theindependent--2019-04-02--US spies helped UAE to monitor BBC journalist and other media figures investigation finds

US spies helped UAE to monitor BBC journalist and other media figures, investigation finds

A group of American hackers who once worked for US intelligence agencies helped the United Arab Emirates spy on a BBC journalist along with a host of other prominent media figures, it has been reported.  The American operatives worked for Project Raven, a secret Emirati program that spied on dissidents, militants and political opponents of the UAE monarchy, a Reuters investigation found.  They attempted to break into the iPhones of at least 10 journalists and media executives, the report states – including a Middle East-based BBC reporter and the chairman of Al Jazeera news station.  The apparent aim was a fishing exercise to find confidential information that could be used in the UAE’s ongoing dispute with their Gulf rival Qatar and to stifle dissent.  But the revelation has potential global reach in that it highlights how highly-trained former US intelligence officials have increasingly become guns-for-hire in the cyber wars of other nations – with little oversight from Washington.  At least nine spies working on Project Raven had previously been employees of the US military or National Security Agency.  The hackers started targeting journalists in 2017 in an apparent attempt to find evidence that the Qatar royal family was funding what the UAE’s authoritarian monarchy perceived as media coverage likely to ferment dissent towards their rule.  The UAE is run as a hereditary autocracy and political dissent is not tolerated.  Among those attacked were Giselle Khoury, the Beirut-based host of BBC Arabic’s The Scene, a current affairs show specialising in interviews with Middle Eastern leaders. Another was Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani, the chairman of Al Jazeera.  When informed of the hack, Ms Khoury said: “They need to spend their time on making better their country, their economy. Not on having Giselle Khoury as a hacking target.”  Reuters say the attacks utilized a cyber weapon called Karma – a piece of software which allowed Raven operatives to remotely hack into iPhones by inputting a target’s phone number or associated email address. Unlike many exploits, Karma did not require a target to click on a link sent to an iPhone, it is said.  The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. The US Department of Defense and the NSA also declined to comment.  But Dana Shell Smith, America's former US ambassador to Qatar, told the news agency she found it alarming that American intelligence veterans were able to work, as effective mercenaries, for another government.  “Folks with these skill sets should not be able to knowingly or unknowingly undermine US interests or contradict US values,” she said.  We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.  At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.


theindependent--2019-04-07--Social media firms including Facebook and Twitter to be legally forced to protect users

Social media companies including Facebook and Twitter will be legally required to protect their users under government plans to introduce a regulator.  The long-awaited government proposal, which would also see bosses of companies personally liable for harmful content on their platform, will ensure internet firms meet their responsibilities, which will be outlined by a mandatory duty of care.  “The era of self-regulation for online companies is over,” culture secretary Jeremy Wright said.  “Voluntary actions from industry to tackle online harms have not been applied consistently or gone far enough.”  The joint white paper from the Home Office and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport says the regulator will have the power to issue “substantial fines, block access to sites and potentially impose liability on individual members of senior management”.  The government is currently consulting on whether a new regulator is needed to enforce the rules or if they should use an existing one such as Ofcom.  The measures come amid concerns about the growth of violent content, disinformation and inappropriate material online.  In March, the father of Molly Russell urged the government to introduce regulation on social media platforms in response to the suicide of his 14-year-old daughter, who was found to have viewed content related to depression and suicide on Instagram before her death.  Prime minister Theresa May said the proposals were a result of social media companies’ failure to self-regulate.  “The internet can be brilliant at connecting people across the world – but for too long these companies have not done enough to protect users, especially children and young people, from harmful content,” she said.  “That is not good enough, and it is time to do things differently. We have listened to campaigners and parents, and are putting a legal duty of care on internet companies to keep people safe.  “Online companies must start taking responsibility for their platforms, and help restore public trust in this technology.”  The proposed new laws will apply to any company that allows users to share or discover user-generated content or interact with each other online, the government said.  The regulation will be applicable to companies of all sizes – from social media platforms to file hosting sites, forum, messaging services and search engines.  The proposal also calls for powers to force internet firms to publish annual transparency reports about the harmful content on their platforms and how they are addressing it.  Companies including Facebook and Twitter already publish reports of this nature.  In March, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg wrote an op-ed calling for governments to play a more active role in establishing regulation for the internet.  The home secretary, Sajid Javid, said tech firms had a “moral duty” to protect the young people they “profit from”.  “Despite our repeated calls to action, harmful and illegal content – including child abuse and terrorism – is still too readily available online,” he said.  “That is why we are forcing these firms to clean up their act once and for all. I made it my mission to protect our young people – and we are now delivering on that promise.”  However, former culture secretary John Whittingdale warned ministers risk creating a “draconian censorship regime” in their attempt to regular internet firms.  He feared the plans would send the wrong message to other countries which censor their people.  “Countries such as China, Russia and North Korea, which allow no political dissent and deny their people freedom of speech, are also keen to impose censorship online, just as they already do on traditional media,” he said.  He added that the UK regulator “must not give the despots an excuse to claim that they are simply following an example set by Britain”.  Daniel Dyball, UK executive director at the Internet Association, criticised the current scope of the proposals for being “extremely wide”, which could hinder their implementation.  “The internet industry is committed to working together with government and civil society to ensure the UK is a safe place to be online. But to do this we need proposals that are targeted and practical to implement for platforms both big and small,” he said.  “We also need to protect freedom of speech and the services consumers love. The scope of the recommendations is extremely wide, and decisions about how we regulate what is and is not allowed online should be made by parliament.”  The proposal received a positive response from children’s charities which have campaigned for regulation.  Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, said it would make the UK a “world pioneer” in protecting children online, and Barnardo’s chief executive Javed Khan said the announcement was “an important step in the right direction”.  Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, welcomed the proposed legislation but added that it needed to be backed up by robust penalties.  “The social media companies have spent too long ducking responsibility for the content they host online and ensuring those using their apps are the appropriate age,” she said.  “Any new regulator must have bite. Companies who fail in their responsibilities must face both significant financial penalties and a duty to publicly apologise for their actions, and set out how they will prevent mistakes happening in the future.”  In response to the proposals, Facebook’s UK head of public policy Rebecca Stimson said the company was looking forward to working with the government to ensure the regulation is effective.  A 12-week consultation will now take place before the government publishes its final proposals for legislation.


theindependent--2019-04-08--China aposforces millions of peopleapos to download app and earn points by following President X

China 'forces millions of people' to download app and earn points by following President Xi Jinping news

China’s government is forcing millions of people to download an app promoting president Xi Jinping and his Communist Party, according to reports.  Tens of millions of people use the “Study the Great Nation” (Xuexi Qiangguo) app, which allows users to earn points by following news about Mr Xi, such as watching videos of his international visits or answering quiz questions about economic policies.  Critics warn the app’s popularity is engineered by Communist Party officials, who put pressure on citizens to use the app and punish those who ignore it.  Study the Great Nation, which is a pun on Mr Xi’s name (Xuexi can be read as “Study Xi”), was developed by technology giant Alibaba and launched earlier this year.  It has since become the most downloaded app for Apple devices in the country, surpassing messaging app WeChat and viral media app TikTok, with state media claiming it has more than 100 million registered users.  The app has been compared to Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book” which was widely distributed during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.  “He is using new media to fortify loyalty towards him,” Wu Qiang, a political analyst in Beijing, told The New York Times.  Thousands of Communist Party officials have reportedly been ordered to ensure citizens use the app, with schools criticising students with low scores and companies ranking employees based on their usage.  Many employers reportedly require workers to submit daily screenshots to document their progress on the app or deduct pay if the app is not used frequently.  “It’s a perfect example of propaganda in the Xi era ... that appeals to China’s large online population,” Manya Koetse told AFP in February.  Ms Koetse studies social trends in China as the editor of What’s on Weibo, based on the popular social media website Sina Weibo.  The app is thought to be the latest attempt to solidify Mr Xi’s control over China.  Mr Xi is considered one of the most powerful Chinese leaders since Mao and could rule the country indefinitely – the Communist Party removed presidential term limits in March 2018.  The president’s political theory, known as Xi Jinping Thought, was officially incorporated into the Constitution of the Communist Party of China in 2017, putting him among the country’s most significant leaders.  Efforts to crack down on criticism in recent years have included banning search terms related to political dissent and banning Winnie the Pooh, due to memes likening the character to Mr Xi.  It is not known how closely the government can track users on Study the Great Nation, although the app requires a mobile number to register and a national identification number for some features.  “You cannot divert attention away from it,” Haiqing Yu, an Australian professor who studies Chinese media, told The New York Times.  “It’s a kind of digital surveillance. It brings the digital dictatorship to a new level.”


theindependent--2019-12-03--Thich Tri Quang: Buddhist monk who wielded political might during the Vietnam War

