Harvey Mudd (and Pomona) Brings Bill Gates on March 10

Thursday, March 10, 2011
Bridges Auditorium, Pomona College

Seating is limited with priority given to HMC and Pomona College students. Tickets will be available mid-February and students, faculty and staff will be allotted one ticket each. Limited general admission tickets for alumni will be available through the Bridges Box Office (909.621.8032) starting Feb. 16. Depending on availability, there may be a limited number of general admission tickets for the public at the Bridges Box Office starting March 7.

Bill Gates is founder and former CEO of Microsoft. A tech visionary and business entrepreneur, Gates' leadership -- fueled by his long-held dream that millions might realize their potential through software -- made Microsoft a personal computing powerhouse and household name.

In summer of 2008, Gates left his day-to-day role with Microsoft to focus on philanthropy. Maintaining that all lives have equal value no matter where they're being lived, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donate to expand opportunity to the world’s most disadvantaged people. Collaborating with grantees and partners, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is focused on programs in global health and education, HIV/AIDS, libraries, and agriculture research.

Gates has also become an avid student and investor in new energy approaches, fueled by his interest in global development and innovation.

He is also a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Claremont Portside Owes Readers a Correction on Bassam Frangieh Story

The Claremont Port Side has done its readers a disservice with a factually-inaccurate article it released today. Nevertheless, I'm grateful that they have decided to write on the subject nearly two months after my second article on Frangieh's views and some nine months after my first. I salute The Port Side in having a dialogue about an issue that won't go away. After all, even if it is off-base, it's at least willing to discuss those views, which is much more than we can say for Richard Rodner, Claremont's VP of Communications, who censored Bassam Frangieh's wikipedia page of anything critical. (Curiously, The Port Side omitted that mention in their piece.) 

Their first act must be to release a correction:

A series of articles have been published by Charles C. Johnson at the Claremont Independent and elsewhere decrying Prof. Frangieh’s (alleged) political views. Based on interviews and petitions translated from Arabic, it has been claimed that Frangieh has expressed “great pleasure” at Hamas taking power in the Gaza Strip and that Frangieh said that “without Hamas and Hezbollah,” the Arabs would have “Nothing. Except humiliation.”

We do not know whether these quotes are true or accurately translated. Most of the documents are in Arabic. None of the translated documents have been made public in their entirety. Only a few of these documents are made available in the original Arabic. Many of these are not Prof. Frangieh’s own comments, but instead petitions that he appears to have signed. So, the veracity of Johnson’s claims or of his translations cannot be independently verified.

Despite having nearly two months to vet all of sources in their original Arabic, The Port Side shows that it is uninterested in serious journalism. I have reproduced the sources from The Claremont Independent article here in an effort to help the Port Side's lazy journalism: 

Arabic language sources:

http://www.diwanalarab.com/spip.php?article293

http://ya-ashrafe-nnas.blogspot.com/2007/05/world-doesn.html

http://www.jammoul.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4484&langid=1

http://articles.abolkhaseb.net/ar_articles_2007/1007/istnkar_021007.htm

http://alnoha.com/visitor8/la-letqseem.htm 

http://www.al-moharer.net/moh262/hussaini262.htm

http://arabnews.ca/joomla/index.php?Itemid=44&id=2666&option=com_content&task=view

an interview 

http://aljabha.org/?i=20335

There is nothing “alleged” about the views. They have been translated by three different translators. I offered to make the translations available (with the original Arabic) to The Claremont Port Side's publisher, Jeremy Merrill CMC '12 and its editor, Everett “Alex” Heiney CMC '12 as the transcript of gchat conversations between the two of us will show. As a token of good will, I gave Heiney the entire interview and more documents on January 18th, 2011. I know he received this email because he thanked me for it. 

 The offer to work with anyone interested in this topic still stands, as does giving everyone the material whenever they want it, but I have not released all of it yet online because I want the stories many dimensions to become clear to the campus. The Port Side owes its readers a correction given those conversations between me and its staff that offered, repeatedly, to share the translations with the Port Side. Moreover, the Port Side is incorrect. In an article I wrote nearly two months ago, I released all of the documents in their original Arabic here. 

The Port Side is correct that many of the source material is petitions, though the most damning bits – where he praises Hezbollah and Hamas – are, in fact, in his own words and from a May 26, 2006 interview with Al Jabha. Heiney, at the very least, should know this, as I sent him that interview translated in English with relevant sections highlighted on January 18th. Does the editor of The Port Side not talk to its publisher? 

Had the Port Side's editor taken me up on my offer and read the interviews and petitions I sent him (and sent them to the publisher as I requested), he would know that Frangieh views petitions as something that “stem[s] from the heart, and are cast onto paper.” That makes us wonder if his view that there is a “Zionist plot” behind America's Iraq war policy, that he supports a boycott against Israel and Israeli academics, that he condones violence against Israelis, that he considers the terrorist group Hezbollah the legitimate government of Lebanon, and on and on. Then we could move along to a more serious question: whether someone with these horrible views can credibly teach on what the Port Side calls a "complex" area? 

I'll go through the rest of The Port Side story later, but this dishonesty on the part of the editor and publisher of this magazine shows loud and clear and should make anyone question what The Port Side has written here. How terribly disappointing for a newspaper that was so recently proving itself to be beyond its libelous past. I've asked The Port Side's Jeremy Merrill for a correction, but he has thus far refused. Let's hope he reconsiders.

