Category Archives: Culture

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The Inky’s Editorial Board have weighed in: they think that genocide of the Jews is a subject for debate

This website has expended considerable bandwidth documenting the anti-Semitism on college campuses, the University of Pennsylvania in particular, and we have noted that, following the firing resignation of Penn’s President, Liz Magill, over her idiotic testimony in Congress, The Philadelphia Inquirer has been engaged in a half-hidden support of Dr Magill’s “context dependent” testimony, calling it a defense of free speech.

The newspaper’s Editorial Board had not opined on the subject until Thursday morning, but, as I had guessed, they came out along the same lines:

Despite Magill’s departure, Penn must stay the course on free speech issues | Editorial

It is essential that the university does not allow the recent chaotic series of events to further compromise its commitment to open expression and academic inquiry.

Continue reading →

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I’ll wait for more evidence before I believe this story.

Both Riley Gaines Barker and Collin Rugg posted a story which just plain sounds fishy to me. From Mr Rugg:

REPORT: A male volleyball player apparently snuck his way into a full women’s athletic scholarship to the University of Washington after concealing his biological gender since 12

Tate Drageset has verbally committed to play on Washington’s women’s volleyball team

One problem: Drageset is a male.

Drageset is the first known biological male to receive a full athletic scholarship for a women’s sport.

According to a report by Reduxx, Drageset’s transgender identity was hidden from the public, parents and even coaches for years.

One source says suspicions were raised when Drageset was 12 and playing against 14 year old females.

Drageset’s mom Stacey appears to be a far-leftist who was convinced her son was transgender since he was a toddler and published a children’s book on gender identity.

Mrs Barker’s story is shorter, but tells us the same thing. Here was their source: Continue reading →

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The media don’t like that deep pockets donors won’t tolerate anti-Semitism! Colleges really hate the fact that they are not somehow "above" the real world, but a part of it

If the questions had been whether calling for the genocide of blacks or the killing of homosexuals, there is no way on earth that university Presidents Liz Magill of Penn, Sally Kornbluth of MIT, or Claudine Gay of Harvard would ever have said that such decisions on violations of rules or codes of conduct would ever depend on the “context” of such speech. Nor would Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Inquirer, be telling us that Dr Magill’s “ouster” at the University of Pennsylvania is an attack on free speech, but a horrible racist who just had to go. And while the newspaper’s Editorial Board have not weighed in on the subject, the selection of articles and OpEd columns in the Inky is certainly on the side of allowing open debate on a question once thought completely settled. Continue reading →

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Well, of course they did!

Our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, loaded up with the #woke as it is, has been very, very upset about Israel defending itself from the Hamas attack of October 7th through the policy of trying to utterly destroy the terrorist group, and with neocon columnist Trudy Rubin, who loves her some warfare when it comes to the Russo-Ukrainian War, fretting that Israel is causing too many civilian casualties as they try to cut down the Hamas fighters hiding amongst the ‘non-combatant’ population, is now worried that former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill’s firing resignation under fire will have a “chilling effect” on colleges: Continue reading →

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Well, of course he doesn’t! Will Bunch doesn't like people in authority being held accountable for what they said

I will admit it: despite paying too much for my subscription to The Philadelphia Inquirer, I only infrequently read hard-left columnist Will Bunch’s stuff, but Christine Flowers pointed it out to me this morning. The distinguished Mr Bunch, whose Inky bio states that he “the national columnist — with some strong opinions about what’s happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government,” waxed wroth that University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill will shortly be Penn’s former President:

Liz Magill’s ouster at Penn will help the worst people take down free speech, higher ed

Critics celebrating the scalping of Penn’s president won’t stop there. Free speech, and college itself, are in grave danger.

by Will Bunch | Sunday, December 10, 2023 | 11:44 AM EST

A band of raiders never stops at just one scalp. Just minutes after the University of Pennsylvania’s president Liz Magill pulled the plug on her stormy 17-month tenure, under intense pressure for her handling of antisemitism questions on Capitol Hill, her chief inquisitor — GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York — was back on the battlefield calling for more.

“One down. Two to go,” a clearly ebullient Stefanik posted on X/Twitter, urging on her dream of an academic Saturday Night Massacre that would also take down the two college leaders who testified last week along with Magill — MIT’s Sally Kornbluth and Claudine Gay of Harvard, which, in a controversy with more ironies than a Jane Austen novel, happens to be Stefanik’s alma mater.

I’m old enough to remember, back in the days of quill pens and parchment print-on-paper only newspapers how columnists were limited to roughly 750 words, but Mr Bunch’s rant was 1,663 words long, so prepare for it if you click on the embedded link!

