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BACK-TO-SCHOOL: UNIVERSITIES, BY CHAMPIONING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, PROMOTE PREJUDICE, AND SUPPRESS INDEPENDENT THOUGHT

We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication.

 

The Nonsense Kids Learn in School: George Jonas, National Post, Aug. 22, 2015 — September being just around the corner, it’s time for another instalment of my periodic complaints about schools and education.

UC is Not Welcoming Place to Jewish Students: Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, Santa Cruz Sentinel, Sept. 8, 2015 — “For myself and other Jewish and pro-Israel students, the atmosphere is poisonous.”

Middle East Provocations and Predictions: Daniel Pipes, Mackenzie Institute, Sept. 9, 2015 — The Middle East stands out as the world’s most volatile, combustible, and troubled region; not coincidentally, it also inspires the most intense policy debates – think of the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Iran deal.

At Tuscany’s Only Kosher Winery, Owners Can’t Touch the Chianti: Ben Sales, Times of Israel, Aug. 22, 2015 — Up a windy road in the tranquil Tuscan hills, down a gravel path and past acres of grapevines, a visitor will come across a stainless steel door frame secured with a piece of clear packing tape.

 

On Topic Links

 

Repentance is No Simple Matter: Yossi Beilin, Israel Hayom, Sept. 18, 2015

Is the West Dead Yet?: Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, Sept. 8, 2015

University: Where Debate About Even a Silly ‘White Students Union’ Goes to Die: Chris Selley, National Post, Sept. 18, 2015 

Brandeis to Award Endowed Chair to Anti-Israel Scholar: Winfield Myers, Campus Watch, Sept. 6, 2015

Middle East Studies Profs Team with Iran Lobby to Push Deal: Cinnamon Stillwell, Matt Bradley & Giovanni Legorano, Campus Watch, Sept. 6, 2015

                                          

                             

THE NONSENSE KIDS LEARN IN SCHOOL                                                                                       

George Jonas

National Post, Aug. 22, 2015

 

September being just around the corner, it’s time for another instalment of my periodic complaints about schools and education. It must be 20 years since I heard a bold grandfather pose a knowledge-testing question of a kind I wouldn’t have risked putting to my grandsons. “Where would you look for the agonic line on the map?” the adventurous senior asked his grandchild, a boy of 12. “Agonic what?” “Never mind. What did you talk about in geography class today?” “Global warming.”

 

Need I say more? Still, I’m not opposed to education. Some of what is being taught in school is accurate and useful. It’s good to know that there are 1,000 metres in a kilometre or that the agonic line passes through Thunder Bay in our hemisphere. And if much of what our children learn in school is nonsense, so were many things that our parents and grandparents learned decades or centuries ago.

 

Not necessarily the same nonsense, though. For instance, a child educated in the early 1800s might have learned to think of Aborigines as savages. His grandchild in the early 1900s was more likely to think of Aborigines as noble savages. A child of the early 2000s might come home from school thinking of Aborigines as archetypal environmental activists.

 

For good illustration, I recommend the slightly out-of-date magazines in medical waiting rooms. Leafing through The March 1991 issue of the Australian Teachers Journal in a dentist’s office, for instance, one runs no risk of reading expressions like “noble savages.” What one risks is reading lines like: “Aboriginal Science is a mode of knowledge which has evolved to allow human beings to fit into, rather than outside of, the ecology.” Aboriginal science? Maybe it’s a typo. It isn’t. The writer, Dr. Michael J. Christie, explains that Western science placed humanity apart and above the natural world, while “Aboriginal Science” strives for unity between human beings and the environment. He doesn’t actually write “Man is Fish is Kangaroo” but comes close.

 

All right; look at it this way. “Aboriginal Science” being an improvement on “noble savage,” one might conclude that our nonsense is getting gentler and kinder. I’m not so sure, though. Nonsense is nonsense and even benign nonsense has a way of turning malignant.

 

Anything can turn malignant, actually, including good sense or fine ideals. Patriotism, the unselfish love of one’s own country, can metamorphose into chauvinism or ethnic hatred. A desire for social justice can lead to tyranny and the Gulag. Almost any idea can be Nazified. Our current ideas, from feminism to environmentalism, are no more immune to Nazification than patriotism or religion have been at other times or places. Any bottled dogma is likely to have a potential fuehrer or ayatollah lurking inside it, and dogmas are often bottled in schools.

