acad suppress 2 bak

acadsuppress2

3/23

bad code bold

see  main pre 3/17 capt 817

see CRT

see fasc 5

see say gay

see campus free sp BS

see anti-commie cultural marxism

recall hartmann 5 strps oligarch

capt 318

see climate lawsuits

see SAAG

BS

realclear invest links to EID?!

no docs

https://eidclimate.org/failure-to-disclose-new-report-exposes-academics-with-financial-ties-to-law-firms/

no lnx see realclear invest

FAILURE TO DISCLOSE: NEW REPORT EXPOSES ACADEMICS WITH FINANCIAL TIES TO LAW FIRMS

MAY 24, 2021 | WILLIAM ALLISON

Just a week after the bombshell admission that a Harvard academic is working under a retainer agreement with a top plaintiffs’ attorney firm without any previous disclosure, a new report puts the spotlight on this practice happening at universities across the country.

The report, “Private Funders, Public Institutions: ‘Climate’ Litigation and a Crisis of Integrity,” published by [NOT THE REAL] Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C. (GAO), uncovers the coordination taking place between public officials, activist organizations, wealthy donors, and university faculty to bring climate change-related cases against energy companies, with a specific focus on the lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in June 2020.

Why the Naomi Oreskes-Sher Edling Retainer Presents Multiple Conflicts of Interest

The GAO report’s release couldn’t have come at a more apt time. Earlier this month, news broke that Harvard professor and longtime climate litigation activist Naomi Oreskes is on retainer with Sher Edling, LLP, the environmental plaintiffs’ law firm representing the majority of municipalities and states, including Minnesota, that have filed climate change lawsuits against the energy industry in recent years.

When Oreskes and fellow Harvard researcher Geoffrey Supran released a new study focused on climate change communications (that was just as flawed as their previous work), they did not seem prepared for the news that Oreskes is on retainer with Sher Edling to break. Notably, this wasn’t disclosed via a game of telephone, either, but Oreskes herself said so while under oath in a recent deposition.

It now appears that Oreskes sought to redefine her business relationship with Sher Edling after it hit the press, as she and Supran provided several different explanations to reporters when asked about her retainer disclosure. While Oreskes may be uncertain about the nature of her involvement with Sher Edling and its implications, others are not.

Academics took to Twitter to point out that this relationship should absolutely been disclosed:

A significant (an undisclosed) conflict of interesthttps://t.co/IPX2PgtsJ8

— Judith Curry (@curryja) May 14, 2021

Shot ‘n Chaser

LEFT – Authors of new paper about Exxon-Mobil complicity in downplaying climate states they have no relevant financial ties

RIGHT – Same author disclosing in a recent deposition (Mann vs CEI) that she is on retainer for a law firm suing Exxon-Mobil

This is fine pic.twitter.com/UGTxjAPizf

— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) May 14, 2021

The Academic-Activist Behind the Curtain in Minnesota

The report shows that Oreskes is far from the only academic who is working directly with top attorneys involved in the climate litigation campaign.

In Minnesota, the report outlines the critical role that University of Minnesota law professor Alexandra Klass played in orchestrating Attorney General Ellison’s lawsuit. In April 2019, she signed a memo titled “Potential Lawsuit against Fossil Fuel Companies for Minnesota Climate Change Damages” to be shared with the newly sworn-in Ellison.

Newly released documents in the report show that Klass was approached by an outside activist group that provided funding for her students to write the memo, reviewed by other attorneys supporting climate litigation, and backed by the Rockefeller network that has manufactured entire national litigation campaign.

None of this involvement by Klass was ever disclosed to the public, whether when moderating a forum on campus with Ellison, providing quotes in local newspapers, or in podcasts discussing the lawsuit.

Highlighting emails obtained through public records requests, the report shows that in late 2018, Klass was approached by Michael Noble, executive director of local activist group Fresh Energy about enlisting her help with potential litigation in Minnesota. In conversations with Klass, Noble spoke of a “big idea” and sent along climate pleadings from previously filed cases, and that he was looking for Klass’s “reaction (and hopefully enthusiasm).”

Roughly one month later, in December 2018, Noble asked if Klass wanted “to do a phone call with the lawyers advising the Rockefeller family fund” (sic) and the climate case was off to the metaphorical races.

Image via GAO

By early 2019, Klass had a contract through Fresh Energy to hire several law students to assist her in drafting the legal memo focused on a potential Minnesota climate change lawsuit that was eventually sent to Ellison.

Image via GAO]

In October 2019, Klass helped to host a panel discussion at the University of Minnesota Law School on “the legal and scientific case for recovering climate change damages in Minnesota from fossil fuel companies” which featured both Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Sher Edling’s Vic Sher, whose law firm now represents Minnesota in its climate change deception case.

At the time, the event was framed as an academic discussion. But what the public didn’t know was that Klass had already written a memo to Ellison earlier that year laying out the proposed legal theories that could back a climate change-focused lawsuit targeting the energy industry. Furthermore, the event was coordinated by Sam Duggan – one of the students who helped write the memo.

Despite her direct involvement in the drafting of the lawsuit, Klass has continued to present herself as an impartial expert on Minnesota state law. When Ellison initially filed his climate case last summer, Klass was quoted in news stories, including coverage from the Minneapolis Star Tribune as a professor of environmental law and thus, a neutral third-party expert. To date, she has not publicly spoken about her lack of disclosure regarding her involvement in helping put the idea of climate litigation in front of Ellison.

Efforts to keep government actions hidden from the public has even extended to Ellison’s office. Earlier this year, Ellison wrote an op-ed in the Star Tribune touting his office’s transparency, but the hiring of two Bloomberg-funded Special Assistant Attorneys General from another university – the NYU Law School’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center – raises serious questions. Ellison’s claim that these SAAGs “report to me and no one else,” and thus solely loyalty is to Minnesota taxpayers, is hard to believe when the job description for a similar position with the New York Attorney General explained:

“Fellows hosted by the OAG as special assistants will have responsibilities that include… preparing periodic reports of activities and progress for the State Impact Center.”

The Group in the Middle of It All? The Rockefellers

To the surprise of no one who has is even remotely familiar with the climate litigation campaign, the Rockefellers are one of the common threads between Oreskes and Klass.

The Rockefeller Family Fund supported all three of Oreskes’ major studies focused on the energy industry, and if there was any doubt that the wealthy foundation that supports climate litigation wouldn’t have any subjective effect on this research, then let Oreskes herself explain how the source of a researcher’s funding can lead to unconscious bias.

As Oreskes stated in published a letter she co-authored in 2015:

“But the issue is deeper than one of obeying rules; the important question is why those rules are necessary. The answer is that even if we think of ourselves as honest, objective, and independent, scientific evidence demonstrates that our research can be influenced by the sources of our funding… Many of us are reluctant to accept this funding because it seems to imply that our colleagues—including individuals we may know and respect—have been corrupted. Corruption exists, but the funding effect may more often be the result of unconscious bias.” (emphasis added)

In Minnesota, the Rockefeller Family Fund has been just as active. The group, and its director Lee Wasserman in particular, put the idea of a climate lawsuit in front of Michael Noble right after Ellison was elected in November 2018, as the report shows:

Image via GAO]

In turn, Noble then went to Klass where he explained the Rockefeller Family Fund’s role in supporting a climate lawsuit in Minnesota:

Images via GAO]

The “lawyers advising Rockefeller family fund” that Noble mentions is the Center for Climate Integrity, an activist group that’s supporting climate lawsuits across the country and which has received more than $3 million from the Rockefeller Family Fund. The group was also a sponsor of the 2019 panel that Ellison and Klass attended, and two senior officials from the group, Judith Enck and Alyssa Johl, provided feedback on Klass’s memo:

Images via GAO

With the memo prepared, Noble then went about bringing all the threads togethers by arranging a meeting of the key players, including Klass and officials with the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Center for Climate Integrity:

Finally, shortly after Ellison introduced the lawsuit, Noble couldn’t help but tout his own work when he admitted on a public webinar that he and the Rockefeller-funded Center for Center for Climate Integrity convinced the attorney general to file the case.

West Coast Edition

The coordination among academics and law firms is indeed happening from coast to coast, including Ann Carlson, the UCLA Law professor taking a leave of absence to serve in the Biden Administration.

Previously, Carlson has worked as a consultant with Sher Edling, the same firm that has Naomi Oreskes on retainer. Carlson also appeared on a panel discussion on climate litigation alongside Vic Sher at the University of Hawai’i Richardson School of Law in May 2019, just ten months before the City & County of Honolulu filed its own climate lawsuit.

The report outlines Carlson’s work at the UCLA Law School and the financial support she received:

“Consider another relevant example, revealed in a recent public-record production obtained from UCLA Law School by Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C. That production of documents revealed certain details of how donors named Dan Emmett and Ralph and Shirley Shapiro gave a combined $1.5 million to a ‘Carlson discretionary fund’ which, according to the Shapiros’ instruction, is ‘to be used at the discretion of Professor Ann Carlson… in her sole discretion as she deems appropriate.’” (emphasis added)

Conclusion

As Energy In Depth as shown for years, the Rockefellers have manufactured the entire climate litigation campaign and their work hasn’t slowed down.

This new paper from Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C. uncovers the role that academics have played in supporting these lawsuits with Minnesota the latest example of the lack of disclosure between government officials, activist groups, and college professors.

Added on top of the bombshell news that Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes is on retainer with a top plaintiffs firm, this nationally coordinated campaign becomes more interconnected by the day.

 ===

68 pp basis for benghazi attack?

https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/shellenberger-testimony.pdf

The Censorship Industrial Complex U.S. Government Support For Domestic Censorship And Disinformation Campaigns, 2016 - 2022 Testimony by Michael Shellenberger to The House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government March 9, 2023

Executive Summary 4

The Censorship Industrial Complex Today 8

Definition and Mission 8

National Science Foundation Funding 8

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Roots 9

Key Organizations 10

Key Individuals 15

The Complex’s Disinformation Campaigns 18

1. The Trump-Russian Collusion Conspiracy Theory, 2016 - 19 18
2. Delegitimizing the Covid Lab Leak Theory, 2020 – 2021 22
3. The Hunter Biden Laptop Conspiracy Theory, 2020–21 22

Ideology, Strategy, And Origins 25

Ideology 25

Strategy 30

Origins 34

Key Events 36

2017 36

New Knowledge runs disinformation campaign against Republican Senate

Candidate in Alabama 36

Former FBI employee web site that falsely accuses ordinary Twitter users of

being Russian bots 38

2018 39

Senate Intelligence Report On Russian Interference 39

2020 40

“Election Integrity Partnership” 40

Aspen Institute Workshop Trains Top Journalists To Pre-Bunk “Hack and Leak” 42

Covid Censorship 45

Lab Leak Theory 45

Mask Skepticism 46

2021 46

DHS Expands Its Censorship Powers 46

Under Pressure From White House, Facebook and Twitter Censor Accurate Vaccine

Information 47

Climate Change and Energy 50

2022 53

U.S. government funds “Disinformation Index” and “News Guard” to drive

advertisers away from disfavored news media 53

Creation of Department Of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance

Board” 54

2023 54

Diresta and Stamos hype “foreign disinformation” threat 55

Recommendations 56

1. Defund the Censorship Industrial Complex 56
2. Mandate instant reporting of all communications between government

officials and contractors with social media executives relating to content

moderation 56

3. Reduce Scope of Section 230 56

Shellenberger Testimony March 9, 2022 p. 4

Executive Summary

In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of

“the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial

complex.” Eisenhower feared that the size and power of the “complex,” or

cluster, of government contractors and the Department of Defense would

“endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” How? Through “domination

of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the

power of money.” He feared public policy would “become the captive of a

scientific-technological elite.”1

Eisenhower’s fears were well-founded. Today, American taxpayers are

unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship-industrial complex

run by America’s scientific and technological elite, which endangers our

liberties and democracy. I am grateful for the opportunity to offer this

testimony and sound the alarm over the shocking and disturbing emergence

of state-sponsored censorship in the United States of America.

The Twitter Files, state attorneys general lawsuits, and investigative

reporters have revealed a large and growing network of government agencies,

academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations that are actively

censoring American citizens, often without their knowledge, on a range of

issues, including on the origins of COVID2

, COVID vaccines3

, emails relating to

Hunter Biden’s business dealings4

, climate change5

, renewable energy6

, fossil

fuels7

, and many other issues.

I offer some cautions. I do not know how much of the censorship is

coordinated beyond what we have been able to document, and I will not

speculate. I recognize that the law allows Facebook, Twitter, and other private

companies to moderate content on their platforms. And I support the right of

governments to communicate with the public, including to dispute inaccurate

and misleading information.

But government officials have been caught repeatedly pushing social

media platforms to censor disfavored users and content. Often, these acts of

censorship threaten the legal protection social media companies need to exist,

Section 230

Shellenberger Testimony March 9, 2022 p. 5]

“If government officials are directing or facilitating such censorship,”

notes George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, “it raises

serious First Amendment questions. It is axiomatic that the government cannot

do indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly.”8

Moreover, we know that the U.S. government has funded organizations

that pressure advertisers to boycott news media organizations and social

media platforms that a) refuse to censor and/or b) spread disinformation,

including alleged conspiracy theories.

The Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington, the

Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and Graphika all have

inadequately-disclosed ties to the Department of Defense, the C.I.A., and

other intelligence agencies. They work with multiple U.S. government agencies

to institutionalize censorship research and advocacy within dozens of other

universities and think tanks.

It is important to understand how these groups function. They are not

publicly engaging with their opponents in an open exchange of ideas. They

aren’t asking for a national debate over the limits of the First Amendment.

Rather, they are creating blacklists of disfavored people and then pressuring,

cajoling, and demanding that social media platforms censor, deamplify, and

even ban the people on these blacklists.

Who are the censors? They are a familiar type. Overly confident in their

ability to discern truth from falsity, good intention from bad intention, the

instinct of these hall monitor-types is to complain to the teacher — and, if the

teacher doesn’t comply, to go above them, to the principal. Such an approach

might work in middle school and many elite universities, but it is anathema to

freedom and is an abuse of power.

These organizations and others are also running their own influence

operations, often under the guise of “fact-checking.” The intellectual leaders

of the censorship complex have convinced journalists and social media

executives that accurate information is disinformation, that valid hypotheses

are conspiracy theories, and that greater self-censorship results in more

accurate reporting. NOTE LACK OF EVIDENCE

 In many instances, censorship, such as labeling social

[Shellenberger Testimony March 9, 2022 p. 6

media posts, is part of the influence operation aimed at discrediting factual

information.

The censorship industrial complex combines established methods of

psychological manipulation, some developed by the U.S. Military during the

Global War on Terror, with highly sophisticated tools from computer science,

including artificial intelligence. The complex’s leaders are driven by the fear

that the Internet and social media platforms empower populist, alternative,

and fringe personalities and views, which they regard as destabilizing. Federal

government officials, agencies, and contractors have gone from fighting ISIS

recruiters and Russian bots to censoring and deplatforming ordinary Americans

and disfavored public figures.

Importantly, the bar for bringing in military-grade government

monitoring and speech-countering techniques has moved from “countering

terrorism” to “countering extremism” to countering simple misinformation.

The government no longer needs a predicate of calling you a terrorist or

extremist to deploy government resources to counter your political activity.

The only predicate it needs is simply the assertion that the opinion you

expressed on social media is wrong.

These efforts extend to influencing and even directing conventional

news media organizations. Since 1971, when the Washington Post and New

York Times elected to publish classified Pentagon papers about the war in

Vietnam, journalists understood that we have a professional obligation to

report on leaked documents whose contents are in the public interest, even

when they had been stolen. And yet, in 2020, the Aspen Institute and

Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center urged journalists to “Break the Pentagon

Papers principle” and not cover leaked information to prevent the spread of

“disinformation.”

Government-funded censors frequently invoke the prevention of realworld

 harm to justify their demands for censorship, but the censors define

harm far more expansively than the Supreme Court does. The censors have

defined harm so broadly, in fact, that they have justified Facebook censoring

accurate information about COVID vaccines, for example, to prevent “vaccine

hesitancy.” Their goal, clearly, is not protecting the truth but rather persuading

Shellenberger Testimony March 9, 2022 p. 7]

the public. That is the purpose of open debate and the free exchange of ideas.

Persuasion by covert means is censorship.

And, increasingly, the censors say their goal is to restrict information

that “delegitimizes” governmental, industrial, and news media organizations.9

That mandate is so sweeping that it could easily censor criticism of any part of

the status quo from elected officials to institutions to laws. This extreme,

reactionary attitude is, bluntly, un-American.

Congress should immediately cut off funding to the censors and

investigate their activities. Second, it should mandate instant reporting of all

conversations between social media executives, government employees, and

contractors concerning content moderation. Third, Congress should limit the

broad permission given to social media platforms to censor, deplatform, and

spread [GUBMINT PRESUMABLY] propaganda.

Whatever Congress does, it is incumbent upon the American people to

wake up to the threat of government censorship via behind-the-scenes

pressure on media corporations. “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,”

Eisenhower noted, “can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and

military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that

security and liberty may prosper together.”

p11

Key Organizations

CISA: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,

an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). On January 6, 2017, outgoing Obama Administration DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson designated “election infrastructure” as “critical infrastructure,” opening up CISA’s mission to censoring alleged “disinformation.”15 Congress created CISA in November 2018 to defend the U.S. from cybersecurity threats from hostile foreign actors (e.g., Russian hackers).16

Digital Forensics Research (DFR) Lab at the Atlantic Council.

