THE LORAX? REALLY?

Last week, I conversed with a parent concerned about the education that her seventh-grade daughter is receiving in one of the "finest" public schools in one of the "finest" school districts in the United States.

The account I received was beyond disconcerting.

It was dismaying!

The student, dedicated to learning and enrolled in the gifted and talented program, returned from a week's absence due to illness and inquired of the teacher as to what work needed to be completed.  The teacher chirped, "Oh, there's nothing to make up.  The class spent all last week watching The Lorax."

The film The Lorax, based on the book of the same title, is eighty-six minutes long.  Apparently, the class discussed the film in class, but no written work was assigned.

The situation did not involve a flu epidemic with too many absences for the teacher to forge ahead, nor die  the situation involve a substitute in charge of the class for the week.  Therefore, I have to wonder if spending an entire week on this film was part of county-approved program of studies.

These two bits of information (HERE and HERE) may provide clues as to why an "advanced" seventh-grade class spent an entire week on The Lorax.

America is turning into an idiocracy, and public education is one means to attaining that particular type of dystopia, defined as a society characterized by human misery — in this case, a dystopia characterized by miserable mindlessness.

Additional reading of possible interest: Marxism in Education: Infiltration of Our School Systems by the Common Core Standards.

TEXTBOOK CHANGES IN THE UK

Changes being made to reflect the "Muslim heritage."

From the Jerusalem Post, with a hat tip to A New Dark Age Is Dawning:

An educational foundation in the UK has announced plans to distribute to high schools a free book that highlights the scientific and cultural legacies of Muslim civilization.

1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World is the creation of the Foundation for Science Technology and Civilization (FSTC), a Manchester-based organization set up to raise awareness of the contributions of the Muslim world to modern civilization.

FSTC said the contribution that Muslim and other civilizations have made to the modern world has been widely overlooked and that its team of academics has focused on debunking the myth of the so-called "Dark Ages of Civilization."

"The period between the 7th and 17th centuries - which has been erroneously labeled 'the Dark Ages' - was in fact a time of exceptional scientific and cultural advancement in China, India and the Arab world," Prof. Salim Al-Hassani, chief editor of the book, said.

"This is the period in history that gave us the first manned flight, huge advances in engineering, the development of robotics and the foundations of modern mathematics, chemistry and physics."

The foundation said it hoped to distribute 3,000 copies of the book to UK schools by October and is seeking public support for the campaign through a sponsorship scheme.

Last month, British evolutionary biologist, popular science author and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins announced plans to distribute free DVDs to high schools across the UK....

Of course, similar drivel is already in many of the textbooks being used right now in the United States. Bad as those books are now, they could be propagandized even more. And at the rate the dhimmitude is proceeding amongst the elite leftists here in the States, we will see a similar development here - as a supplement to use in the classrooms.

Also note the echoes of similarity in the words of BHO at the White House dinner celebrating Ramadan:

President Barack Obama highlighted the contributions made by Muslims to American culture and the “dynamism and diversity” of the Islamic community.

“Islam, as we know, is part of America,” Obama said at a White House dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan....

The White House dinner celebrating Ramadan was held on the fifth anniversary of the barbarous attack on the school in Beslan. Talk about a disgusting irony!

PROMOTING SALAFISM AT THE IVY LEAGUES

Via this posting at Weasel Zippers, we note that Princeton University has a professor shilling for fundamental Islam:

Bernard Haykel [Princeton Professor of Near Eastern Studies], an expert on Islam, told Sheela Bhatt in the first part of an exclusive interview that the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 26, 2008, will be the basis for similar strikes in the future.

In this, the second part of his interview, Haykel, who among other things is defending the legal and human rights of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the prime accused in the 9/11 attacks, talks about Al Qaeda's appeal among Muslims, and how it can be contained.

....Some of Al Qaeda's claims are correct. They have appropriated many of the arguments of Marxists, of the anti-colonial and Third World movement, like social justice, transparency and better government and less brutalisation. At one level their arguments are quite appealing, like their argument on anti-globalisation and environment. Some of Al Qaeda's arguments are legitimate....

Princeton has surely departed from the intent of its founders:

The history of Princeton goes back to its establishment by "New Light" Presbyterians; Princeton was originally intended to train Presbyterian ministers. It opened at Elizabeth, New Jersey, under the presidency of Jonathan Dickinson as the College of New Jersey. Its second president was Aaron Burr, Sr.; the third was Jonathan Edwards.

