Experts Worry that Illegal Immigration Is Affecting the Education System thumbnail

Experts Worry that Illegal Immigration Is Affecting the Education System

/in , , , , , /by

By Family Research Council

Since the beginning of the border crisis in which millions of illegal immigrants have flooded into the country, American citizens have been affected in various ways, most notably by the spike in crime.

Some sanctuary cities have recognized that crime is out of their control and have sought changes in their sanctuary policies. Saturating news headlines are cases of illegal immigrants stealing, assaulting, raping, or even murdering innocent American civilians. In addition, taxpayers are funding the housing, food, and health care of people who aren’t legally in the U.S., with taxpayer money funding gender transition procedures as well.

Experts are also pointing to how illegal immigration is affecting the education system, as Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, explained on Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.”

FRC President Tony Perkins highlighted that “the ongoing border crisis undermines our nation’s education system” and is “often left unmentioned.” But the reality, Kilgannon said, is that both poor and wealthy districts are affected by the illegal immigrant students coming in.

“Americans are very generous,” she said, “and it’s hard for us to turn down a student at the schoolhouse door if they present themselves to learn.” But even so, most schools don’t have a choice on whether they accept the illegal migrants, which then places an added and significant “strain on the budget,” Kilgannon added. And she explained how a lot of them come in without an ability to speak English, which requires special services.

Financial strains, in particular, are hard on the high poverty areas, Kilgannon described, because they’re already struggling to fund their schools. They hardly have enough money for the legal American citizens, she noted, but additionally, “it affects wealthy areas too because of the drug crisis.” As drug overdoses at schools increase, Kilgannon discussed the growing controversy over “whether or not the school is notifying parents when children overdose at school.”

She added, “But the reason that kids are overdosing at school is because, for one thing, there’s poor control over the environment by the people who are running the schools. But there’s [also] an increase in drugs coming across the border. … There’s more availability of these drugs, and it’s causing all kinds of pressures to be put on many, many areas of our society. And of course, it’s happening to our school system as well.”

As a former state legislator, Perkins highlighted that what he used to see were parents who had to deal with very strict rules about which schools they could attend based on the district they lived in. But with illegal immigrants, he shared that those same rules don’t apply. “I mean, we’re making our own citizens have to live within the boundaries and the rules, but then someone who’s not even a citizen of this country can come in and go wherever they want, and we have to pay for it,” he said. Kilgannon agreed and stated “there are so many rules that they do not have to follow that regular American citizens have to follow.”

Perkins observed that it looks like “these schools are just expected to absorb the cost of the Biden administration’s immigration policy.” Kilgannon referred to it as “an unfunded mandate,” which can be defined as “regulations or other requirements imposed by a higher level of government on a lower one, but without accompanying appropriations to cover the cost of compliance.” Both Perkins and Kilgannon reflected on whether “local governments could take action against the Biden administration for that reason.” Kilgannon added, “I certainly would want to if I were running a school system that was dealing with these kinds of things.”

In addition, Perkins briefly mentioned how these education concerns caused by illegal immigration only add to the concern over declining test scores and proficiency rates with each year. Considering this push for schools to cater to the Biden administration’s open border policy, he concluded, “I would just think at some point a state’s got to draw the line and say, ‘We’re not doing it.’ … [T]his is absolutely out of control.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Poll Shows Biden Unpopular among Voters as Immigration, Inflation Worsen

RELATED VIDEO: Understanding Immigration Podcast

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Poll: 69% of Americans Believe Free Speech Is ‘Heading in the Wrong Direction’ thumbnail

Poll: 69% of Americans Believe Free Speech Is ‘Heading in the Wrong Direction’

/in , , , , /by

By Family Research Council

Over the years, research centers have routinely polled American citizens on the topic of free speech. And with each passing year, the country seems more convinced that while freedom of speech is important, how one practices that right can be problematic.

For example, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Polarization Research Lab (PRL) at Dartmouth College recently released a poll that revealed 69% of the 1,000 Americans they surveyed believe free speech is “heading in the wrong direction.” However, it’s noteworthy that their concerns stem from the growing inability for people “to freely express their views.” And “alarmingly,” the researchers wrote, roughly one-third of the Americans polled believe the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees.”

The poll experimented with a variety of controversial statements, asking respondents to choose which ones they found most offensive. Out of the most surprising results, 52% felt their community “should not allow a public speech that espouses the belief they selected as the most offensive.” Additionally, “A supermajority, 69%, said their local college should not allow a professor who espoused that belief to teach classes.”

Reason magazine summarized, “These results indicate that though the average American is concerned about protecting free speech rights, a significant portion of the population seem poised to welcome increasing censorship.”

FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens said the “results were disappointing, but not exactly surprising.” He continued, “Here at FIRE, we’ve long observed that many people who say they’re concerned about free speech waver when it comes to beliefs they personally find offensive.” But Stevens, as well as Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm, believe the best way to protect free speech is, in fact, to protect the right to be potentially offensive or controversial.

Backholm, who serves as a senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at FRC, commented to The Washington Stand, “It isn’t just that the First Amendment also protects offensive speech, it primarily exists to protect offensive speech.” He explained that there’s “no need to recognize the right to say, ‘I like tacos,’ because” most people wouldn’t see a reason to silence that. The entire reason for the constitutional guarantee to the freedom of speech,” he added, “is because the Founders understood the government’s instinct to stop people from saying things the government disliked.”

Especially with the rise of cancel culture, Backholm emphasized, “A lot of people today believe there is a constitutional right not to be offended.” Additionally, they also often “believe the right not to be offended is of greater importance than the freedom of speech,” which he noted is commonly the reason why “pronoun laws and campus safe spaces” are created. “Yes, there are limits to free speech, but those limits are not triggered by the emotional stress associated with discovering there are people in the world who disagree with you,” he said.

As for the Americans in the poll who are more worried about offensive beliefs being freely expressed, Backholm said, “The problem with restricting ‘offensive’ speech is that different things are offensive to different people. The pro-life position is offensive to some while the pro-abortion position is offensive to others.” Ultimately, it begs the question: Should all conversations about the issue be banned? To which he answered, “Obviously not.”

Stevens emphasized the importance of teaching this generation about the value and meaning of the First Amendment. “These findings should be a wake-up call for the nation to recommit to a vibrant free speech culture before it’s too late.” Because, as Backholm concluded, “If we want to be free, and most of us do, we must accept the fact that being exposed to ideas and behaviors we dislike is the cost of being able to do and say things other people don’t like.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

POST ON X:

The suppression of free speech through intimidation and arrest goes directly against what our Founding Fathers intended. The Twitter Files, Missouri v. Biden and Kennedy v. Biden reveal a full scale war by the US government on the First Amendment! https://t.co/A5ibXxWLnd

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) March 2, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

UC Berkeley’s Hitler Youth Accost Jewish Speaker & Attack Jewish Students thumbnail

UC Berkeley’s Hitler Youth Accost Jewish Speaker & Attack Jewish Students

/in , , , /by

By The Geller Report

University of California, Berkeley, administrators have offered no apology to Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat, whose speech to a campus Jewish group was abruptly canceled by the university after violent protesters choked a female student attendee, spit in another attendee’s face, and broke into the auditorium where Bar-Yoshafat waited onstage….more here.

By

The Berkeley schools have declared themselves a chapter of Hamas.  Teachers and Administrators openly and quietly are going after Jewish teaches and students.  This is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

“The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) “knowingly allowed its K-12 campuses to become viciously hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students,” according to a copy of the complaint, filed with the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Parents who have signed onto the complaint say anti-Semitic incidents in the schools have “positively surged” since Hamas conducted its unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.

“At BUSD, a virulent wave of anti-Semitism swept through its schools immediately following the massacre,” the complaint alleges. “Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop anti-Semitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards.”

Reminder;  Like the Nazi’s, Communists, using Karl Marx principles are also Jew haters—so this should be no surprise that the Communist city of Berkeley promotes Jew hating.

Berkeley Public Schools Hit With Federal Complaint Over ‘Severe and Persistent’ Anti-Semitic Bullying

Complaint alleges hallway chants of ‘kill the Jews’ and anti-Semitic teacher rants in support of Hamas

Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon,  2/28/24  https://freebeacon.com/campus/berkeley-public-schools-hit-with-federal-complaint-over-severe-and-persistent-anti-semitic-bullying/

A public school district in Berkeley, California, was hit with a federal complaint on Wednesday alleging it has failed to stem an escalating series of anti-Semitic incidents that include hallway chants of “kill the Jews” and anti-Semitic teacher rants in support of the Hamas terror group.

The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) “knowingly allowed its K-12 campuses to become viciously hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students,” according to a copy of the complaint, filed with the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Parents who have signed onto the complaint say anti-Semitic incidents in the schools have “positively surged” since Hamas conducted its unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.

“At BUSD, a virulent wave of anti-Semitism swept through its schools immediately following the massacre,” the complaint alleges. “Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop anti-Semitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards.”

The complaint, filed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, follows a flurry of similar federal filings against many of America’s top universities, including Harvard, MIT, and University of Pennsylvania, among others. Like its college counterparts, the Berkeley school district stands accused of becoming a dangerous place for Jews and Israelis.

“Reported incidents of anti-Semitism include school ‘walkouts’ praising Hamas with students shouting ‘f— the Jews’ and ‘KKK,’” according to the complaint. “Teachers use class time to propagandize that the Hamas massacre was admirable ‘resistance.’ Following their teachers’ lead, students bully their Jewish peers and deride their physical appearance.”

Berkeley Unified did not respond to a request for comment.

Parents have reported this behavior to school administrators, the complaint says, but the district “has done nothing to address, much less curtail, the hostile environment that has plagued BUSD for over four months.”

The ADL and Brandeis Center are asking the federal government to open a formal probe into the school district to determine if the Jewish population’s civil rights are being violated.

Anti-Semitism is allegedly “normalized throughout BUSD. And teachers have responded with threats.”

In one case, a teacher approached a parent who had complained and said, “I know who you are, I know who your f—ing wife is and I know where you live,” according to testimony included in the federal filing.

Perhaps taking a cue from their instructors, students have harassed their Jewish classmates, telling them, “it is excellent what Hamas did to Israel” and “you have a big nose because you are a stupid Jew,” according to incidents relayed in the complaint.

“While Berkeley Unified School District plasters its buildings with ‘United Against Hate’ posters, Jewish hate is ignored,” said Berkeley Unified parent Ilana Pearlman.

In the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, Berkeley Unified teachers and administrators have allegedly staged walkouts “denigrating Israelis and calling for the elimination of Jews.”

“Teachers, staff, and administrators,” the complaint states, “have participated in and encouraged students to join walkouts, depriving Jewish and Israeli students of a safe place to learn and all students of instruction.” In some cases, these events have taken place during school hours.

In another case cited in the complaint, an unnamed art teacher “spent significant class time imposing his anti-Semitic views on students by showing them violent pro-Hamas videos, projecting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic images during class.” This includes an image of a fist holding a Palestinian flag punching through a Star of David.

The complaint outlines other similar incidents, including anti-Semitic harassment, that has left Jewish students shaken and scared about going to school each day.

“The Berkeley public school district is just one of many districts in California and other states that are experiencing an extreme wave of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic language and incidents in the classroom and the schoolyard,” said Rachel Lerman, vice chair and general counsel for the Brandeis Center. “Since October 7, there have been continual anti-Israel rallies, taking kids off campus without parent permission, where students are provided with signs and permitted to call for the extermination of Zionists and Jews. Students feel free to engage in anti-Semitic speech and bully their Jewish classmates because a number of their teachers tolerate and even encourage it. Meanwhile the administration does nothing in the face of widespread parent complaints.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Jewish Students Tell House Committee: ‘It’s Open Season on Jews on Our Campus’ thumbnail

Jewish Students Tell House Committee: ‘It’s Open Season on Jews on Our Campus’

/in , , , , /by

By The Geller Report

Jews are fair game now. This is exactly what Jewish students and academics experienced in Nazi Germany.

For years, the growing Jew hatred on college campuses was ignored or excused. Before my colleagues and I were banned, we experienced vicious, violent hatred.

No one stood with us. Or took action.

What did they think was going. to happen?

‘I didn’t come to study in a living laboratory of antisemitism’

In DC, Jewish students tell House committee: ‘It’s open season on Jews on our campus’

Months after the Education and Workforce Committee hearing that contributed to the resignation of top school presidents, Jewish students say the hatred continues unchecked

By: Jordana Horn, Times of Israel, March 1, 2024:

NEW YORK — The House of Representatives’ Education and the Workforce Committee held a bipartisan roundtable Thursday with Jewish students from nine American universities to hear testimony about their experiences with antisemitism on campus.

✡️🇺🇸 — WATCH: Harvard Student describes the antisemitism Jewish students go through since October 7th:

“I know these students. I sit in class with them. I share study halls with them. They publicly praise Hamas.” pic.twitter.com/hJkmh0jWjV

— Belaaz News (@TheBelaaz) March 1, 2024

Testimony given before the Education and Workforce Committee’s last hearing in December led to the resignations of Harvard University president Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill.

“These students are dealing with antisemitism at their respective universities on a daily basis. Their courage to speak out and share their stories will give the American people a new look at what is truly happening on college campuses around the country,” Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said before the roundtable in a statement. “This roundtable will help inform the committee’s next steps in the antisemitism investigation as it continues to hold postsecondary education accountable for rampant antisemitism.”

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

IT BEGINS: Muslim Guns Down Jewish Dentist in San Diego, Shoots Receptionist

UK Descending Into Mob Rule: Female MPs Given Bodyguards As Safety Fears Grow Over Islamic Threats

Anti-Israel Biden Regime Reverses U.S. Policy to Turn Up the Heat on Israel

Hamas Claims Seven Hostages Dead

MSNBC: Great Threat to Democracy is White Rural Voters

RELATED VIDEO: America Is Still the Land of Equal Opportunity (for Criminals, at Least) | TIPPING POINT

POSTS ON X:

@Hunter_College @CUNY you need to stop this. This is not free speech. This is putting a target in Jewish students backs. @GovKathyHochul you need to speak out immediately and condemn this https://t.co/6WuviWSTQI

— magsblue (@builderstrong23) March 1, 2024

Harvard *faculty* members are posting old-school classic antisemitic posters.

