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Committee on Academic Freedom Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association of North America | – Letter to the Chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, concerning threatened sanctions against Professor Tiffany Willoughby-Herard Howard GillmanChancellor, University of California, [email protected] Dear Chancellor Gillman: We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and its Committee […]

What better way to mark the 250th anniversary of a nation founded on lofty ideals now plunged into ugly discrepancies than to double down on hate-and-fear-mongering? Cue a Racist-In-Chief who stays silent when 400 masked Nazis march in D.C. but goes online to assail graduating kindergarteners in Minnesota for wearing hijabs - goading his followers in vicious lockstep to dutifully screech, "Deport them, big and small!" Stay classy, MAGA.Somehow, we still manage to be shocked at how ludicrously low the bar's sunk. Never mind the unhinged May hearing where House Repubs attacked the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), following up on equally unhinged fraud charges, by directly quoting a letter from the same hate groups unhappy they'd been named hate groups. In a blistering response, a Dem rep called out their "embrace of white nationalist rhetoric" with the melted clock from the KKK’s 1983 firebombing of the SPLC, charging, "They’re trying to turn back the clock (on) some of the darkest days of our past.”Then there's the Kentucky pastor of a Baptist church "befuddled" by this year's backlash against a 30-year-old ritual of their vacation Bible school wherein men in military garb march down their church aisle, pull "sinners" outside to a mock firing squad and pretend to open fire. Pastor Dewayne Walker blamed "misinformation" - "part of what this generation has become" - for outrage at “nothing more than a small part" of their school helpfully aimed at identifying good and evil. Others called the ritual "depraved" and "appalling abuse," noting, "There’s not enough context in the world to make this okay." Same, alas, for much of what passes these dark days for political discourse. On America's 250th birthday, it was reported, about 400 neo-Nazis from the white nationalist Patriot Front joined the day's tawdry mayhem in D.C. by marching in masks and uniforms - seeking "the menace of a mob with none of the accountability" - chanting "Reclaim America." They looked unsettling enough that many on the right uneasily dismissed them as bad actors or imaginary Antifa; Laura Ingraham sneered, "I call fake," then righteously, nonsensically added, "No one should be allowed to cover their faces."One image of the day went viral: A lone, young, tense Black woman, sitting on the Metro, surrounded by Nazis. "I have taught this photograph before," wrote a longtime teacher on I Fucking Love Australia, describing the September day in 1957 in Little Rock, AR. when 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, trying to integrate Central High School, was stopped by the National Guard. In the image, she walks alone in the white dress her mother had sewn for her first day through a screaming, snarling white mob. Asked for their response, one of today's students inevitably offers, "Look at their faces. They wanted to be seen.""They believed history would agree with them," notes the teacher. "The men on that Metro" - in their masks and khakis - "did not." In the 1940s and '50s, states in the Jim Crow South passed laws banning masks in public, their nod to the brutal presence of the KKK; even they understood that a man who covers his face is not expressing an opinion - he is issuing a threat. "In 1957, the mob showed their faces because they thought history was on their side. In 2026 they hide their faces because they know it is not," the teacher wrote. "That is not nothing. That is 69 years of progress, measured in cowardice."There was another, less widely viewed photo from that day on the train. Roswell Encina, a gay Filipino American, came to the US as an infant; his father served in the U.S. Navy. Roswell is head of the non-partisan U.S.Capitol Historical Society; as part of his job, he places replicas of the Declaration of Independence in embassies, stadiums, public places so ordinary people can read it and see it as their own story. The train on the 4th had been full of red, white and blue families heading to the fireworks; when they got off and the Nazis got on, he said the mood felt "unnerving" and he had to "summon my better angels" to stay put.The group was civil and chatting; he tried not to make eye contact, looked up their patches on his phone, texted friends in a familiar safety ritual to say where he was. Later, neither wearing nor needing a mask, he spoke to reporters, in part to protect the young Black woman whose name was unknown. As a historian, he said he felt reassured unnerving" reassured a photographer was documenting the moment. "Democracy is very fragile," he said. "We need to stay engaged with history, civics, education. History is a conversation, and this is part of it." Then he cited another name and image from that earlier era: Ruby Bridges.Ruby Bridges was six years old in November 1960 when she walked between federal marshals into her New Orleans school as its first Black student after a federal court ordered schools to integrate; white parents were so outraged they kept their kids home, and Ruby spent the year alone in her classroom. To memorialize the historic day, Norman Rockwell painted her, small and again set between marshals, walking along a stone wall where a member of another mob had scrawled "NIGGER" and thrown a tomato, which oozed down. Rockwell titled the 1964 painting, "The Problem We All Live With." Ruby was 6. The 20 or so kids who proudly stood and joyfully sang on a stage in St. Paul, Minnesota last month were all five and six. A brief video clip from Somali TV of Minnesota shows them celebrating their kindergarten graduation at Gateway STEM Academy, a public charter school serving