Evanston, Ill. – More than 100 Northwestern students watched as a naked woman was penetrated by a sex toy wielded by her boyfriend during an after-class session of the school’s popular “Human Sexuality” class.
The demo, which was optional, was part of the popular class taught by Prof. John Michael Bailey, the Sun-Times is reporting. More than 600 students take the class, which the course description says “will treat human sexuality as a subject for scientific inquiry.”
The woman involved in the demonstration was not a student, according to the Daily Northwestern, NU’s student newspaper.
“Her boyfriend did the penetration on her,” said Ken Melvoin-Berg, who narrated what was happening for the class. He operates the “Weird Chicago Red Light District Sex Tour.”
In an email, Northwestern defended the class and its professor.
“Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and at the leading edge of their respective disciplines,” said spokesman Alan Cubbage. “The University supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge.”
Public School Teacher: We hate you. Now give us your kids so that we can turn them against you.
That is what it is like for many schools. Every few days I have to sit down with my child and undo the damage that is done in public school. I have to undo the union propaganda they push on my child in class, the one sided politicking, the slanted history education, and the eco-extremism.
The late American philosopher Richard Rorty (d. 2007) in describing his assessment of the role of university professor wrote: “When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists, we do not consider the possibility of reformulating our own practices of justification so as to give more weight to the authority of the Christian scriptures. Instead, we do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization.” The re-education imperative is one that he, “like most Americans who teach humanities or social science in colleges and universities, invoke when we try to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.” Rorty explains to the “fundamentalist” parents of his students: “we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.” He helpfully explains that “I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft [domination] of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.”
In fact, some of our student clients have heard simplified versions of this very sentiment, and I can distinctly remember my own southern, religious upbringing being venomously caricatured during my law-school days. The fact that my father was a math professor who earned his doctorate (a real-life Good Will Hunting) in a mere ten months was irrelevant compared with his status as an elder in a very conservative evangelical church. I had to be “rescued” from my own heritage.
I stubbornly resisted rescue, but many students — eager for acceptance and feeling isolated — give up, surrendering to the dominant culture and feeding an academic beast that demands conformity, in speech and belief.
I appreciate their candor, even it if is a tad revolting.
Bottom line, they want to engage in all of the irresponsible behavior they want and they believe they have the RIGHT to make you pay for the consequences. Many of them also have some serious hate issues as you will see.
This is just something that has got to be seen to be believed.
By the way, Planned Parenthood engages in institutional violations of the law. This is merely one of these videos we could post:
Planned Parenthood “We can make sure that your donation aborts black babies only…” no joke folks:
Black community leaders speak out:
Planned Parenthood apologized for the phone calls, but there is one little problem. Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist who wanted to use abortion, segregation, sterilization, birth control both voluntary and involuntary, to create a master race. According to Sanger if we have to “clear the weeds” to “cultivate the garden” so be it and should be used to solve “the negro problem”:
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” – Margaret Sanger’s December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
We told you this guy was radical and Obama sat in his church for 20 years, sent his kids to Sunday school with this man, and had his children baptized by him.
This is a lesson that everyone should learn. You cannot placate or satisfy the radical left. If you give in to them just a little, they will move the goal post continually and as long as demonizing you yields results they will continue to do so.
The radical leftist group objects because Target gave a pro-business lobby a small donation, that lobby gives some money to Republicans, some of which oppose gay marriage. The homosexual angle is just that, an angle. These people are anti-capitalist and will keep up their harassment until forced to stop, Target closes, or they realize it is not in their interests to stay.
Target first started giving in by making new “pro-gay” policies etc etc. Look at what it has gotten them. This isn’t about gay policy, this is about money and anti-capitalism. So now Target has crossed its “Amy Grant” customer base that it had courted for many years and still the gay leftist group trashes them.
[Editor’s Note – Valuable Lesson: Once you are targeted in the culture war, or you participate in it as Target did with their Amy Grant ads, you had better stake out your territory, stick to it and not waffle or you WILL lose support with all sides. If Target had made it clear that this pressure group would receive no quarter they could appeal to its cultural advertising base for support and would have gotten it. Now Target has put off both sides. Target’s old cultural ad base now believes Target’s traditional cultural appeal was just an insincere gimmick.]
The best way to deal with groups like this is to make them talk to the hand, and if they use union thug tactics you have to go on the offense.
