The government is the real threat to free speech on campus, not protesting students. That's why the First Amendment begins with "Congress shall..."
23
There is only one appropriate response and that is at the polls. Is this act the proverbial straw? Any American concerned with all freedom, not only academic freedom, must vote to remove Trump. There is no other issue. The opposition candidate does not matter. Freedom and democracy hang in the balance.
32
This nonsense helps destroy our higher education system, once the envy of the world. Control of the curricula by religious ideologues is counter to our ideals.
And...Aren’t Republicans the ones in favor of LESS federal control over such things? Hmmm.
45
Now we are telling Universities how to instruct students on what we think is the right form, what is next? Thought Police (Thinkpol)
This is just like Texas textbook all over again: “The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View,”, which claimed that " Atlantic slave trade brought "millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations."
32
To the schools: stall, resist, and REGISTER VOTERS. This nightmare can be over by Jan 20, 2021.
28
So, when the DOE under Obama insisted that schools teach all religions as the US is a melting pot, it was okay. When Professors, such as the one at the University of WI taught that the Holocaust was a lie, it was okay. But when the DOE finds bias in these two Universities as to what is taught about the middle east, it's wrong. Even though they receive Federal dollars. Wow.
My experience with public and private universities across the US is that over the last 20 years they've become extremely biased. Biased in their approach to history and social studies across the country - build-in criticisms of the history of Christianity, Judaism, etc. while embracing Islam as a peaceful religion. It is not. Yes, the Quran is filled with love and peace in the early part, but unreal intolerance and calls to violence in the latter part. Depending on one's cleric or Imam, focus is on one or the other.
To offer a class on the middle east and present a biased positive only look at Islam while ignoring the persecution of other religions is wrong and should not be subsidized. If the class were called a study of Islam, that would be different.
For some reason, progressives hate most religions but love to embrace Islam. Perhaps it is to overcome feelings post-911. Perhaps it is to promote what the far left sees as the plight of Palestine. If the latter, I'd suggest a history class on efforts attempted to offer Palestine a separate state for the last 40 years.
24
Here it is in boldface: Big time Republican facisism suppressing freedom. Freedom of information now, and next...?
18
THIS is one of the most disturbing headlines of the day.....
21
Being critical of Israel does not equal anti-Semitism. Anyone too dense to understand this obvious distinction has no business being at a university or in government in any capacity.
372
When the research reveals different results than the funders want to see, cut the funds.
Somebody should tell Betsy DeVos and her cronies that there's an extensive, new body of historical research involving Israel and Palestine, that drastically revises the old narrative.
The current generation of Jewish historians in Israel recognizes the imperialistic, apartheid nature of the Israeli state.
The Title VI administrators need to bone up on their history.
23
Once again, the Resident & his minions are trying to destroy the norms of conduct that are at the core of what being an American means. And, again as usual, these minions are so zealous in their narrow viewpoints that they tar the President with a brush even he might not totally deserve. Academic freedom is one of those cherished norms, The freedom to hold & express thoughts that differ with the government is another. And where the President's hand is completely stained is when the attempt to bend the norms is based on either the offering or denial of MONEY (which is apparently the only norm he recognizes).
13
The department of Education is now acting at the behest of foreign governments?
18
Next up: excoriating any academic program that doesn't sufficiently flatter trump. Examples to include physics classes that refer to Trump's Laws as Newton's Laws, math classes that refer to Trump's Last Theorem as Fermat's Last Theorem, etc.
14
There is no reasonable doubt that the majority of universities and colleges are biased toward "liberalism" and against Israel. Moreover, liberals only want "diversity of ideas" when they think it is their own ideas that are being suppressed. They are very quick to condemn any investigation of ideas that they consider threatening, which is why it is essentially impossible to investigate the question of whether there are such things as racial differences in intelligence. I am not claiming that such differences exist; most likely they do not. I am only claiming that any attempt to investigate the matter is suppressed by the very people who most loudly claim to support diversity of ideas.
9
Religions are simply beliefs with no factual backing of any sort.
They were all devised with the idea of putting and keeping men in control and toward that end have succeeded to the point reason has been displaced on the path to human developement.
The fact that they are taught with any positive emphasis is a slap in the face to progress and an impediment to reason. If thought is given to any of them it becomes clear they are tools used by every patriarchy to control the populus.
Those such as Ms DeVos who speak to "bias" only do so to protect the comfort she enjoys under the wing of an ongoing protective male autocracy.
We accept the baseless belief of religions at our own risk. All one needs to do is scratch the surface of any religious belief to expose their truth which is to keep men in power and control by promising another fictional existence after death.
"Fake news" doesn't hold a candle to the longest running fake of religious belief.
20
It is so refreshing to know that my government has way to much time on there hands. Has no one in this administration heard of the separation of church and state. Always nice to know that a non thinking bureaucrat is telling higher institutions of learning how to think.
13
It is so hard to believe there is any genuine desire to reduce bias in a story like this one. Does anti-semitism exist in the United States? Absolutely. Will going after Middle East studies programs do anything to solve that problem? No. "Cracking down" on programs like this one will not reduce bias although it might change the focus of the bias. Attempting to shut down programs that present views you disagree with? Endeavors like that go against everything you are supposed to learn when you attend an institution like Duke or UNC.
7
On page 425 of "How to Slide into an Elected Dictatorship," there's a chapter about university intimidation. It's important to pick a scape-goat, one that even some educated people will nod in agreement with. Don't be judicious. Exaggerate freely. Get it into the media. The point isn't to take down this or that program or professor. The point is to intimidate university administrators. Get them to self-censor.
Colleges are run by people who want things to go smoothly. They dislike controversy, which imperils benefactors and troubles parents paying triple digit tuition. Proto-dictatorships understand this. Just like going after car companies for siding with California sends a message to corporations.
There's only way way to stand up to bullies. Stand up. Bullies are cowards. It's on you, UNC and Duke.
17
decline federal funding, solicit donors.
10
Officially dictated educational priorities and course content is a sure recipe for disaster as it impedes free inquiry and knowledge which is the basic purpose of higher education that is best served through the autonomous University system.
194
Absolutely chilling and deeply disturbing.
Academic institutions strive for evidence and facts based research and education - to pursue the truth - that’s what the Trump administration cannot stand and wants to destroy.
Are there biases in academic institutions? Do certain programs like the Duke-UNC ME program have a particular overall view? Absolutely.
But I can guarantee you that other leading universities have opposing views - Princeton, for example, from the days of Bernard Lewis, has a more pro-Zionist, pro-Saudi perspective. Columbia has had more anti-Orientalist, pro-Palestinian views from the days of Edward Said. Georgetown has had a more understanding view of Islam since the days of John Esposito - but also took funding from Prince Al-Waleed, who got imprisoned and taken out by MBS. I can also guarantee you that there are strong opposing views at each of these universities within each program or department, very much including Duke-UNC program. That’s how academic research and freedom works. It’s far from perfect, but it’s infinitely better than the government telling you what should be acceptable or not. Indeed, in a liberal, true democracy, academia forms an crucial and essential check against the power of governments to distort the truth, to spread propaganda.
Of course, the autocratic Trump administration wants to crush academic voice and dissent. In this case, they are cynically doing so by using false charges of anti-Semitism as a political weapon.
927
@MC, For all the attention given to sympathy for the Palestinians, there is no shortage of Israel-centric programs and centers, and pro-Israel voices at most elite universities and colleges. I'd point out, too, that, at Columbia, Edward Said and other Palestinian-American professors have often faced intense criticism and opposition.
65
@MC: Programs aimed at dissing the two main religions of this country, Christianity and Judaism should be shut down, and Alexander Harrison commends the Trump admin. and in particular Sec. of Education Ms. De Vos for raising the issue of bias.Would you apply to a university in the Mamlaka to design classes based on the virtuousness of Protestantism?How far would you get before being deported?Country was founded by Christians fleeing persecution from Old Blighty, and let us keep our Christian values uppermost in our thinking. Unwillingness of commenters to give their names always makes Alexander Harrison a trifle wary, as if the writer had something to hide, no disrespect intended.
9
@MC I don't know guys. When I took an Islam class at school it strived to point out straw man inconsistencies in other religions without applying the same standard to Islam. It seemed oddly like proselytizing at the time, and many of these programs are funded with international dollars. Before attacking Trump on this one, and I am NO Trump fan, we need more info. I think in many cases people are afraid to criticize the ME studies due to fear of being called prejudice or losing funding. Given how subjective this is, there would need to be a very strong case to remove funding.
34
If there's bias in the program, the administration could have addressed it by offering, say, speakers from the State Dept. or the military or others to present contrary views. This is not the proper way to go about it.
3
To stop federal funding for education, then please include stopping all methods of giving federal funds to all schools.
That includes religious schools.
Especially.
I suppose giving both sides of an "issue" is a valid way to remedy the problem, but somehow I just don't see that happening.
I grew up in New York. In my opinion liberal education is more likely to give both sides of an "issue" than a conservative one, by definition.
8
To stop federal funding for education, then please include stopping all methods of giving federal funds to all schools.
That includes religious schools.
Especially.
I suppose giving both sides of an "issue" is a valid way to remedy the problem, but somehow I just don't see that happening.
I grew up in New York. In my opinion liberal education is more likely to give both sides of an "issue" than a conservative one, by definition.
1
I have degrees from UNC and Duke. The courses were always evidence based and comprehensive. It’s appalling that the government would get involved in course content.
9
This is stunning and completely unacceptable. Our national government has no business using its funding power to tell anyone what to believe or teach regarding any controversial issue -- pro- or anti- any side. Stalin intervened in the same way against the teaching of Darwinism. His intervention set back evolutionary biology in the Soviet Union for decades. This is Stalinism.
8
Here we go again, thank God: the debates between government and teachers, like those between students and teachers at university level, are a necessary interruption of the course of education in a free society. When I was teaching Islamic Civilization at Chicago more than twenty years ago, I received a delegation of three niqab-wearing students complaining that I had given too much attention to the instances in the Qur'an of legends from Christian and Jewish history, at the expense of Islamic lore. I countered that these three world religions did not grow in a vacuum, despite their emphasis on personal divine revelation (as their own prophets, the political philosophers of their time, freely admitted), andt that to ignore the input of the shared folklore of this important area of nascent civilizations was to demonstrate “startling lack of focus on geography, geopolitical issues, history and language" — or words to that effect.” To close your mind to other versions of "the Truth)" leaves it open to the thin wedge of fascism.
7
There is a large group of American Jews - about 80% of whom are democrats who support a liberal Israel with a two-state solution to the ongoing crisis who could be approached for comment. Next time, see if one of us will support this kind of academic programming. JVP - which is unequivocally anti-Israel - is usually alone in providing cover for hatred. JVP's primary value seems to be shielding anti-Semites as well as anti-Zionists. If that's the only Jewish opinion you get, that's lazy journalism.
13
A basic principle is the real issue here. Federally funded education grant programs are typically evaluated by site-visit teams of expert professionals- those who have expertise in the subject matter covered by the grant. Not by the bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Education. This announcement is not just about politics of the Middle East. It's about controling higher education by the Trump Administration.
11
Oh please.
There’s ridiculous liberal bias at Universities, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prime example; no balance whatsoever.
At my son’s college (Cornell) the campus went into national mourning the day after Trump was elected - they even cancelled tests!
No safe zones that day.
The Federal Government should stop funding all these special programs. The Universities have more then enough money. Let them fund them.
130
@Steven Roth
Cornell student organized small protests, reportedly gathering by the "dozens," and there are recorded incidents of student requesting class cancelations, but the school and no professor is on record as having canceled classes or tests because of the election.
It hard to take your stance on protecting common sense from political manipulation when you traffic in hyperbole and lazy ideological stereotypes.
194
@Steven Roth
Well then take him out of Cornell and transfer him to Liberty University. He will get some balanced education there betcha. Check out how much federal funding LU gets Mr. Roth. Bet it's more than Cornell. But like that great Republican Senator Rick Santorum once said an education makes you a liberal. Don't worry if the Republicans, DE head Devos and her Brother have their way no liberal arts(woooo....scary huh) college or their students(ha ha ha..funny but sad) would be getting any federal funding.
Go find some books to burn. Maybe some about the John Birch Society.
119
@MJB
Search on Google for the following article published by the Cornell Daily Sun on Nov. 10, 2016 entitled: “Professors Cancel Class, Responding To ‘Shocking’ Election Results“
13
I thought we lived in a democracy.
I thought university faculty had academic freedom.
I thought, as Americans, we had the first amendment right to speak critically of our government, and by extension, other governments.
This article incenses me. The Education Dept has no business determining curricula. Remember, it is run by the same person who said in her conformation hearing that teachers should be armed to protect students from bears!
11
Such blatant interference in academic studies is bound to increase anti-semitism. The advocates have just shot themselves in the foot.
108
@Hamid Varzi. They can teach whatever they want - on their own dime, but not using money they get from the Federal government for specific purposes. Money with strings. Do not apply for and take the money if you do not agree with the strings
9
@Hamid Varzi What kind of anti-semitism? Being anti-Jewish is anti-Semitic, but being anti Arabic is also anti-Semitic.
3
@Hamid Varzi The presentation of news about the middle east is generally so shallow, any academic study will seem shocking to some. Israel's recent turn away from democracy and towards brutality is factual, just as Hamas's rampant anti-Semitism and violence is. Each side sees the grievous faults of the others, and not of itself. A decent academic program should reveal this. Doing so will, undoubtedly, offend many. Just as narrow minds on the right will attack programs for bias against Israel, narrow minds on the left will attack them for bias against Arabs. It's so conveniently toxic. If the middle east didn't exist, people would invent it
13
Religious studies looks at ALL religions from multidisciplinary points of view--history, philosophy, anthropology, political/economy as well as science--natural and social.
Religion is an important aspect of ethnicity. And should be studied impartially, systematically and logically.
From a logic and evidence point of view the essence of all religions are god and creation stories. There are thousands. They cannot possibly be all true and are probably all false--making them all myth.
Almost all are based on ancient, pre-science, pre-academic texts--making them fundamentally incompatible with logic and evidence based belief. Thus they propagandize "faith based belief" as a virtue.
But such "faith" is not mere trust; that can be logic and evidence based--for good reason. Religious faith is for no reason; it is dogmatic belief regardless of evidence--as though the believers are infallible.
"Religion" can also mean the organizations for marketing (=selling) the godstories and faith in them. They are exempt from the usual constraints on speech and advertising such as libel, slander, defamation, unfounded claims, outright fraud. Most aim for orthodoxy (monopoly and monopsony) and theocracy.
This intervention by the US government not only violates academic freedom (freedom of logic and evidence based research and teaching) --it violates the US Constitution. It makes the government a theocracy.
6
It's interesting that they are not very interested in anti-Semitism when it is directed at Arabic people. (who are also Semitic.)
8
Unbelievable - Is this a precursor to book burning?
6
As so often is the case with unabashed supporters of Israel, those who have criticism of that country are labeled anti-semitic. It's a weak but effective argument but sadly misses the mark on accuracy.
5
Not unreasonable to expect no bias. But whose going to be the judge - a Jewish advocate? Headed to Supreme Court?
1
"Ordered"? Words fail me.
4
Scary stuff: the US gov demanding colleges teach in a particular way about a particular religion. Maybe a few steps away from a National Religion being foisted on us by Pence and the rest of the lunatic right? VERY SCARY.
9
Chilling. Welcome to 21st century America.
'That man' & his perverse minions must be removed from office. More Rudy meltdowns please, pretty please.
3
Again Devos. In her view God made the Jews the Chosen People; that means Arabs are not chosen, and forget the part about Christianity, Duke had better toe the Devos line. Academic freedom takes a back seat to the dictates of this most unfriendly administration where science had better agree that the earth is 10,000 years old, that global warming is a hoax and economic opportunity means that all should have an equal right to live under a bridge.
6
Cancel culture. Too much of the LGBT community for DeVos. 45's administration still trying to make us disappear. It's not going to happen. I guess it's back to the chant "we're here, we're queer, get used to it".
2
I live in a bastion of self-hating Jews, not unlike other liberal communities in the US. My child attends a prestigious prep school in the area, where the community (students and teachers, alike) collectively mourned Hillary’s loss, and openly chastised the few students wearing MAGA hats after the elections. The teachers and curriculum are unapologetically liberal, and with that comes anti-Semitic, anti-Israel leanings. Coming from a Jewish middle school, my child felt a palpable discrimination in the relative weakness of the Jewish viewpoint, even in WWII teaching (there, the teacher focused predominantly on the disabled and the Gypsies’ plight). Another child attends a prestigious college, among the most moderate of today’s US universities, where Muslim and Jewish curricula are equally strong, and the Jewish fraternity is the most popular on campus. It’s reassuring to know that such colleges still exist in the US, and a relief to know that our federal government is fighting to ensure that this sentiment will propagate across other campuses. Those who believe this is demonstrates an anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian bias should take a long hard look in the mirror, and question just how biased THEY are.
12
As a Duke graduate I have only two words. Long Overdue.
72
What's next? Science Departments are going to lose their federal funding for teaching the hoax of human caused climate change and for having a bias in favor of evolution at the expense of creationism? I understand that any criticism of Israel can only be motivated by anti-Semitism as far as the Trump administration and ultra-Zionists are concerned, just as any criticism of US foreign policy and military actions is motivated by anti-Americanism as well as criticism of white-nationalism shows an anti-white bias but the idea that the professors and academic researchers at major academic centers (Duke and the UNC are hardly Liberty University or Bob Jones University) are biased propagandists not really scholars engaged in the pursuit of knowledge is ridiculous, especially coming from the Trump administration which is infamous for its contempt for truth, its rejection of science, and its lack of common human decency with respect to the rights of immigrants, refugees, women, and minorities, not to mention its own bias against muslims without oil wealth.
