Education | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 70
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Education Tag

National Review's David French suggests that states should reject federal funding if they wish to remain free from executive actions such as the Obama administration's directive on school bathrooms [emphasis mine]:
Without an act of Congress, without a ruling from the Supreme Court, and without even going through the motions of the regulatory rule-making process, the administration issued a letter drafting every single public educational institution in the country to implement the extreme edge of the sexual revolution... ...We must fix our education system or slowly but surely lose our culture. Indeed, virtually every other conservative endeavor — whether it’s winning elections, transforming media, or infiltrating pop culture — will fail if the entire edifice of public education is arrayed against us. The system, however, can’t be reformed from within: It’s stacked top-to-bottom with progressive activists even in red states.

Madeleine Albright is set to deliver the commencement address at Scripps College. You would think that the nation's first female secretary of state would be welcomed at the women only school but we live in strange times. Back in April, students objected to Albright for being white, now they've decided the real problem is that she's a war criminal. The Los Angeles Times reports:
Madeleine Albright a war criminal? Scripps College's baffling crusade for simple thinking Ah May, when flowers are blooming, allergens are wafting and aggrieved college students are mewling about commencement speakers whose politics don't sufficiently hew to the ultra-liberal standards set by the campuses' most outspoken activists.

Late last night, I blogged about a NYT report that the Education and Justice Departments were issuing a bathroom edict to all government-funded schools. As the NYT pointed out, the letter is not legally binding and has, "no force of law," but is a threat no less. Without force of law, the only threat remaining is federal money (which should make for a fun 10th amendment fight). So the ED and DOJ trotted out Title IX to preach about discrimination. But it's not a threat. Public schools will lose federal funding for noncompliance, but it's not a threat though: Potty Decree highlights (or lowlights):

The Family Policy Institute of Washington recently spoke with some students from Seattle University and asked them simple questions about gender and the differences between men and women. Here's a description from their blog:
The second episode in FPIW’s wildly popular College Kids Say the Darndest Things series launched Monday afternoon, just hours after the federal government inserted themselves into the battle between the unrealistic social justice agenda and biological science.

Because the issue isn't contentious enough, Obama Administration Officials will issue a directive to public school districts nationwide, instructing them to allow students to use the restroom of their choosing. Officials from the Justice and Education Departments have signed the letter which preaches against discrimination. The New York Times reported late Thursday evening:

Harvard is instituting a new policy which will punish students who join single-sex clubs by prohibiting them from serving in leadership roles. While many students are unhappy with the new rules, it was women at the school who recently staged a protest. The Harvard Crimson reports:
Hundreds of Women Protest Harvard Sanctions Continuing to mount pressure on administrators, more than 200 women rallied in front of Massachusetts Hall Monday against a new Harvard policy that will bar members of unrecognized single-gender social organizations from holding leadership positions in official clubs and receiving top fellowships.

The University of Chicago has the distinction of being recognized by FIRE as a model for free speech in higher education. At the same time, the school is home to a number of BDS activists who typically engage in the shouting down of people with whom they disagree. This dichotomy has led to an ironic impasse on campus. While the administration is committed to free speech, some members of the student government are not. This struggle has been going on for some time. In April, the College Council passed a resolution to divest from Israel. The Chicago Maroon reported:
College Council Passes Resolution Recommending Divestment College Council (CC) approved a resolution last night calling on the University of Chicago to divest from 10 companies that the resolution’s proponents say enable Israeli human rights abuses in Palestine.

Campus culture has drifted so far to the left that students at Georgetown are protesting Obama's secretary of homeland security Jeh Johnson, who's slated to deliver the commencement address for their School of Foreign Service. Students have decided Johnson is too conservative on immigration to speak at the university. Blake Neff reports at the Daily Caller:
The Latest Campus Speaker Denounced As Too Conservative Is An Obama Cabinet Secretary Students at Georgetown University are protesting against the school’s choice of commencement speaker because he enforced the law by deporting illegal immigrants. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson is scheduled to deliver the commencement address May 21 to graduates of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. Some student activists are dismayed by Johnson’s selection, because his role as secretary places him in charge of monitoring the country’s borders and deporting illegal immigrants.

