Tension

Hundreds demonstrate at UCI (OC Reg)

Tension between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel students at UC Irvine flared up again on Tuesday, when hundreds of activists participated in spontaneous "dueling demonstrations" in front of the UCI administration building.

A "speak out" rally supporting the "Irvine 11," the group of students arrested last month after disrupting Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's speech at UCI, turned into a march down UCI's Ring Road. The march stopped at the entrance to the administration building and the two opposing crowds engaged in a shouting and chanting match.

Demonstrators chanted, sung, danced and eventually participated in heated face-to-face discussions.

"It was an example of free speech at its most dramatic," said Cathy Lawhon, University spokeswoman.

Each group initially attempted to chant louder and longer than the other.
. . .
Students, teachers, alumni and representatives from outside interest groups such as the Jewish Federation of Orange County and the National Lawyers Guild began marching after participating in a "speak out" in the UCI student center.

The "speak out," sponsored by the Black Student Union but organized by a "coalition" of different student groups, protested a recent statement issued by University of California President Mark Yudof that condemned the Michael Oren protest alongside the recent racist incidents at UCSD and UC Davis including the "Compton Cookout."

Student organizers objected to the statement, signed by the chancellors of every UC campus, claiming that the "Irvine 11" protest is unrelated to the acts of racism at Davis and San Diego and involves completely different issues…. (continued)

Racial Incidents Multiply in California (Inside Higher Ed)

Even as thousands of students at the University of California's campuses prepare for massive rallies Thursday over state budget cuts, they continue to be roiled by racial incidents. The University of California at San Diego, which has seen a series of incidents, had a new one Monday night when authorities found a white pillowcase on a statue outside the library, making the pillowcase appear to be a Klan-style hood. Police are investigating the incident. Meanwhile, at the University of California at Santa Cruz, officials were denouncing a drawing of a noose on a bathroom door, in apparent reference to a recent noose incident at the San Diego conference.

An Education Researcher's Stunning Reversal (Inside Higher Ed)

Some scholars' views evolve, but a profile in The New York Times examines a series of reversals in the views of Diane Ravitch, a prominent education researcher at New York University and the Brookings Institution. Ravitch has gone from being a leading fan of charter schools and No Child Left Behind to becoming a leading critic, stunning education scholars across the political spectrum.

From the Times article:

Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration’s Education Department, is in the final stages of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took on American schooling.

Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schoolsand free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of two conservative research groups.

“School reform today is like a freight train, and I’m out on the tracks saying, ‘You’re going the wrong way!’ ” Dr. Ravitch said in an interview. (continued)