The lab is one of the most established and influential full-time censorship institutions in the world.17 Atlantic Council DFR Lab created the foreign-facing DisinfoPortal in June 2018, working directly with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and 23 organizations to censor election narratives leading up to the 2019 elections in Europe.18 In 2018, Facebook named Atlantic Council, an official partner in “countering disinformation” worldwide.19 US taxpayer funding to the Atlantic Council comes from the Defense Department, the US Marines, the US Air Force, the US Navy, the State Department, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as energy companies and weapons manufacturers.20

Graphika: a private network analysis firm. Graphika published a report for the Senate Intelligence Committee in December 2018, which claimed to have uncovered “in unusually rich detail the scope of Russia's interference not only in the 2016 U.S. presidential election but also in our day-to-day democratic dialogue.”21 Graphika hired as its director of investigations Ben Nimmo away from DFR lab.22

The Defense Department's Minerva Initiative, which focuses on psychological warfare, and DARPA, both gave grants to Graphika.23 In 2021, the Pentagon awarded nearly $5 million in grants and nearly $2 million in contracts to the organization.24 Last fall, Graphika alleged that cartoons on a fringe website were “suspected Russian actors” that were

p12

Shillenberger Testimony March 9, 2022 p. 11]

Shellenberger Testimony March 9, 2022 p. 12]

“engaged in a renewed effort” to interfere in the 2022 midterm elections.25

The New York Times picked up on the story.26

Moonshot CVE is private firm to redirect right-wing people online away

from radicalism 27 but was found to have pushed right-wing people toward an

anarchist leader. “They sent people who were already looking for violence to a

convicted felon with anarchist and anti-Semitic views,” Rep. Morgan Griffith (RVa.)

said to Google’s CEO. “Who is vetting the vetters? We continue to need

more transparency and accountability.”28 Moonshot includes Elizabeth

Neumann, former DHS Asst. Sec. for Counter Terrorism.

FITF: Foreign Influence Task Force, a cyber-regulatory agency

comprised of members of the FBI, DHS, and ODNI

GEC: Global Engagement Center, an analytical division of the U.S. State

Department which systematically launders domestic censorship by working

through “counter-disinformation” NGOs and foreign firms.

Hamilton 68: A dashboard created with U.S. government funding and

the support of New Knowledge claiming to reveal Russian bots on Twitter but

was mocked by Twitter staff because all or almost all belonged to American

citizens

HSIN: Homeland Security Information Network, a portal through which

states and other official bodies can send “flagged” accounts

EIP: Election Integrity Project, a partnership between four government

funded censorship organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory, Graphika,

University of Washington Disinformation Lab, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital

Forensic Research Lab. EIP has served as CISA’s deputized domestic

disinformation flagger

IRA: Internet Research Agency, the infamous Russian “troll farm”

headed by “Putin’s chef,” Yevgheny Prigozhin

MISP: Malware Information Sharing Platform. Used by cyber security

operatives to share malware, tools around bots, coordinated and inauthentic

ops. “When DFR wanted to apply cybersec tools to misinformation,” said a

government disinformation specialist, “they used MISP.”29

NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, both taxpayer-funded,

are urging advertisers to boycott disfavored publications, and direct

their funding to favored ones The organizations have been caught spreading

disinformation, including that the COVID lab leak theory is a debunked

conspiracy theory, and seeking to discredit publications which accurately

reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop, such as the New York Post

Cognitive Security Collaborative and Adversarial Misinformation and

Influence Tactics and Techniques.

These are online platforms for describing

and coordinating disinformation attacks. “It works like other security

operations focused on threat actors,” noted the specialist. “If they have a

threat actor who has launched a coordinated inauthentic information attack,”

said a source, “they would log the threat actor and start mapping the actor

just as they would a cyber attack. They then coordinate social media

takedowns” [removals].30

University of Washington (UW), one of two academic institutions that

DHS worked directly with and had as its partner, to censor information on

social media platforms during the 2020 election.31 It received a $3 million

government grant, shared with Stanford Internet Observatory, from the Biden

Administration in 2021, to continue its “election misinformation” flagging.32

Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO).

One of the four members of the

Election Integrity Project (and later the Virality Project) with UW, Graphika, and

DFR. It was created in June 2019 by director Alex Stamos and research

manager Renee DiResta. SIO monitors social media and promotes Internet

censorship. For the 2020 election, as part of its partnership with CISA, SIO had

50 “misinformation” analysts assigned to monitor social media.33 SIO was

originally funded by Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Omidyar Network, and

the Charles Koch Foundation.34

Key Individuals

● Graham Brookie, leader of the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab. Brookie

served in the Obama White House on the National Security Council.35

● Renee DiResta, Stanford Internet Observatory. DiResta was the research

director for the organization caught creating bot accounts and spreading

disinformation about Alabama Republican Senate Candidate Roy

Moore.36 In her 2018 Senate testimony DiResta advocated “legislation

that defines and criminalizes foreign propaganda” and allowing law

enforcement to “prosecute foreign propaganda.”37 According to

recorded remarks by DiResta’s supervisor at Stanford, Alex Stamos, she

had previously “worked for the CIA.”38

● Jen Easterly, CISA Director. A former military intelligence officer and the

National Security Agency (NSA) deputy director for counterterrorism.

“One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure,” said

Easterly in November 2021, ”and the most critical infrastructure is our

cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and

disinformation, I think, is incredibly important.”39 The month before,

Easterly said during a CISA summit that Chris Krebs's construction of a

“counter-misinformation” complex with the private sector was a high

priority for DHS.40 A U.S. District Court ruled in October of last year that

Easterly could be deposed because of her “first-hand knowledge” of the

CISA “nerve center” around disinformation.41

● Chris Krebs. CISA Director (2018 to 2020). Chair of Aspen Institute

“Commission on Information Disorder,” helped organize DHS’s “whole-of-society”

approach to censorship.42 Krebs administered the federal

side of the 2020 election after DHS effectively nationalized election

security on January 6, 2017, via the declaration of elections as “critical

infrastructure.” Krebs then declared that “misinformation” was an attack

on election security. Krebs said in April 2022 that the Hunter Biden

laptop still looked like Russian disinformation and that what mattered

was that news media did not cover the laptop during the 2020 election

cycle.43 Krebs advocated for censoring critics of government COVID-19

protocols44 and said “misinformation” is the largest threat to election

security.45

● Ben Nimmo, Head of Global Threat Intelligence for Facebook, and thus

one of America’s most important censors. Nimmo was the technical lead

for censorship at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab,

was employed by Graphika in the fall of 2020 46, and worked in NATO

information operations.47 In 2018, Nimmo publicly reported an

anonymous Twitter account, “Ian56”, as a Russian disinformation bot

account because it expressed left-of-center populist anti-war views when

in reality Ian56 was a real person.48 After Nimmo's report, “Ian56” was

reported to the UK government.49

● Kate Starbird, who runs the University of Washington disinformation lab,

has for years been funded primarily by U.S. government agencies to do

social media narrative analytics of political groups, or insurgency

movements, of interest or concern to U.S. military intelligence or

diplomatic equities. Starbird acknowledged that the censorship focus of

CISA and EIP moved from “foreign, inauthentic” social media users to

“domestic, authentic” social media users between 2016 to 2020.50

Starbird is now the head of CISA’s censorship advisory subcommittee.

Alex Stamos was the senior leader at EIP and VP, which served as the

deputized domestic “disinformation” flagger for DHS via Chris Krebs’

CISA. Stamos in 2020 proposed that DHS centralize government

censorship.51 Stamos was the Chief Security Officer of Facebook and led

Facebook's response to alleged Russian disinformation after the 2016

election. Stamos left Facebook, now Meta, in 2018, after reportedly

conflicting with other Facebook executives over how much to censor.52

Stamos says he favors moving away from a free and open Internet

toward a more controlled “cable news network” model. A huge part of

the problem is “large influencers,” said Stamos.53

● Claire Wardle cofounded and directed, First Draft News. a nonprofit

coalition, in June 2015, to build the censorship complex. “In September

2016, our original coalition expanded to become an international Partner

Network of newsrooms, universities, platforms and civil society

organizations.” In 2017, while at the Shorenstein Center for Media,

Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Wardle helped

develop the “Information Disorder Lab,” a framing that Aspen Institute

would embrace. In June 2022, First Draft closed, but its work lives on at

the Information Futures Lab at Brown University’s School of Public

Health.

The Complex’s Disinformation Campaigns

Many of the leaders and participants in today’s censorship industrial ex

have been involved in spreading disinformation, including conspiracy

theories  compl, while discrediting accurate information and alleging that valid

theories were debunked conspiracy theories.

1. The Trump-Russian Collusion Conspiracy Theory, 2016–2019

The complex’s first major disinformation campaign was the conspiracy

theory that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russian

government to steal the 2016 election.

There is no evidence that Russia’s social media investments, or its

hacking and leaking of emails, had any impact, much less a decisive one, on

the outcome of the 2016 election.54 Most neutral analysts, as well as many

Democratic strategists, believe that they did not.55

Two of the four leading censorship organizations, New Knowledge and

Graphika, provided the Senate Intelligence Committee provided the academic

foundation for the claim that the Russians had elected Trump. They pointed to

evidence that ten million people in the U.S. had seen the ads.56

“The Russian disinformation operations that affected the 2016 United

States presidential election are by no means over,” wrote DiResta in the New

York Times in December 2018. “Russian interference through social media… is

a chronic, widespread and identifiable condition that we must now

aggressively manage.”57

Her findings were widely respected and publicized. Former director of

national intelligence James Clapper called the evidence that Russia had

influenced the election "staggering." University of Pennsylvania

communication professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson pointed to the evidence to

conclude that Trump would not have been president without the Russians.58

But there is no evidence that the Russians had any influence on the

2016 campaign, much less that they won it for Trump. Robert Faris, Hal

Roberts and Yochai Benkler of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and

Society analyzed millions of articles from 2015 to 2018 using network analysis

to measure how audiences paid attention to media coverage, text analysis to

see which sites wrote about what and when, and wrote detailed case studies of

the most salient issues in the election. “The Russians are there,” wrote Benkler.

“They are trying. But in all these cases, American right-wing media did the

heavy lifting to originate and propagate disinformation.”....

https://www.propublica.org/article/jim-jordan-disinformation-subpoena-universities

3 23

house Republicans have sent letters to at least three universities and a think tank requesting a broad range of documents related to what it says are the institutions' contributions to the Biden administration’s “censorship regime.”

The letters are the latest effort by a House subcommittee set up in January to investigate how the federal government, working with social media companies, has allegedly been “weaponized” to silence conservative and right-wing voices. So far, the committee’s investigations have amplified a variety of dubious, outright false and highly misleading Republican grievances with law enforcement, many of them espoused by former President Donald Trump. Committee members have cited supposed abuses that include the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, its investigations of Jan. 6 rioters and the Biden administration’s purported use of executive powers to shut down conservative viewpoints on social media.

now, universities and their researchers are coming under the spotlight of the committee, which the Republicans have labeled the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The letters, signed by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is chair of both the House Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee, were sent in early March.

They cover an investigation into how “certain third parties, including organizations like yours, may have played a role in this censorship regime by advising on so-called ‘misinformation,’” according to a copy of one of the letters obtained by ProPublica.

The committee requested documents and information dating back to January 2015 between any “employee, contractor, or agent of your organization” and the federal government or social media organizations pertaining to the moderation of social media content. ProPublica confirmed the requests went to Stanford University, the University of Washington, Clemson University and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The letters have prompted a wave of alarm among those in the field that the congressional inquiry itself, no matter what it finds, will lead universities to pull back on this research just as the 2024 election gets underway. “Recent efforts definitely have a chilling effect on the community of experts across academia, civil society and government built up to understand broader online harms like harassment, foreign influence and — yes — disinformation,” Graham Brookie, who leads studies in this area at the Atlantic Council, told ProPublica.

“The ‘weaponization’ committee is being weaponized against us,” another researcher told ProPublica. Like half a dozen others interviewed for this story, this person asked not to be identified because of the ongoing congressional probe.

Democrats have called the committee a modern-day House Un-American Activities Committee, akin to the congressional committee that pursued alleged communists during the McCarthy era.

Since Rep. Jordan took over the gavel of the judiciary committee in January, he has issued more than 80 subpoenas and requests for documents. Recipients have included the CEOs of social media companies, intelligence officials who signed on to a statement about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 campaign and members of the National School Boards Association who asked the Justice Department to investigate threats of violence against school board officials. Jordan himself refused a subpoena to testify before the Democratic-led House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, prompting that committee to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee.

Jordan’s missives were sent a day after a committee hearing on the “Twitter files,” leaked internal communications from the company that purported to show how right-wing accounts were sidelined and silenced. In written testimony, a panelist accused a broad swath of organizations and individuals of being members of the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” including, he implied, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, Department of Defense and universities. The witness wrote disinformation researchers, working with the government, are “creating blacklists of disfavored people and then pressuring, cajoling, and demanding that social media platforms censor, deamplify, and even ban the people on these blacklists.”

A New York University study concluded in 2021 that social media had not silenced those on the right. “The claim of anti-conservative animus” by social media companies, the study said, “is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it."

A spokesperson for Rep. Jordan did not respond to requests for comment.

Since the 2016 elections, Stanford, UW, Clemson and others have engaged in research, sometimes in partnership with social media platforms, government officials and each other, into ways that disinformation can pose tZreats to democracy and how such efforts can be meaningfully countered. The role of lies and disinformation leading to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol gave increased prominence to their work.

As ProPublica has previously reported, sustained accusations by congressional Republicans and right-wing influencers that the Biden administration is stifling dissent have caused the administration to back away from its efforts countering disinformation, including canceling research contracts and sending messages inside the administration that disinformation work is too hot to handle.

Those moves followed a bungled rollout of a clumsily named “Disinformation Governance Board” to coordinate efforts to counter what the administration had called “dangerous conspiracy theories that can provide a gateway to terrorist violence.” Following criticism, the administration disbanded the board and accepted the resignation of its executive director, Nina Jankowicz.

Jordan has subpoenaed Jankowicz, too. She is scheduled to testify April 10 and said she will happily testify under oath.

“This sort of inquiry isn’t something that belongs in the United States Congress,” said Jankowicz. “But given that this method of bullying has caused other institutions to fold to Republican pressure in the past, I fear we may see the blunt force of congressional committees continue to be used in ways that are in direct opposition to the safety, security and free expression of the American people...."https://www.propublica.org/article/desantis-google-teneo-video-big-tech-breakup" ...https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io">Stanford Internet Observatory’s Alex Stamos or Renee DiResta, zxz available for comment. The university referred ProPublica to an online fact sheet addressing “inaccurate and misleading claims” made in the congressional testimony about Stanford’s “projects to analyze rumors and narratives on social media relating to U.S. elections and the coronavirus.” The German Marshall fund said it was working to address the request and Clemson University’s media relations department did not respond to requests for comment.

The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public issued a statement that said “We’re incredibly proud of our work,” adding that “some of the projects CIP researchers have contributed to have become the subject of false claims and criticism that mischaracterizes our work, a tactic that peer researchers in this space are also experiencing.” The statement did not specifically address the House requests.

A university spokesperson, Victor Balta, said in an email, “The UW stands behind this important research aiming to resist strategic misinformation and strengthen our discourse. We have received a request for documents and information, and a response is in progress.”

==the Associated Press reports on a rising tide of attacks on free speech in America: not the "Twitter shadowbanned my anime alt" kind of thing that MAGA cares about, but the "government banning books and drag" kind of thing that everyone else cares about.

    "This year, we're seeing a wave of bills targeting drag performances, where simply being gender nonconforming is enough to trigger the penalty. We're also seeing a wave of bills regulating what can be in public or K-12 school libraries," [FIRE's Joe] Cohn said. "On college campuses, we have been tracking data about attempts to get faculty members punished or even fired for speech or expression and the numbers are startling — it's the highest rate that we've seen in our 20 years of existence."

States banning abortion have also banned vague things like "promoting" abortion, leading to art and literature about abortion being disappeared.

    Four documentary video and audio works by artist Lydia Nobles that showed women talking about their own experiences with abortion were also removed. And part of artist Michelle Harney's series of 1920s-era letters written to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger were stricken from the show.

    "To be censored like that is shocking and surreal," said Majkut, who designs her art to be educational rather than confrontational. "If the most even-keeled, bipartisan artwork around this topic is censored, then everything is going to be censored."

That thought, along the lines of But I'm non-confrontational and bipartisan, and they censored me?, is such a wonderful illustration of another, immediately adjacent problem.

https://www.alternet.org/victory-florida-desantis-censorship-block/

an 3 23

the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday kept in place a preliminary injunction against Florida GOP policymakers' school censorship law in what rights advocates celebrated as "an important victory for professors, other educators, and students."

The appellate court denied a request from Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration and higher education officials to block a district judge's injunction that is currently preventing enforcement of the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees (WOKE) Act—rebranded by its supporters as the Individual Freedom Act—in the state's public colleges and universities.

DeSantis' Stop WOKE Act "limits the ways concepts related to systemic racism and sex discrimination can be discussed in teaching or conducting training in workplaces or schools," parroting a Trump administration executive order that was ultimately rescinded by President Joe Biden, the ACLU explained last year.

The plaintiffs in one of the relevant cases, Pernell v. Florida Board of Governors, are represented by the national and state ACLU along with the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and Ballard Spahr, who first filed the federal suit last August—the same day U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, issued a separate injunction against the law related to employers.

The new appeals court order upholds the injunction Walker issued in November, which began by quoting George Orwell's novel 1984. Calling the controversial law "positively dystopian," the judge wrote at the time that "the powers in charge of Florida's public university system have declared the state has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of 'freedom.'"

Leah Watson, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program, said Thursday that "the court's decision to leave in place the preliminary injunction is a recognition of the serious injury posed to educators and students by the Stop WOKE Act."

"All students and educators deserve to have a free and open exchange about issues related to race in our classrooms," Watson argued, rather than censored discussions that erase "the history of discrimination and lived experiences of Black and Brown people, women and girls, and LGBTQ+ individuals."

LDF assistant counsel Alexsis Johnson similarly stressed that "institutions of higher education in Florida should have the ability to provide a quality education, which simply cannot happen when students and educators, including Black students and educators, feel they cannot speak freely about their lived experiences, or when they feel that they may incur a politician's wrath for engaging in a fact-based discussion of our history."

the order also pertains to a challenge filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in September.

"Professors must be able to discuss subjects like race and gender without hesitation or fear of state reprisal," FIRE said Thursday. "Any law that limits the free exchange of ideas in university classrooms should lose in both the court of law and the court of public opinion."

