New York University’s student senate voted to divest from companies like Caterpillar and General Electric that do business with Israel, reported Campus Reform. But as we saw with the University of Michigan, students can pass a BDS resolution, but that doesn’t mean the administration will give two hoots.
This was a secret ballot vote and before we go any further, let me just say that I really don’t understand secret ballot votes. You’re electing student senators to represent you and your interests. If you don’t know how these senators voted — particularly on such a contentious topic as Israel — how will you hold them accountable?
NYU’s Black Student Union supported the resolution, suggesting that both Palestinians and American blacks fight against white supremacy. The group said “we continue to see a linkage between the Palestinian oppression and the struggle for Black liberation. Israel’s pervasive use of detention and imprisonment centers evokes similarities to police violence and the carceral state in the U.S. that targets and criminalizes Black communities.”
Notice the disingenuous framing of law enforcement as an institution that punishes people not for crime, but for the color of their skin. Anyway, remember George Mason University professor Noura Erakat? You know, the one who takes issue with people calling Palestinians a “mob” but doesn’t seem to have a problem with the term being used to describe Israelis? Well, she praised the passing of the resolution as part of a building of a “path for human rights,” but it doesn’t look like any of this even matters because NYU’s administration controls the cash flow and ISN’T a huge fan of the resolution.
An NYU spokesman said: “The University opposes this proposal….It is at odds with the Trustees’ well understood position that the endowment should not be used for making political statements.”
As for the left, isn’t it just a bit ironic that the same people who want money out of politics don’t want politics out of money?
Remember Talia Lavin? You know, the former New Yorker fact-checker who falsely reported that an ICE agent had a Nazi tattoo? I reported a couple months ago that New York University had, ironically enough, commissioned Talia to teach a course entitled “Reporting on the Far-Right” — you know, because clown world. Well, after only two studentssigned up, that course has been canceled, according to Campus Reform.
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, had some pretty…poignant things to tell me about NYU and Miss Lavin.
Peter said “the eagerness of progressive journalists to smear conservatives leads more than a few of those journalists to license their imaginations to make up outrageous tales. NYU escaped some of its ignominy when only two students signed up for Lavin’s course, giving the school a reason to cancel it. The students plainly have more sense than the administrators.”
But Talia Lavin wasn’t the only left-wing journalist commissioned by NYU. Remember Lauren Duca?
Lauren used to write for Teen Vogue, which seems to provide teens with a healthy mix of celebrity news and left-wing indoctrination. NYU is having Lauren teach a course called “The Feminist Journalist” which makes no attempt to appear objective.
Her course description says that “truth is not a math equation” and that “media coverage of our current political climate has been plagued by the mental Napalm that I call “both sides-ism.” This is a kind of classic “he said, she said” form of journalism where the reporter tries to give both sides of an issue, even if one side is completely bogus.”
I mean, credit where credit’s due — but if you’re going to be a progressive hack, I don’t know about you, but I prefer my wolves out of sheep’s clothing.
The Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU put out a statement in early May saying students from the department would not be studying abroad at Tel Aviv University, according to The Algemeiner.
“Access to the program is clearly being obstructed by Israel’s long-standing discriminatory policies (as acknowledged by the State Department) of barring entry to Palestinians or persons of Arab descent and Muslim heritage, and by the recent amendments to its Law of Entry, which advocate for the exclusion of persons on account of their political speech.”
But another article on the Algemeiner points out that the State Department page linked by this NYU department doesn’t state that Israel BARS these groups, but rather that these groups have experienced more scrutiny upon entry. And that would make sense because certain groups do have different proclivities for committing terror attacks. These equality advocates gotta realize that nothing in nature is symmetrical.
As for discriminating based on political speech, that’s not exactly something that’s unique to Israel. The UK has blocked entry to left-wingers like Louis Farrakhan, as well as conservatives like Pamela Geller.
If you’re heading off to New York University this fall, you’ll be able to take a course called “Reporting on the Far Right” taught by Talia Lavin who, less than a year ago, resigned from the New Yorker after saying this ICE agent, who’d previously lost both legs on a combat mission, had a Nazi tattoo, reported Campus Reform.
You just can’t make this stuff up, folks. This is like Eric Clanton, who was apparently running around Berkeley bashing Trump supporters with a bike lock, turning out to have been a professor of — wait for it — ethics. So let’s take a look at Talia’s course.
“The course will teach students how to track far-right harassment campaigns to their sources and uncover the identities of white supremacist propagandists on the web.”
White supremacist propagandists as decided by Talia, of course. But cool, you know, looking around at all of the microaggression seminars, affirmative action, right-wing speeches getting shut down, I’ve always thought “hey, what’s the one thing that could really seal the deal for colleges to become complete cancer?” That’s right: How to Doxx Your Political Opponents 101.
Anyway, Talia’s course also deals with the “psychological impact” of covering hate and will “confront the ethical dilemmas incumbent in such coverage, exploring the question of when exposing hate crosses the line into amplifying it uncritically.”
Right because the real ethical dilemma of publishing personal info about people you don’t like isn’t exposing them to violence or anything, no, no, the real ethical dilemma is whether your report will create copycat purveyors of “hate.” You know, because people who read Media Matters and HuffPo are really likely to become right-wing activists.
Hiring Talia isn’t just a one-off for NYU, either. Last month on Campus Unmasked, we reported how the school hired former Teen Vogue columnist Lauren Duca of getting thrashed by Tucker fame to teach a course called “The Feminist Journalist.”
To go three for three, maybe they can get New York Times writer Sarah Jeong to teach a course on how to really slam white people on Twitter.
