Tag Archives: Professor

Making Good Citizens

Posted on by

Author: R. Alan Harrop,Ph.D

In a prior article, I wrote about the importance of maintaining the rights, privileges, and duties of citizenship in our republic. The valued status of American citizen must not be taken lightly and given away as the Left would do by granting amnesty to illegals.

The Founding Fathers believed that it is critical for our country to teach our children about their obligations as citizens, to understand the principles of a free country, and to understand their duty to defend those principles and freedoms. It is obvious that many of the schools in this country are failing in this responsibility. Teaching critical race theory, diversity/equity/inclusion, and transgenderism are antithetical to the founding principles of America. Students frequently hear that America was founded on slavery and is an essentially flawed country that is inherently racist. Consequently, America must be “fundamentally transformed” as Barack Obama said. None of these things are true, but truth is never a Left wing value. In one generation, we have gone a long way from Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as a shining light on a hill.

The Republican controlled General Assembly, to their credit, passed HB588 that requires the teaching of the founding documents (2011) and more recently, HB 96-NC Reach Act,(2024) which would require all students attending state universities to take a course on the Constitution and founding documents prior to graduation. Not yet a law, it is being resisted by the usual suspects at UNC Chapel Hill and some other state universities and has not been approved by the Senate. A petition from several hundred Chapel Hill professors is being considered by the University Board of Directors, which is likely to advocate for a weakened version to substitute other less accountable teaching methods. Let’s hope the General Assembly will stick to its guns and get this passed as originally designed. Only leftist leaning professors, of which there are too many, would object to teaching the founding principles of this country.

What all this boils down to is that parents and concerned taxpayers need to insist that students receive a sound background in patriotism and love for and respect for this country. In other words, what most of us learned when we went to school needs to be passed on to our children and grandchildren. Parents also need to discuss American values and principles with their children and not rely on the school systems. There are many sources of material to assist parents. Prager University, an online source of free information, is excellent, as is Hillsdale College. Local school boards need to do more to ensure that students are receiving the instruction they need to be good citizens and appreciate the things that make this country great. If we do not fight the leftist indoctrination our children, how can we expect them to become good citizens as the Founding Fathers’ intended? The future of our Republic is at stake.

When Good People Are Attacked

Posted on by

On April 1, The Blaze posted an article about John Eastman.

The article reports:

John Eastman is a patriot, a constitutional scholar, a lawyer, a husband, and a father. He is our friend, colleague, and fellow board member of the Claremont Institute, and he has spent his life defending the principles upon which this great nation was founded. After a 10-week travesty of a trial, a California Bar Court judge, seeking to criminalize disagreements in constitutional interpretation, recommended that John should lose his license to practice law in California.

The term “lawfare” has become part of the American vernacular in the past few years. It means the manipulation and corruption of the legal system to gain political advantage and attack and destroy one’s political opponents. The most famous example of lawfare is, of course, the shocking abuse of the U.S. Department of Justice, the attorney general’s office in the state of New York, and the district attorney’s office in Fulton County, Georgia, in an attempt to destroy the current Republican candidate for the presidency, Donald J. Trump. But the assault on Trump is just the most widely publicized example of this evil practice, which is destroying the rule of law in America.

A previous article on that site about John Eastman included a statement from his children:

Eastman has prepared his whole life to fight years of coordinated attacks and lawfare. His encyclopedic knowledge and understanding of the law are informed by years of study of political philosophy, which culminated in a Ph.D. in government at the once-famous Claremont Graduate School under giants such as Harry V. Jaffa. His law degree is from the University of Chicago, one of the top law schools in the country. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He served as professor of constitutional law and dean of Chapman Law School for decades. He is the founder of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Claremont Institute.

Our dad is well equipped for this battle, and while some individuals have lent their support to his efforts, too many have remained on the sidelines.

With the soul of our justice system at stake, it’s time for others to join the fight.

What has happened to the rule of law under the Biden administration is a serious threat to our Republic (we are not a democracy–we are a representative republic). Lawyers who were planning to represent President Trump have been threatened. People who were part of the Trump administration have been spied on illegally, and some have been put in jail. How long will it be before the rest of us who support equal justice under the law will be silenced?

 

This Is What American Ingenuity Looks Like

Posted on by

The Amateur Radio Relay League (AARL), a group of amateur radio operators, posted the following in their recent newsletter:

Radio Amateurs Team Up to Help University Design Low-Cost Ventilator

Amateur radio volunteers from around the world have volunteered to assist University of Florida Professor Sam Lampotang and his engineering team in their quest to rapidly develop an open-source, low-cost patient ventilator that can be built anywhere from such commonly available components as PVC pipe and lawn-sprinkler valves.

The amateur radio volunteers are developing Arduino-based control software that will set the respiratory rate and other key parameters in treating critically ill coronavirus victims.

