More of the Mamdani effect in motion, at NYC schools

A Holocaust survivor was denied a chance to give a speech at a New York school, because the principal didn't like his messages:

The principal of a Brooklyn middle school created controversy this week by turning down the opportunity to have a Holocaust survivor speak to students.

Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement Thursday that he has met with that survivor, Sami Steigmann, in the past, and that "he is absolutely the right person to speak with kids about the atrocities of the Holocaust."

The snubbing of Sami Steigmann

Last month, a parent in the Boerum Hill section of the borough wrote Arin Rusch, the principal of Middle School 447, asking to bring Steigmann in as a speaker, saying he's "very relatable, especially with youth."

Rusch responded, in part, "We've had Holocaust survivors speak in the past," adding, "It can really help build empathy and counter antisemitism."

However, she also said, "In looking at his website materials, I also don't think that Sami's presentation is right for our public school setting, given his messages around Israel and Palestine. I'd love to explore other possible speakers."

"I wish I was able to talk to her to find out why she feels that way, what is the reason, because just being proud of being Jewish does not disqualify me to be a speaker," Steigmann said.

Based on what the principal brings up, it's clear on the one hand, she buys into the palestine propaganda as an Arab/Islamic state hook, line and sinker, and it wouldn't be shocking if she'd refuse to accept it was all a concoction of the Roman empire in remote times. On the other hand, she doubtless despises Mr. Steigman's respect for the actual country his ancestry originated from, and believes he's not allowed to be proud of his ethnicity. On which note:

On Steigmann's website, aside from two Q&A slides that have the Israeli flag as the backdrop, slide number 57 explains Zionism. One bullet point reads, "No other state would accept Jews before Israel was created, during the time of the Holocaust and beyond."

No doubt, she also opposes anything to do with Zionism, which is just a synonym for patriotism and nationalism. And this is also obviously the Zohran Mamdani effect, even before he's begun his term of office as NYC's first Muslim mayor.

Moshe Spern is the president of United Jewish Teachers.

"There seems to be a movement of separating Jews from Israel and now there seems to be a movement of separating the Holocaust from Jews and separating the Holocaust from Israel," Spern said. "We cannot allow New York City to continue down a path that censors and shuts out Jews for their viewpoints and especially Holocaust survivors."

I would also strongly recommend making a similar case for Armenian historians on Turkey's genocide during WW1, and 911 Families/survivors, who're doubtless censored and blacklisted by many school systems too in New York. Sadly, this is bound to get worse under the incoming Mamdani, and victims of October 7, 2023 could also be blacklisted.

In the meantime, the NY Post notes that without a doubt, Mamdani will also cancel an anti-BDS order issued by outgoing mayor Eric Adams. And while NY governor Kathy Hochul may have distanced herself from Mamdani's positions, it wouldn't be shocking if she took no proper action to prevent him from destroying NYC as he's bound to do soon enough.

Unlike ordinary families in Minnesota, Muslim families are allowed to reject LGBT curriculum in schools

Here's another example of how, in far-left states like Minnesota, Muslim families are allowed to opt out of lessons about LGBT ideology, in contrast to non-Muslims:

A Minneapolis area school district says it will let families opt out of LGBT curriculum materials after several Muslim families threatened to sue.

[...] Somali Muslim families had threatened to sue the district, alleging that not allowing families to opt out potentially violates the Constitution and state law.

On November 2, the families’ attorneys sent the district a letter explaining Islamic teachings around gender and sexuality and outlining the timeline of parents’ complaints about the LGBT books.

Some of the families’ elementary school children had been exposed to LGBT characters in picture books, which caused “significant confusion and distress,” the families’ letter said.

All concerned about LGBT ideology indoctrination would do well to consider that this is really only a win for Islamists, not for Judeo-Christians, who can find it much harder to oppose this horrific stuff. Both Islam and LGBT ideologies are hurtful to women, and that surely has something to do with how this was all approached by the left. And no doubt, after the October 7, 2023 Hamas bloodbath in Israel, a lot of the pro-LGBT ideologues who may have wanted Islamists to accept their trash have now changed course completely, since the Religion of Peace truly is a favored ideology of theirs too in the long run.