No excuse for this. This is plain old antisemitism. Shame on @Harvard.

h/t: Harvard Chabad pic.twitter.com/T2Ri6wWRxu

— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) February 20, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

FL Rep. Chase Tramont: ‘There is no objection to the teaching of facts and truth of history. In fact, we demand it!’ thumbnail

FL Rep. Chase Tramont: ‘There is no objection to the teaching of facts and truth of history. In fact, we demand it!’

/in , , , /by

By Dr. Rich Swier

Republican Florida Representative Chase Tramont of Port Orange, Florida took to the floor of the House this week to defend out history and refute the big lie that Republicans are somehow trying to censor the teaching of history in a new bill that outlaws the use of ideology to interpret hard fast facts.

Chase is a cosponsor of a bill that requires an honest rendition of our past, warts and all.

The bill prohibits teacher preparation programs, EPIs, and Level I and Level II school leader preparation programs from distorting significant historical events or including a curriculum or instruction that teaches identity politics, violates the Florida Educational Equity Act, or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.

The bill requires all teacher preparation programs and EPIs to afford candidates the opportunity to think critically, achieve mastery of academic program content, learn instructional strategies, and demonstrate competence

The bill requires Level I and Level II school leader preparation programs to afford candidates the opportunity to demonstrate mastery of program content, including instructional leadership strategies, coaching development, school safety, and continuous improvement efforts.

Representative Chase Tramont, “…[A]nd for the future education of my son who will be introduced to the world on Wednesday, I am proud to stand on the right side of protecting our history today.’“

WATCH: Representative Chase Tramont Defends History

©2024. Volusia GOP. All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Democrats’ lawfare against Trump! thumbnail

PODCAST: Democrats’ lawfare against Trump!

/in , , , , /by

By Conservative Commandos Radio Show

GUESTS & TOPICS

REVERAND BEN JOHNSON

Rev. Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand. His writings have also appeared in The (UK) Guardian, Human Events, The Stream, Real Clear Policy, Conservative Review, The Daily Caller, and have been cited by National Review, CBS News, and Fox News. He was managing editor of FrontPage Magazine and U.S. Bureau Chief at LifeSiteNews. He is the author of two books on tax-exempt foundations, as well as Party of Defeat (2008, Spence, with David Horowitz). Before turning to online journalism and editing, he spent more than a decade in all facets of radio broadcasting, including news and talk.

TOPIC: Teachers agree! Trans, CRT Lessons Hurt Rather Than Help Schools!

MARTHA ZOLLER

Martha Zoller is a conservative strategist, activist, policy expert, and pundit with extensive campaign and government experience. For twenty years, Martha has hosted radio programs and was named to the Talkers Top 100 Radio Shows in America multiple times. She was a regular contributor on Cable and Broadcast News and served as a longtime panelist on Fox 5 Atlanta’s The Georgia Gang. Martha is the host of “Morning Talk with Martha Zoller” heard weekdays on WDUN AM550 and WDUN FM102.9.

TOPIC: What are Georgians saying about Fani Willis?

©2024. Conservative Commandos Radio Show. All rights reserved.

10 Times as Many Teachers Say Trans, CRT Lessons Hurt Rather Than Help Schools thumbnail

10 Times as Many Teachers Say Trans, CRT Lessons Hurt Rather Than Help Schools

/in , , , /by

By Family Research Council

A new survey reveals a cavernous gap between teachers’ unions and the views of most parents, teenagers, and teachers on whether public schools should teach LGBT ideology to students — and whether parents should have the right to opt their children out of those classes.

While elite teachers’ unions such as the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) believe schools should teach sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) classes to children, their customers — parents and students — disagree, as do many of their members, according to a series of new polls released last week.

More than 10 times as many teachers said debates over LGBT ideology, including sexual orientation and gender ideology, “have had a negative impact on their ability to do their job,” compared to 4% who said they improve learning, according to the Pew Research Center: 41% to 4%. Social Studies and English teachers were the most likely to say SOGI topics harmed their teaching time; they were also the classes most likely to discuss those issues, the survey found.

Yet some left-wing activists are working to change that. MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, donated $10 million to a group that instructs math teachers to “infuse social justice into mathematics.”

Teachers, Parents, and Students Do Not Want LGBTQIA+ Issues in the Classroom

Half of all teachers say “students should not learn” about gender identity issues in school, including 62% of elementary school teachers, 45% of middle school teachers, and 35% of high school teachers. Among those who believe the school should weigh in on such divisive topics, 33% of teachers say gender “can be different than sex assigned at birth,” while 14% believe in biological sex. More than twice as many elementary teachers believe transgender ideology as believe in biology; the proportion reaches three-to-one among high school teachers (45% vs. 15%).

The poll apparently shows those supportive of transgender beliefs are more likely to address the topic in school. Just under one-in-three teachers say sexual orientation or transgender ideology come up occasionally (21%) or frequently (9%). But teachers who belong to the Democratic Party were 15 points more likely to confess that LGBT issues creep into their classrooms than Republican teachers (36% to 21%).

Although a plurality (48%) of teachers believe parents should be able to opt their children out of transgender ideology indoctrination classes, one-third of instructors believed such classes should be compulsory.

“On both topics, parents’ views were more evenly split than the views of teachers,” according to the Pew survey. For instance, a majority of parents (54%) believe they should be able to determine whether teachers can subject their children to trans ideology.

The largest percentage of teens do not want to hear about LGBT ideology in the classroom, either: 48% say the topics should not be taught at school. Teens are also slightly more likely to believe in biological sex than in transgenderism (26% vs. 25%). But Democratic students are 525% more likely than Republican students to say gender identity is not tied to physiognomy.

Teenage students are more likely to feel uncomfortable hearing about transgender or sexual orientation issues than feel comfortable (33% vs. 29%). More than twice as many Republican students are more likely to feel uncomfortable hearing about such topics than to feel comfortable.

Only 14% of all teens say transgenderism or homosexuality “has never come up in any of their classes.”

The poll seems to indicate many teachers believe parents have too much say in their children’s education. While a plurality of teachers said parents had “the right amount” of influence, teachers were more likely to say parents had “too much influence” than not enough (32% to 19%). Democrats were 42% more likely than Republicans to believe parents had too much influence.

Republican-leaning teachers are more likely to honor parents’ views on these subjects, the poll found: 69% of Republican teachers say schools should not be in the business of teaching LGBT issues, and 80% say parents should decide whether their children attend such classes. Half of Democratic teachers say public school LGBT classes should be mandatory, and 53% say schools should teach transgender ideology.

A strong majority of teachers (58%) belongs to the Democratic Party, Pew noted.

Asian and “[w]hite Democrats are more likely than [b]lack and Hispanic Democrats to say parents should not be able to opt their children out of learning about sexual orientation and gender identity,” Pew stated. In all, 53% of Asian Democrats and “six-in-ten [w]hite Democrats say this, compared with 42% of Hispanic Democrats and 34% of [b]lack Democrats.” A plurality of black Democrats say parents should be able to opt out of LGBT indoctrination (46%, compared to 34% who oppose it).

Teachers’ Unions Out of Touch with Students, Poll Shows

The views of teachers, parents, and students strongly conflict with the stance of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, the three-million-member NEA and the 1.5-million-member AFT. The NEA provides model legislation to teach LGBT ideology in public schools and carries out numerous training sessions to promote gender ideology to teachers.

The NEA’s “Pronoun Guide” includes “Ze, Zim, Zir, Zay or Zee.” It urges teachers, “Inspire and encourage your student” with its two-page list of “LGBT+-affirming books.” It instructs teachers in 33 states how they can obtain a free “Rainbow Library” from GLSEN.

“You can use your work environment,” e.g., the classroom, “to show support for students of all backgrounds — for example, by hanging a Black Lives Matter poster or Pride flag or making clear that you will use a student’s personal gender pronouns,” the NEA advises teachers.

The union’s leadership has strongly emphasized its commitment to radical LGBTQ advocacy, regardless of parental objections or, seemingly, state law. “We will say gay! We will say trans!” bellowed NEA President Becky Pringle at the group’s 2022 Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly, taking aim at the popular “Parental Rights in Education” law, signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), who went on to win a rousing double-digit reelection months later. The bill says teachers may not “encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” before the fourth grade. The NEA stated its union members would “validate our students,” presumably when children’s gender choice conflicts with their parents’ values.

The NEA’s chief union rival, the AFT, “also coached its members on how to inject gender identity politics into the classroom,” found a report from the Defense of Freedom Institute. The AFT’s Together Educating America’s Children (TEACH) conference last July held sessions on “Affirming LGBTQIA+ Identities in and out of the Classroom” and “The TGNCNB [Transgender, Gender-Nonconforming, Nonbinary] Inclusive School and Classroom.”

Teachers in Tennessee’s Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, which strongly supported President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, learned that the U.S. operates as a “system of oppression” that confers “privilege status” on “white,” “able-bodied,” “men, cisgendered,” “heterosexual,” “Christian” Americans; but the U.S. allegedly brands an “oppression status” on any “person of color”; “woman, trans, nonbinary, genderqueer,” “LGBQ+, polyamorous”; and people whose religious views are “pagan.”

The LGBTQ movement’s advocacy goes outside the classroom to the restroom, locker room — even the hotel room. Last summer, teachers at Governor’s Ranch Elementary School in Littleton, Colorado, attempted to force a fifth-grade girl to share a bed with a boy who identified as a girl on an overnight field trip. Last July, the AFT adopted a resolution supporting “inclusive” policies allowing men to access female facilities, “including, but not limited to, bathrooms and locker rooms.” AFT President Randi Weingartenwalked away from a reporter who asked her about girls who do not feel safe undressing in front of boys in their locker rooms.

“Both teacher unions ignore the reality that most teachers want to teach, not affirm a student’s gender identity, either due to their personal values or their beliefs that doing so oversteps their authority and encroaches on the role of parents,” says the Defense of Freedom Institute.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Teachers Ran LGBT Education Program At Dallas School Without Approval: REPORT thumbnail

Teachers Ran LGBT Education Program At Dallas School Without Approval: REPORT

/in , , , /by

By The Daily Caller

An LGBTQ program that partnered Dallas Independent School Districts (ISD) teachers with a local transgender care-providing clinic was never approved by Dallas ISD officials, documents obtained in a public records request by the Dallas Express showed.

The Out for Safe Schools program reportedly partnered the district with a transgender-affirming clinic called the Resource Center, which allegedly provides transgender patients with hormones. The program educated teachers on how they could be “allies” to the LGBTQ cause, according to the outlet.

This partnership agreement was allegedly signed by the Resource Center, but not by any Dallas ISD officials, according to the Dallas Express.

“The department said there was no executed agreement,” JoAnna Talley, public information coordinator for Dallas ISD, told the Dallas Express.

Despite this apparent lack of support on behalf of the district, the program was reportedly operating anyway, the outlet reported. Further documents obtained by the Dallas Express allegedly show that the program was struggling to recruit teachers.

“Update. We still only have one person signed up for today,” Mahoganie Gaston, the LGBTQ youth support services coordinator for Dallas ISD, said in an April 2021 email, according to the outlet.

“Ok. Let’s go ahead and cancel today & ask today’s participant to attend in May. Hopefully, the trustees can push out the training in the areas they represent & attendance will be higher for the final two sessions,” Rafael McDonnell, an employee of the Resource Center, responded, according to the outlet.

Mentions of the Out for Safe Schools program were allegedly taken off the websites of Dallas ISD and the Resource Center after the Dallas Express exposed the program previously, according to the outlet.

There is still time to register for tomorrow’s training! Email mgaston@dallasisd.org ! pic.twitter.com/8GWWJnWasu

— Dallas ISD Support Services for LGBTQ Youth (@DallasISDLGBTQY) May 21, 2020

The Dallas ISD LQBTQ support center did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.

Recently, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office permitted Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to refuse to hand over documents in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) pertaining to the $90,000 they paid to Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago since 2021, as reported by the DCNF.

The payment was reportedly for a series of training sessions from the hospital’s Sexuality Education Program, which includes “age-appropriate” lessons on anal sex and “gender-affirming” sexual communication, according to the hospital’s website. The denial was made on the grounds that Illinois law protects “course materials” from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, according to the DCNF.

AUTHOR

THOMAS MCGIFFIN

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Criminal’: Legal, Parental Advocates Sound Alarm On Blue State Bill Allowing Minors To Consent To Medical Procedures

POST ON X:

BREAKING: LGBTQ youth advocacy organization @TYEFofficial offers to secretly send 13-year-old a chest binder behind her parents’ backs.

We posed as a teen girl and they encouraged her to choose another family, get a job to pay for s*x change surgery, and bashed her Trump… pic.twitter.com/7A9IaB2PTT

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 27, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Why are Americans becoming more stupid? thumbnail

Why are Americans becoming more stupid?

/in , , /by

By The Geller Report

“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” ― Aristotle

Why are Americans becoming more stupid?

Our entire education system needs a revolution

By: Joel Kotkin, Unherd, February 26, 2024:

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind,” said Winston Churchill.

And judging by the state of education in America, it seems both of those empires could soon crumble. The dysfunction is evident from top to bottom: from Ivy League outposts down to the secondary schools. Both are producing a generation that is ill-informed, illiterate and innumerate. In other words, a generation increasingly ill-suited to function as productive citizens in a democracy.

