Thread: Colleges vow to protect undocumented students

Colleges vow to protect undocumented students

By BENJAMIN WERMUND
11/23/16 10:00 AM EST

With help from Caitlin Emma, Kimberly Hefling and Michael Stratford

COLLEGES VOW TO PROTECT UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTS: The fate of undocumented college students has emerged as the first post-election rallying cry in academia, as university leaders brace for potential clashes with President-elect Donald Trump over issues that include diversity, “political correctness” and immigration policies.

— Leaders at more than 200 colleges and universities have signed a pledge urging Trump not to scrap Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a policy that allows some children of undocumented immigrants to receive two-year work permits and exemption from deportation.

Advocates estimate there could be as many as 1.4 million people in the U.S. who could be covered by the program, which applies to children of undocumented immigrants who arrived after 2007 at age 16 or younger.

As of June, the federal government had approved more than 840,000 DACA applications. Undocumented students attend some of the nation's top universities and in many states are allowed to pay cheaper in-state tuition.

— Trump repeatedly vowed to repeal DACA and other executive actions while on the campaign trail.
In a 2015 interview with Chuck Todd, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," Trump said he would deport undocumented immigrants — even if it meant splitting up families. "They have to go," Trump said. Trump has softened his stance since then, saying he will focus his deportation efforts on those with criminal backgrounds — at least initially. North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, who is a strong candidate to chair the House education committee in the next Congress, says any talk of deporting college students is premature. "Yeah, we eventually have to deal with them, but that ought not to be the first priority,” Foxx said.

— Immigration is expected to be only one of several potential culture clashes between the Trump administration and college leaders, who are vowing to “double down” on values such as inclusiveness. While Trump has said little about his plans for higher education, the president-elect has taken an antagonistic tone toward elite colleges and universities, saying he’ll end “political correctness” and that the government has “a lot of power over the colleges.”

— “We have to double down as an exemplar for the future of the country,” said Howard Gillman, the chancellor of the University of California-Irvine and one of the college leaders who signed the DACA pledge. “The job of a university is to educate a democracy.

That’s one of the reasons why every authoritarian or totalitarian that gains power, the first two places they go are the media and universities. Those are the two places that try to tell it like it is and that are incubators of independent thought … We need to continue to tell it like it is.” Read more.

http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/mo...tudents-217557

Harvard’s Hypocritical Protection of ‘Undocumented’ Students

70+ Catholic college leaders pledge solidarity with undocumented students

December 1, 2016 By Kirsty Jane
Leftists Lose Their Minds Over ‘Professor Watch List’ Created To Expose Liberal Indoctrination On Campus

Turning Point USA, a conservative organization made up of high school and college students, has compiled a website database of more than 200 professors at universities across the nation that “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”


From Daily Caller

The website, professorwatchlist.org, doesn’t list just any professo*r — TPUSA requires proof.
“This watchlist is an aggregated list of pre-existing news stories that were published by a variety of news organizations,” the website states. “While we accept tips for new additions on our website, we only publish profiles on incidents that have already been reported by a credible source.”
The website also says that TPUSA is not attempting to silence the professors on the list, but instead they are exposing “specific incidents and names of professors that advance a radical agenda in lecture halls.”
Since its recent debut, the list has seen no shortage of harsh criticism.
Slate author Rebecca Schuman deemed the watchlist “grotesque,” and called it “a stock agency for photos of self-satisfied young white people.”
“Intentionally or not, the Professor Watchlist, simply by being a self-styled watch list, has aligned itself with the ugly, frightening new political status quo,” writes Schuman. “This is, indeed, a turning point in our country, a time of fear unprecedented on this continent since the Second World War. Fear of being placed on a list, targeted as undesirable, and subjected to whatever happens next.”
Schuman also compared TPUSA members and the organization as a whole to an angry violent mob, stating, “this list watches over us at our country’s darkest turning point, poised to inflame the tinder-dry, gasoline-soaked pitchforks of a mob that has just stepped boldly into the light.”
New York Times author Christopher Mele also attacked the list in an article titled “Professor Watchlist Is Seen as A Threat To Academic Freedom.”
Mele quotes Julio C. Pino, an associate professor history at Kent State included on the list that believes it “is a kind of normalizing of prosecuting professors, shaming professors, defaming professors.”
“The website has thin information in its entries and a less-than-smooth search function,” Professor Pino continues. “That could be a reflection of how rapidly it was created to capitalize on the political climate, particularly after the election of Donald J. Trump as president.”

Read Full Story At Daily Caller
http://eheadlines.com/leftists-lose-their-minds-over-professor-watch-list-created-to-expose-liberal-indoctrination-on-campus/