When Jesse Jackson, CAIR and other leftist shakedown artists targeted radio stations to try and silence talk radio, talk host Jim Quinn had a very effective strategy. No meetings, keep them off your property and don’t respond to them. Pretend that they do not exist other than occasionally saying on the air that you know what these groups are all about. Several groups and companies have used this tactic and it works. It works because Jesse Jackson, CAIR and other pressure groups do not want it known that they are ineffective. So in cases when they are ineffective they go away quietly after a time.
Target is getting no quarter because they showed signs of giving in and actually communicated with these people in an attempt to placate them. These pressure groups on the left are predatory. Once they get blood they will keep coming back for more.
I suggest that every PR director or information officer read the book SHAKEDOWN by Ken Timmerman (a man who I have had the pleasure of meeting).
Speaking of Jesse Jackson, Benton Harbor, Michigan had riot trouble a few years ago and Jackson was able to calm the situation down. Do you know why he calmed it instead of fanning the flames for the press? Jesse Jackson went to Whirlpool Corp and made it very clear that he would use those crowds and march against Whirlpool if they did not present his group “Rainbow Push” a nice fat six figure check. Jackson was aware that Whirlpool was outsourcing and flying in foreign workers to replace local Americans in a town that had the highest unemployment in Michigan. It would not have gone over well for Whirlpool if they had resisted. I know this because I worked at Whirlpool at the time and had regular access to many of the top people there (and for the record I thought their employment practices were offensive too).
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Target Corp. is suing a San Diego pro-gay marriage group to get it to stop canvassing outside its San Diego County stores, alleging its activists are driving away customers.
Rights advocates say the trial between Target and Canvass For A Cause that begins Friday could further strain relations with the gay and lesbian community after controversy over its $150,000 donation to a business group backing a Minnesota Republican candidate opposed to gay marriage.
Minnesota-based Target insists it remains committed to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and its lawsuit has nothing to do with the political agenda of the organization.
“Our legal action was in no way related to the cause of the organization and was done so to be consistent with our long-standing policy of providing a by not permitting solicitors at our stores,” the company said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.
Target says it has taken similar action against a number of organizations representing a variety of causes. It alleges in the lawsuit that the San Diego group‘s activists harass customers by cornering them near its stores’ front entrances and debating with them about their views on gay marriage.
The group says it canvasses at shopping malls, college campus and stores like Target to collect signatures and donations in support of gay marriage.
The corporation says at least eight Target stores in the area have reported receiving more than a dozen complaints daily since canvassers started working outside their stores in October 2010. Target says the activists have refused to leave when asked politely and shown the company’s policy prohibiting “expressive activity” on its property.
They are so stupid… and in this case stupid is the best word….that their latest rant against the military is that it is discriminatory against the aged and the physically disabled.
Wow.
We have reported just how stupid the nonsense that comes out of Columbia Journalism Review and to be honest I was virtually certain that stupidity in such a degree could not be surpassed. I now stand corrected.
Equally important is the fact that ROTC will remain a discriminatory institution even after DADT has become a relic of history. There are many reasons–from physical disability to age–for which people are disqualified from admission.
Lee Doren from “How The World Works” posted a brilliant rant about academic stupidity and of course, the latest abject stupidity form Michael Moore.
Watch what this student has to say. Where did he learn such anti-common sense Marxist drivel? How did he become, quite frankly, so dumb? I would bet $1000 that he was indoctrinated by unionized public school teachers and some Marxist professors. Some of you might not be aware of this, but at many universities, if you are not far left you will not get tenure and other academics will try and suppress you. There are countless of examples of this.
Parents, you need to watch this and you need to teach your children to resist Indoctrinate U.
Oh what ever you do don’t stop watching now, it gets even better:
We can’t talk about schools and teachers unions without inspecting the current curriculum, which is negative about America NOW, as opposed to a straightforward account of achievements and failures.
I have written extensively about the master narrative that dominates the teaching of U.S. History in post-civil rights America throughout this website. The mobilizing of pro-government workers unions has put this issue front and center. The purpose of this blog is to remind our visitors that the humanities curriculum as it was adjusted after the assassinations of MLK Jr. and Malcolm X could have done nothing else but to intensify already existent divisions in our country, thence to under-educate the students most in need of high quality education that would prepare them to compete in the job market in fields where there is high demand for skilled labor.