The Stop WOKE Act is part of a nationwide effort by Republican state lawmakers and governors—especially DeSantis, a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate—to curtail what content can be shared and discussed in classrooms and workplaces.

"Since January 2021, 44 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism,...;Education Week analysis updated on Monday. "Eighteen states have imposed these bans and restrictions either through legislation or other avenues." [twt]

aCLU of Florida staff attorney Jerry Edwards warned Thursday that "lawmakers continue to threaten our democracy by attempting to curtail important discussions about our collective history and treatment of Black and Brown communities."

"This is an important step in preserving the truth, civil liberties, and a better future," Edwards said of the 11th Circuit's decision.

though legal groups welcomed the order, the battle over the law is ongoing. The court will eventually rule on the merits of the case—which DeSantis' press secretary Bryan Griffin highlighted Thursday, adding, "We remain confident that the law is constitutional. Opponents of the law are also undeterred, as Ballard Spahr litigation department chair Jason Leckerman made clear.

"The movement to restrict academic freedom and curtail the rights of marginalized communities is as pervasive as it is pernicious," he said. "We are proud of the work we have done so far with our partners, the ACLU and Legal Defense Fund, but the fight is far from over. Today, we'll take a moment to savor this result—and then we'll keep working."zzz  This post has been updated with comment from FIRE and Gov. Ron DeSantis' press secretary.

proxy for pinko prof? strict fr?

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As the Biden administration defends the president’s policy of canceling up to $20,000 of student debt for millions of Americans against a Republican-backed challenge before the Supreme Court, some right-wing commentators are going beyond their old arguments against the policy to make truly outrageous claims about it.

When President Joe Biden first announced his administration’s plan in August to address the very real problem of student debt doubling in the past decade, which affects tens of millions of Americans, conservatives tried arguing that the policy was unfair, would raise inflation, would favor the rich, and had no legal basis.

But when arguments about the policy reached the Supreme Court yesterday, some right-wing media figures went far beyond their previous opposition to the policy and levied some egregious new attacks:

    Fox News host Mark Levin called Biden’s student loan cancellation policy “a fascistic act by an out-of-control man” who is “cheered by the Marxists in the country.”

    OutKick founder Clay Travis: “This was a transparent political attempt by Joe Biden to rig in his favor the 2022 election.”

    Travis again portrayed the student debt cancellation policy as a voter turnout scheme: Biden “wanted to drive up young voters’ turnout as much as he could.”

    Fox contributor Liz Peek: “You can't just dole out $400 billion to get votes, which is basically what this is all about.”

    Media Research Center’s Stephanie Hamill said “it’s almost like a bribery” of voters.

    Newsmax host Rob Schmitt said it’s a “vote-buying scheme” to get people “on the narcotic of social welfare.”

    Schmitt later portrayed student debt cancellation as Biden wanting “to dump hundreds of billions of dollars that we don't have on 8-balls, Jack Daniels, and flights to Mexico.”

    Fox contributor Marc Thiessen claimed student debt cancellation is “an act of stolen valor,” and that Biden is “turning millions of Americans into people who are engaged in stolen valor.”

    Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk used student debt cancellation to attack college education in general, claiming he might not be so opposed if colleges were “producing fruit that loved America.” Instead, he said, they’re the “Wuhan Institute of Virology equivalent of idea pathogens in our country” and asked, “Is this a alleged money laundering scheme to pay off colleges for their Marxist indoctrination?”

    Kirk also wrote on Twitter that “college is a scam!”

 his lane? one up? unfixable?

https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-christopher-rufo-says-we-should-make-colleges-better-how-where-has-ever

https://www.mediamatters.org/ron-desantis/hungarys-viktor-orban-targeted-central-european-university-gov-ron-desantis-following

florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and anti-civil rights activist Christopher Rufo are waging a campaign against New College of Florida that strongly resembles actions taken by Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán in 2017 and 2018 to shut down Central European University.

DeSantis appointed Rufo, known for his anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ messaging propaganda, to the board of trustees at New College of Florida in early January. Since then, Rufo has engaged in what amounts to a hostile takeover of the school, forcing the president out and attempting to reinvent the school as a conservative institution. The scheme echoes Orbán’s plot to force CEU out of Hungary just years earlier.

Right-wing media personalities and activists in the United States have extensively praised Orbán in recent years, including after he gave what his own adviser called a “pure Nazi speech” in which he decried “race mixing” among Hungarians. During a May 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference event in Hungary, Orbán referred to Fox News star Tucker Carlson as a “friend” whose show should be “broadcasted day and night.” (Carlson passionately defended Orbán in 2021, characterizing his views as “moderate and conventional.”) A separate event known as the National Conservatism Conference also served to strengthen the ties between the illiberal Hungarian leader and his stateside admirers.

Whether DeSantis and Rufo are deliberately modeling their efforts on Orbán’s — or the similarities have arisen naturally from the authoritarian ideologies all three men share — isn’t clear. Regardless, Rufo himself appeared to endorse Orbán’s targeting of CEU in a tweet to conservative writer and Orbán fanboy Rod Dreher.

[twts]

other members of DeSantis’ inner circle have praised Orbán’s administration. During the National Conservatism Conference in Miami last September, Christina Pushaw, a longtime DeSantis aide, “told the audience that Orbán’s government gave her inspiration” for icing out mainstream journalists, as reported in New York magazine.

    “The New Yorker wrote to Orbán and asked for comment on their hit piece, and they received a response that was just perfect. It said, ‘We are not going to participate in the validation process for liberal propaganda,’ ” she recounted, “and I don’t think we need to participate in that validation process either.” Instead, she noted, DeSantis gives access to conservative sites, which then get quotes and scooplets they can use to build their audience.

At the same conference, an Orbán adviser praised DeSantis and used the governor’s policies to justify and normalize Hungary’s own. From New York magazine:

    At one panel, The Federalist’s Sean Davis asked Balázs Orbán, an adviser (no relation) to Viktor Orbán, how his government is preventing the fake-news media from poisoning the minds of the youth. “Just as is done in Florida,” Orbán replied, explaining that the Hungarian regime used state power to prevent the left from indoctrinating the country in its ideology. (His spokesperson explained that he was referring specifically to “gender propaganda.”) He mocked the idea that the regime was behaving autocratically: “You can say I am autocratic, pro-Putin, pro-everything that is bad, but look, in Florida, in the United States, the Republicans are doing the same.”

The similarities in the campaigns that DeSantis and Rufo in Florida, and Orbán in Hungary, have waged against a particular institution of higher learning are striking. Beginning in 2017, Orbán set his sights on CEU, one of Budapest’s top universities. Founded in 1991 by liberal philanthropist George Soros, who was born in Hungary, the school was meant to serve as a model of post-Cold War openness and cosmopolitanism. Orbán saw it as a threat — a bastion of liberalism that threatened his far-right regime.

Orbán, who studied law at István Bibó, a college in Budapest, moved to impose requirements on CEU that appeared to be impossible to meet by design. As The Atlantic reported:

    Although the legislation didn’t mention CEU by name, the school was its obvious—and only—target. The bill would suddenly make CEU’s existence in the country dependent on quickly meeting a series of impossible-seeming requirements. As a foreign university, it would have to operate a campus in its country of origin. (CEU was chartered in the state of New York, but it didn’t have any faculty or facilities there.) Its national government would need to enter into a bilateral accreditation agreement with Hungary. (In the U.S., accreditation agreements are the jurisdiction of the states, not the federal government.)

The law passed, ultimately forcing CEU to close its campus and relocate to Vienna, Austria.

Orbán’s broader intrusions into school curricula also anticipate DeSantis’ own attempts to exert control over classroom instruction. The Atlantic writes:

    Textbooks and curricula, once the domain of municipalities, have been centralized and now inculcate the regime’s politics. “The government is quite clear that patriotic education is as important as transferring knowledge,” Péter Kréko, the political analyst, told me. An eighth-grade history book praises Orbán as a “foundational figure.” A high-school textbook opens a section on “multiculturalism” with an image of refugees huddled at the Budapest train station, accompanied by a quotation from the prime minister: “We consider it a value that Hungary is a homogeneous country.”

Rufo has been alternately open and cryptic about his plans for New College. He sometimes describes his efforts almost modestly, as in a closing paragraph on his blog at City Journal:

    My proposals include redesigning the curriculum to align with the classical model; abolishing DEI programs and replacing them with “equality, merit, and colorblindness” principles; adopting the Kalven statement on institutional neutrality; restructuring the administration and academic departments; recruiting new faculty with expertise in the classical liberal arts tradition; and establishing a graduate school for training teachers in classical education.

But in the same post, he endorsed DeSantis’ chief-of-staff’s comment that the goal is to remake New College into a “Hillsdale of the South,” referencing the far-right Christian college in Michigan.

As New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote (emphasis in original):

    The new majority’s plan, Rufo told me just after his appointment was announced, is to transform New College into a public version of Hillsdale. “We want to provide an alternative for conservative families in the state of Florida to say there is a public university that reflects your values,” he said.

Rufo has made clear that New College is just the beginning. “If we are successful, the effort can serve as a model for other states,” he wrote at City Journal.

Orbán was successful in driving CEU out of Hungary. Whether DeSantis and Rufo can remake New College remains to be seen, much less whether their actions are scalable. Regardless, Rufo has stated that his ambitions do not end with the DeSantis administration. In a recent video titled “The Strategy Behind the Campaign to Abolish DEI Bureaucracies in Public Universities” posted to his YouTube page, he says that his goal is to “get it done in one state, in the state of Florida, and then see a domino effect of other states following suit.”

But it would be wise to take warning from CEU’s president, Shalini Randeria.

“We are a textbook case because what we need to realise is that all of these ‘soft authoritarian’ regimes, as I call them, are learning from one another. There is a playbook they are carefully watching to see what works in one case or another,” she said in an interview with University World News. “We need to study this carefully to see there is a certain toolbox they’re using, and no university is safe.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/31/florida-new-college-conservative-trustees-00080541

taLLAHASSEE, Fla. — The newly-installed conservative board of trustees at New College of Florida ousted its current president in favor of former state education commissioner Richard Corcoran Tuesday, launching the initial move in reshaping the campus under the vision of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The decision came at the first board meeting since DeSantis appointed six new trustees with the idea of overhauling the liberal arts college in Sarasota into a more conservative-leaning institution. That track was accelerated Tuesday when the board paved the way for new leadership as students and parents protested the major changes that appear bound for New College.

“Some have said these recent appointments amount to a partisan takeover of the college. This is not correct,” said trustee Matthew Spalding, a constitutional government professor and vice president at Hillsdale College’s D.C. campus who was appointed by DeSantis. “It’s not a takeover — it’s a renewal.”

A leadership switch from President Patricia Okker to Corcoran as interim leader is one of several moves made Tuesday by the board, which also signaled its intent to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campus — all policies pushed by DeSantis. The changes are major developments at the school spurred by the new appointees, including Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who has advised DeSantis on critical race theory, and Eddie Speir, the co-founder of Inspiration Academy, a Christian charter school in Bradenton, Fla.

Tuesday’s meeting was met with apprehension from dozens of students and parents who protested what they called a “hostile takeover” at New College. They urged Okker to stay on as president and push back against the new mandates from the DeSantis administration to model the school as a “Hillsdale of the South” in reference to the private conservative religious “classical“ college in Michigan.

Okker in an emotional address told the board — and the campus — that she couldn’t continue to serve as president amid accusations that the students are being inundated with liberal indoctrination.

“The reality is, and it’s a hard reality and it’s a sad reality, but the vision that we created together is not the vision I have been given as a mandate here,” Okker said.

In remaking the board at New College, the DeSantis administration said the school was “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning” and in need of change following downward enrollment trends. To move on from Okker, trustees agreed to a “generous” exit package that includes at least 12 months of paid professional development leave and benefits. Corcoran is unable to begin serving until March, leaving Okker’s chief of staff Bradley Thiessen in charge until then.

“New leadership is the expectation and I think it makes sense,” Rufo said at the meeting. “I don’t think it’s a condemnation of Dr. Okker, scholarship or skills or character.”

DeSantis’ changes at New College follow other efforts to reshape higher education in Florida. Earlier Tuesday, the GOP governor proposed several changes to Florida’s university system, including pressing the GOP-led Legislature to cut all funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to allow university leaders to launch tenure review of professors. Last year, DeSantis and state Republicans placed GOP allies in top university posts and pushed legislation that could limit how professors teach race.

New College is also now set to review its Office of Outreach & Inclusive Excellence at the request of Rufo as part of the state’s stance against diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools. Rufo originally pushed to abolish the office outright, including four positions, and take other actions tied to diversity and equity, but decided to request further details on the program for a discussion in February.

New College trustees also want former Senate President Bill Galvano to serve as their general counsel and attorney. They asked the interim president on Tuesday to enter negotiations with the former Republican lawmaker who practices law in Sarasota.

Tuesday’s meeting was tense at times, with audience members frequently shouting over and at the new trustees as they spoke. Several parents and students addressed the board before they huddled, often criticizing their plans to retool the university and asking them to leave the college alone.

Some faculty said students felt “hopeless” about what could happen at the school, which is a unique college of under 700 undergraduates where students craft personalized education plans and don’t receive letter grades.

“Many students came here to feel safe and access the education that is their right as Floridians,” Diego Villada, Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, told the board. “And the impulse to make this a place where race, intersectionality and DEI are banned indicates to them that you want everyone to be the same – to be like you.”

Trustees, though, made it clear that the New College overhaul is fully underway, a message that came the same day DeSantis pledged to invest millions of dollars into recruiting faculty to the school.

“The campus needs a deep culture change. You sat up here, you called us racists, sexists, bigots, outsiders,” said trustee Mark Bauerlein, professor emeritus of English at Emory University who was appointed by DeSantis. “We are now in a position of authority in the college. And the accusations are telling us that something is wrong here.”

    Filed under:

    Florida,

    College,

    Ron DeSantis,

    College Board

sieg heil

left-leaning media outlets have villainized Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, painting his recent moves in the Sunshine State’s education system as a hostile takeover from the Right. So Matthew Spalding, a professor at Hillsdale College whom DeSantis recently appointed to the New College of Florida’s board of trustees, decided to set the record straight.

“DeSantis Allies Plot the Hostile Takeover of a Liberal College,” Michelle Goldberg wrote in The New York Times. Goldberg referred to Hillsdale College as “the template for this reimagined New College” and noted that the conservative Hillsdale—based in southern Michigan—worked with then-President Donald Trump to create a patriotic education curriculum.

“DeSantis moves to turn a progressive Fla. college into a conservative one,” runs the headline on Valerie Strauss’s Washington Post story. The subheadline: “His administration says he aims to make it a ‘Hillsdale of the South.’” Strauss brands Hillsdale a “bastion of far-right conservatism.”

“A Tiny Christian College in Michigan Is Infiltrating Florida’s Schools” runs the headline on Mary Harris’ Slate story.

The New Republic‘s Jack McCordick also slammed DeSantis’ appointment of Spalding, writing that Hillsdale and the Claremont Institute “eagerly hitched their wagons to Trump” and are “home to some of the country’s most notorious coup plotters and insurrectionists.”

McCordick suggested that Spalding’s appointment by DeSantis represents a threat to the “uniquely proactive nature of the New College’s student body.” He quoted alumnus Derek Black, who credited that student body with his conversion from a “white nationalist activist,” implying that the governor’s new appointments might enable white nationalism to emerge at the school.

These media outlets eagerly cited remarks from Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute scholar best known for combating critical race theory and homelessness. DeSantis also named Rufo to New College’s board. In remarks to The New York Times, Rufo said he aimed to reverse a Marxist “march through the institutions.”

“If we can take this high-risk, high-reward gambit and turn it into a victory, we’re going to see conservative state legislators starting to reconquer public institutions all over the United States,” Rufo told the Times.

The media outlets also cited James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ chief of staff, who told the Daily Caller: “It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college … more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”

“Florida is where woke goes to die,” DeSantis said in his victory speech following his nearly 20-point reelection victory in November.

The Republican governor has taken aim at critical race theory, a framework that claims to find “systemic racism” in American institutions and that critics say leads educators to treat white students as oppressors and treat black students and other minorities as oppressed. DeSantis also has opposed transgender ideology and signed a bill protecting parental rights in education and preventing institutionalized instruction of LGBT lessons in kindergarten through third grade.

Spalding, vice president of Washington operations and dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale’s satellite campus in the nation’s capital, did not address DeSantis’ program but insisted that the political controversy is “overwrought.”

Spalding, a former director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal, also said he doesn’t aim to turn New College into a carbon copy of Hillsdale College. Rather, he told The Daily Signal, he intends to champion liberal arts and classical education at the historic Florida institution.

“The political controversy surrounding recent appointments to the board of New College of Florida is overwrought,” Spalding said in a written statement provided to The Daily Signal. “I am honored by the appointment and look forward to engaging in reform to achieve educational excellence.”

“As a professor, dean, and vice president at a successful liberal arts college, my focus is on the work at hand: restoring New College’s ‘distinctive mission’ as the ‘residential liberal arts honors college’ of Florida,” Spalding said. “I appreciate the complimentary nods to Hillsdale College, but we are not going to serve New College’s mission by remaking it into a carbon copy of another institution.”

“In the liberal arts, the college—which means a partnership, one between students and faculty—works together and comes into conversation with great thinkers and writers who’ve asked timeless questions about human purpose, about the good and justice, and how to live well,” he added. “The very aim of liberal arts education is to liberate the mind from current fads and popular ideologies by inviting students to address these questions in pursuit of the truth about what it means to be fully human. That pursuit transcends contemporary politics.”

Getting “such an education teaches one how to think, not what to think,” Spalding added. “The surging enrollment at my home institution and others like it shows that students hunger for such serious academic inquiry.”

The author of this article, Tyler O’Neil, is a Hillsdale College alumnus.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/18757-aaas-reassessing-award-to-public-interest-scientists

press release announcing award to Sri Lankan researchers is suppressed

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) says it's "reassessing" its previous decision to give the 2019 Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility to two Sri Lankan scientists who uncovered an association between glyphosate herbicide exposure and chronic kidney disease in farmers in areas with hard water.