Theologian Jonathan Edwards is most famous for his role in the Great Awakening and his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

MISLEADING LABELS

According to this article in the November 14, 2007 edition of the Washington Post, the thinktank Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which advocates rigorous standards for education, recently graded some Advanced Placement (AP) courses, in which some 14,000 students are enrolled and by which high-school students can receive college credit if they pass the AP exams. Literature courses received a B+, history courses a B-, biology courses an A-, and calculus courses a C-. Compared to the marks which Fordham Institute awarded state standards, those for AP courses were significantly higher than for regular-track courses. However, the report found particular fault with math and history courses because

math [programs]...allowed more use of calculators than the authors considered appropriate. AP U.S. History was faulted for mentioning few specific historical events in its course plan....The authors advised teachers to ignore the [course] outlines....

College Board, which oversees AP courses as mentioned above, has a different take than the Fordham Institute when it comes to history courses. Specifically, College Board has indicated that AP courses should

[pursue] changes to social studies courses that might encourage "more time talking about such themes as 'politics and citizenship' or 'continuity and change,' " which report authors worried would reduce time for learning facts about historical events.

That issue of time is, in my opinion, a valid concern. Teachers and students do not have unlimited time to cover course material. Furthermore, just how are students supposed to talk in a reasoned manner about such themes if facts and events are not the basis of such discussions? Maybe the students are supposed to rely on hunches and feelings — those stand-bys of leftist education....


Read the rest at Always On Watch.

THE YOUTUBE ELECTION IS HERE (PLUS: AS USUAL, THE PRETTY GIRLS ARE ON OUR SIDE) [VIDEOS]

Original: We haven't done the legwork on this one way or another, but these quotes don't seem technically "true" or "like the way Palestinians usually talk." This video is only here (a) as a Kaus-esque "this is the kind of thing people can do in their basement to swing votes" example and (b) because the second video didn't justify a whole post. We're not joking about this. This isn't like a dishonest nudge-nudge wink-wink thing where we disavow responsibility but post the video "just to air some questions." These quotes are almost certainly not true. If they were true, this would be a fantastic attack ad. But since they're probably not, it's just something that shows how a great attack ad might come together:

Also: have we mentioned that we've got the pretty girls on our side? Bonus points awarded to this young lady both for being a Fredhead and correctly identifying that Ron Paul is - from a strict clinical perspective - kind of crazy:

Not batshit crazy mind you. Just kind of unseemly vulgar populist crazy.

Updated:
Update: Regrading the precise dose of truthiness in the first video, this got dropped into our inbox:

The quotes and statements, with the exception of the question at the end of the video, come from the book by Aaron Klein "Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew!" Mr. Klein is World Net Daily's Jerusalem bureau chief] and are noted in the ending credits.

And now you know.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

HYSTERICAL LIBERAL CALLS TO BAN COULTER SOMEWHAT INCONSISTENT WITH THEIR "FREE SPEECH" CELEBRATIONS OF AHMADINEJAD'S COLUMBIA APPEARANCE

As JR said, this Coulter dustup has very little to do with hate speech (although the comparison between evangelicalism and haredi Judaism probably doesn't line up all that well theologically). That said - what if Coulter had really said that she wanted Jews wiped off the planet? She didn't, but what if she had? From Hunter at DKos, unblinking - albeit richly amusing - irony:

So if you can look at that record of bile and bigotry, and still invite her on your show, here's the rule: you own what she says. You don't have to invite her on. Just because she's plugging another book, a thin rewrite of the last four or five similar books about liberals-something-something-traitor-something-something, doesn't mean you're obligated to prop her up in a chair and help her promote it. You choose to put her on the air. You choose to give an audience to her crap.

If you invite David Duke or a Stormfront spokesman on your network to talk about the inferiority of blacks or Jews or Latinos, you have made the choice to give those hatemongers a mountaintop from which to promote their bigotry... Don't give us this crap about pretending to be offended by her bigotry. If you were truly offended by her bigotry, you wouldn't have returned her damn phone calls, much less hitched a microphone to her and placed her in front of a camera. In giving her an audience knowing full well what sorts of things she would say, you own her bigotry.

