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Thank you for the A2A[1].I have written about this before on Quora, but the same question keeps coming back to haunt the Indian subcontinent.We just passed August 5, 2020. This date marks the first anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir by the Indian government. If you have missed the details on my earlier analysis on the Kashmir Problem, I invite you to read through this one.Edit 1:I thank all my readers for your overwhelming support for this writing. Many of you have expressed the hope that this post should reach all Indians, Pakistanis, people in the west, leftist-liberal Indian journalists, biased western media... that list is long. All of that can happen, only if YOU take the initiative to do YOUR bit. As Gandhi advised us - "Be the change you want to see in the world".If you are numb with the overdose of biased reporting from Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera (this list is long too), you can respond by doing this - share this writing through your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts… whichever social medium you use. This will not happen without YOUR action. The false narratives on Kashmir can only be dispelled by supplanting them with the truth.When did Kashmir start losing its peace?[2]The world we live in today, if you were to ask for a commentary or analysis or opinion on the Kashmir problem, there is one argument that will garner unanimous agreement across the South Asian subcontinent (and even from foreign affairs experts around the globe and self-styled experts on Kashmir from the western media) - that the history of the Kashmir problem starts with 1947.Take a look at the 59 other answers to this question on Quora. 90% of those answers begin with the narrative of what happened in 1947.The expanse and the magnitude of this myopia is disconcerting!The seeds of the Kashmir problem were sown centuries before 1947 came into being. 1947 and the birth of Pakistan simply triggered what could be the beginning of the end for this most disturbing and perennially lingering episode in the history of the Indian civilizationWhat is the Kashmir Problem?Kashmir is not a territorial dispute.Kashmir is a dispute emerging from a civilizational struggle.A struggle for uprooting a civilization with an indigenous and deeply ingrained culture of peaceful coexistence between ethnicities and religions… and forcibly replacing it with a virulent strain of Islam that borders on the insidious and violent totalitarianism of Sunni Wahhabism.Kashmiri Hindus - The original Inhabitants of Kashmir[3]According to folk etymology, the name "Kashmir" means "desiccated land" (from the Sanskrit: Ka = water and shimeera = desiccate). In the Rajatarangini[4], a history of Kashmir written by Kalhana[5] in the mid-12th century, it is stated that the valley of Kashmir was formerly a lake. According to Hindu mythology, the lake was drained by the great rishi or sage, Kashyapa, son of Marichi, son of Brahma, by cutting the gap in the hills at Baramulla (Varaha-mula). When Kashmir had been drained, Kashyapa asked Brahmins (the highest caste among Hindus) to settle there.If we go by written history, Kashmiri Hindus are the aborigines of Kashmir. The native pagans who survived centuries of cruelty and oppression while keeping the flag of Indian civilization fluttering in the valley against all odds.However, as a result of the incessant invasions by Muslim barbarians, some parts of the Indian civilization began to witness a change in demographics in favor of Muslims. Kashmir happened to be a key example of one such region.Exodus of Hindus from KashmirKashmir and its original inhabitants - the Hindus of Kashmir have been in existence for centuries before Pakistan or any of the Muslim League leaders and the proponents of the 2 Nation Theory were even born.From the 14th century to the present times, the Hindus of Kashmir have been at the literal bleeding edge of the clash of civilizations. As a result, over the course of a few centuries most Kashmiris had been converted out of the Hindu fold by the force of intimidation and brutal violence that characterized the better part of Muslim Rule in Kashmir.By the turn of the 20th century, Kashmiri Pandits came to represent the bulk of the Hindu presence that remained in Kashmir. The Kashmiri Pandits (also known as Kashmiri Brahmins) are Kashmiri Hindus and a part of the larger Saraswat Brahmin community.Some westerners pose the question, why do all Kashmiri Hindus belong to just the Brahmin caste. Well, that is because all the other (Hindu) castes were converted to Islam by the swords of the tyrants who ruled the valley. Tyrants like Sikander Butshikan[6], Ali Shah, Shamsuddin Iraqi and others who not only carried out terrible genocides but also destroyed the centers of Kashmiri Hindu spiritual and intellectual life. History bears evidence to the desecration