In a series of peer-reviewed papers, Drs Sarath Gunatilake and Channa Jayasumana presented their hypothesis that glyphosate, marketed mostly by Monsanto as Roundup, was transporting arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metals to the kidneys of those drinking contaminated water, causing chronic kidney disease.

Just a few days ago, on 4 February, the AAAS announced it was giving the award to Drs Gunatilake and Jayasumana, whom it characterised as "Two public health researchers who battled powerful corporate interests to uncover the deadly effects of industrial herbicides, solving a medical mystery and protecting the health of farming communities across the world".

The AAAS press release continued, "Drs. Sarath Gunatilake and Channa Jayasumana faced death threats and claims of research misconduct while working to determine the cause of a kidney disease epidemic that has claimed tens of thousands of lives in their home country of Sri Lanka and around the world. Ultimately, their advocacy led to the culprit, a herbicide called glyphosate, being banned in several affected countries."

In a strange reversal, by 6 February, the AAAS had removed its press release from the Internet – but not before GMWatch republished it. You can read it here.

In response to a Twitter storm from defenders and foes of glyphosate, the AAAS tweeted, "We are taking steps to reassess the 2019 Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, after concerns were voiced by scientists and members. This award will not be presented next week as originally planned while we further evaluate the award selection."

Who exactly were the people who voiced these "concerns"? We know who one of them was: Kevin Folta, the University of Florida promoter of GMOs and pesticides, and a member of the AAAS. On 5 February Folta wrote a blog post which was republished on the website of the Genetic Literacy Project, under the heading, AAAS fumble? Prestigious scientists’ organization endorses ‘data-less’ study suggesting links between glyphosate and kidney disease in Sri Lanka.

Citing the Sri Lankan authors' first paper, Folta wrote, "The paper presented a hypothesis. There were no data. There were no experiments. It was a semi-well-crafted hypothesis that could be tested."

However, Folta's claim that there are "no data" in the paper is false. There are plenty of data in this and the authors' follow-up papers – from epidemiological and case-control studies, as well as geographical surveys – that support the idea that glyphosate herbicides should be withdrawn from use as a precautionary measure until they can be proven safe.

Are these data conclusive? No. They point to an association. It's true that the link between glyphosate exposure and chronic kidney disease will always remain a "hypothesis" until it is proven in controlled long-term animal feeding studies. Such studies would count as the "experiments" that Folta complains haven't been done. The truth is that they are unlikely to be done, due to the massive expense and the unwillingness of industry and governments to fund studies that could show that they were responsible for exposing people to poisons over many years.

Drs Sarath Gunatilake and Channa Jayasumana, as Folta admits, have in no way overstated their case. They are conservative and careful in forming their conclusions.

The AAAS's press release likely overstated things in calling glyphosate herbicides "deadly" and "lethal", as such words tend to imply acute toxicants that kill with immediate effect. It would be more accurate to call them slow poisons, though there is little doubt that the end result of exposures can be "deadly".

But a less than ideal choice of words on the part of the author of a press release is an argument for modifying the press release, not reconsidering an award given to honest public interest researchers, particularly ones who have already been the victims of industry-linked intimidation.

And in the case of this particular award, the conclusiveness of the researchers' findings on glyphosate is irrelevant. As Prof Jack Heinemann of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, said on Twitter, "Whether or not the link between glyphosate (or formulation) and kidney disease is right misses the point. A scientific freedom award is given for persecution. If you only give it for proven science, it would be delayed decades and it would only benefit those who persecute."

Folta's record

Now let's look at the record of their accuser. Kevin Folta took a $25,000 grant from Monsanto to promote GMOs and took steps to avoid disclosing it to the public, while all the time falsely telling the public that he had "nothing to do with Monsanto".

Folta has allowed an agrochemical industry PR firm to ghostwrite for him, but then denied it. The PR firm ghostwrote answers to questions on GMOs, which were then published on the industry's public relations website, GMO Answers, under Folta's name.

He had to stand down as Chair of his university department after his then wife accused him of violent abuse. She also accused him of taking money for consulting for Bayer. He was deserted by several of his former close associates after that turned out to be true. He has also publicly defended drunk driving and published advice on how to get away with it.

Finally, although Folta has no known medical or toxicology background, he regularly pontificates on food and chemical safety as if he were an expert, often inaccurately. And in his defence of Monsanto's glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, Folta has not only made a series of false claims, but irresponsibly, has even drunk it publicly, supposedly to demonstrate its "harmlessness”.

The AAAS's record

Let's hope the AAAS stands up to the likes of Folta – and stands by its decision to honour the Sri Lankan scientists, who have endured too much victimisation already for their brave work.

The AAAS has a mixed record when it comes to public interest issues. In 2013 the AAAS's board of directors issued a statement opposing the labelling of GM foods in the US. The statement argued that such labelling “can only serve to mislead and falsely alarm consumers”. The AAAS was at the time chaired by Nina Fedoroff, who has close ties to the GMO industry.

But in an incident that showed that the AAAS is not monolithic but contains scientists who do not toe the GMO lobby's line, a group of scientists and physicians that included many long-standing AAAS members condemned the AAAS board of directors’ statement as “an Orwellian argument that violates the right of consumers to make informed decisions”. They pointed to evidence showing that Roundup, the herbicide used on most GM crops, could pose risks that consumers might reasonably want to avoid.

Sadly, the AAAS board seems more likely than its membership to have the power to decide on the fate of the award that was to be given to the Sri Lankan scientists. Whatever they decide, the row kicked up by the antics of the likes of Folta has served to bring the risks of glyphosate herbicides to the notice of a wider public.

If the AAAS does decide to withdraw its award to the Sri Lankan scientists, that will send a clear message to the public about the suppression of science. Ironically, of course, it was the now-suppressed AAAS press release which noted that jeopardizing the profits of the glyphosate industry has come with serious “consequences” for Drs Gunatilake and Jayasumana.

==

 state of Florida is under fire for trying to silence professors who want to testify about voting rights

Cody Fenwick

 October 31, 2021

After public outrage over its decision to block professors from testifying as expert witnesses about voting rights, the University of Florida tried to defend itself this week by issuing a statement claiming to support "academic....

intercept 921

Israeli Diplomat Pressured UNC to Remove Teacher Who Criticized Israel

Murtaza Hussain

821 common dr

no lnx

 The secret corporate memo behind today's guerilla war on campus progressives

 Nancy MacLean , Lisa Graves and Common Dreams August 25, 2021

As college students return to classes this fall, the latest culture war campaigns will join the pandemic in upsetting campus life. If recent experience is any guide, their proximate cause will be well-funded right-wing groups that thrive on provoking and publicizing conflicts: "Campus Reform" (part of the Leadership Institute), Turning Point USA, and more.

When the University of North Carolina tried to hire a distinguished journalist, for example, Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk had this to say: "Nikole Hannah-Jones is a racist and a liar." He urged allies to "find the names of the biggest donors at your school and email them"—and monitor faculty with his ProfessorWatchlist.org. Campus Reform obtained the offer letter sent to Hannah-Jones and Fox News cranked up its outrage machine. We know the rest of the story.

Such groups have actively targeted professors who teach about structural racism in American history. The latest buzzword is "CRT," critical race theory, which they claim is dividing students at all educational levels, even though CRT is mainly a law school elective.

Such clashes have multiple sources, but the least understood one is how they serve a long-term strategy to disrupt and transform higher education so it better serves corporate interests.

The initial mission statement was a confidential memorandum issued 50 years ago this week, on August 23, 1971, by a tobacco lawyer named Lewis Powell, Jr., at the behest of his neighbor Eugene Sydnor, a leader in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Powell's memo, which was shared with numerous CEOs, only became public after it was leaked to a reporter.

The memo carried the foreboding title "Attack on the American Enterprise System." It was filled with socialist fear mongering akin to the political rhetoric of 2020. Powell alleged "a wide-ranging attack from many in the media, in politics, and on the campus." His proposed corporate counterattack put higher education in the crosshairs. Powell recommended that donors and trustees exert power over education "to address the campus origin of this hostility." He urged "constant surveillance" of textbooks.

Powell upbraided corporations for enabling popular animus by "appeasement, ineptitude and ignoring the problem." He urged CEOs to engage in a long war to embed ideas then regarded as radical into the mainstream. "Strength lies in organization," he counseled, "and the scale of financing only available by joint effort." He also urged corporate funding of new institutions to advance the mission.

Less than two months later, President Richard Nixon nominated Powell to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he spent the next 15 years re-shaping the Constitution to give corporations more rights.

Soon after Powell's memo, an heir to the Coors fortune helped create the Heritage Foundation. The new American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), created to advance the corporate agenda in the states, moved in with Heritage.

But such advocacy was not enough for the young leader of one of the largest privately held companies in America, Charles Koch. In 1974, he issued "The Anti-Capitalist Mentality," a blistering follow up to Powell's memo contending that taxes were forcing corporations to subsidize universities hostile to their agenda and that CEOs were putting too few strings on their giving.

America has seen these seeds grow since the 1970s into action by the wealthiest few on the political right to create pro-corporate centers and institutes, fund faculty hires and research, pay for lectures and seminars, change curricula, and even underwrite fields such as law and economics. They have also engaged in collective power plays, as with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, launched in 1995 to coordinate the muscle of donors.

The corporate donors most committed to disrupting higher education have been those also known for polluting debate with disinformation that serves their bottom lines while endangering the rest of us.

A case in point is Koch Industries, a fossil fuel conglomerate that has spent three decades as a key funder of climate science denial. The Koch family has spent nearly half a billion dollars at more than 500 colleges and universities since 2001, and millions more before that.

It's a shrewd pincers' action: push to cut taxes that fund public universities and then appeal to trustees to accept Koch's ideologically driven campus investments. Meanwhile, the Koch-funded Leadership Institute publishes Campus Reform, which targets professors. Koch's foundation has publicly condemned "inciting harassment of scholars" and said it does not fund Campus Reform but it has long funded the Leadership Institute, whose selling point is its campus network.

So, where is the 50-year plan to counter Powell's memo and Koch's implementation of it? For the health of our democracy, we need to disarm the war on knowledge and reason, now painfully evident in the widespread resistance to life-saving vaccines and masking.

One step is to expose the theories and money fueling disinformation. Another step is to restore public funding for public universities so that self-interested donors cannot distort what is taught and who teaches it. Robust public funding can rescue the pursuit of knowledge that supports evidence-based public policy rather than the coin-operated output preferred by some CEOs.

msnbc moral panic: you raise kids w/ right values/american and univ makes them into liberals[and/or gay?]

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/ron-desantis-2653505905/

Florida goes full fascist': Ron DeSantis sparks furious backlash with ‘authoritarian’ campus political surveys

Raw Story June 23, 2021

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation requiring Florida students, faculty, and staff to register their political views in surveys in an effort to promote "intellectual diversity" at colleges and universities, and the measure set off backlash across social media.

Critics decried the law, which DeSantis claims will promote freedom of speech, as a "thoroughly Orwellian" attempt to gain control over academic debate at institutions of higher learning.

Well, this is thoroughly Orwellian. ?? Faculty and students of Florida, you know what to do! Freep Mini-Trump's stup… https://t.co/N2nEE5UzuM

— Betty Cracker ?? (@Betty Cracker ??)1624454881.0

Well that's got to be unconstitutional: Florida students required to register political views with the state to pro… https://t.co/b1Bh8p98uN

— David Rothkopf (@David Rothkopf)1624455537.0

DeSantis wants to survey university students and staff, with the threat of budget cuts if he doesn't get his way???… https://t.co/IWfcM8nGhI

— Witty Librarian In a Mask (@Witty Librarian In a Mask)1624455089.0

Our new authoritarian overlords like @RonDeSantisFL (who is a smart version of Trump) are coming for the universiti… https://t.co/Wupp1WG0Y9

— Rachel Bitecofer ?????? (@Rachel Bitecofer ??????)1624450474.0

Florida is becoming too dangerous full of right wing extremists. Floridians are shooting each other every day whil… https://t.co/bTj5qSkwJq

— Natives&ImmigrantsAreUS (@Natives&ImmigrantsAreUS)1624454706.0

Fascist authoritarianism takes another step forward in Florida. https://t.co/aRnOdvOQvS

— Rusty Cannon (@Rusty Cannon) 1624454946.0

The Florida education “intellectual diversity,” survey is one question - it’s a picture of Reagan with the caption… https://t.co/a9WS5fdp0h

— Eldritch Millennial (@Eldritch Millennial)1624451688.0

@TeaPainUSA Since the survey is not anonymous and since results will not be aggregated without identifying informat… https://t.co/CGTr7rYUMt

— Mary Buggie-Hunt ?????????? (@Mary Buggie-Hunt ??????????) 1624454430.0

Also if you don’t think they’ll sell your survey answers connected to your ID to the highest bidders, well, perhaps… https://t.co/uKBiKSSf7U

— Heather Flyte (@Heather Flyte) 1624456751.0

@GinnyMcDonald8 I raised two smart-asses. If they were going to be in a Florida University, they would find great p… https://t.co/rTTgKo8nXJ

— Israel Jablonski (@Israel Jablonski) 1624454688.0

Defending liberalism from illiberal wokeness by *checks notes* administering ideological tests and threatening budg… https://t.co/FwnsHBe1KA

— Zack Beauchamp (@Zack Beauchamp) 1624455675.0

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// antifa concept?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/republicans-fact-free/

The right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale, has lately been making a fetish of something called "critical race theory" (CRT). This has prompted academics to defend it. It's not a radical political ideology, they say. It's merely a form of critical inquiry. It is not the boogeyman it's being made out to be. There's nothing to fear.

I understand the need to defend critical race theory. Colleges and universities are beset on one hand by Republican fascists accusing scholars of indoctrinating students, on the other by anti-left liberals accusing the same of hostility toward freedom of speech. Meanwhile, administrations act more like corporations that privilege efficiency over research and teaching. It's enough to think CRT is an appropriate hill to die on.

This, however, overlooks the larger dynamic at work. The more you defend CRT as an ideologically neutral mode of seeing and thinking about the world, the more the propagandists are going to do what they do best, which is terrifying the ignorant. More importantly, CRT defenders are not seeing the true nature of their opponents. From the authoritarian perspective, modes of seeing and thinking about the world are never ideologically neutral because once you learn to see and think about the world on your own, you don't need authoritarian leaders to tell you what to see and think.

I risk making them seem like cartoons. I risk making people who treasure "traditional" and "conservative" and "Judeo-Christian" values look like they yippy-skippied over the Enlightenment on their way from the Spanish Inquisition to the 21st-century America. But it's worth the risk given that most respectable white people, in my opinion, tend to overestimate the societal effects of liberal arts education. Critical thinking is so uncontroversial among respectable white people as to be barely worth mentioning. The authoritarians, however, see it quite clearly for what it is—an existential threat.

This is why the particulars of critical race theory don't matter.1 (You don't care about the particulars when you're fighting for survival!) This is also why explaining those particulars to people who seem to fear them won't change their minds if you don't also take into account that explaining the particulars of critical race theory can itself be seen as intolerable aggression. What most of them fear is loss of social control. What most fear is loss of authority. Where you see an individual merely muddling through life the best she can, coming to the best conclusions she can, most of them see an individual whose ideological aggression is so monstrous as to justify any response.

Respectable white people look at the right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale, and marvel at the fact that Americans consuming its propaganda inhabit a fact-free world. I think what they misunderstand is lying isn't a bug. It's a feature. Facts are available to individuals to see and think about on their own, free and independent of authorities licensed to say what individuals see and think. Facts, therefore, are aligned politically with perceived enemies. A rational response to facts is nonstop lying. So "alternate facts" are not a result of authoritarian politics. They are a first principle.

Critical race theory is not a political ideology, but it may as well be to the world of the right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale. It might as well be because anything that teaches individuals to see and think about facts independent and free of groupthink compromises the integrity of the authoritarian's grip on the group. Case in point is Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney. The Republican believes the former president tried bringing down the republic. She is factually correct. For the "crime" of seeing and thinking about the world on her own, she's now being punished. The House Republicans are poised to purge her from the House conference leadership. The Republicans are not individualists. They are collectivists enforcing groupthink.

Respectable white people marvel at the fact that Americans consuming right-wing propaganda inhabit a fact-free world. As a consequence, they do not take it seriously. People who insist on inhabiting a fact-free world are not just ignorant—not when democracy depends on the ability of individuals to associate and organize themselves for the purpose of self-rule. When huge numbers of people inhabit a fact-free world, and collectivist leaders police the integrity of that groupthink, they threaten not only democracy's ability to function minimally, but its survival. Liz Cheney is now being reassimilated into the collective. Democracy itself faces the very same fate. Do not marvel at these people and their fact-free world. Regard them as the danger they are.

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Aha: this is an extension of pinko prof brainwashing and campus conserv student silencing b/c of PC cancel culture; gin up hype in front of election (TP kirk bloody revenge coming for your kids?! also reaction to BLM for end of systemic racism.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/loving-your-country-is-not-the-same-as-loving-trump-how-the-right-makes-a-mockery-of-us-patriotism

on September 17, in a speech delivered at the National Archives Museum, President Trump announced he was signing an executive order establishing the 1776 Commission, aimed at promoting what he called a “patriotic” and “pro-America” education.  The announcement was a direct attack on the 1619 Project, a New York Times initiative that explores the legacy of slavery in the United States. For Trump, teaching critical race studies is akin to committing child abuse “in the truest sense of those words.”

“Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and souls,” Trump announced. He accused the left of destroying children’s love of their country by teaching the facts of its history — facts, he claimed, wrongly “rewrite” American history as founded on oppression rather than freedom. He’s demanded that schools “teach American exceptionalism” and said that schools are teaching students to “hate their own country.”

This was just the latest show of Trump’s blatant conflation of racism with patriotism and it served as yet another example of how Trump has turned patriotism into a self-serving performance free of any connection to facts. From the start, Trump has attempted to define patriotism not as loving the country, but rather as loving Trump. All we need to do is remember that the same man who dodged military service spent over $2.5 million on a Fourth of July military parade designed to be primarily a celebration of himself.

