An Israeli dance prof is suing UC Berekley for allegedly discriminating against her on the basis of her nationality. Having taught at the dance department before, she was encouraged in the summer 2023 to apply for renewal.

This is what the chair said a few months later. It's not just the chair's cowardice that's so striking. It's the hey-I'm-real-sorry-but-in-a-way-I'm-doing-you-a-favor level of stupidity that really stands out to me. YOU'RE BREAKING THE LAW!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Jews (or any other minority ethno-cultural group) wanting to discourage intermarriage and assimilation. It’s about cultural survival. Passing on something you feel has value.

https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1954180906215731375

By the way, this is something that critics of cultural appropriation should be able to immediately appreciate.

It’s gotta be said: much of the Jewish response to the Bibas family is flat-out insane. Genocidal, psychopathic, murderous, cruel, and out-of-control. And not just from the usual precincts of Jtwitter, either. It’s everywhere.

Stop. Step back from the Kahanism. I logged on after Shabbat and found nothing but bloodlust. Dressed in a rueful “they forced us into this” fatalism, of course, but you could sense the eagerness. It’s understandable but still inhuman.

Angry about Katherine Franke's "retirement"? Good, you should be. But if people are serious about stopping something like this from happening again, they need to get serious about the cause. Because the precedent was set loooong ago.

A big-ish 🧵 In fact, all of the tools now being used against pro-Palestine faculty (the DEI apparatus, Title VI complaints, collegiality discourse) were developed years ago to quash speech opposed by the left. And I have receipts to prove it.

Here's your imperial boomerang, folks. 2/

🚨The IHRA definition of antisemitism, if adopted and enforced by public universities, is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. So says a federal judge in Texas. A terrific (if, for reasons I'll explain in a second, somewhat inconclusive) decision.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… Here's the gist. Last March after a series of protests by SJP and related groups on college campuses, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed GA-44, an executive order requiring public colleges and universities to prohibit and punish antisemitic speech.
gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/…

I've gotten accused of being snarky and self-righteous lately, which tbf is probably warranted. So let me try this one with some sincerity: Everyone upset about the Muhlenberg should acknowledge the long line of tenured faculty fired for protected speech after leftwing outrage. I'm talking about people like Charles Negy, who was fired after sending out these tweets.
foxnews.com/media/central-…

Humiliation. The Rufo Strategy is well and truly a dead end.

https://twitter.com/jeffsolochek/status/1826068923382636658

This is actually part of a much larger and quite significant story. The entire “anti-woke” strategy in Florida is in full retreat. @PENamerica noticed it fairly early on and put together a good piece on it.

pen.org/report/cracks-…

There is no person on earth with a stronger claim to my house than me because when I am in it, I remember that it is where my daughter took her first steps. No theory of Indigeneity or ethno-religious descent is more powerful than that.

IOW, what matters is community.

A rant: It's important to keep in mind what the real crime of settler colonialism is. Not "theft" per se. No single ethnic group or cultural lineage can own the land, and if your political theory claims otherwise, it is evil and I want nothing to do with it.

Another lawsuit has been filed against an anti-CRT bill. This time it's in Tennessee. @ThePlumLineGS has the details, which are pretty crazy.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/… @ThePlumLineGS The 2021 law at issue is what @PENamerica calls an "Inclusion" ban. That means it forbids K-12 teachers from including certain ideas in classroom instruction. The other types of bans, Compulsion and Promotion, are also bad, but less so.

publications.tnsosfiles.com/acts/112/pub/p…

!!!
Under the Stop WOKE Act, Florida faculty and guest speakers are PROHIBITED from expressing support in class for affirmative action.

That's not me talking. It's Florida's own lawyers.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/… This incredible admission comes after plaintiffs pointed out (and a lower court agreed) that the law's ban on saying that "[a] person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex should be discriminated against...to achieve DEI" would bar support for AA.

The brain drain is real. Tampa Bay Times pulled records on faculty retention at four Florida universities. Resignations are way up, failed searches are common, fear and self-censorship are palpable. A disaster in the making.

tampabay.com/news/education… Several out-going faculty single out Rufo and their fear of being targeted online as a prime motive.

Meanwhile, New College has announced it is seeking $2m from the state to fund an institute to combat “cancel culture in higher education.”

flaglerlive.com/floridas-new-c…

Let me tell you a story about why one Florida school district is yanking works by Flaubert, Milton, and Shakespeare off the library shelf.

