Author: Sherry Sylvester

TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with Rabbi Dan Ain, Founder of “Because Jewish,” to discuss how Texas’ Jewish community is coping with the continued strife in Israel.

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During the legislative battle last spring to end the racially divisive and cynically named “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs in Texas academic institutions, faculty members called the effort racist and extremist. Hundreds of University of Texas at Austin students and professors flooded into the Capitol building to smirk and boo former HUD Secretary, Dr. Ben Carson, the pre-eminent African American physician, who explained that DEI is a sham. Many stood with their backs toward lawmakers and Dr. Carson—like petulant children—to show their disdain.

Fearful that funding would be cut, administrative leaders from Texas flagship universities insisted to legislators that DEI was simply a program to help students who needed extra support to succeed in college—minority and marginalized students, first generation students, even veterans. Who could be against that?

The truth about DEI—that the world is divided into two groups, oppressors and the oppressed, has been difficult for normal Americans to comprehend. With academic administrators insisting they were simply continuing the work of making college accessible to everyone, donors, parents and students haven’t really pushed back. Texas and Florida are the only states that have banned DEI outright, and major universities like Michigan have doubled down.

All that changed last week when over a billion people viewed video clips of three elite university professors who declined to condemn threats of Jewish genocide on their respective campuses.

People who have been mystified by pro-Palestinian student marches since Oct. 7 that proclaimed America to be an evil oppressor while insisting the Hamas terrorists are the good guys finally have an answer—these awful sentiments are coming from the top.

When the now-notorious college presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Liz Magill from the University of Pennsylvania, told a congressional committee that calls for genocide and intifada by students on their campuses would have to be “considered in context,” their frightening insensitivity shocked some sense into the country.

These DEI “pod people” presidents repeatedly refused to condemn threats of genocide and violence against Jewish students even when given several chances to recant. Their worldview is so distorted that they could not bring themselves to say what is obvious to most Americans—attacking and calling for the deaths of Jews, or any group of people because of their race or ethnicity—is wrong, unequivocally. There is no “context” in which it would be okay.

The blowback was immediate. The presidents were called on to resign and donors threatened to withdraw millions in contributions from their universities. Magill, at the University of Pennsylvania, is already out, although the move is hardly a setback for her. She is still a fully tenured professor in the UPenn law school.

Apologies also came quickly as Gay at Harvard explained that she was focused on the free speech policies at Harvard rather than the recent demonstrations.

Free speech is a good argument to make, but the president of Harvard cannot credibly make it. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Harvard has the worst record on free speech of any university in the country.

At Harvard, the failure of anyone—student or faculty—to call a man who thinks he’s a woman “she” can get you fired. In fact, Devon Buckley, a radical feminist, was disinvited from speaking at Harvard because she has written that “gender is binary.” Even Lawrence Bacow, a former president of Harvard, was drummed off the stage there because students disagreed with his position on disinvestment from Israel.

Every Harvard student must take Title IX training where they learn that expressing any hint of “transphobia,” “fatphobia,” or “cis-heterosexism” is abusive.

Magill and Kornbluth also apologetically said their focus in the Congressional testimony was free speech, but their records are no better than Harvard. The Arab Alumni Association of MIT demanded that Miri Eisin, a former colonel in the Israel Defense Force, not be allowed to speak on campus and she was disinvited. Former CIA Director John Brennen was shouted down at the University of Pennsylvania and his lecture had to be cancelled.

To take a credible stand for free speech, you must stand up for all speech—but these presidents and all universities that are steeped in the ideology of DEI simply don’t allow that.

The Kalven principles, adopted by the University of Chicago, has a different free speech model. It proscribes that every issue is open to debate and universities should be neutral, protecting all sides to speak. University of Chicago students are rallying for Palestine on that campus, but Jewish students are rallying as well. Though there is backlash from both sides, the recently stated position of the University of Chicago on the Middle East is that they have no position—on this or any other issue. Students are free to speak.

If the three presidents had told the congressional committee that their institutions did not take positions on issues, the hearing would have been over, but, again, their record makes it clear that’s not true. While they ignored the attack of Hamas terrorists on Jews on Oct. 7, all three institutions spoke out almost immediately after George Floyd was killed. Harvard not only affirmed its support for Black Lives Matter, it also attacked the Harvard University Police Department. MIT quickly issued a statement promising to increase its diversity and equity efforts, and at the University of Pennsylvania, the official statement issued immediately said that the University community “weeps for the loss of life.”