3
This is not about "academic freedom".
Would a history course syllabus solely focused on benefits fascism brought to Germany and Italy in the 1930's, leaving out what else happened, be OK?
It's about history vs. propaganda. There is a difference.
12
The long hand of Israeli reshaping the minds of Future American leaders through the help of the Evangelical right. A balanced approach to education without a doubt.
11
"Too few of the Duke-U.N.C. programs focused on “the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze and others,” the department said."
So I'm assuming these sage apparatchiks are totally on board with African American studies, women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, yes? I mean, if we're fostering intellectual appreciation of cultures suffering discrimination at home.
5
Betsy DeVos brother is Erik Prince. What can we expect from the sister of a person who has committed war crimes in Iraq?
9
Who’s your daddy ? - Israel of course .
This is a blatant attempt at stifling any criticism of Israel - in effect the powers that be managed to place a gag order on any narrative that doesn’t include a rosy picture of Israel . This has nothing to do with balance. There is countless history of literature in our universities that doesn't include Islam or Palestine with any symmetry with Israel and Judaism. The mere changing of the definition of anti-Semitism tells you that it’s not about protecting Jews but shielding a political entity Zionist government against anything that doesn’t jibe with their agenda. It’s amazing to me that you could criticize anything almost anything : leaders of our government our history our policies etc but you can’t do the same when it comes to Israel as underscored by the anti-BDS movement . Boycotts were always a form of an acceptable peaceful mechanism of a democratic society. Think about it ,we as Americans can boycott Alabama but not Israel - mind boggling. I have a little faith that this biased news paper will ever print my comment who knows somebody might be texting someone instead of concentrating on their screening job and it just may fall through the cracks -here it goes
8
I wonder when the Education department is going to descend on various schools and try to ferret out anti-Hispanic bias?
7
Anti-semitism is alive and well in America.
Last year there was an all time rise in anti-Jewish actions throughout the US.
However, one of the prime places where flagrant and loud anti-Semitic acts is seen is on college and university campuses.
Many left wing and anti-Israel groups are using their power to intimidate Jewish students. This also extends to many faculty members.
These Federal interventions are long overdue.
No one would complain when there is Federal intervention to protect blacks and others from racist actions.
Why not protect Jews, too?
The Jewish community votes and many of us will take notice of who our friends and enemies are when election time comes.
191
@simon sez. If you were truly concerned with the protection of Jews in America, then your focus would have been on the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in the US since 2017, as described by the ADL. You would have brought up the incident during the Charlottesville protests where white supremists were chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” Most importantly, you would have mentioned the shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 people. But you did none of those things.
Rather than discuss, “flagrant” acts of anti-semitism, often committed by those on the alt-right, why are you choosing to focus on college campus activities that are completely unrelated to the anti-Semitic violence that is actually going on in America?
234
@simon sez Be very careful what you wish for.
25
@simon sez
Sadly, I disagree. This is being done to curry favor, not to protect.
67
The universities need to drop the federal funding and carry on.
The federal action is a disgusting intuition on the first amendment and on higher education.
All courses do not need to conform to the current ideology in Washington.
5
No surprises here, unfortunately. The administration’s politicization of yet another supposedly protected or politically insulated endeavor/activity is still stomach turning and deeply alarming. We have moved so far from any semblance of fair or just governance under Trump that each new example of self serving intrusion and bias comes with a sinking ‘oh yeah, should have expected that’. The damage to our institutions and most valuable traditions continues to accelerate. The chance to unseat these clowns cannot come soon enough.
1
"Tone"? Seems a simply case of the censor's idea of the proper "balance" of content. This balancing act is not the government's job.
Betsy DeVos perfectly exemplifies the idea that very few very rich people belong in government. They are to used to having their way, not serving others. And they too often care nothing for the law--their lawyers help them dodge it--and know nothing about their jobs.
1
“the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in America, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze and others,”
There, I fixed it. Lets add ethnic minorities in there also.
Republicans as a whole, and this administration in particular, have a lot of nerve accusing ANYONE of bias.
6
College is too expensive anyway.
Too many wars have been fought in the name of religion.
2
The Republicans say they are the party of freedom. In what definition of freedom does the government dictate what is taught in private colleges?
112
@Boston Barry, when you take federal funds, you buy trouble.
7
@Boston Barry U.N.C. is a public institution, not private.
9
Also in this edition of the NY Times there is a paper by David M. Halbfinger, "Arabic Readers in Israel Have to Hope the Border Guards Are Sloppy". In Israel this is the state which decides which books the Arabs (in fact Palestinians) citizens of Israel are allow to read or not. So may be the Trump administration wants to apply the same policies in the USA. The difference being that the state will decided which courses are allow to be teach or not.
3
Let us call it for what it is: simply and purely CENSORSHIP.
5
This is so scary to me, actually shocking. It's censorship by government and there is the assumption that Israel is innocent because that is the policy of this Administration.
As a Jew, this problem can be daunting and haunting, the communication that a good Jew supports Israel without question.
I think that it is sad that so many people do not realize the struggles of Palestinian civilians and see only Hamas as Palestine.
This is dangerous; this is censorship; I hope there is a huge uproar.
What I have also realized is that being in favor of a two state solution, being in favor of not targeting Palestinian civilians and caring about their plight is NOT anti-semitism.
7
This is what you can expect from an administration that is ignorant and intolerant. Betsy is in competition for the most incapable cabinet member of all time, trailed by Ben. Educational institutions are not perfect, but that is the point. They are breeding grounds for discovering the truth. The truth is messy.
7
Oversight of the expenditure of Federal funds..good. Fighting racism...good. Using the power inherit is overseeing government funding to prevent criticism of said government or its allies...wrong. Do I trust the motives of this Republican Department of Education related to issues of Israel and the Middle East...no.
8
Big Brother and the thought police are on the move.
6
This is what happens when you put an Administration in power politically beholden to the Tele-Evangelical sect and their religious beliefs. The Middle East to them is merely the future site of the Biblical Armageddon and the "Second Coming," and so, the President, arguably the least Christian president in American history, somehow gets away with it by using his presidential power to pander to them
Even aside from the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, this is deeply troubling.
12
Ah yes... rewrite the textbooks to teach history in the way you want it taught. By all means don't present it using historical fact based information. Where have I seen this before? Oh, yes, when the civil war and slavery were (and still are) 'taught' in southern history classes. And look where that got us.
8
What??????? I predict the last straw. The government controlling what colleges teach. If this doesn't result in demonstrations on all campuses we are lost.
9
Consider the parallels between federal education funding and financial ownership of a newspaper. In both cases, the financial hand should not influence the editorial hand or the scope of research. When financial ownership dictates subjects, content or desired conclusions, the result is bias, bad science, and propaganda.
5
How dare universities base their courses on facts. I'm sure they're going to Liberty University and examining their multi-cultural studies programs as well as American History programs for pro-Christian bias.
8
While not directly related to the question of bias in Middle East studies programs and academic freedom, our embassies in the countries of this region (and elsewhere) are charged with reporting on developments in their host-country governments, between factions, and among important opinion-shapers. Our diplomats seek out contact with various people and study government actions, statements, and interactions with other governments. Each embassy has reporting requirements to the State Department concerning human rights, religious freedom (mandated by Congress), and other policies. American academics often travel and study in other countries to learn about current attitudes and policies. Many of the mandated reports are published. Academics, like journalists, are frequently in touch with our diplomats for briefings about the political, economic, social, and religious events in the host country. Many of our diplomats and academics are language-trained and can speak and read Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, and other regional languages. Thus, they can read the press and understand TV broadcasts. It is almost impossible for any diplomat or academic to come away with completely unbiased views. Whether Duke and North Carolina academics have had extensive interactions with people in Israel, Palestine, and the Arab countries is not clear in this report but it seems likely that the experts at these universities have had such experience. I doubt the DOE officials have had like experience.
1
Taking handouts, especially from the government, regardless of who has administrative control, always comes with consequences. Pretty soon they give you an offer you can't refuse...
6
In short, if your program does not align with the views of anti-Education Secretary DeVos and the narrow interests of the clique that she represents, the Federal Government will cut your funding. So much for democracy in America.
11
Next stop, STATE RELIGION, mandated by the likes of Mike “I can’t talk to you, Woman, my wife’s not here!” Pence and his fellow lunatics.....
3
This is immediately reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984. "Thought control" seems to be De Voss' objective. And it seems to be connected to the criticism of academia's concern for the plight of the Palestinians. That concern is often expressed by criticism of Israel's oppression of Palestinians' rights. This criticism, in turn, viewed as Anti-Semitic. Much of the Jewish community views it as such. But one would hope that the Jewish Community would see the danger of giving any support to De Voss' response.
6
Next up, math, all the sciences (except conservative political), economics, certain languages (Spanish, for sure; others TBD at at a later date) and, of course, philosophy, history, and law will all have to be watered down, if not eliminated outright. Pre-approval of all curriculum at all institutes of higher education (excepting of course those run by the religious right) by Betsy DeVos will be mandatory, with the President himself weighing in as necessary to assure compliance with his vision for Making America Grate Again.
3
@Glen
What do you mean, "next up".
Science is already gone.
Creation science.
Young earth.
Human development.
History itself (I know, but it is a social SCIENCE...).
Environmental science.
Forest management.
Economics.
Research on guns, marijuana, medical interventions (aside from abortion, of course).
Climate science.
All under the thumb of and to some greater or lesser extent perverted by know-nothing, anti-intellectuals in Congress, many of whom, for some reason, cannot stop themselves from flaunting their elite degrees.
Like everything else in Conservativania, things are important until they're not, they mean something until they don't, they're true until its no longer convenient, and The Founders said exactly this until they said that.
2
@oogada
Not including my daily comics email, this was my first laugh of the day.
Thanks, oogada.
Glen
1
This really boils down to whether the UNC/Duke program complies with the terms of the grant. If the grant does not precisely address the content of study for which funds are being made available then there is no basis for the Govt to come back and criticize the institutions. If, however, the program content is sufficiently described and they are not complying with the grant then the Govt should have the right to require compliance. Of course, if compliance cannot be determined objectively that’s another challenge.
The grant amount in question seems like chump change, but these grants do add up.
7
Good try but teaching emerges finally from the viewpoint of the teacher without, often with little or regard to the hopes and dreams of the federales. Unless what teachers are actually teaching is supervised (but how?) when the classroom door closes teachers own the curriculum and their students are eligible to become the intellectual hostages or beneficiaries of it. There are various categories of curricula. The critical one is the one LEARNED, but we cannot know that. The one we might be able to study (but why?) is the one that is TAUGHT. Bottom line: The teacher is the curriculum - always was; always will be.
2
We are supposed to be teaching student, not indoctrinating them.
11
If republicans can’t win with facts let’s force them to change.
The party of freedom and smaller government? They make me SICK!
9
Sorry Sinclair Lewis . . . it CAN happen here. And it is.
The desecent into authoritariasm picks up speed ever day Don the Con is in the White House.
What irony . . . the next president (if there is one!) will have the huge job of cleaning up the mess Trump is making and truly making America great again.
7
More tax payers wasted money. This is so wrong on so many levels I did not know the government was throwing away my money on such foolishness. Thanks for bring that to my attention. I hope Trump shuts this down and fast. The swamp remains a swamp. But the last thing this nation needs is some liberal colleges teaching Islam values? Are you kidding me!
1
I believe Middle East studies programs should provide a balanced and factual curriculum to students.
That being said, I do not believe President Trump’s assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department Kenneth Marcus "who has made a career of pro-Israel advocacy and has waged a yearslong campaign to delegitimize and defund Middle East studies programs that he has criticized as rife with anti-Israel bias" should be allowed to impose his personal views under the guise of impartiality.
By unilaterally adopting the State Department's new definition of anti-Semitism that, among other things, labels “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” as anti-Jewish bigotry; Marcus appears to be trying to prohibit legitimate criticism of Israeli actions such as building illegal settlements on Arab owned land seized as a result of the 1967 War. Deemed as illegal under international law for violating Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 which states: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
The concept of “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” when used to justify such actions by Israel, is no different than trying to justify the 19th century belief in Manifest Destiny that U.S. settlers "were destined" to expand across North America. Or, to justify the Lebensraum ("living space") settler colonialism of Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s.
10
Taxpayer money is being used to support these curriculums. There has been a lot of bias against Christian and Jewish people in these regions, many losing their homes and their lives. They deserve to be included in the curriculum. The program is Mideast Studies, not Muslim studies.
10
Move along folks, nothing to see here.
This is just another twist of the knife in what was once democracy here in the US, which is being attacked daily by this autocratic administration.
3
Since we live in a Judeo-Christian society, it seems that courses may need to teach other points of view than what they will get regularly from our society.
I always wondered what was being held back in my education. Basically, I was taught that Israel was unquestionably right and good.
Of course, this was the same thing that I was taught about the United States of America and about White people. With the reverse of that logic being that foreigners and non- white people were unquestionably wrong and bad. It is what you learn from schools in white enclaves with few minorities.
Hopefully, Duke and UNC- Chapel Hill believe the truth is more important than federal funding.
18
It's one thing to teach students about the complex politics of the Middle East. It's something altogether different to have professors who advocate anti-Israel positions, including supporting BDS. Universities have become breeding grounds for anti-Israel activity, including shouting down visiting speakers, intimidating students, and calls to boycott the country.
The federal government should absolutely be demanding a fair and balanced curriculum in return for any funding.
14
As Ike said “federal aid to education is federal control of education”.
6
The educator's appear to have forgotten to provide facts, context and balance - instead, looking to graduate students with skewed visions. Time they should be recalibrated!
6
This is only the beginning. Next up for the Trump administration: Math curricula. Conventional math is obviously biased against the bottom line in the Trump budget with its astronomical tax cuts that threaten to bankrupt our country while shoveling massive amounts up wealth into his and his cronies' pockets. Oh, did I say "astronomical"? OK then, astronomy departments are next after that.
7
What’s wrong with the federal government deciding religious preferences as a basis for allocating funding? It’s not like it’s forbidden in The Constitution or anything.
11
Government and public officials have this idea that universities are a place to confirm conventions and official histories. That is not what universities do. Universities are the only place in which students can freely share and discuss information, where they can learn to see arguments from both sides and make an informed decision on their believes. This government intervention is just a slippery slope for censorship and infringement of academic freedom. To problematize Israel is not to confront it, but to bring discussions to make it better.
8
Alas, I remember America..... so much promise, destroyed by a nasty national cancer, brought on by inattention to our internal toxicities, greed and racisms... and our abandonment of integrity as a core value.
23
Wait, seriously? The Education Department is sticking up for Christianity and Judaism in Departments of Middle East Studies at major universities? Oh, so then they must also be sticking up for the inclusion of slavery in the American History Department, and the inclusion of evolution in the Biology Department and the inclusion of contraception in the Public Health Department.
And they must be very, very busy advocating for everyone in the Gender Studies Department!
28
Yeah, let's have a "fair and balanced" curriculum at these universities. And while we're at it why not ask Sean Hannity to be the dean in charge of "fairness". Thus, we as a nation spiral down to a swamp of ignorance.
17
Let's face it -- to the Republican party these days any criticism of Israel, Israel's policies, or it's current leadership is "radical anti-Israeli bias" and anti-antisemitism. An academic conference that finds fault with Israel for it's oppressive policies concerning Gaza is not by definition anti-Semitic.
Israel is a State, a government, and a set of policies. Its actions toward Gaza, it's settlement policies, and it's interactions with minority populations are all open for discussion in any academic setting. Duke and the University of North Carolina are not propaganda outlets for the Trump administration.
Republican Jesse Helms tried this same thing in the late 1960s with his proposed Speaker Ban Law, which attempted to restrict academic freedom at the University of North Carolina. The University successfully fought back the challenge to their academic freedom then, and they should do everything in their power to do so again.
13
The Chinese Communist Party does this in Chinese Universities all the time. I guess Americans will just have to get used to the growing authoritarianism and further erosion of our world class universities.
13
Nobody’s getting used to anything. The outrage and resistance and boiling blood to fight back grows every nano second.
3
This is outrageous and deeply disturbing. I had the opportunity in the early 80's to participate in this program (I took a course at Duke while I was enrolled at UNC called 'The History of Islam' taught by scholar Herbert Bodman). If not for this class, Islam would never have been mentioned in my entire American education. It was a highlight of my time at Carolina.
19
Wow! Really scary! Is this the way we want our government to take us? While accusing bias of others, nothing reflects more bias than this act of censorship.
8
Charlie in NY says it best. Among further points he makes, "...the action undertaken by the Department of Education against Duke relates directly, and only, to how federal funds are being spent...."
Is this action by the current DOE politically motivated? Probably. So they affect these programs, but are the programs supportable without federal funding? If not, maybe they shouldn't continue. Betting they can and do.
1
Duke and UNC have every right to academic freedom and to study and run those departments as they see fit.
The US government has the right to fund research and programs based on what it sees fit. You could understand why they don't want to fund film studies. Anyway if they do they are mixing church (mosque and synagogue) and state. Don't need US government picking priorities based on religion.
Duke and UNC have huge tax free endowments so they can fund their programs themselves.