Multiple volunteers responding to a call for help from Gordon Gibby, MD, KX4Z, include noted software developer Jack Purdum, W8TEE, and uBITX transceiver maker Ashhar Farhan, VU2ESE. University of Florida physicians are working to address the critical legal aspects as the design moves closer to fruition. The ventilator’s valves would precisely time compressed oxygen flow into patient breathing circuits under Arduino control, allowing exhausted patients with “stiff” lungs impacted by viral pneumonia to survive until their body can clear the infection.

The software design team is also adding simple features such as an LCD display, encoders to choose parameters, and watchdog safety features.

This is the result of the free market being allowed to function.

The Beginning Of The Move To Make The Abnormal Seem Normal

Posted on by

There is a move in some academic circles to make pedophilia normal.

Yesterday The Daily Political Newswire posted the following:

A professor at the University of Texas is one of those people. Professor Thomas Hubbard writes and teaches about “pederastic intimacy” and advocates for the sick phenomenon.

Pederasty is the “prominent social phenomenon in numerous ancient Greek cultures” in which men had sexual “relationships” with boys.

Hubbard wrote that “contemporary American legislation premised on children’s incapacity to ‘consent’ to sexual relations stems from outmoded gender constructions and ideological preoccupations of the late Victorian and Progressive Era.”

In other words, the sleaze believes that it should be legal for men to be allowed to have sex with children.

The Professor has been in the news before.

On December 19, 2019, The Washington Times reported:

A group of students from the University of Texas at Austin showed up at a professor’s house last week and pounded on the windows and doors, accusing him of being a pedophile over his past research on the history of pederasty, or the sexual relationships between adult men and young boys.

Students with the group Fire The Abusers wore face masks, carried signs and shouted through bullhorns outside the home of professor Thomas K. Hubbard. A video posted by the group on Dec. 9 showed students pounding on the doors and windows and chanting, “Thomas Hubbard, come outside. Pedophile, you can’t hide,” and, “Thomas Hubbard, you’re a creep. Keep an eye out when you sleep.”

The protesters contend that Mr. Hubbard is a child molester because of his writings on pederasty, though he has not been found guilty of any sexual misconduct violations or crimes, the University of Texas at Austin told The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday.

…Mr. Hubbard told The Morning News that his work on pederasty focuses on the “romantic courtship of adolescent males” in Greek literature and art and that he personally believes in informed consent. His writings have been used by the North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA, to promote pedophilia, though Mr. Hubbard has denied any involvement or support for the group.

There are people in our country who want to normalize pedophilia. The ‘research’ being conducted by Professor Hubbard is a part of this effort. Pay attention to what the people teaching your children. believe.

Fighting Back Against Indoctrination

Posted on by

The College Fix posted an article yesterday about a course being taught at the University of North Carolina Wilmington by Dr. Mike Adams.

The article reports:

“What does the evidence say about the claims of the Black Lives Matter movement?”

“Is the criminal justice system really systematically racist?”

“Is there really a rape epidemic on our college campuses?”

“What was that you were saying about white privilege?”

“What was that you were saying about patriarchal oppression?”

These are some of the study prompts for a new class to be offered at the University of North Carolina Wilmington called “Issues in Criminal Justice.” Were these topics taught by a left-leaning scholar, the classroom conversations and readings might have gone one way.

But the class is the brainchild of one of the most well-known and outspoken Christian conservative scholars in the nation — criminology Professor Mike Adams — and he promises that students will finally get a chance to hear how those on the right would answer these questions, and more.

He calls the class “a reasoned response to systematic academic malpractice.”

“Please note that whereas political leftists author virtually all of the readings in your other courses, conservatives and libertarians author most of the readings in this course,” the syllabus states. “This is done so that you will be exposed to beliefs that contradict those of the vast majority of your professors. Often, these dissenting views are presented only as caricatures. In this class, you will hear from the proponents of such views directly.”

Among the required reading list: Mike Lee’s “Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America’s Founding Document”; John Lott Jr.’s “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime And Gun Control Laws”; K.C. Johnson’s and Stuart Taylor’s “The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack On Due Process At America’s Universities”; and Heather Mac Donald’s “The War On Cops: How The Attack On Law And Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.”

The article concludes:

Adams said he is disappointed in how his colleagues no longer teach both sides of an issue.

“There’s a legitimate question as to whether all my colleagues are just incompetent or whether it’s just that they have a moral compass that points to them,” Adams told The Fix. “I’m really trying to figure out if they’re intellectually herniated or just morally herniated. But in all likelihood it’s improper to attribute it to one or the other. It’s got to be a combination because the situation has just gotten so bad. I just have to teach a course like this one.”