Their statements called on the community to embrace Black Lives Matter. They also essentially reiterated the DEI principle that we are all either oppressors or oppressed and must continue to fight the racism inherent in everyone, whether they know it or not.

It would be a mistake for universities or any of us to demand that Jewish people be moved from category A (oppressors) in the DEI dichotomy to category B (oppressed). What we should see clearly in the weak and evasive testimony of the three elite university presidents is that the entire ideology of DEI must be overthrown. There is no place for it in academic institutions where all ideas are debated freely and every individual must be judged on his or her merit, achievement and character, not group identity. When that happens—and terrorists launch a genocidal attack on people anywhere—it should be resoundingly condemned, no matter who the victims are.

Oct. 7 should have been an easy call. It is tragic these academic leaders couldn’t make it.

TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with nationally and internationally preeminent pollster Mike Baselice to discuss the electoral trends that turned Texas red and what he predicts for the future.

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Media prophet Marshall McLuhan revolutionized our understanding of communications in the 1970s when he observed that “the medium is the message.” For the terrorists of Hamas, murder and medieval slaughter are clearly the medium. They are also the message.

The Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel was so horrific that it was not immediately apparent that Hamas’ violent actions were chiefly a media operation designed to drive a narrative and impact public opinion.

The mission of Hamas is to kill all the Jews, but they are also propelled by Iran to inflame anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism, not just in the Middle East, but worldwide. On Oct. 7 and in the days since, Hamas has demonstrated they are willing to let thousands—maybe millions—of Palestinians die to achieve that objective.

The deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza aren’t “collateral damage” in this war—they are the strategic feature. The higher the body count, the more effective Hamas can be in pushing the narrative that civilians are the victims of Israeli aggression—even though Hamas started the war.

That’s why Hamas has embedded its military operations in hospitals, schools and mosques. When Israel retaliates against their attacks, Hamas can blame them for killing Palestinian civilians without ever acknowledging that killing Palestinians was part of the Hamas plan.

We don’t know how many civilians have been killed because Hamas releases dubious numbers of casualties—like the 500 people who were supposedly killed by Israel in Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. In fact, many fewer were killed in that hospital from a rocket launched by Hamas.

American mainstream media is key to driving the terrorist narrative, but even CNN has confirmed that Hamas has been storing weapons and staging assaults from hospitals. Independent observers were able to quickly uncover the facts about the Al Ahli hospital, but if the protesters on the streets of America and Europe knew the truth, they ignored it.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib stuck with the hospital lie even as she was censured in the U.S. House. She continues to clamor for a ceasefire, forgetting that a ceasefire was in place until Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

As the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) continues to pull bodies out of the rubble from the first attack, more and more evidence is being found that Hamas and Iran have been planning this assault for months, perhaps years. In addition to digging tunnels in Gaza and taking paragliding lessons in Iran, Hamas laid the real ground work far outside the Middle East.

Academic institutions have been engaged in a war on the West for decades, teaching that virtually everything that has been achieved by mankind—art, science, progressive thought, all advancement—is basically bad, illegitimate, rooted in white privilege and falsely linked to phony standards like merit and achievement. This crowd proclaims that most every facet of life in America is bad.

American elites have bought into this message and once you believe America is bad, it apparently is not all that hard to swallow the lie that terrorism via Hamas is good.

Hamas’ global communications plan is working masterfully. Influential elites in both America and Europe have rallied behind the terrorists.

They marched in the streets of the world’s largest cities even after the release of tapes which show Hamas gleefully killing, raping and mutilating Israelis in the Oct. 7 massacre. They are demanding a ceasefire even after the tape of the phone call of the young Hamas terrorist happily reporting, “Dad, Dad, I killed 10 Jews today!”

They are not even demanding that American hostages be released or acknowledging that a ceasefire would simply allow Hamas to regroup.

Bari Weiss reminds us that this most recent manifestation of the oldest ethnic hatred in the world is not just about the Jews, it is about all of us.

That is why it is so horribly ironic that over the past several weeks, the terrorists have had such an easy time getting Western leaders, particularly on the left, to take their side. In addition to the very sad “Queers for Palestine” crowd, it is almost laughable that Christian churches in America have signed a joint letter calling for a ceasefire. Homosexuality is a capital crime in Palestine and what do you think Hamas would do to American Christians if they aren’t stopped?

The ultimate goal for the terrorist collaboration headquartered in Iran is to obliterate the “great Satan,” which is the Western world in general and the U.S. in particular. Everyone who celebrates America freedom is on their list of infidels. They hate us.

