9 UC Berkeley Law School Groups Ban Majority of Jews from Speaking
Nine student groups at the University of California Berkeley Law School have banned any speakers that support Israel or Zionism, meaning that the overwhelming majority of Jews will be excluded from addressing those groups.
Civil rights attorney Kenneth L. Marcus noted in the Jewish Journal that the new “progressive” policy, on the campus that gave rise to the Free Speech Moment in the 1960s, amounts to an effective policy of antisemitism, and creates what are effectively “Jewish-free zones” at a public university.
Marcus wrote Sep. 28:
Nine different law student groups at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law, my own alma mater, have begun this new academic year by amending bylaws to ensure that they will never invite any speakers that support Israel or Zionism. And these are not groups that represent only a small percentage of the student population. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus. Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he himself would be banned under this standard, as would 90% of his Jewish students.
…
These exclusions reflect the changing face of campus antisemitism. The highest profile incidents are no longer just about toxic speech, which poisons the campus environment.
Now anti-Zionist groups target Jewish Americans directly.
A recent survey of the American Jewish Committee found that over 80% of American Jewish millennials believe that Israel is at least somewhat important to the survival of the Jewish people worldwide.
Some of the bans by anti-Israel groups are ironic. Israel is the only country in the Middle East to recognize LGBTQ rights, for example, and it is also the only country in the world to airlift Africans, en masse, to freedom and citizenship, as Israel has done with Ethiopian Jews.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Berkeley Law Dean Blames Media for Reporting On Jew-Free Zones
Kenneth Marcus, the former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, described a move by some Berkeley Law groups to ban speakers who support the existence of Israel, effectively most Jews, as creating, “Jewish-Free Zones”.
Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky responded by arguing, “There Are No ‘Jewish-Free’ Zones on the UC-Berkeley Campus”.
What’s Chemerinsky’s comeback?
To state it plainly: There is no “Jewish-Free Zone” at Berkeley Law or on the UC-Berkeley campus. The Law School’s rules are clear that no speaker can be excluded for being Jewish or for holding particular views. I know of no instance where this has been violated.
Allow me to explain the controversy that sparked this misguided furor.
After that confident opening, Chemerinsky’s argument boils down to it hasn’t happened yet.
“A handful of student organizations—fewer than 10 out of over 100—initially adopted the by-law,” he writes.
That’s 9 out of over 100. Or somewhere in the neighborhood of 10%.
If 10% of student organizations (if even 1%) had adopted bylaws banning most black speakers, we’d be talking about nothing else for the next six months, resulting in multiple investigations, massive settlements and several books.
“Most importantly, no group has violated the Law School’s policy and excluded a speaker on account of being Jewish or holding particular views about Israel. Such conduct, of course, would be subject to sanctions.”
It takes a whole lot more to argue that Berkeley Law isn’t a “Jewish-Free Zone” than ‘No one acted on it yet”.
Chemerinsky can point out that the bylaws haven’t led to actual action, that we know of yet, but ridiculing concerns about discriminatory codes because they haven’t been, to his knowledge, enforced yet is a dishonest position.
“At this stage, all some student groups have done is express their strong disagreement with Israel’s policies. That is their First Amendment right. I find their statement offensive, but they have the right to say it. To punish these student groups, or students, for their speech would clearly violate the Constitution.”
Their speech isn’t at issue. They appear to have adopted bylaws that actually call for discriminatory activities.
“Student organizations signing the statement “will not invite speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.”
This is speech in the same sense that “No Blacks Allowed” and “No Jews, No Dogs” is speech.
There’s an argument to be made there, but that’s not actual civil rights laws. And no other group has discrimination legalized against it in this manner.
Chemerinsky goes beyond just minimizing what’s going on to attacking the Jewish Journal and other” some media outlets” that “have brought it worldwide attention.”
He claims that he is “convinced it is because they have a narrative they want to tell about higher education generally—and Berkeley, in particular—being antisemitic. They wanted to use this incident to fit their narrative, even though the facts simply don’t support the story they want to tell.”
This is frankly despicable.
