Why exactly are they reluctant? Does it have anything to do, by any chance, with the fashionable anti-Americanism and sympathy for the jihadist perspective so prevalent on many campuses today?
By Billy House for The Tampa Tribune (thanks to Hal):
WASHINGTON - Some of the nation's colleges and universities are reluctant to aid the government in keeping tabs on the activities of foreign students, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says.Now appearing before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, Chertoff has not been asked about or spoken directly on last Friday's indictment of two Egyptian-born University of South Florida students, one accused of trying to aid terrorists.
But under questioning from Rep. Gus Bilirakis, a Palm Harbor Republican, Chertoff discussed in general terms how the government needs the cooperation of colleges and universities to know when foreign students aren't attending programs or classes in which they are enrolled.
Chertoff said some colleges "don't want to see themselves as enforcement tools for the government."
Greetings:
Well, unlike some of our municipalities, at least they didn't declare themselves santuaries.
Moral superiority - the cocaine of the 21st century.
JihadWatch: Subverting the Subverters.
That could be solved easily enough, if only it can be established that any school receiving any federal funds agrees, by virtue of accepting those funds, to comply with requests of this nature.
Precedent exists (somewhat ironically) in the enforcement of FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act-- a school that runs afoul of that can lose federal funding. But obviously law enforcement, of all people, fit the "need to know" criterion for disclosing information.
However, I wonder if perhaps some finer points of FERPA need to be tweaked in order to spell out the rights of law enforcement-- and society as a whole, with respect to national security issues-- in no uncertain terms, so that colleges and universities have fewer excuses to offer before complying.
Apropos the NYC [moslem] taxi strike: i saw plenty of available taxis. Some people were pooling and the strike really didn't seem to have much effect.
Pull the federally funded blanket right out from under them.
I am using my memory here (beware!) but I do believe that this came up soon after 9/11 that the Universities should help out some more and they resisted, big time! I don't see them being very helpful because so many of them receive monies from saudi arabia, and when the saudis give money - they expect 'favors'.
So, I don't know about Universities being very bright, overall, about what we face and what sorts of people attend their schools at times.
A sensible university president will not only comply, but happily comply and make public the reasons for his compliance. One problem is that Michael Chertoff is in the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration has been imbecilic in its attempts to deal with Islam, or rather in its failure to begin to understand Islam, and how those boots-on-the-ground in Iraq are entirely unnecessary, constitute a continuing and maddening squandering of lives, money, and materiel, and Bush, an obstinately stupid and stupidly obstinate man, entirely devoid of the kind of ruthless cunning both appropriate and necessary for the task at hand -- instead he hopes, he keeps hoping, a veritable Little Engine That Could -- that the way to handle things is to promise and, what's more, deliver, toys and good things to eat to the boys and girls on the other side of the mountain, but no matter how hard he huffs and he puffs, he won't bring the Islamic house of demisemihemi-quavering cards down, but rather do damage to us, as he has done.
And many, for that reason, cannot see clearly, cannot see straight, about the texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, and end up not seeing the true nature and scope of the menace. And then these same people simply cannot support Chertoff, or anyone else in the Bush Administration, when they happen to divert into sense, or semi-sense.
It will take someone quite different to garner enough support for such measures. But university presidents could help out, could be less timid, could study on their own and avoid those esdrujula obstacles -- stupidity, timidity, rigidity, cupidity (unless their university is expecting a new Middle Eastern center from the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Qataris, or for that matter the nice Oyalan Foundation that paid for the "Edward Said Professorship" at Columbia)--if they thought about the matter.
Where are those figures of yesteryear? James Bryant Conant? Nicholas Murray Butler? Charles Eliot Norton? Virginia Gildersleeve? Or, for that matter, Woodrow Wilson? Where are those who, in the days before college presidents became mere fundraisers and gladhanders and deliverers of commencement cliches, the days before they had to have their smiles grimaced on, and their arms permanently outstretched in Eleemosynary Position #1, were not afraid to speak out, to offend and attack the powerful, and possessed a modicum of common sense and therefore a commonsensical interest in preserving a cultural, and therefore a political, legacy, and were quick to attend to the menace of those who would, if they could, destroy that legacy. Think of American colleges and universities during World War II, and how they would have treated consistent and sinister apologists for Nazi Germany.
Where are they?