6
You must not be keeping up with current events. The government funds film studies and the arts all the time. The government probably funded plenty of those confederate statues in the communities surrounding Duke and UNC.
There is nothing "liberal" about being opposed to ignorance. Politicization of education should be considered as un-American. Such dangerous government meddling in the educational affairs of North and South Carolina should be contested in the courts.
10
Simply, NO. The government of the United States cannot mandate curriculum. End of story.
11
I'd like to see the Department of Education attack something a little closer to home.
Why not start with the shallow and rosy view of American history taught in Primary school. Put back all the stuff that was left out.
US history doesn't get compelling until the post secondary years. But most Americans never stay long enough on the topic to pick up where the primary years leave off.
7
This is horrific. Almost all universities and colleges receive federal funding in some way. What will keep the government from putting its nose in the business of other colleges? Academic freedom is the key to a great college. Students have the choice to attend other places schools if they don't like the message at these two. In addition, almost all universities allow for open and honest dialogue in classrooms, thus if a student sees an issue with a professor, they can debate the problem within the classroom. The Dept. of Ed has no business asking for a change in the message. You cannot change facts at your will. I have taught a Middle East history course at a university and I simply went where the facts took me. If that forced me to give a bad portrayal of Christianity, even though I am a Christian, then so be it. I hope Duke and UNC resist at all costs. This is simply insane.
8
I have done extensive research about this Title VI issue on American campuses, and also organized an educational forum at which students at about a dozen Boston area colleges and universities discussed their experiences with bias in Mideast Studies departments in Massachusetts. The concerns of De Vos and Marcus are based on an accurate assessment of the failings in the execution of the federally financed program, and are heroic in their fairness. Talk to students today at American colleges who want to be able to study about Arab-Israeli relations and Mideast issues today while being taught by professors who welcome fair treatment of diverse views, and it will reinforce the rightness of the current Education Department's requests. Jewish View for Peace is not a liberal organization, it is an organization which one-sidedly condemns Israel. It is a fringe group which hates Israel and is not representative of the Jewish community. It is more representative of anti-Israel groups.
14
And they have one point of view. Ask them to support their views with facts. If you ban them, maybe their point of view is too legitimate for you to handle.
2
@Gary Ward On the contrary, please tell me that you have spent several years doing academic research about federal funding for these academic programs and the niceties of both Education Law and the facts about how these programs have functioned at various Middle East studies centers at various universities nationwide before you pretend to know that those critical of the existing situation are biased rather than straightforwardedly calling for fairness and accuracy in the way the next generation is taught about Mideast and other international issues. I know from your own comment that your own work in this field does not match mine in rigor and commitment for accuracy. You are just looking to smear anyone who disagrees with you on policy, just like the departments you are defending. You are not credible because you have not educated yourself about the details of this issue, and I can tell from what you have tried to say. Let me guess, this is not a field of study in which you have spent years studying both sides with academic rigor but you still feel free to try to attack people who unlike you, work before they draw conclusions. It apparently gives you some sort of emotional reward to speak vehemently about subjects you haven't immersed yourself in in a fair way. You knew what you thought before you began. Professor Elman, mentioned in this article, for example, is a scholar who has written numerous books about the Mideast conflict based on her rigorous research. Read.
4
Trump and company are attacking the last bastion of freedom - academic freedom. Our Democracy is truly in peril. Everyone must get out and vote in 2020 and save our democracy from Trumpism.
3
Federal money in higher education is a slippery slope. Eventually you get a demagogue of one sort or other who thinks it means that they get to control what is taught. At what point does it get to be that the only thing being taught is Government propaganda?
10
One reason the Iraq war was such an abysmal failure was ignorance of the Muslim Middle East. For example, Bush neo-cons did not know what the result would be of banning Sunnis from Iraqi government; in fact, it radicalized them and created Isis. Trump government's meddling in the curriculum is sure to render graduates ignorant of the religious and ethnic dynamics that are key to successful foreign policy.
12
The appropriate solution is to eliminate all emphasis on understanding the positive aspects of cultures or religions; and, for that matter, all emphasis on understanding their negative aspects. Let the only emphasis be on disinterested investigation, and anyone who doesn’t like it will be in the wrong.
2
Duke still has a very well respected Divinity school, and as their website states, "As the spiritual center of a great research university, Duke Divinity School forms innovative Christian leaders for the church and the world." Plus they are still offering a B.A. concentrating in Jewish Studies.
And regarding UNC at Chapel Hill, I looked this morning to see if something had happened to their vibrant Hillel Center. Whew! It is still there. And students traveled to Israel earlier this year, learning through archeological excavations.
There are multiple courses in multiple religions at both universities. Two top universities trying to teach understanding for ALL, preparing us for the present and future global world. I'm trying to figure out why the DOE thinks this is a bad thing.
7
Inching just a little bit closer to our Handmaids Tale, the contemporary Dark Ages.
20
Censorship...pretty soon we'll have book burnings.
15
The Middle East is INDEED made up of more than Moslems. Present the facts. Allow students to think for themselves. BTW, the Christian minority is fleeing the area. Oh! Ask why.
17
@ShirA, I'm quite sure that all students are allowed to think for themselves.
At least, this was the case when I went to school.
1
Because all of it is tyranny and cyclical.
1
Republicans and facts? Isn’t that the same as oil and water? The two don’t mix. Indeed! present the facts. Then watch the right wing swirl of into a pit of whining and despair. Facts do not suit the right wing. But feel feee to complain on their behalf.
3
Imagine my shock at seeing that Miriam F. Elman’s little posse is chasing not just the possibility of anybody opposing anything crummy that Israel might be doing, but the possibility that somewhere, somehow, some college prof might note that LGBT-whatever folks are getting attacked and deserve better.
Really, truly, disgraceful, in the grand tradition of that great historical scholar Newt Gingrich.
20
Shocking. Incredible. We are a country that demands separation of church and state, and we protect academic freedom and freedom of speech. Even more stunning is that an American University is being told to be more complimentary to a foreign power. We don't even ask universities to be complimentary to the US! This will not stand.
28
November 3, 2020 this all goes away.
But only if you, yeah you, put aside petty squabbles about policies and work hard for any Democrat running against Trump.
This ain't about policies just now.
This is about survival of the nation.
30
So will the Education Department also take on so-called Christian colleges for their multiple inaccurate viewpoints?
80
While I don't doubt the news regarding an increase in anii-Semitism worldwide, I'm wondering if actions such as this might at least partially contribute to that increase. Just wondering.
12
There are reasonable arguments to made on both sides regarding the government’s right to regulate curricula that it funds through grants or other mechanisms. I tend towards the belief that the pursuits of academia should be overseen by the academy, not the government, but others differ. Fine.
The real problem, in my mind, is that when a rank partisan (and an under-qualified, single issue partisan at that) such as Ms. DeVos is placed in charge of a government office as diverse in mission and as important as the DOE, no issue as potentially contentious as this can be handled with anything but the highest degree of rancor. She has no moral authority, no credibility, and therefore no capacity to lead. So whether or not this program review was meant as a “witch hunt” or to “have a chilling effect” on certain academic pursuits, it will be read as such. And rightfully so.
19
This is profoundly and deeply disturbing. As a professor, I know that the idea of being entangled in an investigation with the federal government would have a profoundly chilling effect. The idea that the program would have to have more positive coverage of Judaism and Christianity is absurd. Are all programs that cover Christianity required to have positive coverage of other religions? But most profoundly disturbing about it all is the idea that it is anti-Semitic to criticize the political situation in Israel. In the same way that it is deeply patriotic to question flawed policies in one's own country, it is also morally appropriate to question the policies of any other country, including one run by Jews. I write that as the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor.
46
15 months and counting. This madness needs to come to an end.
16
So, Ditzy DeVos, a latter-day Calvinist, decides to meddle in a Middle-East Studies program to force it to to her ideological line. Mind-boggling. Christianity has always taken pride of place in the US pantheon of religions, often to the complete exclusion of other faiths - and still its numbers are declining year on year. Given that Christianity and Judaism have a long-established presence in the US, there is little need to further proclaim their "positive contributions" to society. Not so with other faiths, from Buddhism to Hinduism to Islam. And, in point of fact, the Jews have a lot to take issue with the Christians over, as do the secularists and the atheists, not to mention the native and indigenous peoples of North America.
7
So now "Israel can do no wrong" is being forced onto universities in America? What, I wonder, is Netanyahu extracting from Trump for this one?
14
Can a teacher mention Israel’s vote in the UN supporting the US embargo of Cuba?
7
Why is this news? It is not new. To Kill a Mockingbird was removed from some school systems curriculum as it 'made people uncomfortable' or recently Muslim parents in various Michigan School districts threw shoes at the school board for allowing information about the Holocaust to be taught or major educational book publishers had to revise their texts because one of their largest customers-the state of Texas objected to some historical information etc etc Why not teach facts and teach students to learn how to make intelligent judgement -be discriminating in their outlook-would produce a better outlook and a better informed population
8
@J Martin, I wasn't aware that "recently Muslim parents in various Michigan School districts threw shoes at the school board for allowing information about the Holocaust to be taught".
Do you have a source for that bit of information?
Because I can't imagine why people who had nothing to do with the Holocaust, would do such a thing.
Please be specific. Thanks!
6
Trump administration and cabinet= MyCarthyism 2019
5
The government is a political institution. It is inherently biased by its politics and cannot be a referee capable of determining bias and determining unbiased curriculums. Free speech and the "marketplace of ideas" are the only relevant and proper considerations here. Feds: butt out.
11
Coming soon. Book burnings at Trump rallies!
18
The constant attempts by the Israel lobby to equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism are counter productive and are probably the cause of real, actual anti-semitism. Most people, myself included, are capable of understanding that the Israeli government is not representative of all Jewish people, but some people who are incapable of making that distinction could be tempted to blame all Jews for the war crimes and heinous human rights abuses being carried out against the Palestinian people. Especially with the Israeli lobby constantly telling us that if you don't agree with the policies of the Israeli government it's because you hate all Jews. Some people with lower cognitive function may actually believe them and decide that the Jewish people are to blame for the actions of the Israeli government. Meanwhile, Bibi and his party, along with AIPAC, cuddle up to white nationalists and nazi sympathizers in the states and around the world, while screaming "anti-semite" at anyone on the left who has policy issues with the current regime in Israel.
27
Can you provide specific examples of heinous human rights abuses? The examples supported by facts.
13
@Bill
How about all the Israelis stabbed to death by Palestinian terrorists last year?
14
Sure, how about the young American female activist, Rachel Corrie, run over by a bulldozer driven by a soldier. If that happened in the U,S. He would have been put in prison for a very long time .
10
If Jews stand for anything it's freedom of expression. American Judaism has been hijacked by the small minority of Jews associated with AIPAC. Coming from a Jewish heritage, this story makes me cringe.
And a puzzle, prompted by looking at the State Department definition of anti-semitism referenced within the article (https://www.state.gov/defining-anti-semitism/): how is it that the word "Semite" refers to those speaking Semitic languages; Jews, Arabs, and others, but the word 'Anti-semite' refers specifically to bias against Jews?
12
@ShenBowen: It's not really that much of a puzzle. If you disregard the word for a moment, and consider the phenomenon itself, you will recognize that hatred of Jews is quite a different thing, culturally and historically, from hatred of Arabs. (Although there are some similarities in some of the stereotypes) But hatred of Jews is a distinct, complicated thing, thaqt has its own important place in European culture, and some writer, I forget who, called it "Anti-Semitism". He arbitrarily wanted it to refer to hatred of Jews, even though the word might suggest a reference to Arabs also. So, there is no deep significance, it was just a somewhat careless word choice, that caught on.
7
Lock-step extremist Zionism orthodoxy becomes the law of the land. And not just the law of the land of Israel, but the law of the land of the United States. And its water carried by political Christianists.
Fascinating. Alarming. Disgusting.
41
@Rocky
Zionism is the movement to establish a Jewish homeland. What about that “disgusts” you?
14
Betsy Devos begins the inquisition.
11
DeVos next action is to defund any Palestine’s critics of 235 dollars each.
2
Why is the DOE involved? Doesn't most of the federal money for these so-called international studies centers came from the State Department and AID as the means to employ emigre compradors and semi-retired foreign service personnel and to recruit for the CIA. Or is this another case of Mrs. De Vos being way out of her league?
5
To recap:
The Republicans want states rights -- except when they don't. Examples: State universities' curriculum and California pollution standards.
The Republicans don't want an Education Department --except when they do. Example: Using the Education Department to "order" state universities what to teach.
The hypocrisy is stunning.
10
@Julz Traveler
The article clearly states that the DOE is not telling Duke or UNC what to teach.
The DOE is demanding that they comply with the terms of their federal grant. Non-compliance results in no funding.
That sounds like every other contract.
9
As an alum of the UNC business school, I find this chilling. Madam Sec can go pound sand!
8
@Kevin
You graduated from business school?
But you don't understand basic contract law?
Title IV is predicated on compliance with certain obligations.
The DOE is investigating compliance.
Non-compliance will result in defunding.
How could a business school graduate from an esteemed University as UNC not understand this?
Based on your demonstrated misunderstanding of basic concepts that should be taught in any college-level business school, perhaps the DOE should also look into their grants and funding of that department as well.
8
@MKF
If you're going to be snarky and insulting, maybe you should get your facts straight or maybe you should get a refund on your contracts law class. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. The Duke/UNC program is a grant recipient. A grant is different from a contract. A federal grant recipient is responsible for describing the scope of work and its implementation. (Queue up the "Academic Freedom Song") With a contract, the feds describe the scope of work to be carried out by the contractor. This action by the DOE is chilling and the fact of its investigation does not make its investigation factual.
12
The irony is that doctrines like this actually feed into antisemitism.
9
No, no, no. This can never be. The federal government can NEVER dictate academic content. Better to abolish DOE than tolerate this totalitarian abuse.
7
The headline of this article presently reads "U.S. Orders Duke and U.N.C. to Recast Tone in Mideast Studies."
The headline alone should be enough to convince anyone who is serious about "free and unfettered academic inquiry"---once a foundational principle of western civilization---that this administration and the right-wing cabal that funds it and runs it could not be less interested in "free and unfettered academic inquiry."
The extraordinary quality of higher education in the U.S.---exemplified by private universities such as Duke and public universities such as UNC---is unmatched by any other country on the planet, a fact that affords me great pleasure whenever I get the opportunity to lord it over colleagues in the U.K.
Even more extraordinary is the fact that such quality in such quantity has been developed over a relatively brief period of time---only 400 years or so.
This remarkable achievement, of which all Americans should be justifiably proud, is threatened whenever the core principles of academic freedom become subject to the politically-motivated, ideological mischief-making of such educational low-lifes as Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos.
Our institutions of governance are crumbling under the corruptive influence of right-wing ideologues. What a further pity it would be if our tradition of excellence in higher education crumbled under the weight of lightweights such as Trump and DeVos.
12
@MC,
Agreed, this is chilling and deeply disturbing
2
This is entirely consistent with every other early stage fascist move the administration has made. Between the concentration camps, attacks on the press and judiciary, the wanting to remove “undesirables” from California’s streets, and the contempt for the rule of law, this move to subvert academic freedoms is entirely predictable.
What’s most chilling is that 40% of Americans support eliminating freedom wholesale like this.
10
Is Duke anti-Semitic? Or is Duke willing to embrace a variety of thought and opinions which may make some feel uncomfortable? Being Jewish is not a unilateral frame of thought and political agenda, just as being a thoughtful Christian or Muslim means adherence to a single political party. College courses can be narrow or broad. But they are only 6-12 weeks. Hardly sufficient time to indoctrinate enough of a student’s attention to warrant a Federal sanction.
3
Not surprised but continuously disappointed. DeVos and her cronies would love to micromanage higher education and ensure its bias.
3
Noam Chomsky we need you now. This is the most disturbing thing the administration has done so far. And so it begins. God help us.
7
THIS is how a democracy [and nation] dies.
4
So much for free speech on campus.
4
Perhaps they should let Jared Kushner mediate between the government and Duke University based on his proven record and his allegiance.
3
@GM, isn't Jared too busy re-inventing government IT and fostering innovation, and achieving peace in the Middle East?
2
Just plain scary.
3
Ironically, the more you gag people from expressing what they honestly believe to be true, the more convinced they become that what they believe to be true is true.
3
Republicans are not even trying to hide their distaste for separation of church and state.Old TJ must be rolling over in his grave after hearing about this latest republican travesty against the constitution.
Republicans have absolutely no shame at all.Why they feel the need to press their beliefs about an invisible sky god on the rest of us is beyond belief.If you turn a republican inside out you will have a Taliban member standing in front of you.
The only difference between the two is one believes in sky god Jesus and the other believes in sky god Allah.I'd hate to have to live on the difference between the two of them.
The year is 2019 and this is what the republicans are doing with their tax payer funded jobs.Simply unbelievable,simply unbelievable.
4
Israel and Judaism are two seperate things. Israel is a country, while Judaism is a religion. I have nothing against Judaism, and the jewish people, but I find the politics of Israel distasteful. Yet if I express this, the neocons scream 'anti-jewish' 'holocaust' and all kinda other such.
8
It is about time that the government crack down on educational abuse, especially in universities. Universities have spent the last 15 years lambasting Jewish students. There is no freedom of speech for Israel supporters and Israel supporters are treated with disdain and bigotry.
