ACADEMIC SUPPRESSION

see ACAD SUPRESS 2 ( 3/17 trumplandia)

see student suppression Gaza // --> fascism ~ expert facts

SEE CRT RUFO DESANTIS TRUMP FLORIDA

see pinko prof

can overlap with sci suppress since legit cli sci is at universities

eg Lancaster almost lost his house

CLIFFSNOTES SHORTFORM EXCERPT:

What was Roger Revelle’s impact on the climate change debate? How did doubt-mongering threaten to discredit him?

In their book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway take on individuals or groups who seek to discredit science that they perceive to be a threat to their agenda. One of the targets of a doubt-mongering campaign was Al Gore’s mentor—Roger Revelle.

Read more to learn about Roger Revelle and the merchants of doubt.

Roger Revelle Enters the Climate Change Debate

In 1965, Roger Revelle summarized the possible impacts of the warming caused by CO2. There were still a lot of unknowns, so he focused on the sea-level rise because it seemed the most certain. He estimated that by 2000, there could be notable changes in climate because there would be 25% more atmospheric CO2. As the planet warmed, sea ice would increase in size due to thermal expansion (volume increases when material warms up), and this would push water farther inland.

Lyndon Johnson read the report but had bigger problems (such as the Vietnam War) and didn’t do anything about it. The next president, Nixon, did consider atmospheric changes, but he was focused on the greenhouse gas effects of water (from supersonic transports (SSTs)), not CO2.

Discrediting Roger Revelle

Roger Revelle was an important voice in the climate change discussion. He was also Al Gore’s mentor, so if the merchants of doubt (MODs) could make it look like Revelle had changed his opinion on global warming, it would not only sow doubt, it would hurt Gore’s 1992 presidential campaign, which focused on the environment.

Fred Singer attended one of Revelle’s talks and approached him about writing an article together that would be called “What To Do about Greenhouse Warming: Look Before You Leap.” Revelle agreed but shortly after, he had a heart attack. An operation saved him, but there were further complications and his health deteriorated. He and Singer continued working on the article (though Revelle appeared to have lost enthusiasm), and Revelle may not have been able to look closely or check changes due to his health.

While still working with Revelle, Singer wrote his own article with almost the same title (“What To Do about Greenhouse Warming”). This article reused the Marshall Institute’s work and focused on uncertainty.

In February 1991, Singer and Revelle met to discuss their paper. They argued about how sensitive the climate was to CO2. The current draft of the paper claimed that the warming would be “well below the normal year to year variation” and less than 1 degree Celsius. Revelle corrected the numbers in the margin. Singer ultimately cut the numbers, so the next draft read that a “modest average warming” and still contained the phrase about the warming being below the normal variation. The historical record doesn’t show whether Revelle ultimately agreed to this wording, but everyone who knew him expected he hadn’t. Revelle was well aware of natural variability because he was a geologist (natural variability is determined from paleoclimate data).

The article appeared in Cosmos (a non-scientific journal with low circulation) and because Revelle was listed as the second author, it looked like he had agreed that the warming wasn’t significant or outside of normal. One of Revelle’s colleagues stated that Revelle was embarrassed by the paper (Revelle died shortly after it came out).

While few scientists read Cosmos, the article made its way into public consciousness. In 1992, Al Gore’s critic Gregg Easterbrook attacked him for failing to mention that Revelle had ultimately concluded that there was too much uncertainty to act. The quote Easterbrook used to support this was from Singer’s solo1990 paper with a similar title to the co-authored one. Other critics repeated the attacks.

Setting the Record Straight

Several people tried to set the record straight about Roger Revelle.

1. Revelle’s daughter published an op-ed.

2. Two of Revelle’s colleagues wrote to Cosmos. They wrote that Singer had written the paper, not Revelle, and that Singer had probably only included his name as a thank-you for advising and reviewing. Cosmoswouldn’t publish their letter, so they sent it to Oceanography(a scientific journal mainly read by scientists).

3. Justin Lancaster, a colleague and close friend of Revelle:

Wrote to the journal that had published Easterbrook’s attack. The journal refused to publish Lancaster’s letter.
Tried to get Singer to remove Revelle’s name from the paper when it was republished. Ultimately, the republication had a footnote to another of Revelle’s papers that presented his thoughts on climate change.
Complained about the Cosmosarticle at Revelle’s memorial symposium and continued to go public about Singer pressuring Revelle. Singer filed a libel lawsuit. Lancaster tried to fight it, but he didn’t have the money and had to settle.

Revelle probably didn’t actually change his mind about global warming. In November 1990, he wrote an unpublished introduction to a meeting (Oreskes and Conway found it in his papers), which states that he thought that climate was serious and we should act.

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medium com

10 25

Recently, Rutgers University professor Mark Bray, who taught a course on anti-fascism, left the US, a day after he was blocked from boarding a flight to Spain, following the White House event. The historian, who has taught courses on anti-fascism at New Jersey University, was attempting to board a plane at Newark airport late on Wednesday when he was informed at the boarding gate that his and his family's reservations had been cancelled.

After Charlie Kirk’s assassination on September 10th, the rightwing influencer Jack Posobiec called Bray a “domestic terrorist professor” on X. The Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA then circulated a petition that accused the professor of being an “outspoken, well-known antifa member” and called for his dismissal.

9 8 25

NIXON PROF = ENEMY

JDV

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AN 9 25

Citing state policy on tenure, elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and the cost of living, Florida faculty laid out their frustrations in a recent survey.

In a Faculty in the South survey conducted by various conferences of the American Association of University Professors, 31% of Florida respondents said they have applied for a job outside of Florida since 2023. That number was 25% among all survey respondents in the South.

The same, 31% of Florida respondents, said they plan to seek employment in another state during the next hiring cycle.

“The governor of Florida threatens at every turn to take funding away so administration at colleges don’t stand up to him or board of education. I no longer have any motivation or creativity to make courses better,” a tenured professor at a public community college wrote.

The survey focused on policy affecting employment, including whether faculty would recommend working in their state to up-and-coming academics, and trends in applications for faculty positions. It included nearly 200 responses from Florida faculty among its nearly 4,000 responses across Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

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The survey concluded with an open-ended question asking faculty to provide examples of how “attacks on higher education are directly impacting your work.” It did not report respondents’ identities beyond basic demographics like gender, race, tenure status, years of experience, and type of institution they teach at.

‘Walking on egg shells’

“Students report any classroom discussion they don’t like directly to the Governor’s office. Everyone is afraid all the time,” one woman teaching at a public four-year school wrote. “I have stopped teaching books that might be in any way controversial. I don’t open up general discussion in class but ask only direct questions that will elicit non-controversial answers. I need health insurance so I can’t just quit.”

The state scanning course materials for disfavored viewpoints was a widespread stressor for many faculty.

Florida DOGE to ‘deep dive’ into state universities, ‘prune’ ‘ideological study stuff’

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“Most of the courses I’ve taught for decades now violate state and university mandates,” a man teaching at a Florida tier-one research university said.

As of earlier this year, Florida institutions’ general education courses no longer contained “indoctrinating concepts,” State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues proclaimed in January.

Florida universities have conducted a review, required by a 2022 law, of general education courses to ensure that they do not “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.”

“I’m continually worried that the content of my clases [sic] will be flagged as “DEI” because I am a historian of the Caribbean, a region mostly populated by non-white people,” one professor said.

One women’s studies professor described the effect as “Constant anxiety, walking on egg shells trying to anticipate what would be used against me/us.”

More than a third, 34%, of Florida respondents said administrators have questioned syllabi or curricula choices for their courses. Among all states surveyed, half as many, 17%, indicated administrators questioned their curricula.

One professor said that since the state and federal government have made illegal “a wide range of Constitutionally protected components of speech and expression,” “I must break the law in order to tell the truth. Because I’m hired to tell the truth, and because I’m much more committed to the truth than to the law, I break the law. This means I am expecting to be arrested in front of a classroom any day, for actions that are illegal only as a result of the right-wing fad of the most recent decade.”

Nearly three in four, 71%, of faculty in Florida who were surveyed said they would not encourage a graduate student to seek employment in Florida.

“I am going to take early retirement despite a great job and salary. The threats are real and I am exhausted, between fighting this and fighting AI and poorly prepared, lazy, unethical students,” a tenured professor at a four-year public university wrote.

Higher education funding cuts have been the subject of nationwide political debate, including Florida State University reporting that it lost $100 million in federal grants, although $83 million of that has since been reinstated, the school’s president said last week.

About one-in-10, 11%, said they have had a federal contract ended by the Trump administration.

“The loss of vital federal grants has removed opportunities from me and my colleagues,” one professor wrote. “Attacks on LGBTQ students, immigrants, and diversity have also made it difficult to recruit promising graduate students or to guarantee their health and safety. Florida colleges being forced to remove diversity languages has destroyed years of valuable work, overturned an incredible general education curriculum, taken power and governance away from faculty, and wasted a lot of valuable time.”

Tenure troubles

Since 2023, professors in Florida with tenure have been subject to post-tenure review, graded on standards crafted by university trustees relating to research performance, teaching, service, and compliance with state laws and university policies.

Of the nearly-one-third who recently applied for an out-of-state job, tenure and DEI issues, academic freedom, the political climate, and cost of living were among the most common concerns.

Respondents said the number of applications for coworkers’ positions, as well as the quality of applicants, have decreased.

“Our department is trying to improve, but we have had several failed searches in recent years because candidates don’t want to move to Florida because of the broad political climate and the fact that tenure protections functionally no longer exist here,” a tenured public university professor said.

Some faculty said they have not experienced problems with “attacks on higher education,” one stating, “I haven’t felt any — Florida is great!.” Another said, “They’re not, and freedom in the classroom still persists, and I am at a public university in… wait for it… FLORIDA…”

“I find that I’m having to spend more time explaining to students why they need to use evidence to support their views and why clear arguments are important,” a professor at a private institution wrote.

One professor complained that “our board of trustees stacked with heritage foundation members, our president was forced out and replaced by a republican politician.” Course materials face heightened scrutiny, this professor added.

“The climate of persecution, retaliation, and ideological imposition makes it impossible to teach my discipline accurately or well without opening oneself to disciplinary measures,” that professor said. “While New College got a lot of headlines, similar invasions of public universities are happening with no national press, leaving those of us who work here isolated and vulnerable to attack.”

‘Academic freedom is on life support,’ say professors surveyed on tenure, censorship

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Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a shake-up of the University of West Florida Board of Trustees in a more conservative light earlier this year and that institution is now led by a former GOP lawmaker.

Results for the survey were collected throughout August and more than 60% of respondents said they are tenured. Last year’s iteration of the survey featured responses from about 350 Florida professors.

“There is a lower threshold of critical thinking because everyone is fearful about what is ‘allowed’ vs. ‘banned’ by law. The fear and the self-censorship is widespread. Our administration, now saddled with a governor-imposed, unqualified hire as a President, is understandably more cautious rather than vocal about protecting academic freedom,” one professor wrote.

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note not xo?

an 8 25

Trump will sign a memorandum ordering colleges and universities to submit information on their admissions to ensure they are complying with a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court order banning affirmative action and gutting race-conscious admissions. The order would expand the current admissions data the government collects.

“Admissions data has increasingly become a focus of the Trump administration as part of its effort to change the ideological balance of the higher education system, which the president views as hostile to conservatives,” The New York Times reported.

Several Ivy League schools have agreed to hand over to the Trump administration certain admissions data, including “standardized test scores and grade point averages of all applicants, as well as information about their race, a measure that could profoundly alter the competitive college admissions process,” according to the Times.

The 2023 6-3 Supreme Court ruling banned public and private colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in its admissions decisions. Schools had said they needed to do so to protect the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissenting opinion.

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Bloomberg News called Thursday’s order “a new and expansive front” in the Trump administration’s “pressure campaign against colleges.”

Angel Perez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, Bloomberg added, “said the data transparency mandate could drive institutions away from the kinds of holistic admissions practices that have helped them increase diversity on campuses.”

“The bottom line,” Perez said, “is that colleges that don’t admit enough White students will be punished.”

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AN 5 25

New York Magazine columnist Ross Barkan urged against Americans bolting to the shores of foreign nations to escape Trump’s many attacks on civil liberties.

“[F]leeing the U.S. isn’t the answer,” said Barkan. “This is not the Vietnam War, when young men of draft age fled to Canada to avoid dying in an unpopular conflict thousands of miles away. … Fleeing is a cheap, ego-flattering maneuver; it helps no one.”

“Death camps are not being constructed, and opposition political parties are not being outlawed. This isn’t Xi’s China, Putin’s Russia, or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. America is, for all its flaws, a republic that has lasted more than 200 years,” Barkan said. “In nations bereft of any genuine democratic traditions — or those, like Hungary, that are quite small in population — versions of fascism are possible. But it’s very hard, despite the claims made by these histrionic academics, for it to actually happen here.”

Fascism “has happened here: in bursts, over and over again,” Barkan concedes, referring to former president Franklin Roosevelt tossing Japanese Americans into internment camps, and Abraham Lincoln suspending habeas corpus. Woodrow Wilson, a segregationist who appointed racist Southern politicians to cabinet positions, ordered the arrests of thousands of left-wing immigrants. And then there’s the rampant destruction of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and J. Edgar Hoover’s “long reign at the FBI” and “George W. Bush’s surveillance state.”

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Barkan referenced three prominent Yale professors who announced with much fanfare they were emigrating the United States for positions at the University of Toronto to escape Trumpism.

“If every left-leaning American adopted the posture of the Yale academics and trundled abroad, the nation would be hollowed out, with MAGA left to pick over its carcass,” he points out. “The U.S. is larger than MAGA and Trump and will outlast him. Trump is unpopular, and his party will not control the federal government in perpetuity. There are more elections to come, and Republicans could very well lose many of them. And the destruction Trump has wrought on the federal bureaucracy can eventually be undone: Executive orders, unlike legislation, are easy enough to reverse.”

Read the full New York Magazine column here.

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an states n? 5 25

Why are right-wingers so scared of ideas?

Are their minds so weak that mere exposure to certain books will infect them with what Elon Musk calls “the woke mind virus”?

They don’t want you inoculated against measles, but they’re doing their damnedest to inoculate Americans against knowledge.

Novels upset them; poetry upsets them; science upsets them; history upsets them; art upsets them; questioning of authority upsets them.

Universities really, really upset them — all that interrogating norms; all that challenging orthodoxy; all that critical inquiry.

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To that end, Donald Trump’s going to war with Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, even Penn, his alma mater.

Ron DeSantis beat him to it: The governor’s been trying for years to regulate speech, impose restrictions on what teachers can teach, and decree which books the state of Florida finds “acceptable.”

While he’s had some success in K-12, enabling Moms for Liberty and their ilk in their book-banning crusade and threatening educators with dire consequences if they mention the existence of gay and trans people, some judges, unsurprisingly partial to the First Amendment, have slapped him down.

DeSantis, nothing if not energetic in his rage, is now determined to shield our precious college students from Dangerous Thoughts.

Choose the administrators. Choose the presidents. Control the universities.

The University of Florida needs a new dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences — with 40 majors and more than 10,000 students, it’s the largest college at UF.

They got as far as interviewing four highly qualified candidates: two mathematicians — UF’s own Kevin P. Knudson and Maggy Tomova, dean of UCF’s College of Science; Ryan Schroeder, dean of Georgia Southern’s College of Behavioral and Social Sciences; and Robert Brinkmann, a professor of Geology and dean of Liberal Arts and Science at Northern Illinois University.

‘Radical DEI progressives’

But two weeks ago, the governor blew up the search. Demanded UF stop it.

Seems the finalists, admired scholars and seasoned leaders, are crypto-Marxist, Trump-hating eggheads bent on destroying America.

An anonymous social media account calling itself “Commies on Campus” ran shrieking to Bryan Griffin, DeSantis’ communications director, calling all four “ radical DEI progressives.”

The Commies posted slick, selectively edited videos of candidate interviews, slamming Brinkmann for stating the obvious: “We have people in charge of things in our country that don’t have any business being in charge of those things,” and Knudson for being proud that as head of UF’s Honors Program “we were able to increase the number of African American and Hispanic students in the program.”

As if that’s somehow shameful.

Kent Fuchs, UF’s invertebrate of an interim president, sent out a memo pretending “terminating the search” was the only thing to do, what with the university also in the middle of hiring a permanent president.

Fuchs has never said no to DeSantis.

He does as he’s told, facilitating the hiring of our data-challenged surgeon general at UF’s medical school and trying to stop professorsfrom testifying on voting rights.

Academic freedom doesn’t matter; the professors’ expertise might pose a “conflict of interest to the executive branch of the state of Florida.”

As if serving the interests of the executive branch should somehow be the mission of a university.

UF remains a distinguished institution, though slipping in national rankings of public universities. It was No. 5 a couple of years ago but is now No. 7.

Still pretty good, especially given DeSantis’ obsessive attacks on higher education in the state.

But allowing some trifling X account to dictate policy at Florida’s flagship university won’t exactly burnish UF’s reputation.

All-purpose insult

Whoever the “Commies on Campus” may be, they weren’t paying attention in political science class.

They call anything they don’t like “communist:” LGBTQ, feminism, secularism, programs for the poor, addressing the climate crisis, taxing the rich, giving anyone without one of those useful White Man Cards a fair shot in life.

“Communist” is MAGA’s all-purpose insult.

Read a book, kids: While real live commies like the ones in North Korea, Cuba, or China may think religion is the opiate of the masses and rich folks (except the leaders of these countries) shouldn’t exist, they’re not keen on stuff like feminism, they persecute gay people, and they sure as hell don’t favor DEI.

Ask the Uighurs.

Yet DeSantis, a man educated beyond his intelligence, takes what these nameless chuckleheads say at face value.

There are in fact a number of well-regarded Marxist scholars at American universities. Yale, the governor’s alma mater, has a reading group studying Marxism and Cultural Theory.

Nevertheless, DeSantis emerged from the Red Menace of New Haven untainted.

He’s also unimpeded by understanding what universities are supposed to do.

An academic’s job is to research everything from the Roman Republic to astrophysics to Norse sagas to gene structure to the ideology of slavery to economic and political systems, which requires reading across the spectrum from “Das Kapital” to “ The Road to Serfdom“ and presenting their data and knowledge to students.

We call this “education.”

It’s embarrassing how MAGAs deem Hungarian (or Putinist) authoritarianism OK, even admirable, while “communist” is the gravest of insults and socialism is a mortal sin.

Perhaps they’re unaware socialism is viewed favorably by around 36%of Americans.

That’s almost the same number who say they strongly support Donald Trump.

Ideas are not viruses

The point is, ideas are not viruses: Mere exposure to communist thought doesn’t turn you into a communist, any more than reading James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” makes you gay, any more than reading “The Wealth of Nations” ensures you’ll become a rabid capitalist.

But MAGAs don’t do high-level thinking: It makes their heads hurt. They simply react.

Loudly. Ignorantly. Irrationally.

Commies on Campus now has a new project: trying to influence who will become the new president of the University of Florida.

UF has announced a finalist.

One finalist. Chosen in secret.

He is Dr. Santa Ono, a Canadian American immunologist.

The Commies say he’s some kind of woke monster who, as president of the University of Michigan, created “THE LARGEST #DEI EMPIRE in the country.”

Their evidence? Christopher Rufo, the febrile New College trustee last heard claiming immigrants were eating cats and dogs, calls Ono “left-wing” and points to a 2023 commencement address in which he made the unimpeachable statement, “The climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time.”

Florida gubernatorial candidate and Trump acolyte U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, never losing a chance to ingratiate himself with MAGA voters, demands UF “ go back to the drawing board.”

Donalds’ hair is on fire because Ono once said, “Racism is one of America’s original sins.”

Deep breath, people: 1. Both of Ono’s statements are perfectly true; and 2. Rufo, Donalds, and the Commies need to update their intel.

Ono has changed his tune. No longer a champion of diversity, he’s now singing from the DeSantis Hymnal, declaring himself in “total alignment” with the governor’s anti-woke crusade.

“I have the same views as this governor,” Ono said.

Bend the knee

During his three years at Michigan (the shortest tenure of any president in the university’s history), Ono initially won praise for prioritizing sustainability and anti-racist projects. Students say he was personable and accessible.

Then Trump happened, and, like too many university administrators, he bent the knee, shutting UM’s DEI office, cracking down on student protest, and creating, as one faculty member said, “ a surveillance state.”

Seems he deployed plainclothes officers police to trail and photograph people on UM’s campus.

No wonder DeSantis likes this guy.

Santa is a real scholar, a proper scientist, with academic and administrative qualifications that could have been a great fit at UF. He’s streets ahead of DeSantis’ last hand-picked president, the empty, in-over-his-head Ben Sasse, whose one discernable talent was spendingother people’s money.

In a Trump-free world, Ono might have become the leader who could protect the institution. He might have pushed back against the governor’s determination to reduce Florida’s universities to football factories with libraries curated by the likes of Christopher Rufo and courses insisting on the divine greatness of America.

Alas, Ono has made clear that’s not him, not anymore.

This is what you get when one incurious, anti-intellectual, and perpetually angry man chooses university presidents in secret.