Thich Tri Quang was a Buddhist monk who led waves of protests that brought down South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and later contributed to growing American ambivalence about the Vietnam War.  For about three years during a critical phase of the war, from 1963 to 1966, Tri Quang, who has died aged 95, commanded headlines as a figure of international interest if not outright intrigue. Clad in grey robes, he appeared on the front of Time magazine in 1966. “Lean, well muscled, with a sensual electricity, in every gesture and blazing eyes that can mesmerise a mob, Thich Tri Quang … has long been South Vietnam’s mysterious High Priest of Disorder,” the article read.  Part of the fascination surrounding Tri Quang – Thich is a religious title, akin to the reverend – stemmed from what to western observers sometimes seemed the contradictory nature of his objectives. He was variously described as the great champion of Vietnam’s Buddhist majority and a radical sowing political dissent in an already tortured land. At times, he was called a communist; at other times an anti-communist.  In 1963 he was granted a haven in the US embassy in South Vietnam after escaping government raids on Buddhist pagodas. But by 1966 he charged that Vietnam was “oppressed by two pressures: the communists and the Americans”.  Tri Quang (the name means “brilliant mind”) was born Pham Quang in Diem Dien, a village in the central province of Quang Binh that would later become part of the communist North. He was the son of a farmer and became a monk at age 12 or 13, a practice not unusual in Vietnam. He settled in Hue, which after 1954 became part of South Vietnam.  Early on, Tri Quang was inspired by the struggle against the French colonial rule that ended with the conclusion of the first Indochina war in 1954 and the division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel. He was also concerned with what he described as the “unity of the Buddhist faithful” across Vietnam.  He first came to prominence in 1963 as a leader of protests that led to the ousting of Diem, the first president of South Vietnam, in a US-backed coup that November. Diem was Catholic, with a brother who was a powerful archbishop, and most of the protesters seeking his overthrow were Buddhist.  Tri Quang reportedly employed spies in the Diem government and armed monks with insecticide sprayers filled with vinegar and red pepper. Hostilities reached a flash point on on 8 May 1963, when South Vietnamese soldiers fired on a group of Buddhists flying a Buddhist flag in Hue. Nine people were killed.  Protests culminated with the ritual suicide a month later of the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who was soaked with gasoline and then sat lotus style as he burnt to death on a Saigon street. That image ricocheted around the world and pushed President John F Kennedy to reconsider US support for Diem, who was ultimately assassinated in the coup.  After Diem’s death, to the chagrin of US officials who wished to see a more stable South Vietnam amid the ongoing war with the North, Tri Quang mobilised his followers to help overthrow a succession of governments and their holdovers from the Diem regime.  A second Buddhist uprising, again with Tri Quang as a principal leader, erupted in 1966 during the government of Nguyen Cao Ky, revealing the extent of fissures within South Vietnamese society and government.  The protests, which were eventually crushed, were regarded as an unwelcome development in the US, which by then had deepened its involvement in war with the deployment of combat troops.  Little is known about Tri Quang’s activities after the end of the Vietnam War. He reportedly spent a period under house arrest at his pagoda. In its 1966 cover story, Time reported that Tri Quang lived for at least one period in a small cell at his pagoda, where he did not partake of meat, cigarettes or alcohol. He rose with the sun, a reporter wrote, “spending a third of his waking day in prayer, a third in activity, a third in contemplation of his mistakes”.  Paul Mooney in Hanoi contributed to this report


bbc--2019-12-29--The best science long reads of 2019

The best science long reads of 2019

From the search for new dinosaur skeletons in the "Badlands" of Wyoming, to the push to return humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972, here's a festive selection of the best science and environment long reads published by the BBC this year.  This year, a team of scientists began an audacious dinosaur hunt.  They have started to excavate a square mile (260 hectares) of land at a secret location in the "Badlands" of Wyoming - and have already discovered a treasure trove of bones.  The researchers hope it will give them an unprecedented understanding of the dinosaurs that lived 150m years ago, and could help to solve the mystery of how these Jurassic beasts grew so huge.  Electric car future may depend on deep sea mining. By David Shukman  The future of electric cars may depend on mining critically important metals on the ocean floor.  That's the view of the engineer leading a major European investigation into new sources of key elements.  Demand is soaring for the metal cobalt - an essential ingredient in batteries and abundant in rocks on the seabed.  David Shukman visited a ship off the coast of Malaga in southern Spain, where a prototype mining machine was being lowered to the seabed to test the extraction of precious minerals.  Chernobyl: The end of a three-decade experiment By Victoria Gill  After the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, an area of more than 4,000 square kilometres had to be abandoned.  The accident turned this landscape into a giant, contaminated laboratory, where hundreds of scientists have worked to find out how an environment recovers from nuclear catastrophe.  An exclusion zone- covering more than two thousand square kilometres - was established around the plant. Its purpose was to protect the public and reduce the spread of radiation.  But, as the BBC's Victoria Gill found out, talks have been underway to re-draw the boundaries of this zone.  To the Moon and Beyond By Paul Rincon  The White House wants to send Americans back to the Moon by 2024. This mission will be the first to land humans on the lunar surface since 1972.  But this time, Nasa plans to do things differently. The Orion spacecraft, which will carry astronauts on their lunar journey, superficially resembles hardware used in the Apollo era. But it's packed with technology that was unimaginable in the 1960s.  The agency also plans to build a space station in lunar orbit, called Gateway, which could act as an operations control centre.  But can Nasa safely mount a return mission in just a few years, given that some critical hardware has neither been built nor flight-tested?  Twelve years to save the planet? Make that 18 months. By Matt McGrath  In July, Matt McGrath wrote about a growing consensus that the subsequent 18 months were critical for the climate crisis.  More than five months have now elapsed and, after a compromise at the UN climate conference in Madrid, the urgency is even greater.  Among experts on the climate, there's a sense that 2020 is the last chance saloon for protecting our planet from the dangerous effects of climate change.  The UN's climate conference in Glasgow next year - COP26 - could be a pivotal moment.  But because the summit in Madrid failed to clarify so many key issues, the talks in Glasgow have a mountain to climb.  How much warmer is your city?By BBC Visual and Data Journalism team  The world is getting hotter. July 2019 was one of the warmest months ever recorded - and July temperatures almost everywhere on Earth have been higher in the last 10 years compared with 1880-1900.  Find out how the temperature in 1,000 major cities across the world has changed already and how much it could rise by in the coming years.  Go to the page  Climate change: Your choices have a ripple effect. By Justin Rowlatt  Is individual action pointless in the face of climate change?  What difference does one person forgoing a lamb chop for a lentil bake make if the other 7,699,999,999 of us humans here on Earth don't do anything?  But 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg made headlines this year when she opted to travel to climate change meetings in New York on a racing yacht rather than fly there.  Ms Thunberg told the BBC the point was just as much about sending a signal to those in power as it was about individual contributions to tackling the climate crisis.  The island nation of Madagascar has a dubious accolade: it is the world leader in deforestation.  In 2017 alone, 500,000 hectares were cut down - half a million football pitches of rich, diverse rainforest.  It is home to species threatened by the pet trade, which will go extinct in the next few years if things don't change.  Now, some of the island's teenagers are mobilising to stop food production from destroying the island's rich rainforest ecosystem.  Microplastics: Seeking the 'plastic score' of our food. By Helen Briggs  Microplastics - defined as plastic chunks that are smaller than 5mm - are found everywhere on Earth. But we know surprisingly little about what risks they pose to living things.  There are many unanswered questions about the impact of these tiny bits of plastic, which come from larger plastic debris, cosmetics and clothes.  What's not in dispute is just how far microplastics have travelled around the planet in a matter of decades.  Scientists are now racing to investigate some of the big unanswered questions.  The vast sand scheme protecting the Norfolk coast. By Rebecca Morelle  A huge "sandscaping" scheme has been carried out in the UK, on the eroding Norfolk coastline.  Engineers created a 6km-long dune to protect Bacton Terminal, which supplies one third of the UK's gas.  The station is teetering just metres from a cliff edge. But the project is also intended to protect two nearby villages.  The Norfolk coastline is losing land every year as part of natural geological erosion. When big storms occur, several metres of coastline can vanish at once.


conservativehome--2019-02-25--Calling Conservatives New public appointments announced Chair of the Defence Science and Technolog

Calling Conservatives: New public appointments announced. Chair of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory – and more