 

What has made me so wary of schools is the storm-troopers of Nazism and commissars of communism I’ve known, along with the priests and mullahs of theocracies I’ve known about. The dismal creatures surfacing from history’s pestilential swamps were rarely illiterate. Most had been formally educated, usually in the humanities. Many had been teachers or journalists before they became fanatics of some religion or ideology. The ideas they embraced were also spawned in the schools of their respective periods. Nazism spread through Germany’s institutions of higher learning faster than it spread through its beer halls. Colleges and universities were hotbeds of communism far more than unions or workers’ clubs.

 

University students and professors were among the first to “cleanse” independent thought and inquiry. These much-vaunted institutions of academic freedom were the pioneers of political correctness back then, just as they are today. Tyrannies might entrust the day-to-day operation of their torture chambers to untutored louts, but those at the helm are often graduates of law schools. Many have teachers’ certificates and master’s degrees. I’m not suggesting that education causes people to become Nazified, only that education does nothing to prevent it. Usually it just puts a seal of good housekeeping on people’s errors or crimes.

 

All cultural institutions are in the grip of fashion. Schools, just like the media, mirror prevailing trends. Education has an uncanny way of reproducing the spirit of the times. Schools rarely rise above the intellectual and social fashions of the day.

 

I’d agree that if children must learn to think nonsense, it’s better to have them think of Aborigines as early environmental activists than savages, whether noble or ignoble. Better — but no less nonsensical. There’s hardly a social idea children bring home from school today that’s less nonsense than those brought home by yesterday’s children, especially in the realm of morality or human nature.

 

Thank God schools haven’t yet changed their minds about the agonic line running through Thunder Bay or the number of metres that make up a kilometre. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they’re so preoccupied with global warming, they rarely bother mentioning anything else to their pupils anymore.                                                                   

 

Contents                                                                                                

   

UC IS NOT WELCOMING PLACE TO JEWISH STUDENTS                                                            

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin                                                                                         

Santa Cruz Sentinel, Sept. 8, 2015

 

“For myself and other Jewish and pro-Israel students, the atmosphere is poisonous. We feel attacked, ostracized, and threatened. Our identities are being rejected and our right to express our beliefs endangered. Our academic performance is being harmed unjustly.” — a Jewish UC student.

 

To make good on the “welcoming and inclusive” campus promised in the “Principles of Community” of its 10 campuses, the University of California has taken steps to heighten awareness of certain kinds of bigotry such as racism and sexism, offering university administrators sensitivity training in the subtlest forms of allegedly bigoted expression known as “microaggression.” A document issued by the UC Office of the President has identified seemingly innocuous utterances including, “America is a melting pot” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” as examples.

 

Meanwhile, Jewish students on many UC campuses are facing what can rightly be called “MACROagression” — long-standing and pervasive patterns of vicious, hateful behavior. In the past few years Jewish UC students have reported being harassed, assaulted, threatened, vilified and discriminated against, their property defaced and destroyed, and their events disrupted and shut down.

 

UC leaders cannot claim ignorance of this anti-Jewish bigotry. A widely-publicized 2012 study, commissioned by then UC President Mark Yudof, found that Jewish students on seven UC campuses were confronting “significant and difficult climate issues” as a result of behaviors “which project hostility, engender a feeling of isolation, and undermine Jewish students’ sense of belonging and engagement with outside communities.” The study revealed that the primary sources of anti-Jewish sentiment were anti-Israel activities which challenged Israel’s right to exist and were fueled by anti-Zionism and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movements.

 

Since the study’s publication, the campus climate for Jewish students has significantly deteriorated. Not surprisingly, almost all of the recent antisemitic incidents including swastikas on a Jewish fraternity at UC Davis, posters blaming Jews for 9/11 at UC Santa Barbara, and a UCLA student being told by student senators that her Jewishness would make her ineligible to serve in government can be directly linked to anti-Israel campaigns, especially BDS.