One might expect, then, that the creation of a raft of new universities and schools focused on doing something different would seem like a fundamental necessity. After all, young people are deserting college in droves, with enrolments down by 15% over the past decade; in the lower grades, it’s common to hear talk of “zombie schools”, the product of more than 20% of pupils being “chronically absent”.

And yet, the emergence of these still-small shoots have terrified the educratic establishment. Some claim the shift in emphasis towards classics and civics, now occurring in places such as Florida’s New College, is “sinister development” by nefarious Right-wingers. Similarly, the teachers’ unions have resisted a number of moves to create charter schools — which increase choice in the public system — because they are part of a “war on schools”.

In some cases, the defence of failure is breathtaking. Blue states such as Illinois have worked to all but eliminate charters, even as the Land of Lincoln boasts 53 schools where not one student can do grade-level math and 30 where none can do so in English. These schools are overwhelmingly in Chicago, where a significant increase in spending per student since 2019 seems to have made no impact.

Yet Chicago’s failures are wholly representative. The most recent National Assessments of Educational Progress found that only 27% of eighth graders are proficient in reading, 20% in math, 22% in geography, and a mere 13% in US History. The Covid lockdowns may have accelerated the deterioration, but scores have continued to decline since the pandemic ended. IQ scores, which had been rising for decades, are now falling even among college students.

More influential here is education’s gradual radicalisation, which has its origins at the top of the food chain. Already in 2018, one study of 51 top-rated colleges found that the proportion of liberals to conservatives was generally at least 8 to 1, and often as high as 70 to 1. Five years later, nearly three in five US professors admitted to self-censoring to avoid offending administrators and students.

Continue reading.

A READER’S COMMENT:

“This is now [a] state of war, fifth generational war – from the inside, not kinetic, but lawfare against the society in order to destroy it. Destroy morals and ethics, the sense of fairness, destroy the understanding that rights only work when tied to responsibilities. Break the family – get young to not marry, be bisexual or gay if possible. Create mental illness (phones, entertainment industry, the ‘health departments, vaccine), increase Crime, increase anti-social behavior, import a vast number of unsuitable people, cause them to not absorb in the native culture to fragment society. Destroy religion. Destroy patriotism.

Remove enlightenment liberalism (the writers of the USA Constitution, for example) and replace the philosophy with Postmodernism, which is basically Satan’s creed. Grow debt past the ability to pay to service it, award entitlements to the public sure to bankrupt the nation as they have to be borrowed to pay them out – then have to borrow to ‘service’ that debt’s interest payments, which is called a ‘doom loop’, borrowing to pay interest on debt….. Make home ownership unaffordable to young so they do not have Families. Basically do everything the UNIParty’s of all Western Nations do – abetted and run by their ‘Deep States’ and Globalist masters. Keep ‘Forever Wars” burning to justify a secret Police state, the ‘Security Services’ are now watching you, their resources turned inward….

But enough listing – I am sure you know a hundred more insane things being done – and even enforced, to destroy us all. (Kneeling?) drugs, homelessness, just endless.

At the heart of it all is to destroy Enlightenment and Classical Education. One which has good and evil – not ‘correct and incorrect.’ The people are utterly powerless once you replace that with Postmodernism Liberalism. No morals, No ethics, nothing of ultimate importance.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Florida Weighs Allowing Chaplains in Public Schools thumbnail

Florida Weighs Allowing Chaplains in Public Schools

/in , , , , /by

By Family Research Council

The Sunshine State is considering giving students access to chaplains in public schools. On Tuesday, the Florida State Senate’s Appropriations Committee on Education voted to approve Senate Bill 1044, which would allow chaplains to volunteer to offer counseling at public and charter schools.

The text of the bill states, “Each school district or charter school may adopt a policy to authorize volunteer school chaplains to provide supports, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.” The bill would require volunteer chaplains to pass a background check and would further require school administrators to publicize any chaplain’s religious affiliation and obtain parental consent before a student begins counseling.

Similar bills have been advanced in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas over the past year, facing backlash from Democrats but also some criticism from conservatives and Christians, who fear that the lax requirements around the volunteer chaplain position may allow for atheists, Satanists, and others to present themselves to children as chaplains.

Pastor Jay Johnston, Family Research Council’s chaplain and National Prayer Director, told The Washington Stand, “In speaking with church and ministry leaders about this opportunity to place chaplains in schools, it is suitable from my view if churches who adhere to biblical instruction could commission chaplains and send them to schools — if they have chaplains who know Jesus and have a pastoral heart to minister and bring forth spiritual guidance as they speak life, hope, and encouragement to students, faculty, and parents.”

“However, there is a downside to this,” he continued. “If church and ministry leaders don’t seize the opportunity and chaplains take up positions in schools that are without Christ or associated with a cult, it could give the enemy a foothold and expose the student body to spiritual darkness.”

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, also commented on the good that school chaplains could achieve. “The specifics of the Florida bill may not be perfect,” she told TWS, “but the need that Florida legislators are seeking to address is very real. As a general matter, as long as the chaplain is actually a pastor who has theological training and ministry experience, I think school chaplains would be a blessing to everyone in the school: students, faculty, staff, and parents.”

However, she also warned, “But when I think of my own public school system where I live, I can easily imagine the approval by school officials of a chaplain in drag, an atheist chaplain, and worse. And that is obviously worse than no chaplain.”

A spokeswoman for the Florida Catholic Conference explained to TWS that although the state’s Catholic bishops have not taken an official stance on the legislation, “We recognize the good that chaplains can do in schools by helping students to address their spiritual and emotional needs. We are pleased that parents will determine the services their children will receive as well in districts that choose to establish chaplaincy programs.”

Reverend James Golden, pastor of Mt. Zion AME Church and the co-founder of Pastors for Florida Children, was among those critical of the bill’s lax qualification requirements. He told lawmakers on Tuesday, “We cannot reduce this important job to somebody who is just able to pass a level two background check.” Golden’s comments echo complaints voiced by a coalition of 100 active chaplains in Texas when the Lone Star State advanced similar legislation last year. In a letter, the chaplains wrote that the Texas bill “allows a school district to give any employee or volunteer who can pass a background check the title of ‘chaplain.’ This is simply not enough. Professional chaplains have specific education and expertise to fulfill our role in helping others engage their own religious practices and traditions.”

The Texas chaplains also wrote, “As trained chaplains, we strongly caution against the government assertion of authority for the spiritual development and formation of our public school children. We would never provide spiritual care to someone without their consent. And when children are involved, parental consent is necessary.” Florida’s new legislation, however, specifically addresses this concern.

The Sunshine State’s bill also addresses another concern raised in Texas last year. The Texas chaplains made it clear, “Because of our training and experience, we know that chaplains are not a replacement for school counselors or safety measures in our public schools… We cooperate with mental health counselors — we do not compete with them.” While the Texas bill specified that “a school district may employ a chaplain instead of a school counselor to perform the duties required of a school counselor” (emphasis added), Florida’s bill does not replace counselors but simply adds chaplains.

Florida Senate Bill 1044 is now being reviewed by the State Senate’s Rules Committee. If approved by the state legislature, it will go into effect July 1.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Henry Blackaby — Experiencing God Face to Face

POST ON X:

WATCH: Christians take over a mall!

Notice how they are NOT looting or assaulting any people? AMAZING! pic.twitter.com/7GCZmdFHDn

— Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 News (@DonaldTNews) February 26, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

New York Times ‘Journalist’ Accused of Participating In Oct. 7th Hamas Attacks Wins Journalism Award thumbnail

New York Times ‘Journalist’ Accused of Participating In Oct. 7th Hamas Attacks Wins Journalism Award

/in , , , , /by

By The Geller Report

The New York Times proudly announced last Monday that it had “won three George Polk awards, including two for its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.” Those prestigious journalism awards went to “Samar Abu Elouf and Yousef Masoud of The Times” for “photojournalism for their photographs of the conflict from inside Gaza, capturing the horrific toll of Israel’s airstrikes on civilians, including the death and injury of many children.” The Times neglected to mention, however, one telling detail: Masoud has been unmasked as a member of Hamas who participated in the Oct. 7 jihad massacres inside Israel.

The Paper of Record shows no sign of firing Masoud or returning the George Polk award he won, but the Jerusalem Post had the story on Thursday, noting that the media watchdog Honest Reporting had “highlighted his accreditation to a photo provided to the Associated Press, with the caption, ‘Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis southern Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.’ How had Masoud gotten on the scene so quickly, so as to be in a position to take this picture? Honest Reporting “questioned Masoud’s explanation of his presence that he’d been woken up at 5.30 a.m. by rocket fire even though the firing only started an hour later.”

What’s more, “Masoud’s name was included in an investigative report from November showing that journalists from leading news outlets, including The New York Times, AP, Reuters, and CNN, joined Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip on October 7 to document the events with their cameras.” The New York Times responded indignantly: “The accusation that anyone at The New York Times had advance knowledge of the Hamas attacks or accompanied Hamas terrorists during the attacks is untrue and outrageous. It is reckless to make such allegations, putting our journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza at risk.”

Honest Reporting, however, said that claims it had “jeopardized the safety of all media working in Israel and the Palestinian territories” were nothing more than “a deliberate attempt to deflect from the real issues we raised.” And that’s true. Why doesn’t Masoud explain how he came to be on the scene of a Hamas operation on the morning of Oct. 7, and why he stated that he was awakened by rocket fire an hour before the rocket fire started?

After all, there is nothing remotely implausible about the idea of a New York Times “journalist” being a Hamas operative. Honest Reporting pointed out the Times’ “backing of a decision to rehire Gazan freelance filmmaker Soliman Hijjy despite HonestReporting previously revealing how he had praised Hitler on social media.” What’s more, the Times and the rest of the establishment media have for years been consistently anti-Israel, and have worked assiduously to whitewash the bloody reality of Islamic jihad. Why would the Times, or any other establishment propaganda arm, hesitate to hire a supporter of Hamas and fanatical hater of Israel and Jews? Media observer Hugh Fitzgerald states that “save for a single columnist — Bret Stephens — the New York Times has no one on its staff, among its hundreds of reporters, columnists, and op/ed contributors, who could be described as willing to give Israel a fair shake.”

We have just recently discovered how closely the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) collaborated with Hamas, allowing the jihadis to operate on UNRWA premises, employing Hamas operatives, and teaching hatred of Jews and Israel in its textbooks for Palestinian schools. If this could happen before the eyes of a watching world, what would possibly prevent a “journalist” from a deeply biased and essentially pro-Hamas outlet from going whole hog with his support for the jihad terror outfit?

The New York Times has a great deal to answer for, far beyond Yousef Masoud. Masoud may indeed have been a Hamas jihadi, in which case his George Polk award should be rescinded and the Times should not use him again. But the fact that none of that is likely to happen is in large part a result of the Times’ indefatigable efforts to make support for jihad violence respectable and mainstream. The Times should at this point perform a thoroughgoing soul-searching, and a wholesale reevaluation of its uncritical support for jihadis. But nothing is much less likely.

AUTHOR

Robert Spencer

RELATED ARTICLES:

Journalist Participated in Hamas massacre, Ecstatically Displayed Soldier’s ID Card, Helmet and Magazine

Yet Another Muslim Journalist Working for The New York Times Praises Hitler

WATCH: IDF hits top Hamas propagandists posing as ‘journalists’ in Gaza

POST ON X:

The operation in Zeytun continues: the soldiers of the 401st Brigade combat team eliminated over 30 terrorists in the last day; At the same time, the deepening of the activities of the 98th Division in the Khan Yunis area continues pic.twitter.com/92XwfueSEO

— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) February 26, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 7: Politicized Education—Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is thumbnail

CHAPTER 7: Politicized Education—Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is

/in , , , /by

By Linda Goudsmit

Globalism is a replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate, ruled by the globalist elite themselves. The globalist war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The long-term strategic attack plan moves America incrementally from constitutional republic to socialism to globalism to feudalism. The tactical attack plan uses asymmetric psychological and informational warfare to destabilize Americans and drive society out of objective reality into the madness of subjective reality. America’s children are the primary target of the globalist predators.

The three pillars of faith, family, and flag were established as the infrastructure of freedom in the United States of America. Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of an educated citizenry for sustaining ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. The infrastructure and moral tenets in American culture were derived from both the Bible and the Judeo-Christian tradition our Founding Fathers embraced.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. —John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798

Our Founding Fathers recognized literacy as the cornerstone of critical thinking and the transfer of information. They knew that an educated, moral, responsible adult citizenry was necessary to sustain and grow our fledgling nation.

Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country. —Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district—all studied and appreciated as they merit—are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty. —Benjamin Franklin, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (ed. 1864)

It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country. ––Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

Reading remains the most fundamental skill required to preserve and protect our constitutional republic. The enemies of freedom targeted American education tactically, to undermine literacy in order to achieve an unaware and compliant citizenry decades before that infamous phrase was associated with John Podesta and Hillary Clinton. Children were always the strategic target because they are the future of America.

Industrialists John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were major influences in the evolution of American education. Teachers College at Columbia University was endowed with $500,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1902. In that same year John D. Rockefeller created the General Education Board (GEB) with a gift of $1 million. The GEB provided funding and influence to shape American schooling. Rockefeller is quoted as saying, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers; I want a nation of workers.” Education was being recalibrated to emphasize vocationalism, to produce future factory workers for industrialists’ needs. The GEB was subsumed by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1960.

The idea of mandatory education in the United States was embraced and promoted by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie advocated for a teacher certification system, and donated millions of dollars to establish libraries and universities across the country. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching[i] (CFAT) was originally established as the Carnegie Foundation with a $10 million gift by Andrew Carnegie in 1905, “as an independent policy and research center called to ‘do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold, and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education.’” (Carnegie Foundation History)

Since its inception, CFAT has had a powerful influence on American education, particularly in its efforts at quantifying and standardizing education. In 1906 it introduced the Carnegie Unit, a measurement of education credits required for high school curriculum and graduation requirements. The CFAT pension program, which became an independent nonprofit organization called Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association[ii] (TIAA) in 1914, was linked to participation in curriculums using the Carnegie Unit in high schools for graduation, and to colleges and universities for admission.