Six years ago, the TaxPayers’ Alliance reported that “in the last year, five times more Labour people were appointed to public bodies than Tories”.  Since then, the figures have varied, and some Conservative members or supporters have been selected to fill important posts.  Nonetheless, it remains the case that, since it took office in 2010, our Party has punched beneath its weight when it comes to public appointments. One of the reasons seems to be that Tories simply don’t apply in the same number as Labour supporters.  To help remedy this, every week we put up links to some of the main public appointments vacancies, so that qualified Conservatives might be aware of the opportunities presented.  “The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) is a force for improvement through intelligent, responsible and focused inspection and regulation, and an organisation committed to putting children and students first. Ofsted is recruiting up to four individuals to its board. The board agrees Ofsted’s strategic priorities, targets and objectives. Its members provide constructive and supportive advice and challenge to Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector (HMCI) on Ofsted’s activities and performance, and monitor Ofsted’s performance and spending. Successful applicants will be strategic thinkers able to lead and influence at Board level. You will be able to consider issues from a big picture, macro perspective, and to support and challenge the executive in its strategic planning. Practical experience in a relevant sector, and theoretical understanding of the challenges and issues facing Ofsted will be crucial to your ability to contribute across the breadth of Ofsted’s activities.”  “Those who serve on the Boards of public bodies play a vital role in the life of this country, whether by improving the delivery of public services or providing independent advice to Government. Many people from a wide range of backgrounds across the whole of the UK participate in public life by being members of the Boards of public bodies. They are involved in making decisions that develop, shape or deliver government policy and public services. The information pack sets out the requirements for the RSH Chair position along with information on the work of the RSH and the appointment process. On 1 October 2018, through a Legislative Reform Order, the RSH became an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), sponsored by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which is responsible for the regulation of social housing. The successful candidate will have experience and understanding of how to operate effectively at Board level, and have knowledge of the social housing sector, regulation and finance.”  “Ofqual wishes to recruit up to five, high calibre individuals to the Board. We are looking to appoint at least one in each of the following areas: assessment and qualification design, regulation, finance and apprenticeships. You will be expected to support Ofqual’s aims and objectives and act as ambassadors for the organisation. We are looking for independent thinkers who will offer challenge and guidance to Ofqual’s executive to support their decision making. We seek applicants who have significant experience and expertise to bring to Board discussions and are committed to driving forward the work of the organisation. You will have: the ability to think strategically and to contribute to strategic development in different organisational contexts; the ability to build effective relationships at senior levels and/or between organisations; and the ability to support and provide challenge to Ofqual’s executive on both strategy policy and organisational matters.”  “The Defence Electronics and Components Agency (DECA) is an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), whose world-class workforce is proud to provide Defence with long-term agile sovereign capability. It delivers maintenance, repair, overhaul, upgrade and obsolescence management services for a range of avionic and electronic equipment.  Run along commercial lines, it also grows profitable business streams through the supply of electronics components products and services to its customers, the Army, Navy, RAF, Defence Equipment & Support (DES) and industry. The current Chair is standing down after four years’ successful stewardship of this complex organisation and a successor is now being sought to continue leading the Board in overseeing its important delivery programme and in transforming the organisation’s capabilities.”  “Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) is an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence (MOD).  The highly-skilled 4,000 strong workforce is committed to providing sensitive and specialist science and technology research, advice and analysis for MOD and the wider UK government.  The context is exciting and demanding, with continuing globalisation and the rapid development and emergence of new technologies, against a backdrop of ongoing shifts in economic and military power, all influencing our customers and, by extension, DSTL.  It plays a central role in helping MOD respond in a rapidly evolving and complex setting, and our advice to the Department’s Chief Scientific Advisor and other MOD stakeholders makes a major contribution to keeping our country safe.”  “The National Infrastructure Commission is recruiting for a National Infrastructure Design Group to advise on how best to embed design into the culture of infrastructure planning, to save money, reduce risk, add value, support environmental net gain and create a legacy that looks good and works well. We are seeking up to five Group members with relevant infrastructure and design expertise to contribute to the Group to ensure quality design in future infrastructure and to support the implementation of the recommendations on design made in the National Infrastructure Assessment. The Group will be chaired by Professor Sadie Morgan and will meet formally four times a year.”  “As our new Chair you’ll certainly be kept busy.  You’ll lead us through the next stage of our development. This will include working through and shaping a new future following the LEP review, introducing a Local Industrial Strategy, embedding new relationships, engaging across the County, harnessing all the strengths of a high calibre private sector led Board, bringing us a national profile and ensuring a relentless focus on delivery. You’ll serve all of Lancashire and every sector, visible to our 52,000 businesses and 1.5m people. You’ll see the big picture, understand what makes our economy tick and what’s needed to accelerate growth.  With deep private sector experience, you’ll be relentlessly commercial, but understand that real cross-sector partnerships create strong foundations for success.”  “The Public Weather Service Customer Group (PWSCG) is an independent body which acts as the customer on behalf of the public and public sector users of the Public Weather Service (PWS). It provides independent advice to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to enable the formal agreement of the PWS Customer-Supplier Agreement (CSA) between Government and the Met Office. It is responsible for defining the outputs required from the Met Office and holding them to account for delivering to a satisfactory level. The funding for the PWS is currently around £120M per annum, of which £100M is paid by BEIS. The PWS provides a coherent range of weather information and weather-related warnings that enable the UK public and professional bodies to make informed decisions in their day-to-day activities, to optimise or mitigate against the impact of the weather, and to contribute to the protection of life, property and basic infrastructure.”


hitandrun--2019-04-18--Middlebury College Cancels Speech by Polish Politician-Academic

[UPDATE: Also check out this analysis from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.]  Legutko was to speak on The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, and seems to be a pretty serious scholar:  Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades — and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. But having now lived for three decades under a liberal democracy, he argues that western democracy has over time crept towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet-style brutality. Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.  Mr. Legutko is a Member of the European Parliament.  He has served as the Republic of Poland's Minister of Education, Secretary of State, and Deputy Speaker of the Senate.  As a Member of the European Parliament, he chairs the Parliamentary Group of European Conservatives and Reformists and serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee.  He has been an active participant in recent debates over Brexit in the European Parliament.  Under communist rule, Legutko served as editor of the illegal samizdat publication, Arka. After the collapse of the communist regime, he co-founded the Centre for Political Thought in Kraków. One of Poland's foremost public intellectuals, Mr. Legutko is Professor of Philosophy at Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland).  As a specialist in ancient philosophy and political theory, he has translated and written commentaries to Plato's Phaedo (1995), Euthyphro (1998), and Apology(2003). He is the author of several books, including Plato's Critique of Democracy (1990), Toleration (1997), A Treatise on Liberty (2007), An Essay on the Polish Soul (2008), and Socrates (2013).  He had been invited by the Alexander Hamilton Forum, a faculty-run program, and his talk had been cosponsored by the Department of Political Science and the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs. But he drew opposition from faculty and students who argued that his views were "homophobic, racist, xenophobic, [and] misogynistic"; and the College administration canceled the lecture, writing (I quote here the Washington Free Beacon (Alex Griswold)):  In the interest of ensuring the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members, the lecture by Ryszard Legutko scheduled for later today will not take place. This decision was not taken lightly. It was based on an assessment of our ability to respond effectively to potential security and safety risks for both the lecture and the event students had planned in response.  At least some of the organizers of the planned protest against Legutko say they weren't trying to prevent Legutko from talking:  "In light of the recent announcement by the Middlebury College administration to cancel the Legutko event this afternoon, we are reiterating that it was never our intention to shut this event down, nor prevent the speaker from speaking," Taite Shomo wrote.  But the administration did prevent it.


hitandrun--2019-07-29--Even Amy Wax is Protected by Academic Freedom

Over at the American Association of University Professors' Academe Blog, I have a post on the latest brouhaha over Penn law professor Amy Wax and her views on immigration and the relative virtues of "First World" culture. There are those who say she should be fired or stripped of her teaching duties. There are those who say that she does not deserve the usual protections of academic freedom and that her speech rights should be curtailed. As usual, protections for free speech do not matter much when people are saying things that are pleasant and agreeable. Our tolerance is tested only when someone says something unpleasant and controversial. Read the whole thing here.  A taste below:  The Wax case is not a hard case. She should be fully protected from employer sanction based on the content of the views that she has expressed in her public writings and speeches. This principle is foundational to the modern protection of academic freedom, and there is no exception for faculty speech that makes students uncomfortable or contradicts a dean's opinion about the values of the institution. Wax is being criticized not merely for how she says things, but for the very substance of her ideas, ideas that are close to her scholarly endeavors. If her speech is not well inside the protected sphere of academic freedom, then academic freedom has little to offer those who might hold controversial views.  Of course, my views on the Wax case reflect the principles I elaborate and defend in my recent book, Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech, which oddly enough is available for purchase here.


hotair--2019-01-09--Academic who hoaxed grievance study journals could lose his job