But what Stefanik promised on Saturday night, and what her allies are cheering on, goes well beyond a few high-profile resignations. She promised the current crisis — over what constitutes antisemitism on college campuses, and how administrators like Magill have been handling it — will lead to more congressional hearings on “all facets of their institutions’ negligent perpetration of antisemitism including administrative, faculty, and overall leadership and governance.”

This one’s pretty long, so I’ve moved the bulk of the article below the fold. Continue reading →

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The most important news this Saturday Yes, Liz Magill is gone, but Army beat Navy to win the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy.

I wrote, in a comment on one of Robert Stacy McCain’s articles, “The over/under on Dr Magill’s resignation date is Monday, December 11th. There’s a meeting of the Board of Trustees set for Sunday, Sunday! afternoon.” Well, the lovely Dr Magill didn’t make it to Sunday, resigning on Saturday.

Breaking: Penn’s Magil Resigns.

by Robert Stacy McCain | Saturday, December 9, 2023

Mere hours after I blogged about this (“‘Context Dependent’: Ivy League President Belatedly Realizes Maybe She Answered That Question About Genocide Wrong”), now the University of Pennsylvania’s embattled President Liz Magill has resigned:

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has resigned as president of the university in the wake of intense backlash over her failure during a recent congressional hearing on Capitol Hill to say whether advocating for the genocide of Jews is permissible on campus.

“Dear members of the Penn community,” the university began in its announcement. “I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania.” Continue reading →

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Journolist Linda Blackford needs to get out more often She was fooled by a statistic that anyone could have seen was bogus

No, that’s not a typographical error in the headline: The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

Linda Blackford’s biography blurb with what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal states that she “writes columns and commentary for the Herald-Leader. She has covered K-12, higher education and other topics for the past 20 years at the Herald-Leader.” You’d think that someone who has lived in and around Lexington for at least twenty years would be somewhat familiar with the Bluegrass State.

But, when the Williams Institute of UCLA’s law school reported that Kentucky had the highest percentage of homosexuals and transgendered people in the country, 10.5%, Mrs Blackford reacted with glee, and jumped right into a celebratory column. Unfortunately, that column is no longer available, because she had to issue a correction, using the same url:

It turns out Kentucky is NOT the gayest state in the U.S. | Opinion

by Linda Blackford | Friday, December 8, 2023 | 6:44 PM

Late Friday, the Williams Institute at UCLA issued an apology for a data error that said Kentucky had the highest rate of LGBTQ adults in the nation.

“We made a mistake, and we apologize to Kentucky and to you,” the release said. “We know there is a growing and thriving LGBTQ community in the Bluegrass State. But our report issued earlier this month incorrectly stated that Kentucky had the highest percentage of people identifying as LGBTQ. That percentage is 4.9 percent instead of 10.5 percent and in line with the national average of 5.6 percent.” Continue reading →

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Aren’t our universities supposed to be institutions supporting Western civilization? As for Presidents Gay, Kornbluth, and Magill, they're toast, and their careers are over; it's just a matter of counting down the days.

At least as of 9:58 AM this morning, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill still had a job, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story, “Penn President Liz Magill faces mounting pressure to resign from Capitol Hill as university backs her: The school says president Liz Magill is staying put while rebukes increase over her comments on antisemitism on campus.” But the hits keep on coming, From The Wall Street Journal:

Penn Donor Threatens to Rescind $100 Million Gift Unless President Is Ousted

Warning from financier Ross Stevens comes as congressional panel announces investigation into antisemitism at Penn, MIT and Harvard

By Melissa Korn and Joseph De Avila | Thursday, December 7, 2023 | 11:26 PM EST

The turmoil engulfing the president of the University of Pennsylvania over her handling of antisemitism on campus intensified Thursday as a major benefactor threatened to withdraw a $100 million donation. Continue reading →

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Is Penn President Liz Magill as dumb as a box of rocks?

We reported, on Tuesday, how University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill not just toast, but toast which has fallen on the floor, buttered side down, after The Philadelphia Inquirer noted her terrible performance before a congressional committee:

When given the chance, though, the presidents — Dr Magill, Harvard president Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth — at times didn’t directly answer, struggling to explain the point at which hate speech rises to the level of incitement of violence — or, when students or faculty should be disciplined for it.

“It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman,” Magill said when asked repeatedly if calling for the genocide of Jews violates Penn’s rules or code of conduct.

What? If the question had been about calling for the killing of blacks or Hispanics or homosexuals, is there any doubt, any doubt at all, that Dr Magill’s answer would not have been that it was a “context-dependent decision”?

At least as of this writing, Dr Magill still has her job, but I wonder just for how much longer that will be: Continue reading →