A 2015 CFAT study authored by Elena Silva, Taylor White, and Thomas Toch, “The Carnegie Unit: A Century-old Standard in a Changing Educational Landscape,”[iii] discusses the history and future of the Carnegie Unit. From the report:

The Carnegie Unit and the Credit Hour (p. 8)

The standard Carnegie Unit is defined as 120 hours of contact time with an instructor, which translates into one hour of instruction on a particular subject per day, five days a week, for twenty-four weeks annually. Most public high schools award credit based on this 120-hour standard (one credit for a course that lasts all year; or half a credit for a semester course). And, while state and district coursework requirements for graduation vary, most states require a minimum number of units, typically expressed as “Carnegie Units.” A typical high school student earns six to seven credits per year over a four-year program of high school.

In higher education, students receive “credit hours,” a metric derived from the Carnegie Unit and based on the number of “contact hours” students spend in class per week in a given semester. A typical three-credit course, for example, meets for three hours per week over a fifteen-week semester. A student, then, might earn fifteen credit hours per semester (fifteen is standard full-time registration for a semester, thirty for an academic year) en route to a four-year bachelor’s degree requiring a total of 120 credits.

The report recommended replacing the Carnegie Unit with a system of Outcome-Based Education (OBE). Popularized in the 1990s, OBE is an educational theory that rejects traditional content-based learning that emphasizes rote learning and acquisition of foundational knowledge, and bases the educational system instead on personal pre-determined goals called outcomes. It is the quintessential shift from the WHAT of education to the WHO.

Marketed as deeply personalized, empowering, and student-centric, OBE rejects traditional education as old-fashioned, limiting, and educator-centric. In OBE teachers are facilitators, not educators with authority or expertise. The student-centric focus is not on individual academic achievement, but rather on student social interactions and cooperativelearning experiences.

This seismic shift from traditional to outcome-based education marked the institutional shift of American education from the education our founders envisioned to social activism where outcomes, results, performances, competencies, and standards could all be evaluated with a politicized metric. Outcome-Based Education was the chosen vehicle for social change through education, which was now being used to emphasize political activism and produce anti-American Americans for globalists’ needs.

The 2015 study indicated that one of the biggest obstacles to shifting from the Carnegie Unit to Outcome-Based Education (OBE) was federal financing:

But efforts to further push the boundaries of the design and delivery of higher education face a substantial barrier: the federal government’s requirement that most students taking part in the $150 billion federal financial aid program attend colleges or universities using Carnegie Units. (“The Carnegie Unit,” p. 25)

The Obama administration was committed to OBE, so it proposed changes to the federal funding model that included other criteria besides the Carnegie Unit:

To promote competency models in higher education, the Obama administration has endorsed a provision in the federal financial aid regulations that extends eligibility under the program to students at institutions that use “projects, papers, examinations, presentations, performances, portfolios” and other “direct” measures of learning “in lieu of credit hours or clock hours” to gauge student performance. It initially extended “direct assessment” privileges to two institutions, Capella University, a for-profit online provider, and Southern New Hampshire University’s College for America. The University of Wisconsin’s Flexible Option, which is led by UW–Extension, received approval for direct assessment in August 2014. (“The Carnegie Unit,” p. 25)

The Carnegie Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have politicized American education and abandoned their founding missions. The 2015 CFAT Executive Summary states unequivocally that the Carnegie Unit must be replaced in order to facilitate “solutions” sought by reformers. It is political reform disguised as educational reform:

The Carnegie Foundation is committed to making American education more effective, more equitable, and more efficient at this critical junction in the nation’s history. We share change advocates’ goals of bringing greater transparency and flexibility to the design and delivery of K–12 and higher education in pursuit of deeper learning for more students. After studying the Carnegie Unit’s relationship to today’s reforms, we have concluded that American education’s reliance on the Carnegie Unit is an impediment to some of the solutions sought by reformers. Most notably, the federal government’s financial aid rules requiring colleges and universities to measure student progress using Carnegie Units are a barrier to the spread of flexible delivery models in higher education. (“The Carnegie Unit,” p. 5)

Changing the metrics of education from the Carnegie Unit to OBE weaponized American education, transforming it from its colonial purpose of literacy and support of Americanism to being the political agent for massive social change.

CFAT’s current Mission Statement:[iv]

The mission of the Carnegie Foundation is to catalyze transformational change in education so that every student has the opportunity to live a healthy, dignified, and fulfilling life.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was chartered by an act of Congress in 1906. Since then, it has pioneered a broad range of transformative advancements in K–12 and higher education, including the creation of the Carnegie Unit; TIAA; standards for schools of law, medicine, education, and engineering; Educational Testing Service; the GRE; Pell Grants; the Carnegie Classifications; the U.S. Department of Education; and the use of improvement science to build the field’s capacity to improve.

Today, the Carnegie Foundation has set its sights on tackling the nation’s most significant educational challenge: achieving educational equity for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander, and first-generation students, as well as those from low-income households. Carnegie will leverage its expertise, assets, partnerships, convening power, and social and reputational capital to address longstanding educational inequities that impede economic mobility and exacerbate racial inequality.

Historically, public education supported upward mobility and the middle class through education focused on teaching basic skills and fundamental knowledge. The politicization of American education shifted the ideological focus from meritocracy’s equal opportunity to socialism’s equal outcome. It was a seismic shift in both form and content in American education.

We are feeling the aftershocks of this earthquake today. The introduction of racist Critical Race Theory, the staggering increase in functional illiteracy, the profoundly disturbing introduction of pornographic sex education—all are derivatives of the changed purpose of America’s education industry.

Journalist and educational reformer Alex Newman explores the subject in his September 13, 2023, article, “Lesbian-Marxist US Library Boss: School & Libraries for ‘Socialist Organizing’.”[v] Newman writes:

Government schools and local libraries should be used for “socialist organizing,” the self-proclaimed “Marxist lesbian” chief of the American Library Association (ALA) proclaimed at a major socialism conference last week. The library boss has also become notorious recently for hating on parents, families, Christians and anyone else who stands in the way of indoctrinating children.

Speaking after a panel at the Socialism 2023 conference in Chicago organized by a coalition of revolutionaries advocating for the “right” of children to engage in prostitution, among other absurdities, ALA chief Emily Drabinski did not hold back. “Public education needs to be a site of socialist organizing,” she told attendees…. Among other topics, the panel at which Drabinski spoke out included discussion on how teachers could indoctrinate children with Critical Race Theory propaganda, even in jurisdictions that have banned it. “We need to be on the agenda of socialist organizing,” added Drabinski…. The socialism event in Chicago, which featured the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as a supporter, featured panels on abolishing the family and replacing it with government, as well as “best practices for developing socialist programming for kids.”…

“Ms. Drabinski is a supporter of Critical Race Theory, which Montana rejected as discriminatory, and other far-left-leaning ideologies that have no place in our schools and libraries,” said Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen. “By electing a declared Marxist as their President, the ALA has not only turned its back on families, parental rights, and American values—it has turned its back on America itself.”

Taxpayer funds are being weaponized to foment a revolution against the very taxpayers coerced into footing the bill for this dangerous extremism. It is time for all library systems to leave the ALA and for government schools turning children into Marxist revolutionaries to be shut down. The future of America is on the line.

Today’s American education industry is in direct opposition to our Founding Fathers, who understood that an educated citizenry is required for sustaining ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. The American education industry is now the instrument for anti-American propaganda and Marxist indoctrination. Parents can no longer trust their children’s education to it.

SOURCES:

[i] Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

[ii] Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association

[iii] The Carnegie Unit: A Century-old Standard in a Changing Educational Landscape

[iv] Mission Statement

[v] Lesbian-Marxist US Library Boss: School & Libraries for ‘Socialist Organizing’

©2024. Linda Goudsmit. All rights reserved.

Please visit my Pundicity page: goudsmit.pundicity.com and website: lindagoudsmit.com

Goldwater Institute Creates New Series of Educational Videos thumbnail

Goldwater Institute Creates New Series of Educational Videos

/in , , , , /by

By Neland Nobel

/in , , , , , , /by

Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute has developed a new series of educational videos called Foundations of Freedom.

It seems many people absorb information today more readily on videos than reading.

Whatever the method used, we think what the Goldwater Institute has done here is quite good and urge you to view their videos.

Here is one concerning education. Please take the time to view the video.

The series will include other subjects as well,  including such topics as property rights, free speech, equality, the environment, and the abolition of slavery.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

1707 2560 Neland Nobel 2024-02-24 05:44:58Goldwater Institute Creates New Series of Educational Videos

FIND GREAT CONTENT

Search through articles, research, and policy papers. Search by keyword, tag, author, date range, and category.

Where is George Washington? thumbnail

Where is George Washington?

/in , , /by

By Karen Schoen

When I was a child going to school we studied the Presidents. We played a game with coins and each president had a coin. We were told a story and asked questions and had to attribute each question to a president . The one with the most coin was the winner and got an ice cream.

My favorite story was from George Washington.  ”The cherry tree myth is one of the oldest and best-known legends about George Washington. In the original story, when Washington was six years old, he received a hatchet as a gift and damaged his father’s cherry tree with it. When his father discovered what George had done, he became angry. Young George bravely said, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.” Washington’s father embraced him and declared that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees.

The first time I heard Obama talk and lie, about spying or Obamacare, Fast and Furious, etc. I realized, they all lie. All the Presidents lie. So where does that leave us. Who do we believe? The media picks and chooses what lie they will report on making its about equal.  The media is bias and will over report the GOP and under report the DNC.

The saddest part to me is: How do we teach our children to tell the truth if their leaders are lying?  Today this generation of children grow up with no heroes except animated characters that they see on the big screen. Where do they go to learn telling the truth is the greatest virtue they can possess?

The family was supposed to teach virtue.  The church was supposed to assist in morality.  American values were to be the finishing touches.  All of that is gone now as the schools no longer teach history. no longer teach truth.  Facts are unimportant and the one with the biggest wallet is the winner. It no longer matters if you lie cheat or steal to get what you want as long as you get it. Today we are petrified if the Speaker of the House or a football team prays before a meeting or event.  We are losing our country because of the lies. The Globalists although smaller in number can cause so much chaos by lying that the misinformed uneducated people will turn on each other and beg the same people who created the chaos for help.

“When people become educated, you can’t control them. You can’t frighten them. People who are educated know their own power and don’t surrender it to others.” Jordan Maxwell

Get your kids out of government schools. Tell your local official to stop taking government grants.  Vet your candidates and look for George Washington.

Contrary to popular belief, George Washington did not buy slaves. He inherited them. At that time in history, there were no big machines to manage farms and slavery was the method used. This had been going on for hundreds of years as the loser of any war became the slave of the winner.

The following quotes are from George Washington via William Federer as we celebrate President Washington’s Birthday. I believe if President Washington was with us today he would say the same thing.

On July 2, 1776, from his Head Quarters in New York, General Washington issued his General Orders:

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army.  Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore to resolve to conquer or die …”

In Washington’s Farewell Address, he warned us about Political Parties: However combinations or Associations of the above description may now & then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, & to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

You can find more on the history of President Washington by reading the thoughts in his Farewell Address or listening to Bill Federer on the Prism of America’s Education show today.

Today we will also discuss our health. Americans are not taking care of their health issues and things are about to get worse. Most of our drugs come from CCP-China.  What if those drugs were withheld or worse yet, what about a Cyber attack.  I believe you can only handle the stress of life if your foundation is strong. Your body is your foundation. No one will take care of it if you don’t. Listen to Robert Scott Bell

Remember: 

Everything is connected. Nothing is random, Everything has a plan. All plans are lies. All Globalists want is MONEY, POWER, CONTROL Don’t give them yours. Challenge them with the truth. Doing Nothing is affirmation. Share with your 5.

So join me today

©2024. Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

Show Link: https://www.americaoutloud.news/the-prism-of-americas-education/

POST ON X:

Today we honor the father of our country, George Washington, and his service and contributions to our great nation. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/YqqSjahk9y

— Senator Marco Rubio (@SenMarcoRubio) February 19, 2024

Jew-Hating Queens College Muslim Student Association to Host Speaker Who Accused Israel of Creating ISIS and Involvement In 9/11, Jews of Pedophilia thumbnail

Jew-Hating Queens College Muslim Student Association to Host Speaker Who Accused Israel of Creating ISIS and Involvement In 9/11, Jews of Pedophilia

/in , , , /by

By The Geller Report

Nothing new here.

Muslims and leftists bring the most abhorrent, anti-human, vicious demons to speak as a matter of course.

What does bear pointing out is, on the rare occasion that when supporters of Israel, Conservative leaders, voices of freedom are extended an invitation all hell breaks loose and they are inevitably canceled.

There is no freedom in this once free country and we are living under the boot a most brutal and vicious thugocracy.

“Jews of pedophilia” this from a ‘religion’ whose prophet, the ‘perfect example’, married his favorite bride Aisha at the tender age of six which is why child marriage is rampant in Islam.

I won’t even dignify the Islamic State or 9/11 blood libel against the Jews.

Queens College Muslim Student Association to Host Event with Speaker Who Accused Israel of Creating ISIS and Involvement In 9/11, Jews of Pedophilia

By Zach Kessel, JNS, February 21, 2024:

The Muslim Student Association at Queens College, a public institution under the City University of New York (CUNY) system, plans to host an event on February 29 titled “Analyzing the Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Multifaceted Examination.”

Their featured speaker at the discussion is an author named Daniel Haqiqatjou, a writer at a website called Muslim Skeptic and the author of the book “The Modernist Menace to Islam.” According to his bio, he attended Harvard University for his undergraduate studies and then earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Tufts University.

Haqiqatjou, as is often the case with guests invited to address Israel and the ongoing war against Hamas, has a history of publishing antisemitic conspiracy theories.

