education

WI school board votes to ban ‘political messages’ such as BLM, pride flags in classrooms

Published

1 year ago

August 22, 2022

Is the woke agenda’s time coming to an end in our education system? One Wisconsin school board may be an indication of districts saying ‘enough is enough.’ One student of a Wisconsin school board fighting back against pride flags and Black Lives Matter (BLM) flags in the classroom put it simply and plainly:

“I am not controversial. I am not political. I am a person.”

The Kettle Moraine School Board vote was held in a “packed room last week” as students, teachers, parents and “community members” debated and ultimately voted in favor of banning the pride and BLM flags from classrooms due to political messaging.

“Teachers and administration will not have political flags or religious messaging in their classroom or on their person,” Superintendent Stephen Plum said ahead of the vote, according to Fox 6.

The vote ended “in favor of keeping a code of conduct in place that the school’s superintendent had interpreted as banning teachers from displaying political and religious messages in classrooms” reports Fox News.

“The political messages include ones such as gay pride flags, BLM flags and ‘We Back the Badge’ signs. Only one school board member voted against the ban, saying he made the decision after speaking with concerned students and staff.”

The policy also includes banning teachers from including their preferred pronouns in email signatures.

Plum told the school board that the district’s interpretation of the policy — which prohibits staffers from using their positions to promote partisan politics, religious views and propaganda for personal, monetary or nonmonetary gain — changed following a legal analysis.

“The fact is, the majority of students don’t want or need this, so catering to the minority only encourages the envelope to be pushed further,” another student said.

Always ready for a controversial fight, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin is investigating the policy, and comparing the banned pride and BLM slogans to those such as “Support our Troops”, “Believe Women” and “Save the Planet.”

“By some people’s definitions, all of those things are political” said Christine Donahoe of the ACLU of Wisconsin.

education

Department of Education Office of Civil Rights opens investigation into Harvard University

Published

2 days ago

November 30, 2023

Sara Carter Staff

On Tuesday the United States Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights opened an investigation into Harvard University in order to determine if the school has fulfilled legal obligation to respond to the increase in antisemitic incidents after Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on October 7th.

The university agreed to cooperate with the investigation in a statement issued Wednesday. “We support the work of the Office for Civil Rights to ensure students’ rights to access educational programs are safeguarded and will work with the office to address their questions,” the statement read.

The DOE has also opened investigations into Columbia University, Cornell University, Wellesley College, and the University of Pennsylvania this month over “discrimination involving shared ancestry” under Title VI.

According to a letter from the Department of Education obtained by the Boston Globe

the investigation was prompted after a complaint which stated Harvard “discriminated against students on the basis of their national origin (shared Jewish ancestry and/or Israeli) when it failed to respond appropriately to reports of incidents of harassment,”

National Review reports that while the Office of Civil Rights does not typically disclose which specific complaints prompted an investigation, there have been several high-profile incidents of antisemitism at Harvard and other Ivy league universities in recent weeks.

Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman sent an open letter to Harvard president Claudine Gay earlier this month which cited the confrontation at the “die-in” and urged her to take action to protect Jewish students.

“Jewish students are being bullied, physically intimidated, spat on, and in several widely-disseminated videos of one such incident, physically assaulted,” Mr. Ackman wrote. “On-campus protesters on the Widener Library steps and elsewhere shout, ‘Intifada! Intifada! Intifada! From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall be Free!’”

Harvard President Claudine Gay released a statement about “combatting antisemitism” on November 9:

“I affirm our commitment to protecting all members of our community from harassment and marginalization, and our commitment to meeting antisemitism head-on, with the determination it demands,” Gay said. “Let me reiterate what I and other Harvard leaders have said previously: Antisemitism has no place at Harvard.”

Among the antisemitic events that have circulated national news are how just days after the Hamas attack, a 19-year-old Columbia student was arrested for allegedly assaulting an Israeli student who was trying to prevent the suspect from tearing down posters of Israeli hostages. Also at Cornell, a 21-year-old student was arrested for allegedly threatening to murder and rape his Jewish classmates on an anonymous online message board.