This is what you get when there’s only one finalist.

Yes, the trustees officially make the job offer, but there’s no chance they’d hire someone DeSantis didn’t like.

This is the reality of higher ed in Florida today.

FIU has one finalist for president. No shock that it’s DeSantis’ former lieutenant governor and Interim President Jeannette Nuñez.

In its presidential search, FAU announced three finalists. Maybe this would be a real contest?

Two had Ph.Ds. and solid higher ed experience. One was a Republican political hack.

You can guess who got the gig.

A ‘plant’ at FAMU?

Florida A&M, still in the process of choosing a president, has four finalists.

Promising, right?

There were initially three on the shortlist, all with extensive university experience. Then a fourth candidate, a woman with ties to top Republicans, appeared.

She’s Marva Johnson, a communications company executive, appointed by then-Gov. Rick Scott to the Florida Board of Education and chosen by Ron DeSantis for the Florida Scholars Academy Board of Trustees.

Commies on Campus have not yet weighed in on this one.

FAMU alumni say she’d be a terrible choice, calling her “ a plant” and likening her to a Trojan Horse hostile to the university’s mission.

But what the alumni want, and what the university wants, probably won’t matter.

What DeSantis wants matters.

As everyone in the unfree state of Florida knows, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

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Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

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mma

April 17, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): A world on fire as President Trump continues to hammer in every different vertical and take on the institutions of this country to make sure that they are — that the DEI wokeness, anti-American, neo-Marxist — I don't know what we're going to call it, is wringed from them. It's really magnificent. He's breaking the big law firms that run the country. He is breaking these big universities, the Ivy Leagues.

I'm just waiting to go to the Bannon pivot to the public ivies, which is essential, to get to the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

And the way he's doing this is cutting off everyone from the public trough. All the pigs feed. What, $9 billion to Harvard, all these people getting billions and billions of your taxpayer money. And guess what taxpayers, middle class, working class taxpayers, they've had it, not interested.

I also think that they got to de-em— It's not about anti-Semitism. That's a big — that's a part of it. In some cases, a big part of it. That's not the reason.

The reason is that these are radically — radical progressive, neo-Marxist faculties and administrations and we have to purge that. Or just go do it — if you want to do it privately, finance it privately, go for it. Harvard, you got $52 billion. I don't even think that counts the business school and the other colleges. I think that's just Harvard College and the university. I don't think the individual — I think the business schools got a $10 billion. I'm not sure they just rolled that up and that's what it is. I think it's bigger. I think Harvard may have $100 billion. And only 1 year ago, 2 years ago, they started using it for letting kids that couldn't afford to go there, go there.

Cut them off. They're not so tough. Law firms are not so tough when you cut them off the federal, off your tax dollars, when you cut it off from the trough. You want to drain the swamps, start by taking the pig trough and draining that. They're not, they're not, they're not so big. They're not big shots anymore.

### Steve Bannon and guest argue rising bond yields mean “tough times ahead” if Trump doesn't secure trade deals and “get government spending down”

04/10/25 2:52 PM EDT

### Steve Bannon suggests the Trump administration “immediately revoke” all Chinese student visas

04/10/25 11:36 AM EDT

### Steve Bannon: Trump “loves his charts. Those are like the tablets that Moses brought down.”

04/03/25

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{{ aha 3 25

see 1st amend ppl lose ACTIVIST SUPPRESS, STUDENT SUPPRESS --> FAscism

aha yikes this is seen as righteous corrective action, punishment of those ppl

foreigners, but students are spoiled, captured by radical lunatic pinko left accuse real am of being racists [and greedy?]

erode incrementaL ATTACK START WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS, STATE OF EXCEPTION/ EMERGENCY POWERS? CDA 1ST NATIONS WATER PROTECTORS FROM CORP PIPELINE DAPL

RUBIO PULLED GREEN CARD FOR COLUMBIA STUDENT GAZA 3/1025

AN 3 25

Trump is following Putin’s, Xi’s, and Orban’s playbook. First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you.

Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with.

Intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.)

Then focus on independent sources of information: the media and the universities. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews.

Then go after the universities.

Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests. On Friday he cancelled hundreds of millions in grants and contracts with Columbia University.

This is an extension of Republican tactics before Trump’s second term. Prior to Trump appointing her ambassador to the United Nations, former Representative Elise Stefanik (Harvard class of 2006) browbeat presidents of elite universities over their responses to student protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, leading to several presidents being fired.

Senator Josh Hawley (Stanford class of 2002 and Yale Law class of 2006) called the student demonstrations signs of “moral rot” at the universities.

But antisemitism was just a pretext.

JD Vance (Yale Law 2013) has termed university professors “the enemy” and suggested using Victor Orban’s method for ending “left-wing domination of universities.”

I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. [The government should be] aggressively reforming institutions … in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.”

Trump is also targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on university campuses.

But of all Trump’s and Republicans’ moves against higher education, the most destructive is the cancelation of research grants and contracts. The destruction is hardly confined to Columbia and other suspected left-wing bastions.

Research universities depend on funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Trump reportedly aims to slash the budget of the National Science Foundation by up to two-thirds. And he’s instructed the National Institutes of Health to no longer honor negotiated rates for “indirect costs” on grants that it administers — money that universities use for laboratory space and research equipment.

In defiance of court orders, Trump has largely maintained a freeze on NIH funding.

As a result, many of America’s great research universities have stopped hiring and are cutting Ph.D. programs — in some cases rescinding offers to accepted students.

Trump’s moves are consistent with the tyrant’s playbook, but they’re also jeopardizing America’s national security and competitiveness.

Trump speaks of putting America First, but his attack on the nation’s great research universities is ensuring that the U.S. comes in second — to China.

Although America has long been the global leader in scientific output, China is now surging ahead. Even before Trump’s cuts in research funding, China was projected to match U.S. research spending within five years.

China has already surpassed the U.S. as the top producer of highly cited papers and international patent applications. It now awards more science and engineering Ph.D.s than the U.S.

Tyrants close universities. Fascists burn books. Trump is destroying America’s most important asset — its innovative mind. }} end aha

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an 10 24

The U.S. Naval Academy is under fire after it invited — then uninvited — a distinguished expert on authoritarianism and fascism to give a lecture.

**Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat** is a professor of history and Italian Studies at New York University, where her bio says she “writes about fascism, authoritarianism, propaganda, and the threats these present to democracies around the world.” She is the author of books on fascism and serves as an advisor to the nonpartisan nonprofit organization Protect Democracy. She is also an MSNBC opinion columnist, where she appears as a commentator, as she does on other news networks.

For weeks, since early October, right-wing media has been criticizing the U.S. Naval Academy for inviting her to speak.

The Daily Caller, founded by Tucker Carlson, described Dr. Ben-Ghiat as “an outspoken anti-Trump guest” who was invited to “give the keynote speech at a high-level lecture this month.”

“Ben-Ghiat announced that she’d be speaking at the event in an op-ed last month and further claimed that former President Donald Trump was an ‘authoritarian ‘and drew comparisons between him and world dictators,” The Daily Caller’s Jake Smith wrote in an opinion piece.

For weeks, since early October, right-wing media has been criticizing the U.S. Naval Academy for inviting her to speak.

The Daily Caller, founded by Tucker Carlson, described Dr. Ben-Ghiat as “an outspoken anti-Trump guest” who was invited to “give the keynote speech at a high-level lecture this month.”

“Anti-Trump historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat is scheduled to lecture midshipmen on ‘authoritarianism,'” two Heritage Foundation officials, Mathew Lee and Wilson Beaver, wrote at The Daily Signal in a piece marked commentary. They called for the Naval Academy to retract the invitation to Dr. Ben-Ghiat.

The Heritage Foundation is the headquarters of **Project 2025**. The ACLU calls Project 2025, “a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity. Project 2025’s largest publication, ‘Mandate For Leadership,’ is a 900-page manual for reorganizing the entire federal government agency by agency to serve a conservative agenda.”

Dr. Ben-Ghiat in her Substack piece also wrote about Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where a cemetery official was “pushed,” allegedly by Trump campaign staffers, according to an Army report. A judge on Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to release its records related to Trump’s visit there in August, by the end of this week.

“The conduct of Trump and his campaign on those hallowed grounds violated federal prohibitions against election-linked activities at military cemeteries,” Ben-Ghiat wrote. “The photos and videos they took there also showed graves of U.S. service members whose families had not given permission. Additionally, a Trump aide shoved an Arlington employee who was trying to enforce the rules, and Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed she initiated the aggression and was having a ‘mental health episode.'”

“It seems counter-intuitive when you are running for president and commander-in-chief to insult the U.S. military,” she added. “But that hasn’t stopped Trump: insulting and mocking the military are among his most consistent habits.”

On Tuesday, in an opinion piece in the Baltimore Banner, Rick Hutzell slammed the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 for getting Dr. Ben-Ghiat’s lecture canceled. (The U.S. Naval Academy is based in Annapolis, Maryland.)

“If Trump wins, the right-wing thought police will come for the Naval Academy,” Hutzell wrote in a scorching editorial.

“You could hear the spittle fly as the Heritage Foundation shouted out its latest intellectual assault on the Naval Academy,” he wrote. “All over Ruth Ben-Ghiat and a lecture the midshipmen likely will never hear.”

“Her politics were the problem, not her lecture.”

“As controversies go, it was easy to miss this one. It all took place within the conservative media ecosystem. But it could foreshadow what might happen to the U.S. service academies if Trump is elected next month,” he added. “Deep within Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 925-page roadmap for the next Republican president, its authors say they want the service academies scrubbed of anything and anyone deemed insufficiently pure of thought — exactly what they did to Ben-Ghiat.”

Ben-Ghiat in an email told Hutzell: “The lecture had nothing to do with contemporary America and I was not going to mention Mr. Trump at all in this strictly nonpartisan event at an institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, which I greatly admire.”

Hutzell wrote that Heritage “Foundation ‘researchers’ Matthew Lee andWilson Beaver made the connection a month after Ben-Ghiat’s announcement and simply made up the rest, assuming she planned to attack Trump.” He also pointed to another piece at The Daily Signal by “Heritage Foundation mouthpieces Hans von Spakovsky and Cully Stimson,” and n0ted that “U.S. Rep. Keith Self — a West Point graduate who represents a district north and northeast of Dallas — wrote Vice Adm. Yvette M. Davids, the academy superintendent, and demanded that she cancel the lecture.”

He also reports The Daily Signal’s managing editor called for an apology from the Naval Academy, and Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee “called for an explanation.”

IFrame Content

“The harrumph over Ben-Ghirat smacks of hamfisted stagecraft. It’s not about protecting young minds from learning what tools authoritarians use, it’s about preparing the case for an intellectual bloodletting,” Hutzell concluded.

Others lashed out at the Naval Academy.

“This is a shameful move by @NavalAcademy. If our armed services are truly training people to be loyal to the Constitution, not to an individual, this is one lecture they need to hear. Very disappointing,” declared attorney and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa, a legal and national security expert.

She also blasted the “members of Congress who do not want students at service academies to learn what happens when you turn into Hitler’s generals,” likely a response to news of Trump allegedly praising Hitler and saying he had wanted “Hitler’s generals.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst, pointing to Ben-Ghiat being disinvited, warned: “This is exactly what she’s been warning about—caving in to the demands of authoritarian leaders, even before they’re in place. Dangerous & shameful.”

Historian and professor of strategic studies Phillips P. O’Brien, author of several books including, “How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II,” called Hutzell’s editorial a “terribly worrying story about how MAGA pressure is already leading to censorship in the US military. The US Naval Academy disinvited the distinguished historian @ruthbenghiat from delivering a major lecture because of Heritage-MAGA pressure.”

===

an 9 24

A survey of professors at Florida universities found that new state government limits on tenure and academic freedom, plus the state’s political climate, have prompted many of them to apply for jobs outside the Sunshine State.

Of approximately 350 faculty working almost exclusively in Florida public institutions, 135 — 39% — reported that since 2022 they have applied for a job in higher education in another state. Popular destinations include California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York.

The survey, headed by Georgia branch of the American Association of University Professors Conference President Matthew Boedy, asked professors across the South how political interference like tenure limits and political vetting of course materials have affected their career outlooks.

More than 2,900 professors answered across 12 states from Aug. 12-30. Responses to the Faculty in the South Survey came from Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

Professor profess

Topics driving Florida professors to apply elsewhere were largely listed as “tenure issues,” as well as academic freedom, DEI, and the overall political climate.

In a free-response section, professors anonymously provided examples of how changes in tenure, contracts, and academic freedom affect their work.

Florida professors consistently highlighted post-tenure review. Approved by the Board of Governors in 2023 at the Legislature’s direction, the practice puts tenured professors under review every five years to determine their “productivity.” If deemed unsatisfactory, a professor can be terminated.

A report compiled by POLITICO shows that 91% of the 861 public professors who underwent tenure review met or exceeded expectations laid out for them. Some earned bonuses. Professors who did not meet expectations, 64 of them, must show improvement during the next year or face termination. More severe, 10 faculty members statewide had “unsatisfactory” performance and were terminated.

Professors spoke out forcefully against the reviews before they took effect last year, and this year’s survey results reflect that sentiment hasn’t shifted.

“Though I am not in direct danger from [post-tenure review], I am now eying the door,” one professor wrote.

“I traded off a higher salary and choice of where I wanted to live, among other things, for academia and its promise that I would be allowed to use my expertise to the best of my ability for my students and the good of society. But this bargain doesn’t hold anymore. The governor and university leaders hold their own faculty in suspicion and contempt. They are actively working to destroy lifelong careers. Tenure is definitely gone, and academic freedom is on life support. It’s time to go.”

‘Anti-woke policies’

Another professor said Gov. Ron DeSantis brags about Florida’s top ranking in higher education by U.S. News & World Report but neglects other topics.

“Rather than working on real problems … the governor keeps looking for more unconstitutional ‘anti-woke’ policies he can implement. Morale among faculty at my institution is the lowest I have seen in more than two decades of working in higher education.”

The Wall Steet Journal released its annual rankings of public universities Monday and it showed Florida’s institutions tumbling in the rankings, including the University of Florida losing its #1 spot.

More than two-thirds of respondents to Boedy’s survey said the effect has been a reduction in applications to join their departments or institutions.

One professor said she recently left a “BIG FL state school in Orlando” because the school “did not defend academic freedom” and did not give a pay raise for the 2023-2024 school year.

“My institution also allowed for post-tenure review to go into effect. I am a new scholar (PhD earned within the last five years), and, frankly, there was no viable reason to stay at that institution,” she said.

“No raise? No tenure (post-tenure review effectively nullifies some of the more important tenure protections)? Not being allowed to teach things from a “non-Western” point of view? My administration cowing to politicians? For real, what incentive is there to stay in FL in higher ed?”

Touting tenure review

DeSantis claimed during the Republican National Convention that Florida universities are “bringing in huge amounts of talent.” Something “maybe even more important” that, he added, is that Florida was “the first state to eliminate DEI” and was implementing post-tenure review.

DeSantis said the rule “is now allowing us to kind of get academia focused on the classical mission of pursuing truth, preparing students to be citizens of this republic, high standards, not be some type of an indoctrination camp.”

He added: “Some of these professors that were unproductive and had their other agendas, they’ve gotten processed out. The media will be like, ‘These professors are fleeing Florida.’ Wait a minute — if Marxist professors are leaving Florida, that is not bad for Florida, that is good for Florida.”

The legislative changes implementing post-tenure review were led by two state senators who now serve as Florida Department of Education officials: public schools Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. and university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues.

During implementation of post-tenure review, DeSantis asserted that “unproductive” tenured professors are the “most significant deadweight costs” for Florida universities, the Phoenix previously reported.

More than 80% of professors said in the survey that they would not recommend a graduate student or out-of-state faculty seek employment in Florida.

“The governor of the state of Florida and his university oversight (BOG) have purposely misled the public about higher education,” one professor wrote.

“They are deceiving the public about what is taught, the implications of how ideas are communicated, and the outcomes of higher education. Their desire is for a college degree to simply be vocational education to prepare students to be ‘cogs in a machine’ rather than employees who understand social, political, and economic factors that have affected the ways employee rights have changed over the years.”

The state Legislature passed the Stop WOKE Act in 2022, which the state argues allows it to forbid college professors from criticizing the governor or teach concepts surrounding race, racism, and privilege.

Uploading a different syllabus

The effects of that law and related efforts by the state government have left professors bowdlerizing their courses.

“We literally upload a different syllabus to the public system than we distribute to our students in class just to avoid having to explain every single detail of it to some draconian maniac from the state legislature,” one professor submitted in the survey.

Another professor pointed out that the Math for Liberal Arts course name was changed to eliminate the word “liberal” to comply with state requirements.

“I no longer feel safe teaching works about Jewishness (I am Jewish) because my university is datamining our Canvas courses for mentions of words like Jew, Jewish, Palestine, Israel etc.,” one professor wrote, referring to an August order from Rodrigues to universities, asking them to review courses that may contain antisemitic material.

One professor said he is being censored from “telling legitimate truths,” and that “what we are seeing from our state government is deeply hegemonic and antithetical to the purpose of higher education.”

He said: “Even though I have been highly successful in a major state university in Florida, I am actively seeking faculty, administrative, and nonprofit jobs in other states. Florida has become toxic to anyone who believes in freedom of inquiry, freedom of speech, and the need to expose students to critical inquiry and a diversity of viewpoints.”

Another professor said she feels “hampered” in teaching contentious issues. “Respect for education to teach critical thinking skills is tanking,” she wrote.

“I can’t advocate safely for students and human rights. I worry my ‘Freedom of Speech’ isn’t so ‘free’ now,” another professor wrote.

During the post-tenure review policy approval process, professors warned that universities might struggle to recruit faculty if it were approved. Now, professors responding to the survey report, that prediction has come true and pools of candidates for many positions are mere fractions of what there were before the political focus on education intensified.

One professor said educators’ work is more relevant than the governor’s and that noise about Florida education seems to come more from outside the state.

“People outside the state seem to have more negative things to say about the state of higher education in Florida than those who actually work and live here,” he wrote.

“Judging a university by whether one likes the governor or not is both short sighted and politically biased in its own way. This is why we have elections and term limits in this country. The most relevant and important work happens in the classroom not the governor’s mansion.”

Across all states surveyed, a majority of respondents said they were deeply dissatisfied with the state of higher education, and 48.9% have noticed a decrease in the number of applicants for professor jobs.

Investigating impacts

Education policy in recent years drove Boedy, an associate professor at the University of North Georgia, to research the effect on those who teach.

“I wanted to do this survey of faculty in the South because I wanted lawmakers and policymakers and those who attack higher education to understand the impacts of those attacks,” Boedy said in an interview with the Phoenix.

“As you can see from the results of the 12 states, many faculty are feeling not just attacked but are feeling that they can’t do their jobs well and many are considering leaving their state. Those attacks from outside of higher education and within higher education have real impacts and I wanted the survey to show that.”

Boedy said the range in salary and experience in responses provides a “good picture of faculty across the 12 states.”

===

Violent arrest of Emory professor spotlights brutality of police crackdown on campus protests](https://www.alternet.org/violent-arrest-professor/)

Julia Conley Common Dreams 4 24

===

Fox host calls for professors engaging in protests to be fired](https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-host-calls-professors-engaging-protests-be-fired)

04/29/24

lAWRENCE JONES (CO-HOST): To your point, Ainsley, also, it's not just the students. You got the professors that are out there with the students as well.

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): They should be fired.

LAWRENCE JONES: Exactly.

BRIAN KILMEADE: Should be fired.

LAWRENCE JONES: You had in Columbia, the professors created a wall around the students. If I'm the president of a university, you got — you already have to go to online learning. Now you got professors that aren't teaching class.

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): They are teaching activism instead of how to be scholars.

BRIAN KILMEADE: I'll tell you what, I watched Fareed Zakaria's show, they had Bruce Bobbins on — I'll show you a — who is one of the senior professors over there for 27 years, and he is actually all for this. You know exactly why these students think this. He's like, I'm spending a lot of time with the encampments; basically Israel is not a democracy because they're outnumbered by Arabs in that area and if it's a really representative democracy they would be a minority. He's, basically, he looks at Israel the way we look at Assad in Syria. And if you think about this — this is a so-called intellectual that you pay $75,000 a year to get people like that — and he's backing up the students and he is saying there is no antisemitic behavior there. Well, we've talked to those students. They are getting the barbs when they walk to class, to the point where the president said it's not safe for Jews to be on campus, so what's this guy talking about?

===

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HARV BLK WOMan pres resign plag BS stefanik 2 dn 1 to go?

Fox host blames the "spider-like cancer" that is diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives for antisemitism | Media Matters for America

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yikes trump = offense = fascism

AN 12 23 thom 3

if Trump is re-elected, he’d be America’s 47th president, so he’s named the plans for his second term “Agenda 47.” At best, it’s a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world.

Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans, include:

Part of Agenda 47, Trump says, is “finishing the job” he started as president between 2017 and 2021.

Just two hours after he and Pence were sworn into office, they removed all mention of LGBTQ+ issues from the White House website.

