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Marcus Epstein Karate Chops His Way to Racist Superstardom

06/06/2009 - 3:00pm

On July 7, 2007, Marcus Epstein had too much to drink and stumbled onto Georgetown’s scenic, shop-lined M Street, walking in no particular direction. At 7:15 p.m., he bumped into a black woman, called her a “nigger,” and struck her in the head with an open hand. An off-duty Secret Service agent was watching. Epstein “jogged away,” according to the agent’s affidavit, and when Epstein was finally chased down, he “continued to flail his arms while being taken into custody.”

And that wasn't just any strike - the U.S. Attorney's office called it a "karate chop." He's scheduled to be sentenced on July 8 ( Read more >

Liberty University Bars College Democrats, Democrats to Apologize

05/27/2009 - 8:33pm

Liberty University Campus Democrats were banned Earlier this month, the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University decided to decertify its chapter of the Campus Democrats club. This means the group cannot use Liberty University's name on any of its materials, can't advertise events on campus, and can't use any university funds. Why? Because its parent organization, the national Democratic Party, "supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the 'LGBT' agenda, Hate Crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc".

Rachel Maddow goes into more detail:

The University and the Doomsday Left

05/07/2009 - 4:14pm

"Don't mourn; critique!"
- Joe Hill, had he been a Ph.D.

As I was doing research for my book on student power, I dug through a seemingly endless stack of books, essays, and articles by various scholars of the left, bemoaning the current state of higher education.

Some took the "corporatization" angle - showing how powerful private interests had hijacked both the operations and fundamental principles of most universities and colleges, while killing tenure positions, raising tuition, and using undergrad and grad students as labor pools to break wages of non-student school employees.
Others took the "militarization" angle - describing the insidious and deadly relationship between the military-industrial complex and the academy (what Henry A. Giroux creatively appends the "military...

The Shadow of Kent

05/04/2009 - 11:32am

Today marks the 39th anniversary of the massacre at Kent State University.

There are some great posts about it this year:

Angus Johnston has a good recap over at studentactivism.net, and reminds us of the racial context that protest was situated in:

In early 1968 police had fired on anti-segregation activists at South Carolina State University, killing three. And it would not be the last — nine days after Kent State, two students at Jackson State College in Mississippi were killed in circumstances similar to those of the South Carolina shootings.
But unlike in South Carolina and Mississippi, the students killed at Kent State were white.

DailyKos blogger kainah has a ver...

When it Comes to Education, Democrats Hate Democracy

04/22/2009 - 6:38pm

Late last month, Obama's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came out swinging against elected school boards:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday that mayors should take control of big-city school districts where academic performance is suffering.

Duncan said mayoral control provides the strong leadership and stability needed to overhaul urban schools.
[...]
He acknowledged Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso, asking how many superintendents the city had in the past 10 years. The answer was seven.

"And you wonder why school systems are struggling," Duncan said. "What business would run that way?"

After the forum, Duncan told The Associated Press that urban schools need someone who is accountable to voters and driving all of a city's resources behind children.

"Part of the reason urb...

The Shallowness of Techno-Libertarian Education

04/21/2009 - 5:18pm

A good portion of the online tech community* has always had a strange kind of schizophrenic politics - when it comes to their online doings, they act like libertarian socialists. When it comes to the "real world," they act like libertarian capitalists. Contributing to an open source project, seeding a torrent, helping out on troubleshooting forums, uploading cam versions of newly-released films, giving away serial numbers for Microsoft Word: these are all actions entirely antithetical - and harmful - to market relations. Using the term loosely, they're essentially acting communistically. Yet ask many of the same people about their political views and you're more likely to hear about Ron Paul or Milton Friedman than Noam Chomsky or Karl Marx.

Case in point: here we have a university professor who aims to further commodify education by using open source projects (which tend to undermine commodity relations). Read more >

Obama's Education Policy is "giving George W. Bush a third term"

04/17/2009 - 6:16pm

Obama hearts Bush on Education Policy! I just ran across a great article from Education Week looking at the striking similarities between Obama's Department of Education and George W. Bush's.

The writer also interviews the always-awesome Alfie Kohn, teacher union officials, and some right wing policy people (Bush Administration, AEI, etc.). It's one of the best mainstream analyses of Obama's education priorities that I've seen in awhile.

The money quote is pretty early on in the article:

"He is operating almost in a straight line from President Bush," said Diane Ravitch, an education historian at New York University, who co-writes a blog for edweek.org. She has criticized core elements of Mr. Obama’...

New School Occupation Redux: Summaries and Analysis

04/13/2009 - 1:37pm

The New School Free Press has a nice timeline of events up, as does NYC Indymedia; the ever-reactionary NYULocal has a few photos from the short-lived occupation, as well as a piece prodding the NYU Administration to expel the NYU students involved. The New York Post interviews New School President Bob Kerrey, who idiotically laid out the terms of his own resignation:

This is the second student protest to unseat Kerrey in five months, but the former Senator from Nebraska said he is resolved to ke...

New School Students Re-Occupy 65 5th Ave

04/10/2009 - 10:00am

Reports started flooding in early this morning, as a large group of New School students occupied and locked down the campus building at 65 5th Avenue. This action has seemingly come out of the blue, and it's hard to nail down a lot of specifics about what's going on. Whereas just the cafeteria in the building was taken last December, this occupation is aiming to control the entire building. The occupying students aren't affiliating themselves with either rival New School radical student group (Radical Student Union and New School in Exile), but I think it's safe to say there's a ton of overlap.

Cops are on the scene, and there are conflicting reports as to whether they've gotten inside the building at this point. The occupiers have a blog going:

http://reoccupied.wordpress.com/

There's also a FAQ, and a Read more >

Students Defy Right Wing Politician and Screen Porn Flick at UMD

04/07/2009 - 11:43am

University of Maryland screening of Pirates II Stagnetti's Revenge - featuring Senator Andy Harris and the Student Power

Student organizers with the Student Power Party screened a portion of the high-budget porn/satire "Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge" last night, after a panel discussion on censorship and free speech.

The film was originally to be screened last week in the theater of the student union in conjunction with a talk about safe sex - but once Maryland state legislators in heard about it, conservative lawmakers headed by State Senator Andrew Harris threatened to pull all $400+ million of state funding to the school if it went ahead with the screening. UMD Administration was all too happy to comply, all the while insisting that they did it of their own accord...