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Gabe Levin
The Nation
Excerpt: Dr. Eric Cheyfitz, a professor of American studies at Cornell, said the university has canceled the two classes he was set to teach this semester. It comes as the provost is recommending that he be suspended for two semesters without pay on the grounds that he violated federal antidiscrimination laws, The Nation has learned.
Cheyfitz’s lawyer, Luna Droubi, said it’s the latest turn in months of investigations—carried out by different university bodies—into whether Cheyfitz, 84, told a graduate student last semester to drop a class he was teaching about Gaza because the student is Israeli. Cheyfitz, who is Jewish and whose daughter and grandchildren live in Israel, denies the allegation.
Sabrina Tavernise
New York Times
Excerpt: Two days after Charlie Kirk was killed, Suzanne Swierc, an employee at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., woke up to a cascade of missed calls, texts and voice mail messages from numbers she did not know.
Ms. Swierc (pronounced swirtz) discovered that the barrage stemmed from something she had posted on Facebook the day before: “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” Her Facebook settings were private, but one of her followers must have taken a screen shot and sent it on without her knowledge.
Henry F. Haidar
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Out of all the faculty The Crimson recently surveyed, only one percent described their political beliefs as very conservative. Think about that: someone is three times more likely to get into Harvard than to encounter a conservative faculty member here.
Much can be — and has been — said in favor of viewpoint diversity in higher education. Yet those decrying the relative lack of conservative faculty overlooks a basic point: The structure of universities themselves lends itself to a professoriate whose politics do not perfectly map on to that of the public writ large. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Laurel Lee
February 17, 2024
In the matter of rights, Civil Rights are the rights of a citizen, distinct from Human Rights that adhere to an individual at birth whether or not a government exists to be a citizen of. Civil Rights aren’t true rights. They’re protections from the absolute piwer of monarchs. The US Constitution lists civil rights cribbed from the constitution & precedents established by England’s Constitutional monarchy. The monarchy has absolute rights or powers delegated to it by an omnipitent God. Under pressure from the English aristocracy, English monarchs delegated their God-given powers to the lords in Parliament assembled, as well as by royal charters. The lords then created the House of Commons to give royally-chartered city councils a voice in discussions of taxation & other national acts. America’s allegedly democratic government officials exert God’s absolute powers despite the Revolution’s rejection of monarchy. The 1776 Declaration of Independence says God bypassed monarchs in His distribution of rights & powers. Instead, God granted human rights to all. Unfortunately, US Founders didn’t follow through by listing human rights at all, let alone describing them in unequivocal terms. All we’ve got is disputable protections from an absolute monarchy that doesn’t exist & the endless, lucrative & self-serving quibbling of lawyers.