Before analyzing the damage Trump has done to U.S. patriotism, let me be blunt: “loving” your country is stupid. Patriotism, when it is nothing more than blind adoration of a country, is idiotic at best and fascist at worst. Countries don’t need to be loved; they need to be built, critiqued, developed and improved. They need to be held to the highest ideals and they need to face their shortcomings so that they can strive to be better. The relationship citizens have to their nations may always include some affect, but real support for a nation thrives when citizens emote less and reflect and engage more. So, when patriotism is synonymous with loving your country, it is always, already a bad idea. but setting aside the question of whether it even makes sense to debate who does or doesn’t love their country, there seems little doubt that the time has come to push back on the way that the right has conflated loving the United States with loving Trump.

It may have been the case that in the early days of Trump his supporters could rationalize backing a man with an absent moral compass, a profound disrespect for our public institutions, and a deeply and openly narcissistic personality. But the moment when a Trump supporter could hold him up as a welcome alternative to the traditional political establishment has long gone. Any hope that Trump signaled anything positive for this country has now been eclipsed by the avalanche of proof that he holds all of the core values we associate with our nation — whether from the left or the right — in profound disdain.

Take, for example, the information that has poured in just over the last month.

We learned that Trump was aware of reports of financial incentives given to Taliban fighters by officials linked to the Russian government to target and kill American troops in Afghanistan, and he did nothing about it.

We have had multiple confirmations of Trump’s inability to appreciate the value of military service, to respect veterans, and to understand the sacrifices those in the military make for their country. And that wasn’t all. Trump went after military leadership, claiming that they wage wars in order to boost the profits of defense manufacturing companies, somehow forgetting that, as President, he is Commander-in-Chief of the military.

Trump didn’t just attack the military; he attacked our electoral system as well. We have read reports of his concerted efforts to derail the electoral process and suppress voter turnout by criticizing mail-in voting and encouraging voters to vote twice. He has also repeated an expectation that election results could be delayed by months, stoking fears over a peaceful transition.

Then we also learned via Bob Woodward’s new book “Rage” that Trump only cares about himself and that he is willing to lie and deceive the American public when it suits him. Woodward reports that Trump knew well that COVID-19 posed a serious health threat, yet he deliberately downplayed it, saying he did so to avoid stoking public “panic.”

Yet, he is more than happy to foster public panic if it can help him win re-election. He has specifically suggested that if he isn’t elected in November, citizens will be in grave danger.

These more recent developments simply build on years of examples of his profoundly selfish desire to put himself before his office and above the national interest. Only last week we had further confirmation of his self-aggrandizing, unpatriotic behavior when we learned that he manipulated the Department of Homeland Security to downplay the threat of Russian election interference and minimize the threat of white supremacists.

This is a man who hasn’t protected our citizens, our health care workers, our military, our national security, or our elections. This is a man who has openly sown social division and purposefully put the future of the nation at risk. Without question, Donald Trump is the least patriotic man to have ever held the office of President. And, what’s more, he is entirely transparent about it.

How, then, to explain the fact that he still enjoys such an astonishing level of support by Republicans? Sure, there are dissenters, but the latest Gallup poll numbers still show Trump earning support of 90 percent of Republicans.

So, supporting Trump when he is obviously doesn’t care a wit about the United States means you can no longer claim to “love” your country.

By every metric that matters, Republicans’ ongoing support for Donald Trump officially ends any claim they have to anything resembling patriotism. Supporting Trump in the wake of these revelations suggests that your patriotism has turned into nothing more than blind fanaticism for a demagogue. There isn’t any other way to explain it.

For many, the idea that Trump and his supporters have ruined U.S. patriotism may not matter much given the fact that for many of us patriotism is too closely aligned with an uncritical American exceptionalism. The notion, though, that the rise of Trump signals the demise of Republican patriotism is a big deal for the simple fact that the Republican party has equated itself with U.S. patriotism for decades. In fact, the mere suggestion that they might not be the patriots they claim to be is likely to seem shocking even to those who are not in the party.

But that’s the thing. The left has generally allowed the Republicans to be the party of those who “love” their country because, for the left, the idea of loving your country uncritically rather than trying to make it better is ignorant and narrow-minded. If being patriotic means you can’t ask questions about the flaws in the system, interrogate injustices past and present, account for the facts of history, and point out deep hypocrisies in the national narrative, then who wants to be patriotic? So, if patriotism means loving your country, then it’s no wonder that the left gave free rein to Republicans to have at it.

And that’s exactly what they did. The story of how Republicans came to dominate the notion of U.S. patriotism is long and complex, but, as Geoffrey Nunberg points out in “Talking Right,” the key to understanding conservative control of U.S. patriotism lies in the deliberate ways that their party worked to merge conservative values with national ones.

According to Nunberg, conservatives exercised a methodical plan to co-opt terms like values, freedom, and patriotism so that these words were uniquely associated with the right — a plan that allowed them to increasingly paint the left as being unpatriotic, against freedom, and morally bankrupt.

This story is key to understanding the twisted patriotism of Trump supporters today, because it wasn’t just that the left let the right merge conservative values with patriotism; it was also that the left let the right suggest that anyone sharing a progressive platform hated their country.  This was how it came to be that protesting the Iraq War or demanding accountability for systemic racism or claiming that health care in Canada was better than it is here meant you hated your country.

The love-hate patriotic drama that the right was allowed to develop meant that all thoughtful conversations about what it means to support the United States were absent, replaced, instead, by the right’s increasingly hysterical claims that they were the only ones who even knew what our nation’s values were. For decades the left avoided claims about their country being great, offering, instead, visions for hope and change and a better future.

The distinction makes sense: the right loves their country in a narrow minded and fanatical way while the left strives to take the best of America’s ideals and make them reality. The problem, though, as Nunberg explains in his book, was that the left forgot that they also needed to fight for their critical approach to nationalism to be understood as offering a set of patriotic values too. Absent that, the right was free to own the idea and mold it to their desires.

It is thanks to these developments that Trump was able to claim Ronald Reagan’s slogan and suggest that he was going to make America great again. Everyone was already used to seeing these sorts of claims from the right.

The problem, though, is that Trump has not ever wanted to make America great in any way at all. He has wanted to make it his to do with as he wishes. He has openly idolized despots and dictators. He has bemoaned that he is limited by our democratic process and commented glibly that he should be able to stay in office beyond eight years. And none of that unpatriotic, un-American behavior has caused his supporters to waver.

Because Trump’s base has spent decades forgetting what it actually means to uphold national values, they’ve been easily swayed into associating a selfish, self-aggrandizing, unethical and morally repugnant human with a patriot. Content to equate flag waving, eating hot dogs, going to football games and buying guns while wearing a red hat with being patriotic, Trump’s base has lost sight of what it means to uphold national values. For them, to love their country means loving Trump.

It’s time to push back on this love affair and call out Trump supporters for their anti-American values.  No one should be able to claim that they love their country and still support him. We might disagree on whether schools should focus on teaching students the symbolism of 1619 and we might disagree on whether or not we should idolize the association of 1776 with freedom, but it’s time to agree that our nation deserves better than Trump.

==

==

the fed wacko blog

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/13/new-paper-confirms-just-how-rigged-higher-education-is-against-the-right/

no lnx

new Paper Confirms Just How Rigged Higher Education Is Against The Right

A devastating new policy report provides data on how conservatives are sidelined in western academia. Now, conservatives have to decide what to do about it.

Sumantra Maitra

AUGUST 13, 2020

A U.K. report finds that academia is severely damaged, has become a revolutionary institution within narrow and stifling ideological echo-chamber, and cannot be easily fixed with a simple “self-correction” pushed by market forces. Given how much the game is already rigged, legislation and other external interventions are needed to balance the scale.

The policy paper from Policy Exchange, a London-based think-tank, highlights the major trends in British higher-ed and has implications for similar problems in the United States. The report indicates that, compared to the 1960s when the British higher-ed system was divided between around 35 percent supporting Conservative causes and around 50 percent supporting the Labour Party, academia currently is almost wholly skewed to the left.

Conservative professoriate numbers are often in single digits. In the United States, also, several studies have found results similar to those of a 2018 survey, which found ten times as many Democrat-affiliated professors than Republican-affiliated at the top 60-ranked campuses. Worse, the U.K. paper finds, is that “soft totalitarianism” has increased, ranging from academic bullying and campaigns against scholars with unconventional views, to even outright seclusion in certain fields and disciplines.

About only half of academics would feel comfortable sitting next to someone who supported Britain’s right to leave the European Union, for example. Just 37 percent say they would feel comfortable being around someone critical of gender and trans-rights. One-third of academics would not hire a “Vote-Leave” supporter of Brexit.

The report also finds that active discrimination against conservatives happens in hiring, background checks, grant and scholarship applications, and committee memberships. Needless to mention, this is ideological discrimination in its purest form.

Naturally, it has resulted from institutions turning into a leftist fantasy world detached from reality. “Many academics thus choose to self-censor. This is again most marked for those who identify as ‘fairly right’ or ‘right’, 32 percent of whom have refrained from airing views in teaching and research,” the paper concludes.

Professor Matthew Goodwin, author of the best-selling National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy, wrote about the report and gave an example of how conservatives are ostracized in academia. Conservative or nationalist professors not only face massive abuse on social media but also are sidelined in their careers solely for their political views. In real life, writes Goodwin, this means:

…being disinvited from workshops in my core research area;  being asked about my personal political views during interviews for research grants; being asked to account for inviting a conservative onto campus; being accused of ‘going native’ or being an ‘apologist’ for Brexiteers and populists; being made aware that I was considered ‘problematic’; and, more generally, experiencing social ‘distancing’ from colleagues.

Naturally, senior and established academics can better weather such abuse, but junior academics are often sidelined or censored severely. Almost worse, many resort to self-censorship in an effort to preserve their career prospects.

The report argues that legislation is critically important to address issues of balance, establish positions to monitor academic freedom, and make sure that universities address freedom of speech and actual viewpoint diversity, rather than accumulating men and women who look different outwardly but all share the same ideas internally.

The report is important as it provides direct evidence for what most conservatives know to be instinctively true. Some of these issues are exactly similar in the United States, where campus free speech has been an increasingly partisan issue with conservatives trying to restore some semblance of equality in an atmosphere hostile to their views.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education maintains a whole database of how many times speakers have been disinvited on campuses. The University of Chicago is the only major university that has charted principles to defend free speech and freedom of expression on campus. So, while there have been many efforts by university leftists to shore up ethnic and racial diversity, the only diversity that is not visible is one of viewpoint.

Across the Anglosphere, three key issues ail academia. One, since ideological bias skews results, grants and scholarships are not falling sway to normal market conditions. Unfortunately, in this regard, despite much conventional conservative faith in markets, the market alone will not remedy what is wrong with academia. In fact, flawed as the current conditions are, a purely market “solution” would further treat students as consumers, encouraging them to feel even more entitled to whatever they desire from higher education.

Two, experience and history tell us that bureaucracy will do whatever is needed to survive and expand. University bureaucracy is no different and caters more to these entitled groups while expanding and filling their ranks. During the last three decades, administrative growth at universities has eclipsed 200 percent, compared to faculty growth in double digits.

Finally, add to these a very minor but extremely vocal group of activists acting as an ideological vanguard trying to discredit and ostracize opponents and grab power. Combined, these three create a perfect storm.

To defund activists in academia, and to ensure viewpoint diversity, external intervention is needed to enforce appropriate legislation and establish rules. South Dakota‘s new law on campus free speech and viewpoint diversity for public universities is a good model.

Assuredly, there are limits to whether governments can or should intervene. Governments can, however, reset the playground rules. They can, and should, help make universities better and more competitive while ensuring free-speech and viewpoint diversity and a level playing field. If it needs to be a battle of ideas, ideas need to openly compete with each other, without fear of ostracism or overt bullying.

Sumantra Maitra is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a senior contributor to The Federalist. His research is in great power-politics and neorealism. You can find him on Twitter @MrMaitra.

tags:

academic bias academic debate academic freedom Bureaucracy campus activism campus administrators Campus Reform education freedom self-censorship viewpoint discrimination viewpoint diversity

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ref hr1087

https://sdlegislature.gov/docs/legsession/2019/Bills/HB1087ENR.pdf

https://www.thecollegefix.com/south-dakota-legislature-passes-intellectual-diversity-bill/

The College Fix

Original. Student reported. Your daily dose of Right-minded news and commentary from across the nation

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/10/college-professor-fired-trump-52-cultural-sites-tweet-joke

paging greg l

college professor fired for joking about Trump's 52 cultural sites tweet

Asheen Phansey jokingly listed 52 US cultural sites for Iran to bomb, including Mall of America and the ‘Kardashian residence’

Poppy Noor

 @PoppyNoor

Fri 10 Jan 2020 11.37 ESTLast modified on Fri 10 Jan 2020 12.43 EST

The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota – one of 52 US ‘cultural sites’ listed by Professor Asheen Phansey of Babson College in a satirical Facebook post.

A professor who jokingly listed 52 cultural sites in America that Iran should bomb has been fired from his job at a private Massachusetts college.

Donald Trump claimed on 4 January that the US had earmarked 52 Iranian cultural sites for destruction – warning the country not to strike back after a US drone killed Iran’s top general, Qassem Suleimani, last week.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

 · Jan 4, 2020

Replying to @realDonaldTrump

....hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have.....

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

....targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran &  the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

274K

2:52 PM - Jan 4, 2020

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Trump appeared to backtrack on those comments on Tuesday, probably because attacks against cultural property are a violation of the rules of warfare stated by the Hague Convention.

But following Trump’s post, Professor Asheen Phansey posted to his own Facebook page, saying: “[The Supreme Leader of Iran] should tweet a list of 52 sites of cultural American heritage that he would bomb … Um … Mall of America? … Kardashian residence?”

The Facebook post, which has since been deleted, was subject to a “prompt and thorough investigation” by Babson College, also Phansey’s alma mater.

On Wednesday, Phansey apologized through his attorney for the Facebook post, saying it was a poor attempt to poke fun at the United States’ lack of history. The statement said the post was a “bad attempt at humor” rather than an incitement to violence.

“I am sorry that my sloppy humor was read as a threat … I am completely opposed to violence and would never advocate it by anyone,” the statement said.

Babson College announced on Thursday that Phansey was no longer employed by the college, as a result of the investigation into his Facebook post. The statement sread: “[The Facebook post] does not represent the values and culture of the College. Babson College condemns any type of threatening words and/or actions condoning violence and/or hate.”

Phansey released a statement on Thursday evening, saying that he was “disappointed” at the decision to terminate his employment.

“I am disappointed and saddened that Babson has decided to abruptly terminate my 15-year relationship with the college just because people willfully misinterpreted a joke I made to my friends on Facebook.”

He said that he loved the institution, had put much into it and hoped it “would have defended and supported my right to free speech”.

He added that the incident gave him cause for concern about freedom of speech.

“Beyond my own situation, I am really concerned about what this portends for our ability as Americans to engage in political discourse without presuming the worst about each other.”

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elec intifada

In recent weeks, two professors at the University of Michigan have declined to write recommendation letters for two separate students seeking to join study abroad programs in Israel.

The professors cited Israel’s discriminatory laws and policies of occupation and apartheid against Palestinians in their decisions to not write the letters. They have expressed their support for the call to boycott Israeli institutions as long as Israel continues to violate Palestinian rights.

In September, after he refused to write a recommendation letter, professor John Cheney-Lippold received death threats. The threats were not publicly addressed by the university.

But the administration did choose to comment on the professor’s actions, charging him with interfering in the student’s request with his own “personal views and politics.”

Israel lobby groups pressured the university to discipline Cheney-Lippold, claiming that his choice was an act of discrimination and anti-Semitism.

In an apparent effort by the university to appease Israel advocates, an advisory committee declared in late September that “a student’s merit” must be “the primary guide for determining how and when to provide letters of recommendation.”

On 3 October, the university again bowed to the demands of Israel supporters, sanctioning him with the loss of his earned sabbatical for two years and no merit pay raise for the academic year.

Cheney-Lippold is being threatened with further sanctions if his politics guide future decisions about recommendation letters.

Another University of Michigan instructor recently refused to write a letter of recommendation for a student wishing to study abroad in Israel.

Doctoral student instructor Lucy Peterson said that she had “pledged myself to a boycott of Israeli institutions as a way of showing solidarity with Palestine.”

Last week, she was questioned by the administration. Peterson also faces potential discipline, according to civil rights group Palestine Legal.

“This is an alarming violation of the professor’s First Amendment and 14th Amendment due process rights under the US constitution,” Palestine Legal’s Radhika Sainath told The Electronic Intifada Podcast.

As an employee of a public university, Cheney-Lippold has full constitutional protections, she said, “and that means that the university may not punish him for his viewpoint supporting Palestinian rights, or because he is taking this principled stance to support the boycott for Palestinian rights.”

Sainath said that the administration’s punishment is a “really extreme measure, and it will have a chilling effect” on political speech.

Moreover, Sainath noted, by refusing to write the letters for a program that inherently discriminates against students of Palestinian ancestry, Cheney-Lippold and Peterson are merely “abiding by the university’s really strict anti-discrimination and diversity policies by refusing to write recommendations for institutions that all of their students cannot study at.”

Appeals

Approximately 800 individuals have signed a petition in support of the professors, urging the university to rescind Cheney-Lippold’s punishment and ensure that Peterson not be subjected to similar sanctions.

Academics, scholars, graduate students, alumni and human rights advocates are appealing to the university to drop the punishments as well....

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/the-right-wings-massive-free-speech-hypocrisy-bret-stephens-and-mo-brooks-are-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

no lnx

The right-wing’s massive free-speech hypocrisy: Bret Stephens and Mo Brooks are the tip of the iceberg

Written by Sophia Tesfaye / Salon September 1, 2019

Last week’s embarrassing “bedbug” saga, in which a harmless joke finally drove New York Times columnist Bret Stephens off Twitter, is a perfect example of the incredibly thin skin possessed by most of the vocal “free speech warriors” who have used fear-mongering over the supposed silencing of discourse on college campus to leapfrog from the right wing into the mainstream. The hilarious anecdote also usefully breaks down the false premise upon which this particular battle in the culture wars is built on.

