Does Academic Freedom Protect Propaganda in the Classroom?

And more about our campus jihadists

In this newsletter, we share more examples of faculty using their classrooms to promulgate antisemitic propaganda; we discuss a new report that mapped the network of campus jihadists; and we share a conversation between a knuckle-head UCLA activist and a survivor of October 7 revealing the cowardice and ignorance of the protestor, an interview of Vanderbilt’s Chancellor explaining the boundary between academic freedom and academic hooliganism, and an interview with dissident Natan Sharansky providing insight into the spread of Woke ideology. Plus a couple of satirical pieces for your enjoyment.

Instagram the Intifada: Mapping the Social Network of Students for Justice in Palestine, Mason Goad’s Report for the National Association of Scholars

A new report, Instagram the Intifada: Mapping the Social Network of Students for Justice in Palestine, has been published by the National Association of Scholars. The mapping project sampled 100 colleges and universities across the United States, including USC, and five geographic regions, including Southern California, to provide a picture of SJP’s network and their affiliates. The goal of the project was to identify the social network of SJP to develop a better understanding of SJP’s operation, organization, leadership, and—most importantly—its supporters. The report includes links to the raw datasets, which can be used by law enforcement and other interested researchers. The report adds to the growing body of material documenting the pro-terror organizations operating on US campuses (see here, here, and here).

Instagram the Intifada finds, to no one’s surprise, that the Columbia University SJP is one of the most influential chapters, although Meta removed the account while we were compiling this data. Just yesterday, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) posted a graphic calling for supporters to reject Veterans Day and celebrate “Martyrs Day.” Other popular chapters include Harvard and Boston University. 

The report lists 64 groups linked to SJP via social media networks, including faculty networks. The take-home message is: 

The SJP camps may have been cleared out, and the intensity of their protests may have waned, but this organization’s presence on campuses and the threat it presents has gone nowhere. There is still much left in the data to be explored, too much to do on our own. With the creation and release of this original dataset, we hope to offer other researchers and law enforcement officials an extensive list of leads for further inquiry into the organization and leadership of Students for Justice in Palestine, its ties to other organizations, and persons of interest.

Radical Faculty Are Using Classrooms for Indoctrination and Antisemitic Propaganda

We extensively covered the issue of radical faculty using their classrooms to indoctrinate and propagandize their students in our last newsletter. Since then, more examples have come to light:

UC Berkeley (TGIF: The Ten-Pound Brain Administration (The Free Press, November 22, 2024):

→ Lit 102 feels different this year: University of California, Berkeley announced that it would offer a course on world literature, and this one hits all the greats. I’ll pull from the course description: “From the Hamas revolutionary resistance forces combating settler-colonialism to a continuous anti-imperialist politic by Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, China, DPRK, and various Indigenous and First-Nation peoples across the Americas, there continues to be a commitment to anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism in what has been termed the Global South and those within the Global North that actively challenge it.” When someone asks why we started The Free Press, I’m just going to send them that and ask for fifty bucks. Setting aside that Hamas is framed as resistance, which I’ve come to expect, I’m obsessed with the countries listed as good: Venezuela, China, and straight-up North Korea (!!). Rocket Man has some new fans, but this time, their hair is blue, not Trumpian blonde. This is the department, as if I even need to say it, where Judith Butler is. Now, usually I have to read between the lines to argue that the left is rooting for these various regimes. Usually I have to imply it real hard. Here, god bless them, they’ve come right out and said it. Once people noticed the course, those Berkeley professors deleted the description, but you can find it here, archived. 

Guys. Guys. Whatever you do, never go full North Korea. 

Cornell University

Meet the distinguished Cornell University scholar Professor Eric Cheyfitz. A past or present member of pro-Hamas organizations, including, but not limited to, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace, you can read about his corpus of antisemitic deeds, including quotes, social media posts, and publications, at the Canary Mission’s wepbage, The good professor also teaches the flagrantly antisemitic course “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance.”

The course description emphasizes the “plausible genocide” in Gaza. A more fitting name for the course would be “Using the Critical Social Justice Framework to Promote Blood Libel.”

A circle member wonders (as do we):

How such individuals manage to keep academic positions and teach classes such as this remains a mystery to me, but aside from hiding behind “academic freedom” they obviously have allies in their institutions that allow students to get college credit for taking part in a course that is little more than anti-Jewish hate speech. 

Academic Freedom Does Not Protect the Hijacking of Classrooms to Promote Propaganda

Published in Sapir magazine, this interview with Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier (Encouraging Debate, Not Settling It, Bret Stephens, November 17, 2024) touches upon issues of institutional neutrality, merit, academic freedom, and professionalism. In particular, Diermeir explains the boundaries of academic freedom, and the responsibilities of administrators to protect the educational mission of the university:

Stephens: Let me ask you about the role of university leaders. One thing you sometimes hear from presidents is I have no power. The faculty rule the institution. There’s a limit to what I can do in terms of what happens on my own campus. Tell us about governance structures. How can university leadership effectively use its position within those structures to set a tone, create a culture, have a set of rules and expectations for how the student and faculty behave? If you were speaking to first-time university presidents from across the country, what would you advise them?

Diermeier:

. . . . Institutional neutrality does not constrain faculty or students. It does constrain administrators. So the second concern that you pointed out, which I’m going to call the politicization of the classroom, is a separate one. That, to me, is a question of professionalism. If you’re using your classroom for indoctrination or propaganda, you’re fundamentally not doing your job. You’re not creating an effective learning environment for your students. So I think these are two separate issues that should not be commingled, because the point of institutional neutrality is to create freedom for faculty and students. If that freedom and responsibility are abused, that’s a different conversation.