Done and done. But this nuanced understanding seemed a little lacking during Ahmadinejad's Columbia appearance. Even when they weren't explicitly defending Ahmadinejad himself (money line: "he spoke a lot about his spiritual view and hope for the world... he ain't such a bad man"), they were still defending the visit on free speech grounds. So letting American citizen and best selling author Ann Coulter explain her views - that makes you complicit in bigotry. But letting a genocidal Holocaust denying dictator try to justify himself in the heart of American academia in the greatest city in the US - the freest of free speech.

As it happens, Ahmadinejad actually is a hateful bigot and Coulter is very much not. But even if that wasn't true, wouldn't the hysteria surrounding Ann's remarks prove that "free speech works"? There's something a little familiar - and a lot disturbing - about the left's thuggish stampede to get anything they don't like off the airwaves.

[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]

LIBERAL ACADEMICS, MEDIA STILL MISUNDERSTANDING BASIC GRADE SCHOOL CONCEPT OF "FREEDOM"

Mark Steyn's article about Ahmadinejad is up at the NY Sun. It's mostly about the eyeroll inducing self-indulgence of anti-American and anti-Israel academics (they're so brave and edgy!) but there's another argument that deserves some fleshing out:

"I'm proud of my university today," Stina Reksten, a 28-year-old Columbia graduate student from Norway, told The New York Times. "I don't want to confuse the very dire human rights situation in Iran with the issue here, which is freedom of speech. This is about academic freedom." Isn't it always?... I don't know whether Stina Reksten, as a 28-year old Norwegian, can be held up as an exemplar of American youth, but she certainly seems to have mastered the lingo: We've invited the President of Iran to speak but let's not confuse "the very dire human rights situation" — or his nuclear program, or his Holocaust denial, or his role in the seizing of the embassy hostages, or his government's role in the deaths of American troops and Iraqi civilians — with the more important business of applauding ourselves for our celebration of "academic freedom."

The self-congratulatory ideological back patting would be frustrating enough if it wasn't also insanely stupid. Not to get pedantic, but freedom of speech and academic freedom aren't about helping people that you disagree with. They don't mean that academics are supposed to go out, find genocidal lunatics, and provide them with platforms for propaganda. That's not freedom of speech, that's making a choice to promote that particular kind of speech - to actively seek it out and bring it into the public dialogue. The correct question is: why would they choose to care about something like that? Why is it important that Ahmadinejad be brought into the discussion?

With the very deluded exception of liberal intellectual George Lakoff, there's no Western conception of freedom that says "freedom means having to do things you don't want to do or help people you disagree with." Most people would quite rightly say that having to spend blood and treasure helping your enemies is the opposite of freedom. Unless the people justifying Ahmadinejad's Columbia visit don't really consider him an enemy. Which is also something that should probably be discussed a little bit more.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

LIBERAL CAUSE CELEBRE COLLIDES WITH SCIENCE: HYSTERICAL CLAIMS OF "BIOPIRACY" GET RENOWNED SCIENTIST, TIME "HERO FOR THE PLANET" 16 YEARS IN PRISON

For decades academics and human rights activists have screamed about biopiracy, which is what they labeled virtually any intrusion by Western scientists into the sanctified environ of the Third World. Defenders of measured biotechnological research were screamed down as "racists". Now this happened:

Marc van Roosmalen is a world-renowned primatologist whose research in the Amazon has led to the discovery of five species of monkeys and a new primate genus. But precisely because of that work, van Roosmalen was this year sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison and jailed in Manaus, Brazil. Last month, his lawyers managed to get him freed on bail while they appeal his conviction on charges stemming from an investigation into alleged biopiracy. But scientists in Brazil and across the world are outraged, and describe the case as the most glaring example of laws and government policies they say are stifling scientific inquiry.

To understand the sheer scope of this disaster, you should realize that this description of his honors - which include the phrase "one of the most accomplished field biologists of our time" are underselling his achievements. Tetrapod Zoology recently did a four-post series about new mammals that van Roosmalen has discovered. This is a total outrage.

This style of the activism - the smug self-righteousness of the activists, the hysterical ad homs against anyone who tries to steer a middle course, etc - creates an environment ripe for abuse. This is how global warming research became an anti-scientific endeavor where data is withheld from dissidents until they reverse engineer flawed algorithms, it's how absolutist claims about scientific practice have recently been used to shut down open source science journals, etc.