Last October I wrote about the trio of academics, Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, who submitted bogus papers to supposedly serious journals and discovered that a number of them were not only accepted but praised. Now one of the professors who engaged in that attempt to point out the deficiencies in contemporary scholarship fears he is in danger of losing his job. Peter Boghossian, an associate professor of philosophy at Portland State University, says the university is considering accusing him of “fabricating data” in the papers which were so obviously absurd they bordered on satire. From Fox News:  Four days before Christmas, Portland State University Vice President Mark McLellan emailed Boghossian that he had been found guilty of “a clear violation of the policies of your employer” for hoaxing the journals without first seeking permission from an “Institutional Review Board”. Institutional Review Board rules mandate “informed consent” from “human subjects” – in this case, the fooled journal editors – meaning the university would have required him to get consent from the journals in advance of sending the hoax papers. Boghossian notes that would have defeated the whole point. Boghossian says the university has assigned him extra training as a punishment – but that a more serious punishment, to be determined by the university’s President and Provost, will also be announced soon, that may include his termination… The university is currently deliberating about finding Boghossian guilty on an additional charge of “fabricating data”. Boghossian’s published hoax paper about “rape culture and queer performativity” in dog parks extravagantly claimed to have examined 10,000 dogs’ genitals and then surveyed their owners about their sexual orientations. Boghossian and his co-authors say the claim to have such data was “clearly preposterous” and that the whole point was to see if the journal editors would pick up on the absurdity.  It seems pretty clear what is happening here. Entire fields of feminist and gender studies (what the academics call grievance studies) have been embarrassed by this experiment and the people who look like frauds for praising rewritten versions of Mein Kampf (just one example of a paper that was accepted for publication) are looking to lash out at those who embarrassed them.  And it’s not just the publication of the papers that started this. Last year Boghossian invited James Damore to speak on campus. That event was interrupted when someone cut the microphones to silence the speakers. Not long after that, all three of these academics hosted a talk on campus titled “Is Intersectionality a Religion?” They concluded that it was a kind of religion. Part of the irony of the reaction to them is that all three professors are liberal atheists. They aren’t remotely on the right themselves, they’re simply critical of the far left. That’s enough to make them enemies in modern academic settings.  Last November, a group of a dozen PSU professors contributed an anonymous hit piece to the student paper in which they claimed Boghossian’s efforts had damaged the value of a PSU degree. Though they wouldn’t put their names on the attack, they clearly wanted to see him punished or fired. “It is utterly incredible to me what the university has become,” Boghossian said at the time. Here’s a video made the day the article was published:  In case you’ve forgotten what the fake journal papers were about, here’s a video summary of the trio’s efforts. I strongly suspect one of the things motivating this backlash is how much joy these three took in mocking the grievance studies journals and their idea of academic rigor.


instapundit--2019-02-04--PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD Why arent illiberal universities challenged Its high time academics

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD:  Why aren’t illiberal universities challenged?  It’s high time academics…

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Why aren’t illiberal universities challenged? It’s high time academics started standing up to the campus thought police.


lewrockwell--2019-06-27--The Purge of Trans-Sceptical Academics

The Purge of Trans-Sceptical Academics

In the UK academy, we have become accustomed to students deploying the ‘No Platform’ policy to silence external speakers. Now this same censoriousness seems to have spread to the world of academic journals, as evidenced by the pressure put on two academics recently to stand down from their editorial roles.  In the first instance, Sarah Honeychurch, one of the editors of the journal Hybrid Pedagogy, received a formal email from Chris Friend, the journal’s managing editor, asking her to resign her position. This was all because she had signed a letter to The Sunday Times, in which a number of academics critiqued the close relationship between the LGBT charity Stonewall and UK universities. The letter argues that via the education section of the Stonewall Diversity Champions Programme, trans-awareness workshops are being delivered to academics which present only one set of ideas on gender, some of which are anti-scientific yet presented as objective fact.  In the second instance, Michele Moore (full disclosure: I have just co-edited a book with her), another signatory of The Sunday Times letter and honorary professor at Essex University, found herself the subject of a petition demanding her resignation from the journal Disability and Society, where she is editor-in-chief. This was sparked by the letter, but her thinking on transgender issues is well known: she is concerned that children with complex psycho-social needs, including autistic children, are vulnerable to being pushed towards transitioning, exposing them to a lifetime of medical intervention and potentially sterility. The Free Society Laurence M. Vance Buy New $19.95 (as of 02:50 EDT - Details)  Friend, in justifying his decision to push out Honeychurch, says that ‘just as marginalised students who feel unsafe in school face obstacles to learning, marginalised authors who feel unsafe in journals face obstacles to writing’. ‘Before any debate can take place, our authors must be safe’, he continues. ‘[This] is not a matter of shutting down an argument or censoring a perspective. It is about holding space for a group that needs protection against the entrenched powers of authority already in place.’  Dr Angharad Beckett, associate professor of sociology at the University of Leeds, and an editor at Disability and Society, resigned her post over Moore’s involvement with the letter. She says that Moore’s views are ‘damaging to the wellbeing of trans children and their families’ and that the Sunday Times letter ‘will do little to make transgender colleagues and students feel welcome in universities’.  Thankfully, Taylor and Francis, the journal’s publisher, is standing by Moore and has not asked her to resign. Jessica Vivian, a director at Taylor and Francis, tells The Times: ‘Having seen both the petition and social-media discussion online, we are working with the journal’s editor and board to put into place a review of the journal’s editorial policies.’ But, she stresses, ‘our focus remains on ensuring the journal continues to challenge, debate and publish research from across the full spectrum of views’.


nationalreview--2019-10-18--An Ominous New Rationale for Trampling on Academic Freedom

An NYU professor sees free speech as a tool of a ‘reactionary agenda.’  Free inquiry on campus has come under fire. Survey data make it clear that many students (especially conservative ones) are hesitant to speak up in class. Faculty at schools ranging from Portland State to Sarah Lawrence to Northwestern University have been castigated by campus mandarins for the sin of challenging the regnant groupthink regarding such issues as the legacy of colonialism, the role of campus support staff, and Title IX. In light of that, one might expect academics to man the ramparts of academic freedom in the name of self-preservation.  Even as faculty have been investigated and intimidated for questioning campus orthodoxy, however, the academy has stood mutely by. And yet campus apologists have felt obliged to insist that concerns over attempts to encroach on academic freedom are exaggerated or overstated. For all the hypocrisy and obfuscation, this has at least suggested a professoriate that thinks it’s supposed to defend free inquiry.  That’s what makes a recent turn so disturbing. Some in the academy increasingly argue that the whole notion of free inquiry is a reactionary blemish rather than a bedrock principle. Indeed, in a new book published by Oxford University Press, New York University professor Ulrich Baer has done a signal (if disheartening) service in articulating this ominous new stance.  NYU’s Baer, a professor of comparative literature, German, and English, and author of What Snowflakes Get Right, told Inside Higher Education last week that “the urge to block speech, which is really a reminder that the university’s purpose is to vet ideas and regulate speech so that teaching and learning can proceed, is related to a new generation’s realization that free speech has become a weapon for conservatives to undermine equality and the university itself.” He explained that free speech “is neither a blanket permission to say anything without consequence . . . nor identical with academic freedom.”  Got that? Forget all that talk of free, untrammeled inquiry. The university’s very purpose is to “vet ideas and regulate speech” — with an eye to the fact that “free speech” itself is a political “weapon” that threatens the “equality and the university itself.” What Baer offers is a pivot that would leave behind any squeamishness for those wishing to stifle conservative perspectives or maintain any romantic attachment to the age-old principles articulated by the American Association of University Professors.  You see, Baer argues, “universities get confused about their mission in the free speech debates and insist . . . that open-ended and unregulated inquiry is their purpose.” In fact, Baer says, universities are supposed to tolerate free inquiry only as a means for “advancing knowledge and seeking truth,” and the campus mandarins should serve as censors who determine which ideas and speech do so — and which do not.  This is the next front in the push by campus culture warriors to marginalize and silence those who hold objectionable views or values. Baer is explicit on this count, explaining that “free speech only has meaning in the university when it’s paired with the legally mandated principle of equality for all qualified participants.” He elaborates: “When a speaker proposes that some people are innately inferior, such speech conflicts directly with the university’s mandate to provide equal access to its facilities and resources.”  Now, I’m scratching my head trying to think of many campus speakers in 2019 who spend their time arguing “that some people are innately inferior.” But the game, of course, is that Baer and his cronies will define ideas and thoughts they dislike as fitting the bill — and they trust that progressive, weak-kneed campus censors will see things their way. Recent history suggests that they’re on safe ground, on that score.  Baer explains that this profound redefinition of the university reflects the “new generation’s” sense “that free speech can serve as a hollow concept to advance a reactionary agenda.” This cynical dismissal is a telling summation of how Baer and likeminded illiberal thugs view the ideals of free inquiry and academic freedom.  A century ago, in 1915, the American Association of University Professors, then led by John Dewey, set forth its founding principles, proclaiming, “The university cannot perform its [primary function] without accepting and enforcing to the fullest extent the principle of academic freedom.” In 1940, the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges declared, “Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good. . . . [And the] common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.”  The question for the academy is whether these values still hold sway. Will a left-leaning professoriate accept Baer’s convenient new doctrine and the chilling future it portends, or will it choose to say “Enough is enough” and reassert a faith in its enduring principles?


