Trump Administration Dares to Question How Its Funds are Spent by Universities (Part 1)

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The Trump administration is threatening to cut funding for a Middle East studies program run by the University of North Carolina and Duke University, arguing that it’s misusing a federal grant to advance “ideological priorities” and unfairly promote “the positive aspects of Islam,” but not of Christianity or Judaism.

An Aug. 29 letter from the U.S. Education Department orders the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies to revise its offerings by Sept. 22 or risk losing future funding from a federal grant that’s awarded to dozens of universities to support foreign language instruction. The consortium received $235,000 from the grant last year, according to Education Department data.

A statement from the UNC-Chapel Hill says the consortium “deeply values its partnership with the Department of Education” and is “committed to working with the department to provide more information about its programs.” Officials at Duke declined to comment. The Education Department declined to say if it’s examining similar programs at other schools.

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Academic freedom advocates say the government could be setting a dangerous precedent if it injects politics into funding decisions. Some said they had never heard of the Education Department asserting control over such minute details of a program’s offerings.

This government investigation of how its money is being spent has nothing to do with academic freedom. The so-called “dangerous precedent” that the government is trying to establish is only, and justifiably, this: universities cannot do whatever they like with government money, but must do what they promised to do. That’s not hard to understand. UNC and Duke are free to teach what they want, but not on the government’s dime. When they receive government money for specific purposes, and then fail to spend it for those purposes, the government has a perfect right to ask for an accounting, and to end its financing of certain programs, if the funds have not been used as promised. It’s no different from the Cold War, when the government sponsored Russian language courses in universities. Had a university instead spent the money on courses praising the Russian Revolution, or teaching Ukrainian folk dancing, the government would have had every right to ask for that money back.

Who is injecting politics into funding decisions? Isn’t it the Duke-UNC faculty who chose to ignore their solemn commitment to use the funds for foreign language instruction and area studies, and have apparently been offering many other courses, paid for with the government funds, in which Islam, but no other religion, is shown in a positive light?

Is the government now going to judge funding programs based on the opinions of instructors or the approach of each course?” said Henry Reichman, chairman of a committee on academic freedom for the American Association of University Professors. “The odor of right-wing political correctness that comes through this definitely could have a chilling effect.”

This is hysteria from Professor Reichman. Let’s turn the question on its head: does the government have a right to examine how its money is being spent by universities, in order to ensure that it is being used on the subjects for which it was intended? Of course it does. The Higher Education Act awards funding to colleges “establishing, strengthening and operating a diverse network of undergraduate foreign language and area or international studies centers and programs.” What does “right-wing political correctness” have to do with making sure that money meant for foreign language training and area studies is spent on such studies, rather than on courses on Iranian cinema or Lebanese cuisine or Yemeni folk dancing?

The Department of Education “believes” that the Duke-UNC Middle Eastern studies consortium “has failed to carefully distinguish between activities lawfully funded under Title VI and other activities” that are “plainly unqualified for taxpayer support.”

The Dept. of Education complained that the “consortium’s records on the number of students it had enrolled in foreign language studies — a cornerstone of the federal grant program — were unclear, and that “it seems clear foreign language instruction and area studies advancing the security and economic stability of the United States have taken ‘a back seat’ to other priorities.”

The department also criticized the consortium’s teacher training programs for focusing on issues like “unconscious bias, serving L.G.B.T.I.Q. youth in schools, culture and the media, diverse books for the classroom and more.” They said that it had a “startling lack of focus on geography, geopolitical issues, history and language.”

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ordered an investigation into the Duke-UNC program in June after North Carolina Rep. George Holding, a Republican, complained that it hosted a taxpayer-funded conference with “severe anti-Israeli bias and anti-Semitic rhetoric.” The conference, titled “Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities,” included a rapper who performed a “brazenly anti-Semitic song,” Holding said in an April 15 letter .

In a response , DeVos said she was “troubled” by Holding’s letter and would take a closer look at the consortium.

The inquiry joins a broader Education Department effort to root out anti-Semitism at U.S. universities. Speaking at a summit on the topic in July, DeVos attacked a movement to boycott Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, calling it a “pernicious threat” on college campuses.

