Posts Tagged ‘college’

Merrick Garland is a coward

Posted: May 5, 2024 by John Ruberry in catholic, education, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

In terms of numbers and in geographic reach, America is possibly suffering from its worse outbreak of anti-Semitism ever. I’m referring of course to the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests at many colleges. Many of these “spontaneous” events are illegal encampments filled with similar tents, exact-copy signs, that are populated with angry students and other interlopers chanting the same slogans.

Fortunately, for now at least, the worst outrages at these hate rallies are isolated incidents.

Last month, a protester at George Washington University held a sign with a Palestinian flag and “the final solution.” At Columbia, a protest leader, the pronoun challenged Khymani James, was banned from campus after a video surfaced where, James declared, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”

Also at Columbia, a knucklehead there screamed, “Go back to Poland, go back to Belarus” at pro-Israel counter protesters.

Can you imagine the uproar–it would be a well-deserved one–if someone screamed, “Go back to Africa” to Black protesters? The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division would be there at Navy Seals speed.

The head of the Department of Justice is Merrick Garland, the US attorney general. When the situation fits, he likes to remind people that he is Jewish and had two members of his family perish in the Holocaust.

Last year, when questioned about the infamous FBI memo that suggested Catholics who favor traditional Latin mass services could connected to “the far-right white nationalist movement,” Garland responded emotionally. “The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous,” he said, “so absurd.”

In March, in an address to the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League’s Never is Now Summit, Garland was more specific about his family and the Holocaust.

“My family fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe at the start of the 20th century,” he said. “My grandmother, who was one of five children born in what is now Belarus, made it to the United States, as did two of her siblings.”

“The other two did not,” the AG continued. “They were killed in the Holocaust.”

Oh yeah, Belarus, the same place the hater at Columbia said, along with Poland, Jews should return to.

Garland is a native of Lincolnwood, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. He graduated–as class valedictorian-from Niles West High School in nearby Skokie. It was in Skokie, several years after Garland’s graduation, where Neo-Nazis attempted to march. Thousands of Holocaust survivors lived in Skokie at the time; Garland almost certainly was classmates with children of survivors of the Shoah.

Why hasn’t Garland specifically and forcefully spoken out against the anti-Semitism at these pro-Hamas protests? His boss, President Joe Biden, hasn’t either, of course.

When the time is right–or better, when the politics are right–Garland speaks out against anti-Semitism.

But is Garland even running the Justice Department? In the May 3rd Chicago Way podcast hosted by John Kass, the great Charles Lipson, a professor emeritus of political science from the University Chicago, had this to say about Garland: “The attorney general’s office right now is being running by a woman named Lisa Monaco, she’s the number two-person, Merrick Garland’s not doing anything.”

Well, he can do something now. Garland can unequivocally denounce the anti-Semitic protests at college campuses and the Biden administration’s weak response to them.

And then resign.

It’s up to Garland to convince me that he’s not a coward.

John Rubery regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Modern students suck

Posted: August 12, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths
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One of my jobs involves teaching classes for an internationally recognized certification exam. I teach both in-person and online, and I enjoy teaching the materials and helping people prepare to pass the exam. For me, this certification opened up a lot of doors, connected me with a great network, and in general changed my career for the better. I’m pretty passionate about it, and I try to bring that passion and care to the class.

But man, sometimes, it is hard.

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a decline in the care level people place on education. Now, to be fair, education is always a challenge, especially if we’re talking middle or high school education. Many of those kids just don’t want to be there. I don’t measure that engagement. I teach post-secondary classes. My adult students should, theoretically, want to be in class, and place some value on it.

It shocks me how little the modern student cares. As an instructor, I’m full of knowledge about the certification exam, yet most students ask few if any questions about the exam. I’ve then had students that failed the exam say “I wish you would have covered this aspect of the exam…” only to have me send them a link to their class video where I explicitly state “This aspect is really critical and you need to memorize it for the exam.”

In college, I had an electrical engineering instructor that used to work for NASA. He was the guy that designed the carbon dioxide filter for the Apollo 13 mission. If you saw the movie and remember where they made a square filter fit a round hole…yeah, that was him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_LD5PkV6rI

Most of the people in my class never asked him any questions. He never volunteered information about his time in NASA, and it wasn’t until the last week of class that I had the opportunity to ask him about his NASA experience. I learned so much in just that short time, and I’m glad I took that opportunity while in college.

We live in an era of information abundance, where gaining knowledge is simply a matter of applying yourself. Gone are the days where knowledge was kept under lock and key, only reserved for the powerful or rich. Yet this abundance has resulted in seemingly dumber students who are not ready to actually work. When you have mechanical engineering graduates who can’t make basic parts on a lathe, you have to wonder what that person did for 4 years in college.