prisonplanet--2019-07-25--PSU punishes prof who duped academic journal with hoax dog rape article

PSU punishes prof who duped academic journal with hoax ‘dog rape’ article

The professor who duped academic journals into publishing bogus articles has now been banned by Portland State University from conducting any and all university-sponsored research and threatened with an administrative review of his “questionable ethical behavior.”  Peter Boghossian made headlines in 2018 after he and two other researchers set out to prove a point about the integrity of “peer-reviewed” academic publications by submitting several fake studies including an analysis of “dog rape culture,” and a piece that was simply a section of Hitler’s Mein Kampf reworked to include a smattering of academic buzzwords.  After seven of the team’s fake submissions were accepted and published by esteemed academic journals, a Campus Reforminvestigation led the publisher of the infamous Portland “dog park rape culture” article to question the origins of the submission.  This ultimately revealed the article as part of a larger effort by Boghossian and his team to demonstrate the inadequacies of these publications.  After his experiment, Portland State threatened Boghossian with disciplinary action, accusing him of conducting research misconduct. The school asserted that Boghossian had unethically conducted research on human subjects with his experiment. According to the school’s Institutional Review Board, Boghossian would have needed to obtain “informed consent” from the individuals reviewing his hoax articles in order for his actions to have been considered ethical.  The IRB conducted several reviews of Boghossian’s work involving his treatment of animal subjects, human subjects, and the possibility of “plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification.”  On July 17, the university sent Boghossian a letter informing him that he is now barred from conducting any “human subjects related research,” as well as any university-sponsored research.  The radical left will stop at nothing to intimidate conservative students on college campuses. You can help expose them.Find out more »  Boghossian is prohibited from conducting research until he “can show satisfactory evidence of understanding of the protections afforded human subjects,” by completing a “protection of human subjects” training course and subsequently meeting with the Assistant Vice President for Research Administration to “assure [his] understanding.”  The letter, sent from Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies Mark McLellan, also warns Boghossian that the university president, as well as his department chair, dean, and provost,  will be advised as to his “lack of academic integrity” and “questionable ethical behavior.”  McLellan then encourages Boghossian’s superiors to conduct “an appropriate academic and/or administrative review.”  In a statement to Campus Reform, Boghossian said that he has “not had time to process this yet,” noting that he has been busy recording an upcoming audiobook.  “I am incredibly grateful for the thousands and thousands of letters of support sent to PSU on my behalf,” Boghossian added, referencing the hundreds of letters from students, professors, and other scholars from around the world who voiced their support for the PSU professor, on which Campus Reformreported exclusively.  This article was posted: Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 6:27 am


sottnet--2019-04-17--Vanishing breed Philadelphia university president stands up for academic freedom

Vanishing breed: Philadelphia university president stands up for academic freedom

What happens when university students call on authority figures to censor students or staff at institutions of higher education? At Yale such students have been awarded prizes, at the University of Missouri they've been successful in forcing administrators to resign, at Claremont they were able to force their president to implement a long list of demands, and at Evergreen State College a throng of students were allowed to take control of the campus while harassed faculty sought refuge off-campus.This pattern of weakness has been dismaying for all people who value academic freedom and open inquiry. This week, however, a line has been drawn by David Yager, President of Philadelphia's University of Arts (UArts). In response to students calling for the censorship of Camille Paglia-one of the most admired humanities scholars in the world-he articulated a full-throated defence of intellectual freedom, showing administrators of supposedly superior universities what real leadership looks like.To understand what happened, one has to go back in time to 2016, the year when Camille Paglia recorded an interview with Ella Whelan of the British magazine Spiked. In this interview, Paglia criticised the transgender and feminist activist movements in her usual colourful and provocative style. She queried whether every single case of transgenderism was genuine, and. While controversial, Paglia's comments. Part of her popularity comes from saying what no-one else has the courage to say.Yet it was only last week, after UArts student Joseph McAndrew-who identifies as "non-binary" and who stipulates their personal pronouns as they/their/them-began making posts on Facebook and Instagram, that a complaint against Paglia was made:After McAndrew made their social media posts, a petition was created and a protest was organised during one of Paglia's lectures on Nefertiti and Egyptian design , with a fire alarm being set off. The petition demanded that UArts sack Paglia, who has been a tenured faculty member since 1984, and replace her with a "queer person of colour." The text of the petition reads as follows:This particular protest and petitionWhile her work is hard to simplify and compress into a few neat sentences, anyone with a passing familiarity with Paglia's career would know that transgressive ideas around sexual and gender expression is one of the central themes of her work. The notion that she "oppresses" transgender people is as ill-informed as it is illiterate.Paglia's career as an academic and public intellectual has coincided with the hollowing out of humanities departments by ideologues and activists intent on undermining the very principles that such departments were created to uphold. While English Studies lecturers joined the flock of Foucault worshippers in the '80s and '90s, Paglia maintained an interest in close-reading and the teaching of the Western Canon.Her fame has fluctuated with the political correctness of America's cultural atmosphere. In the early '90s, she became a celebrity as she pushed back against the stifling conventions of bourgeois feminists, and in recent years she has been increasingly sought out again as authoritarian, illiberal students, academics and administrators have stifled dissent on campuses and within academic and artistic communities. In an interview with Quillette last year, Paglia commented on the sad state of humanities departments:Readers of Quillette will be familiar with the wasteland that Paglia describes. On a podcast with Joe Rogan last year, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt gave an intriguing explanation of the underlying logic that motivates such protests, likening them to a status game for the student-activists. You can't understand these protests unless you think about the social milieu that these students exist in, and the incentives that reinforce their behaviour. After every social media post calling for someone to be censored or deplatformed, for ostensibly humanitarian or compassionate reasons, an activist will receive "likes" and attract more followers. A quick perusal of the social media posts of Joseph McAndrew, Camille Paglia's self-appointed Torquemada, is a case in point:The problem with status games is that they often turn toxic. They can be dangerous to the individuals who engage in them-whether it's drinking games, drag races or boxing matches-and also toxic to outsiders. In his podcast with Rogan, Haidt likened this type of activism to the head-hunting rituals of teenagers in Melanesia or Papua New Guinea.Status games notwithstanding,in an email sent out to staff and students. It read:At Quillette we hope David Yager's moral leadership becomes a turning point in the defence of free thought. We raise our glasses to him and to Philadelphia's University of the Arts.


cbsnews--2019-05-06--Service academy athletes may be able to delay duty to play pro sports Trump says

Service academy athletes may be able to delay duty to play pro sports, Trump says

The Trump administration is considering allowing athletes at service academies to delay their active duty service so they can play sports professionally first, President Trump announced in a ceremony honoring the Army Black Knight football team at the White House Monday.  "I'm going to look at doing a waiver for service academy athletes who can get into the major leagues like the NFL, hockey, baseball. We're gonna see what we can do and they'll serve their time after they're finished with professional sports," Mr. Trump told the audience in the White House Rose Garden, giving few details on how such a waiver would work or how it would benefit the military.  "I think it's a great idea, I think it's really fair, too," the president added, generating applause from the audience for the proposal.  It's a big day for sports at the White House, where Mr. Trump presented the Army Black Knights with the Commander-in-Chief's trophy and plans to present Masters champion Tiger Woods with the Medal of Freedom as well. Mr. Trump has praised Woods for his career comeback.  "Congratulations to @TigerWoods., a truly Great Champion," the president tweeted after Woods' victory last month.  But there are lots of other pressing matters in Washington Monday. Democrats want special counsel Robert Mueller to testify, and are threatening to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress. Meanwhile, the Dow plummeted Monday after Mr. Trump threatened to level new tariffs on China while the U.S. and China are negotiating a trade deal.


instapundit--2019-04-18--SAD Storm Clouds Over Tulsa Inside the academic destruction of a proud private university A

SAD:  Storm Clouds Over Tulsa:  Inside the academic destruction of a proud private university.  A …