Two days later, his State Department deleted former Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology to the nation for the “Lavender Scare” government persecution of gays and lesbians during the McCarthy era 1950s and early 1960s. A month later, Trump’s Justice Department announced they’d no longer defend the civil rights of trans kids.

His Education and HUD offices both withdrew their court defenses of queer people, particularly students and those in homeless shelters, and his Secretary of State refused to mention to the Russian Foreign Minister the detention and brutal executions of gay men by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. On May 4, 2017 Trump signed an executive order letting the DOJ ignore claims of illegal discrimination against queer people and women throughout every single one of the nation’s federal agencies.

In September, 2017, Trump’s Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, officially ended that agency’s Title IX guidance requiring schools to do something about sexual harassment, including sexual violence, against women and LGBTQ+ kids. In response to a question from the media about the change in policy and gay men, Trump said that his Vice President “wants to hang them all.”

In January of 2018, Trump rolled out the “Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom” at HHS, which would backstop people who wanted to use the excuse of “deeply held religious beliefs” to justify explicit discrimination against queer people and women, or to simply to make life difficult for government agencies.

All of this is just the beginning. The Human Rights Campaign has documented page after page of anti-queer policies put into effect by Trump that will be resurrected and put on steroids in a second term.

In the Agenda 47 section of his website, Trump explains how he’s going to use our schools and colleges to indoctrinate young Americans in rightwing ideology. He explicitly says:

“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”

Any colleges that continue to teach “under the guise of [racial] equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”

In other words, just like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary and Putin did in Russia, he’s going to bankrupt the nation’s schools and colleges if they continue to teach the true history of America and promote egalitarian values. As Trump notes at his website:

“[W]e are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all.”

Back in the 1970s, Richard Nixon said he was going to use “impoundment” to strip funding from agencies his donors didn’t like, claiming that, even though Congress had appropriated budgets for them, he could, as head of the Executive Branch, simply “impound” the money and refuse to spend it. His plan to remake the federal government was interrupted by Watergate.

In 1974, Democrats in Congress got together and passed legislation outlawing this and Jerry Ford signed it into law. But Trump’s lawyers apparently think they can get it overturned through their appointees on the courts or even, if they can take both branches of Congress, through new legislation. As Trump says on his website:

“I will use the president’s long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”

Since the fossil fuel companies, banks, refineries, anti-union big employers, and their billionaires who fund the GOP hate all of these agencies, it’ll be a bonanza for them.

Not so much for working people, retirees, and those of us concerned about a livable future environment for our kids and grandkids, though.

First, he wants to make it illegal for the federal government’s security services to notify social media platforms about Russian disinformation and other foreign efforts to swing elections, since nearly 100% of those efforts are coming from authoritarian countries in support of Trump and against democracy.

“I will ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information,” Trump proclaims on his Agenda 47 website.

He also wants to force social media to carry his buddy Putin’s trolls’ lies and attempts to pit Americans against each other, and limit the companies’ ability to label or block lies and propaganda. As Trump puts it:

“I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising Section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business.”

In Hungary, one way Viktor Orbán got rid of actual news media and replaced the ownership of all the nation’s major radio and TV networks, websites, and newspapers was by changing the libel laws so that public figures (like Orbán himself) could sue for libel when they thought they were treated unfairly.

They then sued company after company, commentator after commentator, reporter after reporter, into bankruptcy.

Orbán’s rightwing buddies could buy the media properties out of bankruptcy which is why now virtually all the media in Hungary is like Fox “News,” broadcasting suck-ups to Orbán and criticism of “liberals,” immigrants, and gays 24/7.

Trump wants to do the same here in the US.

When Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury came out with some unflattering characterizations of Trump in it, the then-president said:

“We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. And if somebody says something that’s totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled, will have meaningful recourse.”

Simply reporting on what Trump’s up to could bring lawsuits that would bankrupt even the Times or the Post, and, like in Hungary and Russia, pretty much end the existence of a free and independent press in America.

Trump has promised to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists who tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House (and whose actions led to the death of four police officers), and put into place a national “stop and frisk” law that upends the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

It would also — like Duterte in the Philippines who executed over 10,000 people during his reign of terror — authorize the federal government to immediately execute anybody convicted of trafficking in drugs without further due process or appeals.

Republicans in Texas have already pioneered using vigilantes to hunt down women who’ve had abortions and the people who’ve helped them. Expect these vigilante-enforced laws to spread across the country with a second Trump administration, with groups like the Proud Boys and III Percenters becoming the modern-day equivalent of the old west’s 19th century bounty hunters.

In a flashback to Hitler’s “work camps” that preceded the death camps by five years, Trump’s also proposed building concentration camps around the country to house “millions” of undocumented aliens and his political enemies. As he noted in a speech on Veterans’ Day this year:

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” adding that Russia isn’t a problem. Instead, he said, “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

Presumably that means people like me and you, who would oppose his fascist agenda.

Way back in 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau thought he’d properly bribed President James Garfield by giving the president, during an in-person visit in the White House, a speech he’d written for Garfield to use. Garfield was polite but didn’t offer Guiteau a federal speechwriter’s job, which provoked a murderous rage: shortly thereafter, Guiteau met Garfield’s train and shot him twice, killing him.

The explicit and institutionalized practice of exchanging gifts and personal loyalty for federal jobs dated back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), arguably the second-most depraved president in American history behind Trump (which is probably why Trump hung his picture in the Oval Office; Jackson’s favorite nickname for himself — given him by the Cherokee he slaughtered — was “The Indian Killer”).

Jackson had elevated the practice of bribing the president — himself, at the time — to get federal jobs into an art-form: it was called the “spoils” or patronage system and was insanely corrupt. It was also, by Garfield’s presidency in 1881, routine.

After Guiteau failed to gain his “spoil” or “patronage” from Garfield and killed him, President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.

It separated all those government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats, whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of the guy who happened to be in the White House at any particular time.

It also explicitly outlawed bribing the president for a job. The goal, which it accomplished and has held for 140 years, was to end corruption in the bureaucratic branches of the federal government.

Donald Trump wants to functionally end the Civil Service system and replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself.

He tried to do this in the last months of his presidency through an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, (which Biden reversed on his first day in office) that reclassified those workers out of their Civil Service jobs and into political appointee positions, doing the same work but now entirely dependent on the good will of the president to keep their jobs.

The next Republican administration will almost certainly put Schedule F back into force, reestablishing the 1829 spoils system for the federal government, and ending any possibility that people in the government will push back against Trump the way they did during his presidency.

The Department of Justice was established by President Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War, in part to enforce federal laws protecting the rights of people who’d recently been freed from slavery.

After Richard Nixon tried to use it against his enemies (and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, went to prison for his efforts), Congress in 1978 passed the Ethics in Government Act which put a wall of separation between the DOJ and the White House.

Trump has explicitly proclaimed his intention to tear that wall down and go farther than Nixon ever imagined in using our armed investigative services for personal revenge and harassment of people he perceives as his enemies.

He wants the nation’s premiere police agencies to become his own personal enforcers, and has already said they will be hunting down “liberals,” Black Lives Matter protest participants, and Joe Biden, his family, and members of his administration.

He wants to imprison them, as well as the prosecutors and judges who have been participating in the effort to hold him to account for the crimes he committed over the past 7 years.

This politicization of law enforcement has been a first-order and primary feature of every authoritarian or totalitarian regime that’s risen to power over the past few hundred years, worldwide. It’s always one of the first things fascist leaders do when they seize power.

In an apparent attempt to portray himself as a visionary like JFK, with his promise to send men to the moon and bring them back safely, Trump is promising to build “freedom cities” in his second term. The main feature he’s discussed is that people will get around in them in “flying cars.”

While it’s being portrayed as a goofy stunt designed to make him seem like an imaginative idealist, in fact there has been a movement among rightwing billionaires for some time to create cities that they basically run as little feudal fiefdoms, the same way the morbidly rich run their companies and their football teams.

Some libertarian billionaires assert that the only reason there’s never been a successful libertarian nation in the history of the world is because true libertarianism — government doing nothing but running the police, army, and courts and everything else left to private charity and business owners — “has never been tried.”

The ”freedom cities” could be a new libertarian experiment, or they may be the 21st century version of the old “company town,” where nobody has rights or protection of the law but is subject to the whims of the local billionaire owner. A group backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has already put forward what appears to be a plan to build a new city in California that they may or may not envision running along these lines. The group has so far purchased more than 53,000 acres of land, an area larger than the entire city of Beaumont, Texas, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Trump is also promising that he’ll end the brutal attacks against Ukraine on “day one” by simply turning the country over to his good friend, Vladimir Putin.

For the first time since World War II, this would legitimize a nation attacking another nation simply to seize their land, resources, and people.

It would greenlight China to do the same with Taiwan, and encourage every other tinpot dictator in the world to grab nearby territory that he wants. It would encourage war, and could very easily lead to a world war.

Abandoning Ukraine like this, along with Trump’s oft-stated preference to leave or end NATO and stop support for the UN, would lead the autocracies of the world — particularly Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea — to destroy the democracies in their sphere of influence, replacing those democracies with strongman autocracies.

The democratic experiment on this planet is only 250 years old, more or less, and this would signal a return to the way the world had been ruled for the 7,000 years prior to that: by kings, popes, mullahs, strongman warlords, and the morbidly rich.

Between Agenda 47 and Project 2025, Donald Trump and the rightwing billionaires who own the GOP have big plans for this nation, regardless of which Republican takes the White House next. They’re dead serious and far more well-funded than any of the groups that fight for and advocate democracy.

If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you.

Triple check your voter registration, especially if you live in a Red state where the voter purges have already begun, and make sure everybody you know is registered to vote.

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evil b/c pervert class action

https://www.rawstory.com/jim-jordan-2661556363/

no lnx raw 6 23

Jim Jordan leads GOP push to cripple 'fight against disinformation': report

Matthew Chapman

June 19, 2023,

Republican lawmakers are joining forces with far-right activists to attack universities and even private businesses that are investigating the spread of disinformation online — claiming that this amounts to an effort to silence conservatives on the internet, according to a report.

The New York Times posted a details of the actions they are taking on Monday.

"The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money, according to several people involved," reported Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel.

"They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise — and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election."

The House Judiciary Committee, under Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), has been leading the charge. Meanwhile, a group founded by far-right former Trump adviser Stephen Miller has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court going after the same entities.

"Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online," said the report.

"In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful."

The new push is part of a broader, years-long conspiracy theory among right-wing activists that the government and "big tech" companies are colluding to silence conservative speech on the internet. There is no evidence of any such conspiracy; in fact, research shows conservative content actually spreads more easily on Facebook and Twitter.

:{:{}:

LNX

There is no evidence of any such conspiracy; in fact, research shows conservative content actually spreads more easily on Facebook and Twitter.

---

ref nyt

bing steal no lnx

G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election

A legal campaign against universities and think tanks seeks to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics.

By Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel

June 19, 2023

On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online.

The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money,according to several people involved.

They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise— and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

“I think it’s quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director ofColumbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute,an organization that works to safeguard freedom of speech and the press.

:{:{}:

The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public. It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough.

A conservative advocacy group led by Stephen Miller, the former adviser to Mr. Trump, filed a class-action lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Louisiana that echoes many of the committee’s accusations and focuses on some of the same defendants.

:{:{}:

Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online.

In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful.

A House subcommittee was created to scrutinize what Republicans have charged is a government effort to silence conservatives. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

The committee’s chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Mr. Trump, has accused the organizations of “censorship of disfavored speech” involving issues that have galvanized the Republican Party: the policies around the Covid-19 pandemic and the integrity of the American political system, including the outcome of the 2020 election.

Much of the disinformation surrounding both issues has come from the right. Many Republicans are convinced that researchers who study disinformation have pressed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative voices.

[The Spread of Misinformation and Falsehoods

The Titanic Truthers of TikTok: On the app, long-established facts about the 1912 disaster are being newly litigated as musty rumors merge with fresh misinformation and manipulated content.

A Global Effort: A group of scholars introduced an international panel to study online misinformation, inspired by the way scientists documented the global effect of carbon emissions.

A Hub for Conspiracy Theories: The Denver airport is a magnet for tall tales inspired by the paranormal — and an experiment into whether, sometimes, institutional fabulism can just be fun.

Climate Lies: In 2021, Google said that it would stop running ads alongside content that denied climate change. But a report shows that one of its platforms, YouTube, has continued to profit from videos pushing misinformation on the topic.]

Those complaints have been fueled by Twitter’s decision under its new owner, Elon Musk, to release selected internal communications between government officials and Twitter employees. The communications show government officials urging Twitter to take action against accounts spreading disinformation but stopping short of ordering them to do, as some critics claimed.

Patrick L. Warren, an associate professor at Clemson University, said researchers at the school have provided documents to the committee, and given some staff members a short presentation. “I think most of this has been spurred by our appearance in the Twitter files, which left people with a pretty distorted sense of our mission and work,” he said.

Last year, theRepublican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration in U.S. District Court in Louisiana, arguing that government officials effectively cajoled or coerced Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms by threatening legislative changes. The judge, Terry A. Doughty, rejected a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March.

The current campaign’s focus is not government officials but rather private individuals working for universities or nongovernmental organizations. They have their own First Amendment guarantees of free speech, including their interactions with the social media companies.

The group behind the class action, America First Legal, named as defendants two researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos and Renée DiResta; a professor at the University of Washington, Kate Starbird; an executive of Graphika, Camille François; and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graham Brookie.

If the lawsuit proceeds, they could face trial and, potentially, civil damages if the accusations are upheld.

Mr. Miller, the president of America First Legal, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last month, he said the lawsuit was “striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex.”

The researchers, who have been asked by the House committee to submit emails and other records, are also defendants in the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The plaintiffs include Jill Hines, a director of Health Freedom Louisiana, an organization that has been accused of disinformation, and Jim Hoft, the founder of the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site. The court in the Western District of Louisiana has, under Judge Doughty, become a favored venue for legal challenges against the Biden administration.

The attacks use “the same argument that starts with some false premises,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, which is not a party to any of the legal action. “We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do.”

The House Judiciary Committee has focused much of its questioning on two collaborative projects. One was the Election Integrity Partnership, which Stanford and the University of Washington formed before the 2020 electionto identify attempts “to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters or delegitimize election results without evidence.” The other, also organized by Stanford, was called the Virality Project and focused on the spread of disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.

Both subjects have become political lightning rods, exposing the researchers to partisan attacks online that have become ominously personal at times.

In the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the requests for information — including all emails — have even extended to students who volunteered to work as interns for the Election Integrity Partnership.

A central premise of the committee’s investigation — and the other complaints about censorship — is that the researchers or government officials had the power or ability to shut down accounts on social media. They did not, according to former employees at Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, who said the decision to punish users who violated platform rules belonged solely to the companies.

No evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts, even when the groups flagged problematic content.

“We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules,” Mr. Hancock said.

The universities and research organizations have sought to comply with the committee’s requests, though the collection of years of emails has been a time-consuming task complicated by issues of privacy. They face mounting legal costs and questions from directors and donors about the risks raised by studying disinformation. Online attacks have also taken a toll on morale and, in some cases, scared away students.

In May, Mr. Jordan, the committee’s chairman, threatened Stanford with unspecified legal action for not complying with a previously issued subpoena, even though the university’s lawyers have been negotiating with the committee’s lawyers over how to shield students’ privacy. (Several of the students who volunteered are identified in the America First Legal lawsuit.)

The committee declined to discuss details of the investigation, including how many requests or subpoenas it has filed in total. Nor has it disclosed how it expects the inquiry to unfold — whether it would prepare a final report or make criminal referrals and, if so, when. In its statements, though, it appears to have already reached a broad conclusion.

“The Twitter files and information from private litigation show how the federal government worked with social media companies and other entities to silence disfavored speech online,” a spokesman, Russell Dye, said in a statement. “The committee is working hard to get to the bottom of this censorship to protect First Amendment rights for all Americans.”

The partisan controversy is having an effect on not only the researchers but also the social media giants.

:{:{}:

Twitter, under Mr. Musk, has made a point of lifting restrictions and restoring accounts that had been suspended, including the Gateway Pundit’s. YouTube recently announced that it would no longer ban videos that advanced “false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections.”

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation for The Times. He has worked in Washington, Moscow, Baghdad and Beijing, where he contributed to the articles that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2021. He is also the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.” @stevenleemyers • Facebook

Sheera Frenkel is a prize-winning technology reporter based in San Francisco. In 2021, she and Cecilia Kang published “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination.” @sheeraf

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singer BS 15 pp

https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/0817939326_283.pdf

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no cut paste, looks good

https://yalereview.org/article/weaponizing-reputation

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How Much Of A Lying Asshole Was The Now-Dead Denier Fred Singer? This Much Of A Lying Asshole

By this time, climate scientists were also in Singer’s sights. In early 1991, just a few years before inventing the whaling controversy, Singer had shown up at the office of oceanographer Roger Revelle, a pioneering and widely respected climate researcher with the University of California, San Diego. Singer wanted to discuss a draft paper that he’d written, and which Revelle had received months earlier and ignored. Singer argued in the paper that climate change wasn’t real, even though by 1991 this position was already contrary to the growing body of scientific evidence that it was, which included Revelle’s own climate research and findings.

At the time, Revelle was a frail 82-year-old recovering from recent triple-bypass heart surgery, and just months from the grave. But that didn’t deter Singer, who over the course of many hours talked Revelle into making some minor modifications to Singer’s draft. Singer then published the paper with Revelle listed as a co-author, not in a peer-reviewed and reputable science journal, but in an obscure magazine called Cosmos, put out by an equally obscure Washington-based social organization called the Cosmos Club. But because the article had Revelle’s name on it, it helped to keep the public doubting climate science, instead of debating what the nation needed to do to stop climate change.

Further, as Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway recount in their book Merchants of Doubt, the article served as a weapon the following year against one of Revelle's most famous protégés, then-Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore.In a 1992 article in The New Republic, climate contrarian Gregg Easterbrook cited the Cosmos article, observing that Gore hadn't mentioned in his recent climate change book, Earth in the Balance, that “before his death last year, Revelle published a paper that concludes: ‘The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.'" Singer then managed to quash an effort by another scientist to clear Revelle’s name. A Harvard post-doc named Justin Lancaster challenged Singer’s unethical behavior and the dishonest article. Singer responded in typical Singer fashion: He forced Lancaster to shut up by filing a libel lawsuit against him, and coerced Lancaster into signing a retraction.

The full details of this especially enraging chapter in Singer’s career only came to light in 2006, when Lancaster broke his silence [same yr as easterbrook 180?]

and published documents online that fully backed up his denunciations of Singer. Calling the retraction he’d been forced to sign “the worst decision I ever made in my life,” Lancaster stated that he’d been confident that he would have won the lawsuit, but backed down because of its effect on his wife. “She was terrorized by this lawsuit,” he wrote, “scared we could lose our house and all our assets.” More than any other, this series of actions in the early 1990s exemplified the Singer method: bullying and falsely discrediting the work of a dying scientist, and then protecting himself from the consequences by terrorizing the family of another scientist who called out his wicked behavior.

EDIT

https://www.drillednews.com/post/fred-singer-obituary-climate-denier

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capt 817

This is mostly about intimidating academics from speaking out about public issues, but is related to buying academic scholars and depts, eg Harvard Risk analysis and GMU/IHS incubators

see HACKADEMICS ALSO SCIENCE SUPPRESSION eg MANN & Hayhoe is both .

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this is also LEGAL suppression:

i'm sure FIRE is on the case; accred by who?

an 1 22

Baker College, one of the largest private schools in Michigan, is threatening legal action against a former faculty member who spoke to ProPublica and the Detroit Free Press for an investigation published this month.

Jacqueline Tessmer, who taught digital media for 14 years at Baker’s campus in Auburn Hills, told the news organizations that students often came to the nonprofit college unprepared to succeed and exited without degrees or good jobs but with heavy debt from loans. “Baker College has ruined a lot of people’s lives,” she said in the story.

A Jan. 19 letter to Tessmer — sent by the law firm Plunkett Cooney on behalf of Baker — demanded she retract her statements, which it described as “false and defamatory.” It did not specify what, if anything, was false. Arguing that Tessmer was in violation of a nondisparagement clausein a settlement she reached with Baker in an employment dispute, attorney Courtney L. Nichols also demanded that she “agree voluntarily to remit payment to Baker College for the damages it has suffered as a result of your violation(s), including attorney fees.” The letter did not include a dollar amount.

Since publication, Baker has not contacted either news organization to contest the validity of her statements. Before publication, the Free Press and ProPublica informed Baker that Tessmer would be quoted and shared her comments. Baker did not specifically address those quotes or Tessmer’s time at the college.

Baker’s letter to her after publication gave her seven days to respond. Tessmer said in an interview this week she stands by her comments and will not meet the college’s demands.

She said she didn’t see how it would be possible to make a retraction even if she wanted to, given that she expressed her opinion “based on what I did in service to the college” and her comments were only “a couple of sentences in a giant article.”

“I could be quiet, but is it really going to matter at this point?” she added.

The story on Baker examined the college’s low graduation rates, its aggressive marketing and the oversight of a Board of Trustees that has included former presidents of the school.