6
Next, the Dept Education will begin investigating university science programs that do not conform to the climate change denial beliefs of the GOP.
25
@Steve, I've even heard that K-12 schools, and colleges and universities, promote the notion that the earth has existed for more than 6,000 years.
1
Let me get started on ending every last American History program for not emphasizing/including every non-white person responsible for the development and “success” of the United States of America! There’s no USA without the indigenous population, enslaved Africans and the Chinese laborers out West.
11
With friends like these...
2
If Israel was such a shining city on the hill, they wouldn't need an intervention on the behalf of DeVos. They would be able to stand on their own merit. Maybe if Israeli voters get rid of Trump-Lite the nation can move beyond expanding settlements and maybe providing equity and justice to all in the region.
15
@ B Bleck : the Jewish Community is very small and have limited resources wearas all the funding by Arab Nations 2 American universities is amazing in its volume and number of foreign students paying out-of-state tuition. there is no way they can be anything but an imbalance against Israel and no ability to effectively respond against the bias and still have enough money to pay for our synagogue membership and school our kids,
6
@Dean Blake That the Jewish community (about 7 million in America as near as I can tell from a quick search, compared to less than half as many of Arab descent), while certainly not a huge population, they are hardly lacking in resources. In the US, they have powerful lobbyists with an outsized influence in relation to those in the Jewish community who support expansionist views and settlements. Never mind the resources the American government provides the Israeli government. That DeVos is stepping into this is evidence that they have the government at their back much more than do the Palestinians and other Arab nations.
Judaism and anti Israeli government animus are not equivalent in any shape. The anti Israeli movement is not anti semitic, its antifascist, which is what the government of Israel has become. Even Israelis are choking at a government that is ever more aligned to a right wing, xenophobic, racist ultra orthodox minority which has taken over the government to the detriment of not only the nation of Israel but to an aver increasing majority of its citizens that are not ultraorthodox or are Israeli arabs or secular.
7
This is terrifying. As a Jew in a city with a large Jewish population, I recount a similar perversion of Jewish values: an ultra right Zionist group with outside funding repeatedly tries to dictate our schools’ Middle East history curriculum through frivolous lawsuits and screeching claims of antisemitism if anyone disagrees with them. The (Jewish) mayor, teachers, administrators, and most importantly many, many Jewish parents in town vociferously push back each time. Jews nationwide better start screaming about this. It’s crazy and Orwellian and it won’t stop here. I’d assume climate change science is the next funding target.
13
This is quite disturbing, but every day brings a new assault on our constitution. Republicans must never hold the levers of power again. Ever.
18
No big surprise, since Trump likes to brag about his buddies in Israel, and campaign on saying that the Democrats will take away your right to impose conservative "Christianity" on everyone.
Although premarital and extramarital and even birth control are still mortal sins under the Pope. Divorced do not count unless the marriage is formally annulled.
3
US taxpayer dollars are not intended to push a biased pro-Palestinian agenda on US campuses. It’s not complicated.
22
They should not push any bias. Period.
3
One of Trump's political problems is how can he lead a antisemitic white supremacist movement and still get votes from Jews, particularly in Florida. He has hit on the strategy of doing whatever the American Jews who focus on protecting Israel want. He has done this over and over and this looks like one more action that he can claim supports Israel, He wants Jewish voters to ignore his antisemitic retweets and his antisemitic final campaign ad. One thing Trump knows is how to scam people and trying to sell himself as a protector of Jews is a scam. If he were serious about protecting Jews he would lead an effort to stop white supremacist terrorism and he had done nothing of the kind.
12
Well, clearly Ilhan Omar was correct. The Trump-DeVos takeover of the Justice Department and the Department of Education has as one of its goals that Americans swear loyalty to Israel. When the heck did this happen?
19
The funding should be stopped/taken back immediately. I would then give the program until next semester to get their act together. If not then no funding. Anti-semitism is rampant throughout US college campuses and has to end.
19
Can we just re-name the Education Department as the Ministry of Truth and be done with it?
17
This will prove to be a most dangerous course of action since wars, genocides and the worst acts in hidtory were(and still are ) committed by those claiming their religion was founded by their one true God.
The old adage cautioning us to know history so we do not repeat it comes to mind.
1
Trump is building an endless inventory of human rights, environmental, legal and freedom of speech violations that in 2020 a (popularly elected) president will need an entire department working to find and eliminate them, policy and bigot (DeVos’s crew) alike.
4
Were the grants issued under the Obama administration or the Trump administeation?
3
I commend the Department of Education for opposing the singling out of Israel, the rife anti-semitism in certain colleges and universities and the BDS movement.
16
And if Ivanka ditches Jared and reverts to Christian evangelism, and the new Israeli prime minister renames Trump City, the Education Department will also flip and seek instead try to root out Jewish influence in schools?
7
What I find very disturbing is that for too long it has been accepted as politically and academically correct to openly ostracize and intimidate Jewish students on campus because they may oppose the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement. In one well known instance a young Jewish female student at a distinguished California University was called out and almost barred from participation in a student government organization because she was told by Palestinian sympathizers that her being Jewish would automatically mean she supported Israel. Fortunately a faculty supervisor intervened but not before the student was abused and castigated for being Jewish.
For that reason I support the U.S. Education Department for its intervention and orders to remake Middle East studies programs. The absurd and humiliating attempt to exclude a Jewish student from student government specifically because she is Jewish is abhorrent. Furthermore the BDS movement is using a propaganda tool of the Nazis of the 1930s to deny Jewish students, businesses and organizations of their right to engage in commerce. Boycotting of Jews and Jewish businesses was the first step in stripping Jews of their rights as German citizens. Ultimately the boycott of the Jews by the Nazis led to Holocaust and the extermination of 6 million Jews.
Middle East studies should not be biased against Jews, Israel, Judaism, Christianity or other religions. Anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias is real on campus. Jews are at risk.
27
As we should expect from one of the most powerful corporate-owned newspapers in the world, we find the very best propaganda in the title lines The New York Times chooses for its op-eds; however, here we find this propaganda on its homepage for this news article:
"Education Dept. Hunts for Anti-Israel Bias in Colleges"
Therefore, we should expect to also see these title lines for news articles in The New York Times:
"Education Dept. Hunts for Anti-North Korea Bias in Colleges"
"Education Dept. Hunts for Anti-Iran Bias in Colleges"
"Education Dept. Hunts for Anti-France Bias in Colleges"
Of course, the NYT would be reduced to a laughingstock if also ran these title lines to introduce a news article dealing with the same phenomenon but involving these other countries.
"Anti-Germany" propaganda washed over Hitler's Germany with great effect. And this effect is not changed one iota by replacing one country's name with another.
The only difference now is that this title line is not issuing from a government; rather, this is powerful corporate propaganda, pure and simple.
6
I attended all three days of the "Conflict Over Gaza" event and found the panelists and presenters to be as objective as one could be when covering a controversial topic. The scholars and guest speakers consisted of individuals of multifaith and multiethnic backgrounds (Jewish, Egyptian, etc.). The video released largely misrepresented the performances and discussions that took place. I note that my perspective is of someone with no familial ties or affiliation with the Middle East.
18
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Melissa,
I very much doubt your objectivity.
3
@Mssr. Pleure
Again, this is my experience as someone who attended the event who is culturally an "outsider". You have a right to an opinion, however, I would invite more people to comment on objectivity who actually attended the entire event. Did you?
1
This is ridiculous!
Would DeVos and her cabal contend that a course on The History of the New Testament is biased and "doesn't teach the full picture" because it doesn't include Muhammad's and Joseph Smith's views (and criticisms) about Christianity?
And isn't it hypocritical for the Right to claim that American schools should be allowed to display the Ten Commandments and present Christmas concerts without requiring them to include representation of all other "minority religions," yet complain that a program about the Middle East, which is predominantly Muslim, must do the opposite?
And following their line of reasoning, shouldn't all schools that receive federal funding be required to include the history of LGBT rights, in order to include minority perspective equitably?
Sorry Betsy, I ain't buying any of this.
15
This isn't right, and Republicans know it's not, they just don't care.
7
Betsy DeVos, who heads the Department of Education, wants to tear down the wall between state and Christianity in America's schools. (And her brother, private mercenary Erik Prince, sees himself as a warlord leading a new Crusade.) I'm going to bet with no small amount of confidence that the issue here is not that the government feels the Duke-UNC program is insufficiently positive about Judaism, but that it feels the program is insufficiently negative about Muslims.
8
establishment clause
1
I find it odd that only one short paragraph in this very long article spoke favorably of the program. It didn't read as being overly balanced.
1
Propaganda always comes from the top. Will this shameful chapter ever end?!?
These other comments go to show how anti-Semitism is alive and well; everyone would cheer on Government investigations to protect any other group of people.
16
@American Patriot
Since when does the US govt demand that a university change its courses or lose funding because it’s not nice enough to an alleged ally?
9
I am unable to wrap my head around the name calling when it comes to Israel. I have read most of the comments here and find little to no-antisemitism. But plenty of accusations of being anti-semitic. You can be critical of the political body Israel represents at this time WITHOUT hating Jews. Two pairs of shoes. Any remotely meaningful discussion will only succeed if people like yourself understand and accept that point. Otherwise you just run in circles.
4
I have yet to read a single comment that acknowledges the fact that several decades ago the Saudi Arabian government began pouring billions of dollars into establishing “Middle Eastern Studies” programs in universities across our country. Saudi names are plastered across the buildings and listed as the endowers of the programs. They focused the bulk of their endowments into prominent Ivy universities as well as “second-tier” schools like Duke, and eventually spread to state universities like the University of California system. Their faculty members were carefully selected to parrot the Saudi Wahhabi brand of Islam packaged in a more palatable format that would not be so blatantly anti-Christian. But they spared no effort to inculcate their virulent Wahhabi anti-semitism in its students by linking it to Israel. Now, a generation later, those first indoctrinated students are leaders across America who have been nursed on the mother’s milk of Saudi/Muslim delegitimization of Israel - so much so that it’s a given to almost all of the commenters to the NYT honestly believe that Israel is a colonial occupier of “Arab lands” and every other calumny imaginable. The Saudis care nothing for the Palestinians except to pay them lip service in order to advance their own Wahhabist agenda. The Times should focus its journalistic zeal into investigating the Saudi/Duke relationship and readers need to educate themselves before spouting off more uninformed drivel.
14
@Bob Kale
So b/c the Saudis don’t love the Palestinians it’s ok for Israel to occupy Palestinian land? Criticism of Israeli policy and military action is never anti-Semitic. Just like criticism of the US govt isn’t anti-Xtian. Or criticism of the Japanese govt isn’t anti-Shinto. Or criticism of the Mexican govt isn’t anti-catholic. It’s pure fiction and propaganda to say it’s anti-Semitic to criticize the political leaders and policy of a modern nation state.
9
@Bob Kale
You are absolutely right my friend.Saudi Arabia is the main source of destabilization in the Middle East.They are the leaders of Sunni Islam which happens to be the 90% of all Moslems. They are absolutely intolerant of any other ethnic or religious minorities which they constantly harass and persecute viciously to the point that they are almost none left except in few countries like Turkey and Egypt.However Shia Islam is much more tolerant toward other religious groups.Would you believe that there are Jewish and Christian minorities in Iran?Well they do exist there but for the reason that they do not want to do business with the US they are being vilified to the max
1
@george
I am aware of the xtian and Jewish minority population in Iran but those people exist at the largesse of the Iranian govt. Iran has no particular love or respect for its xtian or Jewish minority. As long as those groups are silent they are allowed to exist. No argument that Wahabi Islam is a significant nexus of malevolence but I don’t think Iran is much better. It’s not Islam that’s the problem. It’s the warped minds in power that bend Islam and turn it into something it isn’t. But that’s true of Christianity and Judaism as well. Bob Marley was right when he said the only god is a living man.
1
Is the Republican party controlled by Israel ? Right from inviting an Israeli PM to shame our own president, to banning pre-BDS speeches, and now in banning funding.. Common Republicans, could we worry about America and Americans ?
13
This is flat-out censorship. It has no place in the United States. I hope the ACLU and the AAUP will get involved to stop this abuse of federal power.
18
Have you all not realized what is happening here?
Do you remember Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Well this is Trump’s (Kushners, Miller’s and The Evangelicals) Jewish strategy. They know they will loose votes in the future as our society is considerably more liberal than the GOP are, so they are desperately seeking to flip the Jewish liberal vote from Democratic to Republican by making the liberal leaning voters and Democrats hostile towards Israel.
Israel is not the problem, it’s the right wing government of Israel as well as the militants of Palestines that are the problem. Most people on both sides want a peaceful solution so they can live their lives. The fanatics on both sides want the conflict to continue.
This strategy of splitting the Jewish vote from the Democrats will succeed if we all don’t calm down. We must stick together and see that liberals and democrats cannot sway in their support of Israel’s right to exist but rather we must work towards resolving the issues between the needs of the Palestinians and Israelis.
14
If Israel wants to be called a democracy, criticism of the government goes with the territory. Just like all Muslims aren't bad, neither are all Jews or Christians good. Just look at the current Secretary of State.
7
Faced with this witch hunt, I hope Universities will take a stand on principle, ideally united in solidarity. Basic freedoms are at stake here.
The school and department being targeted here are both known to me and of good quality. Universities should never be afraid of interest groups on any side, from China and UAE to Israel; and the bottom line must never be donor dollars.
11
Anti-semitism and iv league have storied intertwined history. Furthermore, anti- semitism is alive and well and best represented by the current admissions committees into iv league schools. It is very sad but true fact.
10
Positive imagery of Christianity in the region?
Like the time that the Crusaders occupied Jerusalem for over eight decades, and then threatened to destroy everything in the city, rather than accept that Saladin had led a successful siege?
Yeah, we wouldn’t want anyone to remember just how closely intertwined Judaism and Islam were. Who was Maimonides again?
5
First, the Israelis of today are not synonymous or coterminous with the Israelites of the Bible. Evangelicals cannot understand the very important difference between the two.
11
This non stop pressure from the Israel Lobby will not work forever. Time, demographics (both in the US and Israel), and most importantly the truth are on the side of those who seek justice for the Palestinians. Justice is the only path to peace in the region.
10
what country do I live in?
11
Being anti-Israel does not make someone anti-Jewish. I don't like the government of China but no one accuses me of being anti-Chinese.
17
Denying the right of the Jewish people to national self determination constitutes anti-Semitism. United Nations.
4
Sallie did in no way or word deny Israel its right to exist. What are you talking about??
1
Why is Betsy DeVos the last OG survivor on Trump Island? I think she should get some education from Duke, not the other way around.
10
Bias against anything the entrenched academic community dislikes is the norm. After Trump’s election, students who had supported him or his ideas were given bad grades and ridiculed by faculty. These students were not following the correct thinking of professors who desired the perfect liberal order. I am not surprised that there’s an anti Israel bias. It is unfortunate that Trump’s son in law is Jewish. Otherwise Trump might have dismissed Israel. Then of course, liberal Democrat thinking would have instead embraced Israel.
5
Please open your eyes and quit viewing things through the distortions if Trumpism and falling for urban myths.
8
@Richard Wright
Examples (you know, like specifics)? Assertion of something doesnt make it true, or accurate.
7
So cranky and hyperbolic. Not to mention Trumpian in that you throw out generalizations with zero evidence.
It doesn’t help forward conversations to group everyone into a binary. Case in point: how do you feel?
5
The Trump administration continues to equate Judaism with Israel and Islam with Palestine. Neither Israel nor Palestine are the sum total of their respective faiths anymore than there is a single Christian country or church. Both Christianity and Islam are based on Judaism and the Torah (the Christian Old Testament - we have the same God, the same Creation, the same prophets. All three recognize Jesus Christ under slightly different guises. But Middle Eastern studies are not all about religion even though it must be recognized as a factor throughout the Middle East. It's mostly about the countries, their populations, their economies, and their interrelationships. All countries, not just Middle Eastern countries, have their failings as well as their successes. It's impossible to have a relevant study of any country without studying the entire country and region. DeVos and Trump need to get their noses back to things they understand, like society balls and bankruptcies.
23
When the DOE tells a public college it is biased against Muslims and Palestinians, with the same effort and high profile this act is getting, then I'll rethink my liberal bias against all things Trump and this Ed dept.
17
Go find someone in those colleges condemning murders of the liberals in islamic countries. Silence.
This is not about progressive agenda. This is about culture war. Culture war which has bad guys (white conservatives and those who support them, moderates sometimes, Israel, Western civilization and its legacy in general) and good guys (everyond else). Good guys can’t do anything wrong.
How come this brainwashing happened in the cradles of knowledge - big question.
24
Better late than never
8
This is part of an wide ranging campaign by the Israeli lobby to outlaw criticism of Israel within the United States. The lobby has already managed to subvert the US Constitution by getting US lawmakers across the country to enact laws that criminally outlaw the BDS movement.
The problem for the Lobby is that Israel as currently constituted is not a true democracy, but an apartheid state. The status quo is no longer a defensible position with the reach and diversity of today's modern media. Thus their need to outlaw not only non-violent opposition to the discriminatory practices of the Israeli government, but also to outlaw the very debate itself.
26
As a North Carolinian, an American, and a significant contributor to Duke University, I have been troubled that both these schools haven’t yet had the smarts or the backbones to stop these most unacademic of programs. Maybe the federal government telling them it won’t keep paying for them (I hope the NC General Assembly follows suit) will spur the schools to come to their senses.