SAD: Storm Clouds Over Tulsa: Inside the academic destruction of a proud private university.  A Harvard Business School professor recently predicted that up to half of all American colleges and universities will go bankrupt in the next ten to 15 years. While this may be a worst-case scenario, universities have for years been offering an increasingly inferior product at unsustainably high prices to an ever-more skeptical group of prospective students. Many institutions below the top tier are scrambling to respond to the collapse of the higher-education bubble by jettisoning the liberal arts and pumping up the practical ones: health care, computer science, business, and other technical fields that promise to yield jobs immediately after graduation. This approach has been employed in a particularly crude and short-sighted manner at the University of Tulsa, where a new administration has turned a once-vibrant academic institution with a $1.1 billion endowment and a national reputation in core liberal arts subjects into a glorified trade school with a social-justice agenda. Our story is worth telling, because we have been hit by a perfect storm of trends currently tearing through the American academy: the confident ignorance of administrators, the infantilization of students, the policing of faculty, the replacement of thinking with ideological jargon, and the corporatization of education.


sputnik--2019-03-14--UK Academics Alarmed Over Cambridge Unis Bid for Military Research Into PSYWAR

UK Academics Alarmed Over Cambridge Uni's Bid for Military Research Into PSYWAR

The project, called the Human Social Science Research Capability (HSSRC) programme, was designed to deliver research into human capabilities, ostensibly the aim of building a better military.  According to a Ministry of Defence presentation, it focused on six areas of research, which includes personnel, training and education, humans in systems, human performance, and enhancing medical systems and capabilities.  The sixth area was titled "understanding and influencing human behaviour"; specifically, the research would cover "the challenges of rapidly developing information technologies and their impacts on social interactions and cohesion within and across generations and cultures" as well as "automation and cyber warfare and their influence on trust in technologies and democracy".  The government earmarked £69 million ($92.4 million) for the HSSRC project; if selected, Cambridge would receive up to one-tenth of this money over four years. Its researchers would also receive £20m in research funding, while the university would also be able to compete for research funding worth £42m.  Cambridge's General Board of the Faculties approved the bid in June 2018, and the university was among the four shortlisted institutions at the final stage of the bidding process, but eventually decided to pull out for unclear reasons. Cyberwarfare is 'Dangerous As It's Put Us On Path of New Cold War' – Activist  The Defence, Security and Technology Laboratory — the agency within the Ministry of Defence that placed the tender — mentioned "potential reputational risks" of the programme, vowing to mitigate them through "a targeted communications effort" which would stress "the positive impact of the University's involvement".  According to the Guardian, a spokesperson for DSTL said that this research was focused on "communicating with overseas audiences and deterring adversaries who threaten the UK's interests".  Varsity reported that over 40 Cambridge academics sent a letter to the vice-chancellor, saying that the university is not supposed to "involve staff in armed conflicts by acting as a supplier of contract research to the MoD".  "Undertaking government-funded contract research of this nature is troubling enough, but looking to profit from it is shocking. What kind of paying clients did you imagine would have wanted to buy services such as these?" they were quoted as saying.  A senior university manager was quoted as saying that it was "entirely appropriate" for researchers to apply for the tender.  It comes weeks after hackers exposed the activities of the Integrity Initiative — a US government-led project which is ostensibly devoted to combating disinformation but appeared to be mostly focused on targeting Russia's influence in Europe.  According to the exposé, the Integrity Initiative consists of a network of clusters involving pundits, academicians and journalists, which are meddling in the domestic affairs of EU member states and waging an information campaign targeting Russia.


thedailyecho--2019-10-04--New university laboratory will lead national infrastructure development

SOUTHAMPTON is set to be at the centre of developing Britain's infrastructure with the opening of a new facility.  The University of Southampton has officially opened its National Infrastructure Laboratory (NIL), which will provide researchers and students with state of the art equipment to aid their projects.  At the heart of the facility is the Large Structures Testing Laboratory, with a four-metre-deep reinforced concrete floor.  This will be where the strength of heavy-duty components such as railway tracks, bridge beams and wind turbine blades will be tested to their limits under loads of up to 50 tonnes, increasing in future to 250 tonnes.  The NIL also includes a geotechnical centrifuge, which will allow researchers to simulate the behaviour of an infrastructure component in service conditions.  William Powrie, professor of geotechnical engineering at the university said: "Infrastructure and urban systems underpin modern life.  "Our new facilities, which will be open to researchers from around the world, will support research to ensure that our infrastructure is affordable, adaptable, resilient and transformational.  "Our research in rail infrastructure has underpinned innovation and design improvements for several years.  "This new investment by Network Rail will accelerate customer focused improvements in performance, cost-efficient design and carbon neutral construction.  He added: "Decarbonisation of the infrastructure and the way we use it, to help avert the climate catastrophe, will be a major goal."  As well as taking on new research projects, existing programmes led by the University of Southampton will continue in the laboratory.  These include 'Track to the Future', which aims to develop a railway track that will cost less and last longer.  Chief executive of National Rail, Andrew Haines, said: "The laboratory will increase our ability to keep trains running in the face of extreme weather, reduce infrastructure failures and downtime for repairs, and reduce the cost to the taxpayer of maintenance.  "It will make it easier to test new ideas, realistically test the demands of heavy rail use, and speed up the delivery of essential improvements.  "I’m looking forward to seeing the developments that come out of this and other partnerships, as we work together to give passengers the service they expect and deserve."


sputnik--2019-05-03--Cambridge Slammed for Bizarre Choice of White Academic for Slavery Study

Cambridge Slammed for 'Bizarre' Choice of White Academic for Slavery Study

Phillips questioned Cambridge's appointment of Prof Martin Millett of Fitzwilliam College — to lead a two-year investigative research of ways the university "contributed to or benefited from the Atlantic slave trade and other forms of coerced labour during the colonial era."  Following a televised interview where he criticized the choice of a white academic to lead the study on "Cambridge's entanglement in the legacies of slavery," he posted on Twitter:  Phillips used artificial intelligence programmes used to make decisions on mortgage applications and insurance premiums, producing worse outcomes for representatives of ethnic minorities, as an example.  "If (Cambridge) really wanted to tackle this issue of racism, instead of putting these guys in a basement somewhere to look at plantation records from 200 years ago and come up with stuff everybody already knows, they could put some of their brilliant people into this," he said.  Cambridge University responded to the criticism, saying that it has commissioned an eight-member Advisory Group to oversee this two-year inquiry.  "The panel represents a diverse range of experience — with five out of eight members from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background. The investigation will also be drawing on the wide views of the BAME academic community. ‘The relationship between artificial intelligence and racial bias is a topic of study at Cambridge's Centre for the Future of Intelligence and features in our landmark AI Ethics Roadmap recently published with the Nuffield Foundation," a Cambridge spokesperson said.  READ MORE: UK Banks Less Likely to Refund Black, Old or Poor Victims of Fraud — Report


lifesitenews--2019-12-04--UK schools directed to massively incorporate gay, trans themes for kids as young as 5