 

Yet despite the mounting evidence of anti-Jewish “MACROaggression,” there have been no UC initiatives to address anti-Jewish hostility, no sensitivity training for UC administrators, and no widely-circulated UC documents with examples of the anti-Semitic behaviors that have created an extremely hostile and threatening environment for many Jewish students. Not one. Indeed, anti-Jewish “MACROaggession” is simply not on the radar. Why are administrators so well attuned to the subtle forms of some types of bigotry but unable to recognize even the most flagrant forms of contemporary antisemitism? Because UC currently lacks the single most essential tool for identifying and educating the campus community about the kinds of antisemitic expression that Jewish students are actually experiencing: an accurate definition.

 

That is why dozens of the world’s foremost scholars of antisemitism, approximately 60 religious, civil rights, educational and student organizations including the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel and thousands from California’s Jewish community have been urging UC to adopt the U.S. State Department definition of anti-Semitism, which provides an authoritative standard for determining when anti-Israel expression crosses the line into anti-Semitism. And, commendably, UC President Janet Napolitano herself has publicly expressed support for the State Department definition.

 

At their September meeting, UC Regents will consider a statement of principles against intolerance. If the Regents incorporate into their statement a reference to the State Department definition of anti-Semitism, or at least an acknowledgement of the well-documented relationship between certain kinds of anti-Israel expression and anti-Semitism, they will be affirming their commitment to ensuring a welcoming and inclusive environment for all students including Jewish students. If not, the Regents will be sending a loud and clear message to the California Jewish community: We do not care about Jewish students, and are unwilling to ensure their safety and well-being.

                                                                       

Contents                                                                                      

   

MIDDLE EAST PROVOCATIONS AND PREDICTIONS                                                                                      

Daniel Pipes                                  

Mackenzie Institute, Sept. 9, 2015

 

The Middle East stands out as the world’s most volatile, combustible, and troubled region; not coincidentally, it also inspires the most intense policy debates – think of the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Iran deal. The following tour d’horizon offers interpretations and speculations on Iran, ISIS, Syria-Iraq, the Kurds, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Islamism, then concludes with some thoughts on policy choices. My one-sentence conclusion: some good news lies under the onslaught of misunderstandings, mistakes, and misery.

 

Iran: Iran is Topic No. 1 these days, especially since the nuclear deal the six great powers reached with its rulers in Vienna on July 14. The “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” seeks to bring Tehran in from the cold, ending decades of hostility and inducing Iran to become a more normal state. In itself, this is an entirely worthy endeavor. The problem lies in the execution, which has been rewarding an aggressive government with legitimacy and additional funding, not requiring serious safeguards on its nuclear arms program, and permitting that program in about a decade. The annals of diplomacy have never witnessed a comparable capitulation by great powers to an isolated, weak state.

 

The Iranian leadership has an apocalyptic mindset and preoccupation with the end of days that does not apply to the North Koreans, Stalin, Mao, the Pakistanis or anyone else. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei et al. have reason to use these weapons for reasons outside of the normal military concerns – to bring on the end of the world. This makes it especially urgent to stop them.

 

Economic sanctions, however, amount to a sideshow, even a distraction. The Iranian government compares to the North Korean in its absolute devotion to building these weapons and its readiness to do whatever it takes, whether mass starvation or some other calamity, to achieve them. Therefore, no matter how severely applied, the sanctions only make life more difficult for the Iranian leadership without actually stopping the nuclear buildup. The only way to stop the buildup is through the use of force. I hope the Israeli government – the only one left that might take action – will undertake this dangerous and thankless job. It can do so through aerial bombardment, special operations, or nuclear weapons, with option #2 both the most attractive and the most difficult.

 

If the Israelis do not stop the bomb, a nuclear device in the hands of the mullahs will have terrifying consequences for the Middle East and beyond, including North America, where a devastating electromagnetic pulse attack must be considered possible. To the contrary, if the Iranians do not deploy their new weapons, it is just possible that the increased contact with the outside world and the disruption caused by inconsistent Western policies will work to undermine the regime.