I refer of course to the focus on Native Americans as victims of westward expansion; the Mexican War; slavery, the slave trade, the Civil War and Reconstruction; the Chinese Exclusion Act; the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII; and the exclusionary policies of labor unions until the establishment of the CIO. Not only these events were and are deployed by leftists and liberals to insure the hatred of “the dominant culture” (including the “racist” white working class), but these events that did of course happen, are said to linger in the present, despite a congeries of government programs at all levels, including preferential treatment in the race for college admissions, hiring in government employment, separatist ethnic studies programs in universities and colleges, and in corporations.
1960s activists against the Viet Nam war and “the system” have taken over the command posts of education and media, always in the name of a higher law than those “bourgeois” rules that constitute the basis for our democratic republic. Such high dudgeon is then used to justify lawless actions against “the system” that has tortured and dispossessed the minorities who comprise so much of the base of the Democratic Party. So although we see mostly white faces in the Wisconsin protesters, I suggest that their “civil disobedience” is experienced by them as a link to abolitionists and others who argued for “the higher law” that abrogated the Constitution, seen as a slaveholders’ document. OTOH, recall that Charles Sumner, the antislavery Senator from Massachusetts and a founder of the Republican Party, did not appeal to a higher law, but rather argued that the case for antislavery lay in the Declaration of Independence and in the Preamble to the Constitution; that the individual States were akin to Republics that should insure the promised equality in our founding documents, hence could not use “state’s rights” to justify slavery and its expansion. After the Civil War, he pleaded that the hatred must stop. For this, along with his “radical” proposal for compensating the freedmen with land and full civil rights, I have inferred that he has been diminished by some key academic authorities as harsh and extreme.
Already, government and other unions are mobilizing across the nation to strengthen their collective hands against an insurgent Republican Party. It is to be hoped that the public will use this opportunity to examine every phase of our educational system, including the demoralizing curriculum that is hurting everyone, indeed, that in tandem with much of the mass media, is inspiring cynicism on a massive scale, threatening to bring down the Republic, a Republic that is our “last best hope” for the future of our species.
Dr. Spark received her Bachelor of Science from Cornell, Masters in Teaching from Harvard, and her doctorate in U.S. & European Intellectual History form UCLA.
In the video Ann McElhinney says that kids are fed anti-capitalist, anti-freedom propaganda almost daily. I would say that my experience in college almost mirrors that description. She also explains how our kids are shown Al Gore’s debunked movie several times before they graduate with no attempt at balance or to tell both sides of the argument. I know this is true as I just went through this with Riley High School.
McElhinney says no one, and I mean no one will stand up in public schools and tell kids how capitalism lifts people up. How it brings wealth and gives people more of a chance for upward mobility. In my case in college that was not completely true as I did have one professor who spoke very well about capitalism. The administration fired him for it.
Ann mentions “The Story of Stuff” Marxist indoctrination video – you can see it and a complete refutation HERE.
Ann McElhinney, director/producer of “Not Evil Just Wrong”, speaking at Tea Party American Policy Summit in Phoenix (AZ) on February 26th 2011. For more, please see http://www.noteviljustwrong.com and follow Ann on Twitter @annmcelhinney.
Lou Dobbs on this indoctrination video called “The Story of Stuff”
This is Dr. Walter Williams. He was the chair of the economics department at George Mason University. Recently an economics professor was fired from Indiana University at South Bend for showing students material from this man so I thought that some of you might want to see what he has to say.
Last October marked the 24th anniversary of Justice Antonin Scalia’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Well known for his sharp wit as well as his originalist approach to the Constitution, Justice Scalia consistently asks more questions during oral arguments and makes more comments than any other Supreme Court justice. And according to one study, he also gets the most laughs from those who come to watch these arguments. In September Justice Scalia spoke with UC Hastings law professor Calvin Massey.
Q. How would you characterize the role of the Supreme Court in American society, now that you’ve been a part of it for 24 years?
I think it’s a highly respected institution. It was when I came, and I don’t think I’ve destroyed it. I’ve been impressed that even when we come out with opinions that are highly unpopular or even highly—what should I say—emotion raising, the people accept them, as they should. The one that comes most to mind is the election case of Bush v. Gore. Nobody on the Court liked to wade into that controversy. But there was certainly no way that we could turn down the petition for certiorari. What are you going to say? The case isn’t important enough? And I think that the public ultimately realized that we had to take the case. … I was very, very proud of the way the Court’s reputation survived that, even though there are a lot of people who are probably still mad about it.