In addition to the letter to Tessmer, Baker responded to the article by emailing students, writing a letter to the editor in the Free Press, and placing a statement on its website that disparaged the story and touted the school’s achievements. Officials have defended the 111-year-old college as an affordable open enrollment school whose practices are reviewed by regulators and accreditors.

Neither Baker nor its lawyer has responded to a request for comment on the legal threat.

Tessmer’s relationship with Baker ended in a lawsuit she filed for breach of contract and retaliation. The school disputed her claims in a countersuit, and the case ended in a settlement in 2014. The letter from Baker’s lawyer also suggested that if Tessmer had spoken about the settlement, she would be in violation of it.

“This is what they do,” said Tessmer, now self-employed. “They scare. They huff and they puff, and it works a lot of the time. I mean, it’s worked on me.”

The letter to Tessmer said that if she did not comply, “Baker College will consider its available recourse.”

As of Thursday evening, Tessmer had not heard again from the law firm.

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VICTORY: Harvard dean relents, will offer fellowship to human rights leader

jan 6

510 Walnut Street, Suite 1250 Philadelphia, PA 19106

phone: 215-717-3473 Fax: 215-717-3440

thefire.org January 6, 2023

Douglas Elmendorf

Dean of Faculty

...fIRE requests that the Kennedy School immediately reinstate the original offer to Roth of a

senior fellowship with the Carr Center. Given the urgent nature of this matter, we request a

substantive response to this letter no later than the close of business on Friday, January 13,

2023.

Sincerely,

Jessie Appleby

Litigation Fellow

---

https://phys.org/news/2023-01-board-shake-ups-threats-tenure-money.html

usatoday

florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's decision to overhaul the board of trustees at a progressive public college was his latest move in a larger movement against so-called "woke" education.

"Like so many colleges and universities in America, New College of Florida has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning," Bryan Griffin, DeSantis's press secretary, told USA TODAY, attributing low student enrollment and other financial challenges to the college's "skewed focus and impractical course offerings."

The shake-up is part of a years-long effort by DeSantis and a growing contingent of conservative leaders to chip away at what they view as higher education's liberal bias. They're shepherding legislation targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and critical race theory, including bills explicitly addressing colleges through provisions that would reduce tenure. They're shaping higher education in more subtle ways, too, including through philanthropic giving.

Observers say these trends will continue into 2023 as legislative sessions kick off and key players ramp up their campaigns for national elections.

What happened at New College of Florida?

New College has a reputation as a left-leaning college. All but two of the new appointees to New College's board of trustees are prominent conservatives.

DeSantis's chief of staff has said the hope is to make New College into something "more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South."

Hillsdale is a private Christian college in Michigan that has been lauded by some on the right for championing conservative values. The college doesn't receive any federal funding, exempting it from some of the civil-rights mandates typically applied to higher education institutions.

The prospective New College trustees "are committed to refocusing the institution on academics and truth and ensuring that students are receiving a quality education," said Griffin. "The campus will become a place for learning and discourse, as it was designed to be."

New College students have said they're drawn to the school precisely because of its offerings and because its values contribute to its academic rigor, as reported by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, part of the USA TODAY Network. Among those values: building a "just, diverse, equitable and inclusive community" on campus.

In a statement, New College President Patricia Okker said she sees "tremendous opportunity for New College and I believe that our new trustees will bring fresh ideas and new perspectives. New College has a long history of embracing change, all while being true to our mission of academic excellence."

Is there a liberal bias in higher education?

College students tend to skew more liberal than the general population. In a 2020 survey of 20,000 students across 55 colleges, the most comprehensive analysis of its kind, 50% of respondents identified as liberal, versus 26% as conservative. Roughly a quarter of Americans generally say they're liberal.

However, just 19% of Gen-Z adults—the group of people most likely to attend four-year colleges now—identify with the right, suggesting there are more conservatives on college campuses than among their age group as a whole.

"Most colleges and universities are not extreme," said Samuel Abrams, a visiting scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and politics professor at Sarah Lawrence, a liberal arts college in New York that is often ranked as one of the country's most liberal colleges. With the exception of some liberal-arts schools, particularly in the Northeast, "students are pretty centrist."

Abrams' research suggests administrators and other leaders—from department heads to dorm staff—are the ones driving colleges' leftward shift. "We have undergrads who are a little bit more liberal than the average American, we have faculty who are understandably liberal but not crazy, as well as some conservatives," Abrams said. "And then you have administrators who are extremely liberal activist progressives."

Students continue to prize free speech rights on campus but increasingly feel those rights are being trampled upon, according to 2022 polling data from the Knight Foundation and Ipsos. The percentage of students who say speech rights are secure has dropped every year since the survey first asked the question in 2016.

Just last week, news broke that Harvard—where roughly eight in 10 faculty identify as liberal—had rescinded a fellowship offer to Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch. Roth is a prominent critic of Israel, which his organization has regularly accused of war crimes against Palestinians.

Critics are blaming the decision on pro-Israel bias within Harvard leadership and describing it as yet another example of the ways in which colleges—particularly elite ones—police thought.

Board shake-up part of larger movement against CRT, DEI

Since 2021, lawmakers in dozens of states have introduced legislation restricting lessons on race and systemic discrimination—often described as critical race theory—as well as on sexuality and gender identity.

For the most part, the bills have centered on K-12 schools. Increasingly, though, the legislation has focused on higher education. Thirty-nine percent of bills in 2022 targeted higher ed, compared with 30% in 2021, according to an analysis last year by PEN America, a free speech and literacy organization.

Another trend: Legislation targeting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives—for example, DeSantis's "Stop W.O.K.E. Act," whose higher education provisions are on hold for now because of a lawsuit. DeSantis is appealing.

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and one of the four prominent conservatives appointed by DeSantis to the New College board of trustees, has been at the forefront of the anti-CRT, anti-DEI movement. He and one of the other new appointees—Matthew Spalding, a dean and professor at Hillsdale—also played key roles in the Stop W.O.K.E. act's creation.

Rufo, through his chief of staff, said he would only consent to an interview if the reporter removed her pronouns from her email signature for 90 days. USA TODAY rejected the request and reiterated its desire for an interview but did not hear back. People state pronouns in email signatures for a variety of reasons, including to avoid being misgendered by people with whom they communicate.

"I was honored to be appointed to this board, along with friends and colleagues from the conservative movement," Rufo wrote in a blog post Thursday. "Governor DeSantis has tasked us with something that has never been done: institutional recapture. If we are successful, the effort can serve as a model for other states."

Is New College replacing 'one set of extremism with another'?

Mark Bauerlein, a fellow conservative and recent appointee to New College's board, distanced himself from Rufo, however, saying he'll take a different approach.

"I don't have goals in mind," the Emory University English professor emeritus said, stressing the DeSantis administration hasn't given him any policy prescriptions and he doesn't have an agenda for the role. Bauerlein said he'll start by listening and getting "a feel for the atmosphere of the place."

While "the leftward tilt (in higher education) has certainly happened, it's not a problem if we find that academic standards are being maintained—if we find that the ideals of inquiry and discussion and peer review are held to a good level of rigor," he said.

Bauerlein, who has written about and helped the state of Florida develop K-12 standards, said one of his first tasks might be to compare student projects from the 1990s and more recent work to assess whether "there is some deterioration, whether the standards significantly lower quality than before." He's also curious as to why so many students—close to 70%—are female, and whether DEI efforts are crossing the line.

While having little prior knowledge about the college and living in another state, he's prepared for the host of issues he may have to chime in on, from facilities and athletic programs to administrator salaries and contracts.

"I think that the 'transformation' may be a lot slower and less striking than people expect," Bauerlein said.

USA TODAY reached out to the other new appointees but didn't receive responses.

In a statement, Hillsdale's 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."

AEI's Abrams emphasized the importance of a cautionary approach. "What Florida has to do very carefully is they can't swing too far in the other direction," he said. "Florida needs to make sure that they showcase how viewpoint diversity works. ... We don't want to replace one set of extremism with another."

Another target of conservatives: Academic tenure

In addition to targeting DEI, DeSantis's Stop W.O.K.E Act aims to weaken tenure protections on the grounds that academics need to be held accountable for promoting critical race theory.

Reports indicate some professors in Florida adjusted or altogether removed classes in response to the law.

Tenure,which protects professors from being fired except in extreme circumstances, has long been in decline and for many reasons, including financial ones, said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors. But "what we're seeing right now is really a war," and the renewed focus on tenure by "right-wing conservatives" is one aspect of it, she said.

Proposals to erode or eliminate tenure has come up recently in roughly half a dozen states, she said, primarily targeting professors who teach about race and racism, equity and justice, and gender studies.

"Tenure is what protects academic freedom for faculty in higher education—it's necessary so faculty can promote the free and vigorous open exchange of ideas ... without fear of being fired," Mulvey said. "Trying to take away tenure from faculty is an age-old strategy from the totalitarian playbook to attack education to stop students from learning ideas the state disagrees with."

Pressure could continue to mount this year as more states are expected to consider or implement tenure restrictions, according to reporting by the Associated Press. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, for example, has vowed to revoke tenure from professors who teach critical race theory.

"The larger strategy is to create divisions ... and then exploiting those divisions in order to win elections and build power," Mulvey said. "It's cynical, it's disingenuous, and the consequences for higher education and democracy are really devastating."

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an 1 23 mia brett

As I explained for the Editorial Board, CRT is a sociolegal framework to analyze ways in which our legal system perpetuates racism.

It’s not anti-white people.

It’s not about making white people feel guilty.

It won’t hurt white people or bring about white genocide.

Yet Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others are treating CRT as it were a major threat to American life. Not satisfied with controlling k-12 education, many Republicans are now seeking to make the public university system an arm of government control in order to outlaw CRT as well as violate trans people’s rights.

I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this is directly out of Nazi laws passed in 1933. Though if this Republican effort is successful, you might not be able to learn things like that anymore.

Ridiculous but effective

In 1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor, the Nazi party took power in Germany and got down to the business of passing laws to enforce political narratives and other ways of thinking.

Two laws were passed in 1933 that successfully targeted German universities. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banned “non-aryans” (with a few exceptions) from civil service positions that included university professors.

The Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities set strict limitations on the number of Jewish students permitted to attend public and private schools and universities in Germany.

The fascist control of education didn’t stop there. It included reforms to promote German art, philosophy and even “Aryanphysics.” Jewish intellectualism and works portraying an “un-German spirit” were purged. Freud, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka and hundreds of modernist or expressionist artists were deemed decedent, depraved, deviant and degenerate.

Einstein and his theory of relativity represented the Jewish subversion of physics and was driven out of the academy. Only pure German thinkers and early Greek and Roman art unsullied by Jewish influence could be taught in German universities.

Such ridiculous responses to intellectual and artistic pursuits was ridiculous then and its ridiculous now. Relativity and modernism weren’t perversions of science and art anymore than CRT and African American history are undermining the United States.

Though ridiculous, these arguments work.

Fascist control of the academy absolutely serves to perpetuate nationalist propaganda and influence the citizenry to be angry and uninformed in ways that serve the fascist government.

If you know anything about history or racism, DeSantis sounds unhinged, but his plan is working. Twenty-eight university presidents have promised to stop teaching undesirable subjects.

Understanding, not belief

While DeSantis’ Stop Woke Act, which restricts race-related education in workplaces, schools and colleges, has been temporarily blocked by the courts, the governor has found a new way to restrict academic freedom in Florida’s universities.

DeSantis has asked for data on all courses involving race, and all resources spent on CRT or DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

He and supporters of the anti-CRT panic claim critical race theory is a “trendy” ideology that teaches people to feel guilt or shame based on their race. (It doesn’t – CRT is about systemic injustice, not individual guilt). Therefore, he justifies this attempt at fascist control in universities by claiming students need to be protected from dangerous teachings on race. (Or, really, any teaching on race, as he is also banning AP African American Studies in high school.)

Fearing that DeSantis will go through their resources with a fine-toothed comb, 28 presidents of Florida state universities and community colleges have agreed to eliminate CRT education.

Technically, their statement regarded teaching “that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality.”

Thing is, I don’t know of any concept taught in college that compels belief. Biology teachers will happily teach evolution to creationists as long as those students engage with the material in good faith and answer the questions correctly, according to evolution.

Similarly, CRT isn’t something one “believes” in.

It’s an analytical framework – a tool. I suppose if you don’t “believe” racism exists or that racism is a systemic issue, it’s unlikely you’ll agree with CRT, useful analytical framework or not.

But again – belief not required to do well in class. I’ve taught CRT in many classes and I have no idea what my students believe in at the end of the semester. I only know what they understand.

A request for data on trans healthcare at universities has also been submitted by DeSantis. It’s not clear what such information could be used for, but I think we can agree it won’t be good.

It’s so reminiscent of Nazi Germany that it’s hard to believe republicans aren’t purposefully following a Nazi playbook.

A chilling erosion

In 1919, a Jewish doctor opened the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. Dr. Hirschfeld amassed a huge collection of books on gender and sexuality. In 1930, the first modern gender reassignment surgery was performed there. In 1933, Nazis destroyed the clinic and burned the books inside, destroying an immense amount of important research on gender non-conforming and gay people.

Hirschfeld’s likeness was reproduced in Nazi propaganda. Trans and gay people were sent to concentration camps along with Jews and Romani for the crime of polluting the Aryan race.

Anti-CRT bills targeting universities have been passed in Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Dakota and Idaho.Most of these laws prohibit requiring that students “believe” in CRT or the listed divisive concepts which shouldn’t be a problem because university professors don’t care what their students believe.

But these bills are a chilling erosion of academic freedom and a huge step toward fascist academic control in the service of right-wing narratives. While it’s still legal to teach history, remember where such efforts have led and take them seriously.

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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....

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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

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Here's how Floridians are defying Ron DeSantis' Jim Crow voter ... ›

Florida's Ron DeSantis wages war on the CDC - Alternet.org ›

Ron DeSantis signs 'outrageous and blatantly unconstitutional' bill ... ›

Iran sentences French academic to 5 years: lawyer Agence france

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.

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. Photograph: PR handout

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!

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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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https://www.alternet.org/professor-targeted-right-wingers-teaching-course-white-racism

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Professor Targeted by Right Wingers for Teaching Course on 'White Racism'

Ted Thornhill taught a class on the history of racism — and was attacked by racists: “I didn’t cede any ground”

By Chauncey DeVega / Salon June 1, 2018,

The 2017 academic year has just ended at most colleges and universities. The students who have graduated are planning their next steps. Other students are working to pay for next year's tuition bill. Lucky students are able to vacation and enjoy a few months of rest before the pressures of life become too heavy again.

College professors and other instructors are taking the time to do the writing and research that most have to put aside during the school year to attend to the demands of teaching and navigating the bureaucracy that comes with a career in higher education. Like many students, those underpaid college instructors who do not have year-long contracts and are employed on an "as needed" contingent basis, are working during the summer to survive those long months without a paycheck as well as subsidize what they hope will be a job in the next school year. There are other college professors who have seen those routines and rituals greatly disrupted.

The American right has been waging a war against American higher education for decades. With the election of Donald Trump it seems to have reached a new crescendo: Across the United States faculty members who have been deemed too "liberal" have been targeted by right-wing organizations for harassment and eventual firing. This war on academic freedom is part of a larger campaign against critical thinking in defense of the anti-intellectualism that has typified American conservatism since at least the 1950s -- and in service of a neoliberal model of education and society where citizens are to be "productive" drones rather than engaged citizens.

Ted Thornhill is one of many educators who has felt the weight of Trumpism and the right-wing movement that is fighting to remake American education in its own image come crashing down upon him.

Thornhill is a professor of sociology at Florida Gulf Coast University. Last January he offered a course entitled "White Racism." The reaction to this course was immediate: his life was threatened, armed guards had to be posted outside his classroom, the right-wing media led by Fox News mobilized its public against him, he was the target of a coordinated harassment campaign, and right-wing student activists, including white supremacists, schemed to undermine his authority as a scholar with the ultimate goal being the termination of his employment.

I recently spoke with Professor Thornhill about the perils of teaching courses about race in the era of resurgent white backlash, academic freedom, truth-telling and the color line, and the new McCarthyism that is targeting America's teachers and professors. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

There is a right-wing network of activists, interest groups, politicians and media figures who are trying to remake American education in radical ways. Part of their strategy is to harass and force out of their jobs any educator who defies your orthodoxy. You experienced this personally. What transpired when you taught your course on white racism?

I’ve been teaching courses on racial stratification for about a decade. When it was time to come up with my list of classes that I would teach in the spring, I knew I wanted to teach a course on that topic. I wanted a title for the course that would capture the subject matter. Thus, I thought that the term "white racism" was an appropriate one. I knew that some white folks would get upset by it, but I can't concern myself with them. We look to engage students, pique their interests. I wanted them to be excited and take the course. Things got out of control because student Republican groups and libertarian groups went online and used Facebook to say that I was racist against white folks. These students then looped in Fox News and a local NBC affiliate. Then other right-wing reactionary media groups got involved back in October and November and it grew from there.

The producer for Fox News' Tucker Carlson tried to get me on his show four separate times and I’ve ignored them. I think what had these racist conservatives going apoplectic was the fact that I would not apologize or say that maybe I should have moderated my tone and the title a bit. I didn’t cede any ground to them. I think they took offense from that, and then got even more upset. I don’t have nothing to concede. If you’re not a white racist then you shouldn’t be concerned with the title of the course.

What is their logic, in terms of saying you should apologize or that the title of the class is racist?

Everything from these folks is predicated on a belief that our society is "post-racial."They all think that we’ve eclipsed their point where race matters, except in some exceptional cases where people are wearing the hoods and the robes. Moreover, they wanted to silence me. They believe the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction now that white people -- white conservatives in particular -- are being oppressed.

Some people have actually asked me, "Why didn't you just title the course 'Institutional Racism'?" They actually believe that institutional racism impacts them. They think affirmative action is actually an example of institutional racism negatively affecting the life chances of whites. I actually think that these folks are delusional. It’s either they are delusional or they are indifferent. When you know the data the truth is screaming at you. These white folks know what the history of this country is. I think they derive pleasure from it.

How have the university administration, as well as your department chair and fellow faculty members, responded to all of this?

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the strong support I’ve received from the president of the institution.Because it’s certainly the case that faculty members who were under assault by these right-wing folks are often thrown under the bus, or they release these weak, tepid statements intended to reaffirm the institution's commitments to "diversity," "inclusivity," "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" -- all that kind of stuff.

I’m pleased that the president of my university is respecting and protecting my academic freedom. There have been some folks at the institution, within the power structure let’s say, who have not been antagonistic. But they’ve been a bit reticent about the title of the course.

Why is the very statement of the fact that white racism has in many ways defined modernity so provocative?

I think it’s predicated on their way of producing these false equivalencies. Many people, especially those who are harassing professors like myself, believe that racism, first of all, is not a structural phenomenon. It’s something that is limited to the level of thoughts and beliefs and attitudes. By me titling the course "White Racism," I’m being very blunt in making a claim that you white folks and your ancestors and your white-controlled institutions are responsible for the gross differences and social outcomes between whites and folks of color. That’s just too direct for them to stomach.

One of the most salient things that I’ve learned so far from this experience is that we’ve had these courses called "Systemic Racism" and "Race and Class in American Culture" and "Race and Ethnic Relations" in sociology and other disciplines for a long time. It must be the case that these people who are protesting my class must be thinking that those courses were not focused on systemic racism and that they were simply focusing on this idea that we are all racially prejudiced. "You’re bad, I’m bad. We should all just be kind to one another and the world would be a better place."

I didn’t realize how deeply they believed that, because such people and groups are not attacking all these other courses. They’re going after courses which are explicitly about race. They’re going after courses which examine topics such as the abolition of whiteness, the problem of whiteness or white racism.

One of the ways white privilege works is through how invisible and normal it is for white folks. White privilege also takes the form of interpersonal and structural violence against nonwhites. To actually name a thing for what it is -- that's simply too psychologically and emotionally disruptive for many white folks, especially those deeply invested in white privilege.

I think that is the case. You've got to be able to name something before you can fight it. They know that, because these folks -- despite the fact that I think that they are incorrect on understanding racial matters -- do still have some brain cells operating. They’re sophisticated enough to know that these types of courses represent a possibility for other people to be persuaded by the empirical evidence which shows the continuing significance of race and racism globally. That is why they have to use right-wing, guerrilla-style tactics to try to shut us down.

Let me offer up a very basic question you might have heard from these people: Shouldn't we stop talking about race to get past racism?

You can't address a problem without talking about it. There are processes and practices and laws and traditions and customs that have been in place for generations, and whose negative effects continue to this day. By refusing to talk about race and racism, or even to collect data, they want to ignore reality.

Imagine the audacity and the arrogance necessary for these individuals to think that other folks should silence themselves and not communicate about the racial problems in this society. I don’t have a lot of patience for that.

What are some basic concepts and theories that people who study the color line in a serious way understand and take for granted that may be challenging for students and the general public?