Because that's how bad things are getting in Florida. They're pulling Shakespeare.
orlandosentinel.com/2023/07/03/ora… Under HB 1069 (signed by DeSantis in May), county residents may object to any book they feel "depicts or describes sexual conduct." Challenged books must be immediately removed and quarantined pending the outcome of a formal review.

How do you look at these numbers as anything other than a total GOP messaging defeat?

Even a slight plurality of K-12 *parents* believe that teachers should play the lead role in their child's education.

ipsos.com/en-us/american… The DeSantis platform is wildly unpopular. With parents, with the general public...

I tend to agree. “Restrict” is a better term. That said, one school in Florida recently took Brave New World out of the general library and “restricted” it to the 11/12th grade AP English classroom. So it’s still available (and therefore not a ban?) but only to +/- 50 kids.

https://twitter.com/katrosenfield/status/1661398913159426048

Here’s that story. The point is straightforward: would-be censors have many tools at their disposal short of a formal ban to essentially achieve a ban’s effect. We all know this.

https://twitter.com/jeffreyasachs/status/1659243010096234516?s=21&t=JySrZxJlj8WaxenDL2EGjg

One more contribution to this debate, then off for the night.

The reason I focus on "a handful of examples" is because those were the examples Greene himself chose to highlight. I didn't pick them. He did. He just had the poor luck (I guess?) of choosing ones with obvious flaws.

https://twitter.com/jaypgreene/status/1659278143151042578

The other thing I want to say is that temporary removals should, indeed, be recorded as bans -- albeit as ones that were later reversed.

And the reason is simple. First, b/c many genuine bans do get reversed. I cite in my thread this case in Missouri.

https://twitter.com/JeffreyASachs/status/1659241644330299392

Okay, so you know that "debunking" of PEN America's banned book Index? I didn't work on the Index myself and have no insider knowledge, but did finally have time to look it over yesterday and I'm calling bullshit. You may have seen tweets like this, where a Heritage staffer named Jay Greene says that PEN America falsely listed The Bluest Eye as banned in Wentzville, Missouri classrooms.

https://twitter.com/jaypgreene/status/1656664575343988737

From the files of Are Colleges Brainwashing Your Child? comes a new entry by @JonathanMijs. When students have a roommate of a different race, their attitudes about meritocracy and racial discrimination change...but *only* if the student isn't white.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl… @JonathanMijs The gist: When black or Hispanic students are randomly assigned a different-race roommate in their freshman year, they become less likely to see America as a meritocracy or discrimination as on the wane.

Statistically, that roommate is likely to be white.

I just want to follow up to address two soon-to-be mis-framings of this law. The first is that it’s an anti-DEI law. It is not.

https://twitter.com/jeffreyasachs/status/1658178490670235648

Supporters will try to persuade you that “all” the law does is ban DEI. It does do that, sort of. But there are only two provisions related to DEI in the law and they’re quite brief. The bulk is about other things: curriculum, faculty speech, etc.

Alongside last year's Stop WOKE Act, this new law is the worst anti-CRT bill to have become law so far. It is vague, highly punitive, and flagrantly unconstitutional. No wonder DeSantis likes it.

washingtonpost.com/education/2023… Most of the attention is going to be on the anti-DEI stuff, but there's a lot more going on. Let me break it down.

1. Curricular censorship: The BoG will review universities for compliance with the Stop WOKE Act (currently enjoined). Also no classes about systemic racism, etc.

A Florida elementary school has pulled from its *library* (not curriculum) this children's graphic novel about desegregation. Why? Because while it's appropriate for 5th graders, it's not for 3rd graders.
amazon.com/Little-Rock-Ni…

https://twitter.com/FLFreedomRead/status/1655900572887797761

The logic here (a logic that no school follows in any other circumstance) is that unless every child in a school can read a book, no child in the school may read that book. Which is too absurd to be anything other than a pretext for "This book is about racism".

New from @PENamerica: Educational Gag Orders are changing. After setbacks both in court and in legislative chambers (to say nothing of public opinion), supporters are shifting tactics from restricting academic speech to academic *structure*. Which is bad.

pen.org/from-classroom… @PENamerica First, a round-up of where we stand. 108 EGOs were introduced in 2023, of which 87 are still live. Five have become law or state policy, including four in April and May.