Schools in USA desensitize children to violence, and employ rotten apples

Michele Exner warns of the serious topic of universities and schools alike in the USA that have clouded their students' judgement when it comes to Islamic jihadism, and practically desensitized them to violence:

There should have been a resounding and unified condemnation against these barbaric attacks, but shockingly, the statements from student groups and universities across the U.S. like Harvard, Columbia, Stanford and George Washington University, showed many young Americans siding with Hamas terrorists instead of standing up for the innocent people targeted and killed.

Much attention has been given to the radical protests and anti-Israel rhetoric coming out of college campuses, but it would be naive to think these students developed this warped sense of morality in just a few years or in a few classes at college. What we are witnessing is the manifestation of hate-filled indoctrination that has taken root in K-12 classrooms across the country.

Schools have become infatuated with teaching children that the entire world exists in a paradigm of oppressed versus oppressor. This hierarchy of oppression has replaced moral teachings of right and wrong. It has programmed students to wrongly believe violence is justified if it is carried out against a group deemed the “oppressor” by prevailing progressive ideologues.

Parents Defending Education has tracked dozens of incidents of school districts incorporating these reprehensible lessons into curriculums and teacher training sessions.

In New Haven Unified School District’s Ethnic Studies & Social Justice Academy, which is part of James Logan High School in California, the course’s objective was to teach students to challenge and criticize “power, oppression, capitalism, white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism.”

In a proposed ethnic studies curriculum in Jefferson Union High School District in San Mateo County, California, students are expected to learn “systems of oppression” with lessons on the “Four I’s of Oppression,” power and privilege, and colonialism. One example included in the lessons focuses on “Palestinian dispossession of lands/identity/culture through Zionist settler colonialism.”

[...] In Boston, public schools incorporated an ethnic studies curriculum focused on oppression and examining the so-called “pillars of white supremacy.”

If it was not bad enough this propaganda was being forced on American kids under the guise of “ethnic studies,” there have been accounts of school officials and even school board members who have promoted hateful rhetoric.

On May 13, 2021, Abrar Omeish, who continues to serve as a sitting member on the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Board, uploaded an antisemitic post on her Facebook page accusing Israel of being an apartheid state and colonizers. The account she used is also the one she uses for her official duties.

And all these years, nothing was done to get these kind of people out of the public school system. You can't be shocked it could come to this then. There've even been similar cases occurring with movements like the ADL, which degenerated into a cesspool of wokeness some time ago, and following offensive incidents in which Hamas supports in the USA tore down posters featuring pictures of victims of kidnap/rape/murder, it also turns out one of those who did such a truly abominable act was an employee at ADL:

One of the NYU students who brazenly ripped down posters of Israeli hostages is an activist “extremely passionate about fighting racial profiling” who blamed her behavior on misplaced anger.

Yazmeen Deyhimi — a junior at the top university who once worked for the Anti-Defamation League — admitted to tearing apart banners that were plastered outside NYU’s Tisch Hall, in a shameless act that was caught on video.

Deyhimi came clean on her Instagram account after the action ignited social media outcry and calls for the school to hold the perpetrators accountable.

“I have found it increasingly difficult to know my place as a biracial brown woman, especially during these highly volatile times,” she wrote.

What she's doing is a truly shameless display of victimology. What's really weird here is that:

According to her LinkedIn profile, Deyhimi is an advocate against Muslim bigotry and spent a summer working with the ADL as a CSC Education Intern when she was just 15 years old.

If she means she's opposed to bigotry espoused by Muslims, she lied via her behavior. And it's not going to be easy to excuse her even now. She should be ostracized, and told to repost the advertisements she and her cronies tore down. The accomplices must be identified and ostracized as well.

“After review, we can confirm that one of the participants was part of an ADL high-school level summer internship in 2019,” a spokesperson for the organization told The Post.

“We fully condemn her actions and hope that the apology she issued is the first step towards working to repair the harm and deep hurt her actions caused.”

The ADL has since taken down a blog post announcing the Long Island native as one of the 12 student leaders joining the program, describing Deyhimi as “extremely passionate about fighting racial profiling and championing gender equality.”