I don’t think its a matter of education availability. The opportunities are there, and they’ve been there since I was a student all the way to today. But whether its laziness, lack of care, or something in the water, our modern students suck.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

The most important story of the day is not what you would expect:

Posted: July 19, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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It is this bit from Commentary that links to this interview in the Jerusalem Post all emphasis mine:

The best of the best. We had 35 people in the room: 20 of them were non-Jewish, 15 were Jewish. And I didn’t tell anyone who was which. And I’d recruited them by telling them “we’re going to talk about Iraq, Iran and the Middle East,” not telling them that the real focus was Israel.

Got them all into the room. It was so crowded that we had kids sitting on the floor. But that added to the intensity. They felt like they were in a dorm room. And within 10 minutes, the non-Jews started with “the war crimes of Israel,” with “the Jewish lobby,” with “the Jews have a lot more power and influence” – stuff that’s borderline anti-Jewish.

And guess what? Did the Jewish kids at the best schools in America, did they stand up for themselves? Did they challenge the assertions? They didn’t say sh*t. And in that group was the leader of the Israeli caucus at Harvard. It took him 49 minutes of this before he responded to anything.

The group is over. It’s a three-hour group. I then say, “Who’s Jewish, who isn’t?” At that point some of the Jewish kids got a little outraged. I dismiss all the non-Jewish kids.

And the Jewish kids are there. And they’re now ticked at me for doing this, you know, “Why have you segregated us?” I said, “I’m Frank Luntz and I’m Jewish, and I’ve been working on this now for 10 years, and you all didn’t say sh*t.”

And it all dawned on them: If they won’t say it to their classmates, who they know, who will they stand up for Israel to? Two of the women in the group started to cry. I got the whole thing on tape. The guys are like, “Oh my God, I didn’t speak up, I can’t believe I let this happen.” And they’re all looking at each other with horrible embarrassment and guilt like you wouldn’t believe.

And I take this tape down, this little DVD, to the Jewish community and I say, “This is what we’ve done – or not done.” It’s not just giving them the facts. It is also teaching them how to say it, when to say it, when to crack a joke, when to acknowledge someone else’s points, when not to be argumentative or judgmental.

That is the point. During the 30’s people just couldn’t let themselves believe what was coming for Jews. This denial allowed it to happen. Right now that same denial is going on. Evelyn Gordon bottom lines it:

But it’s also a travesty because it shouldn’t be hard for any Jewish leftist to explain why Israel, for all its flaws, is still a far better example of the left’s one-time values, such as freedom, democracy, tolerance, and human rights, than any of its enemies. As Israel’s first Bedouin diplomat, Ishmael Khaldi, said in explaining why he chose to represent a country that allegedly oppresses his fellow Muslim Arabs, “We’re a multicultural, multilingual, multireligious country and I’m happy and proud to be part of it.”

I’m sorry if liberals in general and liberal Jews in particular are unable, unwilling or too afraid to stand up for Israel then they had better beware, because radical Islam and its followers don’t just say “death to Israel” they say “death to Jews” and if Israel disappears tomorrow you and your children (and not me since I’m not even slightly Jewish) are the ones who are going to pay the price. And when that price is paid and the yellow star is once again on your chest (if you’re lucky that is) you will be echoing the guys in the group from above said:

I can’t believe I let this happen!

And if you think that is an exaggeration, try to walk through a Muslim neighborhood in England or Canada carrying an Israeli flag or wearing a big blue star of David if you dare.

Memorandum thread here.

Update: Stacy handles this in depth emphasis mine.

As with global warming, so too with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The three-decade ascendancy of the Edward Said cult in Mideast studies has poisoned the academic well to such a degree that one can scarcely find an “expert” on the subject who is not tainted by it. Meanwhile, the veterans of the ’60s New Left have penetrated organized liberalism to such a degree that, vis-à-vis the Middle East, the Democratic Party is now more aligned with Sirhan Sirhan than with RFK.

Reality is going to catch up with you it you don’t deal with it first.

A great lesson on how reality actually works

Posted: June 14, 2010 by datechguy in employment, opinion/news
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Don Surber reveals a lesson about college degrees:

First up is Jackie Mroz, 22, of Oregon City: “She put everything she had into her studies at the University of Oregon, graduating in 2009 with degrees in international studies and sociology and a double minor in nonprofit administration and African studies. She studied abroad in Senegal, took challenging courses, earned a 3.8 grade point average and raced through college in three years.”

I am no expert, but I cannot see much of a market for sociology or knowing how to run a business that doesn’t make money.

While on the other end of the scale:

Next up is “John Yeier, 24, who graduated from the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls on Saturday. He’s the sole member of his class with a degree in embedded engineering, which integrates computer software and hardware in cell phones, cars and other machines. He will work on small plane navigation system software for Garmin AT in Salem.”

Take a look at his conclusions which make a lot of sense. I think that our society’s attempts to insulate our children from the realities of life is counterproductive. We may be able to delay those realities, but they can’t be repealed. If we don’t teach them this, then life will do it for us, without favoritism or mercy.