You believe in an enduring constitution rather than an evolving constitution. What does that mean to you?
In its most important aspects, the Constitution tells the current society that it cannot do [whatever] it wants to do. It is a decision that the society has made that in order to take certain actions, you need the extraordinary effort that it takes to amend the Constitution. Now if you give to those many provisions of the Constitution that are necessarily broad—such as due process of law, cruel and unusual punishments, equal protection of the laws—if you give them an evolving meaning so that they have whatever meaning the current society thinks they ought to have, they are no limitation on the current society at all. If the cruel and unusual punishments clause simply means that today’s society should not do anything that it considers cruel and unusual, it means nothing except, “To thine own self be true.”
In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don’t think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we’ve gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?
Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. … But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that’s fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don’t like the death penalty anymore, that’s fine. You want a right to abortion? There’s nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn’t mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.
What do you do when the original meaning of a constitutional provision is either in doubt or is unknown?
I do not pretend that originalism is perfect. There are some questions you have no easy answer to, and you have to take your best shot. … We don’t have the answer to everything, but by God we have an answer to a lot of stuff … especially the most controversial: whether the death penalty is unconstitutional, whether there’s a constitutional right to abortion, to suicide, and I could go on. All the most controversial stuff. … I don’t even have to read the briefs, for Pete’s sake.
Should we ever pay attention to lawyers’ work product when it comes to constitutional decisions in foreign countries?
[Laughs.] Well, it depends. If you’re an originalist, of course not. What can France’s modern attitude toward the French constitution have to say about what the framers of the American Constitution meant? [But] if you’re an evolutionist, the world is your oyster.
You’ve sometimes expressed thoughts about the culture in which we live. For example, in Lee v. Weismanyou wrote that we indeed live in a vulgar age. What do you think accounts for our present civic vulgarity?
Gee, I don’t know. I occasionally watch movies or television shows in which the f-word is used constantly, not by the criminal class but by supposedly elegant, well-educated, well-to-do people. The society I move in doesn’t behave that way. Who imagines this? Maybe here in California. I don’t know, you guys really talk this way?
You more or less grew up in New York. Being a child of Sicilian immigrants, how do you think New York City pizza rates?
I think it is infinitely better than Washington pizza, and infinitely better than Chicago pizza. You know these deep-dish pizzas—it’s not pizza. It’s very good, but … call it tomato pie or something. … I’m a traditionalist, what can I tell you?
One hundred and thirty six years ago this week, Winston Churchill—arguably the leading statesman of the twentieth century—was born. The son of a British father and an American mother, Churchill is often remembered for his formidable oratory skills and his love of fine cigars. Yet Churchill was also a great friend to America whose warnings about the empty promises of the nascent welfare state have come to fruition.
A great admirer of America, Churchill especially praised our founding document: “The Declaration is not only an American document. It follows on the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as the third great title deed on which the liberties of the English-speaking peoples are founded.” Though Britain and America were two separate nations with different forms of governments, they were united in principle: “I believe that our differences are more apparent than real, and are the result of geographical and other physical conditions rather than any true division of principle.” As Justin Lyons explains in “Winston Churchill’s Constitutionalism: A Critique of Socialism in America,” Churchill’s ideas about individual liberty, constitutionalism, and limited government “stemmed from his explicit agreement with the crucial statements of these principles by the American Founders.”
When Churchill saw America’s principles of liberty, constitutionalism, and limited government, threatened with the rise of the welfare state, he admonished America to resist this soft despotism. In “Roosevelt from Afar,” Churchill admits that the American economy was suffering when FDR took office, but FDR used this crisis as an opportunity to centralize his political authority [Sound familiar? LINK – IUSB Vision Editor] rather than to bolster the free market through decentralized alternatives. Churchill commends Roosevelt’s desire to improve the economic well-being for poorer Americans [FDR’s New Deal never got non-farm unemployment below 20%. What it accomplished was a great expansion of government power, prolonged misery for the American people, and a supreme court that abandoned the idea of limited government after the court stacking threat. – IUSB Vision Editor], but he critiques Roosevelt’s policies toward trade unionism and attacks on wealthy Americans as harmful to the free enterprise system. Drawing on Britain’s experience with trade unions, Churchill understood that unions can cripple an economy: “when one sees an attempt made within the space of a few months to lift American trade unionism by great heaves and bounds [to equal that of Great Britain],” one worries that result could be “a general crippling of that enterprise and flexibility upon which not only the wealth, but the happiness of modern communities depends.” Similarly, redistribution of wealth through penalties on the rich harms the economy: “far from depriving ordinary people of their earnings, [the millionaire] launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values, and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to capture commonwealth.” Ultimately, attacks on the wealthy only serve as a distraction from other economic issues.