45
@J. Have you ever actually taken any of the classes involved in these programs or are you just upset that anyone has a positive opinion about Islam?
10
@J. Yes, let's not study things that don't align with our world view.
10
From Jerusalem to Chapel Hill, Sheldon Adelson’s campaign contributions sure do go far and wide.
30
I'm confused: "a State Department definition of anti-Semitism . . . labels rejection of the Jewish state of Israel as anti-Jewish bigotry," but these programs are criticized for lacking "viewpoint diversity."
Mr. Pot, this is Ms. Kettle; Ms. Kettle, Mr. Pot.
At worst, (and I am neither conceding nor denying it) at worst the universities in this case are guilty making their conclusions into non-negotiable moral certitudes in precisely the same manner as the administration.
All propositions must be subject to the dialectic of open argument, including the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
25
@Stewart Winger
Is the legitimacy of Israel open to argument? Is the demand for a Palestinian state also open to critical review?
7
Methinks that you deny the right of the Jewish People to National self determination.
5
Just great. Next the Education Department will order all schools to remake their United States Civil War studies as they too were offering students a biased curriculum that didn’t didn’t present enough “positive “imagery” of the Confederacy.
67
@Ash We've already had a good fifty years of pro-Confederate educational bias. The canonization of General Lee as a case in point.
10
Freedom of ideas and speech as a right is being shredded in slow motion just because supporters of Israeli right-wing policies in administration and congress are not happy with criticism of Israeli policies.
There is an Israel first rhetoric at play.
Free speech is more important that any "friend" .
42
This has Stephen Miller written all over it. He has held a vendetta against liberal faculty members at his alma mater since he was a student there (we were classmates at Duke). He once told me he’d be sure make them pay. So gross. Don’t believe me? Just check out his old columns for the Duke Chronicle.
794
@Allison
Yuck. So sorry you had to encounter him.
30
@Allison Wow. That makes (hideous) sense. And truly illustrates what is wrong with this admin. I went to Chapel Hill in the 80's and got to participate in this program. It was stellar.
25
So, a Federal agency will review the curriculum to be sure Jewish and Christian interests in the Middle East are treated in a "balanced" manner since federal funds are involved. This is just another attempt to suppress anything remotely critical of Israel. Good luck with that.
280
What next? Complaining that programs on Israel don't pay enough attention to the 20% of Israelis who are Arab?
51
@Shawn McHale That 20% have more rights in Israel than they do in ANY Arab country.
13
@Maxy Not my point, which I am sure you realize.
1
As they should. Like any other citizens.
1
More ideological meddling from the right-wing. If DeVos's lawyers want to reduce criticism of Israel from informed, scholarly programs like those of Duke-UNC, they should put pressure on Israel to stop behaving badly.
Also, this piece misidentifies the organization "Jewish Voice for Peace." It is not, "a liberal group that advocates Palestinian rights", but rather "a progressive group that includes Palestinians when it advocates for human and civil rights in Israel-Palestine."
210
@gideon brenner
As a member of JVP, I say, "be grateful for what you got." After years of being ignored, I commend the reporter for getting a quote giving our side.
The Nobel laureate Francois Jacob said that when you explain molecular biology, you have to simplify "as much as your conscience permits." Same with the middle east. Same with journalism.
I agree with your basic point, though. You don't want to be called war criminals? Stop killing civilians.
15
You can discern who has power in a society by whom you cannot criticize -Voltaire
36
This is what fascism under a Trump and Evangelical Ed secretary looks like. This administration complains that there is no free speech on campus when conservative provocateurs aren't given freedom to spout nonsense and racism, yet when academics and students engage in free thought about subjects they don't like or agree with, they threaten to pull funds and scare the bejesus out of the entire university system. Wake up frogs, the water is getting warmer.
20
Lol, Israel. Forever associated with Trump and the GOP.
Who pounded the nails this time?
7
After reading through the comments, I notice the words fascism, thought police, mind control, AIPAC, Adelson et al.
Stop pulling your hair out! The DOE is telling you that if your program is blatantly biased against Jews, Israel, and Christians, then find other funding.
No one is stopping free speech. They’re just saying, do it on your own dime if you’re presenting only one skewed narrative.
18
@David G
People don't see it that way because that is not how chilling free speech works. This DOE is out of its league in diagnosing bias in any college course, period, and this is simply an attack on thoughts they do not like.
7
There are several things that get to me about this whole issue. Firstly colleges and universities aren’t some liberal monolith; you have very conservative universities as well like St. Andrews. Second, it’s obviously incredibly telling that it’s only the Middle Eastern curriculum that’s being hunted down for not being ‘diverse’ enough, nothing in there about Eurocentric history curriculums or a lack of Native American cultural programs.
Thirdly, it’s hypocritical of a Republican-led government to suddenly get incredibly regulatory in a state-owned and run institution of higher learning. It’s doubly insulting because NC was the state where we asked for help in our gerrymandering case but the Supreme Court said NC can handle this state issue on our own. So we can most certainly handle what’s going on in our university system. Also funnily enough, UNC and Duke are top-tier schools not only in the state but internationally for a reason; I think they have their system in hand unlike the for-profit dupe ‘colleges’ Devos put her full support behind.
Lastly, this whole thing is insulting to adults that are even going to college in the first place. They aren’t stupid and especially there, those two schools are insanely hard to get accepted to. I think the students can think for themselves the information they are taught and presented in class without censorship or handholding.
18
So the fascists Trump has installed in the federal government are now regulating speech at universities. I’m waiting with bated breath for the free speech warriors on this paper’s op-ed page to publish outraged columns.
7
This is an area for scrutiny by the public, the press, and private groups, not the federal government. The federal government has no place in determining the content of college lectures. The far right needs to immediately cease employing any department of the federal government as thought police.
7
These actions seem about as usefully as forcing the installation of disabled access ramps on the corners of sidewalks that nobody ever uses because they don’t lead anywhere. Enforcement for the sake of enforcement.
1
Israel backers should be wary of lobbying the government to coerce universities into curtailing free speech. It will backfire on them by creating ill will and resentment against Israel.
12
I propose that all these Middle East studies professors take a sabbatical to go teach in a Muslim country for a while. They seem quite enamored of Gaza. Why not start there? Or Iran, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, take your pick. Then let them come back and lecture us on academic freedom.
21
The NYT quoting Jewish Voice for Peace is blatant tokenism.
Shame on you.
10
Almost every single Middle Eastern nation discriminates against Jews. Almost every single Middle Eastern nation forced the Jews to leave in the 1950s with death the penalty for noncompliance. Yet Israel is singled out for demonization by the left. It really makes you wonder what their motivations are.
31
like everyone tells native Americans. get over it
It’s scary to be a Jew in many college campuses.
28
Pure Fascism.
Unbelievable Orwellian Totalitarian Tactics.
From the DeVos Division of Disinformation & Doctrine of the Party.
This would make Orwell blush.
10
This article itself shows how bias works. This article was written because of a letter written because of a conference that Duke and UNC held, that had actual antisemitic content. But I didn't see that mentioned in the article. There is a difference between being critical of Israel and being antisemitic and the Duke-UNC program mentioned in this article crossed the line which is why the Federal government has noted that it wanted the money returned. The NY Times should have mentioned that. It should have mentioned the antisemitic songs, the undue and unbalanced content of the symposium.
16
Move up about 50 comments. A reader there reported about her experience at that very symposium.
1
And that's the type of reason Americans are becoming more and more hostile to Israel, our own government is trying ram propaganda for another country down our throats. From my prospective; as a middle aged white male born and remains in the deep south.
14
Born and remains in the Deep South says it all.
Neocons, and Evangelicals blinded by their own religious views, see the absence of an obvious and extensive pro-Israel bias as anti-Israel. This is mostly a fight for the hearts and minds of the young on the issue of Israel vs the Palestinians. Pro-Israel forces would like the convince the world, starting with the young minds, that the Palestinians don't exist and the occupied territories belong to Israel. If you have a more balanced view on this issue, you're branded as anti-Israel, or worse, as antisemitic.
12
"That focus appears to reflect the views of an agency leadership that includes a civil rights chief, Kenneth L. Marcus, who has made a career of pro-Israel advocacy and has waged a years-long campaign to delegitimize and defund Middle East studies programs that he has criticized as rife with anti-Israel bias.
Let me see if I've got this right. A government apparatchik, Kenneth L. Marcus, "who has made a career of pro-Israel advocacy," is saying it's obviously all right for him to have a bias (pro-Israel, in his case) and to put the full force of government behind his particular bias but that nobody else can have a bias if it's not the same as his?
15
Lets be clear. The right is doing a lot of this to pry the Jewish vote from the left. It all pretty well orchestrated. Different views on the ME and areas of focus are not antisemtism. They are different views. Disagreeing with Israel or with the Palestinians is not antisemitism. It is a political position. It is characterized as antisemitism to weaponize the issues as the right has long weaponized many issues. 50 years ago the posters and people who cry antisemtism would have been making casual slurs against Jews. I would guess they still do. Some of use who had GG parents were taught about the folks who make up the modern right. Not to long ago they were at Father Coughlin rallies or post WW II working to keep Jews out as students, workers and members of organizations. A cat may try to bark but in the end it is still a cat. If you turn your back on these folks make sure you have decent plate body armor.
6
And now from Comedy Central:
'In reconsidering the case, Mr. Marcus said the Education Department would be using a State Department definition of anti-Semitism that, among other things, labels “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination”'
How about how we stop worrying about labels and focus on how Israel actually denies the Palestinians right to self-determination with tanks, bombs and guns. And has done so for 52 years.
13
Abbas is in his 15th year of his four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. it would seem that the PA is denying the Palestinians their opportunity for an independence day.
2
Aren’t the same people pushing for minority inclusion in ME history also supportive of keeping non-whites OUT of US history.
5
Anti Israel or anti Israel leadership? The knee jerk reaction that any criticism of Israeli policies is anti Israel or anti Semitic needs to stop. Current Israeli policies toward Palestine are reprehensible and Netanyahu's pledge to annex large portions of the West Bank are illegal. Universities should be able to have honest and open discussions of these facts. The Federal government has no business here.
11
Funny the Department did not start with Bob Jones University. I am sure there is a less than flattering viewpoint on Judaism and several constitutionally protected rights.
7
Based on the article, this interference is wholly unjustified. Please contrast this quotation from the law:
Title VI of the Higher Education Act, which awards grant funding to colleges to “establishing, strengthening and operating a diverse network of undergraduate foreign language and area or international studies centers and programs.”
to the criticisms by the department:
(a) The letter said that “it seems clear foreign language instruction and area studies advancing the security and economic stability of the United States have taken ‘a back seat’ to other priorities.”
(b) ... the department believed other offerings, like a conference focused on “love and desire in modern Iran” and another focused on Middle East film criticism, “have little or no relevance to Title VI.”
(a) distorts the quoted law, which does not say "advancing the security and economic stability of the United States" and does say "and area or international studies centers and programs", not only or mainly foreign language programs.
(b) simply ignores that the cited conferences are precisely what "area or international studies centers and programs" may do to study the culture of the region.
4
"The Education Department has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to remake the Middle East studies program run jointly by the two schools after concluding that it was offering students a biased curriculum that, among other complaints, did not present enough “positive” imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region."
Thank you for so eloquently chronicling the last breath of American democracy.
Assuming some outpost of freedom survives somewhere in the world it will be useful for them to understand what happened here.
That roughly a third of our electorate are sitting at home smugly applauding this atrocity says all you need to know about the last days of freedom in the US.
DeVos, by our former standards, is a criminal, and Trump a traitor of the first order.
Lets see what the vaunted Pelosi does with this. I suspect nothing...another useless coward.
8
I can tell you in no uncertain terms that in my time in university there was a clear anti-Israel, anti-jewish, BDS bias that ran through most of the academia, from the professors to the student body. Im not sure when this ideology crept into our university systems but it was open and clear while I was there. It is time to clean those houses and rid our houses of education of these bigoted ideologies.
25
There were also anti-apartheid movements against South Africa on most campuses.
5
@Donald White oh please Donnie. I went to a university... not a college. You know like University of (insert state), not like community college...
1
I’m sorry but no natural-born American would use the phrase “my time in university”. That’s foreign to American colloquial English. They would say “my time at college”.
5
Somewhere, Joe McCarthy is smiling.
16
More nuttiness from Trump’s “only the best” people.
I’ll give them consistency. Consistently the worst.
3
Now THIS is a witch hunt.
15
It is revealing that Mr. Marcus, the Department of Education civil rights chief, is employing a definition of anti-Semitism that equating opposition to the existence of Israel as a formally Jewish state with anti-Semitism. As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I think that a person can ethically oppose such a state without being branded a Jew-hater. I have no problem with the continued existence of Israel, but this definition seeks to eliminate any criticism of such a state or its actions towards lands that it has occupied without international approval. I hope that there will be follow-up articles that detail the curriculums being attacked by our government so that the reader can decide whether there is any legitimate basis for the attacks. Generalities aren't enough to base an opinion upon.
16
Thank you. Being the grandson of a Palestinian refugee I greatly appreciate your open-mindedness. I have no ill will towards Judaism; I do not oppose the existence of Israel. I just want peace. Hopefully we can focus on the practicalities of the issue and not make it yet another idealogical battle.
10
Perhaps the investigation should shift to educational materials in our country. Texas textbooks, for example?
14
This article has a fairly sanguine description of the UNC-Duke "Gaza" conference. The singer had the audience sing along to the anti-Semitic song and then thanked the audience for their display of "beautiful anti-Semitism."
Imagine a white nationalist thanking a crowd for their "beautiful display of racism" at an academic conference using federal funds. The outage would be justified and the calls for remediation would be well deserved.
How is this any different?
28
TMDJS Are you sure they weren’t just showing Borat re-runs?
3
We should take names of every academic who supports this move by the Education Department to control the political views of academia. Once this administration is done, the party will be over these creeps.
4
Yow..Just like awarding a commendation to the lawyers at the DOJ who 'got Kavanaugh through the nomination process', once you have started creating your own reality there are no limits...What is wrong with this country - too much plastic in the water?
3
Since when did the Education Dept. become the thought police? Anyone else feel like they've crashed through the looking glass?
9
@Mark McIntyre
I agree with you. Even though I'm Jewish and despise BDS's focus on only one tiny little country in the entire world, having the DOE tell universities what they should teach is terrifying.
Sure, you might cheer when Israel is being defended, but how about when programs about LGBT, POC, Immigrants and, yes, even Democrats are ordered to stop by the Government.
This sort of interference is truly scary and must be opposed by everyone.
Remember, YOUR group could be the next target.
5
These courses could all be distilled down to one simple truth.
Israel is a democracy.
Nearly all the other "countries" (in reality oil companies with flags) in the Middle East are dictatorships run by and large by illegitimate "monarchies."
Long story short problem solved.
19
Israel is in control in its sphere of influence. This control has been obtained through force of arms and it is being extended via the same route. Israel is settling areas obtained through force of arms and is or soon will annex them. Israel is displacing Arabs from land which they have legitimate rights to. Israel proposes to abandon its original constitutional document and is becoming an increasingly Jewish state.
If we steadfastly ignore the mistakes that our friend and ally makes, we put them at risk and we destroy whatever glimmer of Mid-East peace there may be left.
Pointing our your friends faults should be a prerequisite to calling them friend. Pandering and concealing the truth can only do them harm.
4
Is this what the GOP means by less government?
6
If this isn’t ‘fascism’, I don’t know what is.
Once you take away the academia’s right to openly discuss and teach differing viewpoints, you deprive the masses of the ability to analyze critically, period.
This is how you destroy America, one brick at a time.
Well done, patriots! The Framers and the Founders of the Republic must all be turning in their graves.
12
I very much doubt that Duke will let this nonsense go more than about another two minutes. If Miss Betsy is anxious about Middle East Studies programmes being insufficiently christianist or inadequately supportive of the state of Israel, let her go nag UT- Austin or UCLA. Perhaps she would be more comfortable with ME Studies being confined to the time period of 1946 forward, so as to avoid the question of whether consideration of the state of Israel is obligatory in courses dealing with Salah al-din? Or perhaps she feels that any discussion of the post-WWII Middle East cannot meet current 'federal standards' without an exhaustive analysis of the place of Richard Coeur de Lion? Utter codswallop.
6
The truth has a liberal bias.
5
This is straight up fascism. The Trump Administration doesn't care about teaching history, they care about teaching policy - their policy, regardless of how biased, misinformed, and outright misleading it may be. Want proof? They want to blow up hurricanes and prevent states from setting emissions standards.
Betsy DeVos apparently didn't get enough controversy from trying to defund the Special Olympics.
Undermining education with politics is the very definition of propaganda. I hope UNC and Duke stand firm in their independence to teach truth and facts.
12
This has nothing to do with Judaism or Christianity. It has to do with the fact that Islam is being presented, and not in a negative light,
5
This issue, active and direct US government interference of academic freedom in the US in support of Israel, is part of the well orchestrated international propaganda campaign waged by the latter’s government. A campaign that has grown exponentially since Israel’s military victory in the 1967 Six Day war. A poisoned chalice that successive Israeli governments have been replenishing as tragically as they have drunk from.
The campaign is enabled by many of the long established, formal organisations of the global Jewish Diaspora on the basis that criticism of Israel is, at its well-spring, anti-semitism. A charge whose main aim, more often than not, is to stifle discussion.
The campaign’s main objective is to get the Palestinian Israeli issue off the front pages and definitely out of the classroom. If this objective fails then the back-up plan is to assail the perpetrators as a warning to others.