and destruction of great Hindu temples like the Sun Temple at Martand and countless other shrines.A rare photo of the ruins of the Surya Temple at Martand, which was destroyed due to the iconoclastic policies of Sikandar Butshikan, photo taken by John Burke in 1868.Source: Wikipedia on Sikandar Butshikan[7]Kashmiri Hindu women were beautiful. There was a time in Kashmir under Afghan rule when their striking looks became such a burden on their families that their noses had to be cut-off and their heads shaved, to protect the Hindu girls from the lustful eyes of the ruling barbarians.Such atrocities created pressure on the dwindling Hindu community to flee from Kashmir not once or twice but 7 times since Islam came to Kashmir. The demographics of the Kashmir region continued to change decisively in favor of Muslims. This episode will be continued to its climax when we get to 1990, the year Hindus were "ethnically cleansed" out of Kashmir.1947The Indian civilization finally woke up to an era of realizing its long cherished and hard fought dream of nationhood. However, fate had destined one last blow of plunder and pillage of a different nature.A man named Mohammed Ali Jinnah mistook independence from the British to mean the subcontinent had just turned into a once in a lifetime opportunity to a grab-all-you-can real estate bonanza[8]. He claimed that the Muslims needed a separate homeland, just because they were born Muslims, and needed protection from the violent and unpredictable Hindus in an independent India. Jinnah made sure they got one at the cost of 2 million dead and 14 million displaced from their homes. But, for Jinnah's overbearing lust for a kingdom and a throne, that was small price to pay so long as Muslims could secure their “only for us” homeland. A few decades down the line that cherished homeland for Muslims would turn out to be a paradise for the rich and the privileged among Punjabi Sunni Muslims and a purgatory for Muslims of all other types and sects. But, Jinnah didn’t know that yet.While Jinnah and his coterie enjoyed their newfound real estate, the British spiced up the situation with a menu of options to the autonomous princely states. Those options were - merge with either India or Pakistan, or remain independent.The king of Jammu and Kashmir, Raja Hari Singh chose the latter. His decision caused serious concern in Jinnah's homeland named Pakistan (Land of the Pure).Pakistan's Lust for Kashmir and the First Kashmir War of 1947 - 1948Neither the Indian Independence Act of 1947[9], nor the Radcliffe Boundary Commission[10] indicated that Kashmir "belonged to Pakistan".There is no documentary evidence that the British, at any point in history considered Kashmir to be gift-wrapped and handed over to Pakistan. All historical evidence strongly suggests that the British wanted the fate of Kashmir to be determined by its ruler, as was the case with all other princely states from the Union. For Pakistan to claim that Kashmir belongs to them on the basis of a Muslim majority will be as much a figment of their imagination as for Mexicans to claim that California belongs to them on the basis of an overwhelming majority of Hispanics in that state.Yet, rulers in Pakistan worried that Kashmir would either remain independent, or worse, join India. Pakistan's lust for Kashmir was born out of the perverted ideology that territories in the South Asian subcontinent, with Muslim dominated demographics, should belong to Pakistan.This twisted ideology of gabbing land with majority Muslims in the name of a “Muslim homeland” would be busted in 1971 when Muslim East Pakistan initiated a mass rebellion against Muslim West Pakistan. In return, Muslim West Pakistan launched one of the worst genocides recorded in recent history on Muslim East Pakistan[11].That genocide and the uncontrollable influx of refugees from Muslim East Pakistan into India resulted in India’s intervention and the subsequent surrender of West Pakistan before India… one of the only recorded cases in recent military history of one nation publicly surrendering to another. East Pakistan changed into the independent nation of Bangladesh[12]. But, Pakistan didn't know all that yet.To secure Kashmir, Pakistan dispatched tribal marauders to seize Kashmir by force. On 22 October 1947, Pakistan's Pashtun tribal militias crossed the border of the state. These local tribal militias and irregular Pakistani forces moved to take Srinagar, but on reaching Baramulla, they took to plunder and rape and stalled.Hari Singh's Decision to join IndiaMaharaja Hari Singh made a plea to India for assistance, and help was offered, but it was subject to his signing an Instrument of Accession to India. The then British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten would not allow India's intervention without a formal treaty with the Maharaja. The Instrument of Accession broke that stalemate. By executing this document under