Chemerinsky has presented no contradictory facts. He’s spun the existing ones. He argues that it somehow shouldn’t be an issue if 10% of student organizations ban Jews and that it’s a non-issue until someone is specifically banned. Had 10% of student organizations committed to banning Asian speakers, without action having taken place, the response would be dramatically different.
In a previous interview, the dean, who is an anti-Israel leftist, had admitted…
“The reality is, the message is seen by many students as antisemitic,” Chemerinsky told J.
Chemerinsky, speaking to J., added that “to say that anyone who supports the existence of Israel — that’s what you define as Zionism — shouldn’t speak would exclude about, I don’t know, 90 percent or more of our Jewish students.”
Now Chemerinsky backpedals to claim that the measure seen by many students as antisemitic and which would exclude 90% of Jewish students is a non-issue created by the media.
This is what bad spin and a worse coverup of campus antisemitism looks like.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism
More and more, he (BIDEN) reveals the hands of puppeteers and the influence of handlers — making him appear psychologically unsteady and unable to think on his feet, a leader unerringly late to the table on important issues and ill equipped to face adversity and change.
The public can see the obvious immigration lies
What has become apparent with the Biden administration is that officials apparently feel like they can say anything. Why? Because they know that the media will cover for them and their leftist policies, acting as though what they say is the truth even when facts present a contrary view.
The Reckless Inauthenticity of Joe Biden
As the Biden administration's progressive agenda rages on, shell-shocked Americans are asking themselves, "How could so much go so wrong so fast?"
From inflation to energy, immigration to crime, Afghanistan to fentanyl, President Biden has kept America lurching from crisis to crisis, failed policy to failed policy, debacle to debacle — obsessed with dismantling the Trump legacy and deliberately charting a radical course that is proving ruinous to the country. America is burning, and Joe Biden doesn't seem to care.
After his surprising win in the 2012 South Carolina Republican primary, Newt Gingrich explained his victory on Face the Nation: "I think the number one thing people look for in difficult times is authenticity. They want somebody who is what he seems, somebody who is comfortable with himself, somebody who's able to have force in what he's saying or she's saying because they actually believe it."
BLOG EDIOR: PROFILE OF A TYPICAL SOCIOPATH!
Well, difficult times are here, and when Americans look at Joe Biden, they see a man divided, a man who isn't present in himself, a man without a defined sense of personal identity or an expressed set of values. Joseph Epstein, former editor of The American Scholar, noted, "Because Mr. Biden seems so without solid principles, so without clear politics, so unpresidential, the U.S. feels sadly leaderless," which "has contributed greatly to the deflating sense of hopelessness that seems to have swept over the country."
French philosopher Michel de Montaigne maintained, "The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself" — the idea that a person thinks of himself as an individual with a distinct identity and interior life, whose deepest sense of personal identification informs and inspires how he lives in the world. And when this interplay between the inner self and its expression in the outside world is harmonious, consistent, and aligned — then it can be said that one is living an authentic life.
Authenticity takes on paramount importance with respect to our elected officials. Ben Jones, assistant director of the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State, wrote, "When individuals entrust the responsibility of governing to representatives, they seek to know their representative's core commitments." Authenticity demands of those who speak for us, who do our bidding, and who are charged with maintaining our rights to exhibit the same high moral standards both in their personal lives and in the congruent exercise of their political duties.
Joe Biden, as our premier "representative voice" in government, portrays himself as the Healer-in-Chief. At his inauguration, he preached unity, to "right wrongs," "to stop the shouting and lower the temperature," and "to restore the soul and secure the future of America." We were asked to hear him out and to "take a measure of me and my heart." For almost two years, America has listened and taken his measure and has found him sorely lacking — body and soul. The Healer-in-Chief has become the Divider-in-Chief, who has done nothing to end "this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative against liberal," and in the process rails against the unvaccinated, MAGA Republicans, and the "semi-fascists."
Like an erratic king, he decrees cancelation of student debt to a select few — thumbing his nose at the poor and the working class — making fools of those millions who have worked and scrimped and saved to pay off their loans. Like a petulant king, he berates us for deigning to question the wonders of his Inflation Reduction Act, which Mitch McConnell (and Penn Wharton, the CBO, et al.) said "won't reduce inflation any more than the 'American Rescue Plan' actually rescued America." Even one of Biden's own, Democrat congresswoman Elaine Luria, admits, "The Inflation Reduction Act. That might be the name, but it's a huge environmental bill."