We can readily recall Churchill’s foresight in foreign affairs—his warnings about appeasing Hitler and the rise of the Soviet Union—but we forget his warnings about America’s welfare state. Unlike the progressives in America and abroad, Churchill recognized that tyranny is still possible—even with a well-intentioned welfare state. Political change does not necessarily mean change for the better. Throughout the nineteenth century, political progress was assumed to be boundless and perpetual. After “terrible wars shattering great empires, laying nations low, sweeping away old institutions and ideas with a scourge of molten steel,” it became evident that the twentieth century would not live up to the nineteenth century’s promise of progress. Democratic regimes—even in America—would not be immune from destruction and degradation.
Years later, Churchill’s warnings about trade unionism and redistribution have proven accurate. Though our current economic situation seems bleak, we must also remember (as Churchill reminds us) that politics is not a mere victim of history. Just as progress is not inevitable in politics, neither is decline. Isn’t it time we looked to our old friend Winston Churchill?
Sustainability. It sounds like such a yummy word, such a responsible word. Doesn’t it?
Do not be fooled. Sustainability is a euphemism for leviathan government, eco-extremism, the consolidation of wealth and power to an elite few, and the central planning of not just our economy, but our communities as in where and how we live.
The more the planner’s plans fail the more the planners plan, so in reality these ideas are anything but sustainable.
Academics and administrators who push this nonsense are violating the most basic academic rules of conduct. The purpose of an education is to prepare people to think for themselves, not to indoctrinate them. Believe it or not academics there is a difference between a school and a political party. Consider this a friendly warning; if you keep going down the path you are going, which is making public education subversive, you are inviting legislation to fix these problems permanently. The American people are waking up and they have had just about enough of government’s nonsense and that very much includes your behavior. Straighten up or face legislation that will either mandate your curriculum for you or defund your institutions.
Do you teach sustainability? Do you research sustainability? Will you promote sustainability? Are you setting an example in sustainability? Give us details.
Rather intrusive questions like these are popping up in faculty surveys across the country. This week, two Argus volunteers—one on the East coast, one on the West—wrote to us after they were each startled by the bluntness of their universities’ inquiries.
Faculty members at San Diego State University recently received an email from Provost Nancy Marlin asking them to “take a few minutes to respond to San Diego State’s first survey on faculty teaching and research related to sustainability.”
The survey asks nine questions. The first is, “Do you teach sustainability focused courses?” Fine print under the question explains that these are “Courses in which the primary content focuses on the Environment, Social Justice, Economic Equality, Human Health; Resource Management; Environmental Ethics, Economics or Law; Sustainable Tourism Management, Conservation and/or Preservation, Land Use Planning and Development, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management.”
While such subjects as the environment, ecosystem management, conservation, and resource management make immediate sense as names for stewardship of the earth, a few aren’t so obvious. Social justice, economic equality, economics, and law don’t seem to be specifically “sustainability focused” or fit with the environmental theme.
That’s because there’s a lot more to sustainability than just the environment. For a great many of its proponents, the environment serves as a cover to smuggle in a host of other ideologies. As the University of Delaware framed it in its 2007 residence life materials, “sustainability is a viable conduit for citizenship education and the development of a particular values system.”
Part of that “particular values system,” we’ve found, is a proclivity to big government, economic redistribution, and politically correct preferences for certain identity groups. That’s how sustainability is able to include ideas such as social justice, economic equality, economics, and law. Indeed, the top of the survey says:
Sustainability curriculum and research activities are not limited to considerations of environmental impact of human development or climate change but include content on interrelated social, economic, ethical, and environment dimensions.
The tension between sustainability’s shared aims is commonly depicted in a Venn diagram, with three interlocking circles labeled “Environment,” “Economy,” and “Society.”