the provisions of the Indian Independence Act 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh agreed to accede to the Dominion of India. The Instrument of Accession gave India’s Parliament the power to legislate in respect of the state of Jammu and Kashmir only on the matters of defense, external affairs and communications.The events that followed on the battlefield, to the settlement at the Line of Control (LOC) are widely documented, and I will refrain from detailing facts well known. The Indian army succeeded in pushing the Pakistani marauders back, so that two thirds of Kashmir, including the Srinagar valley remained in Indian territory, while the remaining one-third of Kashmir including the region of Gilgit Baltistan came under Pakistani occupation. The irony is that Pakistan renamed that seized and occupied territory as “Azad Kashmir”, meaning liberated Kashmir. Liberated from what… from an infant Indian state that was still struggling to stand on its feet? India calls it “Pakistan occupier Kashmir” or PoK.Pakistan’s Contribution to Developing “Azad Kashmir”Today Muzaffarabad, the capital city of Azad Kashmir proudly serves as the global headquarters of the Pakistan military sponsored terrorist group Hizbul Muhahideen. Thanks to the Pakistan military, all of Azad Kashmir has a well developed infrastructure of terrorist training camps that are used regularly to launch terror attacks on the Indian side of Kashmir[13]. Global terror organizations such as Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) also share terror training centers along with the Hizbul Muhahideen in Azad Kashmir. The LeT and Hizbul have conducted multiple terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The Hizbul Mujahideen has been designated a global terrorist organization by the Unites States[14], European Union[15] and India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba has been designated a global terrorist organization by the United States[16], the United Kingdom[17], the European Union[18], Russia, Australia [19]and the United Nations[20] and India.The territory of Azad Kashmir is occupied and regularly used by the Pakistani military to recruit young, unemployed young men from families living below the poverty line and training them to become the Islamic fundamentalists and jihadis that can conduct sabotage and subversive activities on the Indian side of Kashmir. This arrangement fulfills 2 critical objectives for the Pakistani military.It builds into Pakistan’s narrative for the global audience that Kashmiri freedom fighters homegrown within India’s borders are fighting against Indian occupation.It allows the Pakistani military to wage a relentless proxy war on the Indian armed forces stationed in Indian Kashmir, without risking any of its regular personnel. Once the terror training mechanism is in place, terrorists can be produced a dime a dozen, as disposable war machines.So much for “Azad Kashmir” or PoK.Syed Salahuddin, the supreme leader of Hizbul Mujahideen in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), with his menSource: The Week[21]The Instrument of AccessionThe Instrument of Accession, which Maharaja Hari Singh signed with India was a simple document. In the blank spaces, it had a place to fill in the name of the state, the name of the ruler, the date of accession, a place to hold the signature of the ruler and lastly, a line where Lord Mountbatten would put in his signature.This simple document was used to persuade 602 princely states to join the Union of India. When a princely state signed the Instrument of Accession, it gave India’s Parliament the power to legislate on the matters of defense, foreign affairs and communications. Thereafter, the delegates of the princely states would meet with India's Constituent Assembly to gradually bring their kingdoms under the full purview of the Indian Constitution. The princely states were also participants in the formulation of the Indian Constitution. This process of political amalgamation was somewhat similar to the Constitutional Convention of the United States, also known as the Philadelphia Convention that took place from May 25 through September 17, 1787. This process would culminate in a complete adoption of the Indian Constitution by the state in question thereby consummating the accession of the state to the Union of India.With Jammu and Kashmir, the process diverged a bit. Though Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession, his government pointed out that they were signing the document under exceptional circumstances, as they were “under attack from a neighboring hostile entity - Pakistan”. So as not to be rushed into the process, they asked for more time to align themselves with the Union of India.The Constituent Assembly agreed to this special request.However, there was a debate on which parts of the Constitution would apply to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which