After it was reported this week that the New York Times headquarters has a bedbug infestation, David Karpf, an associate professor at George Washington University, tweeted: “The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens.”

Without even being tagged in a tweet that had initially garnered zero retweets, Stephens noticed. He then wrote an email to Karpf to bemoan his lack of civility, sending a copy to the provost of Karpf’s university.

“I’m often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people — people they’ve never met — on Twitter,” Stephens wrote in a now-infamous email to Karpf. “I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face.”

Stephens later explained on MSNBC that he snitched to Karpf’s boss not in an effort to get him fired, but because “managers should know” about their employee’s private speech. This is the same Bret Stephens who has warned against trigger warnings in the classroom: “If you can’t speak freely, you’ll quickly lose the ability to think clearly.”

A day before Stephens’ Twitter-induced meltdown, a right-wing Republican congressman called for a university professor to be fired for his speech.

After Allen Frances, former chair of the Duke University department of psychiatry, appeared on CNN last weekend, Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., took to Twitter to call for his firing. Brooks objected to Frances’ argument that “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin and Mao were in the last century.”

Brooks, who has previously compared Democrats and the media to Hitler, declared in a recent press release: “I support freedom and free enterprise. I oppose free speech suppression and Socialism.”

Both calls for suppression of speech from prominent voices on the right come about a week after a targeted campaign by right-wing media resulted in a professor actually losing his job because of political speech and association.

Conservative websites piled on Jeff Klinzman, an adjunct English professor at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, over a post on a Facebook page named “Iowa Antifa.” After someone shared a tweet in which Trump referred to antifa protesters as “Radical Left Wack Jobs who go around hitting … people over the heads with baseball bats,” Klinzman commented, “Yeah, I know who I’d clock with a bat,” ABC affiliate KCRG reported.

Trump said in July that his administration was considering designating anti-fascists as a terrorist organization after GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Ted Cruz of Texas introduced a non-binding resolution to label members of antifa groups as “domestic terrorists.”

Klinzman was forced to resign from his teaching position following the national outcry.

Few so-called free speech advocates came to Klinzman’s defense. Not New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who once wrote, “Political correctness on college campuses has run ridiculously riot,” or his colleague Ross Douthat, who complained about the “fainting-couch politics of recent campus and online progressivism.”

Even fewer have taken up the cause of Ismail B. Ajjawi, a 17-year-old Palestinian student recently detained at Boston’s Logan Airport on his way to Harvard University. The Harvard Crimson reported that U.S. officials interrogated Ajjawi, who was arriving to begin his freshman year at Harvard on a full scholarship, for eight hours. After searching his phone and computer, authorities eventually revoked his visa and sent him home to Lebanon, where he had lived as a refugee. Ajjawi’s visa cancellation came just days before the U.S. State Department removed Palestine from its official list of countries.

According to a written statement by Ajjawi, an immigration officer claimed she “found people posting political points of view that oppose the U.S.,” though she discovered nothing Ajjawi had posted himself.

Not enough details are available on Ajjawi’s case to know whether any of his friends’ offensive posts were threatening in nature. But since there was no official boasting about having stopped a potential terrorist, it seems highly unlikely there was any imminent threat or any apparent history of radicalism. Indeed, Ajjawi is not even being punished for something he said — but for something his friends apparently said.

And his case comes the same week an inspector general released a report on political targeting within the State Department.

That investigation was launched following media reports of political retribution and the administering of a sort of loyalty test after Donald Trump’s inauguration. The State Department inspector general’s office found a pattern of inappropriate actions by Kevin Moley, assistant secretary of state for the department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, and his senior adviser, Mari Stull.

According to Foreign Policy, Stull’s job had been to “scour the social media accounts of employees, diplomatic staffers, and employees of international organizations connected to the US, to determine if they’re devoted and dutiful to Trump and his agenda.”

Moley and Stull were also accused of deciding not to fill a bureau role that dealt with human rights because they did not like the leading candidate for the role, possibly because of the person’s relationship with the LGBTQ community. The person’s past work with a UN agency that deals with Palestinian refugees was also said to have bothered Stull, who felt the agency was anti-Semitic.

The IG’s report found that Stull had referred to her colleagues in the IO Bureau as the “swamp” on her personal Twitter account. On the allegation that Stull retaliated against career officials perceived as politically disloyal, the inspector general “found evidence of leadership and management deficiencies and mistreatment of career employees in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs.”

The majority of the employees the inspector general’s office interviewed, the report stated, “either directly experienced hostile treatment or witnessed such treatment directed at others.” Many of the bureau’s staffers said Stull “made positive or negative comments about employees based on perceived political views,” including referring to career employees as “‘Obama holdovers,’ ‘traitors,’ or ‘disloyal.’”

Stull told Foreign Policy that the inspector general’s “report is politically motivated payback for my efforts to implement President Trump’s agenda over the resistance of Deep State bureaucrats who opposed his reform agenda.”

Free speech is just a tool for conservatives, who have no serious commitment to the First Amendment or any other doctrine of basic human rights. The moment such freedom doesn’t further their ideology, it magically disappears.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/the-history-professor-who-was-ostracized-for-saying-the-civil-war-was-about-slavery/

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/01/26/competitive-enterprise-institute-climate-denial-target-nbc-cities-liability-suits

ref

https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/12/12/ucla-law-professor-ann-carlson-cara-horowitz-cei/

Marco Poggio

A conservative think tank with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry has sued UCLA to obtain email correspondence between two UCLA climate law professors and pro-environment individuals involved in climate change litigation.

The lawsuit was filed last month in California Superior Court by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian group that lobbies against limits on greenhouse gas emissions and claims that CO2 is good for the environment. CEI argued the university hasn’t complied with two public record requests made in February and May under the California Public Records Act.

According to the lawsuit, Competitive Enterprise Institute v. Regents of the University of California, the emails show environmental law professors Cara Horowitz and Ann E. Carlson discussed future meetings with others, including staffers from several attorney general offices, to discuss new legal actions against major carbon producers.

The lawsuit mimics the ones filed to obtain email correspondence by several climate scientists, including prominent climatologist Michael Mann of Penn State, which was ended by the Virginia Supreme Court in 2012. Another continues to embroil University of Arizona scientists Jonathan Overpeck and Malcolm Hughes, who were recently ordered to release 13 years of emails demanded by another fossil fuel ally.

“This appears to be yet another effort by hired guns funded by polluting interests to badger, intimidate, and silence scientists whose findings prove inconvenient to those who continue to profit from our dependence on fossil fuels,” Mann said of the suit against UCLA.  

Among the emails Horowitz and Carlson have been asked to release are those exchanged with litigators in direct contact with offices of pro-environment attorneys general around the country. That includes former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who in 2015 began investigating Exxon for possible climate change-related fraud.

Carlson told Climate Liability News that UCLA is working on complying with CEI’s record request, sorting through hundreds of emails.

“I don’t feel intimidated. I don’t have anything to hide,” Carlson said, “I don’t have a problem, so far, with what I’ve been required to turn over.

“I do worry that these tactics, more broadly, are designed to discourage public discourse about important topics, like climate change and who should pay for climate damages.”

Specifically, CEI has asked for correspondence between the two UCLA scholars and Shaun Goho, a Harvard lecturer and environmental lawyer with a record of environmental litigation in state and federal court.

Goho said the lawsuit is just an harassment tactic meant to divert the energy and resources of people fighting climate change away from their work.

“I don’t see how academics speaking with government officials about matters of public concern is a conspiracy. It doesn’t seem to make sense to me,” Goho said.

“This lawsuit doesn’t stand alone. It’s really part of a broader campaign by fossil fuels companies and their allies to harass people who are taking action trying to try to address climate change in various ways, whether it’s climate scientists, lawyers or others who are researching legal issues related to climate change and the relationship between climate change and the fossil fuel industry.”

CEI has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. Exxon was its biggest funder until 2006, when public criticism pushed the company to distance itself from CEI’s climate denial campaigns.

CEI has also sought emails containing the names of other pro-environment lawyers and climate scientists, including Peter Frumhoff, the director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Sharon Eubanks, one of the attorneys involved in the federal tobacco litigation against Philip Morris.

Additionally, CEI demanded emails regarding two separate events—one held at Harvard and one at UCLA—attended by Carlson and Horowitz and employees of various state attorney general offices, private lawyers, academics and environmental activists, who were set to discuss causes of action against major carbon producers.

“Public records show that Professors Horowitz and Carlson are using their positions at your public university to coordinate with certain activists groups in organizing andpursuing law enforcement and civil investigations and litigation against private opponents of a particular political agenda. We seek correspondence and other records illuminating this use of a public university faculty position and resources,” the request’s text reads.

Frumhoff declined to comment for this story.

Central to the lawsuit are the UCLA and Harvard meetings, in which Carlson, Horowitz and other parties discussed legal actions against polluters.

The “secret meetings” as they were described in some of the emails, were attended by Frumhoff and Matthew Pawa, a lawyer with Hagens Berman, which is involved in several climate liability suits filed by communities against the fossil fuel industry. Those meetings also included staffers from attorney general offices around the country, including those of New York and California.

A CEI representative declined to comment, citing pending litigation, but referred to the organization’s website for a statement concerning the lawsuit.

“This ‘secret meeting’ agenda shows UCLA faculty briefed the attorneys general and prospective donors on potential legal actions they could pursue. Attorneys general are now pursuing the types of investigations urged by UCLA faculty,” Chris Horner, a senior fellow at CEI who signed the petition, wrote in the statement.

“This donor-funded scheme of using law enforcement to pursue a failed political agenda, raises significant constitutional and other legal issues, as well as ethics concerns. With the revelation that this involves the use of public institutions in this mercenary campaign, the public has a right to know what their employees are doingin their name, and on their dime,” Horner’s statement said the statement continues.

In its lawsuit, CEI claimed the subject matter contained in the emails is of  “great public interest” and that the university has violated the California Constitution because delays in handing over the records practically meant a refusal to comply with the request.

The lawsuit presents new challenges to law practitioners in the field of environmental litigation, paving the way for an aggressive use of public record access law that some fear would stymie the process of accountability of carbon producers.

“I don’t know exactly where this is all leading. I do think it’s part of a broader campaign to try to divert attention away from oil industry’s own activities and own efforts to try to dissuade the public about the legitimacy and validity of climate science, and I worry about that,” Carlson said.

The use of public record access laws as a tool to hit back critics in the academic world is a fairly recent practice embraced by trade groups of several industries, not just oil and gas, to target opponents.

“Requests can be burdensome on government agencies,” said David Snyder, an expert in California public record access law who directs the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit nonpartisan advocacy group that promotes free speech and public access to government information.

The law effectively puts academics in the same position as public officials that might have strong interests in not having their communications disclosed to the public.

“It seems like an odd fit, I acknowledge, for a college professor to sit in the same category as officials at city hall or at the governor’s office,” Snyder said. “Nonetheless, UCLA is a public agency, and employees of that public agency are subject to the public records act.”

A study compiled by the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit providing legal assistance to researchers, ranked each of the 50 states based on the level of protection from open records laws they grant to scientists working at publicly-funded institutions.

Only three states, Delaware, Maine, and Pennsylvania, exclude some forms of scientific and academic research from their open records laws. Laws in four other states, including Arkansas, Montana, New Mexico and North Carolina, contain no protection for researchers whatsoever. The remaining states guarantee different types of statutory exemption, deliberative process exemption and balancing tests that offer different degrees of protection.

“The breadth and strength of state open records laws and the federal equivalent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have made them powerful tools, but have also made them vulnerable to misuse and abuse by groups who try to harass researchers and stifle scientific research they dislike,” the study reads.

The right to exemption from having to turn over documents is often hard to balance with the right to access public records, which is critical to ensure transparency in institutions, Snyder said.

“It’s tricky,” Snyder said. “Under the public records act, by design, government agencies are not allowed to single out the requesters based on the reasons for which they want the records.”

“They can’t say, ‘we’re not gonna give you the records because we know that you espouse these views, because you want to use the records for this purpose,’ that’s expressly forbidden,” Snyder said. “You don’t want the government picking sides.”

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ref

Industries Turn Freedom of Information Requests on Their Critics

Image

By Elizabeth Williamson

    Nov. 5, 2018

WASHINGTON — Dennis J. Ventry Jr., a law professor at the University of California, Davis, drew the ire of tax preparation companies like Intuit and H&R Block this summer by criticizing a deal they have to provide a free tax filing service through the Internal Revenue Service.

The companies promptly hit back with a tactic that corporations, lobbyists and interest groups are increasingly using against academic researchers: Their trade coalition filed a public records request with the university in July seeking everything Mr. Ventry had written or said about the companies this year, including emails, text messages, voice mail messages and hand-jotted notes.

The university estimated that it spent 80 to 100 hours complying with the request, filed under the California Public Records Act, which requires employees of any state agency or institution to produce, upon request from any member of the public, any record that relates to “the conduct of the public’s business” that is “prepared, owned, used or retained” by the university.

The request generated 1,189 pages of documents, university officials said. And it was just one example of how both state-level public records laws and the federal Freedom of Information Act, written to ensure transparency and accountability in government, have morphed into potent weapons in legal and business disputes, raising questions about the chilling effects — and costs — they impose on targets who are doing research in controversial or sensitive fields.

A 2017 analysis of requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act found that “public-oriented inquiries by concerned citizens and their advocates” account for “only a small fraction of the 700,000-plus FOIA requests submitted each year,” wrote David Pozen, a law professor at Columbia University, whose paper reviewed studies on the issue. “The bulk of requests come from businesses seeking to further their own commercial interests by learning about competitors, litigation opponents or the regulatory environment.”

Public records requests have long been an important tool for a wide variety of groups, like journalists, political opposition researchers, climate-science skeptics, animal rights advocates and anti-abortion activists keen to dig into research and the work of people in the government.

But the sheer scale of the requests in recent years, and their growing use by advocacy groups and business interests to challenge academic work at public universities, has alarmed some experts, who say the commitment to openness embodied by freedom of information laws could be tested.

The weaponization of such requests poses “a real danger that we’ll hit a tipping point, where the cost and burden of open records laws will overcome the benefits and we’ll have a retrenchment of transparency rights,” said Margaret Kwoka, a University of Denver professor with expertise in government transparency litigation. “This kind of abuse fuels the political will to do that.”

The University of California system, with nearly 45,000 faculty and academic appointees on its campuses and in its laboratories and medical centers, sits at the center of this trend.

In 2009, the system received a total of 3,266 public records requests. In 2017, it received 16,921, an increase of 418 percent.

A significant portion of the requests are from activists and industry groups “using public records requests as one part of a strategy to undermine the work of researchers in controversial fields,” Maria Shanle, managing counsel for education affairs and governance at the University of California, said in an interview.

These have included a 2011 request for every document a visiting scholar produced related to “chemical substances, including flame retardants”; a 2012 demand by an anti-abortion group for the names of researchers working on an abortion safety study; and a 2015 request for every email to and from a journalism professor that contained words like “biotech” and “Monsanto.”

Image

“What we need is a dividing line between financial and ministerial accountability, and the university’s function as an intellectual and teaching institution,” Claudia Polsky, an assistant law professor who directs the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of California in Berkeley, said in an interview.

In a paper titled “Open Records, Shuttered Labs: Ending Political Harassment of Public University Researchers,” Ms. Polsky argued for legislative protections, already offered in some states, for unpublished emails and other personal records that can be used to stymie research.

“Digging into professors’ email inboxes has nothing to do with democratic accountability or fiscal transparency,” she said, “and everything to do with creating ideologically based mischief.”

In Mr. Ventry’s case, he said he did not have anything to hide — he has been a critic of the tax preparation program, Free File, and an outspoken advocate for no-cost, simplified, government-provided tax preparation for years. But he said that the request had made collaborators in his research wary of communicating with him and amounted to intimidation by the industry.

“They are trying to bully me,” Mr. Ventry said of the industry group. “More importantly, they are trying to chill my research and scholarship, whether it has to do with tax law reform or not.”

The industry group, the Free File Alliance, whose legal name is Free File Inc., defended the request as a proper use of public records law.

Mr. Ventry, the group said, had a conflict of interest because he also serves as the chairman of an outside advisory group to the I.R.S. and was intent on promoting an alternative plan under which the government would offer its own tax preparation service through the I.R.S. The alliance defends its program as benefiting low- and middle-income Americans who would otherwise have to pay for tax preparation services.

Freedom of information requests “are a legitimate, legal method to determine what public officials are doing and saying in their official capacity,” the alliance said in an emailed statement. “Professor Ventry holds a strong preconceived bias against the I.R.S. Free File program.”

Mr. Ventry is not employed by the I.R.S. He is the chairman of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council, a public forum on tax administration issues that advises the I.R.S. commissioner and is composed of outside experts who volunteer their time. He was a published critic of Free File for years before joining the council.

Mr. Ventry; Joseph Bankman, a tax law professor at Stanford University; and others have worked over the years to create a model for free tax-filing programs administered by a half-dozen states, while advocating a free, streamlined federal e-filing system.

In July, Mr. Ventry, Mr. Bankman and other colleagues wrote op-eds taking aim at Free File, which the I.R.S. offers to many taxpayers through an agreement with the Free File Alliance, which includes Intuit, makers of TurboTax and other software; H&R Block; and 10 additional commercial tax preparation companies.

After the House passed a bill that included a provision making the Free File agreement permanent, the academics raised alarms. Citing research, I.R.S. statistics and investigations by ProPublica, The Wall Street Journal and others, Mr. Ventry wrote that Free File is a “failed program” that “inflicts substantial harm on taxpayers” by confusing them, pushing them toward paid products and failing to fully protect their personal data.

The companies in the Free File program are not compensated by the I.R.S. for providing their services. But ending the program and replacing it with a government-run electronic filing service for all taxpayers would threaten the industry.

Image

In a July opinion piece  in The Hill titled “Free File Providers Scam Taxpayers; Congress Shouldn’t Be Fooled,” Mr. Ventry originally included his affiliation as chairman of the tax agency’s advisory council as well as his academic post. (After a complaint from the industry group, he removed the affiliation to the council.)