A more measured model of scientific progress - one that recognizes the sociology of scientific communities while refusing to cede ground to the cultural left on the question of science's privileged relationship to truth - would go a long way to avoiding these pitfalls. But that would lack something in the way of smug sophistication, and where would that leave the soft anti-intellectualism of international human rights activism?

[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]

PRO -WALT AND MEARSHEIMER ACADEMICS ARE SUSPICIOUSLY INCONSISTENT

JPost has a pretty decent article about how AIPAC and the Israeli government intend to counter Walt and Mearsheimer's The Israeli Lobby (subtitle: "how the Jews came from across the ocean, corrupted good Christian Americans, and tricked them into betraying their country"). The basic strategy: do nothing. Israel can't go around countering the claims of every vaguely disgruntled, largely discredited academic who discovers that "hey, these Jews make pretty good scapegoats". It's got all of its resources tied up dealing with the ones who are already on UN committees:

Neither Israel nor the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are putting together a proactive campaign to combat the new Stephen Walt-John Mearsheimer book slamming the Israel lobby for allegedly hijacking US foreign policy. The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy is scheduled to hit the stores on September 5, but is already being sold on the Internet. Government officials in Jerusalem, explaining why the Foreign Ministry has chosen to ignore the book, said Sunday that Israel had no desire to "help the sales of the book," something that would happen, one official said, if Israel aggressively fired back. "We don't want to play into their hands.

There is a very easy test to see whether a pro-The Israel Lobby academic is being genuine in his or her new-found anti-Israel sophistication. For decades, the academic left has railed against Mearsheimer. There were times when, for the critical left, he was more or less the embodiment of everything that was wrong with "academic Orientalism". No part of his theory - from ideas like "national interest" to his description of the anarchy problematic - was spared from withering criticism. He was quite openly indicted as complicit with colonialism, imperialism, genocide, etc. So if you find an academic that spent the last few decades quite convinced that the realist description of the world was (a) wrong and (b) bad - and if suddenly that academic has found something redeeming about Mearsheimer, just as Mearsheimer has become to demonize living, breathing Jews - then yeah, it's probably appropriate to be suspicious about their change of heart. Just remember: it's not anti-Semitism, it's just anti-Zionism. Why their anti-Zionism is so entrenched, seething, and irrational - of course - is a different question.


[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]

THREE TYPICAL ACADEMICS URGE APPEASEMENT OF EVIL

RTWT OVER AT THE AMERICAN THINKER; EXCERPT:

Such willful blindness is rooted in the reflexive anti-Western nature of many of today's Middle East studies academics. Their eagerness to put the best face on groups and governments widely known for practicing the art of deadly deception parallels their instinctive distrust of their own country and, in a larger sense, the West.

TAT GIVES LINKED QUOTES WHICH PROVE THIS POINT.

AND THE POST ALSO PROVES THAT THEY'RE REALLY NOT FOR PEACE; THEY'RE ON THE OTHER SIDE.

WHY DO THEY SUPPORT THE OTHER SIDE?

BECAUSE THEY HATE THE WEST AS MUCH AS THE JIHADISTS.

THE ACADEMICS ARGUE OUR WESTERN ATTITUDES & STYLES NEED TO ADAPT TO THE STYLES AND ATTITUDES OF THE ENEMY. WE NEED MERELY TO BE MORE DIPLOMATIC, RHETORICALLY.

OH... REALLY!?!

AND HOW COME FATAH LOST TO HAMAS?

AND WHY DID THE TALIBAN OVERTHROW THEIR NATIVE GOVERNMENT?

AND WHY ARE THAILAND'S SOUTHERN REBELS UNABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE THAI REGIME?

AND WHY IS MUBARAK HAVING SO MUCH TROUBLE WITH THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND THE ALGIERIANS, AND THE MOROCCANS, ETC ETC ETC AND SO FORTH?!?!?!?!?

IF THE WHOLE WORLD AND ALL ITS CULTURES - INCLUDING ASIAN ONES AND OTHER MUSLIM ONES - ARE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH IRAN AND AL QAEDA, THEN HOW CAN ANYBODY WITH A BRAIN CLAIM THE PROBLEM LIES IN COMMUNICATION!?

IT MAKES NO SENSE.

IT'S IDIOTIC.

IT'S POSTMODERN LEFTISM AT IT'S MOST IDIOTIC.

IT'S LEFTISM.

