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UC Berkeley

Labor Secretary Turned Prof: Tea Partiers Radical, Extreme, Fanatical

by College Fix Staff on March 6, 2013

Robert Reich, a labor secretary during the Clinton administration and currently a UC Berkeley public policy professor, claims Tea Partiers aim to destroy the government.

Yes, those flag-waving, Constitution-citing, Reagan-loving folks – they’re militants who really want to see government literally dismantled, according to Reich.

He implies they are using the ongoing sequestration drama to that end, calling them radical, extreme and fanatical.

Reich, in a recent personal blog republished by a Berkeley faculty blog, stated:

Imagine a plot to undermine the government of the United States, to destroy much of its capacity to do the public’s business, and to sow distrust among the population.

Imagine further that the plotters infiltrate Congress and state governments, reshape their districts to give them disproportionate influence in Washington, and use the media to spread big lies about the government.

Finally, imagine they not only paralyze the government but are on the verge of dismantling pieces of it.

Far-fetched? Perhaps. But take a look at what’s been happening in Washington and many state capitals since Tea Party fanatics gained effective control of the Republican Party, and you’d be forgiven if you see parallels.

Tea Party Republicans are crowing about the “sequestration” cuts beginning today (Friday). “This will be the first significant tea party victory in that we got what we set out to do in changing Washington,” says Rep. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), a Tea Partier who was first elected in 2010.

Sequestration is only the start. What they set out to do was not simply change Washington but eviscerate the U.S. government — “drown it in the bathtub,” in the words of their guru Grover Norquist – slashing Social Security and Medicare, ending worker protections we’ve had since the 1930s, eroding civil rights and voting rights, terminating programs that have helped the poor for generations, and making it impossible for the government to invest in our future.

…To avoid default on the public debt, the White House and House Republicans agreed to harsh and arbitrary “sequestered” spending cuts if they couldn’t come up with a more reasonable deal in the interim. But the Tea Partiers had no intention of agreeing to anything more reasonable. They knew the only way to dismember the federal government was through large spending cuts without tax increases.

Nor do they seem to mind the higher unemployment their strategy will almost certainly bring about. Sequestration combined with January’s fiscal cliff deal is expected to slow economic growth by 1.5 percentage points this year – dangerous for an economy now crawling at about 2 percent. It will be even worse if the Tea Partiers refuse to extend the government’s spending authority, which expires March 27.

A conspiracy theorist might think they welcome more joblessness because they want Americans to be even more fearful and angry. Tea Partiers use fear and anger in their war against the government – blaming the anemic recovery on government deficits and the government’s size, and selling a poisonous snake-oil of austerity economics and trickle-down economics as the remedy.

They likewise use the disruption and paralysis they’ve sown in Washington to persuade Americans government is necessarily dysfunctional, and politics inherently bad. Their continuing showdowns and standoffs are, in this sense, part of the plot.

… The President should let the public see the Tea Partiers for who they are — a small, radical minority intent on dismantling the government of the United States. As long as they are allowed to dictate the terms of public debate they will continue to hold the rest of us hostage to their extremism.”

Click here to read Reich’s entire piece.

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LSD Openly Sold Near UC Berkeley Campus

by College Fix Staff on March 5, 2013

Far out, man. LSD is being openly sold near the southside of UC Berkeley.

The Daily Clog, the blog of the university’s student newspaper The Daily Californian, reported Monday – complete with a picture – on a flier posted on a telephone pole very near campus that boldly proclaimed:

“Want to buy some LSD? (Call) Cosmo.” The flier lists the drug dealer’s apparent real phone number – complete with those little rip-off telephone number tags fliers often offer.

In a pleasant surprise, the Daily Cal blogger, Meagan Kane, doesn’t exactly praise the development.

Due to our high tolerance for the abnormal, a truly strange occurrence is when Berkeley manages to shock us with something — but that is exactly what happened when we spotted this flier stapled to a telephone pole on Southside near campus.This flier raises a lot of questions. However, instead of torturing ourselves with questions we will never know the answer to, let us pause for a moment and reflect on all of the things that we can learn from this photo.

We don’t know who Cosmo is, but his entrepreneurship and brashness is equal parts impressive and alarming. Clearly trivial things like the law aren’t really a concern for him (unless you would like to make a more conspiratorial interpretation of this photo, in which case this is a very clever trap planted by police). Apparently, the LSD market is booming in Berkeley, as there are only two phone number tags left on the flier.