After seven decades of messianic misplaced policies, Israel is surrounded with sworn enemies armed to the teeth. Not to mention one fifth of its citizens getting on with their lives but not, as a group, sharing the ‘miracle’ that is modern Israel.
How in Heaven’s name did it come to this? Surely, it will all end in tears over many, many more broken bodies.
And when the conflagration comes, sooner rather than later, as surely as it must on the current trajectory, nuking Nablus will never be an option.
Wake up Israel. Remember Masada, for all our sakes.
3
I find this to be an extremely biased article. A lot of explication of the government’s (or should I say Mr. Marcus’) position. And yet, unless I missed it, not a single quote from any Duke or UNC faculty member who teaches in the program. It’s pretty clear what’s going on here: big government interfering with academic freedom.
7
So we’re just like China...
4
Republicans are against big government meddling in everything... right?
4
Calling Jewish Voice for Peace a "liberal" group is a gross mis-characterization; it's like calling David Duke a "conservative." The Anti-Defamation League does not make a habit of labeling liberal groups as hateful, but JVP most definitely makes their list. They are a toxic, radical organization with very little support among an otherwise-liberal Jewish community who often does criticize Israel. They equate Zionism with racism (the UN, not exactly a friend of Israel, rescinded that equation in 1991 and has condemned it ever since). They've even gone so far as to equate Jewish identity with white supremacy.
NY Times: I know the story you're looking for is the Betsy Devos Education Department meddling with the educational content delivered by universities. But there's a whole Jewish community in the Durham-Chapel Hill area (my community) that was never interviewed for this article. It does complicate matters if it turns out they normally loathe the Trump administration but agree with what it did here, but that's how it goes.
16
It's time someone stood up against the supporters of terrorism.
10
Long overdue.
It’s fine to examine some of Israel’s more questionable policies, but when academia is so blatantly skewed toward anti-Israel bias, then cut the funding. It isn’t remotely even-handed.
If leftists want to present their own narrative, do it on your own dime.
21
The thought police have arrived.
7
University students who take courses about the Middle East and its people are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda.
To the contrary, they are generally equipped with well-honed critical thinking skills that allow them to detect and, if need be, reject biased teaching. Trust them to judge the validity of what they are being taught.
Today's students have access to a vast quantity of information to supplement what they learn in college courses
Having the heavy hand of the federal government fall on classrooms smacks of dictatorial censorship.
10
Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years and they have virtually disappeared from many countries because of that continued hate. And in this day and age when at least a few of our Congresswomen make anti-Semitic comments and are not disciplined by the same political party that most university administrators and professors belong to, the Department of Education is wise to closely monitor these universities.
17
From moving the Embassy to Jerusalem, to endorsing Bibi's annexation of the West Bank, to investigating Colleges, Trump will do whatever it takes to get the Pro-Israel vote.
Possibly even to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities
3
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the Fascist Trump Administration and its supporters are cynically crying wolf.
How much more one sided on Israel’s favor can the nation move to. This isn’t about presenting Christians in a more balanced way. Leave Christians out of this charade. If, in fact, balance and fairness was at the center of this opportunistic expedition, then these same individuals would be protesting out loud and persistently against Stephen Miller’s racist policies against refugees or the Sackler family’s OxyContin’s murders - 800,000 people have died from opioid addiction. Further, these same critics should be demanding that the Sackler family forfeit their dirty fortune ASAP.
Netanyahu’s Palestinian land grab is wrong. Treatment of Palestinians is wrong and in its totality, weather it’s Palestinians or Central American immigrants, consist of crimes against humanity. This attempt take over of academia is tantamount to the destructive behavior by “vulture capitalists” that destroyed American industry, democracy and our future.
4
This is pure bias by an Israel supporter wielding government power. It is nonsensical, too: Kurds aren't even a religious minority. And he is asking for more attention to Christians and Jews? This is necessary in a country run mainly by and for Christians?
4
Criticize Islam: business as usual.
Criticize Judiasm: storm of outrage and criticism. Cries of anti-sémitisme abound.
Hypocrisy anyone?
None of us, nor any ideology is immune to legitimate self-examining or criticism from within / the outside. Let’s be consistent here!
4
Funny, I didn’t see one word in the article depicting any criticism of Islam in these Middle East departments.
6
So the Education department is working on behalf of a foreign country?
Amazing.
6
US out of ME. ME out of US.
3
The feds should also investigate the Latin American Studies department at UNC. When I was a student there, I learned how bad U.S. intervention was in Latin America — the Bay of Pigs, overthrow of Allende, teaming up with the death squads in El Salvador, etc. The instructors were so persuasive that I still believe what they taught!
6
Cranman. Clearly UNC should have had Elliot Abrams as a guest lecturer to set the record straight about how pure US intentions were during those interventions.
2
As a person of Salvadorean descent whom has an Uncle killed by the right wing US supported government, I really appreciate this comment!
3
@JerseyJon
I got my fill of Mr. Abrams during the Iran-Contra hearings, but his attitude remains instructional about our country’s use of power.
1
When it comes to the West Bank occupation/colonization, or the treatment of Palestinians in general, the facts have a well-known anti-Israel bias.
8
“Facts”
2
One wonders just how much the Department of Education cares about the Iraqi Yazidis when they can’t even be bothered to spell their name correctly.
“Too few of the consortium’s programs focused on “the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yadizis, Kurds, Druze, and others,” the department said.
2
The problem with the brand of knee-jerk fascism peddled by the right is that it eventually clashes badly with their allegiance to capitalism, which requires evidence-based science to function. I can't wait till that lackwit DeVos accuses physics professors of bias against Christianity and commands stealth bombers to be constructed with the power of prayer.
3
This is repulsive. The Federal government is attempting to chill criticism of the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli government, and to delegitimize the BDS movement.
It's contrary to what America stands for, and no, we have no business "protecting Israel" when it continues to its policies against Palestinians.
3
Investigating how Judaism is handled in college? For centuries Christian universities have denigrated Judaism in their defense of Christianity. Biblical scholarship was termed the high minded antisemitism.
8
Maybe if there were some standards of truth and objectivity, we could have avoided the holocaust and a few progroms.
1
Long overdue. Liberal academia has long Ben laughably biased towards the Palestinians and laughably biased against Israel. Academic freedom only prevails on campus for those who think the right thoughts.
15
@Richard That's absolutely false and you only believe it because someone told you it happens.
How about refocusing American history on the positive aspects of paganism and the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
1
So where are all the free speech zealots, academic freedom hardcases, anti-pc activists, and First Amendment absolutists. You're with me right? What could be less American and more unconstitutional than the Federal government trying to force institutions of higher learning to submit to propaganda preferred by Kenneth Marcus, Sheldon Adelson and Ayelet Shaked?
To the barricades my sisters and brothers!!!
Wait, why are some of you looking the other way, looking at the ground or saying this isn't the right fight...
3
@Lilo
As an Academic (a Jewish one at that), I am completely with you. Attempted government control of course content is Fascism.
3
"a biased curriculum that, among other complaints, did not present enough “positive” imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region."
But "'positive' imagery" is not "biased", right?!
That's what happens when the truly ignorant & uneducated "run" the Dep't of Ed.
2
The ideological cleansing of higher education begins.
3
OMG, it's like Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Brave New World and Handmaid's Tale all converging into this administration.
5
This is like making sure American universities were teaching a balanced view of apartheid South Africa back in the 1980's.
5
This is insanity. Is it even possible in this day and age to have any sort of discussion or analysis of middle east history/culture without being tagged by a pro-Israel lobbyist as "anti-Israel"? As with most things in life, there is no black and white, just shades of gray, and Israel has a complex history that takes nuance to unpack.
4
The following statement in this news item is inaccurate and distorts State department definition of antisemitism:
"State Department definition of anti-Semitism that labels rejection of the Jewish state of Israel anti-Jewish bigotry, suggesting that it had been adopted by his office"
That is an inaccurate statement because 1) the State Department does not declare all anti-Israel bias to be antisemitic but rather only establishes that some anti-Israel bias is antisemitic and 2) the State Department definition is extensive with multiple parts.
Here's the definition:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
The word limits on these comments do not allow me to include the entire State Department definition, but it can be found here: https://www.state.gov/defining-anti-semitism/.
2
Israel has successfully confused the definitions of Judaism and Zionism to the point that the words are now used interchangeably. Judaism can mean a religion, a culture, or a self-identified ethnic group. Zionism is a Jewish Nationalist ethnic political ideology. Full stop. The Zionist narrative states that only Zionists have the right to speak in the name of Jews and that Zionism alone determines what lands and what values are authentically & officially “Jewish”.
The Result? “Anti-Israel Bias Investigations” & US Senate Bill 1, which labels all protests against Israel as “anti-Semitic” and punishable by fines and imprisonment.
So, if I disagree with Israeli political policies, I can’t boycott, I can’t complain about Israeli settlements, educators can’t teach, journalists can’t report on Settler violence, in short all forms of non violent protesting or documenting controversial Israeli political actions are labeled illegitimate and weaponized as “anti-Semitic”.
Yet it’s OK for the revolving door connecting American lobbying groups supporting Israeli Government interests and the Israeli Government to keep spinning away, and it’s OK for American citizens, carrying Israeli passports, to successfully influence US legislation.
Meanwhile, the people that actually lived in Palestine when European colonists began arriving a little more than 100 years ago are disempowered by Jewish Israelis from expressing any views, and is labeled as being the “aggressor” and the “terrorist”.
7
@DCJ
If you're playing the "Who was here first" game, remember that Jews have lived continuously in Israel for 3,000 years, way before Islam even existed.
7
@akamai And there were other people there before the Hebrews.
2
Just call it Anti-Semetic studies, and return the money.
2
This is terrifying. And those that are so blindly belligerent about American support of Israeli foreign policy that they condone a fascist remaking of a university’s curriculum need to have their heads examined. The fact that this is being pushed by DeVis automatically disqualifies it from anything proper it based in fact.
I’m not even going to address the intellectually lazy conflation of anti-colonialism with anti-semitism. It’s so tired.
6
This action is no favor to Jewish and Christian communities. reinforcing the notion of bullies, crying foul.
2
Well, a big thank you to George Holding, one of our Republican Congressmen. He is responsible for this action and is a consistent puppet of Trump. Take a look at his voting record.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/george-holding/
1
Um, it’s a Middle East Studies course, and Islam is the dominant religion in that part of the world. No need for a course correction.
3
To Jonathan
Fort Collins, CO2h ago
Times Pick
Who writes:
"As a Duke alum, here's a suggestion for these schools: stop taking the federal government's money."
"Duke University received $384.6 million last year from the National Institutes of Health to advance medical research, ranking 9th in the country among universities"
https://dukeeyecenter.duke.edu/news-events/duke-university-among-top-10-nation-federal-medical-research-funding
“it seems clear foreign language instruction and area studies advancing the security and economic stability of the United States have taken ‘a back seat’ to other priorities.”
Sounds like a pro-Intelligent Design argument...aka, anti- education, anti-thought, government line.
Enough. Save our country. #25A45 #Impeach45 #Indict45 #Imprison45
1
Rename the programs Arab and Persian Studies and be done with it!
These departments were funded partially by foreign governments ? if so who?
2
This is one of hundreds of line items where the Federal government imposes its will on colleges and universities. All these claims of authoritarian Trump administration ring rather hollow given the passive acceptance of the other intrusions into higher education by the Federal Government over the decades.
3
To Jake, Your letter was remarkably concise, honest and revelatory, showing that in the analysis of difficult and complex issues, seemingly contradicting perspectives must be brought to front stage. The greatest error in historical analysis is over- simplification.
1
Seems reasonable to assure accuracy. Let’s hope we don’t get a mixture of competing biases. Wishful thinking
In my lifetime, I never thought I would see this egregious oversight of our educational institutions! How dare Betsy Devos, who believe in conversion therapy for gays, engage in curriculum manipulation in private and public colleges. I shudder to think of what this infringement will produce next.
4
The visceral (relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect) and knee jerk reactions to this Education Department action is to be anticipated. And it's a shame. I'm a progressive, anti-Trump Democrat who usually fails to find anything positive about anything Ms. DeVoss does -- but this time, I'm on the other side. So hooray for the Department of Education! Hooray for this long overdue action. I'm fully in agreement for no taxpayer money for these biased programs.
4
@Paul I doubt it.
I am neither a Democrat or a Republican, am an agnostic and a United States citizen. Religion has no place in any government or public university excepting as literature, history or philosophy. Likewise, partisan politics has no place in higher except as a subject of study or discussion.
Crazy right-wing whack-a-doodles with political agendas need to back off and leave higher education alone. Dominionists and others think it proper to try to drive our country toward a theocracy.
6
The context is that Trump who is enabling an antisemitic white nationalist movement is trying to focus on antisemitism that occurs on the left. Most notable has been his attacks on the squad. Any antisemitism on the left has involved rhetoric or could be said a boycott but on the right they are shooting up synagogues. The big danger in this country is white nationalist terrorism and Trumps messages of hate are adding to the problem. Anyone concerned about antisemitism should understand that Trump is a threat and the big danger comes from the right.
5
I teach Middle East history to both undergraduate and graduate students. I also participate in community outreach, such as teaching K-12 teachers about various topics related to the Middle East. One question: How does the DOE know that I don't teach about minorities in the region? Has anyone from that esteemed branch of government ever attended one of my lectures or (God forbid) read anything I've written? As for the commonplace canard that the Middle East center at my university, like other Middle East centers, does not spend enough on language instruction, the center (which gets Title VI assistance) spends about one third of its budget on language instruction, in spite of the fact that the university has a department dedicated to the study of Middle Eastern languages and cultures (which houses multiple professors who teach Hebrew language and literature and, yes, an Israel Studies Program). Finally, anyone who thinks we single out Israel for insult should read what my colleagues and I have written about Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran.
The powers that be at the DOE are ill-informed ideologues.
757
@J.G.
It is good to hear that your department is providing a quality education that complies with Title IV
However, unless you teach at Duke or UNC your comments are irrelevant.
That is the program that the DOE is investigating.
If your department is also being investigated by the DOE, that would also be interesting.
15
@J.G. How does the DOE know? It would seem that that information would be fairly easy to find out. Like maybe looking online at what courses are offered?
9
@J.G. Thank you for what you do!
10
The federal government should not be in the business of re-writing college curricula. This use of federal funding to coerce a politically correct curriculum sounds like it would fit right in in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, etc. The job of universities should not be to provide positive images of particular religious groups. Has the Justice Department investigated how Muslims are portrayed in the curricula of American universities? How did that review come out?
435
@Art This is taxpayer money. There are some things it shouldn’t be used to support. That being said it is hard to believe any justification coming from an administration that lies as naturally as this one does and is so deeply committed to an ideological viewpoint which they pretend is all about freedom.
8
"The Education Department has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to remake the Middle East studies program run jointly by the two schools after concluding that it was NOT offering students a biased curriculum that, among other complaints, presents only “positive” imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region."
I am pretty sure that's what they really meant.
179
@Christiaan Hofman
You'd be 110% correct.
7
@RJM
Fascinating, opinion, but that is not what happened.
5
I support our Education Dept in this effort.
This entry thru a backdoor or a side door or even right thru a front door of anti Israel, anti semitic propaganda at tax payers expense - simply can't be allowed.
It's contrary to what America stand for.
And it's contrary to our aims and goals in the middle East including protecting Israel.
It's like building a house to standards to prevent fires yet - allowing someone to modify it so that a defective fireplace is allowed to be installed - at our expense.
29
@Neil telling universities what they can and cannot teach is dangerous and is very contrary to what America stands for.
7
@Neil Do you know anything about the programs the Education Department considers "biased"? How do you know they are "anti-semitic"?
2
Don’t think this will result in more pro Israel attitudes.
3
While I find it disturbing that the dialogue on both the far right and the far left has become decidedly anti-Israel, as well as anti Semitic (and I do not believe the two are the same), government interference in higher education of this kind is not the solution. The moment the Dept of Education starts dictating university curricula, there will be no going back...
32
Anti-Israeli bias and outright anti-semitism are rife on college campuses. There are plenty of stories about Jewish students being intimidated, harassed or silenced for expressing solidarity with Israel or protesting lies about Israeli and Jewish history and politics. The BDS movement is morally repulsive and politically dangerous, calling for the destruction of an independent state. All this said, it is not the place of the government to interfere in what courses are being taught by institutions of higher education. Academic freedom must be protected. If lies and distortions are being disseminated by anti-Semitic faculty, there are mechanisms within the academy to correct them. The government should keep out.
16
@Mor
And what would those "mechanisms" be? If the faculty and curriculum is anti-Semitic, who would succeed in doing anything? We've seen university officials run for cover when any blatant bias is uncovered.
3
@Mor
“The BDS movement is morally repulsive and politically dangerous, calling for the destruction of an independent state.”
This is a fallacy that I think you’ve posted before and I responded with a link to the BDS statement showing that it does NOT support the “destruction of an independent state”. Did you bother to read it?
The BDS movement is no different than the successful anti-apartheid campaign against South Africa in the ‘80s. Many conservatives supported the same divestment tactics used in that campaign and not only did it not destroy South Africa but it also helped it enter a era of peace and reconciliation.