As noted here:

While Jonathan Greenblatt has performed okay during the current crisis, I warned that the changes he made to the ADL have actually infected the group with extremists who hate Israel and Jews. [...]

If the ADL doesn't part ways with them collectively - say, if there's 20, to make sure all 20 are completely dismissed - then they shouldn't even continue to function as a movement at all. It's clear at this point they've failed their mission.

The Nanny State (the Ninny State?)

Almost every week I see an article about a school being sued by stupid parents because a teacher or a coach has done something to upset a child’s self-esteem. Today in my local Florida newspaper is another story – this one about a volleyball coach who has been fired for “grabbing a student’s shirt”. In Rhode Island, where I live in the summer, there is an ongoing case about a parent suing (of course, with the help of the ACLU) the principal of a high school for his objecting to the female student wearing a tee shirt that contained an obscenity relating to the President. My goodness, who are these babies that need such protection from slights in life, and how are they going to handle some real problems they will face as adults?

Not only are these parents creating adults who will be perpetual children who fly into tantrums when everything doesn’t go just right (and we all suffer the consequences of these adult brats – especially road rage), but they are robbing their children as well. I had a high school track and football coach who threw a baton at me when he thought I was slacking in a race, and who picked me up and hurled me into my practice opponent to show me what the result of a proper block should be. When I got over it, I was proud to receive these harassments; most of my team members had similar experiences, and I was now one of them. Even now, more than 50 years later, my friends and I still remember these incidents involving me and them and that coach with great amusement and affection. (I’m sure that this causes feelings of horror among liberal do-gooders.)

In graduate school and in the Army, group solidarity was built by subjecting the group to some wearisome and, sometimes, humiliating experience. It worked, we became a team, and we got over it, but I shudder to think of what would happen to such a coach, a teacher or a platoon sergeant in today’s silly, liberal, mush environment.

There is an excellent book about this phenomenon and its consequences called “The Nanny State” by David Harsanyi , and many others have also noticed this state of affairs; here is an interesting article on the subject:

Targeting dodge ball and other inanities

April 2, 2002, DAVID LIMBAUGH - World Net Daily:

There was a time in this country when public school teachers could focus on teaching the basics. Today, unfortunately, they are all too often preoccupied with accommodating the silly concerns pervading our society. To what concerns do I refer? Oh, those such as banning the innocent children's games of dodge ball, cops and robbers, musical chairs, steal the bacon and tag. You heard me right – it's not just the allegedly sadistic and violent game of dodge ball that schools are trying to outlaw.

Excerpt: See Rest at From Sea to Shining Sea

HIGH COURT OF ISRAELI APARTHEID STATE FORCES GOVERNMENT TO INCREASE FUNDING TO ARAB SCHOOLS

Not that Arab schools weren't being funded, mind you. They just weren't being funded enough to satisfy the justices. And so they threw Israel's educational system into a literal crises - risking the jobs of thousands of teachers - until the government promised to fix it:

The High Court of Justice ruled on Sunday to allow the Education Ministry to implement a plan that would change the status of "national priority areas" gradually, eliminating the need to fire 1,500 teachers in schools that will lose their funding due to the decision... In February 2006, the High Court canceled the 'national priority areas' status after the map... was deemed unfair by the Court because it heavily favored Jewish areas over Arab ones in education spending. The Education Ministry was ordered to develop a map that was in keeping with the principle of 'equality.'... 15 months after the High Court decision, the Education Ministry announced in an internal memo that it was seeking legal ways to delay implementing the ruling. However, the deadline for firing teachers - a move that would be necessary for dozens of schools if the national priority map were canceled for next year - was only two days later, on May 31.

Now you might be like "well then wasn't the Education Ministry trying to implement an apartheid system". And we'd say "no, they were corrupt and returning political favors to local constituents - and since the effect of that might have been discriminatory, the High Court struck it down anyway". Which is just like what used to happen with black public schools in apartheid South Africa, right? And Jimmy Carter isn't either an idiot or a potential latent anti-Semite for his irrational hatred of the Jewish State, right?

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]