His most recent article at Muslim Skeptic is titled “Is ISIS Jewish?” and argues that “ISIS acts in keeping with the Jewish law of war,” which “is why ISIS encourages random individuals to constantly burst into churches and even mosques, then kill the innocent men, women, and children there by [sic] shooting or bombing (like the recent church attack in Turkey).”

He says that “the most likely explanation for ISIS’s behavior is that it is run by Israel,” but even if it is not, it has adopted “the type of disgusting tactics approved of in Judaism.”

Haqiqatjou has also written about his belief that “Judaism is perhaps the world’s most racist religion” and that “owing to the influence of Judaism, Israel is one of the most racist states in the world.”

To prove this claim, Haqiqatjou pointed to a passage in the Talmud — which even the most advanced Jewish scholars spend their lifetimes studying — that he contends “says that blacks, due to their inferiority, are not allowed to fully participate in sacred worship.” Haqiqatjou is not a Talmudic scholar, and there is no evidence available to suggest that he has ever engaged in the study of the texts.

In another piece, Haqiqatjou bemoaned a supposed state of affairs in which “researchers who make claims about” World War II and the Holocaust “which might provoke criticism of Jews” find themselves suffering “career setbacks.” He stated his opinion that “it is not permitted to conduct research on the possibility of Jewish human sacrifice rituals” and accused Jews of controlling academia to the extent that no criticism of Jews or Israel can be published.

Haqiqatjou has claimed that Israel and India are working together to commit genocide against Muslims and that “the powerful Israel lobby has . . . successfully pushed the U.S. government into adopting” a plan to eradicate Islam. He wrote that the Jewish holiday of Purim — a celebration of an instance in which a plot to eliminate Jews in the Achaemenid Empire was thwarted — is, in fact, a remembrance of Jews’ “continuing duty to genocide their enemies in all times and all places.”

On his X account, Haqiqatjou has argued that “Judaism has developed a special hatred for Christianity and Islam.” In the immediate aftermath of October 7, he supported Hamas’s barbarism, writing that “Palestine has the right to defend itself from terrorists” and criticized Mehdi Hasan as being a “complete zionist shill” because he condemned Hamas’s taking children hostage. He has baselessly accused Israel of stealing Palestinian organs. He has also reposted those who claim Israel was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and said himself that he believes Al Qaeda was “gradually infiltrated over time” by Israel.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

Trump Vows To Get Hamas Sympathizers The Hell Out of Our Country

Islamic Terror Attack in Israel: One Dead, 8 Severely Wounded Including Pregnant Woman

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘Desperate’ for Votes: Biden Expands Student Loan Forgiveness by $1.2 Billion thumbnail

‘Desperate’ for Votes: Biden Expands Student Loan Forgiveness by $1.2 Billion

/in , , , , /by

By Family Research Council

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced a new round of federal student loan debt forgiveness, in which almost 153,000 borrowers will have their loans forgiven at a cost of $1.2 billion to American taxpayers under what the White House has termed the SAVE program. Since Biden took office, he has now canceled over $131 billion of student loan debt. Experts say the policy, which will further deepen the over $34 trillion national debt, is a “desperate” attempt to garner the votes of young college students.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Biden indicated that his administration’s effort to cancel student loan debt is far from over, stating that “we’re pushing to relieve more.” As Penn Wharton estimated last July, the SAVE program is projected to cost “$475 billion over the 10-year budget window.”

The administration’s latest announcement is further proof that Biden is undeterred by the Supreme Court’s decision last June which struck down the administration’s plan to cancel up to $400 billion in student loans held by as many as 43 million people, finding that the HEROS Act of 2003 did not give the Secretary of Education the authority to forgive student loans, as the administration tried to claim. Following the decision, Biden stated, “I will stop at nothing to find other ways” to cancel student loans. Last week, Biden further boasted of ignoring the nation’s highest court regarding student loan forgiveness. “The Supreme Court blocked it,” he said. “But that didn’t stop me.”

Legal experts say that Biden’s latest loan cancellation is unconstitutional. “Despite the Supreme Court clearly saying that under our constitution the president cannot rewrite our nation’s laws, President Biden continues to do just that,” Karen Harned, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Responsibility, told National Review. “With this latest Executive Order forgiving over $1 billion in student loans, the President is once again breaking the law in a transparent attempt to garner votes.”

Observers are also noting that Biden’s policy clearly favors college graduates — one of the most privileged classes of Americans — over those who are less fortunate. “Per the Pew Research Center, there exists ‘a growing earnings gap between young college graduates and their counterparts without degrees,’ and that gap only ‘widened as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,’” wrote the editors at NRO on Thursday. “College graduates have better employment prospects, better health outcomes, and lower divorce rates than everyone else. Despite this, the federal government chose to spend around a quarter of a trillion dollars during the pandemic on an unnecessary pause in student-loan repayments. Now it wants to double that number with an amnesty?”

NRO’s Charles Cooke further pointed out that Biden’s student loan policy does not address the underlying issues that have caused Americans to amass billions in student loan debt. “This isn’t alms for the poor; it’s a brazen cash-grab by Joe Biden’s friends. … There’s no principle here; the debts owed by others remain untouched. There’s no reform here; the education system remains exactly as it was before this started.”

Others say that the move boils down to a frantic attempt by a president with historically low approval ratings to capture more votes in November’s election.

“President Biden knows how deeply unpopular he is with young voters and his base, and his student debt plan is a desperate attempt to win them back on the taxpayer’s dime,” Sentinel Action Fund President Jessica Anderson said Wednesday. “Biden hopes that wiping away some student loan debt will make voters forget that he is responsible for record-high inflation, rising food prices, and our stagnant economy. Americans won’t be fooled by Biden’s latest campaign stunt.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are echoing these sentiments. “He unilaterally is forgiving this debt, supposedly forgiving, which means he doesn’t care what the law says — Congress,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) commented on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Thursday. “He doesn’t care what the judiciary says — the Supreme Court. [A]nd yes, of course he’s buying votes. But the rest of the taxpayers, there is no forgiveness [for them]. Someone is going to pay these loans back, and now it’s going to be you, the taxpayer.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

he Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Can Harvard Be Saved From DEI and a Debased Curriculum? thumbnail

Can Harvard Be Saved From DEI and a Debased Curriculum?

/in , , /by

By Jihad Watch

Harry Lewis has been at Harvard, man and boy, for fifty years. He’s a professor of computer science, and formerly Dean of Harvard. He has long been a Cassandra, a vox clamantis in deserto, alarmed about the state of education at Harvard, where he has registered the decline brought about by the madness of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and by self-indulgent faculty members who teach what they want — their niche subjects — rather than what the students need. More on Professor Lewis’s analysis of Harvard’s “debased curriculum,” and comments on it by Professor Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution, can be found here: “Harvard’s Crisis Stems From Debased Curriculum,” by Peter Berkowitz, Real Clear Politics, February 18, 2024:

Last month, Harry Lewis published a Harvard Crimson column that squarely laid the blame on Harvard for the crisis that has engulfed the great university. Fifty years of experience on the banks of the Charles River inform Lewis’ severe judgment: He is a longtime Harvard computer science professor, a 1968 Harvard College graduate, and, from 1995 to 2003, he served as dean of Harvard College. Nevertheless, while illuminating Harvard’s damaging politicization over the last 20 years of its undergraduate curriculum – and despite his half century at Harvard – Lewis overlooks the full extent of the crisis.

In “Reaping What We Have Taught,” Lewis maintained that the surge of antisemitism on campus following Hamas’ perpetration of mass atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7 was not the fault of Claudine Gay, who resigned as Harvard’s president in early January. Nor, he asserted, had Harvard admitted antisemitic students or hired antisemitic faculty. The problem, rather, lies in Harvard’s curriculum: “Unapologetic antisemitism – whether the incidents are few or numerous – is a college phenomenon because of what we teach, and how our teachings are exploited by malign actors.”

Lewis performed a simple experiment. He typed into the Harvard online course catalog search box key words associated with fashionable progressive ideology. The word “decolonize,” he found, “is in the titles of seven courses and the descriptions of 18 more” – more than triple its appearance before 2000. The words “oppression” and “liberation” are each “in the descriptions of more than 80 courses,” while “‘Social justice’ is in over 100.” Lewis also searched for “white supremacy” and “Enlightenment” – these days, it is often said, the latter arises out of and perpetuates the former. He discovered that the terms’ appearances in the online course catalog run “neck and neck, both ahead of ‘scientific revolution’ but behind ‘intersectionality,’” which barely registered before 2000…..

Consider the Ethics & Civics category. The 2024 spring semester offerings feature such options as “Ethics of Climate Change,”; “Evolving Morality: From Primordial Soup to Superintelligent Machines,” and “Ignorance, Lies, Hogwash, and Humbug” (which deals with fake news and other forms of deceit that mark “the post-truth era”). With one of these courses, students can check the ethics and civics requirement at Harvard without ever studying Western civilization’s biblical and classical foundations, the synthesis of faith and reason in the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Middle Ages, the modern tradition of freedom’s emergence in the 17th and 18th centuries, and, not least, America’s founding principles and constitutional traditions.

The post-Oct. 7 educational crisis at Harvard, entwined with antisemitism, has been several decades in the making. Effective reform must replace the current curriculum, which advances professors’ interests in niche scholarship and partisan politics, with one that serves students’ interests in acquiring an organized introduction to the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences and in undertaking a reasoned exploration of the United States, the West, and the world.

Can the curriculum be changed at Harvard, removing niche subjects offered by self-indulgent professors, so that again requiring that students be provided with what they need to know: the “general education” that demands basic instruction in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences? And who will remove the modish madness of DEI from the campus, so that it no longer the deciding factor in determining the courses that are taught, the faculty who are hired, and the students who are admitted? What Dean or future President of Harvard would take on the twin tasks of DEI removal and curriculum reform? Perhaps, despite his age, the Harvard Corporation will offer the job of President to Harry Lewis himself. That would be a welcome sign from the Corporation that it’s willing to break with the past. Harvard could not do better.

AUTHOR

HUGH FITZGERALD

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Students for Justice in Palestine at Claremont Colleges Think They Just got a BDS Win. But did they? thumbnail

Students for Justice in Palestine at Claremont Colleges Think They Just got a BDS Win. But did they?

/in , , , /by

By Canary Mission

  • On February 11, 2024, the Pitzer College Student Senate voted to suspend Pitzer’s study abroad partnership with the University of Haifa in Israel. The resolution was spearheaded by Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Pitzer College is one of the seven Claremont Colleges in Claremont, California.
  • Since 2018, Claremont SJP has been trying to pass this initiative. However, the response by Pitzer’s president was swift and decisive. In a statement, Pitzer said, the “Student Senate does not speak for the College, nor does it represent the views of all Pitzer students. The president will not accept…any resolution antithetical to [the principles of academic freedom and safe and productive learning].”
  • Claremont SJP has a long history of supporting terrorists, calling for Israel’s destruction and rejecting dialogue. The group regularly promotes anti-Israel agitators and initiates campaigns for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

KEY FINDINGS

Claremont SJP and JVP spearheaded the ‘Suspend Pitzer Haifa’ initiative, resulting in the Pitzer College Student Senate voting to suspend the college’s study-abroad partnership with the University of Haifa in Israel.

This BDS campaign is a continuation of an initiative that began in 2018.

Daniel Segal, the faculty advisor for SJP, played a key role in both the 2018 and 2024 campaigns to suspend the Haifa partnership, acting as a link between the two efforts.

On October 7th, the same day as the massacre committed by Hamas in Israel, Segal posted on X (formerly Twitter) justifying the attack with the following statement: “Israeli state apartheid, ethnic cleansing & settler colonialism are ongoing violence against Palestinians; some of the resistance provoked is violent also. All who support the oppression, all who oppose non-violent BDS, have more blood on their hands today. #PalestinianFreedom.”

Claremont SJP and JVP act as two campus groups united under the same banner and have collaborated on events as far back as 2015.

On October 8th, one day after the brutal Hamas attack, Claremont SJP and JVP issued a joint statement blaming Israel for all bloodshed and expressing support for resistance and intifada.

Malak Afaneh, a prominent figure in the 2018-2019 ‘Suspend Pitzer Haifa’ campaign, later attended Berkeley Law, where she served as president of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter. During her tenure, the SJP chapter notably drafted a bylaw to exclude Zionist voices from campus.

Lea Kayali, another key player from the 2018-2019 ‘Suspend Pitzer Haifa’ campaign, is now an organizer with Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine (HLS Justice for Palestine), one of the groups that signed the October 2023 anti-Israel statement. This statement, endorsed by over 30 Harvard student groups, held Israel entirely responsible for the violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th.

SEE BELOW CLAREMONT SJP HISTORY OF EXTREMISM AND TERROR SUPPORT

JUSTIFYING HAMAS ATROCITIES

The day after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 250 more, Claremont SJP and JVP issued a joint statement in support of Hamas, which praised “decolonization” (read: murder), Palestinian “resistance” and violent uprising (intifada). This statement justified the Hamas attack, placing all the blame and loss of life squarely on Israel’s shoulders.

The statement read in part:

Before October 7, Claremont SJP activities in 2023 centered around the re-launch of their campaign against Pitzer to suspend its exchange program with the University of Haifa in Israel.

In addition, the group strategized how they could prevent the Claremont student government from adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

The definition includes singling out Israel and holding it to a different standard than other countries of the world vis-a-vis boycotts (a feature of the BDS movement).

Claremont SJP also pushed the lie that Israel was harming Black and Brown communities in Los Angeles by training the Los Angeles police department in repressive surveillance techniques.

2022

In 2022, Claremont SJP participated in a car caravan protest in response to false charges against Israel of “ethnic cleansing” neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Hebron and the Negev region.