Adams made national headlines in 2014 when he won a seven-year court battle against the University of North Carolina Wilmington for retaliating against him for his conservative, Christian views. As part of the settlement, campus leaders agreed to adopt procedures protecting Adams from renewed retaliation.

Adams told The Fix that in light of his past experiences, he is not worried about his academic freedom or the pushback this class might receive from some corners of campus. In fact, he added, controversy is one sign of robust intellectual diversity.

“I’m worried if I don’t cause controversy,” he said. “I’m extremely worried about that. A lack of controversy on college campuses is a sign of sickness and intellectual atrophy.”

Thank you, Dr. Adams, you are a courageous man who is making a difference.

The Growing Contempt For Freedom Of Speech

Posted on by

Walter E. Williams posted an article at Newsbusters today about the attack on free speech.

The Professor notes:

The First Amendment to our Constitution was proposed by the 1788 Virginia ratification convention during its narrow 89 to 79 vote to ratify the Constitution. Virginia’s resolution held that the free exercise of religion, right to assembly and free speech could not be canceled, abridged or restrained. These Madisonian principles were eventually ratified by the states on March 1, 1792.

Gettysburg College professor Allen C. Guelzo, in his article “Free Speech and Its Present Crisis,” appearing in the autumn 2018 edition of City Journal, explores the trials and tribulations associated with the First Amendment. The early attempts to suppress free speech were signed into law by President John Adams and became known as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Later attempts to suppress free speech came during the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln and his generals attacked newspapers and suspended habeas corpus. It wasn’t until 1919, in the case of Abrams v. United States, when the U.S. Supreme Court finally and unambiguously prohibited any kind of censorship.

Unfortunately many of our college campuses have lost the concept of free speech and open debate.

The article reports:

Today, there is growing contempt for free speech, most of which is found on the nation’s college and university campuses. Guelzo cites the free speech vision of Princeton University professor Carolyn Rouse, who is chairperson of the department of Anthropology. Rouse shared her vision on speech during last year’s Constitution Day lecture. She called free speech a political illusion, a baseless ruse to enable people to “say whatever they want, in any context, with no social, economic, legal or political repercussions.” As an example, she says that a climate change skeptic has no right to make “claims about climate change, as if all the science discovered over the last X-number of centuries were irrelevant.”

Rouse is by no means unique in her contempt for our First Amendment rights. Faculty leaders of the University of California consider certain statements racist microagressions: “America is a melting pot”; “America is the land of opportunity”; “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough”; and “There is only one race, the human race.” The latter statement is seen as denying the individual as a racial/cultural being. Then there’s “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” That’s “racist” speech because it gives the impression that “people of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race.” Other seemingly innocuous statements deemed unacceptable are: “When I look at you, I don’t see color,” or “Affirmative action is racist.” Perhaps worst of all is, “Where are you from, or where were you born?”

We should reject any restriction on free speech. We might ask ourselves, “What’s the true test of one’s commitment to free speech?” It does not come when people permit others to say or publish ideas with which they agree. The true test of one’s commitment to free speech comes when others are permitted to say and publish ideas they deem offensive.

I hated it when the neo-Nazis were allowed to march in Skokie, Illinois, but that is what free speech means. The concept of hate speech is the antithesis of free speech–it is an excuse for censorship. If you are not comfortable enough in your own ideas to be willing to let others who do not share those ideas speak, then maybe living in a free country isn’t your cup of tea.

The Court Gets It Right

Posted on by

The Guardian is reporting today that an Australian court ruled James Cook University had unlawfully sacked a professor who had criticised scientific research about the climate change impact on the Great Barrier Reef. Peter Ridd was a professor at James Cook University in Australia before he was fired for his criticism of some of the research on climate change.

The American Thinker posted an article today noting the following:

The greatest “tell” for non-scientists evaluating the likelihood that the anthropogenic global warming theory is a fraud is that instead of critically examining the facts, warmists try to silence skeptics, with some of them even demanding jail for the thought-crime of questioning their unproven theory.  So thorough has been the pressure to keep the fraud going and keep the billions of dollars a year in research funds flowing to universities and other research institutions pushing the party line that skeptics are under threat of firing — and some have been fired.

The Guardian explains:

Judge Salvatore Vasta ruled on Tuesday the 17 findings made by the university, the two speech directions, the five confidentiality directions, the no satire direction, the censure, the final censure and the termination of Ridd’s employment were all unlawful.

…Judge Vasta said the university has not understood the whole concept of intellectual freedom.

“[The] university has ‘played the man and not the ball’,” he said.

 “Intellectual freedom is so important. It allows academics to express their opinions without fear of reprisals. It allows a Charles Darwin to break free of the constraints of creationism. It allows an Albert Einstein to break free of the constraints of Newtonian physics. It allows the human race to question conventional wisdom in the never-ending search for knowledge and truth.”