about 180 students, many Somali, most with legal immigration status, not that it should matter. They wore small sweet blue robes and caps, with hijabs under their mortarboards and white stoles around their shoulders whose rainbow letters, under a teddy bear, read, "Kindergarten Graduate."Theirs was one of several school graduations celebrated around the state, and the country. It was the only one spotlighted online by a right-wing account named “End Wokeness,” which in 2024 went viral with the claim Haitian immigrants in Ohio were stealing and eating people’s pets.This time, it posted a photo of the small celebrants with an enraged, "Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab…in kindergarten.” When 400 masked Nazis marched through the nation's capitol on the nation's birthday, the President of the United States said nothing. But hijabs: "He found his voice."This week, months after he called Minnesota's Somali community "garbage," after vandalism at mosques, women harassed for wearing hijabs, a fire on a school bus at another largely Somali charter school, the ongoing terror of ICE's Metro Surge, he shared the "End Wokeness" post - twice - in hopes of siccing maybe just a modest mob of his 13 million followers, though not the sharpest tools in the shed, on the tiny perps in gowns and terrorist caps. And, oops, when he "pointed at babies," he did not blur their faces, which only takes seconds, and which normal people unthinkingly do to protect babies. The “anti-human” rhetoric found its mark. From Truth Social, "There are just some cultures that don't belong and for good reason," "I think they have stolen enough money from the US that they can buy their own ticket. I could help them out with a size 13 boot," and "This is the case for literally every single immigrant we unfortunately let in our country. They’re here to take advantage of our system and tell us how great their country is because they can rape their way through the population without consequence," which for damn sure wouldn't happen here in Epstein land, right?Parents and advocates expressed "shock and horror" at the reckless cruelty of targeting kids in kindergarten. CAIR: Trump "is putting lives at risk (in a) dangerous escalation of religious hatred. Children deserve to feel safe in their schools and communities...to recognize this is their country.” Tim Walz: "The President (is) attacking a group of kindergarteners because of the clothes they wore to school.” A local Imam: "Our children (are) fully part of this state and country. That is the Minnesota we believe in. That is the America we hope for." Educator Ms. Rachel: “Hijabs are beautiful...No matter what we wear, we all belong.”Online commentators offered, "At least he is attacking his intellectual peers." Outraged parents of kindergarteners protested the insult by noting their kids can "run intellectual circles around that fool," read at higher grade levels, learn new things daily, nicely share without being asked, and are potty-trained. Despite his vast resources, added the teacher at I Fucking Love Australia, he did not find the 60 seconds to at least blur their faces, "Because he was never trying to show you a graduation. He was showing his people where to aim. That is the whole story. Everything else is commentary."

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Nine months after delivering his widely mocked “beardo” speech, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is still fuming about the military’s (according to him) lax attitude toward grooming standards.Hegseth has recently complained in private about seeing service members with facial hair, going so far as to suggest that the military’s senior leadership has not fully embraced his new appearance and hygiene requirements, according to U.S. officials that spoke with CBS News Friday.One unidentified official told the network that Hegseth was frustrated that his speech last year did not produce immediate results.Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell attributed Hegseth’s anger to his high expectations.“Secretary Hegseth maintains the highest expectations for our service members to uphold the professional standards of appearance, fitness, and discipline that define our warfighting force, and he continues to emphasize consistent enforcement of hair, weight, and grooming standards across all ranks,” Parnell said in a statement to CBS News. “Commanders at every level are expected to lead by example by meeting these standards, implementing these requirements, and they will be held accountable for delivering results as the Department works to restore a culture of excellence and readiness,” Parnell continued. “Our Armed Forces are stronger when every service member meets and exceeds these expectations.”Last September, Hegseth ordered hundreds of America’s top military commanders to leave their international posts to attend a mandatory in-person assembly in Quantico, Virginia, during which the hairphobic ex–Fox News host unveiled his agenda to de-woke the country’s armed forces. The plan involved snipping away shaving waivers, despite the disproportionate impact that the requirement would have on Black service members, who are more frequently diagnosed with pseudofolliculitis barbae—or chronic razor bumps—due to the curl pattern of the hair and the subsequent injurious effects of frequently shaving their faces. The painful inflammatory condition has been estimated to affect somewhere between 45 percent to 83 percent of the Black male population in the U.S.“No more beardos,” Hegseth said during his address. “Calling someone to shave, or work hard, is exactly the kind of workforce we want.”“The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done,” Hegseth noted at the time, adding that anyone unwilling to comply should look for a “new position or a new profession.”Branches of the military have distributed their own internal guidance per the new grooming mandate, revealing that even those with medical exemptions will not be allowed to receive accommodations past 12 consecutive months.