The group also held a “Free Palestine” Week and ended the year with a letter-writing event to “show solidarity and build morale” for the “Holy Land 5.” The Holy Land 5 refers to the five individuals who worked for the Holy Land Foundation in Texas and were convicted of funneling money to Hamas in the largest terror financing case in American history. Three of the men are still in prison serving their sentences.

2021

SUPPORTING TERRORISTS

In May 2021, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists fired over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at major population centers in Israel.

Israel responded by launching “Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW),” carrying out targeted military strikes in Gaza.

During the conflict, Claremont SJP advertised two marches organized in solidarity with the “Palestinian Uprising and General Strike.” The first, held on May 15, 2021, was billed as an “LA Rally & Protest for Resistance Until Liberation!”

The second, on May 18, 2021, was held in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles.

As of December 2021, Claremont SJP’s signature was on a petition calling the “Palestinian Students Solidarity Campaign” that was launched by the anti-Israel NGO Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network (Samidoun).

The petition supports Palestinian students detained or incarcerated by Israel for participating in direct terror activity or terror-related activities.

Samidoun advocates for the release of all Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are members of Hamas or other terror groups like the PFLP. Multiple Samidoun activists have been identified as PFLP members, including Mohammed Khatib, Samidoun’s European coordinator.

On March 26, 2021, Claremont SJP posted to Facebook an event page for an online panel titled “Free Them All!” that featured Khatib. The event page said speakers would discuss “the importance of supporting and organizing for the freedom of political prisoners as part of the Palestinian national liberation struggle.”

CALLING FOR ISRAEL’S DESTRUCTION

As of December 2021, Claremont SJP’s platform referred to Israel as an “apartheid state…that can only be dismantled through Palestinian national liberation.”

As of the same date, Claremont SJP’s Instagram bio read: “Fighting for Palestinian liberation, from the river to the sea.” The same quote reportedly appeared in the Instagram bio as early as February 2020.

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a chant used [00:02:52] to call for the elimination of the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state.

The text on a September 21, 2021 advertisement for Claremont SJP for the colleges’ 5C club fair read, “Join Claremont SJP to fight for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.”

HOSTING A TERRORIST SUPPORTER

On November 18, 2021, Claremont SJP hosted an event titled “A Conversation with Mohammed El-Kurd,” who has glorified terrorists, spread incitement against Israel and whitewashed Hamas. El-Kurd has also spread hatred about America and the police and conspiracy theories about Israel.

He has spread misinformation about Israel in interviews on CNN and MSNBC as well as social media. The event advertisement called El-Kurd a “Palestinian activist and poet.”

El-Kurd’s talk was also sponsored also by the Departments of International Relations, Religious Studies and English at Pomona College as well as the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC), Pomona’s student government; McKenna’s student government, The Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College (ASCMC); and the 5C Prison Abolition Collective.

DEMONIZING ISRAEL

During the May 2021 conflict in Israel, Claremont SJP advertised on Instagram a rally in Chicago, calling out all their “Chicago friends” to attend the rally to “Stand against Israeli land theft” and “Stand with the people of Sheikh Jarrah.”

In May of 2021, a property dispute in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah erupted into violence in anticipation of an Israel High Court hearing that was expected to rule on eviction proceedings. The dispute involved over 70 Palestinian tenants illegally residing in Jewish-owned properties. On May 9, 2021, the court postponed the hearing.

The Sheikh Jarrah dispute sparked violent clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces in and around the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

Incitement surrounding Al Aqsa and Sheikh Jarrah were leading factors in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists firing over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at Israeli population centers on May 10-21, 2021. Israel responded by launching OGW, carrying out targeted military strikes against the terrorists and their infrastructure in Gaza.

REJECTING DIALOGUE

As of December 2021, Claremont SJP’s platform read: “We reject any and all collaboration, dialogue, and coalition work with Zionist organizations through a strict policy of anti-normalization and encourage our comrades in other organizations to do the same.”

Proponents of the “anti-normalization” policy seek to police all interactions between Israelis and Palestinians and shut down all conversations, interactions and speech that they perceive as being ideologically unaligned with their own agenda. Adherents to this position reject “liberal Zionist” groups who seek to dialogue with Palestinians on the grounds that such interaction “normalizes” entrenched power dynamics.

This policy was originally dictated by the BDS National Committee (BNC), which listed as one of its “main activities” the “Monitoring & Rapid Response” against interactions that recognize or cooperate with “Israel’s regime.”

CAMPAIGNING FOR BDS

On April 15, 2021, Claremont SJP and 5C Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) introduced a resolution to the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) Senate that mandated ASPC compliance with BDS.

The resolution was titled [p.1], “Banning the Use of ASPC Funding to Support the Occupation of Palestine” and it required [p.2] that ASPC “internal spending” could not be used on products or services from companies that “knowingly support the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

ASPC internal spending includes multiple items including funding 5C student clubs and student-run events.

The resolution also created [p.2] an oversight role for Claremont SJP over the ASPC-run Coop Store and the Coop Fountain restaurant. According to the resolution, ASPC would “work in tandem with members of SJP, and other pertinent parties, to perform an annual check on the ASPC’s businesses to ensure all goods sold adhere to the guidelines outlined in this resolution.”

The resolution stated [p.2] that: “Clubs that fail to divest and/or refrain from such uses of funding would face the loss of all Claremont Colleges Student Government Association funds.”

Claremont Colleges pool mandatory student activity fees and distribute the money to the 5C student governments. ASPC provides almost 47% of the funding for all 5C clubs, although each 5C student government can fund 5C clubs.

The above clause effectively mandated BDS compliance for pro-Israel and Jewish student organizations like Claremont Hillel and Claremont Chabad.

In the spring of 2021, ASPC gave more than $10,000 to 5C clubs. It also gave $30,000 for student-run events at Pomona that were coordinated through the ASPC’s Pomona Events Committee (PEC). The full ASPC spring 2021 budget was $216,700.

The Claremont SJP and Claremont JVP resolution also said [p.2] that ASPC’s “end goal” would be to lead other 5C student governments to pass similar BDS resolutions.

On April 22, 2021, the ASPC Senate passed the resolution with a vote of 10-0-0. Five senators were not present, representing one-third of the ASPC Senate’s 15 seats.

The same day, Claremont SJP issued a press release calling the resolution’s passage “an important first step in reducing our complicity with a country that maintains an illegal military occupation and regularly commits crimes against humanity against the indigenous Palestinian population.”

On April 23, 2021, following criticism of the resolution reportedly among campus and national Jewish groups, Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr sent an email to the student body opposing the resolution. Starr said that requiring student clubs to boycott Israel was “deeply concerning.” She said that since the vote “was held without representation from any student opposition,” the ASPC Senate should “reverse course and allow for full discussion.”

On April 29, 2021, the ASPC Senate held a Zoom meeting that included a “comment period” for student senators and student guest speakers to express their feedback on the resolution.

On April 30, 2021, the ASPC Senate reportedly decided to “table the resolution” for further discussion in regards to the resolution’s call to deny funding to student clubs that failed to adhere to BDS.

On May 6, 2021, the ASPC Senate reportedly passed a modified resolution that omitted the original clause forcing student clubs funded by ASPC to comply with BDS.

The final resolution mandated BDS compliance for internal ASPC spending, PEC-coordinated events and the two ASPC-managed businesses. Claremont SJP was also granted the oversight role regarding the compliance of ASPC businesses with the resolution.

2019

DEMONIZING ISRAEL

On April 2, 2019, Claremont SJP hosted an event titled, “The Washings: Pinkwashing, Greenwashing, and Faithwashing,” as part of Palestinian Freedom Weeks 2019 (PFW 2019) which was held on campus from March 25-April 7, 2019)

The Facebook event page accused Israel of “settler colonialism” and also said: “The Washing Campaign has been fundamental in sustaining Israeli apartheid by way of presenting Israel as a progressive entity in an effort to deflect from state-sanctioned crimes against Palestine.”

“Pinkwashing” is a claim used by anti-Israel activists to argue that Israel manipulates the LGBTQ community in order to garner support for Israel.

“Greenwashing” is a claim that Israel advocates manipulate the environmentalist community in order to garner support for Israel.
“Faithwashing” is an accusation that supporters of Israel engage in interfaith dialogue to promote a pro-Zionist agenda.

On March 27, 2019, Claremont SJP hosted another PFW 2019 event titled “Open Air & Cages: Prison Abolition from Attica to Gaza.” The event’s Facebook page called the United States and Israel “white supremacist and settler colonial projects.”

The same event page also said: “This event will work through the solidarity pacts of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Black Panther party who attempted to draw ‘comparisons between racial capitalism in the United States and Israel …’”

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was declared a foreign terrorist organization by the United States in 1987. The group’s 1968 charter stated that its goal was the “liberation of Palestine” through “armed struggle.”

Yasser Arafat, who was known as the “father of modern terrorism,” was the leader of the PLO from 1969 until his ddeath in 20014.

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was a revolutionary Marxist political organization founded in 1966. The party advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government. BPP members were involved in a number of fatal firefights with police.

On March 25, 2019, Claremont SJP hosted an event titled, “Visit the Mock Apartheid Wall,” where they built a wall on campus meant to simulate Israel’s security barrier.

Israel’s security barrier, 97% of which is a low chain-link barrier, was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks. The concrete portions of the fence were built in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.

The event’s Facebook page read, “The Wall is an extension of Israel’s policies of land theft and ethnic cleansing.” The page also said, “We especially want to bring attention between the connections between the construction of the Apartheid Wall in Palestine and other similar racist, oppressive projects of border militarization around the world.”

PROMOTING ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS

On November 14, 2019, Claremont SJP hosted a film screening of “Gaza Fights for Freedom,” featuring anti-Israel activists Abby Martin, the film’s director, and her husband, Mike Prysner, a journalist.

Martin is a former anchor for the Russian state news agency RT and the Venezuelan state news agency Telasur. She has compared [00:00:13] Israel to Nazi Germany and spread anti-Israel propaganda. Prysner has defended terrorism and has referred to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as the “Apartheid Defense Forces.”

During the event, Martin reportedly “defended Hamas and placed sole blame on Israel for the lack of peace between both states.”

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union, Canada, Australia, the United States and Israel.

Also at the Claremont SJP event, Martin reportedly accused a Jewish student journalist of being “associated with ‘white nationalists.’” Prysner called Israel an “attack dog” of the United States.

CAMPAIGNING FOR BDS

Beginning in 2018 and culminating in 2019, Claremont SJP was involved in a push to boycott Pitzer College’s exchange program with Israel’s Haifa University.

The events transpired as follows:

On November 8, 2018, Pitzer College faculty reportedly voted for a motion to suspend the exchange program which Pitzer had run since 2007. Professor Daniel Segal, the Claremont SJP and Claremont JVP faculty advisor, led the boycott campaign.

The faculty motion was a non-binding recommendation to Pitzer President Melvin L. Oliver. The motion called for the “suspension of the College’s exchange with Haifa University, until (a) the Israeli state ends its restrictions on entry to Israel based on ancestry and/or political speech and (b) the Israeli state adopts policies granting visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a fully equal basis as it does to Israeli universities.”

After the faculty vote, the motion was then sent to the Pitzer College Council (PCC), Pitzer’s “primary legislative body” which “votes on policy recommendations forwarded by the faculty as well as committees.” The PCC includes faculty and student senators who issue recommendations to the Pitzer president. The president is then free to approve or disapprove the recommendations.

On November 18, 2018, Claremont SJP issued a statement supporting the pro-BDS faculty vote, saying that it was “imperative” to end the “deeply problematic” Haifa program. Claremont SJP also circulated a petition to the public titled, “No Academic Freedom Under Occupation,” which accused Israel of having “increasingly draconian policies” and employing a “systemic practice of racial discrimination.”

On November 29, 2018, President Oliver responded to the faculty recommendation, opposing it and calling it a “repudiation of our educational mission…an anathema to Pitzer’s core values.” Oliver also questioned the faculty in singling out Israel for special scrutiny among other foreign countries like China and Nepal where Pitzer also has study abroad programs.

On March 14, 2019, the PCC passed a motion to end the Haifa program. The motion, a non-binding recommendation for Oliver, passed with 68 votes in favor, 25 against and eight abstentions.

The motion outlined a “uniform policy” ending study abroad programs in countries that “restrict entry on the basis of either (a) legally protected political speech or (b) race or ancestry (as distinct from citizenship).” The motion claimed that the Haifa program violated the “uniform policy” and would be suspended immediately.

Also on March 14, 2019, Oliver released a statement declining to implement the PCC motion, saying, “By singling out Israel, the recommendation itself is prejudiced.”

In the statement, Oliver also said, “Although some claim that this is not an academic boycott of Israel, I disagree. The recommendation puts in place a form of academic boycott of Israel and, in the process, sets us on a path away from the free exchange of ideas, a direction which ultimately destroys the academy’s ability to fulfill our educational mission.”

On the same day, Pitzer’s student newspaper, The Student Life, reported: “In advance of the Haifa vote, the organization [Claremont SJP] has focused on outreach to Pitzer faculty and student senators, and on building a coalition of other campus groups.”

On March 15, 2019, Claremont SJP posted on Facebook that they would “continue to organize to suspend Haifa and demand that President Oliver reverse his decision.” Claremont SJP also posted an online petition demanding Oliver rescind his veto of the PCC motion and included the hashtag “#ProApartheidOliver.”

On March 25, 2019, Claremont SJP posted a Facebook event page for its “Palestine Freedom Weeks,” scheduled for March 25 to April 7, 2019. The event page promoted the BDS campaign against the Haifa program and used the hashtags “#SuspendPitzerHaifa” and “#MelvinWontListen.”

On March 31, 2019, the Pitzer College Student Senate, the college’s student government, introduced two resolutions at an “Emergency Meeting” called to address the Haifa program boycott campaign.