SHOCKER: ACADEMIA IS EVEN MORE BIASED THAN THE MSM

FACTS AND FIGURE AND GRAPHS HERE.

VIA GATEWAY.

I bet the %'s would be the same for the bureaucratic apparachiks in the State Dept and CIA...

After all, these institutions are closed networks just like academia and the MSM: they hire and promote their own.

And, if you don't toe the party line you don't get hired - (or don't get promoted/tenured if you slip through the hiring process).

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES ROVE GETS AN MSM/TV JOB LIKE RUSSERT, MATTHEWS, OR STEPHANOPOULOS???

ZERO.

HIRING DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES LIKE RUSSERT AND MATTHEWS AND STEPHANOPOULOS IS FINE.

AND PARADING THEM ABOUT AS IF THEY WERE THE VERY EMBLEM OF POLITICAL MODERATION AND NON-PARTISANSHIP IS FINE WITH THEM, TOO. SHEESH.

AND THEY'RE PERFECTLY OKAY WITH NOT HIRING ANYONE FROM THE RIGHT OR THE GOP.

WHICH ALL PROVES WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW:

THE MSM LIKE THE ACADEMY IS DOMINATED BY LEFT-WINGERS AND DUPES.

[NOTE: ALL LINKS ARE FROM INSTAPUNDIT, SO YOU KNOW THEY HAVE TO BE TRUE.]

BTW: ONLY ROVE GOT SOMEONE RE-ELECTED TO THE WHITE HOUSE.

NOT JUST SOMEONE EITHER, BUT GEORGE FRIGGIN' W. BUSH!

MEANING: HE IS BY FAR THE SMARTEST OF THE BUNCH.

[ASIDE: I DO GIVE THE LEFTIE STEPHANOPOULOS A LITTLE CREDIT FOR QUITTING THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE WHEN THE BIMBO-LIES GOT TO DISGUSTING FOR HIM TO LIVE WITH. IT TOOK A FEW YEARS, BUT BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!)

JUAN COLE IS ENAMORED WITH RANK POPULIST, BORDERLINE ANTI-SEMITE RON PAUL. OF COURSE HE IS.

Juan Cole has another insipid article out in a mainstream magazine. because he's such an expert, you see. It's filled with his typical faux more-intellectual-than-thou fantasies, all delivered with the kind of conceit that only someone who spends his life surrounded by sycophants can muster ("as most of my readers know - what a douche). . There's the mindbogglingly insane claim that Ahmadinejad never claimed to wipe out Israel - which is obviously a lie, but wow does the anti-Israel left love the warm blanket of sophistication that comes with being able to say "but Juan Cole says there's no idiom like that in Persian". There's the you've-got-to-be-kidding claim that Iran couldn't have threatened to nuke Israel because Iran doesn't have nukes yet - duh says your fashionable sophisticated Leftist. Etc. But that's not what we're giddy about. This is what we're giddy about:

Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul continue to show themselves among the few in Congress with any integrity and backbone. They declined to go along with a resolution charging Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad with incitement to genocide, given his alleged call for Israel to be 'wiped off the face of the map.'

On the floor of the US House, Ron Paul gave a speech accusing "neoconservatives", "profiteers", and "blind loyalty to various governments in the Middle East" for current instability in that region. What government do you think he's talking about? We think probably Syria, right? But at least Juan Cole thinks he's a standup guy!

[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]

FINKELSTEIN LOSES BID FOR TENURE. EH.

We know we really ought to care about this. Academic freedom and what not. But honestly, it couldn't happen to a nicer anti-Semite:

Chicago's DePaul University rejected a Jewish political science professor's tenure request because of the professor's opinions on the Holocaust... Prof. Norman Finkelstein has said that Israel uses the Holocaust as an excuse... [and] called Holocaust survivor and scholar Eli Wiesel a "clown prince."