Those who are calling for a cease fire insist they have the moral high ground, as they tell us that the lives of all children matter. They are right about that. That is exactly why Israel is fighting back and America is supporting it—because we believe that the lives of all children matter. All life is precious and the freedom to live those lives is sacred.

It is important to remember that in addition to the more recent pauses, Israel has from the beginning pleaded with Palestinians to get out of harm’s way and, from the beginning, Hamas has threatened to kill its own citizens if they attempt to leave.

Those calling for a ceasefire are missing the key difference in worldviews here. Hamas and their allies are not outraged about the lives of those children—they are just tools in their messaging war. Hamas wants a world where all the Jews are dead and America is brought to its knees. They don’t care how many children die to achieve that goal.

Israel is defending itself and all of us against Hamas’ dark and evil world view. That’s why America is supporting it in its fight to ensure that this does not ever happen again. Pray for them. Also pray that President Joe Biden is not pushed by Hamas’ allies on the left to back away from his support for Israel.

TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with renowned political and public affairs consultant David Weeks to discuss his experience on the Texas Quarter Dollar Coin Advisory Committee, where he contributed to the design and creation of the Texas state quarter that is in circulation today, the current state of Texas’ political climate, and all things in between.

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The Texas AFT has bullishly pledged that it will never surrender in the war against school choice in Texas. That’s no surprise; I have watched teachers’ unions fight school choice all over this country for more than 20 years, often successfully. Lost dreams and opportunities for millions of children are the collateral damage.

Early in my career I worked in the Northeast. In New Jersey, teachers’ unions blocked school choice proposals over the objections of inner-city parents including a statewide coalition of African-American leaders. It was only years later, when now-U.S. Senator Cory Booker became mayor of Newark, that school choice programs were established, pulling that state’s educational system from the brink of ruin.

The New Jersey teachers’ unions didn’t make demands for more funding in public schools, like they have in Texas, because they’d already won the money war. Even 20 years ago, they had some of the highest per-pupil spending and teachers’ salaries in the country. I wrote at the time that the state of New Jersey was spending about the same amount as parents who sent their kids to Harvard but the money didn’t help. In Newark, the graduation rate was 4%.

Texas teachers’ union representatives said during testimony over current school choice proposals this session that no increase in school funding could induce them to support parental rights.

When I first moved to Texas, I was a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, where I watched teachers’ unions and the newspaper demonize Texas Public Policy Foundation founder, Dr. Jim Leininger, for creating a privately funded program that would pay the tuition of any student who wanted to leave the notoriously low-performing Edgewood Independent School District. Dr. Leininger and others invested $50 million for the 10-year program. The school district is still bitter about it, even though results showed increased graduation rates for those inner-city kids who participated in the very popular program.

In addition to private school tuition, Leininger’s program would also have paid for out-of-district tuition for Edgewood students who wanted to attend another public school. Education bureaucrats wouldn’t let that happen. Applicants from the program were rejected.

Think about that scene. A poor child, probably a Hispanic child, from a bad school showed up at a top performing school in San Antonio with funding to pay out-of-district tuition. The child was turned away.

What kind of school official would do that? What teachers’ union or school board member would allow that to happen? How can some of those same people stand up with straight faces today and pretend that their opposition to school choice is based on their concern for children?

I watched the Texas House block school choice for at least four sessions. One 2015 image etched in my memory is a gaggle of Democrat state representatives—many of them African-American and Hispanic, huddled around the front mic of the House smugly attacking school choice, pretending they had the moral high ground.

Many of those elected representatives were private school graduates. Others sent their own children to private schools. However, by standing against school choice, they denied the children of their own constituents, often trapped in the worst schools in the state, any hope of going to a better school. The level of hypocrisy and elitism was staggering.

This is particularly damning when you consider the results of a study published in the Urban Review in 2013 that found that “high achieving black males who attend private high schools are dramatically more likely to attain a bachelor’s degree than similar students attending public schools.”

A majority of Texans support school choice in every poll including nearly 60% of Black Texans, even though most of them also vote Democrat, and killing school choice is part of the Texas Democrat Platform. Texas parents also know that Florida schools went from 33 in the nation to No. 1 by establishing a comprehensive school choice program.

Most parents are like Texas parents. I lived in New York City in the 1990s when public schools were not only dismal, they were dangerous. Nobody I knew, including the lowly underpaid secretaries and custodians in the building where I worked, sent their kids to a public school, because no responsible parent would do that. They worked as many extra jobs as they needed to in order to pay tuition and get their kids in a school where they would have a chance. There is still no real school choice in New York except charter schools and teachers’ unions work tirelessly to close those down.