This intrusion into partisan politics and economics is what makes “sustainability” unfit to be “the foundation of all learning and practice in higher education,” as powerful advocacy groups such as Second Nature are trying to make it.
Second Question:
But let’s move on to the second, more important question: “Do you incorporate sustainability as a distinct course component or deal with a single sustainability issue in any of your courses that are not specifically sustainability focused? Please indicate how many courses you teach that have a sustainability related course component.”
Selecting a number, 0-9, is the sole possible response here. Answering “no” isn’t an option—in fact, only four out of the nine questions have a “no” option.
This question is a net to catch all courses that aren’t explicitly sustainability focused (which are themselves quite widely defined). The implication is that there is no course that sustainability can’t touch, no subject too self-contained for sustainability to be squeezed in.
There’s where that phrase “the foundation of all learning and practice in higher education” comes in. Sustainability, say its advocates, should be the primary goal of academic learning. Not only if you’re studying to be an environmental engineer—or even an economist or lawyer—but also if you want to be a nurse, a mathematician, or a philosopher. Like diversity, sustainability doesn’t stop with administrators but turns a greedy eye toward the curriculum. And it won’t be content with just some of it.
Third Question:
The third question presses for specifics: “How do you incorporate sustainability into your courses that are not sustainability focused? Check all that apply:”
Followup Question:
A follow-up question to this one is intended to gauge faculty members’ commitment levels: “Would you be willing to integrate (or integrate more thoroughly) sustainability concepts in the courses you teach that are not sustainability focus [sic]? This may be phrased as a question, but its message is loud and clear. Essentially it means, “Get on board with our agenda.”
“No, it does not relate to my subject,” and “No, I am not interested in sustainability” are in the drop-down menu as options. It would be interesting to know how respondents who select these answers will be marked in the university’s records. Will they be asked or given incentives to reconsider?
Fourth Question:
Conforming Students to the New Ethics.
The answer set for the fourth question is where things really get strange. Most courses are now required to announce in advance a list of student learning outcomes—things students should have mastered by the end of the semester. Student learning outcomes as a concept tends to encourage professors to come up with low aims and high-sounding words. Here are the ones SDSU wants to see, some of which sound as if they came from the educational jargon generator:
Do the courses you teach include any of the following student learning outcomes? Check all that apply:
Understand and be able to effectively communicate the concept of sustainability
Develop and use an ethical perspective in which students view themselves as embedded in the fabric of an interconnected world
Become aware of and explore the connections between their chosen course of study and sustainability
Develop technical skills or expertise necessary to implement sustainable solutions
Understand the way in which sustainable thinking and decision-making contributes to the process of creating solutions for current and emerging social, environmental, and economic crises
Contribute practical solutions to real-world sustainability challenges
Synthesize understanding of social, economic, and environmental systems and reason holistically
“An ethical perspective”? We’ve seen sustainability’s strange, non-humanistic definitions of “ethics,” its stricter-than-Puritan moral codes, and its overtly religious nature. We’ve also seen that a nation’s manner of educating shapes the character of its people. So what character quality does sustainability ethics seek to instill in students? The ability to “view themselves as embedded in the fabric of an interconnected world.”
What does that even mean? It sounds more like burying your face in a planet-sized pillow than using “an ethical perspective.” The word perspective is also troublesome. Higher education’s role is not to tell students which perspectives they should adopt, but to give them the tools to develop their own.
There Is a Right Answer –
In her email, Provost Marlin said that taking this survey is “critical” in order to “ensure that San Diego State is more competitive in many of the external ‘green’ ratings and rankings, which are increasingly important to students.” She does not point to any evidence that incorporating sustainability into more of the curriculum will give students a better education or give faculty members a deeper knowledge of their disciplines. The rationale, instead, is to do something that students think is important. This seems on plane with parents who appease their children by giving them whatever they want. Is that wise? Is it good for students in the long run?
SDSU’s choice to conduct this kind of assessment has some serious implications. Such a survey has the weight of institutional authority behind it. If you’re a faculty member and receive Provost Marlin’s email, you’re going to feel obliged to answer a certain way, and to indicate some eagerness to get on the bandwagon. Again, while there aren’t known incentives or consequences for answering one way or the other, this one-track survey says clearly, “Follow the pattern we laid out for you.”
This pressure means that many professors will exaggerate their interest in sustainability, which likely means the university will brag about its high faculty involvement rate. Green ratings will soar and outsiders (including prospective students) will get the “right” picture.