White supremacy. Whenever I try to explain that concept to folks, they immediately go to the Klan and the neo-Nazis and the skinheads. It’s so clear to me that we have this structural system in place and all these elements of the system work together -- that there’s a logic to it. White supremacy has permeated all aspects of society within formal organizations, within the minds of people, within belief systems and within ideologies that circulate among us.

It seems so clear. People who are in denial about this reality will say or think things like, "How are you saying that there’s a system in place? We have laws that say you can't discriminate." I respond that we also have laws that say you can't drive over the speed limit and text people while you drive and things of that nature, but it still happens. I think it’s hard for them to understand the structural and systemic nature of racism. Even when I show them the data, it’s just really hard for a lot of white students and some confused students of color. That’s the one concept that I seem to have difficulty conveying.

They have a caricature of the Klan and Nazis in their heads but they don’t want to look in the mirror and ask themselves, "How am I reproducing these power relationships? How do I benefit from the system?" Because then they have to ask hard questions about their own human decency, morality and behavior.

I think for some it calls into question, "Am I a good person? Am I a good white person?" Well, you might be good, but good people can be complicit too. That’s the part they don’t like. They just don’t like the idea that they could be complicit in the system, and they don’t believe they have any animus in their heart. They don’t see how they can be contributing to the maintenance of white supremacy. Another concept that’s difficult for many white folks, and others, is the myth of meritocracy. They get stupefied: "What do you mean? People achieve things because they work hard!" It’s connected because they simply can't fathom that we have a system where people work hard and don’t make it. That’s another one that’s really challenging for many people to reconcile.

When you were putting together the syllabus for this course on white racism, what was the general outline and what were some of the high points?

In all my syllabi I have an introduction that is more detailed than the typical course description. There I offer a narrative about the origins of the United States as a white supremacist society. It is axiomatic. We are not going to debate about whether this nation’s history actually happened or not. I just don’t go there. Then the first week of class we talk about the race concept itself and how race is a biological myth. Race is a social construction. It is a political, social and cultural idea. But it is not biologically real. Race is real in its social consequences.

From there we move on to discussing different sociological theories of racism, racial ideologies and social institutions. We also talk about the concept of "colorism" in the class. Then at the end of the semester, we have time to actually discuss some strategies that students and individuals in general can use to push back against and challenge white supremacy and white racism.

What’s the one lecture or conversation you’re really excited about?

I get really excited when we talk about colorblind ideology. Yes there is a resurgence of these overt white racist hate groups. But they are not the principal mechanism through which folks of color have their life chances constrained, limited, truncated and reduced. It actually is these seemingly nonracial processes and practices and traditions that do that work. It is not only conservatives but also well-meaning, tender-hearted white liberals who reproduce those outcomes.

As someone who felt the weight of the Trump era bearing down on him, how do you think he was able to get elected president of the United States?

I think an element of it was how people on the left thought it was so inevitable that Hillary would win. They didn’t even go to the polls.

There’s certainly this element of the white working class being resentful. Mexicans are coming to take their jobs. Muslims are coming and taking over and we’re going to have sharia law all over the country. That the gains of the civil rights movement have gone too far and the opportunities for the everyday white working Joe and Jane have gone away. They can't make it. Another element was an incorrect belief that clearly people are too intelligent to vote for Donald Trump.

This is a really racist country. These folks voted for him because they thought that he would work for them and make their lives better. Trump either felt the pulse or had people advising him who had the pulse of these groups. He spoke in a way that was attractive to his base. Somehow they forgot the fact that this guy was a billionaire, has nothing to do with them and has no relationship to them except that their skin color is the same.

Given everything that’s happened, are you at all hopeful about America’s future? What are you concerned about?

I’m a follower of the late Derrick Bell’s work. I’m not particularly hopeful with regard to racial progress in our lifetime. I think things can get better than they are now. The problems we have can change, but it will be a matter of degree. I think racial contestation will persist. Perhaps during this demographic transition that the census is forecasting, some coalitions could be formed among communities of color that are sometimes at odds, and also with anti-racist whites. There’s a possibility. But I don’t see that happening for decades and decades.

The one thing on a personal level that encouraged me, since I’m so negative and pessimistic generally speaking, is the positive response I got from people via email after all this went down. Yes, I was getting all these threats and hate mail. But I also got a lot of positive emails of encouragement and support from probably a couple hundred people from all over the country and outside the U.S.. That hit me in a way emotionally that I don’t usually get touched. That has prompted me to perhaps tamper some of my pessimism and my cynicism. But it is still there.

Maybe there’s a little bit of hope for me if I see some changes. Perhaps the 2018 election will give me a little bit of hope. Then we’ll at least have an opportunity to get some progress in some more positive directions. That’s the best hope that I have right now.

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show

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

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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.

The Paris Lawyer Who Gives Google Nightmares

ALL TECH CONSIDERED

The Paris Lawyer Who Gives Google Nightmares

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.

Professor Albert Ponce received death threats after giving a talk on white supremacy in the United States.

Anya Kamenetz/NPR

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.

Article continues after sponsorship

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.

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

LAW

States Consider Legislation To Protect Free Speech On Campus

---

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/does-right-want-do-away-humanities-altogether

Since the turn of the 20th century, the University of Wisconsin has embarked on a "search for truth" in order to "serve and stimulate society." This philosophy is known as the Wisconsin Idea, and it's literally written into the state code. (The progressive governor and senator Robert M. La Follette Sr.was among its greatest champions). During budget negotiations in 2015, however, Republican Governor Scott Walker attempted to purge this language from the university's mission statement. No longer would the school "improve the human condition"; instead it would simply "meet the state's workforce needs."

That effort failed amid a stiff backlash from Democratic officials and the public, but a new proposal could help realize Walker's anti-enlightenment vision. According to the Washington Post, the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point is considering eliminating 13 majors from the humanities and social sciences. In their place, the university would provide programs offering "clear career pathways," believing they might help remedy a $4.5 million deficit.

"Students and faculty members have reacted with surprise and concern to the news, which is being portrayed by the school’s administration as a path to regain enrollment and provide new opportunities to students," the Post's Valerie Strauss reports. "Critics see something else: a waning commitment to liberal arts education and a chance to lay off faculty under new rules that weakened tenure."

If UWSP truly wants to prepare its students for the workforce, eliminating concentrations like English, history and philosophy seems ill-advised. As co-authors Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson argue in their new book, "Cents and Sensibility," an education in humanities may provide the greatest form of job security in an increasingly automated world. Schapiro laid out his case in a recent interview with AlterNet:

Human capital skills really pay off in the labor force. If you’re worried about artificial intelligence, automation, robotics, outsourcing to cheaper providers in Hyderabad or other places, you’d better be able to understand people. I’m a labor economist and I talk about forecasting what human capital skills are going to pay off in 10 years. Narrow technical training is becoming rapidly less valued in the marketplace. Understanding people, being culturally sensitive—those are the things that are going to keep you employed. Having only narrow technical skills is just a recipe to be outsourced.

Proposals like the University of Wisconsin's are just one component of a much larger conservative project to radically reimagine American higher education. A new bill wending its way through the halls of Congress would not only allow religious universities to prohibit same-sex relationships but let student groups discriminate against classmates of another faith. If that weren't sufficiently odious, the legislation would also prevent universities from punishing fraternities and sororities that refuse to admit members of the opposite sex.

"The push away from liberal arts and toward workplace skills is championed by conservatives who see many four-year colleges and universities as politically correct institutions that graduate too many students without practical job skills—but with liberal political views," notes the Post's Strauss.

UWSP students rallied Wednesday at a demonstration called "Save Our Majors." The school's full statement can be read here.

fail drexel

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

fsm

INTERVIEWS FRESH AIR

Student 'Subversives' And The FBI's 'Dirty Tricks'

August 16, 201310:28 AM ET

subversives: bk

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=212381996

...

ROSENFELD: I should explain. I had some files that I was able to show Mario before he passed away in '96, but most of the files I got were after he passed away. But some of the first files I got showed that the FBI had investigated the Free Speech Movement and attempted to discredit it, and when I showed these to Mario Savio, he was quite shocked. He said: Well, we always figured that the FBI was spying on us, but we never suspected that they would attempt to disrupt us.

I also obtained a lot of FBI files concerning the president of the university, Clark Kerr, and when I met with Clark Kerr and showed him some of his FBI files, he was quite astonished that the FBI had tried to get him fired from his job as university president.

The documents showed that J. Edgar Hoover had ordered agents to leak information to members of the board of regents in an effort to convince them that Clark Kerr was not being tough enough on student protesters and that he had to be fired.

GROSS: Clark Kerr is such an interesting character in your book because as the president of the university, he felt that he did a lot to open up the campus to more speech. He allowed communists to speak on campus. He refused to punish people for dissident speech. But to the student activists, he was the establishment, who was not allowing them, like, sufficient free speech on campus, but to the FBI and to Governor Reagan, he just wasn't tough enough.

So he lost on all sides, like, to the left and to the right, everyone was against him.

ROSENFELD: Clark Kerr was the man in the middle, and he had done so much for the university. He is one of the towering figures in American higher education. He expanded the university, and he also developed the master plan for higher education, the system of colleges that's now used not only around the country but all over the world.

He also opened the campus to free speech in many ways, but when the student movement in the early '60s began, he was taken by surprise. He didn't expect the students to be as aggressive as they were, and he was not quick enough to more fully open the campus.

The Free Speech Movement was ultimately successful. It reversed the rule against students engaging in political activity on campus. Kerr later said he regretted that he had not acted more swiftly to lift that rule.

GROSS: You write about what you learn from the Freedom of Information Act files, about how Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor of California, worked with the FBI to get the University of California at Berkeley President Clark Kerr removed from office. What did Reagan, with the FBI, do?

ROSENFELD: The FBI had been very frustrated with Clark Kerr for a long time. Hoover was very upset when Clark Kerr began to liberalize rules on political activities on campus. He saw Kerr as being too soft on protesters and maybe even a dangerous subversive himself. He tried to get Governor Pat Brown to fire Clark Kerr by secretly giving Pat Brown FBI reports about student protesters, and Pat Brown refused to that. He was a staunch ally of Clark Kerr's.

So when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1966, after a campaign in which he made the protests at Berkeley one of his top issues, Hoover welcomed Reagan as a breath of fresh air and worked with him to stifle student protesters and to remove Clark Kerr from the presidency of the university.

A few days after Ronald Reagan took office, he phoned the FBI, and he requested a secret briefing about student protesters, about liberal members of the board of regents and about Clark Kerr. A few weeks later, at the first board of regents meeting attended by Reagan, Reagan's board of regents fired Clark Kerr as one of its first acts.

GROSS: So this was not the first time that Ronald Reagan had worked with the FBI. Their relationship dated back to when Ronald Reagan was an actor. And you say that you learned from the Freedom of Information Act files that you got that Ronald Reagan informed on fellow actors far more than has been known, or at least more than has been known. I don't want to overstate it.

ROSENFELD: Yes, that's correct. Starting in Hollywood in the 1940s, Ronald Reagan developed a special relationship with the FBI. He became an FBI informer, reporting other actors whom he suspected of subversive activities, and later when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, the FBI had wide access to the Guild's information. At one point, the Guild turned over information on 54 actors it was investigating as possible subversives.

The FBI viewed Reagan as an extremely cooperative source in Hollywood. As a result of this, Hoover repaid him with personal and political favors later.

GROSS: And what's an example of one of those favors?

ROSENFELD: The FBI did a personal and political favor for Ronald Reagan in 1965. FBI agents at the time were investigating the Bonanno crime organization. Joe Bananas, as he was known, was one of the most notorious mobsters in America and had recently moved to Arizona.

FBI agents in Phoenix were investigating him when they discovered that Joe Bananas' son, Joseph Jr., was hanging out with Michael Reagan, who was the adopted son of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, and they reported this to headquarters.

The agents proposed that they should interview Ronald Reagan to see if he had learned anything about the Bonannos through his son. This investigation, after all, was a top priority. But Hoover interceded. He ordered them not to interview Ronald Reagan, and he instead told the agents to warn Ronald Reagan that his son was consorting with the son of Joe Bananas.

Ronald Reagan was very grateful for this.

GROSS: You write that, you know, when Ronald Reagan was rising politically, there were parts of his past that could have been considered questionable because as governor, this meant, you know, overseeing the University of California system, which included, you know, atomic research laboratories and atomic research data. And so that's an important security position.

And there were a couple of things in Reagan's past that the FBI might have been concerned about if it was somebody other than Ronald Reagan. Do you want to discuss that?

ROSENFELD: One of the interesting themes that emerged in reviewing all these FBI documents was how J. Edgar Hoover's FBI used information. In the case of Clark Kerr, at one point he was a candidate to be secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.

So the FBI did a background report, and Hoover used this as a pretext to send President Lyndon Johnson a report loaded with allegations that Kerr had associated with various subversives, even though the FBI had already investigated these allegations and knew that they were untrue. And this all comes out in the documents.

In contrast, when Ronald Reagan became governor, he had to undergo a similar background check because as governor, he would be a member of the board of regents and have oversight of the university's nuclear laboratories. During this investigation, the FBI went out of its way to help Ronald Reagan.

When Ronald Reagan filled out his personnel security questionnaire as part of this investigation, he failed to list a number of organizations that he was involved in, in Hollywood in the '40s, organizations that had been designated by the federal government as being subversive.

Normally, this would send up red flags with the FBI. It would be seen as a serious omission. But in Ronald Reagan's case, the FBI did not report that he had failed to include these organizations.

DAVIES: Seth Rosenfeld's book "Subversives" is now out in paperback. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're listening to Terry's interview recorded last year with journalist Seth Rosenfeld. His book "Subversives: How the - The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power" is now out in paperback.

GROSS: Did you learn anything about how the relationship between the FBI and Ronald Reagan developed after Ronald Reagan became president?

ROSENFELD: Ronald Reagan's connection to the FBI begins in Hollywood in the late '40s. This was a time in his life when he was having trouble with his film career, his marriage was falling apart and his faith in the Democratic politics of his father were beginning to falter.

It was about - right about this time - that he was first approached by the FBI and told that communists were trying to take over Hollywood. This greatly affected Reagan. As he wrote in his memoir, the FBI agents opened his eyes to a good many things. He made fighting communism his main cause. He became an FBI informer. He supported the FBI publicly in speeches he gave and in return the FBI did certain personal and political favors for him.

One of the arguments in my book is that Reagan's secret relationship with the FBI had a profound impact on his political development. And later as president he goes on to stare down the Soviet Union.

GROSS: So the information that's in your book "Subversives" and that you've been sharing with us today, this is a result of five Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and 30 years of research on your part. Why did it take five lawsuits to get the files released?

ROSENFELD: That's a good question.

(LAUGHTER)

ROSENFELD: I first got interested in the subject when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in the late '70s. I was a writer for the Daily Californian student newspaper. The Daily Cal had requested some FBI files on Berkeley under the Freedom of Information Act. So I looked at those files and I wrote a story about the FBI spying on the Free Speech Movement and on the Vietnam Day Committee.

They were published back in 1982. But I realized there was far more to the FBI's activities on campus. So I submitted a much larger Freedom of Information Act request. I figured I would get the files in maybe a year or so and write the story and go on to the next project. I had no idea that I was embarking on what would become a 31-year legal odyssey.

---

maybe just knee jerk cya boilerplate?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/28/a-dartmouth-antifa-expert-was-disavowed-by-his-college-president-for-supporting-violent-protest-angering-many-faculty/

mark, occupy , lectuerer campus reform

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/28/a-dartmouth-antifa-expert-was-disavowed-by-his-college-president-for-supporting-violent-protest-angering-many-faculty/

mark, occupy , lectuerer campus reform

A Dartmouth antifa expert was disavowed by his college president for ‘supporting violent protest,’ angering many faculty

By Derek Hawkins August 29

Mark Bray, who teaches at Dartmouth. (Screen grab via C-SPAN)

Dartmouth College lecturer Mark Bray has gone from a relatively unknown academic to a sought-after news commentator in the short time since white supremacists clashed with counterprotesters at the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.

Bray is the author of a new book on antifa, the far-left activist movement whose members advocate using any means necessary, including violence, to combat white supremacy. In the span of just a couple of weeks, dozens of national news outlets have turned to him to help explain the movement as debate has raged over how the country should deal with a rising tide of violent racism.

[Black-clad antifa members attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley]

Many of Bray’s colleagues have celebrated his foray into the national spotlight, where his scholarly work in political radicalism has landed him prime-time interviews on NBC and NPR.

But Dartmouth officials are unsettled. Bray has made no secret about his belief that violence is, in some circumstances, justified. In turn, the university has sought to distance itself from him.

During an appearance on “Meet the Press” last week, Bray argued that “when pushed, self-defense is a legitimate response to white supremacist and neo-Nazi violence.”

“We’ve tried ignoring neo-Nazis in the past. We’ve seen how that turned out in the ’20s and ’30s,” Bray told host Chuck Todd. “A lot of people are under attack, and sometimes they need to be able to defend themselves. It’s a privileged position to say you never have to defend yourself from these kinds of monsters.”

Play Video 1:58

How some 'antifa' protesters are using black bloc tactics

0:00

Black bloc tactics are used by "antifascist action" or "antifa" protesters. Here's what that means. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

The conservative site Campus Reform, which purports to expose political correctness and “liberal bias,” seized on the interview, saying Bray had “endorsed antifa’s violent protest tactics.” The Daily Caller and Breitbart News ran similar articles soon after.

In response, Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon repudiated Bray in a statement, saying he was “supporting violent protest.”

“As an institution, we condemn anything but civil discourse in the exchange of ideas,” Hanlon said. “The endorsement of violence in any form is contrary to Dartmouth values.”

Now, Bray’s colleagues are coming to his defense. More than 100 faculty members at Dartmouth have signed a letter calling on the president to retract the statement, as the Chronicle of Higher Education reported Monday. They said Dartmouth officials issued the statement without consulting Bray first and allowed his critics in the media to distort his remarks. Bray subsequently received death threats, they said.

“Professor Bray was exposed to violent threats, without so much as a basic effort even to warn him that the College intended to endorse the mischaracterization of his position and the implied attack on his scholarly standing by making clear he had no institutional support,” the letter read.

Bray’s biography page says he is a historian of human rights, terrorism and political radicalism in Modern Europe. He received his PhD from Rutgers University last year and is currently a visiting scholar at the Gender Research Institute at Dartmouth. His new book, “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” traces the history of antifa to the 1920s and offers a road map for putting the movement’s principles into practice.

In their letter, Bray’s colleagues said that Dartmouth officials effectively threw him under the bus when they responded to Campus Reform’s piece. They argued that Bray had not called for violent protest but noted that normal channels such as public debate and electoral politics had not thwarted fascism historically. Nothing in his remarks violated Dartmouth’s free speech and academic freedom policies, they said.

“By submitting the statement to such a site,” the letter read, “the College has placed Professor Bray and his family in Hanover in real danger, as well as undermining his professional reputation.”

It continued: “We have watched with gratitude as our junior colleague Mark Bray, on the strength of his historical scholarship, has become the national expert on a subject that is suddenly, terribly urgent: the twentieth-century history of fascism and anti-fascism, in Europe and, more recently, the United States.”

“This is, of course, the kind of public recognition of Dartmouth scholarship that is celebrated in most situations,” the Dartmouth faculty members wrote. “Instead, in this case, Professor Bray has been disavowed by Dartmouth at the request of a right-wing organization, Campus Reform.”

The letter called on Dartmouth officials to retract the statement, publicly apologize to Bray and reconsider how they will react when a similar situation arises again.

A representative from Dartmouth didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment Monday night.

Bray told the Chronicle of Higher Education that he had indeed received death threats via email and on Twitter, and said he had not been contacted by Dartmouth’s president.

The letter showed, he said, “that there are a lot of faculty who support my academic freedom and are upset with the president issuing his statement, without, at the very least, checking in with me and my department to clarify my comments.”

Antifa’s numbers are almost impossible to determine because the movement is decentralized and leaderless, but its activities have surged since President Trump’s inauguration, when activists clad head-to-toe in black destroyed property in Washington and other cities. The general philosophy of the movement is that some right-wing extremists are so dangerous that it is acceptable to use violence to stop them.

In recent months, antifa members have become a fixture at political demonstrations across the country, where they’ve battled white supremacists and other right-wing protesters in streets and public squares.

Play Video 0:48

Berkeley demonstrations turn violent

Left-wing counterprotesters clashed with right-wing protesters and Trump supporters on Aug. 27 in Berkeley, Calif. Violence erupted when a small group of masked antifa and anarchists attacked right-wing demonstrators. (The Washington Post)

On Sunday, antifa agitators wielding pepper spray and homemade shields stormed a small group of conservative demonstrators at an otherwise peaceful rally in Berkeley, Calif. Several people reported being attacked and 13 people were arrested, as The Washington Post reported.[ no reporter on gd?]

In February, 150 antifa members smashed windows and set fires on campus at the University of California in Berkeley in protest of a speech by right-wing media personality Milo Yiannopoulos. Earlier in the summer, antifa members violently clashed with demonstrators attending a pro-Trump “free speech” rally in Portland.

And in Charlottesville, they fought with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and formed human barriers to protect counterprotesters. As Slate reported, some clergy members at the rally said antifa members saved their lives from men waving swastika flags and giving Nazi salutes.

