Monday, September 14, 2015



Colleges brainwash students into believing 9/11 was our fault

Not all of us will be mourning 9/11 victims and their families this Friday on the 14th anniversary of the attacks. Hundreds of college kids across the country will instead be taught to sympathize with the terrorists.

That’s because their America-hating leftist professors are systematically indoctrinating them into believing it’s all our fault, that the US deserved punishment for “imperialism” — and the kids are too young to remember or understand what really happened that horrific day.

Case in point is a freshman-level English class taught at several major universities across the country called “The Literature of 9/11” — which focuses almost entirely on writings from the perspective of the Islamic terrorists, rather than the nearly 3,000 Americans who were slaughtered by them.

The syllabus, which includes books like “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and “Poems from Guantanamo: Detainees Speak,” portray terrorists as “freedom fighters” driven by oppressive US foreign policies.

Even highly ranked University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has adopted the curriculum. The 9/11 seminar is taught by UNC associate English professor Neel Ahuja, who specializes in “post-colonial studies.”

In Ahuja’s twisted worldview, al Qaeda terrorists are the real victims. “Abu Zubaydah’s torture may be interpreted as simply one more example of the necropower of US imperialism, the power to coerce and kill targeted populations,” Ahuja recently wrote in an academic paper criticizing the war on terror.

He says America’s depiction of the 9/11 terrorists as “monsters” is merely an attempt to “animalize” them as insects and justify “squashing” them in “a fantasy of justice.”

This colonialist “construct” of an “animalized enemy,” he added, “dovetails with the work of mourning the nation after 9/11 (which in the logic of security must be made perpetual, melancholic).” To him, it’s all cynically designed to justify more “imperial violence” against “Muslim, Arab and South Asian men.”

Ahuja goes on to decry the US “colonization” of Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, along with “aerial bombing (and) indefinite detention” of al Qaeda terrorists at Gitmo. In other writings, the professor bashes Israel and sides with Palestinian terrorists, further revealing his agenda.

He clearly has an ax to grind, which critics say the university gives him license to exercise through “The Literature of 9/11” curriculum.

A group of concerned UNC students has complained to administrators that the 9/11 course, also taught at the University of Maryland and other campuses, is being used to brainwash impressionable underclassmen.

“These readings offer points of view that justify terrorism, paint the United States and its government as wholly evil and immoral and desecrate the memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” the UNC College Republicans said in a recent letter to Chancellor Carol Folt.

“There is not a single reading required that focuses on the lives of the victims, the victim’s [sic] families, American soldiers (or) families of American soldiers,” they added. “Nor is there a perspective that portrays the United States as acting in good faith before, during and after the Sept. 11 attacks.”

The course, moreover, “does not teach students how to think, it teaches them what to think,” the letter continued. “And the material it presents is an apologetic for the violence and murder against the United States.”

The university replied that freshmen should be exposed to differing points of view, even radical ones.

“Part of the college experience is the opportunity to learn from those who have differing points of view. Carolina’s first-year seminar program is part of that growth,” the administration said in a press statement, while insisting “the university isn’t forcing a set of beliefs on students.”

But several students who have taken the course warned in a professor review blog that Ahuja, who earns $72,100 a year spewing his unAmerican propaganda, does not tolerate dissent.

“He favors kids who share his views, so learn to do that,” said one reviewer. “A very interesting guy, just don’t disagree with him.”

Added another student, in a January 2014 post: “I would avoid contradicting him openly.”  “AGREE WITH HIS STANCE IN YOUR PAPERS!!!!!” advised another in November.

What’s happening in Chapel Hill is not isolated. Presenting terrorists in a sympathetic light and the US as an imperialist nation is standard fare. This is what, in varying degrees, most college kids are learning today, all over the country

SOURCE






Five Caveats to Obama’s ‘Free’ Community College Proposal

“[F]or every young person willing to work hard, I want two years of community college to be as free and universal as high school is today,” President Obama announced Wednesday in a speech at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich. The president’s remarks came as part of a renewed effort to garner support for his America’s College Promise initiative, which would include $60 billion in new federal spending over 10 years to make community college “free” for students who maintain a 2.5 GPA.

*    Obama stated that free community college “is a concrete way to reduce the cost of education for young people, to improve the skills of workers so they get higher paying jobs, and to grow our economy.”

Yet low-income students already have access to federal Pell Grants, which can be used to finance their tuition obligations at a community college.

Indeed, the number of Pell recipients has doubled since 2008. So the proposal will serve as little more than a federal handout to the community college system. And it goes without saying that the initiative isn’t actually free. Someone has to pay that $60 billion price tag, and that someone is American taxpayers.

Community college is already a cost-efficient means of accessing some higher education. Throwing $60 billion in federal subsidies to the two-year colleges, however, will likely encourage those schools to become less cautious about spending, and poorer stewards of public funds.

The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation.  We’ll respect your inbox and keep you informed.

Obama’s remarks mirrored those he made during a similar pitch at the same community college in Macomb back in 2009.

*    During that speech the president argued that the initiative “will reform and strengthen community colleges…from coast to coast so they get the resources that students and schools need — and the results workers and businesses demand.”