As of today, hundreds of college and university presidents have vowed to make sustainability “part of the curriculum for all students.” The president of Unity College declared, “It has to be ubiquitous, it has to be done by everyone, it has to be part of the whole infrastructure.” Colleges and universities are on the verge of a major overhaul of higher education to refit it around sustainability. Questions such as, “How do you incorporate sustainability courses?” are only the beginning.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali says that Islam is overtly bigoted against women, non Muslims and blacks (I am aware of how black Muslims in Arab countries are not treated well institutionally – Update: The Muslim Brotherhood and associated elements are now rounding up black Libyans).
UPDATE -A very revealing article written by a Yemeni journalist:
London Muslim is reporting that Azad is under threat of death from her father and is trying to get the charges dropped and playing happy family out of fear.
Afshan Azad, the 22-year-old British actress who portrayed Padma Patil, a classmate of Harry Potter in the blockbuster Hollywood films, was reportedly beaten, called a ‘whore’ and threatened with death by members of her own family after dating a young, non-Muslim man.
According to the UK’s Daily Mail, the young actress was assaulted and called a ‘prostitute’ after she met with a young Hindu man — a potential relationship that apparently angered her father and brother. After her family members threatened to kill her, Azad reportedly fled the family’s home through her bedroom window. The movie star is apparently so frightened of her brother and father, she has refused to confront them in court.
Both men were charged with making threats to kill her and her brother was also charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm on his sister.
Instead of both going on trial today, the prosecution decided to accept a guilty plea of assault by her brother, and both men were formally found not guilty of making threats to kill. …
Richard Vardon QC, prosecuting, told the court: ‘The incident took place on Saturday 21 of May at the home address of the family in Longsight, Manchester.
‘The prosecution allegation in essence is she was the victim of a wholly unnecessary and unpleasant assault by her brother.
‘The reason for the assault, apparently her association with a Hindu young man, that apparently being disapproved of by her family who are Muslim.
The second video below makes some very good points that are undeniable. The rhetoric used by the Communist Party and the Democratic leadership is indistinguishable. In the name of class envy and helping people both seek to use crisis to expand their power and subjugate the citizen. In the process most people do not get the help they need and things get worse, but the politicians do gain the power [Examples of crisis that leads to bureaucrats taking power 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
This video explains the point brilliantly – Financial Crisis 101 in three and a half minutes:
To those who have not done their homework, or spent some years on most any college campus, this may seem crazy or shocking. The following video challenges you to go to the Communist Party web site and look for yourself at CPUSA.org
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“The mere fact that over 100 million people have been murdered in the name of communism does not matter. The fact that a bank exec makes some money on my home mortgage and an oil executive gets rich because I drive my car is the REAL atrocity. Come to think of it I hate doctors and engineers and anybody who makes my life better.”
Former socialist and former atheist Peter Hitchens explains the foolish elitism of the progressive secular left and how they look down on anyone who disagrees with contempt and scorn as if they are sub-human.
Dr. Sowell describes the critical differences between interests and visions. Interests, he says, are articulated by people who know what their interests are and what they want to do about them. Visions, however, are the implicit assumptions by which people operate. In politics, visions are either constrained or unconstrained. A closer look at the statements of both McCain and Obama reveals which vision motivates their policy positions, particularly as they pertain to the war, the law, and economics.
This is also a great exploration of the difference between constrained realists and unconstrained visionaries, traditionalists vs. central planners, the empirical world vs. the normative.
[Another great piece that I wrote on my old college blog.]
There are two predominant philosophies of journalism taught in this country. The “Walter Lippmann (so called) ‘objective’ model” and what one of my J-School profs called the “Looking out for the folks” model. The former is usually presented as the preferred model at most universities (especially the Ivy’s)
The Lippmann Objective Model is anything but objective. The Lippmann model says that journalists should associate themselves with an elite technical class of people so that these experts via/with the journalists can give the “proper” information to the public so that they can “vote the right way”.
At first, the Orwellian nature of the Lippmann Model is not so pointedly explained, but as time goes on reporters get it and the coverage of the elite media shows it. [If you doubt me I challenge you to follow this LINK and scroll down to the quote from Dr. Rahe and the excerpt from Lippmann’s book – Editor]
For example, the reporter and/or editor has a point of view he wishes to present. So he opens his rolodex and contacts an “expert” he knows will give him the sound-bite he wants and presents him as just an objective expert who they found at random. Or said reporter will have a man on the street section, but the reporter will call a few people he knows to be on that street, complete with the narrative that the reporter knows will present.