Last year, the department reopened an investigation at Rutgers University in which an outside group was accused of charging Jewish attendees for admission while allowing others in for free.

In the UNC-Duke case, the department’s findings did not directly address any bias against Israel but instead evaluated whether the consortium’s proposed activities met the goals of the National Resource Center program, which was created in 1965 to support language and culture initiatives that prepare students for careers in diplomacy and national security.

Investigators concluded that the consortium intended to use federal money on offerings that are “plainly unqualified for taxpayer support,” adding that foreign language and national security instruction have “taken a back seat to other priorities.” The department cited several courses, conferences and academic papers that it says have “little or no relevance” to the grant’s goals.

Although a conference focused on ‘Love and Desire in Modern Iran’ and one focused on Middle East film criticism may be relevant in academia, we do not see how these activities support the development of foreign language and international expertise for the benefit of U.S. national security and economic stability,” the letter said.

Investigators also saw a disconnect between the grant’s mission and some academic papers by scholars at the consortium. They objected to one paper titled “Performance, Gender-Bending and Subversion in the Early Modern Ottoman Intellectual History,” and another titled “Radical Love: Teachings from Islamic Mystical Tradition.”

The letter accused the consortium of failing to provide a “balance of perspectives” on religion. It said there is “a considerable emphasis” placed on “understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East.”

It added that there are few offerings on discrimination faced by religious minorities in the Middle East, “including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yadizis, Kurds, Druze and others.” Department officials said the grant’s rules require programs to provide a “full understanding” of the regions they study.

Jay Smith, a history professor at UNC and vice president of its chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said the letter amounts to “ideologically driven harassment.” He said the Education Department official who signed the letter, Robert King, “should stay in his lane and allow the experts to determine what constitutes a ‘full understanding’ of the Middle East.”

Which “experts” does Professor Jay Smith have in mind? Omid Safi at Duke? Carl Ernst at UNC? John Esposito at Georgetown? Rashid Khalidi and Hamad Dabashi at Columbia? Middle Eastern Departments have in the last few decades been taken over entirely by Defenders of the Faith, both Muslims and non-Muslim apologists, who not surprisingly are also dedicated to the Palestinian cause and besmirching Israel. For too long, the Education Department has shown deference to these academics, who take government grant money meant for language training and area studies (history, geography, geopolitical issues), and spend it on other things. The UNC-Duke consortium’s program in teacher training instead focused on such fashionable matters as “unconscious bias, serving L.G.B.T.I.Q. youth in schools, culture and the media, diverse books for the classroom and more.” Investigators said the program had a “startling lack of focus on geography, geopolitical issues, history and language.”

Instead, students heard all about “Love and Desire in Modern Iran” and “Middle East Film Studies” that have nothing to do with what the money was supposed to be spent on.

Is it unfair – is it an attack on academic freedom? — for the government to investigate how its money has been spent, and to demand that changes in the curriculum be made to reflect the original purpose of the grant?

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Phil McDonald
Phil McDonald
4 years ago

Questions to ask an Islamic studies professor.
1. Why are women “unclean/sinful/evil/hell bound” during their menstrual cycle?
2. Why do women need to hide themselves from predatory Imams?
3. Why did Allah turn Jews into Pigs?
4. Is eating Pork, another form of cannibalism?
5. What is a Kafir?
6. Do Kafir’s get to go to Paradise?
7. Can a Kafir own a Muslim as a slave, similar to Muslims owning Kafir’s?
8. What is the material composition of the meteorite that is worshiped by millions of Muslims in Mecca?
9. Who owned the meteorite, before Muslims decided on using it to worship?
10. Why is drinking camel urine actually considered a healthy drink in Islam?
11. How many versions of the Koran are there?
12. Do you think any of the “lost” Quranic verses will ever be found?
13. Why did Allah permit a goat to eat Quranic verses?
14. Why does Allah allows the Jews to win every conflict with an Islamic State military force?