We don’t know how long Cosmo is planning on staying in Berkeley, and we’re not exactly sure how we feel about it. On the one hand, he brings more color to our already colorful city, and on the other, he also brings more illicit activity. Either way, we realize that midterms can be stressful, but do us a favor and find a healthier way to come out of the midterm slump.

As an aside, Berkeley is very proud of its LSD-dabbling past, if its online homage to Dr. Timothy Leary – its most famous acid-dropping professor, is any indication.

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Professor Blames Society for Prison Population

by Danielle Charette - Swarthmore College on February 25, 2013

A well respected UC Santa Barbara sociology professor in a recent lecture blamed nearly everything but personal responsibility for the high crime and incarceration rates that have long plagued black and Latino communities.

“We need to take accountability for what the state and government has done,” said Dr. Victor Rios during his Feb. 21 guest address at Swarthmore College. “Officers are still beating down black and brown kids.”

And U.S. law enforcement is overtly radicalized and “hyper-masculine,” said Rios, a highly regarded sociologist among leftist academic circles. Rios, a self-described former gang member who eventually turned his life around and earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, has won several awards and grants, has been featured in many news reports, and often gives motivational speeches at schools.

Rios’ address at Swathmore was given not only to college students, but visiting school children as well. He told them he finds fault not only with police, but also politicians and the public, for the high amount of black and Latino incarceration rates, saying people’s fear of “radicals like Malcolm X” is a factor. Rios added the school-to-prison pipeline can be linked to the way some Americans label young people.

“It’s not a question of whether black and Latinos are more prone to crime, but how we choose to label them,” he said. “How you label someone determines how you treat them.”

With that, the term “at risk” becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy for inner city youth, he said.

Rios neglected to speak on what role, if any, he believes personal choice, the drug trade, or family lifestyles in high-crime communities has played in those statistics.

And while he focused on the rising number of incarcerations since the 1960s, he did not address Bureau of Justice Statistics stats that the violent crime rate has been on a steady decline since 1973. Rios isn’t a fan of jail, anyway. He said he prefers “restorative justice.”

His 2011 book, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, “analyzes how punitive juvenile crime policies and criminalization affect the everyday lives of urban youth,” according to his website.

In his speech, Rios said he aims to couch his goals in language that most people can understand. Conservatives, he noted, are excellent at this: “They don’t say they hate black people; they say that welfare makes people lazy.”

Rios’ talked was dubbed “Consequences of Mass Incarceration of Black and Latino Boys” and sponsored by a plethora of Swarthmore groups and academic departments, including:  the Black Cultural Center, Latin American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, the Dean’s Office, the Provost and President’s Offices, the Queer and Trans Conference, and the Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology, Psychology and Educational Studies departments.

Rios, a former Oakland gang member, has come full circle, he told the audience. In a 1994 PBS Frontline documentary on the high school dropout rate, Rios was personally featured as a dropout and delinquent. The documentary shows footage of him being forcibly detained by two officers in a high school hallway. Now a Ph.D. sociologist and “social justice” advocate, Rios is a dynamic speaker.

In his lecture, he went out of his way to encourage visiting Chester, Pa., school children in the audience, saying: “I look forward to you being in college someday … and maybe even being your professor.”

While Rios’ argument was offered with zeal, others scholars have poked holes in ideas behind his beliefs.

For example, Heather MacDonald, the John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an outspoken advocate for New York City’s so-called “stop-and-frisk” policing strategy, wrote in The Wall Street Journal in January that “the advocacy community sees only racism in the fact that the bulk of trespass and other stops happen in minority neighborhoods.”

“But that racism charge,” noted MacDonald, “ignores the statistical truth that crime, too, is disproportionately concentrated in those neighborhoods.”

Rios did not cite the demographic makeup of the neighborhoods he studies and kept his remarks mostly to abstract complaints about “The System.”

“I’m assuming most of us in here are progressive,” admitted Rios.

Clearly his peers in academia are big fans, based on the number of speeches he gives and accolades he has received.