To be honest, we are kind of torn about this. For someone who's published a fair amount to get rejected because of the content of their work - it goes against deeply, deeply ingrained sensibilities. But we're not free speech absolutists, and that extends to tenure. So on this issue, we'll choose to die on some other hill.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

UC IRVINE MUSLIM STUDENT UNION TO CONCLUDE ANTI-ISRAEL WEEK BY DECLARING "UC INTIFADA" FOR PALESTINE

We kind of like how they have special weeks for Israel hating, as if there are weeks when professors like Mark Levine aren't disseminating vicious lies against the Jewish State. Maybe they just mean this is when they try to be especially offensive instead of just rabidly vicious. Confirmation of our theory: the scheduled "Zio-Nazis" event. Problems with our theory: they say that the rest of the year too. Anyway, here are some of our favorite events, just a small subsection of their total events. Don't feel bad about your tax dollars funding this - most of the MSU's money comes from mysteriously well-funded, vaguely wahhabist mosques that have no official ties whatsoever to Saudi Arabia:

MONDAY - Hamas - Speaker - Imam Mohammad al-Asi
TUESDAY - Zio-Nazis - Speaker - Lenni Brenner
WEDNESDAY - Israel: A Mockery to Democracy - Speaker - Lenni Brenner
THURSDAY - Terrorists, Freedom Fighters, & The Holy Land - Speaker - Amir Abdel Malik Ali
THURSDAY - The UC Intifada: How You Can Help Palestine - Speaker - Amir Abdel Malik Ali

We were going to conclude this post with snark about the prevalence of democracy in the Muslim world and an explanation of why "Zio-Nazis" is anti-Semitic under even the most liberal defenses of anti-Zionism (hint: would it be inappropriate to accuse the NAACP verbally "lynching" an opponent? Yes). But then we got to the part where they're having this guy declare an Intifada on American college campuses, and we figured that the goal of the week is mostly self-explanatory. We're probably just overreacting. Like "jihad", this oh-so-nuanced speaker probably means "intifada" in its less globally expressed and Saudi supported "self-overcoming" sense.

[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]

END OF THE WEEKEND "WE'RE LOSING COLLEGE CAMPUSES" ROUNDUP

* Muslim students at George Mason University have more or less taken over the ostensibly non-sectarian meditation room that the University provides. They've added all kinds of homey touches that their funders in Saudi Arabia should appreciate - making non-Muslims feel uncomfortable, separating men and women no matter what religion they are, enforcing a no-shoes policy. When people say that the anti-Israel viciousness on American college campuses is a result of sophistication and nuance... yeah, we dunno about that.

* Cinnamon Stillwell, the winner of the National Anti-Jihad Best Name Award (tm) for three years running, has a new Campus Watch article about borderline jihad advocacy at Berkeley. When we first got the link we thought "not at Berkeley - you're kidding!" But the stuff that she's documenting - outright recitation of Koranic passages urging Muslims to kill Jews - seems to be a qualitatively new flavor of crazy.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

AS FAR AS SMIRKING ANTI-SEMITISM GOES, UC IRVINE MUSLIMS HAVE REALLY OUTDONE THEMSELVES

UC Irvine blogger Reut Cohen is all over this latest outrage:

The MSU is, once again, manipulating the Holocaust to push their anti-Israel agenda. Although the Holocaust is a term that refers to the plight of Jewish people from Europe during World War II, the MSU continuously insists on promoting their despicable events with the use of this term.

The only Holocaust survivor that they've brought in to speak also happens to be a member of the International Solidarity Movement. The other two speakers are as follows: a lunatic anti-Semitic anti-Zionist imam from DC and a disgraced plagiarist who makes ever our academic commitment look admirable. If you guessed that the latter is Ward Churchill - and that UCI's Muslim Student Union managed to wrap anti-Americanism into their annual week of particularly intense Israel hatred - then you're the big winner. In a manner of speaking.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

THE EXCEPTIONS THAT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MAKES ABOUT ISRAEL

Like most Universities, Columbia University's library system maintains lists of resources that students might find useful when doing research projects. One of their sections is a section for "Middle East & Jewish Studies", and under that list is a section about Israel. So there are links to Israeli government sites like the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Bank of Israel. There are links to American government resources like the CIA World Factbook and the State Department Report on Human Rights. And there are links to Israeli media organizations like GLOBES and Ha'aretz.

And nestled toward the top is - you guessed it - "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy". Why is Walt and Mearsheimer's testament to the cognitive failures of realism in there? Why is it the only paper about American domestic politics, in a page devoted to links about Israel itself? It really sticks out like a sore thumb - as near as we can tel, it's the only link to an actual paper, rather than to a site. We would be very interested to know how this random paper found its way into a list of places on the web that talk about Israel. Because apparently if you're going to know anything about Israel, Columbia University thinks that you should know that they control the United States. It's like they're not even trying any more.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]