Palestinians deserve the same right to representation and self-determination as South Africans and Israelis. Despite the minority views of evangelicals, Israel is no more “special” or “chosen” nor entitled to oppress non-Israelis than any other civilized country on the planet. Economic boycotts are a legitimate tool to raise awareness and effect change that conservatives themselves have used. But they don’t get to pick and choose which countries other Americans boycott and they certainly have no right to dictate theocratic doctrine to academic institutions. The First Amendment church/state separation applies to Christianity and Judaism which have no business interfering with secular higher education.
“...the Palestinian BDS call urges NONVIOLENT pressure on Israel until it complies with international law...”
https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds
4
Are investigations going to go forward on PRO-Israel bias? No one can say that there are not individuals and institutions that clearly show PRO Israel bias, at the expense of Palestinians and Israeli Arab citizens.
82
@DaveB That’s okay to them. DeVos and Marcus have no problem with that double standard.
4
@DaveB
the entire US govt, for example.....
3
@DaveB
You can start by reading the remaining liberal Jewish newspapers, such as The Forward, although the NYT does a reasonable job too.
The clearest example of pro-Israel bias I can think of is Hillel International, a Jewish organization that changed its policies within the last few years, at the behest of their big-money contributors, to exclude Jews who were not Zionists or who were critical of the Israeli government. For example Hillel prohibited its local chapters from having meetings with members of Yesh Gevul, the peace organization composed of Israeli soldiers who refused to serve in the occupied territories.
This bias was at the expense of their fellow American and Israeli Jews, not Palestinian and Arab citizens. But an attack against one is an attack against all.
4
I am very pro Israel.
This is a very bad idea.
Government has no business telling the academic world what to do.
52
@Jake: I am neither pro-Israel or anti-Israel, but we are in agreement that government dictating the direction of higher education is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing.
2
@Jake When you take money from the gov't with certain conditions to acceptance - then it is not gov't telling academics what to do - it is academics not doing what they pledged they would do. The money had specific requirements, that are apparently not being met. Stop taking the money - and they can teach what they want.
3
Considering this is coming from an executive branch of government run by Donald Trump and a Department of Education run by Betsy DeVos this action should be concerning. Trump has stated thousands of lies during his presidency and could be said to advocate lying over stating the truth. DeVos has done her best to wreck public education at the k-12 level. So you have a government that lacks credibility challenging a program run by two prominent universities dedicated to seeking the truth, There could be some merit to the claim of the government but I would be extremely skeptical.
121
@Bob
Can you deal with the issue and not descend into name calling? Every issue becomes a political football instead of addressing directly what the article says.
2
Wow. Is it possible to get my taxes back from elementary and high schools since we were not taught about the true history of slavery and there was far too much attention (dare I say outsized) given to the leaders of the South during the ‘War of Northern Aggression’?
How about current ‘inspections’ of history curricula and textbooks? Is there ‘due attention’ given to all the religions practiced in the US?
This could not be more dodgy.
378
I've been waiting for this kind of thing to begin: the inevitable authoritarian assault on higher ed.
436
This is the real witch-hunt. This is the real fight for free speech.
155
Folks, this is a huge deal. And frankly, the solution for Duke and UNC, if they want to maintain control over their own academic programs, is not as simple as some suggest. Simply NOT taking any federal dollars specifically earmarked for those programs will not suffice. The Trump administration has an aggressive ideological agenda and they have many ways to exert pressure. For example, does the school want to enroll any students who participate in any federal student aid programs? That could be enough to force compliance.
Every single day, we experience another crisis, or two, or three. Just today, we get confirmation that the DOJ and the White House have been involved in violating the law in the current whistleblower case. Where is the response from Republicans, members of the "law and order" party?
In this particular situation, once again the Christian far right is driving policy. Today it is education policy. What will it be tomorrow? This is not conservatism. This is not even truly Republican versus Democrat. This is America versus authoritarianism. Right now, it is not clear which side will prevail.
47
Under the National Defense Education Act of the 60s, students were funded to study hard subjects like russian, math, physics. that were relevant to competing with and understanding the soviets. We should be funding studies in Farsi, Arabic, Islam, and the political and economic geography of the broader Middle east. Area studies without a solid, really solid, grounding in substantive subjects is a waste of time and money. Get rid of the DoE thought police by using the dough to support real students studying real subjects with a view toward mastery. And all should read the Peace to end all Peace by David Fromkin.
13
To use a broad brush, it is well documented how far left the universities have moved, especially coastal programs and those in social sciences. At its worst, this means students miss out on hearing a variety of views on issues and fail to grasp real-life contentions.
That said, I don't know if this sort of finger-wagging is the way to fix it - you know, "two wrongs..."
From the comments it is interesting how much of a sacred cow universities have become.
5
@Carl
Really, Duke and UNC, far left coastal elite institutions?
Sacred cow universities? There is a very good reason that universities prize independence. They are supposed to be centers of knowledge; emphasizing thought. Thought often results in change. Change often results in progress.
If Duke and UNC are guilty of bias in their programs, true scholars will vote with their feet.
Economic censorship from ideological government swings right and left will destroy institutions of higher learning and turn them into institutions of indoctrination. Look what extreme party adherence to doctrine has done to our government.
1
@AnEconomicCynic
Didn't mention Duke or UNC, made a broader point. Thanks for your thoughts and I agree about the swings, universities should stand outside ideology.
1
Problem: Illegal federal government interference in academic freedom at private universities. Solution: Don't take federal government money.
7
Gee, who would have thought that a govt. dept. with no power other than throwing around money would stoop to blackmail. I mean, it's not like this is Title IX, which is legitimate use of the power of the purse. Isn't it? Even with the definition of "sex" in Title IX conveniently expanded to the modern interpretation of "gender"?
Coercion is coercion no matter how well-meaning. Now if a previous Republican effort to abolish the Dept. of Education had gotten any traction, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
6
The federal government monitoring college/university professors and telling them what they can or cannot teach is a frontal assault on academic freedom, and on academia itself.
This despicable intrusion isn't about Israel. It's about the use of federal power to delegitimize and weaken yet another institution core to our democracy. We should all be appalled and alarmed, and those fearful for Israel's long term security most of all. The cynical choice of weaponizing issues relating to Israel to use against political opponents in the US will inevitably rebound back to the detriment of Israel.
13
They are not anti-Israel but critics of hard-line conservative U.S. and Israeli policies. It's called critical thinking. The "positive aspects" of religions other than Islam are trumpeted far and wide; craw full of that. All of them, Islam included, maybe even especially, are culpable in the miserable intermittent violence/standoff that oppresses the rest of the world. Policing Academia in the name of the nation's "security and economic stability"? These are the people, the mindset, that trumped up the Iraq war.
19
The First Amendment of the Constitution no longer matters to Republicans unless they want to weaponize it for their own purposes.
7
Reading with understanding is still important. Contrary to what several comments suggest - perhaps a bit too reflexively (witch hunt, silencing Israel’s critics, and the other usual straw men raised in discussions involving Israel), the action undertaken by the Department of Education against Duke relates directly, and only, to how federal funds are being spent by Duke. Either they are spent according to the conditions of the grant or they are not. Duke has yet to respond.
The federal government does not appear to be mandating any particular course of study. Could it be that at least some of those so vocally opposed to this inquiry, as the saying goes, protest too much - specifically because they know there is some basis to the charge? Again, we must await the investigation.
A distinct question, which at the moment is beyond the purview of the investigation, is whether any particular course presents fictions as facts or propagandizes for a particular political point of view rather than educates. Such an inquiry might well stray into the grey area of that somewhat malleable concept called academic freedom - but it too is a conversation worth having, even if separately.
College students are entitled to a full picture of the facts and then apply critical thinking when sifting through them to reach a considered decision - all without fear of faculty or student group retribution for deciding “incorrectly.” Once upon a time, this intellectual endeavor was known as free inquiry.
124
@Charlie in NY
The federal government is demanding a particular course of study. That is precisely what the article says: the current program, "does not present enough 'positive' imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region."
Betsy and Marcus want what serves there religious needs, and that would be a more "positive" image; i.e., a different, more "positive" course.
Can you imagine anyone today insisting that schools be denied federal money for teaching pro-Christian or pro-Israeli classes? I believe such classes are taught quite frequently, as they have been for much of our history. We are, after all, a "Judeo-Christian" country, according to some.
Students can do the critical thinking about whatever they are taught. Let them find the schools they choose and take the classes they choose. Betsy and Marcus should not be the arbiters of political correctness.
46
Unfortunately, what you fail to consider is the nature of the request is clearly politically motivated. There is no doubt that would an inquiry of the same type be undertaken to analyze how several other countries are portrayed, it would lead to similar conclusions about biases in the presentation of material. You have to wonder why is this inquiry so specific to a nation. Why not investigate how Latin America is presented? Why not Investigate how Russia or China are presented? In fact, our own history is presented with a slant depending on the institution.
The problem here is that an educational grant BY THE GOVERNMENT should come with no strings attached with respect to the perspective of the material presented. If we go down that Orwellian path, the government can dictate any point of view it finds beneficial to itself - and we foot the bill.
52
@Charlie in NY
No one can truly have "a full picture of the facts" because that picture is too big for direct comprehension. That is why historians argue about how to interpret the past. No one is guaranteed to be right, and rarely can any scholar be said to be completely wrong. (I except people who don't heed scholarship but just make it up to suit themselves.) You are supporting an authoritarian federal action against both state and private universities by a pro-Israel ideologue who is attacking the results of the free inquiry you support.
33
Since the Islamic faith has been treated in the U.S. as a pariah religion since 2001, while Christianity and Judaism are treated as the most acceptable faiths here, it makes sense to educate college students about the positive aspects of Islam - especially since they share the same basic beliefs, including the same god.
But as long as DeVos and her fellow evangelicals want to meddle in everyone's educational systems, she might as well demand that college history classes promote Donald Trump as the Greatest President Ever. That would earn her a hearty tweet-on-the-back!
25
About time, but too little too late. The situation in "higher" education is hopeless. Too many programs have been gutted or taken over by partisan politics. "Progressive" reforms have grievously damaged education systems from top to bottom in Canada, the UK, and the US. Real literacy is dropping. I don't think the humanities can be rescued.
As both of my children told me after graduating from prestigious (and expensive) universities: "Dad, it was a waste of time. You should have just given me the money."
24
@Observer
Did you forget to tell them to major in engineering?
10
@Observer It's amazing how far some of you will go to make stuff up to make this okay.
2
@SJ Of course not - I am an engineer with several advanced degrees. One was pre-med and was completely turned off to all further academics after his experience getting his BA.
It's not just the humanities. The rot is also creeping into STEM. I keep up with my alma maters, which are world-class STEM - I suggest you check it out. It is much worse than you think.
2
Whatever anyone's views on the politics of the Middle East, we all should recognize this for what it is: a direct assault on the intellectual and scholarly autonomy of universities and colleges in the US and those who participate in them. This move needs to resisted strenuously by Duke and UNC. We should not await the removal of books from the shelves, websites from the internet, or any other next logical steps on the slippery slope to a soft authoritarian state. With narrow exceptions (Fire!), the answer to freedom of speech, our founders well recognized, is not less speech, nor regulation of speech by the state. Defend liberty!
37
The Trump education dept should be spending their time and resources investigating why the public service student loan forgiveness program is only granting 1% of the applications of people have been working 10 or more years in public service and faithfully paying their monthly student loan payments for at least 10 years and relying on the forgiveness to start planning a financially secure future. We need to get these drifters out of office.
36
I live next door to Duke, and there is a very active Jewish community around and within both universities of which I am a member. Haven’t heard a peep about this from anyone locally. No doubt there will be lawsuits; but what a waste of time, energy and money.
39
Wait a minute: Anti-semitism (or anti-judaism) and Anti-Israelism are not the same.
70
@Todd Li
Exactly; it is possible to be against Netanyahu and his policies regarding a Greater Israel, and very supportive of Israel as a Jewish homeland. There are approximately 333M people in the U.S. with diverse backgrounds, beliefs and political views. I am a progressive Democrat, and I have no interest in the fall of Israel. It is possible to question the alignment of the Saudis and Israelis against Iran; it is also possible to believe we should stay out of any further involvement in the endless ME conflicts which do not require our participation. We took away Iran's elected leader, Mossadegh, and installed a corrupt Shah. Perhaps it is time to mind our own business and focus on removing our own Shah.
26
You are correct; however, too many people do not make the distinction.
5
@Todd Li yes, it is. And what is “anti-Judaism”? Not all Jews are religious. But if you deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination, you are being anti-Semitic.
5
Only the professional academic departments at a University have the authority to judge what and how a subject is taught within it. The Education Department now filled with political appointees has not say in the matter. Period!
371
Not if they’re receiving government money.
20
@KitKat
Yes, if they're receiving government money, unless you think the government should dictate the results of academic scholarship.
I thought our government support of academics was to encourage free inquiry into the facts and meanings of reality, whether in history or biology or physics or whatever. Do you disagree?
27
@Thomas Zaslavsky Totally agree. Free inquiry into the facts. Not biased indoctrination based on cherry picked facts and omissions.
10
We are all biased. Teachers are biased. Its up to students to agree or disagree. Students will encounter further unregulated biases after they are done being students. I don’t know why we’re trying to regulate our universities so much. It seems like a bad idea.
10
Any curricula worth considering for these studies should include the archeology that demonstrates that ancient Israelites worshiped several gods, one of which was Yahweh, a storm god. The curricula should also include the archeology that clearly shows that the exodus lead by Moses never happened.
But knowledge is often perceived as bias against those that want religious power over others.
29
@David Bible: "the archeology that clearly shows that the exodus lead [sic] by Moses never happened"? Seriously? I suppose you have "proof" that every square inch of the vast Middle East has been dug up and examined by archeologists, so anything they haven't discovered by now must, therefore, never have occurred. Not saying I am convinced the Exodus DID happen; just not foolish enough to assert that it didn't. I wasn't there. Were you?
4
Israeli Archeologist have been pretty thorough. For reference read Unearthing the Bible for a starter.
1
Far left Democrats and far right Republicans are closer to each other than they are to the center of either of their parties and they’re the ones with power. The center is not really holding. We in the center have Granpa Joe, who’s leading in the polls... but really!! This type of conflict over whose interpretation of education will prevail, will only get worse in the post truth, activist agenda from both sides.
8
@John,
They are basically the same in how they want to apply power unilaterally over the objections of the people governed. The only difference is in what areas they want to exert their power over.
2
@John To be consistent with the "pre post-truth" world, both sides do not do it.
2
@Joan Johnson
You’re correct, the lies on the right are big, dumb and shameless. The left creates narrative, often dogmatic. If you question the narrative your identity will be questioned. It goes way beyond a healthy relativistic skepticism and lands in the same illiberal, post truth pool as the right.
3
This is why I am against the “Free College for All” idea. Once you get a single person or entity in control of spending, they can exert too much influence. If all student tuition is paid by the federal government, schools could be negatively influenced by whoever is in charge.
Imagine Betsy DeVos controlling all tuition spending for every university and college in America. It would signal the end of real education.
Be very thoughtful when considering the expansion of government control on sectors of the economy/society.
14
@Practical Thoughts I agree. What's crazy is that it should be the inverse. Government isn't supposed to discrimnate baes on viewpoint while private payers can legally exercise viewpoint discrimination all day long.
1
Interesting. You just articulated the conservative argument for limiting government control of health care.
4
Gotta love how the right talks about government hands off business and freedoms, but it is the right which is most likely to meddle in business and take away personal freedom.
30
Only the professional academic departments have the authority to determine what and how a subject should be taught. This is called academic freedom. The US Department of education now filled with political appointees has no moral or academic right to tell a University what to teach or how. Universities are not public schools.
12
@Lara
The universities and their academic departments can decide what and how a subject should be taught, but they should not expect to be funded by the American taxpayer.
12
@ann
"The universities and their academic departments can decide what and how a subject should be taught, but they should not expect to be funded by the American taxpayer."
Why not? If the American taxpayer isn't funding our own colleges and universities who in the world should?
Do you really want Washington bureaucrats pulling funds from colleges if they don't like what they're teaching? I thought freedom of speech was a big deal in America?
11
@ann -- Why not? American taxpayers fund attacks on academic freedom already. Why should they not fund defences?
2
I'm all in favor of fair and factual presentations at universities. This is very important.
But it is *absolutely* none of the Dept. of Ed.'s business to intervene in anybody's curriculum.
8
I just read the letter published in the Federal Register. While some of the criticism is petty (courses on film criticism and “Love and Desire in Iran” can round out a broader curriculum in Middle Eastern studies), I think its legitimate to ask why so few students are studying a regional language, and to point out that only 11% go on to work in government.
The US desperately needs people with an understanding of the region, its peoples, cultures, languages and history. To suggest that this is all about a witchhunt for anti-Israel bias does not seem consistent with the concerns expressed in the letter.
15
This development from the DoE is a sign that the right-wing inquisition (McCarthyism) is on. Congress needs to investigate the federal government's chilling and biased suppression of academic freedom; put DeVos and Miller before the House Labor and Education meeting.
12
It is true: students learned nothing about the middle east in the past. When I saw "Jesus Christ Superstar" in my twenties, I remember wondering who all the soldiers were running around with assault-style weapons. A modern-day depiction of Roman soldiers, right?
That wasn't true, of course. I learned all about it when I lived with lousy television reception. Online, I found a website with free documentaries and started watching. There, I ran across a video on peace and propaganda in the promised land.
When I watched the documentary, I could not believe what I saw. For the first time in my life, I learned there was more to the occupation than I had been told. I was fifty-six-years old.