UNITED KINGDOM, December 3, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — A major LGBT lobbying group has produced sweeping guidelines for British schools designed to indoctrinate children beginning at age 5 in every primary school subject area and in every grade level by embedding gay, lesbian, and transgender themes and examples.  The “voluntary guidance” authored by Stonewall, an LGBT lobbying group roughly equivalent to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in the United States, was sponsored by the Government Equalities Office (GEO) and Pearson, a U.K.-based education assessment and publication powerhouse, using a £1-million grant awarded to LGBT organizations, according to a report in the Sunday Times.  The effort is timed to coincide with the new relationships and sex education (RSE) courses scheduled to take effect in September, 2020. While parents will be permitted to exempt their children from lessons on sex, the relationships portion of the curriculum is mandatory.  A review of the suggested guidelines, which touch upon every area of study, reveals an unvarnished intent to thoroughly normalize homosexuality, transgenderism, and LGBT relationships in young minds.  The 56-page document, titled “Creating an LGBT-Inclusive Primary Curriculum,” targets every subject a young student encounters, including math, science, and even physical education and religion classes.  Here are some suggestions from the guidebook, revealing a constant emphasis and repetition of examples focused on households headed by two gay dads or two lesbian moms: • Pretend to be guests at Fatima and Shanika’s wedding. Share out the biscuits so that everyone has two. How many biscuits are left? • Eddie’s mums tell him that his grandad is coming round at 5:30. He wants to practice using his watch. Draw the hands on the clock face to show what his watch will look like at 5:30 • Laura builds a tree house with her mums. The perimeter of Laura’s tree house is 12m. What could the area be? • Nita and her dads want to go on a healthy picnic. What foods could they take? • Jamal is helping his mums choose material to make a coat, what materials would be the best to use? Why? • Dean and Ishmael have bought a holiday home in Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands. Fuerteventura is warm and windy, so water evaporates quickly there. They want to avoid having to top up their swimming pool, so should they use normal water or salt water in their pool? • Introduce the rainbow flag and discuss the meaning of the different colours. You might also want to look at the trans flag and the bi flag. Children design and make their own flag to celebrate diversity and different families. • Design and make a castle for King and King from the ‘King and King’ books. • Introduce the idea of the AIDS memorial quilt and other memorial quilts. Make a class or year group quilt with the theme of celebrating diversity — each child contributes a square. • Learn about Alan Turing’s role in cracking the enigma code in World War II, Roberta Cowell’s role as a fighter pilot or Joesphine Baker’s role as a spy. Be sure to highlight their LGBT identities as well as focussing on their roles in the war. • Learn about Sappho’s love poetry as part of your topic about Ancient Greece. • Help to pack a bag for Emma, who is going on a sunny holiday with her mums. What clothes should she take? • Children use holiday brochures to choose a honeymoon destination for Simon and Pete. They should act like travel agents and persuade Simon and Pete that their chosen destination is the perfect one. Encourage children to research the different countries and to be aware that Simon and Pete might be worried about facing discrimination. • The music world is full of visible role models. Whether your children are in Early Years or Year 6, you can use the music of LGBT artists such as Queen, The Pet Shop Boys, Little Ax Broadnax, Josephine Baker, Janelle Monae, Years and Years or Frank Ocean as a stimulus for their work. This work would also provide the opportunity for the children to learn more about an artist’s LGBT identity. • Listen to ‘Same Love’ by Macklemore. Write a rap about acceptance that could replace Macklemore’s rap. This could also be used as an opportunity to discuss the idea of being an ally to the LGBT community, as an opportunity to discuss stereotypes or to discuss homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in general. • Use books with LGBT themes as a stimulus for programming based activities or artwork or challenge your children to research an LGBT hero. • Whilst the children are getting changed for PE, make use of the time to show them videos which challenge gender based stereotypes. • Highlight an inspirational sports person every week, be sure to include LGBT role models such as Tom Daley, Keegan Hirst, Lee Pearson, Nicola Adams or Claire Harvey. • As part of learning about families, weddings and traditions, read ‘King and King.’ Discuss that King and King had a church wedding or blessing, in line with Christian traditions. • Compare different weddings from across different faiths, including non-religious weddings. Children could even create an order of service for the wedding or civil partnership of a same sex couple. • When learning about religious naming ceremonies, teach that some trans people choose to have a ‘naming ceremony’ or blessing following their transition. • As part of your work on festivals, learn about LGBT Pride as a celebration of diversity and as an event that promotes respect. You could even plan your own school based Pride celebration.  Publication of the guidelines met with a sudden backlash.  Tanya Carter of the Safe Schools Alliance —a group of concerned parents, grandparents, teachers, and others— told the Times, “We are concerned that the aim of challenging homophobia is being used to sneak gender ideology into the curriculum.”  “It is being taught as fact that children can be born in the wrong body and are able to change sex, neither of which is true,” she added.  Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, told the Times that Stonewall’s campaign for “acceptance without exception” as disguising a “manipulative agenda aimed brazenly at our youngest and most impressionable.”  “The innocence of our children is being robbed by introducing them to concepts they cannot be expected to understand and from which they should be protected,” continued Williams. “This curriculum is deeply subversive. It should be scrapped.”  Others took to Twitter.  “Stonewall has been going into schools for some years now.... Why?” asked Dr. Sarah Rutherford. “It is a lobby group that is pushing an ideology of gender identity under the LGBT banner. What better way than having access to young impressionable minds. This is not for children’s benefit.”  “Stonewall has lost it,” asserted Wendy Wheeler. “This is where the worthy liberal aim of equality for all slips into hyper-liberal extremism which is socially destructive.”  “The state continues to drive a wedge-like stake between concerned parents & so-called education trailblazers who work in our kid’s Primary Schools,” tweeted Let Kids Be Kids. “All with the full autonomy for implementation in the hands of individual Headteachers.”


newspunch--2019-09-23--UK Schools to Teach 6yo Kids How to Stimulate Their Private Parts

UK Schools to Teach 6yo Kids How to ‘Stimulate’ Their Private Parts

Children as young as 6 years old will be taught about “stimulating” their own genitals in compulsory classes across hundreds of primary schools in the UK.  The controversial classes have caused outrage among parents who believe the lessons are “sexualizing” young children.  The new sex education teaching program called ‘All About Me’ is being rolled out across 241 primaries by Warwickshire County Council.  Rt.com reports: The program, in turn, is designed to be taught in accordance with the compulsory Relationship and Sex Education (RSE), which will be implemented all across the UK next September.  In the section called ‘Touching Myself’, the teachers are advised to tell the youngsters that “lots of people like to tickle or stroke themselves as it might feel nice,” including touching their “private parts.” The children are told that this is “really very normal,” despite the fact that “some people may get cross or say that it is dirty.”  The children are then warned that it is “not polite” to touch themselves in class or other public places, and they should “only” do it when they “are alone, perhaps in the bath or shower or in bed.”  Some parents were shocked by the program, saying that children of such young ages should not be exposed to mature topics like masturbation. “This sexualisation of our children is just totally inappropriate,” Matthew Seymour told the Mail on Sunday.  “They are calling it self-touching and they won’t use the term masturbation, but when you read it that’s exactly what they’re talking about.”  Parents who disagree with this type of sex education took their children from school when it was taught. A number of education experts and teachers criticized the program’s wording for being too vague and not suitable for primary schoolers.  “We never use the word self-stimulation, not in primary school. For us it is not appropriate,” teacher Lynette Smith said.  Even some politicians who support the idea of compulsory sex education are skeptical towards All About Me. Conservative MP David Davies was “furious” over the program.  “These classes go way beyond the guidance the Government is producing and are effectively sexualising very young children,” he said.  Warwickshire County Council, meanwhile, maintains that the lessons simply tell young students how to “distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate touching” and “recognise the difference between public and private behaviours.”  The council’s website says the program helps to develop the skills required for managing “healthy relationships,” builds “self-esteem” and allows the children “to explore personal identity.”  One of the program’s authors, education consultant Jonny Hunt, argued that “however uncomfortable adults may find it, children of all ages will self-stimulate from time to time.”


npr--2019-09-11--Should Black Athletes Go To Black Schools

Should Black Athletes Go To Black Schools?