…. Islamic Studies 101

Liatris Spicata
Liatris Spicata
4 years ago
Reply to  Phil McDonald

11. How many versions of the Koran are there?

That is a good question to ask, Phil. Many Moslems prattle about how “perfect” their Koran is, having no clue that the Cairo version, considered standard today, was not finalized until the early part of the last century.

Cynthia
Cynthia
4 years ago

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Bill
Bill
4 years ago
Reply to  Phil McDonald

My warped sense of humor made me laugh at #’s 4 and 10. Ten, especially. The camel urine poured over a crushed ice Smoothy?…….Sorry.

Achmed Mohandjob
Achmed Mohandjob
4 years ago
Reply to  Phil McDonald

I LOVE Number Four. It’s been noted, throughout history, that there is but one reason that moslems (the vilest of ALL creatures) refuse to eat pork. They are deathly afraid that it could be their mother.

knightsstrength
knightsstrength
4 years ago

Just cut the entire funding to the University of North Carolina and Duke University. Just say misappropriation of government money

Liatris Spicata
Liatris Spicata
4 years ago

Academic freedom advocates say the government could be setting a dangerous precedent if it injects politics into funding decisions. Some said they had never heard of the Education Department (DoE) asserting control over such minute details of a program’s offerings.

Well I can help them out.

This has been some years, but I doubt things have changed greatly. Brown University had (has?) a graduate program which, as part of the entrance requirements, students were expected to have a degree of fluency in multiple ancient Middle Eastern languages. The program was not attracting “people of color” (important note: this is in contrast to “colored people”). Some DoE administrator, drawing a nice salary from the taxpayers no doubt, was duly upset over this racial imbalance, and pressed Brown on the subject. When told that there were no students of color applying who had the requistite language pre-requisites, his response was, “Then get rid of these programs with meaningless language requirements”.

I should note that the DoE backed down on this one when Brown pushed back, However, the idea that politics has not heretofore been injected into government funding decisions is utterly laughable.

Bill
Bill
4 years ago

‘Academic freedom advocates’. Another way of saying ‘leftist brain-washers’.

Lagertha
Lagertha
4 years ago

The colleges are the rivers that feed the swamp; trump needs to cut the flow off.

Joe Ozer
Joe Ozer
4 years ago

Government funded programs should focus solely on language instruction. That way there would be little or no conflict about political motives. The students can acquire cultural knowledge on their own from various sources.

john53
john53
4 years ago

Academia has no clue about the realities of the middle east, they only have their fantasies that only exist inside their little liberal bubble. I have experienced trying to hire foreign language speakers and believe me with very few exceptions you will not get anyone competent out of academia.

knightsstrength
knightsstrength
4 years ago

Free West Papua from Indonesia’s slow Genocide

https://www.freewestpapua.org/news/

patd
patd
4 years ago

Federal funds are provided for specific purposes and an audit of how they are given out is every RIGHT of us taxpayers!!!!

notme123
notme123
4 years ago

Thank you President Trump. It’s about time we know how our money is being spent, especially in so called institutions of learning.

hopespringseternal
hopespringseternal
4 years ago

It’s about time. Janet Napolitano, the head of University of California, Berkley etc. had hidden $150 million
in an private account. Luckily it was discovered in an audit. Unfortunately to this day we (the taxpayers) never received an explanation why this occurred. Students are asked to pay higher and higher fees every year.

Merchantseamen
Merchantseamen
4 years ago

A few years ago UVA was audit and 2.3 billion yes B was found. A slush fund they said. The Board covered it up the Governor pooed pooed it and no heads rolled or resignations came down the pike. Total corruption. We keep just blindly paying our taxes and they keep stuffing it in their pockets.

hopespringseternal
hopespringseternal
4 years ago
Reply to  Merchantseamen

Yes, the left has been able to corrupt everything they touched…….

LittleRoot_48
LittleRoot_48
4 years ago

We should absolutely know how the money given to the universities by our government (in other words, OUR taxpayer dollars) is spent. If the universities want to offer a one-sided curriculum, let it start paying its own way and stop taking OUR money.

Merchantseamen
Merchantseamen
4 years ago

“Academic freedom advocates say the government could be setting a
dangerous precedent if it injects politics into funding decisions.” Faculty inject politics every morning when they wake up.

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