Domestic political considerations far surpassed concerns about scientific grounding in negotiations at the Copenhagen climate conference. Charlie Martin describes how the leaks “confirm the dark suspicions of climate skeptics.”
Wayne State University recently junked its Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in Media award after the former White House correspondent, in a workshop on anti-Arab bias, said that the U.S. Congress, the White House, Hollywood and Wall Street are owned by the Zionists. She also claimed that Jewish influence made it impossible to criticize Israel in the U.S.
More of the same from Thomas. Last summer, she publicly ranted that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go home to “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.”
Robert Cohen, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit, commented that it was “very ironic that she made these comments at an event, the purpose of which was to address stereotyping.”
Ironic, yes, but hardly surprising in today’s academy which, as David Solway writes, is busily and “invidiously programming its students with … a misplaced tolerance for radical Islamic thought and practice.”
Neither does it astonish, for the same reason, that Thomas received a standing ovation from workshop attendees.
Nor that she has been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists and awarded more than 30 honorary degrees.
But we should commend Wayne State for seeing the error of its ways.
In a series of posts Power Line Blog has been exposing the lurch of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Obama’s appointee, Humanities Chairman Jim Leach, toward “political partisanship and rank buffoonery.”
In the latest of these posts Professor Penelope Blake describes, for example, an egregiously politicized and anti-American conference on the ”Legacies of the Pacific War in WWII.”
Professor Blake rightly urges that Congress not approve the NEH’s multi-million-dollar budget for 2011 until the agency eliminates its political agenda, supports objective scholarship, and offers forums which ensure diversity of opinion.
Texan professors who thrive on taxpayer funding are irate about a state law that requires them to make course content clear to students before the latter are, as Accuracy in Academia labels it, ”trapped” in the classroom.
To whom do we owe this salutary development? One, to University of Texas (Austin) junior Taurie Randermann, who lamented to her boss that her course titled “Communication and Religion” was actually about trendy cults such as Wiccans and Heaven’s Gate; and, two, to her boss, Texas Republican State Representative Lois Kolkhorst, who put forth a bill requiring public, online access to course information.
The state chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), among other status quo academic groups, has protested this new law. As AIA notes, “They usually like to exercise their academic freedom behind closed doors where they can deny everyone else’s.”
Kudos to Randermann and Kolkhorst, and may Texas’ victory for transparency a trend make.
From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:
A new short film by FIRE documents the experience of Penn State student artist Joshua Stulman, whose “Portraits of Terror” art exhibit was censored by the university because it satirized Islamic terrorism. Stulman is just one of numerous college students and faculty members who have been silenced for discussing or criticizing Islamic extremism.
Wellesley, Mass.’s head of schools has publicly apologized after learning middle schoolers participated in a Muslim prayer service during a field trip last spring.
During the outing the students visited the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) mosque, a controversial site because of its ownership by the Muslim American Society and questionable activities surrounding its construction.
A videotape showing the prayer session, with five boys kneeling along with Muslim worshippers, was recently published.
The parent who taped the session remains anonymous. Now what do you think possibly could account for this?
The Cardinal Newman Society has officially launched an ambitious, multi-faceted new “legacy” project to help preserve more than 10,000 manuscripts handwritten by the 19th-century theologian John Henry Cardinal Newman and to promote Newman’s views on Catholic education and doctrine.
Making his writings, including The Idea of a University, more accessible to scholars and the public is the goal of the Newman Legacy Project.
“Newman has much to offer the Catholic Church in America: a strong dose of courageous faith, a commitment to reason and a thorough critique of secularism,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of the society.
The distinguished InterAcademy Council, an independent society of top scientists, recently conducted an extensive review of the practices of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which the former found egregiously flawed.
The IAC strongly rebuked the IPCC for making various pronoucements based on “little evidence,” for “vague statements,” and for not “expressing clearly” or giving the proper “perspective” on climate-related issues.
The Capital Research Center (whose work I have long followed and respected) rightly deems the IPCC’s modus operandi ”shoddy” and concludes — devastatingly:
What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who’ll produce the “right” results.
The warming “scientific” community [as the Climategate emails reveal] is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other’s papers — and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.
Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it’s a travesty.
And, so it is, that we all come tumbling down:
In the end, grievous harm will have been done not just to individual scientists’ reputations, but to the once-sterling reputation of science itself. For that, we will all suffer.
In accord with a national effort to update the “No Child Left Behind Act” with an environmental component — and renaming it the “No Child Left Inside Act” — Maryland may soon become the first state to require an “environmental literacy” component, threaded throughout core subject areas, for high school graduation.
Deborah Lambert puts this development in perspective at Accuracy in Academia, which earlier showed that environmental literacy requirements have already been inserted into higher education curricula as another way of preaching the doctrine of manmade global warming. Some colleges and universities now receive “green certifications” for their compliance.
The organization spearheading this nationwide movement aimed at students is the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) … [that] claims to have reached over 400,000 students at 850 schools through their free high school assemblies … ‘encourages students to become ‘climate heroes’ crusading against global warming’ … .
The endgame, now that so many higher education institutions mandate environmental literacy for graduation? “Sustainability” as a first principle throughout all education.
On the one hand, she militantly opposes the U.S.’s ban on homosexuality.
On the other, with like fervor she embraces Islamic Shariah law that mandates death for homosexuality.
NAS.org articles
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