An Alabama helmet on December 31, 2016, at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, GA. **Scott Donaldson/Getty Images** ****hide caption****  ****toggle caption****  Scott Donaldson/Getty Images  An Alabama helmet on December 31, 2016, at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, GA.  Scott Donaldson/Getty Images  _Top-tier black college athletes should take their talents to historically black institutions._ That's the argument that Jemele Hill is making in [a new piece for the Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10 /black-athletes-should-leave-white-colleges/596629/). She says that doing so could benefit both the colleges and the communities around them.  The piece, [It's Time for Black Athletes to Leave White Colleges](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/black-athletes- should-leave-white-colleges/596629/), argues that when highly-ranked black athletes even _look_ at HBCUs, it "threatens to crack the foundation on which the moneymaking edifice of college sports rests" — that foundation being black athletes drawing acclaim, attention, and money to primarily white institutions.  It's an argument that has drawn some criticism — Hill says she's been called a "segregationist" for even suggesting the idea. To that, she says, "those people don't know very much about HBCUs." (Of course, Hill is no stranger to that kind of critique. She famously drew the ire of President Trump and his supporters after referring to him as a [white supremacist](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2018/12/26/jemele-hill- stands-by-calling-president-trump-white-supremacist-i-thought-i-was-saying- water-is-wet/?noredirect=on) on Twitter.)  Hill spoke to _All Things Considered_ about the piece.  **Interview Highlights**  **On the history of student athletes at HBCUs**  That was exclusively where [black students] could go, and as a result you had a lot of the top talent. At that point in time you had a college like [Grambling State University](https://www.gram.edu/), which was basically considered to be what would be today's version of the University of Alabama, because they were that talented, putting so many players in the NFL over the course of their history. But obviously once there was desegregation, a lot of these black athletes began to go all over. HBCUs in the major revenue sports — talking about basketball and football — began to lose, or not have as much of a foothold.  If you look at the college landscape now, everybody pretty much knows [it] has become a billion dollar industry, given the television contracts, the money, the interest, the marketing, shoe deals, all of that. But black athletes in general are being exploited, because they're not being paid, and they're clearly the backbone of a lot of these universities, of which their labor has helped them become these huge powerhouses. You're looking at schools like Texas and Alabama who have a 200 million dollar athletic budget — not a school budget, just the athletic budget. All that is built on the backs of black athletes.  HBCUs generally speaking do not have large endowments, nothing that could equal any of some of the universities like Harvard. Why not take your talent to these HBCUs that once were the only place that you could go, and help to reimagine those universities from a financial standpoint the communities around them and to some degree kind of rebuild these historic institutions.  **On what it would take for this to work**  You would need a group, frankly, a whole exodus of athletes who would think really really really big picture in order for this to happen.  It can't be one or two, because one or two is not enough. There have been individual cases of a top-tier black talent going to these schools. But they need a wave of a conscientious effort on behalf of these athletes to do that, to help to rebuild these schools, the communities around them. And I think it will be a trickle down effect into strengthening essentially a huge base in the black community, which has always been kind of the black middle class. When you look at the number of lawyers, doctors, professionals that have come from HBCUs, I mean Kamala Harris is running for president. She went to Howard University. So when you look at the level of output that most black colleges have in general, to strengthen that even more with a very solvent, steady, stable financial base I think is just a huge benefit all around.  ****  **On the precedent for this kind of movement in athletics**  We see this happen a lot in college football and college basketball, where you have athletes who have been playing together in high school, maybe on the same team. Because a lot of these guys play on the same [AAU teams](https://aausports.org/), two or three of them will go to one university, because they all want to play together.  One of the more famous examples is [University of Michigan's] Fab Five: Jalen Rose and Chris Webber both are from Detroit, both had a relationship, and they got to know the other members — Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson and Jimmy King. And five freshmen went to the University of Michigan and changed college basketball.  I don't see why that couldn't happen for an HBCU. I mean look, we've seen a lot of these athletes. They have chosen to go to smaller schools or be walk ons sometimes at some of these bigger schools. My thing is like, why be a walk somewhere? Go to an HBCU.  I know I was speaking from a standpoint of utter utopia. It's a little bit more more challenging than that. But I do think it's possible. I think some of it has to be a concerted push, and some of this has to come from their own homes.  When I was making my college decision, no one talked to me about going to an HBCU. I'm from Detroit, and that's a black city, right? I knew other people who had gone, but nobody said, "Hey, did you ever think about going here now?" Two HBCUs wound up being on my final list of colleges, and I owe that to the _Cosby Show_ and _A Different World_.  **On the exposure athletes get at larger schools**  As we've seen always has been the case in sports, and really virtually anything entertainment based, is exposure goes where the talent is. So the exposure would be, to me, the least of the issues, because again, there are players in the NFL and NBA who went to black colleges and they were found. And I think that's part of what I got at in this piece is the mentality that some of these young athletes have. They think the schools make them.  Now I'm not going to pretend that if you go to a black college there are things you have to prove that say, somebody who goes to Oregon or Florida State doesn't have to prove. That being said, teams want to get better, and they want to go where the talent is, and it's the same with television networks. They follow where the audience goes and where the talent is.


npr--2019-11-10--Here's How 2 Schools Have Made Free College Work — For Decades

Here's How 2 Schools Have Made Free College Work — For Decades  Two colleges in Kentucky offer something that most university administrators can only dream of. Berea College and Alice Lloyd College charge students nothing for tuition.  While each developed unique business models that don't transfer easily to other schools, they do have some tips to help reduce the price of college tuition. More precisely — two tips and one caution.  Located in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains in central Kentucky, Berea College was founded by an abolitionist in 1855. It was the first interracial and coeducational college in the South.  When students couldn't afford to pay for tuition, school officials eliminated it.  "Berea College has not been collecting tuition from students since 1892," says Jeff Amburgey, Berea's vice president of finance.  To cover costs without tuition revenue, Berea's board of trustees did something almost 100 years ago that impacts its financial situation today. In 1920, the board ruled that any unrestricted money given to the college would be invested in an endowment to grow over time.  The endowment is now worth around $1.2 billion, and profits from the investments cover a large portion of what it costs to educate more than 1,600 students.  Most students come from Appalachia. They all come from low-income families. And none pays for tuition.  "A lot of people say, 'This has gotta be fake.' But I came here. And it's legit," says 22-year-old Hollie Jameson, who is finishing a nursing degree. She's the first in her family to go to college. "I will leave in May of 2020 with a free education as an RN. Absolutely no debt."  That's not normal. At least, not compared with her hometown friends. Jameson says, "I have friends in nursing schools here in Kentucky that say, 'Oh, my gosh, you're so lucky. Like, I already have $20,000 in debt and I'm where you are, and you have zero.' "  It's all made possible by that endowment.  Takeaway No. 1: If a college doesn't have one already, it should fund an endowment designed to reduce the cost of tuition.  Still, even with good investment decisions and some luck, it could take 50 to 75 years before an endowment completely offsets tuition revenue.  For the impatient who can't wait for 75 years, the next example — Alice Lloyd College — shows what's possible without a massive endowment.  The school started when Alice Lloyd relocated in the early 1900s from New England to the town of Pippa Passes in eastern Kentucky. An Appalachian mountain man persuaded her to educate the local kids. He gave her a barren strip of land along a creek, where Lloyd founded a school that would grow into a college.  Locals had no money for tuition, and students weren't asked to pay. Instead, they provided labor, building the campus and staffing it.  Money was always tight. In perhaps its most famous fundraising windfall, Lloyd appeared on the show This Is Your Life in 1955. At the end, the host asked viewers to send a few dollars to the college. Bags of mail overwhelmed the local post office, delivering around $200,000 in donations.  But while Lloyd never asked students to pay, she did ask them to go home and serve their neglected communities. Lloyd kept framed pictures of students on the wall. "If someone chose not to come back, she would turn the picture around backwards, so you couldn't see their face," says Jim Stepp, executive vice president at Alice Lloyd College.  Today, the college serves around 600 mostly low-income students. According to Stepp, about 85% of alumni return to live and work in Appalachia.  TaLaura Mathis, 21, from Manchester, Ky., is finishing a degree in biology. Next, she plans to study dentistry. "Where I come from, it's very poverty-stricken," says Mathis. "I really want to help blue-collar, hardworking people that just can't afford dentistry."  Student like Mathis are able to study at Alice Lloyd because of its unconventional budgeting method.  "When you begin with the concept that you're not going to charge out-of-pocket tuition, everything you do has to be built around that concept," says Stepp.  The college has a decent endowment, worth around $44 million. Alice Lloyd also relies heavily on fundraising.  Professors teach a heavier class load than at similar colleges. Also, Alice Lloyd doesn't give tenure, which might spark a revolt at other schools.  But there is one thing other colleges could learn from Alice Lloyd — the way it pays for new buildings.  "Typically, when colleges build buildings and they go into a lot of debt, you build that into tuition costs. Students have to bear that ultimately," says Stepp. "Here, we raise the money from private donors before we build."  On a campus tour, marketing director Katie Westerfield points out a new recreational center with a 550-seat gymnasium, which is still under construction.  "Even though it is not completed and won't be until the end of 2019, [this building] is fully funded at $20 million," says Westerfield.  Stepp says he understands how competition for students can make new facilities seem urgent. At the same time, he wonders, "How much debt should a college really go into as an institution? Do you need to put as much money into the facilities when students ultimately are going to pay for that through tuition?"  Takeaway No. 2: Don't do debt — it's too expensive.  Finally, the last lesson is really more like a caution.  Alice Lloyd and Berea do something that, at first glance, may seem like a good way for a college to save money. Both are work colleges — requiring students to work at least 10 hours a week.  The act of working is considered more important than learning any specific skill. Many students come from tiny towns where jobs are scarce. So these college labor programs may be a student's introduction to the culture of work.  Administrators at both Berea and Alice Lloyd praise the work program for building character, instilling values and helping young adults develop a professional mindset.  On the downside, students often work just two- or three-hour shifts. And every year, when seniors graduate, a quarter of the workforce must be replaced and trained all over again.  "It's not one of those items you would implement to offset some financial difficulties," says Berea's Amburgey.  And while college labor programs receive some federal funds, he says, "It is a lot of work to do this. It costs money to [run] the labor program."  Some colleges have tried to adopt the work-college approach only to give up because implementing the labor program was too expensive.  Also, research suggests that the work-college model is best suited for smaller institutions. In a chapter titled " 'Work Colleges' as an Alternative to Student Loan Debt" in The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U.S. Higher Education, Nicholas Hartlep, chair of Berea's Education Studies department, and Diane Dean, an Illinois State University associate professor, write, "creating mandatory jobs for all students may not be feasible in institutions that have larger enrollments. Even scaling up to 5,000 students could prove unfeasible, let alone employing enrollments of 12,000 to 16,000."  Instead, the authors suggest that larger schools could try a hybrid of the work-college model. "Although transforming entire existing colleges into this model may be unrealistic and improbable, interest is growing and it may be possible to create similar small programs on campuses to offer as an option alongside other forms of financial aid."  Takeaway No. 3: The work-college model can help control costs. But it can also be expensive. Be wary.