 

ISIS: The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (aka ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State, Daesh) is the topic that consumes the most attention other than Iran. I agree with Ron Dermer,  the Israeli ambassador to Washington, that Iran is a thousand times more dangerous than ISIS. But ISIS is also a thousand times more interesting. Plus, the Obama administration finds it a useful bogeyman to justify working with Tehran. Emerging out of almost nowhere, the group has taken Islamic nostalgia to an unimagined extreme. The Saudis, the ayatollahs, the Taliban, Boko Haram, and Shabaab each imposed its version of a medieval order. But ISIS went further, replicating as best it can a seventh-century Islamic environment, down to such specifics as public beheading and enslavement.

 

This effort has provoked two opposite responses among Muslims. One is favorable, as manifested by Muslims coming from Tunisia and the West, attracted moth-like to an incandescently pure vision of Islam. The other, more important response, is negative. The great majority of Muslims, not to speak of non-Muslims, are alienated by the violent and flamboyant ISIS phenomenon. In the long term, ISIS will harm the Islamist movement (the one aspiring to apply Islamic law in its entirety) and even Islam itself, as Muslims in large numbers abominate ISIS.

 

One thing about ISIS will likely last, however: the notion of the caliphate. The last caliph who actually gave orders ruled in the 940s. That’s the 940s, not the 1940s, over a thousand years ago. The reappearance of an executive caliph after centuries of figurehead caliphs has prompted considerable excitement among Islamists. In Western terms, it’s like someone reviving the Roman Empire with a piece of territory in Europe; that would get everybody’s attention. I predict the caliphate will have a lasting and negative impact.

Syria, Iraq, and the Kurds: In certain circles, Syria and Iraq have come to be known as Suraqiya, joining their names together as the border has collapsed and they have each simultaneously been divided into three main regions: a Shiite-oriented central government, a Sunni Arab rebellion, and a Kurdish part that wants out. This is a positive development; there’s nothing sacred about the British-French Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 which created these two polities. Quite the contrary, that accord has proven an abject failure; conjure up the names of Hafez al-Assad and Saddam Hussein to remember why. These miserable states exist for the benefit of their monstrous leaders who proceed to murder their own subjects. So, let them fracture into threes, improving matters for the locals and the outside world.

 

As Turkish-backed Sunni jihadis fight Iranian-backed Shi’i jihadis in Suraqiya, the West should stand back from the fighting. Neither side deserves support; this is not our fight. Indeed, these two evil forces at each others’ throats means they have less opportunity to aggress on the rest of the world. If we do wish to help, it should be directed first to the many victims of the civil war; if we want to be strategic, help the losing side (so neither side wins). As for the massive flow of refugees from Syria: Western governments should not take in large numbers but instead pressure Saudi Arabia and other rich Middle Eastern states to offer sanctuary. Why should the Saudis be exempt from the refugee flow, especially when their country has many advantages over, say, Sweden: linguistic, cultural, and religious compatibility, as well as proximity and a similar climate.

 

The rapid emergence of a Kurdish polity in Iraq, followed by one in Syria, as well as a new assertiveness in Turkey and rumblings in Iran are a positive sign. Kurds have proven themselves to be responsible in a way that none of their neighbors have. I say this as someone who, 25 years ago, opposed Kurdish autonomy. Let us help the Kurds who are as close to an ally as we have in the Muslim Middle East. Not just separate Kurdish units should come into existence but also a unified Kurdistan made up from parts of all four countries. That this harms the territorial integrity of those states does not present a problem, as not one of them works well as presently constituted…                                                                                                       

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]                                                              

                                                                       

Contents                                                                                      

                                                    

AT TUSCANY’S ONLY KOSHER WINERY,                                                           

OWNERS CAN’T TOUCH THE CHIANTI                                                                                           

Ben Sales                                                                                                             

Times of Israel, Aug. 22, 2015

 

Up a windy road in the tranquil Tuscan hills, down a gravel path and past acres of grapevines, a visitor will come across a stainless steel door frame secured with a piece of clear packing tape. The Hebrew scrawled on the adhesive reads: “David Solomon.” Almost no one may remove this tape, open the door or use the winemaking equipment in an expansive room on the other side. Another door to the same room, sealed with a white plastic strip bearing a K inside a circle, also stays locked, though visitors may peer into the room through glass panels.