The Townsville-based university’s provost professor, Chris Cocklin, noted the judgment does not refer to any case law.

“We disagree with the judgment and we maintain we have not taken issue with Dr Ridd’s nor any other employee’s rights to academic freedom,” Cocklin said in a statement.

“Dr Ridd was not sacked because of his scientific views. Dr Ridd was never gagged or silenced about his scientific views, a matter which was admitted during the court hearing.”

The case has been adjourned for a further hearing to award a penalty.

My biggest problem in science classes was jumping to conclusions without examining all the facts. I think the entire concept of man-made global warming rather than natural climate cycles is a result of that sort of thinking.

 

There Are Some Precedents Being Set Here That Are Dangerous

Posted on by

There are some legal aspects of the charges against Judge Kavanaugh that are being left out of the discussion. A lawyer friend of mine posted a few comments on the subject on Facebook:CNS News posted an article about the attempts to give the accused a chance to face his accuser.

The article reports:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told a news conference Tuesday that Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser “certainly does deserve a right to be heard,” but at the same time, he called it “disturbing” that Democrats decided to withhold her accusation until the last minute.

Later, an attorney for the accuser, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper her client “is prepared to cooperate with the committee” — but not on Monday, and not until the FBI does a full investigation. “There shouldn’t be a rush to a hearing,” attorney Lisa Banks said.

The FBI has already done extensive background checks on Judge Kavanaugh for his previous positions. None of these charges have ever surfaced. Now, when the Committee was ready to vote, the accuser comes forward, not remembering the year, the place, or how she got home. There is also a discrepancy between what she told her therapist and what she is saying now (four boys in the room instead of two boys in the room). The whole thing looks like a delay tactic. It is also really scummy to bring forth a thirty-five-year-old charge that cannot be proven one way or the other. The accuser has also refused to appear before Congress to confront Judge Kavanaugh until an FBI investigation has been conducted. There is no way the FBI can investigate a thirty-five-year-old charge where the accuser doesn’t know what year it was, where it was, and is fuzzy on the details. That is ridiculous.

This is a portion of Senator Grassley’s letter to Professor Ford’s attorney:

Ranking Member Feinstein first received a letter with allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh from Dr. Ford in July. However, Feinstein neglected to notify Committee Republicans of the letter until the day of the first Committee markup, six weeks after receiving the letter and well after the vetting and hearing process had concluded. Feinstein referred the letter to the FBI, which added it to Kavanaugh’s background investigation file. She should have treated these allegations seriously, as Grassley has done, in immediately acting upon hearing of them.

The FBI has indicated to the committee and in public statements that it considers the matter closed. The FBI does not make credibility determinations. The FBI provides information on a confidential basis in order for decision makers to determine an individual’s suitability. The Senate has the information it needs to follow up with witnesses and gather and assess the relevant evidence.

Grassley’s staff has sought to work with the Democratic staff to reach out to relevant witnesses. The Democratic staff declined to participate in a follow-up call with Judge Kavanaugh Monday regarding these allegations. And they have declined to join efforts to conduct a bipartisan investigation of the allegations.

I have a few observations. I know the Republicans are afraid that if they move forward, they will lose the women’s vote in the mid-terms. I have a word for the Republicans. As many women can identify with the idea of a woman coming forward with a career-destroying accusation against their husband thirty-five years later as can identify with the accuser. If the Republicans do not move forward with the vote immediately, they will lose more votes in the mid-term than they gain. Radical feminists are not going to vote Republican anyway, and they are the only women who ascribe any credibility to this charade. Republicans, this is your moment–either you have a spine or you don’t. If you don’t, you will lose more votes than you will gain.

Freedom Of Viewpoint Upheld

Posted on by

College campuses are not known for their conservative speech. In more than one instance, conservative speakers have been banned from college campuses or shouted down. Conservative professors have also been known to have a hard time.

The American Thinker posted an article today about University of North Carolina Wilmington professor Mike Adams, who sued the school for discrimination.

The article reports:

A federal court Wednesday ordered the University of North Carolina-Wilmington to promote and give $50,000 in back pay to a conservative professor in what is described as a landmark anti-discrimination case.

The restitution was ordered three weeks after a jury found the university guilty of retaliating against criminology professor Mike Adams, a popular conservative columnist on Townhall.com, after denying him a promotion to full professor in 2006.

“This ruling sends a message to public universities: Academic freedom isn’t just for the Left, it’s a constitutional right for all professors — even Christian conservatives,” said David French, senior counsel at the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, which represented Mr. Adams.

College campuses used to be known as places where different ideas were debated. In recent years, they have become more interested in promoting a single point of view. It is nice to see at least one university held accountable.

Enhanced by Zemanta