In truth, Joe Biden's nearly 50-year tenure on the political stage reveals an astonishing lack of authenticity. Like electricity, he steadfastly seeks the path of least resistance. His record of about-faces on a whole range of policy issues is legendary: the filibuster, redefining marriage, mask and vaccine mandates, Saudi Arabia, the Hyde Amendment, fracking, and of course "China is going to eat our lunch? C'mon, man." The list is as long as his time in office. Joe Biden has virtually patented the art of the flip-flop into his own signature aesthetic, and whenever expediency calls, he's more than willing to do a quick one-eighty, slip a dagger between America's ribs, and walk away without shedding a tear.
But flip-flopping reveals deeper issues within Biden's inauthenticity. As a political chameleon, his lack of defining values and sound critical judgment doesn't inform any identifiable ideology, which has made him susceptible to dangerous shifts in the political winds — with his presidency succumbing to what many contend is an authoritarian mindset. Fearing rejection, Biden's constant shape-shifting is a result of what Gregory L. Jantz, Ph.D. believes is a marker of the inauthentic person: "instead of showing up as yourself, you show up as the person you think everyone else will like."
All of this brings us to President Biden's latest incarnation — a precipitously aging man without agency in the world. Almost daily, he proves that he lacks the belief and ability to act independently with a sense of self-direction, motivation, and control. More and more, he reveals the hands of puppeteers and the influence of handlers — making him appear psychologically unsteady and unable to think on his feet, a leader unerringly late to the table on important issues and ill equipped to face adversity and change.
As Biden and his manipulators see their political power in danger of slipping away, they seem untroubled by the unhappiness and suffering they have caused Americans. We are told to lower our expectations; reduce our standard of living; settle for less; admit that we are "spoiled," "high-class," and "unaccustomed to inconvenience" — or as Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, explains, "[t]his is about the future of the liberal world order and we have to stand firm" — decline is necessary, worse is better. How long will Americans have to endure these ever-increasing hardships? "As long as it takes!" Joe Biden barks. Suck it up, America. Live with it.
Now, amid the tempests of inflation, massive spending, illegal immigration, political polarization, plummeting poll numbers, and increasing voter backlash, many feel that the great implosion of the Biden presidency has begun. Its appetite for victims and chaos, dependency and impoverishment is fast approaching critical mass. Its delivery vehicle, the churlish, unrelenting progressive agenda, is proving to be intolerable and casting too dark a shadow over the lives and spirit of America and its people. The ideas that "America is not enough" and "If only America weren't America" ring more and more hollow every day.
In the end, we need a president who is fearlessly authentic, and in Joe Biden we do not have an authentic man. A piece of him is missing — there is no center. He's a bad salesman with a bad product, and simply put, he's not the one. There is nothing left in Joe Biden that America can live with.
Russell Paul La Valle is a New York-based political commentator whose work has appeared in many major newspapers, magazines, and online opinion websites. He is a former contributing editor to the philosophical think-tank the Atlas Society, and his commentaries can be found at https://russellpaullavalle.com/other-writing.
A Commie Coalition of Racists, Butchers, Liars, and Ghouls
Kamala cackles at Korea's DMZ. Braindead Biden speaks to ghosts. Wicked Witch Hillary curses America with lies. Halloween season must be here. Except the evil that Democrats do lasts all year long. Filled with racists, butchers, killers, liars, misanthropes, thieves, and snobs, the commie coalition of leftists in America pursues nothing but harm. Feasting on children, spreading fear and hate, they are the carnival horror show no sane person would dare permit through the gates. Wherever their power grows, Dems bring darkness (thanks, Green New Deal!), scary times, and frightening monsters. (Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself, after all.)