would not, and at what length of time would the accession be complete. To accommodate Jammu and Kashmir's accession to India, the only temporary Article in the Indian Constitution was drafted. This was called Article 306A which later became Article 370.Article 370In March 1948, the Maharaja appointed an interim government in the state, with Sheikh Abdullah as the prime minister. In July 1949, Sheikh Abdullah and three other colleagues joined the Indian Constituent Assembly and negotiated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), leading to the adoption of Article 370. The controversial provision was drafted by Sheikh Abdullah.Article 370, which came into force in 1952, empowered J&K to be a near autonomous state since it limited the Indian government's authority to just external affairs, defence, finance and communication. This provision allowed J&K to have a Sadar-e-Riyasat for governor and prime minister in place of a chief minister till 1965 as well as its own flag and constitution.Article 370 ensured that the law of citizenship, ownership of property, and fundamental rights of the residents of Jammu & Kashmir is different from the residents living in rest of India. Under Article 370, citizens from other states cannot buy property in Jammu & Kashmir. Under Article 370, the Indian government had no power to declare financial emergency.Sheikh Abdullah wanted to turn Article 370, the only temporary provision in the Indian Constitution, into a written-in-stone edict that could not be replaced or terminated by future Indian governments. This violated the very understanding which India’s Constituent Assembly had reached with the state of Jammu and Kashmir - that the accession of the state to the Indian Union would be put on a slow but certain pace through Article 370.Fortunately for India, Sheikh Abdullah did not succeed in voiding the temporary nature of Article 370, which is why the Article reached it’s logical conclusion on 5 August 2019, under the Indian government led by Prime Minister Modi.Article 35AArticle 35A which comes under Article 370, gave the Jammu and Kashmir Legislature full discretionary power to decide who the 'permanent residents' of the state are. It gave them special rights and privileges regarding employment with the state government, acquisition of property in the state, settling in the state, and the right to scholarships and other forms of aid that the state government provides. It also allowed the state legislature to impose any restrictions upon persons other than the permanent residents regarding the above.Article 35A, proscribed non-permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir from permanently settling in the state, buying immovable property, acquiring land, applying for government jobs or any kind of scholarships, aids as well as other public welfare projects.The Night of January 19, 1990Almost 40 years after the First Kashmir War…Pakistan had not forgotten its unfinished business from the war of 1947 - 1948. It had captured a third of Kashmir. However, two-thirds of Jammu and Kashmir which included the prized Kashmir valley was still in Indian territory. Pakistan had been biding its time for an opportune moment to strike.That time came in the late 1980s. By 1989, Pakistan believed it now had a proven strategy. It was the one used to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. The strategy of infiltrating well trained Mujahideen across the Indian border into Kashmir to train and arm locals and incite them to foment jihad against every Indian entity present in Kashmir.Also, Pakistan had the nuclear umbrella, to deter (as it hoped) any significant pushback from India in response to the proxy-war about to be launched in Kashmir. The nuclear threat was a tactic that Pakistan used very effectively against a far more powerful but surprisingly docile India, for a span of almost 25 years (till a man named Modi would come and call Pakistan’s nuclear bluff).Thus, Pakistan launched an asymmetric war in Kashmir.The cold, dark night of January 19, 1990, had stirred into life the worst nightmares of Kashmiri Pandits living in the Kashmir valley. Screaming from loud speakers and crowded streets was a message for the Sikhs and Hindus living in Kashmir - Ralive, Tsalive ya Galive which translated from Kashmiri means "Convert to Islam, leave the place, or perish".The threats had been coming in for a long time, but the night of January 19 is said to have seen a demented assault of a different level. Almost 3 decades later, Kashmiri Pandits shiver remembering the night that forced them into exodus.Colonel Tej Kumar Tikoo, a Kashmiri Pandit himself, describes that fateful night in his book, Kashmir: Its Aborigines and Their Exodus[22]."As the night fell, the microscopic community became panic-stricken when the Valley began reverberating with the war-cries of Islamists, who had stage-managed the whole event with great care; choosing its timing and the slogans to be used. A host of highly provocative, communal and threatening slogans, interspersed with martial songs, incited the Muslims to come out on the streets and break the chains of 'slavery'. These exhortations urged the faithful to give a final push to the Kafir in order to ring in the true Islamic order. These slogans were mixed with precise and unambiguous threats to Pandits. They were presented with three choices - Ralive, Tsaliv ya Galive (convert to Islam, leave the place or perish). Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims poured into the streets of the Valley, shouting 'death to India' and death to Kafirs.""The (Kashmiri) Pandits could see the writing on the wall. If they were lucky enough to see the night through, they would have to vacate the place before they met the same fate as Tikka Lal Taploo and many others. The Seventh Exodus was surely staring them in the face. By morning, it became apparent to Pandits that Kashmiri Muslims had decided to throw them out from the Valley. Broadcasting vicious Jehadi sermons and revolutionary songs, interspersed with blood curdling shouts and shrieks, threatening Kashmiri Pandits with dire consequences, became a routine 'Mantra' of the Muslims of the Valley, to force them to flee from Kashmir."Ethnic Cleansing of the Kashmiri PanditsThrough the export of battle hardened Mujahideen into Kashmir, the Pakistan military and the ISI had set in motion a strategy which would later be described as "bleeding India by a thousand cuts".The Muslims in the valley were being trained physically and psychologically, to envision a Kashmir free of any Hindu influence, geared up to demand statehood and complete independence from India.Before the turn of the 21st century, Kashmir would be ethnically cleansed of Hindus that had called it home since the inception of the land.Those Kashmiri Pandits that Stayed Back or Returned…However, some Kashmiri Pandits would not leave or would come back to the valley. These are their stories.The teacher and his students: Neelkanth Raina was a school teacher who chose to stay back, despite the dire warnings from the Muslim fundamentalists. He was killed by his own students in cold blood while his neighbors assisted the killers in quickly escaping from the crime scene. The murder was meticulously planned and skillfully executed.The Lab Assistant: Girija Kumari Tikoo was a laboratory assistant at a Government High School. She had already left the valley along with other Hindus in early 1990, and was living in a refugee settlement in the neighboring Jammu province. Hindus living in refugee settlements in their own country just because their Muslim neighbors would no longer want them in the neighborhood - ever heard of such a travesty of fate in any other part of the globe? She went back to the valley for a few days to collect her dues from the school never to return. On her way to the school, she was kidnapped by Muslim fundamentalists, gang raped and sodomized before being cut into pieces in a saw mill. She was survived by a 4 year old son and a 2 year daughter.The Professor and his Wife: Professor K.L Ganju and his wife, Mrs. Prana Ganju were kidnapped along with their nephew. After showering bullets on the professor his body was quickly disposed of into the turbulent waters of the river Jhelum. Like in the movies, his nephew was given a choice - to jump into the river or watch his aunt's modesty getting outraged, of which he took the first choice, and survived. Mrs. Ganju, she was gang raped, her breasts chopped off before she was killed.If you dig into Kashmir's history circa 1990 and the early 90s, there are hundreds of gruesome cases of terror and betrayal against resident Kashmiri Hindus to narrate. But, the cases of Neelkanth Raina, Girija Kumari Tikkoo and the Ganju couple drive home an important point. All of them were killed after the Hindu community had already left. These atrocities were thus a signal from the Muslim majority community to the exiled Hindus, never to even think of returning to their homeland. Their houses had been occupied, their places were being renamed, Kashmir was no longer theirs.Just as the dust of Hindu eviction from the valley was settling, it dawned upon the terrorist leadership of the Kashmir valley, their mentors in Pakistan and their apologists in the media all over the world that the public perception of the secessionist movement in Kashmir was getting damaged. So, a narrative began to be promoted that the Indian government had conspired to get the Hindus evicted so that Indian security forces may freely oppress the Muslim population. The religious terrorism of the Kashmiris underwent a cosmetic surgery, and began to be called a political struggle.The underlying thought process actively promoted by Pakistan was - now that Kashmir has been cleansed of almost all traces of Hinduism from the valley, it is