. . . .If [faculty are] using their classroom for political propaganda, it’s a different conversation. The right way to think about hiring and promotions is that they should be based on expertise and merit. I’ve cited a couple of these University of Chicago reports before, but there’s one called the Shils Report that makes that very clear: We do not want to have political litmus tests for whom we hire and promote.

That said, there is an important role for the university, including its curriculum, in a society that investigates and reflects on itself, its values, its history. A lot of that is in humanities, the social sciences, divinity schools, law schools, and so forth. There are multiple perspectives, and to have them in the classroom is vitally important. If you have a class on ethics, you want the students to deal with virtue ethics, deontological ethics, and consequential ethics. You want these perspectives well represented, so that they are challenged, and then students can make up their own mind about what they think. If that does not happen because of the ideological capture of a department or program, we’ve got a problem.

Face-to-Face: UCLA Campus Jihadist Confronted by a Former Hamas Hostage

In this short video, former Hamas hostage Moran Stella Yanai challenges a leader of the protests at UCLA, Aidan Doyle.

“Have you ever been to Israel? Have you visited Gaza before? Probably not,” she said, which Doyle, visibly uncomfortable as she spoke, did not contest. “Did you know that the vast majority of the hostages believe in coexisting?”

Yanai went on: “On October 7, and this is what [the terrorists] told me, they didn’t know about the Nova festival, they didn’t know that we have 3,000 people there. They planned, and they told me that, they planned to move on and kill as much as they could. In Beersheba, in Tel Aviv, in Haifa — they wanted to slaughter everybody.

Spoiler alert: The cowardly protest leader does not engage with Moran—he can’t even look her in the eye. He cannot defend his views. His ignorance is on full display.

Read more about the interview here and here.

DEI Apparatchiks Justify Violence Against Jews: A Dispatch from MIT

Courtesy of the Babbling Beaver, we present the following article. It’s satire, but like all Beaver’s articles, it is based on real MIT news. Click on the links to read about the real news underlying the satire. Parallels to your institution are hardly coincidental.

Two achievements earned MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles her place in the Woke Hall of Fame. The first was her campaign to fuel more DEI hiring by accusing MIT and all of STEM of systemic racism. The second was hijacking President Sally Kornbluth’s effort to combat antisemitism launched in the wake of last year’s October 7th atrocities. Her contribution was loading on an anti-Islamophobia program designed to provide cover for the Hamas supporters turning MIT’s campus upside down.

Stand Together Against Hate (STAH) was her mandate. She assured the traumatized MIT community that “We cannot let these issues fester on our campus.”

That’s how it started. How’s it going a year later?

Say hello to Dr. Afif Aqrabawi, at MIT’s Picower Institute.  When a genuine 1930s style pogrom broke out in Amsterdam last week he took to social media to justify the attacks, which he blamed not on the immigrant jihadists who went Jew hunting but on Zionism. And don’t overlook suspended grad student Prahlad Iyengar whose jihadist manifesto got him thrown off campus.

I guess they skipped Melissa’s consciousness raising seminars….

More Satire: Palestine Protester Tries To Argue With Skinhead But They Just Agree On Everything (Babylon Bee, November 3, 2023)

DALLAS, TX — A tense situation was avoided today, as a Leftist pro-Palestine protestor attempted to get into an argument with a Skinhead but found they really are on the same page about pretty much everything.

"Wait, what? You hate the Jews too?" asked Chuck Peaslee, a college student and Palestine liberation warrior. "I wanted to punch a Nazi today, but you're making it pretty difficult right now, bro."

The skinhead, a representative from a local chapter of the Aryan Knights of Odin's Revenge had just finished explaining to Peaslee that his group also seeks the annihilation of the Jewish people. "Right on, man!" the Skinhead said. "The nation of Israel has no right to exist and should be wiped off the face of the earth! High five!"

"Totally!" replied Peaslee as the two men bonded around their shared hatred….

At publishing time, Peaslee and the Skinhead had clearly struck up what seemed to be the beginning of a lifelong bond based on their shared worldview.

A Free Press Conversation with Natan Sharansky (Bari Weiss, The Free Press, November 21, 2024)

Interviewed by Bari Weiss, Natan Sharanksy shares his insights on current affairs. Particularly illuminating is the distinction he draws between progressivism and liberalism.

BW: Why are so many highly educated people drawn to wokeness, or as you call it, neo-communism? 

NS: People instinctively want to make the world a better place. And that’s how communist ideology—which killed tens of millions of its own citizens—became so popular, especially among intellectuals. 

It’s nice to think of a society where everyone is equal. So neo-communists say: We’re destroying this world, where so much inequality exists, and we’re building a new one. And this ideology becomes so enticing that people are willing to give up their freedom for it. 

This is the reason why the most important conflict in the West is not between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between liberals and progressives. Progressives are hiding behind liberal ideas. And in order to live out the promises of liberalism—equality, freedom—progressives are willing to destroy our world for the sake of building a new one with absolute justice. That’s communism. It’s destruction. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was a liberal, not a progressive. He wanted African Americans to be integrated into society. Instead of dismantling the world he was born into, he fought to reform it. 

So many people don’t understand the principal difference between those who want to destroy and rebuild this world and those who want to improve the world we have now. 

Somehow, liberals became allies of the most primitive, totalitarian demagogues, who very closely resemble communists. And the woke movement looks a lot like the communist movement. 

At the beginning of communism, so many social democrats decided that, although the communists were rough and violent, they wanted the same type of growth. And that’s the danger. 

So we need to separate liberalism from progressivism.  

Good News for Higher Ed?

Say what you want about the man, but this sounds promising: