The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/university-of-san-diego" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of San Diego</a> has blocked a request from a group of college Republicans to bring Daily Wire host <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/author/matt-walsh" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Walsh</a> to speak on campus, with members of the campus’s student government calling Walsh’s beliefs “grossly offensive.”
Members of the USD College Republicans had hoped to bring Walsh to the private Catholic university, but were denied approval by campus administrators and the student government, which unanimously voted against approving an event with Walsh, <a href="https://yaf.org/news/university-of-san-diego-bans-matt-walsh-speech-calls-conservative-beliefs-grossly-offensive/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to the New Guard</a>, a publication of the Young America&#8217;s Foundation. 
While the council turned down the request for funding needed to host the event, the council has approved events with prominent Left-wing speakers like Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullors and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). Schiff has been a vocal supporter of abortion, which firmly violates the Catholic teachings on the sanctity of life. 
“I feel as though conservatives and Catholics are discriminated against for simply holding onto their religious beliefs,” USD College Republicans President Alyssa Jackson told the New Guard. “We hope that we can still bring Matt Walsh to voice conservative beliefs on campus, which are heavily underrepresented. We face discrimination from professors and peers everyday for our values and we believe that Matt would be a strong advocate for our cause.”
Jackson later met with USD administrators who she said told her that the views expressed by Walsh, a Catholic, are not in line with Catholic Social Teaching and are “grossly offensive.”
“The university is in full support of freedom of expression and freedom of inquiry … that’s the basis of a university,” Assistant Vice President for Student Life Byron Howlett reportedly said. “But it’s also a delicate balancing act because we have a duty to protect our community members as well. In that case, that usurps that freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression.”
This view was shared by student senator Isabella Sevilla, who was reportedly involved in bringing a drag event to campus during the spring semester. 
“As a Catholic institution, I do think that it is one of the most important things that we hold our Catholic faith first and if he does not align with the values of the Catholic church then that is something we should consider regarding allocating funding,” she said. 
Sharing the story on Instagram, the USD College Republicans <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CwOmhpFtppv/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">urged</a> followers to “reach out to USD via email to show your support for freedom of speech and diversity of opinions at USD.”

Matt Walsh

California University Blocks Matt Walsh From Speaking On Campus

University of San Diego

Young America's Foundation

The University of California San Diego is requiring new assistant professors in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields to address issues of “race and racism.” 
According to a job application posted to the university’s website, the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is hiring an assistant professor that must be able to “design and teach undergraduate courses that align with the African American Studies Minor (AASM) and the Black Diaspora and African American Studies Major,” or supplement it by creating a course that fulfills the school’s “Diversity, Equity, &amp; Inclusion requirement.” 
Candidates must also have completed research or service that has advanced “anti-racism, anti-oppression, equity, and justice.” Hired faculty will be asked to engage with scholars across disciplines to “address issues of race  and racism, access and equity, and social and political influences focused on STEM/Public Health/Health Sciences.” 
“We welcome candidates whose experiences have facilitated their understanding of traditionally underrepresented racial minority communities,” the <a href="https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF02736?emid=3640">job description</a> reads. “Faculty are expected to have an inclusive stance on mentoring and advising that incorporates working with women and underrepresented racial minority undergraduate and graduate students.”
UC San Diego is also hiring an assistant professor in the oceanography department that will focus on climate change’s impact on racial disparities. According to the <a href="https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF02649">job description</a>, areas of research for the position include “racial disparities in the impacts of climate change and variability, natural hazards, pollution, ecosystem changes, and food security.” Candidates are encouraged to highlight their existing research “on issues of racial diversity and inclusion within their scientific communities.” 
Candidates for associate and full-time professor roles in engineering must also have <a href="https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF02674">completed</a> research or advanced “anti-racism, anti-oppression, equity, and justice in Engineering and/or Computer Science.”
The university has created a new partnership between STEM fields and the school’s Black Diaspora and African American Studies major. Eight of the STEM campus units have promised to hire 13 scientists who will explore “Black and African American experiences” in issues such as biological and physical sciences, engineering, medicine, health, and the environment. 
Other departments partaking in the partnership include the Division of Physical Sciences, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Public Health, Data Science Institute, and School of Medicine. 
The stated goal of the new faculty is to “cultivate Black intellectual spaces on campus, model excellence and increase support for Black undergraduate and graduate students, utilize interdisciplinary collaborations to address issues of race and racism, and integrate knowledge about race and racism within all campus divisions.” 
According to the faculty recruitment <a href="https://af-amstudies.ucsd.edu/faculty-recruitment/index.html#Current-Open-Recruitments">page</a>, faculty will work primarily with “graduate students focused on intersections of Blackness and STEM.”
The job application does not explicitly require that candidates for these positions be racial minorities, though <a href="https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/uc-san-diego-hiring-up-to-12-faculty-members-to-advance-diversity/2418106/">NBC San Diego</a> reported that the school obtained $700,000 for new hiring efforts to “recruit more diverse faculty to better reflect the statewide population, and to foster an inclusive campus climate.”

UC San Diego

UC San Diego Requires New Assistant Chemistry Professors To Complete Research That Advances ‘Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression’

Racism

Following the news that a law professor at the University of San Diego is being investigated for a personal blog post that criticized the Chinese communist government, a noted academic freedom organization has released a statement in defense of the professor.
The Academic Freedom Alliance is an organization <a href="https://academicfreedom.org/200-faculty-across-u-s-launch-non-partisan-academic-freedom-alliance/">launched earlier this month</a> with more than 200 left- and right-leaning scholars who advocate for academic freedom. The organization’s first official statement was in defense of Tom Smith, who is under investigation for a blog post clearly referencing the Chinese government that was misinterpreted.
“Academic freedom includes the right of professors to publish blog posts on matters of general public concern without the threat of investigations and sanctions by their university employer. Unfortunately, the University of San Diego Law School is not respecting that basic principle,” the organization wrote.
As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/san-diego-law-professor-investigated-after-criticizing-chinese-communist-government">reported</a>, Smith was responding to a quote from a Wall Street Journal opinion article about how the Chinese communist government was stonewalling an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. Smith included a single paragraph of commentary in response to the quote:
<blockquote>If you believe that the coronavirus did not escape from the lab in Wuhan, you have to at least consider that you are an idiot who is swallowing whole a lot of Chinese cock swaddle. At least Peter Daszak has good personal and financial reasons, not to mention reasons of career preservation, for advancing what he must know is a facially implausible thesis. But whatever. Go Science!</blockquote>
His sentence about “an idiot who is swallowing whole a lot of Chinese cock swaddle” was misinterpreted &#8212; perhaps intentionally &#8212; to be a reference to the Chinese people, when it was clearly a reference to the Chinese government’s propaganda. Due to this misinterpretation, Smith added an update that reads: “It appears that some people are interpreting my reference to ‘Chinese cock swaddle,’ as a reference to an ethnic group. That is a misinterpretation. To be clear, I was referring to the Chinese government.”
No matter, students at USD jumped on the comment, with the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association circulating a petition claiming Smith’s blog post had caused “a greater, adverse impact on your own students at USD and the community at large.” Another <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210320150711/https:/docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScwpXxvaNlZU-7D_TLF6SS46rdLJ0pJm4fmt0E_qHCskmcVMw/viewform">student petition</a> demanded Smith be fired for his personal blog post.
The USD law school then released a statement announcing it would investigate Smith’s blog post.
The AFA denounced the investigation in its own statement:
<blockquote>This investigation is a clear threat to Professor Smith’s academic freedom. Blog posts are a form of what the <a href="https://www.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-and-tenure">American Association of University Professors</a> calls “extramural speech.” Extramural speech is a protected form of academic freedom. When professors “speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship of discipline.” As the AAUP has emphasized, “The controlling principle is that a faculty member’s expression of opinion as a citizen cannot constitute grounds for dismissal unless it clearly demonstrates the faculty member’s unfitness for the position.” The <a href="https://catalogs.sandiego.edu/graduate/about-university-san-diego/mission-core-values/">University of San Diego</a> embraces those principles, declaring that the university would “uphold the highest standards of intellectual inquiry and academic freedom.”
Not only is the interpretation of Professor Smith’s phrasing as a slur based on race or national origin a tendentious misreading of the blog post in question, but the suggestion that a single phrase in a single blog post commenting on the behavior of the Chinese government and international health agencies can trigger the procedures of the university’s harassment policy sends a chilling message to all faculty. The Academic Freedom Alliance calls upon USD leadership to adhere to its academic freedom principles by rescinding its denunciation of Professor Smith and terminating all disciplinary proceedings against him based on his March 10, 2021 blog post.</blockquote>
Hans Bader, an attorney who formerly worked for the U.S. Department of Education, <a href="https://cnsnews.com/commentary/hans-bader/cali-school-investigates-prof-who-criticized-communist-regime">explained further</a> that Smith’s blog post is protected speech, citing McAdams v. Marquette University, which found that blog posts “are protected by academic freedom even if bigots send hostile messages after reading them.” Bader also noted that Smith’s blog post is protected by the California Labor Code, and such speech has been upheld in other court decisions.

China communism

Academic Freedom Organization Defends Law Professor Being Investigated For Criticizing Chinese Communist Government

China

Chinese Communist Party

Education

A law professor at the University of San Diego is under investigation after criticizing China’s communist government in a blog post.
The professor, Tom Smith, made clear references to the Chinese government, but students and faculty interpreted his remarks as attacks on Chinese people, specifically, University of California-Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2021/03/20/univ-of-san-diego-law-school-investigating-professor-for-post-critical-of-china/">wrote</a>.
Smith began his blog post with a quotation from a Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-lab-theory-a-dark-cloud-on-china-11615332235?mod=trending_now_opn_5">opinion article</a> written by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., a member of the paper’s editorial board. Smith quoted the following:
<blockquote>Alas, the World Health Organization mission is turning into a case of disaster foretold. A credible inquiry requires China&#8217;s full cooperation, not just cooperation with those lines of inquiry that are consistent with its own propaganda. And couldn&#8217;t somebody have put Peter Daszak, team member from New York City&#8217;s EcoHealth Alliance, under permanent mouth quarantine?
To insist that human encroachment on nature is the great risk tells us nothing about what happened in this particular case. To insist, as he did on NPR, that China&#8217;s manhandling of the delegation with greeters in full hazmat garb, its forcing of the visitors into 14-day quarantine, was merely <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-researcher-offers-behind-the-scenes-look-at-who-mission-to-find-covid-19s-origins">testament</a> to China&#8217;s Covid rigor overlooks another possibility: China was <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-covid-wuhan-world-health-organization-allowed-in-probe-coronavirus-origin/">seeking</a> to intimidate and dominate the investigators because of the colossal importance it places on controlling the virus narrative.</blockquote>
Smith then wrote a single paragraph of commentary regarding the information from Jenkins:
<blockquote>If you believe that the coronavirus did not escape from the lab in Wuhan, you have to at least consider that you are an idiot who is swallowing whole a lot of Chinese cock swaddle. At least Peter Daszak has good personal and financial reasons, not to mention reasons of career preservation, for advancing what he must know is a facially implausible thesis. But whatever. Go Science!</blockquote>
His sentence about “an idiot who is swallowing whole a lot of Chinese cock swaddle” was misinterpreted – perhaps intentionally – to be a reference to the Chinese people, when it was clearly a reference to the Chinese government’s propaganda. Due to this misinterpretation, Smith added an update that reads: “It appears that some people are interpreting my reference to &#8216;Chinese cock swaddle,&#8217; as a reference to an ethnic group. That is a misinterpretation. To be clear, I was referring to the Chinese government.”
As law professor William Jacobson <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/03/u-san-diego-law-prof-thomas-smith-harshly-criticized-chinese-govt-now-faces-false-claims-of-ethnic-bias/">reported</a> at his news website Legal Insurrection, law students at USD launched a petition demanding Smith apologize for his comments, claiming his blog post caused them harm. The petition was written by the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, which claimed Smith’s blog post had caused “a greater, adverse impact on your own students at USD and the community at large.” Another <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210320150711/https:/docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScwpXxvaNlZU-7D_TLF6SS46rdLJ0pJm4fmt0E_qHCskmcVMw/viewform">student petition</a> demanded Smith be fired for his personal blog post.
The USD law school released a statement announcing its investigation into Smith:
<blockquote>The University of San Diego School of Law is aware of the blog post of the faculty member.
While the blog is not hosted by the University of San Diego, these forms of bias, wherever they occur, have an adverse impact on our community. It is especially concerning when the disparaging language comes from a member of our community. A core value of the University of San Diego School of Law is that all members of the community must be treated with dignity and respect. University policies specifically prohibit harassment, including the use of epithets, derogatory comments, or slurs based on race or national origin, among other categories.
We have received formal complaints relating to the faculty member&#8217;s conduct, and in accordance with university procedures, there will be a process to review whether university or law school policies have been violated.</blockquote>
The dean of the law school also sent a message to the community regarding Smith’s “offensive language” and misrepresenting his comment as being against “people from China.”

Exhibition Commemorating 100th Anniversary Of CPC’s Founding Opens In Beijing

San Diego Law Professor Investigated After Criticizing Chinese Communist Government

A University of San Diego college professor and students are protesting Islamophobia by doing something incredibly offensive to Jews: wearing yellow Jewish star badges with the word &#8220;Muslim&#8221; and a crescent moon.
The <a href="http://freebeacon.com/issues/college-professor-students-sport-yellow-jewish-stars-protest-islamophobia/">Washington Free Beacon</a> reports that professor Bahar Davary, who teaches theology and religious studies at USD, held the protest with her students to speak out against &#8220;anti-Muslim rhetoric.&#8221; There were at least 100 students and faculty members wearing the offensive badges.
Davary defended the protest and <a href="http://freebeacon.com/issues/college-professor-students-sport-yellow-jewish-stars-protest-islamophobia/">said</a> through a university spokesman, &#8220;This is a class/campus project to raise awareness against Islamophobia. It is not intended to make an analogy between the current situation of Muslims in the U.S. to that of Jews in Germany and wider Europe before the Shoah [Holocaust].&#8221;
The professor also said that wearing the badge is for people to realize the dangers of &#8220;marking any group of people as the &#8216;other.'&#8221;
&#8220;We realize that it is a stark symbol that carries a lot of weight and meaning today not only for Jews but for humanity. That is as it should be, if we are to learn anything from our collective history,&#8221; Davary said. &#8220;The yellow Star of David with the word Muslim written on it is a symbol that my students and I wear with utmost respect for the memory of the Jewish lives lost.&#8221;
Davary and her students are insulting the Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Free Beacon that the professor&#8217;s use of the yellow Jewish star badge was not appropriate:
<blockquote>“When we talk about the yellow star, let’s remember who instituted it,” he said. “You had to wear it under penalty of death.”
While the Jews of Europe “constituted no threat whatsoever to the German state” in the 1930s, the subject of radical terrorism is real, he said.
“When you invoke that symbol you have to also not just use it superficially,” Cooper added, noting that, unlike Muslims in America, Jews of Europe were given no choice. “It wasn’t any crime anyone was guilty of. It was the accident of their birth.”</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/badges.html">Jewish Virtual Library</a> describes the yellow stars that Jews had to wear a year following Kristallnacht as &#8220;one of the tactics used to isolate Jews from the rest of the population &#8230; it enabled the Nazi government to identify, concentrate and ultimately murder the Jews of Europe. Helmut Knochen, chief of Security Service &amp; the Security Police in France and Belgium, stated that the yellow badge was &#8216;another step on the road to the Final Solution.'&#8221;
The U.S. government does not have any plans to round up Muslims into concentration camps, so for Davary and her students to use the yellow Jewish star badges to protest Islamophobia is not only a false analogy but also incredibly offensive to Jews.

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University of San Diego

California University Blocks Matt Walsh From Speaking On Campus

UC San Diego Requires New Assistant Chemistry Professors To Complete Research That Advances ‘Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression’

Academic Freedom Organization Defends Law Professor Being Investigated For Criticizing Chinese Communist Government

San Diego Law Professor Investigated After Criticizing Chinese Communist Government

College Professor and Students Do Something Super-Insulting To Jews to Protest Islamophobia