---

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/professor-forced-cancel-book-tour-after-fox-news-fans-threaten-lynch-her-ripping

A black professor was forced to cancel the rest of her book tour after a Fox News report prompted dozens of death threats against her — and she accuses the conservative network of inciting its viewers to violence.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor delivered the commencement address last month at Hampshire College, and Fox News aired a portion of the 20-minute speech Sunday that called attention to her criticism of President Donald Trump, reported *The Stranger*.

Taylor, a Princeton University professor of African-American studies, described the president as a “racist, sexist, megalomaniac,” and the Fox News report suggested that she was encouraging activists to lawlessly thwart the Trump agenda.

After the report on her “Anti-POTUS tirade” aired, Taylor said she has received more than 50 hateful and threatening emails — some of which were issued with such specificity that she canceled portions of a tour to promote her new book, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.”

“Shortly after the Fox story and video were published, my work email was inundated with vile and violent statements. I have been repeatedly called ‘n****r,’ ‘b*tch,’ ‘c*nt,’ ‘dyke,’ ‘she-male,’ and ‘coon’ — a clear reminder that racial violence is closely aligned with gender and sexual violence,” Taylor said. “I have been threatened with lynching and having the bullet from a .44 Magnum put in my head.”

She accused the conservative network of airing the report in an attempt to silence her and other Trump critics.

“I am not a newsworthy person,” Taylor said. “Fox did not run this story because it was ‘news,’ but to incite and unleash the mob-like mentality of its fringe audience, anticipating that they would respond with a deluge of hate-filled emails — or worse. The threat of violence, whether it is implied or acted on, is intended to intimidate and to silence.”

Taylor placed the threats into context with recent violent acts by white supremacists, including the fatal stabbings of two men on a commuter train in Portland, Oregon.

“Their side uses the threat of violence and intimidation because they cannot compete in the field of politics, ideas, and organizing,” she said. “The true strength of our side has not yet been expressed in its size and breadth, and so they believe they are winning. We have to change this dynamic and begin to build a massive movement against racism, sexism, and bigotry in this country. I remain undaunted in my commitment to that project.”

ref

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/05/28/trump-racist-sexist-megalomaniac-princeton-prof-says-in-commencement-speech.html

bs no byline

PrincetonUniversity professor accused President Trump of being a “racist, sexist megalomaniac” in a May 20 commencement speech at Hampshire College, a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Mass.

“The president of the United States, the most powerful politician in the world, is a racist, sexist megalomaniac,” said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who is an assistant professor in African American studies, according to a report by Campus Reform reporter Anthony Gockowski.

“It’s not a benign observation, but has meant tragic consequences for many people in our country -- from terror-inducing raids in the communities of undocumented immigrants to his disparaging of refugees in search of freedom and respite,” said Taylor, who is the author of “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.”

During the speech, according to The Blaze, Taylor, who is on sabbatical for the 2016/2017 academic year, suggested that the federal court decisions striking down Trump’s executive orders temporarily restricting immigration from several Muslim-majority nations were the result of political activism, not the application of the law.

“When Trump’s first illegal Muslim travel ban was attempted, thousands of ordinary people flooded the airports around this country,” she said. “And because of those protests, and the defiance they represented, that ban was stopped -- not once, but twice. It is not enough just to be outraged. Injustice has to actually be defied.”

Taylor also said Trump “empowered an attorney general who embraces and promulgates policies that have already proven to have had a devastating impact on black families and communities.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced May 12 that he has told prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible against criminal suspects -- a reversal of Obama-era policies, and a move that infuriated civil rights groups.

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

http://junkscience.com/2017/01/ucalifornia-profs-warned-not-to-use-school-resources-for-personal-attacks-on-president-trump/#more-91079

Wanna-be political activists masquerading as professors should not be using their taxpayer-funded day jobs as a perch from which to spout their politics.

[img]

The letter is below.

For more on liberal political activism at the University of California, read the April 2, 2012 report from the National Association of Scholars, “NAS Report “A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California.”

###

January 25, 2017

Professor Eric L. Russell

UC Davis French

https://frenchanditalian.ucdavis.edu/people/profile/96

erussell@ucdavis.edu

Professor Dennis J. Silverman

UC Irvine Physics and Astronomy

http://www.physics.uci.edu/~silverma/

dennis.silverman@uci.edu

Dear Professors Russell and Silverman,

UC professors must not misuse UC resources for political attacks on President Donald J. Trump and his advisors. UC must adhere to underlying state law and must not engage in activities that might violate its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can make your political attacks using your own personal resources. Please read the four articles below and realize that you are being watched by those of us who want UC to adhere to its original mission and to not engage in political activism.

Thank you very much for your consideration of my request.

Sincerely yours,

James E. Enstrom, Ph.D.,M.P.H.

UCLA and Scientific Integrity Institute

jenstrom@ucla.edu

January 23, 2017 California Political Review “UC Davis Professors STEAL From Students/Taxpayers”

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/uc-davis-professors-steal-from-studentstaxpayers/

January 16, 2017 UCI Energy Observer “Trump Advisor Will Happer is Not a Climate Scientist”

http://sites.uci.edu/energyobserver/2017/01/16/trump-advisor-will-happer-is-not-a-climate-scientist/

January 18, 2017 UCI Energy Observer “Update on the Climate Science Denier’s Praise of Increasing CO2”

http://sites.uci.edu/energyobserver/2017/01/18/update-on-the-climate-science-deniers-praise-of-increasing-co2/

January 18, 2017 UCI Energy Observer “Trump’s Cabinet: Make America Dumber, Sicker, Smoggier, and Thirstier Again”

http://sites.uci.edu/energyobserver/2017/01/18/trumps-cabinet-make-america-dumber-sicker-smoggier-and-thirstier-again/

failure to support

http://wwwwww.alternet.org/human-rights/debunking-latest-breitbart-promoted-right-wing-racist-paranoid-buzzword

The false claim that there is a genocide against white people is a key rallying cry used by organized white supremacists to justify racist violence targeting people of color, Muslims and Jews. With the rise of Donald Trump, who promptly appointed white nationalist Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, those forces will soon have a direct line to the White House.

George Ciccariello-Maher, an associate professor of international politics and decolonization at Philadelphia-based Drexel University, recently found himself at the center of a smear campaign for mocking the concept of white genocide. On December 24, Ciccariello-Maher posted a tweet stating, "all I want for Christmas is white genocide." He explained the tweet in a later statement: “For those who haven't bothered to do their research, ‘white genocide’ is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies (and most recently, against a tweet by State Farm Insurance). It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I'm glad to have mocked it.”

Ciccariello-Maher’s tweet and other social media commentary was soon reported by the white nationalist publication Breitbart, which ran an article by Warner Todd Huston referring to the scholar’s Twitter feed as “hateful” and “obnoxious.” The comments section of the article included at least one death threat against Ciccariello-Maher, as well as hateful messages targeting LGBTQ people and African Americans. The story quickly spread toReddit and 4chan, and before long George Ciccariello-Maher had become became the target of a coordinated campaign to contact his employer, Drexel University. Ciccariello-Maher said he awoke Christmas morning to death threats targeting him and his family.

But Drexel, instead of defending Ciccariello-Maher, appeared to be swayed by the pressure it received and publicly condemned his social media remarks as “utterly reprehensible” and “deeply disturbing.” The university’s statement did not include any mention of the white supremacist origins of the term Ciccariello-Maher was mocking—an omission that extended to numerous press outlets which covered the story.

Scholars of fascism and the racist right told AlterNet such omission is dangerous in the era of Trump, with implications far beyond Ciccariello-Maher. “This phrase and its broad dissemination these days is helping shape what Trumpism is politically and also, by its very framing, is something that can authorize any kind of violence against people of color,” Joseph Lowndes, an associate professor of political science at the University of Oregon in Eugene, told AlterNet. “We should mock it, expose it and delegitimize it.”

Term with a disgraceful history

“Fears of the decline of the so-called white race have been around for a long time, with different iterations,”Lowndessaid. “In the American context, it goes back to fears of slave revolts. You can see it in Thomas Jefferson’s notes, when he describes slavery as holding a ‘wolf by the ears.’ He claimed that once you let the wolf go, it will turn on you and devour you.”

Such racist concepts were used as salvo against movements to abolish slavery. "In the 19th century, before the Civil War, you can look at how people who were anti-abolition were warning everyone about an impending genocide if slaves were liberated,” said Alexander Reid Ross, who teaches in the geography department at Portland State University and is the author of the forthcoming book, Against the Fascist Creep.

In undated remarks published in a book of his writings and speeches, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison expressed his outrage at such baseless fear-mongering:...

see prof watchlist kirk turning pt

http://www.alternet.org/education/professor-watchlist-gets-f-accuracy

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http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/professor-who-criticized-trump-hiding-after-death-threats

professor who gave a lecture criticizing Donald Trump, and the divisiveness and racist rhetoric of his presidential campaign, has gone into hiding after receiving death threats.

Olga Perez Stable Cox, a psychology instructor at Orange Coast College, was secretly recorded by a student during a class days after the presidential election:{. In a }:{ posted to YouTube on December 6, Cox expresses disappointment, fear and to a lesser degree, hopefulness about the future. The footage begins with Cox stating the incoming administration is led by a “white supremacist and a vice president that is one of the most anti-gay humans in this country.” She goes on to say that, “Our nation is divided, we have been assaulted, it’s an act of terrorism....And so we are in for a difficult time, but again, I do believe that we can get past that.”}:

[vid]

The student who surreptitiously filmed Cox remains anonymous, but Joshua Recalde-Martinez, whom the Los Angeles Times identifies as the president of the Orange Coast College Republicans Club, released the video publicly. In the weeks since its appearance online, Cox has been subject to “more than 1,000 emails, calls and Facebook comments.” Almost all of those messages have been critical, and some have included threats to Cox’s life, according to the Orange County Register.

Rob Schneiderman, president of the local teachers' union, said Cox identifies as a “lesbian, Latina woman living in [conservative] Orange County.” Schneiderman told the Register that though Cox is “pretty strong,” the sheer number of harassing messages, as well as the violence some expressed, was frightening enough to force Cox to leave the state for a period.

“Someone emailed her a picture of her house, with her address,” Schneiderman told the Register. He said the letter warned that Cox’s “home address is now going to be sent everywhere.”

Another email reportedly read, “You want communism, go to Cuba...try to bring it to America and we’ll put a (expletive) bullet in your face.”

Earlier this week, a group of 60 students and faculty held a rally in support of Cox. Some held signs reading "We support academic freedom" and "OCC for Olga," according to the LA Times. Later in the day, a group of conservative students, including Recalde-Martinez, showed up in counterprotest.

Elias Altamirano, an OCC student who organized the demonstration, told the Register he hoped to reassure Cox her presence on campus was welcome. “She has been here 30 years and impacted over 30,000 lives,” Altamirano said. “I want to let Olga know this is her home and she doesn’t have to feel threatened.”

"Some of us were upset that the media was only showing one side...I think her comments were taken out of context," OCC student Autumn Durand, told the Times. "Undocumented students are scared, women are scared. Olga's speech was about protecting students."

A lawyer has filed a complaint against Cox with OCC president Dennis Harkins. The Times reports the “complaint suggested that Cox attend anger management classes and apologize to her students, and that the complaint be placed in her personnel file.” The college is currently reviewing the request. The school is also trying to determine if the student who secretly made the video violated any rules by recording without Cox’s consent. This may be due partly to the content of the class. A student who previously took the course, which is focused on human sexuality, told the Times it was a forum where “students can share their sexual experiences during class discussions.”

Cox has an entry on the Professor Watchlist, a right-wing website that asserts its mission is to "Expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Conservatives have long condemned institutions of higher learning as bastions of liberal ideology. The political winds may be blowing in a direction that leaves many professors vulnerable to attacks from conservative, Republican and other right-wing groups.

“My experience talking to students is that they want a diverse range of professors and opinions in class,” saidunion president Rob Schneiderman. “The problem here is the lack of dialogue, with students turning the classroom into a reality TV show when they surreptitiously videotape and publish it.”

ref

http://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/tn-dpt-me-1214-occ-professor-rally-20161212-story.html

ref

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/turning-point-usa-assault-free-speech

"Expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

This is the stated aim of the Professor Watchlist,a website that went live on Monday. The project comes from Turning Point USA, a nonprofit group funded to support the work of conservative wunderkind Charlie Kirk, subject of a loving profile in the *National Journal*:{. Kirk, 22, was recently on Fox talking about Trump’s “mandate” and }:{ and allegedly has raised over $1 million to support his conservative youth movement. Now he’s spending that money to put professors on a literal watchlist.}:

In a writeup on the project, Kirk stated that he often hears stories about professors who “use their position of power to advance liberal agendas in their classroom” and that “Turning Point USA is saying enough is enough. It’s time we expose these professors.”

The project offers a chilling example of what the academic world can expect in Trump’s America, while reigniting the ever-fraught safe spaces debate.

***

In recent years, the cultural battle over trigger warnings has intensified, with strange bedfellows working to characterize student requests for safe spaces as threats to academic freedom. Sure, you’d expect to see people at Breitbart write endless essays mocking “safe spaces,” and they have, but they’ve been accompanied by a host of high-status writers who are mostly, but not exclusively, white men.

An NYU professor and the CEO of the mostly libertarian Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) landed an Atlantic* cover story on the matter. The New York Times has repeatedly published pieces decrying safe spaces. Hundreds of thousands of people shared a Vox piece about a liberal professor terrified by his politically correct students. Jonathan Chait, at New York Magazine*, has made the dangers of political correctness one of his beats, accusing “language police of perverting liberalism,” then, after an incident in Mizzou, demanding to know “Can We Start Taking Political Correctness Seriously Now?” This fall, a dean at the University of Chicago won widespread publicity for his criticism of “safe spaces,” followed by faculty saying he was the one actually squelching free speech by telling students not to even inquire about trigger warnings.

There is a simple principle behind essays and letters like these, not to mention the infinite support they generate on social media: Marginalized students requesting or demanding more respectful language, fewer microaggressions, or even specially designated spaces in which to process trauma pose a significant threat to free speech and academic freedom.

This is not true. It’s never been true. Demands or requests from marginalized students do not carry institutional power with them. Sometimes they get appropriated by people with institutional power, but I’ve long argued that attempts to label certain kinds of speech requests “politically correct” stem from a fear of losing hierarchical position. In other words, the demand to stop microaggressions, to consider trauma when developing pedagogy, to change language use—these all destabilize current power relationships, so naturally the folk with the power find them uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, the American right wing is currently organizing, and has long been organizing, to actually repress speech on campus. This watchlist is just the most recent example of this. As the American Association of University Professors pointed out in a comment on the watchlist: “The AAUP has spoken out against organizations that conduct these kinds of activities going back to the 1920s, when it was the American Legion, through the 1980s, when it was an organization that called itself Accuracy in Academia.” AAUP is concerned that “External monitoring of in-class statements not only presents the prospect that the words uttered will be distorted or taken out of context; it is also likely to have a chilling effect and result in self-censorship.”

When I was in graduate school just starting to teach, people were worried about David Horowitz, a conservative who urged students to monitor their professors and eventually published The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Since then, other attempts to use the internet to name, shame, and even punish liberal professors have proliferated. The cell-phone video camera has taught me to assume I’m always being recorded while teaching. Examples of professors, especially women of color, having their Twitter feed turned against them have proliferated.As Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote, academic institutions are unprepared for hate to spill off social media and into their phone and email systems, let alone with public protests, and will all too easily cave to pressure.

And this was all before the rise of Trump. Now David Horowitz is on television, supporting Breitbart, where he writes his screeds. His boss has Trump’s ear. Ben Carson, who keeps being mentioned for the cabinet despite taking himself out of the running, famously wanted to use the Department of Education to strip funding from colleges he deemed to be engaging in promoting liberal values. Trump hasn’t weighed in on professors, but his comments about media freedom and critiques of Hamilton don’t give me much confidence. In such a world, Kirk, a wunderkind conservative with connections to the new administration, seems a legitimate threat.

The problem isn’t really about the professors whose names are on the list, though many I know on the list are worried or at least irritated. The issue is that such a list is intended to intimidate. People who are in precarious positions, people who lack support within their institutions, or just generally people from vulnerable groups (LGBTQ professors, professors of color, disabled professors, etc.) will pre-emptively silence themselves. I suspect, in fact, that this is the goal—not to punish individual professors, but to chill us into silence.

Welcome to speech in the age of Trump. It’s never been more important for experts to engage in public discourse, and such discourse has rarely been so threatened from the state and its allies. I have no solutions other than to say be vigilant, be organized, and support each other.

And if you’re one of those people who has spent the last few years yelling at lefty students over PC running amok, repent, then get to work over here. We’re going to need the allies.

ref

https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/29522/this-21-year-old-is-trying-become-major-player-conservative-politics-so-far-seems-be-working

The 21-Year-Old Becoming a Major Player in Conservative Politics

Charlie Kirk’s backers swear he’s the future of conservative politics—and he’s only just old enough to drink.

ref

BSno img

http://willcountynews.com/2016/11/21/its-time-we-expose-professors-pushing-agendas-in-their-classroom/

It’s no secret that some of America’s college professors are totally out of line.

Everyday I hear stories about professors who attack and target conservatives, promote liberal propaganda, and use their position of power to advance liberal agendas in their classroom.

Turning Point USA is saying enough is enough.It’s time we expose these professors.

Today, Turning Point USA is proud to announce the launch of_{ProfessorWatchList.org,}_ a website dedicated to documenting and exposing professors who discriminate against conservative students and promote anti-American, left wing propaganda in the classroom.

http://ProfessorWatchList.org

Meet some of the professor’s we profiled….

s Angeletti is a tenured professor at Metropolitan State University Denver. He required students to recite a pledge that describes a racist, sexist, homophobic America: “I pledge allegiance to and wrap myself in the flag of the United States Against Anything Un-American and to the Republicans for which it stands, two nations, under Jesus, rich against poor, with curtailed liberty and justice for all except blacks, homosexuals, women who want abortions, Communists, welfare queens, treehuggers, feminazis, illegal immigrants, children of illegal immigrants, and you if you don’t watch your step.”

e Miller-Young is an Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Miller was sentenced to three years’ probation after violently attacking a 16-year-old pro-life activist on campus. She was convicted of assault, theft, and destruction of property, but the University of Santa Barbara never fired her.

r is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University. Cooper stated that white racism is to blame for Brexit. She tweeted “White nationalism gone be the death of all of us. #Brexit” and went on to say. “The only thing I know that makes white folks vote against their own economic interest is racism. #Brexit.” In another interview to Salon she stated that white people need to start recognizing that they are “the face of the oppressor.” Cooper has also stated that Christian conservatives worship a “white supremacist Jesus.”

Pino is a tenured professor at Kent State University in Ohio. Dr. Pino is currently under investigation for having ties to the well known terrorist group ISIS, and allegedly recruiting students to join the Islamic State. The professor once shouted “”Death to Israel!”” at a public lecture by a former Israeli diplomat, and has been a featured columnist for several anti-Semitic and pro terrorism publications.

These people are teaching our students!!

AGU climate scientists archive data: jerry brown " you have nothing to lose but your grants and tenure and ..."

6/16 promoted to primary aslamar smith endgame/death match escalates attacks on scientists, some academic

see STATS: bias claim is precursor to suppression (or ignoring: recall that at some point in congressional testimony, academic/sci were discounted BC of the their expertise/affiliations?)

mannbk

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belated, see hard copy notes

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mann bk: de F Christy complained to U va (--> USAToday Op-ed)

made bones on diff between satellite ad surface temps (--> meme) based on calc error

he would only share part of his CODE; wegman said he could not share his b/c classified (navy intel)

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ch 12: 2007 big year: inc truth,

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IPCC ARA 4, Nobel

even Luntz 180 after 2002 memo

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ARA ~ pillars of deniers

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but 2008 Nature jrnl artl misrepped, --> GW stopped meme --> Geo Will Wapo op ed; superFreakonomics 2009

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Jrnl G res defreitas, carter amd ---

M&M PNAS

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ch 13

cnn weatherman chad meyers --> inhofe

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dobbs 180 BACK!

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apr 17 2009 lisa Jackson epa endangerment (builds on 2007 scotus) initial --> 12/7 final ~ CoC, cei, coal)

oct 09 ce and inhofe forced extend comment period b/c of data destruction (nope)

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Singer and happer try to roll Am Phys Soc (Chron Higher Edm, w/ Cohen Exxon?