It is clear that the commie coven has cast a spell upon the country, transfixing too many otherwise rational-thinking Americans into supporting wicked things. Who could be in favor of explicitly judging people by the color of their skin? Who could support secretly grooming innocent children to partake in sexual fantasies? Who could promote mutilating a child's body as if "transgenderism" were a sacred rite? Who could demand that babies be sacrificed on the altar of convenience? Who could preach that freedom is sinful and that obedience to government is divine? Who could maliciously scare billions with the unscientific doomsaying of imminent climate apocalypse? Who could steal food and fuel from the poor, while global elites choose who will be lucky enough to eat? Who could teach Westerners self-loathing on such a grand scale? Surely only very wicked people could do such things. Or people who have become lost in the delusions of malevolent magicians who seed discord, spread lies, feed on pain, despoil innocence, and thrive on hate.
Leftism really is a curse because it twists minds into believing hideous things. Saying, "All lives matter," is somehow racist. Wanting to "Make America Great" somehow spreads hate. Treating people equally regardless of skin color promotes "white supremacy." Rewarding merit and hard work does, too. The less someone thinks of race, the more that person is condemned as "racist," while the more someone obsesses over race, the more "virtuous" that person is said to be. Only "racists" today treat people of all shades the same.
What a sick world the commies have built. White adolescent males have been intentionally left behind. Their rates for academic achievement have plummeted, while their rates for alcohol and drug dependence continue to rise. They are lonely, without purpose, and suicidal as never before, yet the merciless Marxists beat them over the head with allegations of their miraculous "supremacy." There are no scholarships for "white boys." There are no clubs where they are encouraged to belong. They are not invited to succeed. Books, television shows, and movies relentlessly paint them as the villains. The federal bureaucracy treats them as potential "domestic threats." The stories of their ancestors are rewritten as shameful tales best to forget. They have become the eternal whipping post for the hideously racist political left.
Where has compassion gone? To where has the dream of a colorblind world vanished? Why must young innocents be punished for perceived "sins" committed in the distant past? Who could possibly justify looking through a person's character and seeing instead nothing but oppressive hues? Only a race-obsessed commie coalition seeking to divide. Only hateful demagogues who maintain power by teaching others to despise.
In America, former president but lifelong Marxist Barack Obama can slander proponents of secure borders as racists, and nobody bats an eye. Babbling Vice President Harris can promise to disburse federal funds for victims of Hurricane Ian based on Americans' skin color, and corporate news talking heads applaud. Nancy Pelosi can justify millions of illegal aliens as necessary for picking crops, and America's most race-obsessed pretend not to hear. White victims can be violently targeted on the street by criminal gangs, and Democrat mayors cover up their race-based crimes. Beloved statues and monuments honoring the world historical achievements of America's Founding Fathers can be defiled and toppled, and no arrests are ever made. A white male waving the American flag or singing the National Anthem too proudly, however, is condemned for not proactively apologizing for the color of his skin. Hidden "racist" intent is seen lurking in every corner of society. Americans insufficiently dedicated to racial grievance are "canceled" for imaginary sins. Those unwilling to rewrite history are punished. Those who refuse to believe in "woke" delusions are derided. That's how the left helps evil win.
It has been said often that a culture can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable, and by any measure the West will soon be harshly judged. It was not enough to legalize abortion while promising to keep it rare. The killing of children had to be embraced, then universalized, then celebrated, and finally used as an absurd "human right" cudgel against its opponents. It was not enough to redefine the ancient institution of marriage when destroying the traditional family was the Marxists' ultimate goal. It was never about preaching "tolerance" for others when the political left steadfastly refuses to leave God-fearing Americans alone.
Young students forced to endure Marxist indoctrination may be surprised to learn that a short time ago there was no confusion over biological sex. Nowhere in the world did any culture, scientific body, or human rights group find it controversial to believe in the existence of biologically-defined women and men. Parents had no trouble distinguishing their daughters from their sons. Schools had no need to invent hundreds of "genders" to account for each human's uniqueness. Medicine had not been so politicized as to turn basic genetics upside-down. Only a few years of propaganda and brainwashing, though, were sufficient for thousands of years of human history to be tossed out. What unbelievable witchcraft it is to transform a basic fact of life into a divisive curse for argument and division. How sinister it is to teach toddlers outright lies. How barbaric it is to encourage boys and girls to take life-altering hormones and undergo irreversible surgeries before ever growing up. What ghoulish monsters the Marxists are for mangling bodies, manipulating psyches, and ruining lives.