I always found Jay Leno's "Jay Walking" segment depressing. He would wander around Los Angeles, conducting man on the street interviews with passers by, most of whom showed complete ignorance about very basic American history questions. I never found it humorous, I found it disheartening, but also context for why things are the way they are. This video is no different. Who fought in World War II? Who was Hitler? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Last week we covered the story of three students at the University at Albany who were facing charges for staging a race hoax. The school has now expelled two of the students and suspended another. FOX News reports:
Two New York college students who claimed to be victims of racist attack expelled Two black female college students who claimed to be victims of an assault by a group of white men and women reportedly were expelled from the University at Albany. University at Albany President Robert J. Jones said in an email to The Albany Times Union Thursday that Ariel Agudio and Asha Burwell were dismissed from the college. A third student, Alexis Briggs, was suspended for two years.

Harvard clearly thinks single sex organizations are a bad thing and they're taking extraordinary measures to discourage students from joining them. Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that progressives believe in choice. The FIRE blog reports:
Harvard Brings Back the Blacklist for Final Club, Fraternity, Sorority Students BOSTON, May 6, 2016—In a stunning attack on freedom of association, Harvard University announced today that members of independent, single-sex, off-campus organizations will be blacklisted from Rhodes and Marshall scholarships and banned from leadership of on-campus organizations or athletic teams.

Earlier this week, we reported at College Insurrection that Virginia Tech disinvited conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley over concerns about offending students and protests. Riley addressed the situation at the Wall Street Journal:
I Was Disinvited on Campus ‘Progressives rule higher education,” write political scientists Jon Shields and Joshua Dunn Sr. in “Passing on the Right,” a new book on the dearth of conservative professors. “Their rule is not absolute. But conservatives are scarcer in academia than in just about any other major profession.” Profs. Shields and Dunn aren’t exaggerating. In the humanities and social sciences, they note, surveys show that the percentage of self-described Marxist professors is around 18%, or nearly double that of self-described Republicans...

A decidedly progressive student group at Cornell University called Black Students United has sent a letter to school administrators saying they want the entire faculty to undergo training in diversity and a host of other garden variety issues in identity politics. The Cornell Daily Sun has the story:
Cornell Black Students United to Submit Faculty Training Resolution to Student Assembly Black Students United will present a resolution prompting the Faculty Senate to examine how Cornell’s faculty members are educated in diversity issues at the Student Assembly’s meeting on Thursday. The resolution originated from one of the demands BSU delivered to Cornell’s administration last semester regarding faculty training, according to a BSU facebook post.

Three students from the State University of New York at Albany claimed in January that they were victims of assault on a bus and that the motivation for the crime was racism. They are now being charged for filing a false claim. CNN reports:
N.Y. college students accused of fabricating racially motivated attack Three New York college students who said they were targets of a racially motivated attack face multiple charges for what prosecutors are calling a false claim. A grand jury on Monday indicted Ariel Agudio, Asha Burwell and Alexis Briggs, all 20, each on a charge of third-degree assault and multiple counts of falsely reporting an incident, the Albany District Attorney's Office said.

The newest offering from Prager University asks an interesting question. Why are there still Palestinian refugees and no Jewish refugees? Dumisani Washington of Christians United for Israel hosts the video and points out a number of facts which are frequently ignored by critics of Israel.

We've been featuring Prager University videos at College Insurrection for years now and we figured it was about time we showcased them here at Legal Insurrection once in a while. Dennis Prager has done an outstanding job with his online university and affiliated videos which cover everything from government issues to social policy and beyond. The videos are hosted by figures from politics, media, business, the arts and education. In this new offering, historian and Hillsdale College professor Burt Folsom explores the difference between innovations funded by private investment and government investment.

We've been documenting the Trump hysteria which has gripped college campuses but we now turn to an elementary school in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. Three boys who came up with a hilarious act for their school talent show have been told the show won't go on. The Boston Globe reported:
In Wellesley, it’s curtains for three dancing Trumps Three Wellesley 11-year-olds figured they’d found the perfect plan to reprise their hit performance at last year’s Fiske Elementary School talent show, when they donned masks of their retiring principal’s face and danced wildly: This year, they’d be the dancing Donald Trumps.

This is embarrassing... Indiana University students mistook a Dominican Monk wielding a rosary for a klansman with a whip. This wily foe was up to no good at Red Mango -- the frozen yogurt joint. Twitter was abuzz with reports of a weapon-bearing klansman terrorizing campus. Screen Shot 2016-04-07 at 6.00.07 PM