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Sci Lie meme; Briffa: McI --> McK M&M --> blogs --> rw press

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FOIA lbj 1966; McI ~ SANTER and NOAA 11/08 extents to EMAILs

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DREISSEN: "FRAUD" Fall 09; in Post Chronicle and Town Hall (cites Carlin sci bs) Mann says strategy in Luntz 2002 strat msg memo; sci --> rich and powerfil, or gov --> powerful. Dreissen sez 89B$ in gov't res $

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Phil JONES CRU threat with misconduct, // Wang

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univ(s?) have to respond to charges, even if clearly bogos (p 205)

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ploy: a scientist sez can't reproduce results --> accusation/implication (McCulloch makes error)

---

ch 14 climategate

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11/17/09 bs pr sez "random" but targeted scrape of names: MM santer, briffa, trenberth, jones

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1st www link by McI (hack from N Am via turkey), then saudi (used at Cop 15) --> USSR server

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"smoking gun" ebell --> meme ~ AGW

also pat michaels "gate-keeper" final nail in coffin)

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--> inhofe igloo bs, Palin WaPo

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Overpeck

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Jones suggests deleting email as precaution against recent FOIA's ? 11/20-6

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--> Horner call for investigatuons Fox, punked NYT, wapo, UK Guard!

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CNN >CBS (latter later trued to compensate0

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Guterl newsweek discover mag

Some correction by jrnl but little and late; ABC got better.

...

UK Parl cleared Jones CRU

as did Penn MM; NSG OIG

parl? found minor problems U East Anglia

CBS, CNN even Fox and pitt news-trib but WSJ stuck with Whitewash

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[carlin, cei June 09 --> Beck

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COOCH: birther, homophobe, ~ACA (un-Const) ~ EPA GHG sci unsound

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went after all MM records UVa 99-05, fraud statute --> CID (CEI foia had failed)

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complied, but then asked for more? ~ state gop rep, Rep Moran D Va, wapo, aclu, aaup, FIRE, may 5 UVa faculty

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12/09 Mashey and Deep Climate blogger ~ WEGMAN rept (USA today)

found 1/3 plag and distorted from Badly's well known textbook!

Irony is that wegman lied to congress, which is what he tried and failed to prove about MM!

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stole? McL fig(s?)

apr 2010 formal invest at GMU

MM support by Don Kennedy stanford pres?, nye, ehrlich may 10 250 sci, NAS 11 nobels, open ltr to Sci mag

markey house sci suppression

UCS nature jrnl ~ cooch. AMS, UCAR, AAAS

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2010 campaign chest beating on ~ sci, but when failed --> EPA endangerment

aug 2010 judge sez cooch fishing, but he kept trying. 11/11

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epilogue: climategate did not cause Cop15 fail, and may be pos tip pt

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Lessons:

.. sci is in s street fight"

seth borenstein AP

10/31/14 aside from singer libel suit discussion, ORESKES

morano, michaels, schnare, horner, s kazman. monckton go after UC, harvard and stanford, w/ glantz at ucsf and 2 unnamed stanford profs; in part b/c alums, so presumably defective education?!

http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Fred%20Singer%20emails%20re%20Merchants%20of%20Doubt.pdf

===

adams, IRE unc rape

:{:{:{http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/05/mike_adams_unc_wilmington_conservative_professor_wins_academic_freedom_lawsuit.html}:

}:}:

inside higher ed

In the past 20 years this core group of funders has, by many reports, built and strategically linked an impressive array of almost 500 think tanks, centers, institutes and "concerned citizens groups" both within and outside of the academy. It is particularly telling to observe the funding sources of these organizations during the first 10-15 years of their existence, when their ideological identities were being established. A small sampling of these entities include the Cato Institute,the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute,the Manhattan Institute, the Hoover Institution, theClaremont Institute, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni,Middle East Forum,Accuracy in Media, and the National Association of Scholars, as well as Horowitz's Center of the Study of Popular Culture.

The absence of formal organizational linkages between the entities within these networks creates an illusion of independent analytical voices reaching similar conclusions about strategic policy issues, a technique known in the public relations industry as “astroturfing.” This network has developed an enormous capacity to generate “data” consistent with the targeted political agenda and world views of its core group of funders to quickly and redundantly represent these issues in the mainstream press by what appear to be the voices of independent analysts and to translate these viewpoints into public policy that serves the focused ideological agenda of this core group of funders. The Bradley Foundation under Michael Joyce's leadership has even established a publishing house, Encounter Books, to ensure that grantees like Horowitz have a quasi-academic outlet for their viewpoints.

The degree of interconnectedness within this network of organizations is considerable but almost invisible to the casual observer. For example, when ACTA’s president, Anne Neal, introduced herself to the Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, she presented ACTA as “a bipartisan network of college and university trustees and alumni across the country dedicated to academic freedom.”

Full disclosure should have required some mention of the fact that ACTA (see funding sources above), which changed its name from the National Alumni Forum in 1998, was established by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in 1994. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute in turn evolved from William Bennett’s Madison Center for Educational Affairs and the Institute for Educational Affairs founded by Irving Kristol, Michael Joyce’s mentor, and William Simon, the first president of the John M. Olin Foundation. Bennett and Kristol also sit on ACTA’s Board of Directors. The remarkably consistent record of funding across all of the incarnations of this organization and the high degree of redundancy with Horowitz’s own, highly partisan Center for the Study of Popular Culture is not consistent with Neal’s definition of ACTA as an independent, non-partisan organization.

Another example illustrative of the quietly incestuous nature of this network is presented by an article by the Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young. The article is entitled “Liberal bias in the ivory tower” and by all appearances is an independent opinion piece written by a regular Globe columnist. At the end of the article Young identifies herself as “a contributing editor at Reason Magazine.” What is undisclosed in the article is that Reason Magazine is the publication of the Reason Foundation, whose funding sources are virtually the same as those funding Horowitz’s "Academic Bill of Rights" project and Neal’s ACTA.

Young’s premise for the article is stated in her opening sentence: “Yet another study has come out documenting what most conservatives consider to be blindingly obvious: the leftwing tilt of the American professoriate.” The study that she references was conducted by Stanley Rothman, now emeritus professor at Smith College; S.Robert Lichter, emeritus professor at George Mason University; and Neil Nevitte of the University of Toronto, and was published in the online journal Forum. This study was also cited by Neal in her testimony in Pennsylvania. Young does not inform her readers that Rothman is director of the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change, a center with funding sources that are remarkably redundant with Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Lichter is also president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which again has funding sources that are redundant with those referenced earlier.

In addition, a recent article in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting is highly critical of Lichter’s research methodology. Another example of such conflicted interests is provided by Professor Thomas Reeves. When Reeves writes in strong support of Horowitz’s proposals on the History News Network,he fails to note that he is a spokesman for the California Association of Scholars, a branch of the National Association of Scholars (see funding sources above) and that he is director of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, which was, again, brought into being by the Olin and Bradley Foundations.

This manufactured drumbeat against “academic bias” is amplified by Stanley Kurtz of the Hoover Institution (see funding sources above), Heather MacDonald, a John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute (see funding sources above), and Brian C. Anderson, editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and a former research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (see funding sources above).

The relentlessness with which columnists and experts with direct funding relationships with Olin, Scaife, Bradley, Koch and Coors level charges of academic bias and assert the need for legislative reform of higher education is remarkable. The goal of this narrowly focused and ideologically driven public relations campaign can only be understood in terms of its fostering of a political climate in which federal regulatory “reform” of what is universally recognized as the finest system of higher education in the world, will be tolerated.

Indeed, as has been discussed, such regulatory oversight may already be in the offing. The academy stands today as one of the last spaces in America where the democratic ideas that shape the social, economic and political fabric of the nation can be openly and independently debated on the basis of their merits and without coercion or distortion from vested economic and political interests. It is certainly in the national interest that it remain such.

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===

West Point Professor Calls On US Military To Target Legal Critics Of War On Terror

William Bradford argues that attacks on scholars’ home offices and media outlets – along with Islamic holy sites – are legitimate

By Spencer Ackerman / The Guardian August 29, 2015

An assistant professor in the law department of the US Military Academy at West Point has argued that legal scholars critical of the war on terrorism represent a “treasonous” fifth column that should be attacked as enemy combatants.

In a lengthy academic paper, the professor, William C Bradford, proposes to threaten “Islamic holy sites” as part of a war against undifferentiated Islamic radicalism. That war ought to be prosecuted vigorously, he wrote, “even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage”.

Other “lawful targets” for the US military in its war on terrorism, Bradford argues, include “law school facilities, scholars’ home offices and media outlets where they give interviews” – all civilian areas, but places where a “causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited” exist.

“Shocking and extreme as this option might seem, [dissenting] scholars, and the law schools that employ them, are – at least in theory – targetable so long as attacks are proportional, distinguish noncombatants from combatants, employ nonprohibited weapons, and contribute to the defeat of Islamism,” Bradford wrote.

West Point is the revered undergraduate institution north of New York City where the US army educates its future officer corps. It prides itself on the rigor of its curriculum. Representatives from the school said Bradford had only begun his employment there on 1 August.

Bradford’s article, “Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column”, appeared in the most recent issue of the National Security Law Journal, a student-run publication at the George Mason School of Law. Bradford clarifies that the term means “treason of the professors”, itself an allusion to a famous attack on French intellectuals from the 1920s.

In the paper, Bradford identifies himself as an “associate professor of law, national security and strategy, National Defense University”, seemingly his previous job before West Point. But a representative of the National Defense University said Bradford was a contractor at the prestigious Defense Department-run institution, “never an NDU employee nor an NDU professor”.

It appears not to be the first time Bradford misrepresented his credentials. He resigned from Indiana University’s law school in 2005 after his military record showed he had exaggerated his service. (Among his paper’s criticisms of supposedly treasonous lawyers is “intellectual dishonesty”.)

The National Security Law Journal’s editor-in-chiefhas called the article’s publication a “mistake” and an “egregious breach of professional decorum”.

“We cannot ‘unpublish’ it, of course, but we can and do acknowledge that the article was not presentable for publication when we published it, and that we therefore repudiate it with sincere apologies to our readers,” the editor-in-chief, Rick Myers, wrote on the journal’s website.

Bradford does not clearly name his academic opponents, instead using the neologistic acronym CLOACA, for “critical law of armed conflict academy” to describe them. (In nature, “cloaca” is also the name of a body cavity into which intestinal, reproductive and urinary tracts empty in some animal species.)

The CLOACA, in turn, are part of a GMAC, or “government-media-academic complex”, which Bradford defines as an “aristocracy of senior government officials, elite media members, and university faculty, which squeezes non-members from public colloquy and shapes opinion on security, military and legal issues.”

This “clique of about forty” scholars, Bradford writes, have “converted the US legal academy into a cohort whose vituperative pronouncements on the illegality of the US resort to force and subsequent conduct in the war against Islamism” represent a “super-weapon that supports Islamist military operations” aimed at “American political will” to fight. They are supported by “compliant journalists” marked by “defeatism, instinctive antipathy to war, and empathy for American adversaries”, but Bradford considers the lawyers a greater threat.

The offending legal scholars “effectively tilt the battlefield against US forces [and] contribute to timorousness and lethargy in US military commanders”, he writes. They are among several “useful idiots” who “separate Islam from Islamists by attributing to the former principles in common with the West, including ‘justice and progress’ and ‘the dignity of all human beings’”.

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Bradford derisively quotes Barack Obama, who has prosecuted a globalized war against al-Qaida and now the Islamic State, discussing “co-existence and cooperation” with the Islamic world in his 2009 Cairo speech.

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The West Point faculty member urges the US to wage “total war” on “Islamism”, using “conventional and nuclear force and [psychological operations]”, in order to “leave them prepared to coexist with the West or be utterly eradicated”. He suggests in a footnote that “threatening Islamic holy sites might create deterrence, discredit Islamism, and falsify the assumption that decadence renders Western restraint inevitable”.

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Robert Chesney of the University of Texas, a founding editor of the influential national-security law blog Lawfare, is one of the legal scholars Bradford references as pernicious – for a 2011 paper that largely defended Obama’s execution without trial of US citizen and al-Qaida preacher Anwar al-Awlaki.

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“It’s very hard to take this seriously except insofar as he may actually be teaching nonsense like this to cadets at West Point,” Chesney said.

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Bradford did not respond to emails and phone messages for comment.

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A spokesman for the US Military Academy, army lieutenant colonel Christopher Kasker, told the Guardian: “Dr William Bradford was hired on 1 August 2015 at the US Military Academy. His article in the National Security Law Journal titled ‘Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column’ was written and accepted for publication prior to his employment at West Point. The views in the article are solely those of Dr Bradford and do not reflect those of the Department of Defense, the United States army, the United States Military Academy.”

The US military’s educational institutions have come under fire before for promoting “total war” against Islam. In 2012, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, ordered a comprehensive scouring of anti-Islam training material after a course proposed “Hiroshima” tactics against Islamic holy sites, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary”.

The previous year, highly regarded counter-terrorism scholars affiliated with the US army aided the FBI in eradicating similar material from its own training. Those scholars came from West Point.

http://www.alternet.org/west-point-professor-calls-us-military-target-legal-critics-war-terror

Spencer Ackerman writes for The Guardian from Washington, DC.

FoxNews' neo-McCarthyism

The O'Reilly Factor program plays a fundamental ideological and propagandistic role. Its principal purpose is to uncritically propagate the position of the U.S. government or its right-wing ideologues, and to disparage critics of that policy/ideology. The latter involves character assassination, disparaging comments, and even calls for a person to be imprisoned, fired from their job, and for the "mob" to attack the person in question.[prefigures troll swarm alt right?]

On February 2, 2005, O'Reilly persecuted Ward Churchill,an outspoken professor at the University of Colorado/Boulder and author of numerous books. Churchill wrote and suggested that 911 was a case of "chickens coming home to roost", and a direct consequence of US policy abroad. These comments (which were a year old), were recast as being anti-American, and this paragraph conveys the flavor of the rest of the program:

He wants us to empathize with Al Qaeda. Yet he has little empathy for his fellow countrymen who died on 9/11. He sees the USA as a racist country run by human rights violators. So, of course, any attack on America is justified in his mind. [5]

The result of this program was acoordinated campaign of intimidation against university where Ward Churchill teaches, death threats, and other vile reactions. This is what Ward Churchill had to say about this:

In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been.

— Ward Churchill, Churchill Replies, Z Net, February 2, 2005.

As the experience of several of the victims of O'Reilly's campaigns indicates, the character assassination in The O'Reilly Factor is the culmination of a campaign that includes the following:

Vilification in the right-wing press.

Concerted mail/email campaigns against the institution where the victims work. The fact that such email campaigns start before the airing of the program proves that this aspect of the campaign is coordinated.

Waves of spam and spoofed emails against the victims have been evident.

Violent threats have been made.

Daniel Pipes's Campus-Watchhas listed and posted "dossiers" on several of the victims that are eventually disparaged by O'Reilly.

Deciding fates: judge, jury and...

If the McCartyite campaign wasn't bad enough, on February 2, 2005, O'Reilly appeared together with Daniel Pipes in a program entitled: "Deciding Churchill's fate"! Exerpts:

"The Colorado Board of Regents will decide the fate of professor Ward Churchill, who compared Americans killed on 9/11 to Nazis. Apparently the man is getting threats, and a reporter from The New York Times called me to ask if I felt responsible. I won't be surprised if The Factor audience and I are blamed in some circles for the unfortunate plight of Ward Churchill. I don't revel in the destruction of any person, even one who has said the vile things Churchill has said. I even said the man shouldn't be fired from his job because America is strong enough to tolerate even him. But all that doesn't matter to the left wing media. This isn't about Churchill, this is about power--and many on the left hate the fact that Fox has it. What do Churchill and his sympathizers expect? We're in a war on terror and he supports the enemy. That being said, Churchill should not be harmed in any way--he should instead by [sic] shunned."

— O'Reilly, Deciding Churchill's fate, February 2, 2005.

The choice of Pipes for the program is curious. Here is someone who has been smearing and baiting university professors who have been critical of Israel, and he is asked to comment on the "fate" of someone he reviles!

Other victims of O'Reilly's smear program are:

Sami Al Arian – as a result of the program he lost his tenured position at his university and is currently in prison.

Shahid Alam – this program (February 3, 2005) follows a string of acts of intimidation and smears in Campus-Watch and related organizations. Alam's account of this can be found here: Shahid Alam, "O'Reilly's Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me In Its Crosshairs", CounterPunch, February 2, 2005.

A new website is targeting pro-Palestinian college activists by seeking to deny them jobs after they graduate. Dubbed "Canary Mission," the site profiles dozens of students and graduates involved in the Palestinian cause, in the hopes employers won’t hire them. In a promotional video, a narrator asks for help in ensuring that "today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees."

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/1/headlines

Canary Mission ad: "These individuals are applying for jobs within your company. There is no record of their membership of radical organizations. No one remembers their yelling profanities on campus or attending Jew-hating conference and anti-American rallies. All evidence has been eradicated, and soon they will be part of your team. Canary Mission’s simple interface allows you to easily explore profiles of radical individuals and organizations. BDS News will keep you up-to-date with the latest developments. And follow our blog for an in-depth analysis of radical campus activity. Join us to combat this wave of hatred, protect freedom and make campus life safe for everyone. It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees."

The targeted students include members of Students for Justice in Palestine, which is active on campuses nationwide. Although the students’ names, photographs and biographical information are extensively shown, the Canary Mission keeps its own backers and staffers completely secret.

Emails obtained by CMD under an open records request give a behind-the-scenes look at Gov. Scott Walker’s tortuous efforts to explain changes made to the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin System in his 2015-2017 Executive Budget bill. The emails reveal that controversial edits, which struck "the search for truth" and other aspects of the Wisconsin Idea from the statutes, was far from a "drafting error" or "miscommunication."

Censoring spokes doctor-turned-critic

InJune 2005, U.S. National Public Radio's Snigdha Prakash reported:

"New documents obtained by NPRsuggest that even as Merck was making Vioxx into a bestseller, the company was putting pressure on independent doctors. The company's apparent aim: to keep them from discussing evidence of Vioxx's potential safety problems. The documents show that Merck exerted pressure not only on individual doctors, but also on several of the nation's top medical schools."

Merck's campaigned to recruit physician Gurkirpal Singh of Stanford University as a Vioxx spokesperson"because he was a senior researcher on a seminal study of arthritis patients." Starting in 1998, Singh became a Vioxx booster and was paid $2,500 per speaking engagement by Merck. However, in 2000, a study suggesting heart problems among Vioxx users worried Dr. Singh and he requested the data. According to Dr. Singh in an interview with NPR:

"I wanted to know how many heart attacks, how many strokes, how many deaths were occurring in each one of the groups, and what were these actual number of patients at risk, and how many ended up having an event."

Merck originally promised to share the information with Dr. Singh, but never did. When Dr. Singh began including his concerns in his public presentations on Vioxx, Merck began closely tracking his activities. According to NPR, almost a dozen Merck executives were involved in tracking Dr. Singh. According to an October 4, 2000 email sent by a senior, regional executive who had supervised his scientific handlers:

"I have in excess of 80 e-mails pertaining to interactions with Dr. Singh from March 1999 to present. The following is my best recollection of what has happened. Because of the sensitive nature of the following, I strongly encourage you not to share with anyone unless they clearly have a need to know."

As Singh's public criticisms of Vioxx continued (he was by this time, promoting Vioxx's rival, Celebrex, while being paid by Pfizer), ^[17] Merck began calling his superiors at the university.According to Stanford medical professor James Fries:

"(I) received a call from a medical director at Merck, stating that someone on my staff had been making wild and irresponsible public statements about the cardiovascular side effects of Vioxx." According to Dr. Fries, the representative "hinted there would be repercussions for Fries and Stanford if Singh's statements didn't stop. He was left with the sense that Merck's financial support to Stanford was at risk." ^[18]

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Pope’s presence is felt acutely on the Chapel Hill campus, where some faculty members

say school officials are fearful of antagonizing a longtime critic who now holds sway over

the university’s funding.

They point to an incident last fall, when UNC took steps to distance itself from a professor

at its law school, Gene Nichol, after he drew fire from Pope backed think tanks for a

newspaper column in which he compared McCrory to Southern segregationist governors.

The heads of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy and the Civitas Institute

responded with their own piece, saying Nichol’s “nastiness and increasingly unhinged

partisanship ... reflects an arrogance and radicalism that have been building for years.”

Civitas also filed a public records requestfor six weeks’ worth of Nichol’s emails, phone

records and calendars, eventually obtaining more than 1,000 pages of materials.

Amid the controversy, UNC officials exchanged alarmed emails noting how much

Nichol’s piece had angered the governor and his supporters, according to documents first

reported on by the Raleigh News & Observer.

The university now requires Nichol, director of UNC Chapel Hill’s Center on Poverty,

Work and Opportunity, to include a disclaimer at the bottom of his columns reading, “He

doesn’t speak for UNC.”

Nichol said in an interview that the disclaimer was “a continual reminder that we have a

provost and chancellor more fearful of Art Pope than they are of protecting freedom of

speech.”

In a statement,James W. Dean Jr., UNCChapel Hill’s executive vice chancellor and

provost, said the university vigorously protects First Amendment rights and called the

disclaimer consistent with UNC’s academicfreedom policies.

Still, Dean hinted at the careful political tightrope being walked by the university.

“We have a very close and collaborative working relationship with many state government

officials, including Mr. Pope in his role as State Budget Director,” Dean said. “We have

worked hard to demonstrate the critical role our public universities play in securing North

Carolina’s economic future and will continue to do so.”