 

During a recent visit, the winery’s owner, Maria Pellegrini, stood next door, laying out thin slices of Tuscan bread along the perimeter of a plate and topping them with tomatoes grown in her garden. She chopped pieces of fresh, kosher parmesan into a small dish. But when it came time to open her signature bottle, the Terra Di Seta Winery’s Chianti Classico 2010 Reserve, she yielded to Yossi Metzger, an intern with little winemaking experience and a kippah on his head. Metzger twisted the corkscrew and popped the bottle open. “We must be crazy to make kosher wine in Tuscany,” laughed Pellegrini, who, according to Jewish law, cannot touch the wine because she is not Jewish. “Others tried to make kosher wine, but it’s not easy. It’s not a joke.”

 

Other non-kosher Tuscan wineries have occasionally produced a run of kosher wine, but since it began producing bottles eight years ago, Terra di Seta has been the only fully kosher winery in central Italy’s Chianti region. It’s an area famed for the distinctive red wines its families have produced for centuries, against a landscape that looks like the backdrop to a Renaissance painting. Pellegrini and her husband, Daniele Della Seta, are meticulous about adhering to Chianti’s high standards. They export 35,000 to 45,000 bottles per year to stores and restaurants in the United States, Israel and around the world. The winery also makes olive oil from trees in the vineyard as well as honey, another regional specialty.

 

Requirements for Chianti (pronounced kee-ON-tea) wine range from using the local Sangiovese grape variety almost exclusively to letting the wine age for more than two years. At the end of the process, each run is sent to a committee so it can be approved as an official “Chianti Classico” wine — complete with a serial number for each vintage. But keeping kosher means the vintners must surrender the actual winemaking process to others. According to traditional Jewish law, only religious Jews may produce kosher wine, and though Della Seta is Jewish, he does not observe Shabbat. So mashgiachs, or kosher supervisors, hired by the OK Kosher certification agency have to handle everything from the time the grapes come to the winery’s door to when the cork goes into the bottle.

 

“I’ve worked with non-kosher wineries before who’ve always wanted to jump into some point of the process,” said Ian Schnall, one of Terra di Seta’s mashgiachs. “It’s like Van Gogh saying, ‘Paint this corner in this shade, paint that corner in that shade.’” At first, the restrictions were especially difficult for Pellegrini, who is originally from Tuscany. She grew up in a winemaking family in southern Italy and always dreamed of operating her own winery. When Della Seta, a neurology professor, got an appointment at the nearby University of Siena in 2000, the couple bought a vineyard surrounding a 400-year-old stone house and moved in. The year after their first vintage, in 2007, they decided to go kosher…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]   

                       

                                    CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!

 

Contents                                                                                                                                               

On Topic

                                                                                                        

Repentance is No Simple Matter: Yossi Beilin, Israel Hayom, Sept. 18, 2015—During the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, known as the Days of Repentance or the Days of Awe, those who believe in divine providence are filled with reverent dread.

Is the West Dead Yet?: Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, Sept. 8, 2015 —Never has Western culture seemed so all-powerful. —“White students union!” exclaimed posters on three Toronto-area university campuses this week. There ought to be one, in other words. And that certainly wouldn’t do.

University: Where Debate About Even a Silly ‘White Students Union’ Goes to Die: Chris Selley, National Post, Sept. 18, 2015

Brandeis to Award Endowed Chair to Anti-Israel Scholar: Winfield Myers, Campus Watch, Sept. 6, 2015—Pascal Menoret, who has a history of anti-Israel activism, will be officially named the Renee and Lester Crown Chair in Modern Middle East Studies in a September 8 ceremony marking the tenth anniversary of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, the nation's only non-sectarian Jewish-sponsored college.

Middle East Studies Profs Team with Iran Lobby to Push Deal: Cinnamon Stillwell, Matt Bradley & Giovanni Legorano, Campus Watch, Sept. 6, 2015—The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) has produced a letter promoting the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) signed by "73 prominent International Relations and Middle East scholars." Among the latter are Richard Bulliet, John Esposito, Fawaz Gerges, Rashid Khalidi, Hamid Dabashi, William O. Beeman, Juan Cole, and Reza Aslan.

 

 

 

                                                                      

 

              

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