In a subsequent commentary, the academics criticized the I.R.S. for poor oversight of the industry agreement, saying that Free File “puts tax preparation companies first and taxpayers last.” Some of the criticism echoed the I.R.S.’s independent taxpayer advocate, Nina E. Olson, who said in an interview that Free File was a “poorly designed” program that only 3 percent of eligible taxpayers used after 15 years in existence.

Days later, the University of California received the request for all of Mr. Ventry’s communications about the op-eds, including his contacts with the I.R.S. taxpayer advocate’s office.

In addition to its public records requests, the alliance wrote directly to the I.R.S. about Mr. Ventry in July, saying he “improperly used his I.R.S. affiliation to lend credibility to this attack.” The alliance questioned whether Mr. Ventry should be able to speak out publicly on the issue given his role on the I.R.S. advisory council.

Mr. Ventry said that role was strictly advisory and that he received no compensation aside from his university salary. After the industry alliance leveled the complaint, he says he voluntarily recused himself from the council’s analysis of the Free File program, due out in November.

Responding to the academics’ criticism in a letter to the editor published in the policy journal Tax Notes, Tim Hugo, a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates who serves as the alliance’s executive director, wrote that the partnership between the I.R.S. and Free File had saved taxpayers “an estimated $1.6 billion in tax preparation and filing fees” since its inception in 2003.

The program was under attack, he wrote, “by a handful of ideologues” who “want a centralized system of direct government tax preparation.”

Representatives for Intuit and H&R Block said the companies did not participate in the records requests by the industry group, but the alliance confirmed that the member companies received the documents produced by the university.

Stanford is a private institution not subject to public records requests under the California law, but the alliance’s lawyers used the University of California request to obtain Mr. Ventry’s communications with Mr. Bankman, too.

“There’s nothing really that interesting in my emails,” Mr. Bankman said in an interview. But worries about such requests, he said, stifle the peer review process, a freewheeling exchange of views, often by email, in which academics around the world evaluate one another’s work.

Companies often request such emails “to intimidate people like us, because it really raises the ante and makes it very scary just to email stuff,” he added. For the industry, “it’s a freebie,” he said. “But imagine you’re some young professor somewhere — you don’t know what hit you.”

Mr. Ventry said he was more worried that Mr. Bankman and other colleagues would shy away from collaborating with him.

“We went from emailing multiple times a day over the course of a couple months to not emailing at all,” he said. The request “stifled not just academic freedom but the deliberative and beneficial process of thinking through problems with others.”

If that constitutes winning for the tax industry, he said, “they won.”

alec 5 nola 2018 campus watch

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/08/08/common-cause-exposes-alec-influence-louisiana

ALEC is registered as a tax-exempt charitable organization and claims not to spend any money on lobbying. But according to a new report from Common Cause, a national nonpartisan government reform group, a number of ALEC-backed and -drafted bills have been introduced and enacted by ALEC-affiliated legislators in Baton Rouge in recent years.

“ALEC in Louisiana” uncovers the power that “the secretive special interest lobbying group” has already utilized in the southern state. According to the report, nearly 50 members of the Louisiana Senate and House of Representatives have ties to ALEC.[ now gov john bel edwards ?] Common Cause found that legislative language in Louisiana is commonly copied and pasted from the ALEC “model bills,” making the group’s influence “extremely prominent.”

“Shining a light on ALEC’s undemocratic and secretive operations helps voters know who is really calling the shots in their state legislature,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause. “ALEC’s history of rigging the rules against everyday Louisianans on behalf of their corporate funders is not how democracy is supposed to work.”

ALEC is a powerful corporate-funded pay-to-play organization that brings lawmakers, lobbyists, and other groups in the Koch’s influence machine together to vote side-by-side on bills that legislators then take back and introduce in their home states, usually without any public disclosure of their source. The Center for Media and Democracy teamed up with Common Cause in 2012 to file an IRS whistleblower complaint against ALEC, charging the group with tax fraud and massively underreporting its lobbying activity.

This week’s ALEC annual meeting is chock full of union-busting, gerrymandering, fossil fuel promoting, and school privatizing legislation that benefits the economic interests of ALEC’s patrons.

While the exact issues the Louisiana bills address are varied, the bills fulfill ALEC’s admitted purpose, “to strengthen relationships between ‘business leaders’ and legislators” and “satisfy corporate needs,” according to Common Cause.

For instance, HB 727, was introduced by dues-paying ALEC member, Sen. Joseph H. Major Thibaut, Jr. Thibaut’s bill shares text with an ALEC model bill, “The Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.” It was signed into law in May of this year amidst growing local opposition to the construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which will bring fracked oil from North Dakota to Louisiana’s Gulf Coast.

Senate Bill 364, intended to deal with recent conflicts over controversial speakers on college campuses, is based on ALEC’s “Forming Open And Robust University Minds (Forum) Act.” In June, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed the act into law, after vetoing a similar bill last year.

With ALEC’s assistance, similar bills have been pushed and enacted around the country at the behest of the right-wing Goldwater Institute and State Policy Network.The American Association of University Professors has criticized the legislation’s approach as “a political agenda masquerading behind ‘free speech'” and objects to its “preference for punishment as a means for ending protests and disruptions that obstruct free speech.”

Meg Logue, a 350 New Orleans activist, told Common Cause that, through ALEC, “our legislators jeopardize our democracy by bending toward the priorities of corporations while undermining the peoples’ right to self-determination and justice.”

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https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/04/590928008/professor-harassment

no linx pix

THE NEW CLASH BETWEEN FREE SPEECH AND PRIVACY

Professors Are Targets In Online Culture Wars; Some Fight Back

5:09

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Transcript

April 4, 201811:52 AM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

 Anya Kamanetz

There is a red light flashing in professor Albert Ponce's cubby-sized office. The light comes from an old-fashioned answering machine.

Lately, he doesn't like to listen to the messages by himself. When he presses play, it's obvious why. Here are a couple of messages:

"Albert Ponce, you are a piece of s*** f****** gutter slug that needs his neck snapped, OK? Call me if you need me. I'll do it for ya.

"F****** race-baiting f****** piece of trash."

Ponce teaches political science at Diablo Valley College, a community college in California's East Bay. It all started in October when he was invited to give a public lecture on campus on an area he specializes in: race and politics.

In the speech, which was filmed, he called the United States "a white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist system." He also mentioned Karl Marx in passing, praised civil disobedience and referred to a white supremacist in the White House. The result: attacks on Facebook and threatening voice messages and emails.

Colleges are meant to be a home for free inquiry. But these days, not all professors feel that freedom. Across the country, in the past year and a half, at least 250 university professors, including Ponce, have been targeted via online campaigns because of their research, their teaching or their social media posts. Conservative professors have been attacked from the right and the left, both with equally dire language.

Some have lost their jobs, and others say they fear for their families' safety.

Ponce says his ideas, in context, are "not controversial at all" in his circles of academia. For example, when he talks about white supremacy, he says, he is talking about a system of power, not about individual white people.

But in today's highly polarized political climate, almost any statement about race or diversity can prove extremely controversial. Here are a few examples:

Josh Cuevas, an associate professor in the school of education at the University of North Georgia, came under inquiry from his congressional representative after getting into an argument on Facebook about President Trump and voter turnout.

Eve Browning, the chair of the department of philosophy and classics at the University of Texas, San Antonio, was targeted, as was her entire department, when a student surreptitiously recorded a disciplinary conversation that touched on his negative comments about Islam.

Laurie Rubel, a professor of education at Brooklyn College, published a National Science Foundation-funded research paper about race and mathematics education. Rubel tells NPR that she was looking at how to support high school math teachers who teach in hypersegregated urban schools, in part by being critical of the concept of meritocracy. The on-air take of Fox News commentator Greg Gutfeld was: "A math professor ... claimed that merit-based education is ... a tool of evil whiteness."

George Ciccariello-Maher, an associate professor of politics and global studies, was placed on leave and ultimately resigned from Drexel University in Philadelphia last fall after tweeting, "all I want for Christmas is white genocide." "White genocide" is a white nationalist conspiracy theory; Ciccariello-Maher says he meant to be satirical.

People on the right don't have a monopoly on threats to free speech or academic freedom. Campuses like the University of California, Berkeley, the home of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s, have become national flashpoints with sometimes violent responses to conservative speakers.[they mean broken windows and some trash lit on fire?]

And professors have sometimes been subject to attacks and harassment from the left. Bruce Gilley at Portland State University in Oregon, for example, was attacked online and over the phone when he published an academic paper titled "The Case for Colonialism." His paper on colonialism, he tells NPR, argues that "there is a wealth of evidence ... that shows quite overwhelmingly positive benefits in terms of democracy, public health, human rights."

He calls the response "a mass global mob." The article was withdrawn after threats of violence were made against both him personally and the editor of the journal that published it, Third World Quarterly.

Experts who study the spread of hate speech online say there is a difference in patterns of online harassment between the right and the left. Attacks from the left tend to originate from within campus communities. Thousands of self-identified academics, for example, signed online petitions calling for Gilley's article to be retracted.

On the right, though, a network of outside groups and sites has mobilized against academics. Their views range from libertarian to conservative to white nationalist.

Sites such as The College Fix and Campus Reform pay student reporters to contribute stories titled: "Meritocracy is a 'tool of whiteness,' claims math professor" (Campus Reform) or "History professor calls for repeal of Second Amendment" (The College Fix).

Professor Cancels Course On Hate Speech Amid Contention Over His Use Of Slur

THE TWO-WAY

Professor Cancels Course On Hate Speech Amid Contention Over His Use Of Slur

Jennifer Kabbany, editor of The College Fix, told NPR that the site's purpose is to train future journalists, not to foment hate. "The College Fix has publicly denounced any vile emails that a professor might get," she said. "I'm sorry if professors received that kind of backlash." In reference to Ponce, of Diablo Valley College, she added, "It appeared the lecture was not balanced and didn't do academic inquiry and debate justice."

The College Fix is run by the Student Free Press Association. The association has had Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' son listed on its board of directors and is funded by an anonymous conservative donor fund.

Campus Reform is a project the Leadership Institute, a conservative think tank. Professor Watchlist, which lists more than 250 professors who advance what it calls a "radical" left-wing agenda, is maintained by Turning Point USA, an on-campus group that has been labeled "alt-right."

Campus Reform and Professor Watchlist did not respond to requests for comment.

The Red Elephants is a pro-Trump "alt-right media collective" founded in November 2016. Founder Vincent James Foxx has reportedly denied the Holocaust and been accused of urging violence at rallies. The site posted an edited video of Ponce's talk on YouTube with commentary calling it "Marxist, Communist, disgusting rhetoric that they spew in these classrooms to indoctrinate these children." It used the video to kick off an initiative called "Film Your Marxist Professor."

The administrator of the "Film Your Marxist Professor" Facebook page, who gave his name as Aaron Burr, told NPR via Facebook message: "We receive around 10 submissions per day. Our goal is to stop the anti-white and anti-American rhetoric that is being spewed on college campuses all across the country."

From these specialized sites, content travels to alt-right media sources like Breitbart and Infowars and neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront, and then, sometimes, to Fox News and the New York Post, CNN and other outlets.

Meanwhile, harassment is coordinated out in the open on anonymous, uncensored forums like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, where self-identified "trolls" uncover and post people's personal information, known as doxing, and try out strategies of attack. Cuevas at the University of North Georgia obtained screenshots of the 4chan forum on which people were fabricating social media posts in an attempt to paint him as anti-Semitic and racist or, alternatively, as pushing anti-Trump views onto his students.

"Their stated goal was to get me fired," he says, but he fears that is not the worst of it: "Georgia had just passed the campus carry law [for firearms], and what worried me was a lone nut case."

Flyers for Ponce's talk about white supremacy in the United States sit next to a flyer for Identity Evropa, a white supremacist group.

Anya Kamenetz/NPR

Ponce says he sees a fresh wave of abusive calls and letters every time a new media story hits. He has gotten letters in the mail, emails and Facebook messages, and his colleagues and administrators have gotten calls and emails. He has found his personal information on a Hungarian right-wing website and gotten calls from South America. He, like other professors, has called the police, but the messages keep coming.

Most troubling, he says, are "the real threats against my family" and "pictures on the Web of my 9-year-old daughter."

He and his wife are trying not to park their cars in the same places every day, peek out into the street at night and warn their daughter not to touch the mail.

Hans-Joerg Tiede of the American Association of University Professors says no matter what side you're on politically, it's clear that academic freedom is under assault, as it has been many times in the past.

"There have always been instances of faculty being targeted in particular for what they say, for what they teach," says Tiede, a former computer science professor at Illinois Wesleyan University.

Anti-communist academic blacklists go back to the 1930s, and professors were targeted for taking desegregationist stances in the 1960s, he adds. The difference is that momentum builds very fast, and it doesn't take time to reach far-flung destinations. The AAUP has been tracking this latest wave of targeted harassment and issuing recommendations for policymakers.

Milo Yiannopoulos' 'Free Speech Week' At Berkeley Falls Apart, Organizers Say

HERE & NOW COMPASS

Milo Yiannopoulos' 'Free Speech Week' At Berkeley Falls Apart, Organizers Say

Jessie Daniels, a professor of sociology at Hunter College, is among scholars who say the rise of the Web and social media have given right-wing groups new means for targeted harassment and for spreading their ideology.

"With the rise of the popular Internet, everybody's an expert," she says. "White supremacists really saw that as an opportunity."

In contrast to the sometimes-violent confrontations on campus around speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos, NPR was not able to find a case of an online harassment campaign, targeting a professor for his or her work, that resulted either in violent threats being carried out or in any legal action against the perpetrators.

What concerns experts like Tiede is the potential chilling effect on researchers, especially untenured graduate students and adjuncts, who might fear broaching any topic that could touch off a firestorm.

But as this pattern of behavior becomes better known, professors like Rubel and Ponce are no longer keeping quiet. They are fighting back. Rubel responded by posting many of the foul voicemails and emails and messages she received on Twitter and Facebook and by collecting statements of support from colleagues. "I think they messed with the wrong person," she tells NPR.

For his part, Ponce, who does not have tenure, and his colleagues are urging the board of governors of his community college's district to adopt a resolution in support of academic freedom, making clear that the colleges will stand behind its scholars no matter how provocative their work, as long as they are grounded in research and evidence.

"In a democracy, these places of higher learning should be the spaces where we engage in a rigorous scholarship, not necessarily an ideological one," Ponce says. College, he says, is the place for a quest for truth, not merely opinion.

States Consider Legislation To Protect Free Speech On Campus

https://www.alternet.org/education/college-campus-richard-spencer

 associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University was effectively forced out of his position after describing the Las Vegas massacre as a product of a "white supremacist patriarchy" that must be dismantled. This is actually a fairly standard narrative among progressives in response to mass shootings or political violence. However, George Ciccariello-Maher and his university found themselves facing a particularly harsh campaign of harassment, intimidation and coercion in the wake of these comments, in part because this was not their first run-in with the right-wing media outrage machine.

Although Ciccariello-Maher was intentionally trying to mock and provoke the right, what happened to him could happen to any progressive social researcher today.

Ciccariello-Maher was first thrust into the national spotlight for comments he made on Twitter in December 2016.

In response to a State Farm advertisement featuring an interracial couple, many far-right online personalities took to social media to lament the "white genocide" they believe is being brought about through immigration, interracial unions, multiculturalism and "radical" civil rights activism. In response, Ciccariello-Maher mockingly tweeted to them that all he wanted for Christmas was #WhiteGenocide.

These comments were deliberately taken out of context in right-aligned media, where it was implied that rather than merely trolling the racial anxieties of alt-right sympathizers, Ciccariello-Maher sincerely supported carrying out (violent) genocide against whites, sparking major backlash against himself and the institutions he was affiliated with.

At that time, Drexel University sharply condemned his remarks, but insisted that no action should be taken against Ciccariello-Maher because his comments constituted protected free speech.

Ciccariello-Maher found himself in the crosshairs of the right just a few months later, after declaring on social media that seeing a customer give his first-class seat to a uniformed soldier on a flight made him want to vomit. Right-leaning pundits once again blew up his comments, arguing that Ciccariello-Maher hated America, despised its men in uniform and that the sentiments he expressed were typical of what students were exposed to in the classroom—not just in his courses, but in colleges across the country.

As the threats and complaints once again rolled in, Ciccariello-Maher appeared on Fox News and insisted that this time his comments were not satirical: he was nauseated, he explained, by what he perceived as people “blindly” supporting wars abroad for the sake of supporting the troops, and also by the “smug and self-congratulatory” demeanor of the passenger who offered his seat. He argued that if people really wanted to support the troops they should work on providing better healthcare and services to veterans, and avoiding needless conflict abroad.

...

ref

http://heterodoxacademy.org/professors-must-now-fear-intimidation-from-both-sides/

haidt

 string of recent cases in which professors have been fired, sanctioned, or placed on leave by their universities in response to public outrage generated by right-wing media sites is an alarming turn of events for the academy and for the country. The Chronicle of Higher Ed just published a summary of these recent cases, as has Inside Higher Ed. Some of the more high-profile cases include George Ciccariello-Maher (Drexel), Johnny Eric Williams (Trinity College), and most recently Lisa Durden (Essex Community College).

The basic pattern is:

1) Left-wing professor says something provocative (and sometimes truly inflammatory), usually about race, on Twitter or Facebook or in a speech or media interview.

2) Right wing media sites, particularly Campus Reform and Fox News, pick up the story and report it in a way designed to cause maximum outrage, sometimes distorting or ignoring the context.

3) Readers and viewers of such media become outraged; some of them write racist or sexist social media posts, including rape threats and death threats; many demand that the university fire the professor.

4) The university’s president and other administrative leaders are paralyzed by the public relations crisis; they do nothing to stand up for the professor, and sometimes they move quickly to condemn the professor and put him or her “on leave” in order to begin the process of termination, particularly if the professor is not tenured.

5) Everyone who tunes in to the story, on either side, concludes that their disgust with the other side has been fully confirmed. Each side is now even more certain that the other side is racist, violent, and intellectually bankrupt… which means that their own side must be even more vigilant against the outrages perpetrated by the other side.