As if teaching racism, butchering children, and killing babies were not enough, the left's horror tale is not complete without the frightful terrors of global warming. So committed they are to centralized government power and so obsessed they are with unchecked population growth that the Marxists would rather terrify the world with visions of destruction than let children grow up with hope. To tell kids that their parents are killing them with "fossil" fuels. To spread outrageous propaganda that the world does not have long to live. What sinister intent inspires such apocalyptic prevarications? What kind of evil people spread such fear and dread?
It takes a certain kind of monster to intentionally hurt and scare the weak. It takes a certain kind of villain to terrorize the poor. It takes awfully racist people to obsess over the color of children's skin. It takes misanthropic Marxists to spin lies of planetary horror. Yet the evil that men do succeeds only when good men choose to remain silent. So speak up loudly every day. Break the leftists' spells. Chase the wicked far away. And never be compliant.
Image via Max Pixel.
The public can see the obvious immigration lies
What has become apparent with the Biden administration is that officials apparently feel like they can say anything. Why? Because they know that the media will cover for them and their leftist policies, acting as though what they say is the truth even when facts present a contrary view.
A recent example of this is Vice President Kamala Harris's interview on Meet the Press. Harris told NBC News host Chuck Todd that the "border is secure." She went farther and blamed the Trump administration for what she admitted is a "broken immigration system."
"There is no question that we have to do what the president and I asked Congress to do. The first request we made: pass a bill to create a pathway to citizenship. The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system and particular[ly] over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed," she said.
The border is secure? The apprehension of illegal aliens entering the United States has nearly doubled since President Joe Biden assumed office in January 2021. As of July 2022, Border Patrol agents encountered 1.9 million migrants at the southern border in the fiscal-year-to-date (FYTD) 2022, which begins in October, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). That is already more than 1.73 million illegal aliens encountered at the border at the border in 2021 with three month still to go. In July alone, CBP agents apprehended 199,976 illegal immigrants. In June, the number was 207,933.
Harris blamed the lack of a new pathway to citizenship for these illegal aliens on lawmakers "playing politics." She said, "We don't have that in place because people are playing politics in a state like this [Texas] and in Congress. And by the way, you want to talk about bipartisanship on an issue that at one time was a bipartisan issue, both in terms of Republican senators and even presidents."
So it is the minority party's fault that the majority party in Congress can't pass the Biden administration's immigration reforms? The Democrats control both houses of Congress and could push through any policy changes they want. This means that the changes being proposed are probably so extreme that even some Democrats can't support them.
It's because the policies are essentially to throw open the borders to everyone, and we can see daily what the effect of that has been. Drug-trafficking from the south has increased. Activity among Latino gangs has grown.
Yes, many people coming are looking for a better life, but their first act in their new country is to violate the laws of that country.
It is not the Republicans' fault in Congress that illegal immigration has doubled during President Biden's time in office. It is not the Republicans' fault that more migrants are penetrating what Harris considers a secure border.
It is the Biden administration's fault for not sending a clear message that illegal aliens will not be allowed to enter the country or stay in the country if they are caught. It is the Biden administration's fault that existing immigration laws are not followed.
The administration needs to stop lying to citizens about the problem. It only makes Biden's people look like idiots because most Americans are aware of the problem (which is why the administration finds itself having to address it), and lying about it is not fooling anyone.
Michael A. Letts is the CEO and founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
George Soros with his Open Society money plus the Chicago Marxist contingency of Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Penny Pritzker, and Barack Obama are five people I'm inclined to group as the Biden puppet masters. Is there a pecking order among them? Does it matter? I suppose it matters to these individual megalomaniacs, but to anyone else? No. Just get that totalitarian state up and running. Maybe it will matter when all nations are under someone's thumb and one of those thumbs wants to be the one-world Big Thumb. Not to worry — I'm positive the Big Thumb will be chosen by consensus. SPRUCE FONTAINE.....NO, THE BIG THUMB WILL BE CHOSEN BY BIG WALL STREET BANKSTERS! THE VERY ONES WHO PERPETRATED THE BANKSTER
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