It's the MONEY! These low-life University administrators don't want any diminishment of the lucrative foreign student market because of any possible reputation for such tracking. This excuse/rationalization "don't want to see themselves as enforcement tools for the government." is crap. They know it is a civic and moral duty in view of the threat of Islamic terrorism– but just too bad if any of their Muslim “student” jihadist blow people up as long as it’s not on their campus, which is unlikely. But they want their tuition money.
Chertoff said some colleges "don't want to see themselves as enforcement tools for the government."
Chertoff has forgotten that security and safety of Homeland is his responsibility.
I agree with Alert. I can't believe that the DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY isn't monitoring these 'guests' activity. Why would these guests not expect to be monitored? They aren't protected under Constitutional freedoms because they aren't citizens. We don't need to be overbearing, but we should know where they are and what they are doing and who they are talking to.
Allahfanculo,
You're in NYC? We gotta hook up soon.
Regards,
awake
College seems to be where many converts are created. If muslims were not imported to colleges that would reduce the future threat. Less enthusiastic converts.
Amen, FM, it is the money. Your university administrators, like mine, are globe hopping all the time because they want the full tuition from these folks, knowing that the pool of Americans who can go to college for four years and pay for it shrinks every day. Education is now Big Business, and they have been lobbying for open foreign admission for the past six years. They don't care if it's Osama himself!
To hell with foreign students, let's monitor native professors.
Diggler - not just the native professors, also the foreign professors - many of the American colleges have Middle Eastern staffs, even imams. What these guys are teaching needs to be monitored and made public.
I understand that Germany or some of the German states require all mosque sermons to be in German and monitored. It is time to shed the PC cloak and shine some light on these guys.
Expect the anti hurt feelings brigades to protest.
Re: WASHINGTON - Some of the nation's colleges and universities are reluctant to aid the government in keeping tabs on the activities of foreign students, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says.
These are the "weaklings" that Hitler referred to in Mein Kampf (a very popular book in the Mideast). The constant barrage of slanders and charges ("racism", "bigotry"-1938 Sudetenland style) has crippled the "weaklings" ability to look at facts and see who really is the "victim" in these matters. As Goebbels noted (Hitler too), it is very important for the aggressor to be portrayed as "victim" in the propaganda process so that "the stupid masses" will believe in the "justice" of their cause.
Hitler (from Mein Kampf) on the methods he learned in Vienna on how to silence critics: "I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous (JW, e.g.), until the nerves of the attacked persons break down (JW and others, e.g.) and, just to have peace again, they (the PC in media and govt) sacrifice the hated individua(s).
However, the fools obtain no peace.
The game begins again and is repeated over and over until fear of the mad dog results in suggestive (PC) paralysis.........Conversely, they praise every (PC) weakling (the Moe Howard "Distinguished proffessor" Dr. Karl Ernst, e.g.)on the opposing side, sometimes cautiously, sometimes loudly, depending on the real or supposed quality of his intelligence".
In regard to the "spiritual terror" tactics of Hitler (noted above), William Shirer (page 23, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) said: "No more precise analysis of Nazi tactics, as Hitler was eventually to develop them, was ever written".
We must keep in mind that Goebbels said that propaganda does not have to be logical, truthful or even intelligent. It must be effective. Thus the illogical charges of "racism" only have to be effective in intimidating the target. (Forget about Arab racism and the total lack of pluralism in the Muslim world generally.)
In like manner (on a dime-store level) someone like Fibrahim "Farfur Style Propaganda" Hooper will deliberately lie and attribute to Robert Spencer (on the program with Dennis Prager) a JW post Fibrahim knew was deleted by Robert Spencer. Fibrahim knew he was a liar when he attributed the post to Spencer. However, he knew the smear would stick with many of "the stupid masses". That's what propaganda is about.
God forbid that they might be used as a tool to prevent the loss of innocent lives to some "very religious young man, who never hurt anyone or spoke an unkind word," until he murdered hundreds.
Better to be PC and let people die instead.
Chertoff said some colleges "don't want to see themselves as enforcement tools for the government."
Then the government should deny/revoke student visas to students of those schools.
Alert;
Well said. It is the college's duty to teach, not to become spys for our government. H.L.S. bears the duty to know who they allow in BEFORE they are given access to the schools.
TheDiggler - you made my day a second time. I hear that cri du coeur in the cockles of my lily-livered academic heart.
When I see that the goal of my Marxist colleagues is to destroy Western civilization, I wonder what the heck I'm doing there. Then I remember. The poor students need someone who loves America, loves Western civilization - and, by the way, is willing to teach them what they expected to learn in that class.