Existing federal and state subsidies, however, are already robust. According to the College Board, 31 percent of federal Pell Grant funding goes to students enrolled in community colleges.

Although average tuition and fees at community colleges across the country are around $2,700, students receive $1,700 on average in aid – primarily constituted of federal Pell Grants – to defray those costs.

Among those students earning associates degrees from community colleges, 62 percent graduated with no debt; 70 percent of students leaving community college earning a credential did so debt-free.

*   “Community colleges are the heart of the American dream,” Obama declared.

Although the community college system has been a worthwhile pathway for many students to jumpstart their careers or obtain the skills and credentials they need, the schools’ structure are not working out for many more. Just 20 percent of students who begin community college each year complete their program within 150 percent of the standard time, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In other words, just 20 percent of students complete their studies within three years. And, as the Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey found:

    According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, only 20 percent of community college students transfer to four-year schools, and only 72 percent of those will have finished or remained enrolled four years later. So, from what we can tell, we are looking at completion for just around 34 percent of community college students.

*    When Obama pitched his plan during his State of the Union address earlier this year, he urged making community college as “free and universal in America as high school is today.”

More than one-third of students have to take remedial courses when they enter college, as they leave high school unprepared for university-level work. Free community college would put even less pressure on high schools to produce graduates who are prepared for college-level work, as they could expect the new free community colleges to fill in what the high schools are failing to do. The proposal is more likely to produce a six-year high school system than a two-year gratis workforce preparation experience.

*    “Free community college for responsible students. It’s an idea that makes sense,” Obama argued.

Does it make sense? Once again, the administration is pursuing initiatives to subsidize rising costs, instead of working with Congress on policies that actually would address the driver of college cost increases: the open spigot of federal student aid. Over the past several decades, college costs have risen at more than twice the rate of inflation, thanks in large part to federal subsidies.

Higher education in the United States has a long and celebrated history, pre-dating federal spending and the numerous programs and requirements that exist today. More federal spending and intervention will not serve students or taxpayers well, and will ultimately drive up costs for both.

SOURCE






Australia: Melbourne University porn ban angers Ormond College students

Banned on feminst grounds.  Feminists are the new prudes

Students have been banned from accessing pornography at the University of Melbourne's largest residential college, sparking a fiery campus debate on sexual freedoms and censorship.

Ormond College has blocked access to adult sites on its Wi-Fi network, stating pornography does not allow people at a "formative stage of life" to develop a "healthy sexuality".

But some students have reacted angrily to the move, arguing they pay $200 a semester for college Wi-Fi, and in the privacy of their own rooms they should be allowed to access legal adult sites.

In a recent student newsletter defending the move, college master Dr Rufus Black said pornography was exploitative and "presents women primarily as sex objects who are a means to the end of male pleasure".

Dr Black, an ethicist and theologist, argued that allowing the college's 400 students to access porn on its network would be condoning the objectification of women.

"Pornographic material overwhelmingly presents women in ways that are profoundly incompatible with our understanding of what it is to treat people with respect and dignity," he said.

He maintained that even same-sex pornography was treating another person as a "means to an end", and that porn was addictive.

"The way that it functions is that it desensitises viewers so that they need to consume more of it or more extreme versions to achieve the same level of arousal."

However, first year law student Thibaut​ Clamart​, 24, wrote a newsletter response objecting to the ban, saying it was a "moralising statement" and that not all pornography was demeaning.

He told The Sunday Age the ban was so broad it included any form of erotica or sex education, and many students felt their freedom of expression was being limited.

"We all agree there is an issue with the current state of mainstream porn but banning it is not the answer. It won't educate people, it is condescending and paternalistic," he said.

"If their argument is that it's about respecting women and enabling young people to discover their sexuality without having the repressive influence of porn, that makes the assumption that looking at porn is going to perpetuate those attitudes and you're going to behave like a porn actor."

In 1991 Ormond College was embroiled in scandal when two female students accused the then college master Dr Alan Gregory of sexual harassment, an incident which ignited fierce debate on sexual politics on campus.

The case was later documented in Helen Garner's controversial book The First Stone, with Garner accusing the two complainants of "puritan feminism".

Dr Black said the porn ban was not prompted by student complaints but was informed by a "well-held view that pornography depicts women for the gratification of male sexuality".

Sex educator Maree​ Pratt, who was invited to talk to Ormond students last month supported the college's stance and said there were high levels of gendered aggression in pornography, with 88 per cent depicting physical aggression such as gagging and choking, and 48 per cent including verbal aggression.

"It also conveys a range of problematic messages around pleasure, consent, body image and sexual health. Pornography is shaping young people's sexual understandings, expectations and practices," she said. "A study last year from the UK showed a normalisation of coercive heterosexual anal sex among 16 to 18-year-olds."

Rachel Withers, president of the Melbourne University Student Union, said as long as students were accessing legal sites what they viewed in the privacy of their own rooms should be their decision.

"I would personally prefer to see colleges tackling issues around respect for women's bodies and consent through educational programs and ensuring students receive comprehensive information on consent as part of their college orientation," she said.

Dr Black rejected claims the ban was a restriction on freedom of expression. "We're not in any way restricting their ability to do what they want with their own personal resources but the college's internet is a common resource therefore what it gets used for is a question of community values."

SOURCE




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