How could I have lived in the United States of America for over fifty years and not know the other side of the story? Was the documentary balanced? Not really. But they tried, and they showed me their point of view as honestly as they could. But more than that, they showed me the opposing side of the issue.
After decades, students are finally talking openly on this topic. That's the way it's supposed to be, and that includes conservative viewpoints. That side, too, should be allowed to make their case. Whether an individual supports annexation or argues it's all about property and human rights. Let the debate begin. Please. Let the debate begin.
12
Any program in which Duke & Chapel Hill cooperate on anything should be left alone by everyone.
11
As the clock ticks down to the sunset of these corrupt practices of this perversely twisted, zombie-esque altered Republican party (with any luck), you're going to see a ramping up of last chance maneuvers to impose a strict hard line conservative viewpoint on all facets of American life.
7
As a Duke alum, here's a suggestion for these schools: stop taking the federal government's money and skip out on the irksome meddling that goes along with it. $235,000, the number quoted in the article, is nothing to institutions like these.
Stop taking this tainted money. It's not worth the price of having your course content dictated by the Trump administration (or any other administration, for that matter).
776
@Jonathan This seems like an easy solution but it is not clear that it is that simple. What about students enrolled in those schools who participate in federal student loan programs? If the far right wants to exert control over higher education, it has lots of ways to apply pressure.
41
@Jonathan
No, it's not that easy. The Dickey Amendment in 1996 effectively stopped all government funding for research on on gun violence for 20 years.
Private funding was nowhere equal to the task.
So we now don't know answers to basic questions about gun violence, such as, who is likely to commit violence, and what are the effective ways to stop violence? (Studies in other countries aren't comparable to the unique situation in the US.)
The result would be to continue the many Jewish studies programs, which are also politicized, usually in favor of the Israeli government, where teachers are free to say whatever they want, but harm the Middle East studies programs, which are now already operating under the chilling effects of these threats.
38
@Jonathan I agree that $235K is nothing to Duke's finances, but consider the following. First, it would be against Duke's best interests to be at clash with the government. Whenever they hire someone from countries to citizens of which the US does not issue visas easily, Duke's relationship with government agencies like USCIS and CBP becomes vital. Secondly, most of the research at Duke is government funded, one way or another, through agencies like NSF and NIH. Whenever the government decides -- due to purely political reasons -- that a certain topic is not worth researching, Duke would have to step in and compensate. One example is the fact that NSF has severely reduced funds allocated for Political Science research, limiting them to topics like the Iran nuclear deal. While Duke is certainly rich, they can't just go around handing out faculty money from their endowment. It is simply not sustainable.
14
I cannot evaluate this situation.
Nonetheless, it is interesting to see the education department can act on issues. So, they can actively strengthen programs across the US. They can also rid programs of excess unnecessary requirements - overriding the use of education as barriers to entry by rent-seekers.
2
A quick search of the Duke course listings finds dozens of references to gaza and palestine, but only one reference to divorce- at that was about Israel. There was no reference to divorce in the islamic world at all. Or women’s rights. Or honor killings. There was only one reference to girls education- and that was a book, not a class.
If the program is really “palestinian conflict studies”, this makes sense. If the goal is to study society and culture in the mid east as a whole, then it seems the academics here are missing the boat entirely.
112
Perhaps the titles of those courses don’t explicitly mention those issues; however, that does not imply that the classes do not address them in an adequate way. Titles are short. Classes are long.
84
@greg
It would be helpful to know what books are being read and to see the syllabus for the classes so that we could judge your comment.
5
Yea, online course descriptions detail the entire semester
5
I think the only option for any university receiving federal funding for Middle Eastern Studies at this point is to return the money and continue to teach their students the curriculum they believe in. It’s a shame and yet another example of the road to fascism this country is on.
268
@Miz The problem with that is that it will lead to very few institutions teaching Arabic, for instance, and to even fewer younger people having competence in the languages and cultures of the area. Title VI has been essential to preserving the teaching of less commonly taught languages in public universities, in particular. Without it, we're left with Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Harvard... And that is simply not enough.
The Title VI staff at Department of Education are (or used to be, when I still worked with them through my public university) a bunch of professionals with the best of intentions. But elected politicians drive the budgetary bus and they are now flexing their muscle for personal reasons that have nothing to do with education or national security.
15
@Miz
But that's the problem. The federal "funding" isn't specifically for "middle eastern studies."
6
@Miz
You do not teach students the curriculum the "School believes in" you teach the proper measured and equal curriculum that gives all information without "opinions" and falsehoods no matter which religion is being discussed.
But I do agree that these schools need to give back any money they are taking from Federal Grants that they should not be entitled to if they are teaching these courses based on their own biases.
11
No- I do not support Trump in any way- however this action is way over do. The anti- Israel bias in higher education and harassment of Jewish students is rampant and led by those who distort the facts for their own agenda. A fair dialogue and representation of the facts- no problem- but extreme views cannot go unanswered. I applaud this action.
100
I never encountered an anti-Israel bias as a religious studies student. There is certainly a lot of anti-Palestinian rhetoric published in US newspapers and periodicals, however. In the US, the prevailing opinion seems to be that Israel can do no wrong, despite any evidence to the contrary. It isn't good for the US or Israel.
33
@Jeffrey Are you able to give specific instances of anti-Semitic words and actions and harassment of Jewish students on US campuses?
14
@Jeffrey
"The anti- Israel bias in higher education and harassment of Jewish students is rampant and led by those who distort the facts for their own agenda."
Are Jewish students really getting harassed "rampantly" on college campuses nation-wide?
I must have missed all the news stories about it.
I mean, I completely disagree about the "anti- Israel bias" on college campuses, but at least that is a concept, and idea. But "harassment of Jewish students is rampant?" No, its not.
9
So I assume this will be applied to all countries then? Not allowed to do an East Asian studies program without presenting positive imagery of the current Chinese government?
94
Whatever happened to academic freedom?
87
@Full Name (required)
No academic freedom when you take government money.
3
$235,000 in Title VI grants over how long a time period? It doesn't sound like a lot of money. Why can't the Duke-UNC program refuse Title VI grants, and tell the Trump/DeVos Department of Education to get lost?
106
@Zen Exactly right. If you take a grant, you agree to abide by the provisions of the grant. If you don't want to abide by the provisions, find alternate funding.
32
@Aaron That is unless the trump admin decides to change the rules (in a legally indefensible manner) after the grant is awarded.
8
@Aaron
But it is not the term of the grant that you have to fawn on Israel. It is that one do scholarship. If you think there is no criticism of Iran, or Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel in these curricula then either you don't know what you are talking about, or you want demonization, not criticism.
12
When I was at Columbia in the 90s it's true that to be religious, other than Muslim or Jewish, was not a good thing.
But actions here are totalitarian and should be decried by all.
13
Based on my time in college I can say there is anti-Israel and anti-Christian bias to the point of absurdity but any thoughtful student should be able to see right through it. The Education Department should have better things to do than acting as the thought police for higher ed.
46
@Reasonable Person
The problem is that the non-thoughtful outnumber the thoughtful, and they vote.
8
@Reasonable Person
Based on my time at UC Berkeley, I can say there were no anti-Israel or anti-Christian points of view expressed in any relevant classes, e.g. History, Political Science, Anthropology etc. Christianity was addressed as an historical phenomenon; Israel was included in a broader study of the ME and WWII. I can't speak to where you went to college; I doubt that any major universities would tolerate political bias in relevant classes.
12
@Reasonable Person
If you are a reasonable person, you don't have to tell people this.
On Israel, most of what I was raised on was wildly pro-Israel and mostly inaccurate. I still hear people who don't realize how Israel acquired the land. There are good things to say about Israel, but when people first hear about all the atrocities committed and the darker side of the story they tend to think it is "anti-Israel". It's rather like being given a rose-colored view of American history and then reading the articles in the 1619 project at the NYT. There is more to America than a list of our centuries of crimes, but for people who don't know those details it can come as a brutal shock.
7
WT actual H? Seriously apocalyptical. We are living in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
37
When did it happen that the U.S. government decided to specifically back Israel and Judaism, to the point that alternative points of view in the Mid-East were to be proscribed? I don't recall hearing that policy being announced.
As a UNC alum, I absolutely do not agree with certain radical Islam policies. But I do support the right for all pertinent points of view in one of the world's most tenuous regions be heard, discussed and examined.
64
@PaulB67 If you support the right for all pertinent points, that you must agree with the DOE, as that's exactly what is NOT happening at UNC and Duke now.
2
“What they’re saying is, ‘If you want to be biased and show an unbalanced view of the Middle East, you can do that, but you’re not going to get federal and taxpayer money.’”
Professor Elman may want to reconsider her position. If this action by the Trump administration establishes a precedent, a future government leader might decide that it is her bias that is no longer acceptable and cut off her funding. Is this something we really want our government to be doing?
30
@Charles L. I am not convinced that the Trump administration is driven by a concern about bias and imbalance. It is far more likely that they would love bias and imbalance, just the kind that favors their own personal viewpoint, one that supports, for example, declaring falsely that any opposition to the current Israeli government is anti-Semitism.
9
If title VI requires viewpoint diversity, as the quote at the end of the article claims, what is wrong with having a conference on Gaza that challenges conventional narratives? Isn’t that exactly what tittle VI wants?
This case is using the discourse of ‘viewpoint diversity’ to squash diverse viewpoints. That’s a false premise if I’ve ever heard one.
22
It's important to understand what's going on here. The DOE's investigation is about alleged misuse of Federal grants given to colleges and universities to support international studies. Since it is the Federal government that is awarding the grants, the DOE does have the right, and probably the obligation, to ensure that schools that receive the grants comply with their requirements for a certain degree of breadth and impartiality in the federally supported courses.
In other words, there are strings attached to the awards.
The penalty for violation is, it appears, limited to revocation of the grant. This is a far cry from the implied penalties the DOE proposed under the Obama administration for schools that did not apply the "guidelines", felt by many to be grossly unfair, for adjudication of allegations of sexual harassment. Schools that failed to comply were threatened with loss of all Federal funding, a truly onerous penalty.
Colleges do not like the enforcement action described in this article because they feel it violates academic freedom. Perhaps or perhaps not. We should remember that this sort of oversight of academic teaching began from the left, not the right. Today, it is common practice at many schools to enforce political correctness to an extreme. Faculty can be fired for the most picayune violations of the standards of the politically correct.
Memo to the liberal guardians of today's institutions of higher learning: what goes around comes around.
54
@Alex The Obama concern was due to sexual harassment is institution wide while the section VI funding is department wide.
Please enlighten with specifics for your claim "it is common practice at many schools to enforce political correctness to an extreme. Faculty can be fired for the most picayune violations of the standards of the politically correct."
33
@Alex
Your analogy doesn't hold water. Even opponents of the Obama administration's sexual harassment guidelines -- myself included -- would have to concede that loss of all federal funding is an appropriate penalty for issues that apply to the university as a whole, as sexual harassment policy clearly does and a Middle East studies program clearly does not. More importantly, there is a big difference between the federal government trying, on the one hand, to balance the rights of the accused and of the accusers in quasi-judicial proceedings and, on the other, meddling in an academic program that it finds insufficiently supportive of right-wing orthodoxy. UNC and Duke should tell the Department of Education to take a walk and raise the funds from private sources. I'll write the first check.
46
@Alex How about those of us who don't support the biases of the left and the right? This whole "turnaround" thing reeks of partisanship and is lazy whataboutism.
17
While it's certainly possible that the Duke/UNC MES program isn't meeting all of their Title VI requirements, the fact that this action is being taken by a Dept. of Ed. run by DeVos and Robert King, a man who has made his career openly advocating for pro-Israel causes, leads me to believe that this is just intimidation. These people can't be relied on to do their jobs impartially- the entire reason they have their current jobs in the first place is BECAUSE of their partisan sympathies.
Thinking back to my own education, it always struck me as odd how little education we received on the modern middle east. Sure, we learned about ancient civilizations such as Sumeria and Mesopotamia and Egypt, but there was virtually no curriculum going beyond the start of the 20th century. We did spend a couple of days on Israel, but we stopped around the 1967 war period. After pursuing the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict independently (the lessons ultimately left me with more questions than answers), it shocked me to see just how much was left out of those lessons. More robust Middle East education is sorely needed in this country, and the actions of the Department of Education will only serve as a chilling effect on the topic.
203
@Greg
I agree that more robust education about the Middle East is needed, but these programs sound woefully biased in favor of a liberal academic ethnocentrism. That the various religious minorities noted here are not even mentioned, and a near exclusive focus on Islam is troubling. The anti-Israel bias is also a concern given the rapid growth of anti-Semitism worldwide. Our universities cannot and should be fueling this trend. How much is taught about the internal conflicts within Islam and the unholy alliance between the House Saudi and Wahabism? Frankly, these programs do need some oversight. I'm shocked to find I'm agreeing with anything Betsy DeVos's Dept of Education is doing, but this may be a service regardless of their motivations.
35
@Nancy Hutchens
Perhaps the unusual alliance with Saudi aArabia and the US can be discussed. Why cash from MBS is more important than the murder of a journalist and the killing and forced starvation of thousands of Yemenis .
72
@Nancy Hutchens
Unless you have studied the curriculum, seen the syllabi, sat in on the programming, and gone to classes, everything you say is pure speculation.
12
Anyone who thinks that getting help from the current Dept. of (Indoctrination, oops--I mean....) Education, especially with what they believe is the promotion of a "fair and balanced" point of view, should be wary. As my mother used to say, "lie down with dogs, get up with fleas."
45
There is a certain sense of irony here, given this Administration’s views on a particular Middle East theocracy.
42
"The Education Department has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to remake the Middle East Studies program run jointly by the two schools after concluding that it was offering students a biased curriculum that, among other complaints, did not present enough “positive” imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region."
Thank goodness for free speech.
44
Any Middle East program is going to be Islam centric as the population in the M.E. is 93% Muslim, 3.7% Christian and 1.6% Jewish. These programs are going to provide a narrative that is dominated by the majority of the population, which is Muslim. It would be like defunding a sustainable agricultural program because it does not provide a "postive" image of GMO's. This is just another example of how inept the Trump administration is.
460
@J C Pope
Just because the majority population is Muslim does not give license to disparage other peoples in the region. And, the demographics are not the same from country to country. Moreover, it is fair game to highlight historical discrimination and persecution of minorities in this region (which apparently these programs conceal). Prime examples of discrimination/persecution include Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Iran, and Israel (probably the least among the bunch).
43
@Ray Warren
Is it disparaging to actually use facts such as a presentation of the Nakba where 3/4 of a million Palestinians were removed from their homes? It is a fact that the West Bank has separate roads, schools, gated housing for settlers and a different court system for Jewish settlers than Palestinian Christians and Muslims.
Certainly there are many terrible inequities in other mid eastern countries. Discuss all of these situations .
62
@J C Pope So, by your reasoning, it's ok to ignore and disparage minorities here? We should just tell the white/anglo saxon narrative?
Somehow I don't think that the "they are the majority and it should have their perspective" is a rule that should be supported....
19
I am an educator who does a number of programs with the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies. Every event that I have been to has been extremely well organized, objective, and engaging. I hate to see them under attack by ideologues who are out to score cheap political points.
667
@ChapelThrill23
Wait a minute! Just because you've had actual experience with these programs and their content—who do you think you are trying to refute the opinions of the RIGHT-thinking patriots who are criticizing Duke-UNC? They KNOW it is biased, and just because you've worked them and seen that they are not, so what?
19
As a graduate of UNC I demand that my university not cede its academic freedom to the federal government. The dominos are falling
489
@Cliff 100% agree - of course I also believe that if they do not want to give in on academic freedom, they should also not take federal money. Sorry, it seems like you want to take money with no strings attached -- a nice idea but not really reasonable.
18
@Aaron
Grants with no stipulations are routinely given all the time pal. It is reasonable.
25
@Aaron
Federal funding of these programs should not be contingent on how any of the people working in them think about or portray any religion. Thats what academic freedom means and it includes federally funded work as much as any other. Using federal money as a stick to get departments to produce scholarship that conforms with ideological demands is outrageous.
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I would have thought the federal government requiring a "positive view" of any religion would violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
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@smoores
It would seem to violate the separation of church and State. The history of different religious belief systems is a legitimate area of study, and is a part of world history. e.g. the Crusades, Henry VIII's fight with the Pope over divorce, or marriage annulment, the Protestant Reformation et al. It is possible to study those historical events without espousing a positive religious belief. We have to remind ourselves that Trump did not finish middle school, and acquired an "Honorary" degree as a reward to his father who made a substantial donation to a business school.
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@smoores
I would have supposed someone in the Federal government might have cared. Or the courts. Or the legislature.
Someone, somewhere.
The "civilized","rational" response to this awesome attack on everything these so-called patriots claim to hold dear is a stunning admission that no-one with any influence sees cause for alarm at this fundamental repudiation of everything the founders fought for.
Red voters will win this, because we appear to be self-interested sheep, but they can no longer dare to claim to be patriots or even Americans.
This is the revolution they hungered for, and Red is the appropriate color for these traitors and theives.
So long USA!, it could have been great...
A parting thought: now we see the true color of our religious friends, and particularly the lemming-like supporters of a free ride for Israel.
There was obvious danger there, in the demand for mindless support, but who'd have thought...
So strange they'd take us down just when they finally seem to have divested themselves of the curse of Netanyahu.
5
An administration that boasts of its ignorance will not tolerate academic programs that do not comply with its beliefs.
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