Claremont SJP members Shay Lari-Hosain and Jorj Chisam-Masjid were among the co-sponsors of the first resolution, which stated: “The Pitzer College Student Senate votes no confidence in President Melvin Oliver and, if President Oliver does not retract his anti-democratic decision by the end of the day on April 11, 2019, call for his immediate resignation or removal from office.”

Pitzer Senate president Shivani Kavuluru and vice presidents Kamyab Mashian and Dawson Reckers were among the co-sponsors of the second resolution. Their resolution censured Oliver for keeping the Haifa program and demanded that Oliver reverse his veto.

On April 7, 2019, the Pitzer Senate reportedly voted down the resolution of no confidence 20-12. However, the resolution censuring Oliver passed 29-0.

As of July 2021, Pitzer continued to offer its semester abroad program at the University of Haifa.

2018

SUPPORTING VIOLENT PROTESTERS

On April 15, 2018, Claremont SJP hosted a “Solidarity Vigil with Gaza” on campus in support of the March of Return riots. The event’s Facebook description alleged Israeli snipers “opened fire on thousands of unarmed protesters, killing at least 35 people, including photojournalist Yaser Murtaja while he was wearing a press jacket, and injuring at least 3,000.”

Yasser Murtaja, a photojournalist, was reportedly a Hamas spy who used drones to film Israeli positions. Murtaja was shot on April 6, 2018, as he filmed the 2018 “March of Return” protest in Gaza.

On March 30, 2018, some 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza approached Israel’s border to take part in “Land Day Protests” or the “March of Return.” The March of Return was organized and funded by Hamas as a campaign of violent protests along Israel’s border to spotlight the demand of Palestinians to “return” to Israel.

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel.

March participants sent scores of kites bearing explosive devices across Israel’s border to burn Israeli crops and homes. Participants also attempted to breach the border fence, which caused the Israeli Defense Forces to respond with live fire.

Agitators threw Molotov cocktails, firebombs, shot firearms and threw rocks under the cover of smoke from burning tires.

On May 16, 2018, a Hamas senior official stated that 50 out of 62 protesters killed during a May 14 protest were Hamas operatives. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also claimed that three of its members were killed at the same protest.

On April 17, 2018, Claremont SJP hosted “PFW: Political Prisoner Letter Writing Night!” as part of its 5C Palestinian Freedom Weeks 2018 (PFW 2018) which was held on campus April 9-20, 2018.

The event’s Facebook description read: “SJP will be addressing the topic of Palestinian political prisoners in connection to the Israeli occupation, capitalist exploitation, and child prisoners. Later, we will guide people in writing letters of support to political prisoners under the guidelines of Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner solidarity network.”

As part of PFW 2018, on April 9, 2018, Claremont SJP hosted an event marking 70 years since the creation of the state of Israel. The event’s Facebook description read, “2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba — the planned mass expulsion of more than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians to establish an exclusionary Jewish-majority state in Palestine.”

Nakba is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.

PROMOTING ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS

On April 14, 2018, Claremont SJP hosted an event on campus, titled “Voices of Palestine Resistance” to promote the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was founded in 2001 and is allegedly “committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.” ISM has been accused of supporting terrorism and has encouraged volunteers to act “as human shields in cities, towns and refugee camps.”

ISM has encouraged activists to break curfew and disregard Israeli directives prohibiting access to closed military zones, a policy which resulted in the death of American ISM activist Rachel Corrie in 2013.

The event’s Facebook description said: “The presentation includes an abridged version of Radiance of Resistance, a film by three ISM volunteers serving in Nabi Salih and featuring Ahed Tamimi and her cousin, Janna Ayyad.”

Ahed Tamimi was detained after she was filmed punching and kicking Israeli soldiers. She has a long history of physically attacking Israeli soldiers.

Tamimi is the daughter of Bassem Tamimi, who is known for exploiting young children as political props in staged confrontations with Israeli soldiers. In 2011, he was jailed for organizing violent rallies and inciting minors to commit violent crimes such as rock-throwing.

Ayyad, who is known as “Janna Jihad,” is a relative of Tamimi.

The village of Nabi Saleh is a Tamimi family stronghold. It is notorious as a place where photographers gather nearly every Friday to document scenes of Palestinian residents and international activists clashing with Israeli soldiers. Much of this is instigated by the Nabi Saleh Tamimi clan.

2017

DEMONIZING ISRAEL

On April 12, 2017, in conjunction with Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), Claremont SJP held a screening of an anti-Semitic documentary titled: “The Occupation of the American Mind.” The film claimed to show that Israel controls the American public’s view on Arab-Israeli conflict via the media.

On April 11, 201, as part of IAW, Claremont SJP held an event titled “Pinkwashing 101 Workshop.” The event page claimed “Pinkwashing is a deliberate marketing campaign that Israel uses to project an image of queer-friendliness in order to cover up its atrocities of apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.”

On April 7, 2017, Claremont SJP published an article accusing Israel of being an “Apartheid state.” The article claimed: “700,000 Palestinians — Muslim, Christian, and Jewish alike — were violently uprooted and expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948.”

The article went on to mislead its readers, claiming that “Palestinian citizens in Israel are also subject to racialized laws and regulations that inhibit them from living as equals under the law,” and that “There are over 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinians in Israel.”

The conclusion of the article encouraged readers to participate in its IAW events saying: “We call attention to these crimes this year in Israeli Apartheid week.”

On April 3, 2017, Claremont SJP erected a mock apartheid wall on the Pitzer college campus as part of IAW. On April 6, 2017, Claremont SJP wrote a blog post condemning individuals who displayed a large Israeli flag on campus in opposition to the wall, saying: “This flag shows the ideological underpinnings of Zionism, a settler-colonial project to lay claim to Palestinian indigenous land without acknowledging the human rights abuses, the violence, the massacres, the apartheid, and the walls that are necessary to sustain this project… this 20 foot flag that was hung in an attempt to cover up the horrors of Zionist violence.”

BDS ACTIVITIES

On April 16, 2017, which was the sixth day of Passover as well as Easter Sunday, Claremont Colleges’ Student Senate held a vote revising the Pitzer College Student Senate Budget Committee Bylaws.

Pitzer College student Simone Bishara added an amendment to the Student Activities Funds’ restrictions dictating that the student senate budget committee adhere to a boycott list formulated by the BDS movement. The amendment was approved in a secret ballot vote.

Bishara’s amendment to the Bylaws (P.4. Student Activities Funds, Section 2. Restrictions VI.) stated: “Student Activities Funds shall not be used to make a payment on goods or services from any corporation or organization associated with the unethical occupation of Palestinian territories. Products include those products from corporations and organizations as delineated in the boycott list maintained by bdsmovement.net/get-involved/what-toboycott.”

Upon being informed of the vote, the executive boards of Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance (CPIA) and the Alpha Epsilon Pi of the Claremont Colleges circulated a petition that objected to the vote’s unexpected introduction and passage when many Jewish and Christian students, including student senators supportive of Israel, were off-campus, due to the holidays.

The petition also criticized the fact that the amendment was not announced before the meeting.

Bishara claimed that “the timing was merely an unfortunate coincidence.”

Claremont’s student newspaper, The Student Life, also reported that Bishara did not include the amendment in the first draft of the budgetary bylaws presented on April 9.

Because the BDS resolution was couched as an amendment, Bishara was not required to announce the measure on the meeting’s agenda. Bishara stated: “It’s just not procedurally how Senate does things.”

Although Bishara did not inform anyone from CPIA and the Alpha Epsilon Pi of the Claremont Colleges of the amendment, The Student Life reported that Bishara did “reach out” to some senators and Claremont SJP, which sent members to speak at the meeting in favor of the amendment.

Bishara told The Student Life she did not alert CPIA that she was presenting the amendment “because my intention was to have it pass. I have had enough intellectual conversation about why people disagree with me.”

Bishara went on to say: “My opinions are less rooted in academic knowledge or political belief and more in this identity-based concern,” she said. “It’s emotionally gutting for me to sit here and have to explain why I think these things are the right things to do…It’s just emotional labor that no one ever should have to do.”

In the same interview, Bishara claimed the amendment’s timing also made it difficult for her to go home to celebrate Easter.

“…I had to pull myself away from home and I would never, in a million years, ask anyone else to do that, and never in a million years would intentionally target something around somebody’s faith…I can’t even conceive of a world in which I would be okay if I knew somebody was doing that on purpose.”

Claremont SJP’s press release on Facebook celebrating the vote said it passed by “22 aye, 0 nay, 4 abstentions.” The announcement did not mention that the budget committee’s decisions would be tied to the dictates of the BDS movement.

2016

SUPPORTING A CONVICTED TERRORIST

On December 7, 2016, Claremont SJP posted on Facebook a call for support for Rasmea Odeh.

Odeh was a military operative with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization. In 1969, she masterminded a bombing that killed two university students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.

Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated her as the mastermind.

In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States. In 2017, Odeh was deported to Jordan and stripped of U.S. citizenship, after admitting to immigration fraud.

SUPPORTING AN INCITER TO VIOLENCE

On July 12, 2016, Claremont SJP shared a petition on Facebook supporting Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian woman.

In October 2015, Tatour was placed under house arrest for incitement to violence and for support of a terrorist organization on social media.

Tatour had supported the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and posted to her 4,800 + Facebook friends “I am the next shahid [martyr]” on Facebook under a picture of attempted-murderer Asraa Zidan Tawfik Abed. Tatour also posted a Youtube video of a woman reading a poem that glorified violence and rejected peace.

October 2015 saw an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” saw young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab scores of Israeli civilians.

HARASSING STUDENTS

On March 9, 2016, Claremont SJP posted a statement on Facebook defending their posting of mock eviction notices on student dorm room doors. The action was in violation of the college’s posting regulations.

The notice read: “EVICTION NOTICE: DORM SCHEDULED FOR DEMOLITION IN THREE (3) DAYS. If you do not vacate the premises by 3/10/2016 8 PM, we reserve the right to demolish your premises without delay.”

On March 11, 2016, It was reported that following expressions of concern by Jewish students that they were being targeted, Stan Skipworth — Claremont’s Director of Campus Safety — wrote in an email to the student body that “the flyers violated posting regulations at CMC, Pitzer College, and Scripps College.”

The Claremont SJP’s Facebook post also stated the group’s intention to engage in “pursuing boycott/divestment campaigns” at the Claremont Colleges.

2015

DEMONIZING ISRAEL

On October 28, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted a speaking event featuring anti-Israel journalist David Sheen titled, “The Bullet, the Ballot, & the Boycott: Racism in Israel Today.”

The Facebook post advertising the event announced that Sheen would “describe how top Israeli political and religious leaders use dehumanizing discourse to inspire vigilante attacks toward Palestinians, Africans and other non-Jews.”

The event was co-sponsored by JVP.

On April 2, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted an event screening the documentary “Occupation 101” as part of Claremont SJP’s Israeli Apartheid Week. The documentary is narrated by anti-Israel agitator Alison Weir, founder of the controversial anti-Semitic website If Americans Knew (IAK).

Weir is notorious for writing an article that endorsed a Swedish newspaper’s blood libel which claimed Israel harvested Palestinian organs.

On March 31, 2015, Claremont SJP installed a mock apartheid wall on campus that aimed to “bolster support for the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel.” Claremont SJP student activists posed as Palestinians supposedly being oppressed by an Israeli soldier next to the mock apartheid wall.

The mock wall misrepresented Israel’s security fence, which was built as a non-violent deterrent to Palestinian terrorist attacks — mostly by suicide bombers.

Claremont SJP’s wall featured text that read: “Zionism is Racism.” The wall also featured a series of maps that presented lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” purportedly stolen by Israel.

PROMOTING TERROR INCITEMENT

On October 17, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted an event featuring Nada Elia. Earlier that month, as radicalized Palestinians across Israel stabbed scores of Israeli civilians during the “Knife Intifada,” Elia wrote on October 7, 2015 an article titled “Why Be Afraid of an Intifada?” In the article, Elia stated: “Intifadas are good.”

The event was co-sponsored by JVP.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SJP

POST ON X:

Woke Kindergarten, w/its antisemitic/anti-Israel agenda, was canceled by the Calif elementary school that was using a $250,000 federal grant to pay for the program which is also anti-American & anti-white.

Lest this move be applauded, district officials emphasized that while… https://t.co/ZsIRbVYWlD pic.twitter.com/0qZWtIABf4

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) February 18, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Canary Mission column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Most Powerful Education Idea Ever? thumbnail

The Most Powerful Education Idea Ever?

/in , , /by

By John Droz, Jr.

→ Warning! I’ve been periodically accused of having some interesting, creative ideas before, but IMHO this may be one of the best ever!

Before I reveal a unique and powerful solution to what is ostensibly our most serious societal peril, we need to be clear about what the peril is. This is a brief outline:

  1. The worst current problem in US K-12 schools (by far), is WHAT our children are being taught — i.e., what is in (or missing from) the curriculum.
  2. IMO the part of the curriculum that has been most extensively corrupted, is the subject area of Science. This is due to 49± states fully (or mostly) adopting the progressive Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which is a frontal assault on traditional Science (e.g., they quietly extracted the Scientific Method, and are subverting Critical Thinking). See this Report for details.
  3. Although you likely haven’t heard it before, this is arguably the most significant attack on America. Every year this results in some 3 million propagandized high school graduates, who shortly become voting citizens. This is unsustainable!
  4. Essentially no one (parents, teachers, legislators, State Boards of Education, scientists, conservative organizations, etc.) is exposing the NGSS for what it is.
  5. Likewise, no one has come up with a realistic alternative to the NGSS, or a practical solution to fix the NGSS — until today!

Now that you have a glimpse of the profound consequences of this major unaddressed societal problem, let’s proceed to a unique and powerful solution…

In most US schools, the Science offerings in K-8 are general and rudimentary. In High School, they get more specific and more advanced. For example, in HS there is typically one year each of such classes as biology, geology, chemistry, and physics. (Sometimes there are quasi-fluff options like environmental science.)