“Professor Rios’ ambitious research on the factors that contribute to the social marginalization and hypercriminalization of Latino and black men has garnered significant national attention,” stated UCSB’s Verta Taylor, chair of sociology, in a 2012 announcement that Rios was awarded a $300,000 grant to study “how the interactions between gang-associated youth and their parents, school professionals, police, and probation officers affect their identity and criminal behavior. ”

“This new project will provide insight into the important role that parents and other authority figures play in helping young people at risk for gang involvement unshackle themselves from the criminal justice system,” she said. “Rios has a keen commitment to public sociology and is emerging as a leading expert on gang process and gang reduction.”

Fix contributor Danielle Charette is a student at Swarthmore College.

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IMAGE: Side One Cincy/Flickr

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Berkeley Students Continue Effort to Boot Salvation Army Off Campus

by College Fix Staff on February 5, 2013

A recent student government recommendation to boot Salvation Army donation boxes off the UC Berkeley campus has been met with silence from administrators, so student politicians have decided to press the issue.

In particular, student Senator Nolan Pack said he plans to send a letter to the chancellor this week to “pressure the campus to urge it to break all ties with the charity,” The Daily Californian reported.

Pack is a “CalSERVE” senator. The group, according to its website, “is a community organization that runs candidates through the (Berkeley student government) as a means to create student empowerment, social consciousness, and social justice.”

The student senate passed its anti-Salvation Army bill in late November, claiming the nonprofit discriminates against homosexuals. The organization has denied the charges.

The bill was co-sponsored by more than 20 student representatives and groups, including the Cal Berkeley Democrats and Queer Alliance and Resource Center, according to The Daily Cal, which reported Tuesday that campus officials have been silent on the legislation since its passage.

Pack’s letter is expected to change that.

“Matthew Enger, the communications director for CalSERVE and author of the bill, said the university will respond because Pack is an elected representative of the student body,” The Daily Californian reports. “As an elected official, he has a platform to ask the administration about policies. Even if the administration isn’t willing to give a response now, I believe in time they will because there are too many people in the student body who care about this issue to just let it lie.”

Click here to read The Daily Californian article.

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UC Berkeley Libs Want to Ban The Salvation Army

by College Fix Staff on December 7, 2012

Via Campus Reform:

The student government at the University of California-Berkeley (CAL) passed a resolution last month that would ban Salvation Army bell ringers and their iconic red kettles from campus this Christmas because of the Christian organization’s alleged bias against homosexuality.

UC Berkeley is “reviewing” whether or not they will prohibit the Salvation Army from operating on campus this Christmas, after students passed a resolution condemning the charity.

The resolution, cleared on November 14, accuses the charity of openly discriminating against gay individuals.

“Salvation Army church services, including charity services, are available only to people ‘who accept and abide by the Salvation Army’s doctrine and discipline,’ which excludes homosexuality,” reads the bill, SB 176.

In the resolution, the student body also demands school administrators revoke the Salvation Army’s permit, which currently allows them to collect donations on the Berkeley campus.

“Allowing the Salvation Army to collect donations on campus is a form of financial assistance that empowers the organization to spend the money it raises here in order to discriminate and advocate discrimination against queer people,” it adds.

Read the full story here.

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Outrageously Dumb Campus Moments of the Week (Special UC Berkeley edition)

by Jennifer Kabbany - Associate Editor on December 7, 2012

The College Fix presents a roundup of the top scandals, screw-ups, and stupid decisions involving college campuses this week. Usually this feature includes stories from campuses across the nation, but events recently at and associated with the famed UC Berkeley have been so outlandish as of late that it gets special attention this week.

3. Ah, Berkeley. The birthplace of the modern college student revolt. In the 1960s, massive protests, sit-ins, alternative publications and other radical efforts captured the nation’s attention and, for better or worse, forever shaped the nature of public discourse at today’s universities.

But long gone are the days when radical students, fired up for socialist movements, have much room to complain on college campuses, which now completely cater to leftist causes. So a recent sit-in at Berkeley was largely laughable, to say the least.

Wearing face masks and flying banners calling for “diversity,” five students chained themselves to the school’s Eshleman Hall on Nov. 27 while more than 100 students stood in solidarity outside, The Daily Californian reported.

Their cause? Ready for this? They were upset administrators wanted to consolidate some Multicultural Student Development offices, according to The Daily Cal.

Oh, for the days when there was an actual good reason to chain oneself to a school building.