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http://www.motherjones.com/print/185211

Right-Wing Think Tank FOIAs Climate Scientists

American Tradition Institute seeks the release of emails with journalists to find details that could be used to discredit science.

By Suzanne Goldenberg | Wed Jul. 11, 20126:00 AM EDT

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This story [1] first appeared on the Guardian [2] website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk [3] collaboration.

The ultra-conservative American Tradition Institute [4] has expanded its legal pursuit of climate scientists, using transparency laws to try to flush out potentially damaging emails.

The strategy—used to seek records from prominent scientists such as Michael Mann [5]—is seen by scientists as an excuse to try to dig up embarrassing or damaging communications that could be used to discredit climate science.

Now for the first time the media is being drawn in as well, with ATI seeking the release of scientists' communications with specific journalists. The list of news organisations targeted by the request [6] includes the New York Times, the Associated Press, Frontline, and the Guardian.

Earlier requests focused on exchanges between scientists. "We view this as a new chapter," said Jeff Ruch, a lawyer working with the Climate Science Legal Defence Fund [7]. "Before they were going after interactions between individual scientists. This is basically a spying operation to see who are you talking to, but presumably the idea is the same: to find material that is potential of use in discrediting a scientist."

Christopher Horner, the director of ATI's environmental law center, deployed the new tactic for the first time last week, in a July 5 open records request to two scientists at public universities in Texas.

Horner, who holds posts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute [8] as well as ATI, has led the legal pursuit of climate scientists through open records laws.

He has sought access to communications from Michael Mann, the author of the hockey stick graph, the NASA climate scientists James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, and this year, Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University.

Hayhoe turned came to public prominence when Newt Gingrich, the former Republican presidential candidate, decided to cut a chapter she had written for a forthcoming book [9] on the environment. She and Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, were targeted again last week [10] when Horner demanded their universities turn over all of the scientists' email exchanges with specified journalists dating back to November 1, 2009.

Horner also asked the scientists to hand over communications with the Union of Concerned Scientists [11], which has also been involved in defending climate scientists, as well as Richard Ades, who has served as a public relations consultant to scientists. The two universities are complying with the request.

Horner told the Washington Examiner [12]—a free newspaper owned by the conservative billionaire Philip Anschulz—that his decision to target contacts between scientists and journalists was prompted by a front-page article in the New York Times on clouds and New York Timeson clouds and climate change [13] contrarians. In email exchanges with the Guardian, he indicated he was looking for evidence that scientists were working with journalists and advocacy groups to undermine climate change dissenters.

Horner wrote he was concerned with "taxpayer servants who also engage in quite a bit of activism and – as famously noted in certain in famous emails, all also subject to freedom of information laws—recruiting of journalists 'to investigate and expose' those they do not like or with whom they disagree."

"You might be surprised to learn that the Texas A&M email production shows the academics actually forwarding their email discussions outside their circle. To New York Times reporters, for example," he wrote.

Scientists and campaign groups describe Horner's records requests as a "fishing expedition," aimed at trying to damage climate science.

Ruch said such motivated use of transparency laws was on the rise—and not only by conservative groups such as ATI. This year alone, his organisation, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, had heard from seven other scientists who had been subject to open record requests after appearing as expert witnesses in court cases involving mountaintop coal mining.

Last month, a pair of oceanographers accusedBP of infringing on their academic freedom by demanding the release of email related to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster [14]. Meanwhile, some public universities have begun to fight back against such requests. Penn State University, where Mann now works, is not bound by open records requests. Other public universities are moving in the same direction.

Horner defended his use of transparency laws, arguing the scientists' objections were themselves political. "Our motivations are surely whatever Greenpeace's were when pioneering these requests," he said in an email. "The truth is, they see no problem with using transparency laws this way. They only have problems with people they do not like using them as such."

At the very least, such open records requests are a distraction, said Hayhoe. "These types of requests are disruptive. They require a lot of attention to respond carefully and they take away time spent doing teaching, mentoring, or doing research. For a scientist who is happiest working in a lab or on a computer it is frightening to be accused of things that are completely without basis."

At the other extreme, such records requests represent an escalation of efforts to politicise climate science, said Dessler.

"At some level it's really dirty tricks what these people are doing. They are not using the open records request in any way it is meant to be used," said Dessler. "It's certainly reasonable to get a record of what transpired—how a decision was made, how a contract was awarded, why a university president was fired. But they are not trying to use it to figure out how decisions are being made. What they want to do is to find something embarrassing, something they can use in a political debate."

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Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/07/american-tradition-institute-freedom-information-law-climate-scientists

Links:

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/10/american-tradition-institute-climate-science

[2] http://www.guardiannews.com/

[3] http://climatedesk.org/

[4] http://www.atinstitute.org/

[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/17/michael-mann-climate-war?intcmp=239

[6] http://www.scribd.com/doc/99680945/Ati-Dessler-Txam-Foi-Request-i

[7] http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/

[8] http://cei.org/expert/christopher-c-horner

[9] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/06/climate-scientist-newt-gingrich-book-chapter

[10] http://www.scribd.com/doc/99680950/Ati-Dessler-Txam-Foi-Request-II

[11] http://www.ucsusa.org/

[12] http://washingtonexaminer.com/sunday-reflection-the-collusion-of-the-climate-crowd/article/2501500

[13] http://www.motherjones.com/_fcksavedurl=

[14] http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/04/bp-accused-attack-scientific-freedom

A pair of scientists have accused BP of an attack on academic freedom after the oil company successfully subpoenaed thousands of confidential emails related to research on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

The accusation from oceanographers Richard Camilli and Christopher Reddy offered a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes legal manoeuvring by BP in the billion-dollar legal proceedings arising from the April 2010 blow-out of its well.

It also heightened fears among scientists of an assault on academic freedoms, following the legal campaign against a number of prominent climate scientists.

In an opinion piece in the Boston Globe, the scientists, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said they volunteered in the early days of the spill to deploy robotic technology to help BP and the Coast Guard assess how much oil was gushing from the well.

The two researchers turned over some 50,000 pages of research notes and data to BP. But BP demanded more, and obtained a court subpoena for the handover of more than 3,000 confidential emails. The scientists handed over the emails last week – but with severe misgivings, they wrote.

"Our concern is not simply invasion of privacy, but the erosion of the scientific deliberative process," they wrote. They feared the email exchanges, in which the scientists discuss hitting dead ends or challenging each other on their conclusions, were open to deliberate misinterpretation.

"Incomplete thoughts and half-finished documents attached to emails can be taken out of context and impugned by people who have a motive for discrediting the findings. In addition to obscuring true scientific findings, this situation casts a chill over the scientific process. In future crises, scientists may censor or avoid deliberations, and more importantly, be reluctant to volunteer valuable expertise and technology that emergency responders don't possess."

The struggle over the emails indicates the looming legal significance of any data related to the flow of oil from the stricken well.

A former BP engineer was charged last April with destroying evidence after he deleted text messages discussing the flow of oil from the stricken well.

The justice department indicated at the time that Kurt Mix, the former engineer, was only the first to face criminal charges. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that officials were investigating whether BP executives lied to Congress about the spill during closed door briefings in the early days of the disaster.

A spokesman for BP declined to respond to the scientists on Monday.

Michael Halpern, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said it was a shoddy way to treat scientists who had volunteered to help the country in a time of crisis.

"The Woods Hole scientists saw a country in need and tried to do the right thing, and in the process got burned by a system that does not protect them. And the potential consequences are profound. Sure, scientists might be less likely to ask tough questions of each other in an environment where every sentence they write could be misrepresented," he wrote. "But they will also begin to think twice about using their knowledge to solve pressing and urgent national problems."

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jun/04/bp-accused-attack-scientific-freedom

propagandists: see entine

Enter Entine, Syngenta intimidation and the American Council on Science and Health.

Intimidation. (Per Wikipedia) “In 2014, New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv reported that Syngenta might have been orchestrating an attack on the “scientific credibility”of not just Tyrone Hayes, the lead critic of atrazine use, but other scientists as well whose studies have shown atrazine to have negative effects on the environment and/or human and animal health [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/10/140210fa_fact_aviv?currentPage=all].

“Paul Winchester, a professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, wrote a paper that was published in Acta Paediatrica [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2008.01207.x/full] reviewing national records for thirty million births, found that children conceived between April and July, when the concentration of atrazine, mixed with other pesticides, in water is highest, were more likely to have genital birth defects. Professor Winchester subsequently received a subpoena requesting that he turn over to Syngenta every e-mail he had written about atrazine in the past decade.

“Deborah Cory-Slechta, a professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and a former member of the EPA’s science advisory board, said that she, too, had felt that Syngenta was trying to ‘undermine’her work, after she published a study showing that the herbicide paraquat may contribute to diseases of the nervous system. “The folks from Syngenta used to follow me to my talks and tell me I wasn’t using ‘human-relevant doses’,”Cory-Slechta said. ‘They would go up to my students and try to intimidate them. There was this sustained campaign to make it look like my science wasn’t legitimate.’

“In one of the e-mails obtained by class-action suit plaintiffs, the company’s communications consultants had written in 2005 that they “wanted to obtain Hayes’s calendar of speaking engagements,”so that Syngenta could “start reaching out to the potential audiences with the Error vs. Truth Sheet,”which would provide “irrefutable evidence of his polluted messages.”Syngenta subsequently stated that many of the documents unsealed in the lawsuits refer to “ideas that were never implemented.”

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pacific legal: In 1997-1998 the PLF joined forces with the $10 million funded (by Philip Morris) National Smokers Alliance, in a fierce and vindictive legal attack on Professor Stanton Arnold **Glantz, a leader of California's main anti-smoking organization, Americans for Nonsmokers Rights [7] and attempted to brand him in the public mind as having something to hide ... a destroyer of legal document (a ruse the tobacco industry used itself on a massive scale). Glantz had received documents from the early tobacco industry whistleblowers, and he had established the first public-access Internet web site revealing how the industry operated.

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giroux, attack on unions, stop thinking http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13367-the-corporate-war-against-teachers-as-public-intellectuals-in-dark-times

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Lawyers. Ken Cuccinelli, his Deputy Wesley Russell and his ex-partner Milton Johns (Wegman's lawyer) [38] all got their JD degrees at GMU in the 1990s. So did David Schnare, of the American Tradition Institute [39] (ATI), well-known for FOIA harassment of UVA, Michael Mann, James Hansen, Andrew Dessler and Katharine Hayhoe [40]. FOIA has legitimate uses, but can also be employed for harassment. The reader can decide which these [41] are.

Schnare is also an Adjunct Professor who recently taught a GMU course [42]on how to do FOIAs, use the Data Quality Act [43], using this outline [44]. it starts:

'This course is an introduction on how to sue the government when it does what it should not do. Citizens, advocates of small government and Tenth Amendment proponents engage

He also offers "externships" to give students practice, via a new 501(c)(3) "public charity," originally (and legally still) the George Mason Environmental Law Clinic. [45] it is now called the Free Market ELC [46], consisting of him and Chris Horner [47], as at ATI. He was looking for students [48] to file FOIAs against some Virginia university, likely not GMU.

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schnare lists cses gmu:

Litigation

The FME Law Clinicprovides litigation and research services to qualified clients. We concentrate on cases involving landmark free-market pro-environmental litigation; use of open records and data quality laws to force greater governmental accountability and transparency; and, cases that allow the Clinic to help create the next generation of free market oriented attorneys. The Clinic has paired with the American Tradition Institute in order to prosecute three cases, described below. In addition, the Clinic has an active Freedom of Information Act practice. Current FOIAs are also listed below. At the bottom of this page is a brief description of new litigation the Clinic is contemplating pursuing.

Active Cases

Occoquan Watershed Coalition v. EPA

FME Law is representing the Occoquan Watershed Coalition (OWC ) in a law suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The OWC alleges that EPA has violated the Tenth Amendment by imposing a water quantity standard on Virginia and Fairfax County that will cost as much as $225 Million. If the County is forced to spend that much money on a single watershed, it will mean not one of the other 29 watersheds in the County will receive funds for their restoration, including the eight watersheds in the OWC’s territory.

American Tradition Institute v. University of Virginia

(records of Dr. Michael Mann, Freedom of Information Act Petition filed May 16, 2011)

American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center and Virginia Delegate Robert Marshall asked a Prince William County judge, under the Commonwealth’s Freedom of Information Act, to expedite the release of documents withheld by the University of Virginia that pertain to the work of its former environmental sciences assistant professor Dr. Michael Mann. The legal action followed a delay by UVA of more than four months since ATI and Del. Marshall made their original request on Jan. 6. Twelve months after the initial request the matter remains in court with UVA seeking to deny the public copies of emails for which they paid.

The court has ordered the parties to identify exemplar emails that will serve as the basis for legal challenges to UVA’s refusal to release 12,000 emails that chronicle the history of keystone efforts in the early climate change alarmism. We expect this matter will end up in the Supreme Court of Virginia and if successful its discovery and production will prove invaluable to energy policymaking at the state and federal levels domestically, as well as internationally.

American Tradition Institute v. State of Colorado, et al. (filed April 4, 2011)

American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of Colorado’s Renewable Energy Standard, based upon evidence that the state’s law violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Commerce Clause reserves the regulation of interstate commerce to the federal government.

The court has under consideration a motion for the Sierra Club to intervene, as well as a challenge to ATI’s standing. The next phase of the case will be extensive discovery followed by motions for summary judgment. The case is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

In Re Accotink Creek TMDL – a Data Quality Act challenge to EPA’s Clean Water Act over-regulation of a local stream. EPA was forced to drop a major element of the TMDL that has been used nationally to directly replace local land use planning and controls.

Resolved Cases

American Tradition Institutev. National Aeronautics and Space Administration

(records of Dr. James Hansen, Freedom of Information Act Petition filed June 21, 2011)

On June 21, 2011 American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit in federal district court in the District of Columbia to force NASA to release ethics records for Dr. Hansen. The action followed NASA’s denial of ATI’s federal Freedom of Information Act requestwith NASA, seeking records detailing whether and how ‘global warming’ activist Dr. James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has complied with applicable federal ethics and financial disclosure laws and regulations, and NASA Rules of Behavior.

This case forced NASA and the U.S. Office of Governmental Ethics to change its policy on release of public documents as well as how NASA and others implement their ethics responsibilities (poorly). It has resulted in an ongoing investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations.[who?]

FOIA Actions

§ University of Virginia – Requested Mann emails associated with his academic duties. This matter is now before a Virginia Circuit Court for failure of UVA to meet its responsibilities under the Virginia FOIA and to challenge the University’s claims that 12,000 emails are exempt from FOIA. Mann has entered the case as a party (defendant). As of early 2012 we are in motions practice on our effort to proceed to discovery.

§ University of Virginia – Requested Michael Mann’s research logs or the written authorization allowing Mann to take his log upon his departure from UVA. The University responded stating it did not have a log and had no release authorization. UVA also refused to inquire as to whether Mann actually kept a research log. As such, FME Law has effectively established that he kept no research log which is why no one, including Mann, can duplicate the research underpinning his infamous Hockey Stick-shaped reconstruction of global temperature.

§ University of Virginia – Requested evidence that 15 faculty members who engaged in publishing peer-reviewed scientific papers actually kept research logs associated with that research. The University requires faculty to maintain such logs so that others can duplicate the research using the exact same methods. Of the 15, only one research log was found, and it belonged to a clinical assistant. Not one faculty member appears to have kept a research log.

§ George Mason University – Requested and received the Wegman records sought by USA Today, thereby establishing what is proper, and what are disparate, implementation practices under Virginia’s FOI law by different universities or, arguably, depending on the published views of the subject of the FOI request. Professor Wegman’s emails document the validity of the deconstruction of the Mann Hockey Stick.

§ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – Requested Jim Hansen’s ethics compliance records regarding outside employment and other activity. We established that Dr. Hansen received approximately ten times his salary in gifts, outside employment and speaking fees, all as a result of his environmental advocacy. Should he choose to testify again in Congress he now has specific, troubling questions to answer. His records show he and his supervisors failed to properly follow the NASA ethics requirements. On behalf of ATI Law, the FME Law Clinic filed to force release of the records in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. NASA settled the matter, releasing all records sought, and we are in the fee-recovery stage of this litigation.

§ Harvard-Smithsonian – Requested records provided Greenpeace regarding correspondence associated with the Soon/Baliunas. These were received in a timely fashion. Soon and Baliunas published a landmark paper debunking the argument that the Medieval Warming Period was only a Northern Hemisphere phenomena, showing it was a global event.

§ Harvard-Smithsonian – Requested additional correspondence reflecting the efforts revealed in “Climategate” emails to seek the dismissal of Soon and Baliunas in response to their having published particular research. These documents have not been produced on a timely basis and may require litigation to free them.

§ National Science Foundation – Requested Verardo/Mann correspondence. Mann refused to release fundamental data and results used to support his Hockey Stick temperature reconstruction. When the same data was sought from the National Science Foundation, who provided the grant for Mann’s research, NSF’s Verardo refused to provide the data. ATI sought the email correspondence between Mann and Verardo associated with this matter. NSF claimed it possessed no such records though on appeal FME Law provided certain responsive correspondence which is already publically available on the internet, and noted our ability to establish the existence of more. FME Law appealed this response. NSF’s responded on January 19, 2012 seeking a ten-day extension to consult internally, as is permitted by statute.

§ National Science Foundation – Requested additional documents associated with the Verardo/Mann discussions on disclosure of Mann’s data. After invoking statutory authority for a ten-day extension to consult internally, as the request seeks certain records produced by the general counsel’s office, NSF promised a response by February 2, 2012.

§ National Science Foundation – Requested other Verardo/Mann Correspondence during the time of NAS panel on climate change for a broader window of time than the original request sought. NSF has promised a response by January 25, 2012.

§ University of Arizona – Requested correspondence among Hughes, Mann and Overpeck associated with efforts to have journal editors fired on the basis that they accepted papers critical of Mann. UofA has acknowledged receipt of the FOIA but has not responded and are under no specific statutory time constraint. This may require litigation to force production in a reasonable period of time.

§ U.S. Department of Justice – Requested copies of documents associated with the release of emails from the University of East Anglia (Climategate), beginning in 2009 and through therecent British criminal investigation, in which DOJ has participated. A response was due on January 19, 2012.

§ Texas Tech – Requested documents of erstwhile “climate” chapter contributor Professor Katharine Hayhoe to, from and citing Newt Gingrich, and his forthcoming book on environmental issues. The University refused to produce the documents, producing one redacted email affirming Hayhoe was indeed engaged by Gingrich’s co-author to produce the chapter, as well as the chapter’s inclusion in the book as of December 7, 2011, despite Gingrich claims to the contrary days later. FME Law has appealed this unlawful redaction and filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General regarding TTU’s admission that they violated the Texas transparency laws by failing to seek the AG’s approval before withholding responsive information. FME Law requested the AG compel TTU to produce responsive records, and submitted a second request going back to the date of the first request for Hayhoe’s chapter, in 2007.

§ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Requested copies of policies and internal guidance on how the agency processes citizen petitions authorized under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This is the first step in a planned examination on whether EPA processes petitions from those it endorses as compared to those who criticize the agency.

Prospective Cases: ie FISHING FOR CORP FUNDERS

ATI v. US. Forest Service – ATI is seeking support for, and asked FME Law to prepare, a FOIA, Endangered Species Act and Data Quality Act petition-litigation action to force full implementation of National Forest Management Plans that require logging in order to prevent forest firesthat causing destruction of endangered species habitat and which would also create new timber and mill jobs and reinvigorate a moribund national timber industry.

A_ Association v. EPA – The FME Law Clinic is preparing a petition-litigation action to force EPA to revise rules costing over $60 billion and which fail to properly target the actual source of harmfulPM2.5 air pollutants, regulating industries that do not contribute to the hazard and failing to regulate some that do. http://fmelawclinic.org/?page_id=9

University of Virginia Gets an "F" in Tobacco Industry Studies

by Anne Landman — February 27, 2007 - 1:33pm

Topics: Public Relations, Science, Tobacco

ACADEMIC SUPPRESSION

Roger Revelle Enters the Climate Change Debate

Discrediting Roger Revelle

Setting the Record Straight

‘Walking on egg shells’

Tenure troubles

‘Radical DEI progressives’

All-purpose insult

Ideas are not viruses

Bend the knee

A ‘plant’ at FAMU?

Professor profess

‘Anti-woke policies’

Touting tenure review

Uploading a different syllabus

Investigating impacts

What happened at New College of Florida?

Is there a liberal bias in higher education?

Board shake-up part of larger movement against CRT, DEI

Is New College replacing 'one set of extremism with another'?

Another target of conservatives: Academic tenure

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

Iran sentences French academic to 5 years: lawyerAgence france

INTERVIEWS FRESH AIR

Student 'Subversives' And The FBI's 'Dirty Tricks'

The 21-Year-Old Becoming a Major Player in Conservative Politics

Charlie Kirk’s backers swear he’s the future of conservative politics—and he’s only just old enough to drink.

Censoring spokes doctor-turned-critic

Right-Wing Think Tank FOIAs Climate Scientists

Litigation

University of Virginia Gets an "F" in Tobacco Industry Studies

Iran sentences French academic to 5 years: lawyer Agence france