The assumption is that after eight years of general science, students are prepared for (and interested in) more depth in the traditional Sciences. [Note: Based on current NGSS-oriented curriculums, the accuracy of that assumption is highly questionable.]

What’s proposed here is that a mandatory “overview” Science class be given to all 9th graders. An appropriate title might be: Real Science 101 — but be creative with the name!

The mandatory part is because Science is now an essential element of our existence, so every child needs to be taught some in-depth Science basics — which parents assume are being covered. However, due to the proliferation of the NGSS, almost all of the examples below are superficially treated, mistreated, or ignored:

  1. Critical Thinking (Properly defining, understanding, and teaching it. This includes appreciating the numerous, profound benefits of being a critical thinker.)
  2. Linear vs Lateral thinking (there are significant merits for both)
  3. Social Emotional Learning (how Critical Thinking can achieve SEL objectives)
  4. Why is Science under assault? (Science is a gatekeeper, Science is respected, etc.)
  5. Definition of Science (Science is a Process)
  6. History of the Scientific Method (4000± years of a successful process)
  7. The four key elements of a Scientific Assessment (Objective, Comprehensive, Empirical, and Transparent)
  8. Hypothesis vs Theory (explaining the different levels of Scientific certainty)
  9. Scientific responsibility (Is it the proponent’s obligation to prove their claim, or is it the obligation of skeptics to disprove it?)
  10. Science and Public Relations (Is being right enough to win the day?)
  11. Science and Public Policy (How should the two relate?)
  12. Real Science vs political science (not even remotely similar)
  13. Consensus (not a Scientific procedure, but rather a political aspiration)
  14. Peer Review (a good idea that has been co-opted)
  15. Statistics (the good, bad, and the ugly of probabilities, etc.)
  16. Data (there’s data and then there’s data)
  17. Correlation vs Causality (What is the relationship between the two?)
  18. Computer Models and projections (benefits and substantial weaknesses)
  19. Science vs Scientists (Are studies by scientists, Scientific?)
  20. Scientists and Relativism (Does the end objective justify the means?)
  21. Post-Normal Science (Are some technical issues beyond the ability of Science to assess?)
  22. Normative Science (agenda-driven scientists rarely produce real Science)
  23. Technical terminology (conveying hidden messages with carefully chosen words)
  24. The Precautionary Principle (Is this scientific or ideological?)
  25. Intuition vs Science (making assumptions can easily lead to unscientific conclusions)
  26. Scientists vs Engineers (how they differ in objectives, methodology, etc.)
  27. The Mantle of Science (How should bogus claims about Science be exposed?)
  28. Science and the Media (journalism vs advocacy)
  29. Artificial Intelligence (our best friend and our worst enemy)
  30. Science and Religion (Can Science prove, or disprove, the existence of God?)

Note 1: Essentially none of these Real Science matters are covered in the NGSS.

Note 2: Worse, in the NGSS, the opposite message is conveyed about several of these.

Note 3: HS teachers would need to have a Professional Development class to properly teach such a course.

Note 4: This would also be an excellent general Science class for all college freshmen.

Note 5: The above is a suggested chronological order of topics to cover.

After taking such a class:

  1. ALL students would be better prepared to encounter a Science (and pseudo-science) world, even if they never took another Science class,
  2. All students would perform better on state and national Science tests.
  3. Because (if done right) this would likely be perceived to be the most interesting high school course offered (in all subject areas), a higher percentage of students would become STEM-interested.
  4. STEM students would be MUCH better prepared to subsequently take traditional Science classes in high school and college.

For the above four significant reasons, this should become a state-required class, built into each state’s Science Standards.

Note: All of the states’ current Science standards that are NGSS-based, would then need to be reviewed (which was already essential to critically do anyway), as some of Real Science 101 conflicts with NGSS. That’s a good thing…

Requiring this one class would result in extraordinary benefits to students — and subsequently to our society.

PS — This recommendation does not mean that we forget what’s going on in K-8. 9th grade was selected as several of the above topics are too advanced for a 3rd grader. That said, having a more elemental course on Critical Thinking in early grades is very advisable. Interestingly, a textbook publisher is already offering such material.

PPS — When I get the time, I’ll fill out most of the thirty items with helpful reference links. At this point, the objective is just to convey and discuss this significant idea.

PPPS — Since this is of extreme importance, I’m posting the latest version of this material online (as a PDF), where it will be easier to download, etc.

©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

How the US Regime Subsidizes Immigration—Both Legal and Illegal thumbnail

How the US Regime Subsidizes Immigration—Both Legal and Illegal

/in , , , , , , /by

By Ryan McMaken

In recent months, stories from both the legacy media and the independent media have continued to pile up on how undocumented foreign nationals—also known as “migrants” and “illegal aliens”—are able to take advantage of a vast network of taxpayer-funded benefits in daycare, medical care, housing, and more.

For example, both the New York Post and Denver Post report that these foreign nationals have “overwhelmed” the Denver Health hospital system in Denver, and that the situation is “unsustainable.” Meanwhile, public schools report classrooms are filling up quickly with the children of these foreign nationals. Denver is hardly alone. The New York Post notes that both the City of New York and the state government have expanded local welfare programs, including pre-paid credit cards, to further ensure that migrants continue to receive cash and resources from American taxpayers. This is in addition to the approximately 66,000 foreign nationals who are housed in hotels and shelters, care of both New York and federal taxpayers. USAToday reports that colleges “across the country” are receiving millions in taxpayer money to offer housing to migrants at no charge. Chicago’s mayor is bragging he’s giving away $17 million in taxpayer-funded giveaways to “asylum seekers” who are presently living off the sweat of the taxpayers in government shelters. This, of course, is just a down payment on many more planned giveaways.

Just how much of taxpayers’ resources is going to foreign nationals? It’s difficult to estimate for a number of reasons. The spending is done through numerous different government agencies at various levels of government. Moreover, much of the money is filtered through non-profits (i.e., “NGOs”) that are labeled “charities” but are simply adjuncts of the regime.

Yet, once we add up $1 billion here and $77 million there, after a while we’re talking about real money.

Ultimately one thing becomes abundantly clear: the regime and its partners are subsidizing the influx of foreign nationals who are promised a variety of both cash and in-kind benefits. It must also be noted that, contrary to certain myths, the largesse is not reserved for only the so-called “illegal aliens.” Legal immigrants can take advantage of the generous and well-funded American welfare state even more readily than can undocumented migrants.

The exact magnitude of the effect this has on migration into the United States is unclear, but the effect of subsidization is usually the same everywhere we look: you get more of what you subsidize.  This is true of student loans, it’s true of ethanol, and it’s true of migrants. From the perspective of sound economics, we know that the government cannot possibly know the “correct” number of migrants, nor should the regime be free to centrally plan some arbitrary number. On the other hand, it is extremely unlikely that the number of migrants—even with lax border enforcement—would be as high as it is without the regime’s incessant subsidization of migrants, both legal and illegal.

How Many Foreign Nationals Live in the United States?

According to the Congressional Research Service, it is estimated there were approximately 45-46 million foreign-born residents of the United States in 2022. Of those, about 53 percent, or 24 million, are naturalized citizens. In addition to this, there are 12.9 million legal permanent residents (LPRs) and approximately 11 million more are so-called “illegal” immigrants. All combined, we find that 23 million non-citizen US residents—i.e., “foreign nationals”—are living in the United States. As we will see, many of them receive financial support and resources from US taxpayers.

(This measure does not count the approximately 3.2 million nonimmigrant workers, students, exchange visitors, diplomats, and their relatives who have sought only temporary residence in the United States. These nonimmigrant groups are not eligible for public benefits.)

Are Foreign Nationals Eligible for Welfare?

Among immigrant foreign nationals, most are eligible for some form of taxpayer-funded “public” benefits.

For example, undocumented foreign nationals may legally access “treatment under Medicaid for emergency medical conditions,” a variety of in-kind services such a soup kitchens and temporary housing, and “programs for housing or community development assistance or financial assistance administered by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development…”

That’s just the direct federally-funded services. State and local governments may elect to provide additional services at local taxpayers’ expense.

The welfare programs available to legal foreign nationals are far more broad. Legal foreign nationals (LPRs) can access most federal welfare programs after an initial five-year period. This includes non-emergency Medicaid, CHIP, TANF (i.e., cash assistance), food stamps, and SSI.

Access to these programs has been further broadened by state governments. As noted by the National Immigration Law Center:

Over half of the states have used state funds to provide TANF, Medicaid, and/or CHIP to immigrants who are subject to the five-year bar on federally funded services, or to a broader group of immigrants. A growing number of states and counties provide health coverage to children, young adults, or pregnant persons regardless of their immigration status. Several states offer or will offer health coverage to older adults regardless of their immigration status. And five states (California, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington) and the District of Columbia offer or will offer public or private health coverage with state subsidies to all otherwise eligible immigrants regardless of their immigration status.

It is not necessary to be employed to maintain legal permanent resident status, even if one is of working age. After all, LPRs are not the same as temporary nonimmigrant workers like H1B visa holders: “Green card holders [LPRs] can also collect unemployment compensation the same way citizens do …nor can a legal permanent resident be deported for being unemployed.”

Legal immigrants do not jeopardize their legal status by applying for additional taxpayer-funded benefits such as food stamps: “SNAP enrollment will NOT affect your ability to remain in the United States, get a green card/permanent resident status, keep your green card/permanent resident status, or become a U.S. citizen.”

In short, nearly the full gamut of taxpayer-funded welfare programs are open to legal foreign nationals after the initial five-year bar. Moreover, many migrants aren’t even held to that, including “[r]efugees, people granted asylum or withholding of deportation/removal, Cuban/Haitian entrants, certain Amerasian immigrants” and other specific groups are exempted from the waiting period.

All these foreign nationals, regardless of status, are free to send their children to government childcare centers known as “public schools.”  Because of this, state and local governments disproportionately bear the burden of supporting undocumented immigrant foreign nationals.

How Much Do Foreign Nationals Use American Social Benefits?

A variety of organizations have attempted to quantify the extent to which both naturalized immigrants and current foreign nationals use welfare programs.  This study from the National Academies concludes that the data

show[s] that the immigrant households use several programs, most notably food assistance and Medicaid, at higher rates than do households led by the native-born. …This higher use of welfare programs by immigrants is attributable to their lower average incomes and larger families.

In the NA study, immigrant households with children utilized welfare programs at higher rates in nearly every US state. In California, 61.5 percent of households utilized welfare while 40.7 percent of immigrant households did. In Texas, the same measures are at 66.3 and 44.2 percent, respectively. Similar proportions are found in Florida and New York.

This report unfortunately does not differentiate between naturalized immigrants and foreign nationals. However, given that naturalized immigrants tend to earn 50 to 70 percent more than non-citizen immigrants, it is safe to conclude that foreign nationals utilize welfare programs more than naturalized immigrants, and therefore more than the native population.

Similar studies from the Center for Immigration Studies show similar results.

  • In 2012, 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) reported that they used at least one welfare program during the year, compared to 30 percent of native households. Welfare in this study includes Medicaid and cash, food, and housing programs.
  • Immigrant households have much higher use of food programs (40 percent vs. 22 percent for natives) and Medicaid (42 percent vs. 23 percent). Immigrant use of cash programs is somewhat higher than natives (12 percent vs. 10 percent) and use of housing programs is similar to natives.

Note that these conclusions reflect immigrant households rather than immigrant individuals. This is an important distinction because many immigrant households contain citizen children who became citizens at birth due to being born in the United States. Thus, the household may contain both citizens and foreign nationals—some of whom may be illegal foreign nationals. These households, however, enjoy access to welfare programs by virtue of the underage members’ citizenship. Thus, immigrant households can access taxpayer-funded healthcare, food stamps, housing programs (and more) through native-born children.  Similar trends persist when non-citizen households are measured separately from all immigrant households combined.

Some researchers insist that welfare benefits for foreign nationals ought to be measured only on an individual, per capita basis. For example, in this report from the CATO institute, the researchers conclude that for 2020, native-born residents, on average, cost welfare programs $8,335 per capita while immigrants cost welfare programs $6,063. These proportions can vary by program. For example, the per capita Medicaid cost for immigrants is $1,859, while the cost for native-born residents is $2,081. The use of food stamps is similar ($190 per capita for immigrants versus $214 per capita for natives), Immigrants’ usage of SSI is slightly higher ($188 per capita) than it is for natives ($169 per capita)

An older CATO study (from 2013) does break out non-citizens from immigrants overall. Here, the researchers conclude that low-income immigrants use food stamps more than naturalized immigrants, and only slightly less than native-born residents. When it comes to taxpayer-funded healthcare: one in five non-citizen immigrants collect this benefit while slightly more than 1 in 4 natives collect this particular form of taxpayer largesse.

The Migration Policy Center reports that in 2021, 32 percent of immigrants (both citizen and non-citizen) used government health insurance. That’s comparable to 38 percent of natives.

Yet, even by this conservative measure of immigrant welfare usage, the best we can say is that immigrants use welfare at a rate slightly lower than that of natives. One could argue that, at the low end, immigrants receive (per capita) about 70 to 75 cents for every welfare dollar that goes to natives.  That’s not exactly “good news” given that overall federal spending on social benefits amounts to about half of the annual $6.3 trillion budget and is clearly out of control. The fact that natives get most of this is hardly an exoneration of immigrants. It’s more of an indictment of native-born Americans, millions of whom exploit their most productive fellow citizens every month to keep the government benefits flowing.

In any case, the largesse flows freely to foreign nationals also, which means immigration to the United States is heavily subsidized. We should not be surprised when a lot of immigrants show up to get their share.

*****

This article was published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

STAY INFORMED

Receive regular news, commentary, and analysis straight to your inbox.

POWERED BY

DrRichSwier.com | ThePricklyPear.org

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.