And here’s the kicker: The Daily Cal quoted a top administrator as saying the Multicultural Student Development offices’ changes “were intended to streamline administrative tasks and to allow for more resources to be used for outreach and the retention of minority students. He said the fact that the changes did not receive any attention until a year after their implementation suggests that students were not negatively affected by the consolidation.”

Such a scandal! Here’s another one ..

2. Over the last week or so, Berkeley has made national news (internationally, really, if you count the headline in the UK’s Daily Mail), not for any esteemed academic accomplishments or similar benchmarks. No, the story coming out of its venerable halls is how easy it is to have sex on campus.

Enter UC Berkeley’s most recent “Sex on Tuesday” column in The Daily Californian.

“Yes — having sex on campus is actually very doable, and it’s lots of fun. It’s also surprisingly easy,” the UC Berkeley columnist writes. The down side? “Concerns about not getting to ‘finish’ when doing it in a public place.”

“Maybe I’m just not ambitious enough to have goal-oriented sex, but sex isn’t always about cumming and having orgasms,” she writes. “Sometimes it’s for sh*ts and giggles. Having expectations and goals can ruin the fun of it. Besides, it’s probably not a good idea to ejaculate in public places — just saying. Keep this in mind should you ever attempt sex on campus.”

This columnist did just that, in fact, then detailed her adventures.

“The trick to doing it in Stacks,” she advises, “is to go at a time when there won’t be a lot of people studying at the same time and to pick a section of books that people won’t ever think to look up. … We decided that, out of the millions of books in the library, the shelves full of books on religion seemed like the best place to f**k.”

Nice touch. She continues to dole out more advice:

“For a place to have loud ass-slapping sex, the classrooms in the dungeons of Moffitt served us well after Main Stacks because the ground floor of Moffitt was completely deserted,” she noted.

For a finale, she encouraged others to do the same:

“Learn to appreciate your sexy side and experience a few frisky things during your time here. Take the Female Sexuality DeCal, have sex in Morrison, do the naked run and talk to people who are willing to share their personal experiences. The wide acceptance and freedom of open sexual expression are among the greatest legacies we have the opportunity to uphold at this university.”

Yeah, that about sums up Berkeley’s greatest legacy. No argument here.

1. And finally, we focus the spotlight on comments made recently by two Berkeley educators, arguments that are as outlandish as they are dead wrong.

A prominent UC Berkeley diversity scholar accused Republican politicians of “stoking white racial anxiety for political gain” and using “coded phrases … to transmit signals to a right-wing, resentful white base.”

John Powell, executive director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley, is the lead author on the 2,000-plus word piece, which states in part:

“The right wing can talk about Obama as a food stamp president or how he may not really be American. We knew such attacks on the president and the black community often had serious racial overtones. Yet, if this observation was made, not only would they deny these accusations, they would cry foul: that critics were playing ‘the race card.’”

Once again, here comes the claim that conservatives and Republicans who voice concerns over the growing welfare state are just a bunch of ignorant racists. Instead of addressing the merits of the argument against government dependency, leftists continue to rely on insulting ad hominem attacks.

The second Berkeley educator to catch our eye was a prominent environmentalist professor who linked ignoring global warming with watching people die during a recent guest seminar at Ohio State University.

Citing monsoons and other extreme weather phenomenon on the other side of the globe, Kirk Smith, a global environmental health professor, said climate change is “a moral issue.”

Smith told an anecdote to the audience of a professor who ignores a drowning child on campus as he rushes to teach a class. He then tells his students about ignoring the child, and they are aghast. Later at home, the hypothetical professor opens his mail and throws away a letter from the United Nation’s Children Fund.

“No one thinks that is immoral, and why not,” Smith said of throwing away the UNICEF letter. “What’s the moral distinction? … Today climate change is a sin of omission.”

What’s more, Smith argued, those who ignore global warming and climate change are not just guilty of a sin of omission, they’re also teetering on the verge of a sin of commission.

“Every time I come back from a site in the Third World, and a $16 pizza would feed a family in Guatemala for an entire month … we’re not going and shooting kids in the head, but we are moving in the distinction a bit to the commission side,” he said.

Just remember folks, the next time you throw away a soda can in the trash rather than recycling bin, or purchase that SUV – you’re killing a kid in Cambodia – on purpose.

IMAGE: Dave Cobb/Flickr

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