6) Repeat, with even more passion, anger, and sense of victimization.

Before 2017, the threats to professors and their freedom to speak and write came mostly from the left. The right simply is not much of a presence at most of our universities. At Heterodox Academy we have covered several of the high-profile cases in which students used mob tactics to surround a professor, accuse the professor of racism, and then demand that the professor be fired or punished. See, for example, the Christakis case at Yale, Dean Mary Spellings at Claremont-McKenna, and Bret Weinstein at Evergreen. Such events are particularly chilling because in none of these cases had the professor or dean said anything that seems remotely racist to observers off-campus. The message is: the mob can come for you at any time, so be careful; don’t say or do anything that might provoke students on the left.  The eruption of actual violence at Berkeley and Middlebury, the moral justifications of violence given by some students, and the presence of Antifa among protestors makes student mobs now truly dangerous — physically dangerous — for any professor who faces one.

But in 2017, it’s clear that the threat profile is now bipartisan. It still comes primarily from the left on campus, but now it comes from the right as well, off campus. Social media guarantees that people on each side learn of every outrage committed by the other side, while reading far less — or reading justifications — for the mob actions perpetrated by their own side.

The bipartisan nature of intimidation is likely to have a chilling effect on speech, and on the quality of teaching. Professors must think twice before trying any provocative teaching exercise or line of questioning. But given the nature of social media and mob mentalities, being careful is not enough. Anything you say can be distorted and misreported, potentially destroying your reputation and your career. So why take chances, why say anything controversial at all? Socrates would not last a month at a modern American university.

Given the dynamics of the larger American culture war, I believe that things are likely to get worse on campus. In future posts and essays, I and other members of Heterodox Academy will write about what can be done to break this cycle of escalation and restore a culture of free and fearless inquiry on campus. For now, I just want to note that many of us at Heterodox Academy are deeply disturbed that so many professors are getting mobbed and threatened and fired in the 6-step process I laid out above.

I’d like to close with a simple request to university leaders: Please stop giving in to mobs and their demands. It may seem like the easy way out of your predicament in the moment, but it encourages more mobs to form in the future – student mobs on campus, and right-wing internet mobs off campus. When professors say something truly offensive and irresponsible (and sometimes they do), consider simply talking to them. Or establishing a procedure with clear standards – ideally one that takes a while so that the Internet circus can move on and the rage can dissipate.

Real leadership in the age of outrage requires the ability to stand up to a mob and say: “No. We have procedures in place, and we will use them, but we start with a strong presumption of academic freedom and free speech. We will not be goaded or threatened into punishing a professor for something she said or wrote.”

For more than a century, the university system has been guided by the Wisconsin Idea, a tradition first enunciated by University of Wisconsin President Charles Van Hise in 1904. Van Hise declared that he would "never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every family in the state". Today that belief permeates the UW System's work, fostering close working relationships within the state, throughout the country, and around the world.

In 2015, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's budget proposal included the removal of the Wisconsin Idea from the University of Wisconsin's mission statement. Walker proposed replacing the mission's goal to "extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campus" and to "serve and stimulate society" with a goal "to meet the state's workforce needs". After negative reaction from politicians and the public, the Wisconsin Idea was restored to the budget proposal.[4]

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https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/how-white-nationalists-hide-academia

Even in the world of academia, a punchy headline can be everything.

As subaltern analysis heads from the margins to the center of critical discourse, the kind of post-colonialism that was previously centered on a college campus has been popularized across the left. Within a popular culture shifting to decolonization ideas, someone at the Third World Quarterly likely knew a title like "The Case for Colonialism" was going to gain some traction. The paper, penned by controversial Portland State University faculty member Bruce Gilley, argued that Western colonial expansion into the Global South, specifically Africa, was a net positive, and that the 20th century liberation struggles were a catastrophe that should be reversed. Ignoring the mountains of scholarship that outlines the brutal cruelty of colonial exploitation, slavery and genocide, Gilley has taken an avenue that is popular amongst the academic segment of the radical right: transvaluation. With a mind towards defending white settler colonialism, Gilley did not deny the tragedies, he just decided they were worth it.

While it was shocking to many that a respected Ro...[hist]

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90 min

https://www.c-span.org/video/?308816-1/subversives

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https://www.c-span.org/video/?324828-1/patriotic-betrayal

MARCH 4, 2015

Patriotic Betrayal Karen Paget talked about her book Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism, in which she recounts the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) surreptitious involvement in the U.S. National Student Association in the 1960s. In her book, the author suggests that the agency used the student organization as a conduit in its efforts against communism. Ms. Paget, a member of the student organization in 1965, spoke about the CIA’s plans and the report by Ramparts magazine in 1967, which exposed the agency’s involvement. Ms. Paget spoke with author and Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism lecturer Adam Hochschild.

==

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/6/after_texas_massacre_drexel_prof_asks

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/texas-organiser-vows-hold-white-lives-matter-rally-170814072936129.html

4 rally tamu, curry death threats: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/07/threats-attacks-white-supremacists-target-campuses-170708055258069.html

op ed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/10/10/conservatives-are-the-real-campus-thought-police-squashing-academic-freedom/?utm_term=.3b13293c02fd

many link not:

Last week, I sent a string of relatively uncontroversial tweets in the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre, in which I sought to answer a question about mass shootings in the United States: Why are these crimes almost always carried out by white men? “It’s the white supremacist patriarchy, stupid,” I tweeted, before then diagnosing a sense of double entitlement — as white people and as men — that, when frustrated, can occasionally lead to violent consequences.

My argument was not new, but rather reflects decades of research on how race and gender function in our society. To be both white and male is to be subject to a potent cocktail of entitlement to economic and political power, and to dominate nonwhite and female bodies. When that entitlement is frustrated, it can lead to what the criminologist Mike King calls “aggrieved whiteness,” an ambient furor based on the idea that white Americans have become oppressed victims of politically correct multiculturalism.

[I invited Ann Coulter to speak at UC Berkeley. Here’s why.]

In my view as a researcher and professor of politics, these tweets were neither provocative in tone nor controversial in content. Rather, the insight they provided felt all the more pressing now that President Trump has brought this aggrieved whiteness into daily headlines. As a scholar and teacher, giving context and depth to contemporary debates is an important part of what I do, and it’s a calling I take seriously. But more and more, professors like me are being targeted by a coordinated right-wing campaign to undermine our academic freedom — one that relies on misrepresentation and sometimes outright lying, and often puts us and our students in danger.

This time, the outrage machine geared up as it often does, with a minor conservative media outlet — in this case, the Daily Caller — chopping my tweets up into a misleading mishmash that transformed a nuanced diagnosis of white male frustration into an attack on white people in general. When the Daily Caller posted the article to Facebook, moreover, the intention was clearly to incite: “Absolutely unforgiveable” (sic) read the post, which by now has been shared nearly 2,000 times and commented upon more than 3,000 times.

Hate mail and death threats began to roll in. “I will beat your skull in till there is no tomorrow.” “Soon all you p-----s will get exactly what you deserve.” “Do the world a favor, and kill yourself … I’ll help you find death sooner than later.” One called me a “pig f---er like Obama,” adding homophobic slurs for good measure. Many called me a “cuck” — a favorite racial and sexual insult of the alt-right — while others urged me to move to North Korea or Venezuela. One “love note from a WHITE American” wrongly identified me as a “greasy South American a--hole.”

From there, the contagion was rapid, with Stephen Bannon’s Breitbart News and even Milo Yiannopoulos’s own website running their own cribbed copies of the same story. Then came FrontPage, the Blaze, the College Fix and the campus mercenaries at Turning Point. Soon, the manufactured story had hit the conspiratorial fringes of Infowars and online forums across the right: from “blue lives matter” to those preparing for the inevitable rapture.

[Could everyone please stop melting down about college kids?]

Finally, the story crossed the mainstream-fringe barrier at its most permeable point: Fox News. Fox claimed that not only do I blame Trump for the Las Vegas massacre, but that I even somehow blame the victims. Threatening emails increased to a flood. An invitation to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show arrived in short order, only confirming the insular nature of the machine, which amplifies to a furious roar the same small group of voices. I declined.

I am by no means the first, and will not be the last target of this kind of smear campaign by conservatives aimed at academics. In every case, it is the same right-wing media outlets leading the charge, and campuses are increasingly the target. Universities and colleges have become the perfect target for such crusades: Purportedly hotbeds of multiculturalism, “safe spaces” and political correctness, campuses represent everything the resentful right is afraid of. At the same time that the right-wing media smears professors like myself, decrying our tenure and demanding our heads, they breathlessly chronicle the supposed intolerance of the left when confronted with provocative campus tours by Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, Charles Murray, Ann Coulter and others.

And things aren’t letting up. While noteworthy cases such as Saida Grundy and Zandria Robinson in 2015 gave a glimpse of what was to come, the months since Trump’s election have seen a generalized assault on anti-racist academics. In May, Tommy Curry at Texas A&M was targeted for a years-old podcast; Princeton’s Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor was forced to cancel public events after threats following a commencement speech; and Johnny Eric Williams at Trinity College was targeted and suspended reposting someone else’s words on Facebook. Increasingly, leftist professors are being targeted for “things they never really said.” As Princeton’s Eddie Glaude has put it, when the right is so easily triggered by anti-racism and feminism, they make it perfectly clear who the “real snowflakes” are.

[Free speech on campus is not as simple as everyone seems to think]

Caught in this wave of right-wing threats and provocations, many universities are scrambling to keep up with the coordinated onslaught. In the best of cases, university administrations and departments have publicly condemned threats against faculty and made clear that they do not cave to intimidation campaigns. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has even responded to our cases with new guidelines urging universities to resist the targeted online harassment of their faculty.

In response to such illegal threats of violence, Drexel has chosen to place me on administrative leave. Earlier in the week, I asked my students to explain the relation between white masculinity and mass killings, and they offered in a few short minutes of class discussion far more insight than any mainstream media outlet has offered all week. But now, their own academic freedom has been curtailed by their university, and they are unable to even attend the classes they registered for.

By bowing to pressure from racist internet trolls, Drexel has sent the wrong signal: That you can control a university’s curriculum with anonymous threats of violence. Such cowardice notwithstanding, I am prepared to take all necessary legal action to protect my academic freedom, tenure rights and most importantly, the rights of my students to learn in a safe environment where threats don’t hold sway over intellectual debate. Alongside organizations like the Campus Antifascist Network, I will continue to challenge white supremacists in an effort to make Drexel and all universities safe space for an intellectual debate among equals.

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http://www.alternet.org/education/right-wing-billionaires-are-funding-cynical-plot-destroy-dissent-and-protest-colleges

As s far-right speakers face loud student opposition at their university speaking gigs, conservative lawmakers in several states are introducing legislation that cracks down on protesters. As uncovered by UnKoch My Campus’ Ralph Wilson, numerous states have borrowed their so-called “campus free speech” bills from the rightwing Goldwater Institute, which is funded by conservative plutocrats including Charles Koch and the Mercer family.

The intent of these bills isn’t to protect student speech; it’s actually to suppress it in favor of guest speakers who, at times, support white nationalism, LGBTQ discrimination and other hateful worldviews. By funding the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, wealthy conservatives are enabling the promotion of hate speech while stifling student dissent. Whether or not Koch, for example, agrees with the hate speech he indirectly sponsors, he certainly benefits from a more friendly academic environment for far-right ideologues who often deny climate change and praise his extreme brand of tax- and regulation-free capitalism.

The Goldwater Institute’s model bill allegedly ensures “the fullest degree of…free expression,” but it explicitly states that “protests and demonstrations that infringe upon the rights of others to engage in or listen to expressive activity shall not be permitted and shall be subject to sanction.”

It goes on to say, “Any student who has twice been found responsible for infringing the expressive rights of others will be suspended for a minimum of one year, or expelled.”

Under this code, imagine that a student protests a climate change denier and gets a brief suspension. Then the College Republicans group brings in a full-on white nationalist. Will this student do what she thinks is right and protest a racist who’s given a platform at a respected university, or stay home because she's risking expulsion? This campus "free speech” legislation is essentially an attack on student speech and an elevation of ultra-conservative ideas that many people in university communities think have no place in American society.

“These laws would create a chilling effect on students who reject the idea that white supremacists or climate deniers are simply representing an ‘opposing viewpoint’ that should be tolerated, and who are rightfully relying on their first amendment freedoms to stop the rise of fascism and prevent global climate catastrophe,” Wilson, UnKoch’s senior researcher, told AlterNet. The group has been conducting research into Charles Koch’s considerable ideological donations to higher education, most of which goes toward free-market programs.

Charles Koch Foundation representatives say that conservative views are underrepresented in higher education, and the foundation’s massive university donations—which fund free-market academic centers, professorships, grad students and lecture series—are necessary for academic freedom. This view is shared by other conservative billionaires and higher ed donors including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who recently said to the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “The education establishment [tells you] what to think…the real threat is silencing the First Amendment rights of people with whom you disagree.”

What the Kochs and their allies really want, by amplifying the voices of far-right professors and guest speakers, is to steer society towards a tax- and regulation-free plutocracy. Charles and David Koch, who together are worth nearly $97 billion, have been working toward this goal for over 40 years.

In 2014, Virginia passed the nation’s first law banning so-called “free speech zones,” which restrict protected speech to designated areas often far away from events that students want to protest. The following year, Missouri enacted a Campus Free Expression Act forbidding “free speech zones” without imposing punitive measures.

But while more recent legislation bans free speech zones as well, it also restricts student free speech in scenarios where, lawmakers claim, free speech is protected.

The protest crackdown

Legislators in some states including Illinois and Tennessee have introduced bills in 2017 that explicitly mention sanctions on student protesters. Illinois’ bill, proposed by two Republicans, lifts this language, and additional passages, nearly verbatim from the Goldwater model. Also sponsored by Republicans, the bill in Tennessee—nicknamed the “Milo Bill” after an event at the University of California at Berkeley featuring the racist “alt-right” icon Milo Yiannopolous was canceled due to protests—directs universities to enact free speech policies that include “sanctions for anyone under the jurisdiction of the institution who interferes with the free expression of others,” and it gives faculty “the right to regulate class speech.”

In North Carolina, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest intends to work with legislators on a Restore Campus Free Speech Act, which would create “a discipline policy that would punish students who shout down visiting speakers or deprive others of their right to free expression, a tactic commonly known as the ‘hecklers’ veto.'"

Last year, Forest floated a measure calling on the University of North Carolina’s board of governors to create a system-wide policy that would impose harsh penalties, including expulsion, on students, staff and faculty members who disrupt classes, public meetings or events. The Koch-funded Generation Opportunity lauded the effort at the time. Forest has said that yelling at a guest speaker “has never been free speech,” and he’s called campus protest methods “terrorist tactics.” No one introduced a free speech bill that year.

Other proposed laws, like North Dakota’s, which was introduced by six Republicans, omit sanctions provisions but state that a university may restrict student speech if it blocks entrances to buildings, obstructs traffic or interferes with events. Much of the North Dakota bill comes directly from the text of the Goldwater model legislation. A large group of most Republican legislators in Virginia has a new bill in play that includes much of the Goldwater language but stays away from restrictions on students.

Additional campus free speech bills have been introduced this year in Colorado (sponsored by two Republicans and one Democrat) and Utah (sponsored by 14 Republican state representatives). Florida could be next. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has a "free speech" provision in his proposed budget.

Big money driving campus 'free speech’ efforts

One of the model bill’s authors, Stanley Kurtz, is a longtime fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, which applies “the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy,” according to its website. The center has received millions of dollars in donations from the foundations of the conservative Bradley, Scaife, Olin and Earhart families, as well as hundreds of thousands from two vehicles for wealthy right-wing donors, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are responsible for more than $9 million in contributions to the two groups from 2006 to 2015, according to the website Conservative Transparency and additional research by this author. Much of the $6.3 million that went to Donors Trust came in 2015. A now-defunct Koch nonprofit, the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, donated $190,000 to the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Charles Koch Foundation has given over $9,000.

The Goldwater Institute’s James Manley, senior attorney, and Jonathan Butcher, education director, also co-authored the “campus free speech” model legislation. The institute took in nearly $2.5 million from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund from 2002-2015, according Conservative Transparency and additional research. The Charles Koch Foundation has pitched in $75,000. Manley formerly worked at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the two Donors funds. Butcher was a research assistant at the heavily Koch-funded Heritage Foundation from 2002 to 2006.

Says Wilson, “These bills take Koch's academic presence to the next level, creating protected space to reveal the white supremacist roots of Koch's free market crusade, like Koch's close friend and white nationalist Charles Murray who has taken to campuses to espouse the genetic superiority of white males.”

Another Koch-funded think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, reportedly has student groups at nearly 80 colleges and universities. These groups bring in AEI fellows like the eugenicist Murray to speak on their campuses. Recently, Murray attempted to give a lecture at Middlebury College in Vermont but was stymied by vociferous protests. He had to end his speech early, and he and a liberal professor were attacked on their way out.

Students at UC Berkeley and area residents protested Yiannopoulos, whom the College Republicans had invited to speak. The protests led to fires, vandalism, and reportedly, fights. Until recently, Yiannopoulos was an editor at Breitbart News, known as the online “platform of the alt-right,” which happens to be funded by Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, the far-right mega-donors who are major Donald Trump backers and whose family foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Goldwater Institute. The younger Mercer was even a member of Trump’s transition team. Violence against a speaker, a professor or an onlooker is certainly unacceptable. So is inviting a white supremacist to speak at an institution of higher learning, and so is preventing students and faculty from protesting such a speaker. Plenty of right-wing billionaires likely don’t agree with white nationalist ideas, and by funding these so-called campus free speech bills they’re trying to advance free-market principles. But regardless of motivation, this campus "free speech" movement is spreading the hate of white nationalism, the racist “alt-right,” Islamophobia and homophobia—not to mention climate change denial and economic policies that benefit only the very wealthy—on campuses filled with young students. Conservative, corporate millionaires and billionaires are at fault.

Alex Kotch is an independent investigative journalist based in Brooklyn, NY.

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