Parents care about their kids, but there’s very little evidence that education bureaucrats do. Twenty years ago, I interviewed a couple members of the Newark School Board about why they believed the school district should provide them with a car—which it did. One member told me it was absolutely necessary because he had to get to lots of athletic events and with school district plates, he could park without getting a ticket. He didn’t see any relationship between his car and the 4% graduation rate.

I thought the car story was just a New Jersey thing, until I found out that in Texas today, the superintendent of Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, whose base annual salary is $521,000, also gets an additional $24,000 car allowance. No doubt he has a lot of athletic events to attend too—just like nearly every parent who lives in his district and pays his enormous salary with their property taxes.

Even if you believe that pouring more money into our public schools would make the schools better, and we have mountains of evidence that it won’t make any difference, it wouldn’t fix them in time to impact the lives of the kids who are in school today. If your child is in a school where he or she is not thriving, then you want to find a pathway out of that school and into another that works for your child as soon as possible.

That’s why parents across Texas are fighting so hard for school choice. They know that regardless of what Texas decides to do on the issue of school funding, their child cannot wait for another session or a better political climate.

This is their year. Every class in school now is the class of 2023. They only get one shot.

Nearly 70% of Texas university professors are not recommending Texas to their colleagues in other states, and more than a quarter are considering leaving next year, according to a new poll by the American Association of University Professors. Texas professors told surveyors their dissatisfaction stems from “political interference and widespread dissatisfaction with the state of higher education in Texas.”

(We’ll skip over the hysterical irony of state employees paid with taxpayer dollars being annoyed by the “political interference” in their work.)

Upon releasing the poll, the professors said, “these findings serve as a wake-up call for policymakers, administrators, employers, and other concerned citizens, emphasizing the urgent need to address the concerns raised by faculty members. Failure to do so may result in a significant exodus of faculty, challenges attracting academic talent, and an overall decline in the quality of higher education.”

Wake up call? They are kidding right? Do they think that policy makers, employers and other concerned citizens of Texas give a hoot that a bunch of professors are angry about tightening up tenure rules and ending so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs? Senate Bill 17 passed in May; it ensures that going forward, no program or policy will be allowed on any Texas university campus that “promotes differential treatment or provides special benefits to individuals on the basis of race, color or ethnicity.”

DEI is a woke policy based on the premise that all American institutions, including our colleges and universities, reflect a white supremacist culture. Dozens of Texas university professors who testified against the anti-DEI bill believe that to see America any other way is also racist. No other viewpoint is tolerated.

These professors believe it is their job to divide students by race, ethnicity and gender and then teach young minority Texans to see racism everywhere. They want them to understand that they are all hopelessly oppressed. They also teach Anglo Texans that their race gives them privilege, regardless of their circumstances and that they are racist, whether they know it or not.

If that sounds nuts, it’s worth noting that Texas professors may not be among Texas’ best and brightest. According to the AAUP poll, almost a third of them, 28.7%, said they hoped to leave Texas. The No. 1 place they want to move is California.

At least they’ll be driving against the traffic. USA Today reported in August that Census Bureau data shows in 2021, 111,000 people left California for Texas—300 people a day. That’s an increase of 36% compared to 2016. Folks moving to Texas had a long list of reasons—taxes, cost of living, red tape, crime and infrastructure. It will likely shock the Texas professors to know that more than a few former Californians also mentioned freedom of speech and tolerance for different opinions in Texas as a reason for their move.

Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Stewart and Samuel L. Jackson, all said they would leave the country in 2016 if Trump was elected. They didn’t. These Texas professors aren’t going anywhere, either. The market for academics is glutted and then some. Academic insiders estimate that while it varies from field to field, there are routinely as many as 50 applications for every faculty opening. In addition, young faculty members in Texas complain that because of tenure, professors never retire and they are unable to advance. If these professors pack up their U-Hauls and head west, their jobs will be filled by tomorrow morning.

Dozens of whiny professors testified in opposition to the anti-DEI and tenure reform bills last spring, predicting that if they passed, Texas would be imperiled because a few left-wing academics wouldn’t want to live here anymore.

Not one of them made a case that DEI or tenure had actually improved student performance or graduation outcomes for minority students—or any student—on any college campus in Texas. DEI has been in place for at least a decade on most Texas campuses and the impact has been zilch, so perhaps a “significant exodus in college faculty” is just what we need.

Don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out.

TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with famed historian J.P. Bryan of the Texas State Historical Association to discuss the importance of preserving our great state’s history, free from distortion and historically inaccurate bias.

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