Oh? You think I’m kidding? OK just a few examples:
The “looking out for the folks” model is often quoted by Bill O’Reilly, but Bill, as he will tell you, is more of a commentator than a straight news man. The spirit of the kind of journalism O’Reilly did when he was a straight news man is closer to this model. The “looking out for the folks” model certainly resembles more of the ethical ideal in what people expect from journalism and is what “Lippmann Objective Model” media outlets claim to be on their face.
Enough with the preliminary goodies and on to the meat.
Oh the horror! Fox bureau chief told reporters to be ‘skeptical’
By Mark Tapscott
You think the most essential purpose of journalism and the reason the Founders included freedom of the press in the First Amendment was to insure independent reporting about government, politicians, and public policy issues, right?
Well, you must be wrong because Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon is getting a raft of garbage from liberal activists masquerading as journalists at Media Matters, some liberal bloggers and a scattering of real journalists who ought to know better.
A journalist being skeptical? Who would ever have thought such a thing could be. I don’t know, maybe anybody who has heard this (attributed long ago to a crusty desk editor at the illustrious City News Bureau in Chicago): “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”
In other words, we journalists are paid to BE SKEPTICAL.
For the record, here’s what Sammon said in a Dec. 8, 2009, memo to his reporting staff shortly after the Climategate global warming email scandal erupted:
“Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”
Now I am from out of town and all, but Sammon’s injuction sounds to me exactly like what editors are supposed to tell their charges – report what A claims and what B says about what A claims, but keep your personal views about both A and B out of it.
Note that Sammon includes both those who say the planet has warmed – i.e. global warming advocates – and those who claim the opposite, that the planet has cooled – global warming critics. How much more even-handed – dare I say it, fair and balanced? – can the guy be?
There is also the factual nature of Sammon’s statement that critics question data. Critics DO question the data for a warming planet. He doesn’t demand that his reporters agree with the critics about the data or tell viewers that the critics are right and the global warming advocates are wrong.
Yet, Salon’s headline claims the Fox news executive was “again caught demanding conservative spin.” And the lead that follows makes another false statement, claiming Sammon directed his “anchors and reporters to adopt right-wing spin when discussing the news.”
Are these people so arrogant as to think the rest of us are too stupid to see that Salon totally and completely misrepresented Sammon’s comment?
The back story here, of course, is that Media Matters is doing exactly what billionaire radical liberal financier George Soros paid it $1 million to do, which is to trash Fox News at every opportunity no matter what the facts might be in any given situation.
Watching this campaign unfold, it becomes clear that Fox News drives today’s extremist liberals into the same sort of eye-bulging, irrational, spittle-flying, blind rage that we saw back in the 1950s from the far right whack-jobs in the John Birch Society who claimed Ike was either a fool or a card-carrying commie.
Now, just so everybody reading this knows: Sammon is a former White House reporter for The Examiner. I count him as a friend, a respected colleague and a solid journalist. And Fox News puts me in front of a camera as a talking head once in a while.
So how long you think it will be before Sammon’s critics claim my comments here aren’t credible as a result? The reality is that the left-leaning MSNBC folks sit me down in front of their cameras to bloviate far more frequently than Fox does. Go figure.
So here’s something to ponder when the paid Fox detractors at Media Matters tell you Sammon and I are both former Washington Timesmen and are thus Republican mouthpieces:
I was inducted into the First Amendment Center’s Freedom of Information Hall of Fame a few years ago. I mention this not to boast, but because I was among a bunch of very smart people for whom I have great respect – even though they came predominantly from the liberal side of things.
But I don’t recall seeing anybody from Media Matters among the inductees.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Target Corp. is suing a San Diego pro-gay marriage group to get it to stop canvassing outside its San Diego County stores, alleging its activists are driving away customers.
One hundred and thirty six years ago this week, Winston Churchill—arguably the leading statesman of the twentieth century—was born. The son of a British father and an American mother, Churchill is often remembered for his formidable oratory skills and his love of fine cigars. Yet Churchill was also a great friend to America whose warnings about the empty promises of the nascent welfare state have come to fruition.
Political Arena 