--Charles C. Johnson

Editor of The Claremont Conservative

Editor Emeritus of The Claremont Independent

Aleta Wenger's Anti-Israel Bigotry Does Not Produce "Mutual Understanding"

"Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations." - Senator J. William Fulbright, 1983.

Should Aleta Wenger, Claremont McKenna's current "executive director for international programs" be involved with the Fulbright program whens she holds dehumanizing views of Israelis and their government? After all, according to Claremont McKenna's own press release -- and Ms. Wenger's own words -- the purpose of the program is to foster "mutual understanding". So what does it tell us that the college's liaison to the program is herself against that very spirit and has very bigoted views against Israelis?
 
As I have noted before, she commended an American movement-linked to Hamas in a New York Times comment to do an end run on Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Here’s what she wrote:

I’m against the Israeli blockade of Gaza and do not believe for one minute that the Israelis are allowing in food and medicine, and other commodities, to the level needed by the civilian population. I now have a good cause to support financially, and am very happy that my fellow Americans are interested in joining the blockade movement. Now to see if I can get on that boat. As a retired U.S. foreign service officer now unleashed, I can do and say what I want. Now let’s hear all of your readers tell me how naive I am… but I’m telling you, I’ve truly been there and seen it all… go Gaza flotilla ships go!!! [emphasis mine]

Left unremarked is that that “blockade” is supported by Egypt, as well, as Israel – and that it was in response to the firing of thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel that the blockade began.

The running of the blockade is not so much about humanitarian supplies, as Greta Berlin, one of the organizers confessed, “is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it’s about breaking Israel’s siege on 1.5 million
Palestinians.” For its part, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh said that it would refuse any aid from Israel-intercepted flotilla, telling the press that “We are not seeking to fill our (bellies), we are looking to break the Israeli siege on Gaza.” If we take Hamas seriously, then they are either deliberately starving their people – or the Israelis are correct – that the goods onboard the flotilla were already readily available in Gaza.

However the Gaza blockades looks, it looks like Aleta Wenger has a deep-seated suspicion of Israel. In an August 4, 2006 comment on Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, she suspected the I.D.F. wanted to bomb a university:

I would like ABC to run a full story on the status of AUB [American University of Beirut], including the hospital, with a status report about the physical plant of the most renowned university in the Arab World. Has AUB also been bombed by the Israelis? Since they are now bombing Christian villages in the north of Lebanon, perhaps AUB is next in line. Shame on the Israelis and I welcome more balanced coverage from ABC on this war. [Emphasis mine]

Without a shred of evidence, she suggests that Israel would bomb a university.

Now, at Claremont McKenna, she's the head of our college's international relations and is one of the gatekeepers of the Fulbright award.  Given her views, Wenger should make clear that her hostility to Israel will not translate into policy on campus. Unlike her husband, she does not have tenure.

FIRE's Greg Lukianoff Comes to Claremont

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Greg Lukianoff, President of Free Speech Rights Group FIRE to Speak at Claremont Colleges

Greg Lukianoff, President of the civil liberties group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, will be speaking at Claremont McKenna College on February 2, 2011 at 8pm. Lukianoff was invited by the ACLU of the Claremont Colleges.

“Civil liberties are as important on campus as they are off-campus,” said Miles Lifson, director of the ACLU-CC. He added, “We welcome Greg Lukianoff to our campus to speak on this important issue. Students at the Claremont Colleges should know that they do not lose their free speech rights when they walk through the metaphorical schoolhouse gates.”

Jon Rice, the group’s communications director, explained, saying “California law protects the free speech rights of students, even at private colleges and universities. It is important for students, faculty and administrators to recognize this. We think Lukianoff’s visit will help raise awareness on this issue.”
Lifson is a sophomore at Claremont McKenna College and Rice is a sophomore at Pitzer College.
Lukianoff will be speaking at Claremont McKenna’s Bauer Forum at 8pm. The event is free and open to the public, and directions can be found at claremontmckenna.edu.

FIRE unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of liberty, free speech, legal equality, due process, the right of conscience, and academic freedom on America’s college campuses.

Greg Lukianoff is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and has been with FIRE since 2001, when he was hired to be the organization’s first director of legal and public advocacy. Greg is a member of the State Bar of California and the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. Greg has published articles in The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the New York Post, The Stanford Technology Law Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Fraternal Law, Inside Higher Ed, Reason, Free Inquiry, and numerous other publications. He is a blogger for the Huffington Post and authored a chapter in Templeton Press’s anthology New Threats to Freedom, edited by Adam Bellow. Greg is a frequent guest on local and national syndicated radio programs, has represented FIRE on national television shows – including CBS Evening News, The O’Reilly Factor, MSNBC’s Dr. Nancy, Glenn Beck,The Abrams Report, Hannity and Colmes, and Buchanan and Press – and has testified before the U.S. Senate about free speech issues on America’s campuses. In 2008 he became the
first ever recipient of the Playboy Foundation Freedom of Expression Award and in 2010 he received Ford Hall Forum’s Louis P. and Evelyn Smith First Amendment Award on behalf of FIRE.

The American Civil Liberties Union of the Claremont Colleges is a student group affiliated with the ACLU of Southern California. It partners with the ACLU/SC and various on-campus organizations to advocate for civil liberties, racial justice and freedom from governmental intrusion.

# # #

For more information, please contact Jeremy B. Merrill at 919.724.1285 or at info@aclu-cc.org. Lukianoff, Lifson and others will be available before and after the event. Also, see our website at http://aclu-cc.org

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By admin – January 24, 2011