time to revert back to the 1947 formula concocted by a consortium of land-grabbing, power crazy demagogues from the Muslim League, that every piece of land with Muslim domination, should secede to Pakistan.To this day, Kashmir remains a religious and civilizational conflict. It has no political dimension except on the surface.2019: Pre August 5Kashmir and the Rest of IndiaThe picture below shows how young women in Kashmir spend their day. Pelting stones at Indian security forces is the high point of their morning or afternoon.Source: Zee News, IndiaAnd this is how many young women in the rest of India spend their day. Bouncing ideas off each other during the lunch hour so they could crack that technical challenge they encountered during the morning.The above picture is from one of the campuses Infosys[23] has built across India. Infosys is the legendary Indian IT behemoth that was the first Indian company to be listed on the US NASDAQ in 1999.I am not promoting Infosys, I have no personal interest in the company but, I have a point to make.Time for a Q & AQ: Does Infosys have a campus in Kashmir?A: No.Q: Why not? Wouldn't young women in Kashmir want to switch the low-paying job of stone pelting[24] with the far more lucrative job of code crunching on laptops?(Yup, sources within the Pakistani military run a well-funded operation[25] of financing young Kashmiri men and women for pelting stones at Indian forces stationed in Kashmir)[26].A: They cannot, even if they wanted to.Q: Why not?A: Not a single IT company- Indian or multinational has a presence in Kashmir.Q: I don't get it! India is the 5th largest economy globally and is home to almost all the major IT corporations of the world. Some of them like Oracle Corporation have even built their largest Development Centers outside of the US[27], in Indian cities[28]. And then like Infosys and WIPRO, India has its own litany of indigenous IT companies and many fledgling start-ups spread across the land. Azim Premji[29], the Chairman of WIPRO and one of the richest men in the world (as of August 2020, he is 253rd on the Forbes list of billionaires[30]) - is a Muslim himself! Then why have these IT business houses and their tycoons ignored the state of Jammu and Kashmir?A: Well, their hands are tied. The special status provided to Jammu and Kashmir by Articles 370 and 35A ensures that non Kashmiris cannot buy land in Kashmir. So long as Kashmir is "protected" by its special status within the gilded cage of Article 370 and 35A, there is virtually nothing that someone even as powerful as Azim Premji can do.The Developmental Hurdles Posed to Jammu and Kashmir by Article 370 and 35AArun Jaitly held cabinet positions as Minister of Finance, Minister of Corporate Affairs and Minister of Defence in the Narendra Modi government. As a former lawyer of the Supreme Court of India, he was regarded across the nation and even internationally as one of the finest minds in India's corridors of power[31]. He passed away on 24th August 2019 (just 19 days after Article 370 was abrogated by his government).In a blog post titled "How Article 35A hurt the people of Jammu & Kashmir", Arun Jaitley wrote the following."The State does not have adequate financial resources. Its ability to raise more has been crippled by Article 35A. No investor is willing to set up an industry, hotel, private educational institutions or private hospitals since he can neither buy land or property nor can his executives do so. Their ward cannot get government jobs or admission to colleges (as they are not Kashmiris). Today, there are no major national or international chains which have set up hotel in a tourism centric State. This prevents enrichment, resource generation and job creation. (Kashmiri) Students have to travel all over, including Nepal and Bangladesh, to get college admissions. Engineering colleges and hospitals, including super-speciality facility set up by Central Government in Jammu are lying under-utilized or unutilized since Professors and Doctors from outside are unwilling to go there. Article 35A has prevented investment and dismantled the State’s economy. ""Article 35A, which is constitutionally vulnerable, is used as a political shield by many but it hurt the common citizen of the State the most. It denied them a booming economy, economic activity and jobs.""The historic blunders of special status under Article 370 and Article 35A had cost the country both politically and financially."In one of his last comments after the abrogation of Article 370, Jaitley said - "Article 370 invoked the separate status that led to separatism (in Jammu and Kashmir). No dynamic nation could allow this situation to continue."With the revocation of Article 370 "A historical wrong has been undone today. Article 35A came through the back door without following the procedure under Article 368 of the Constitution of India. It had to go.""The decision of the government will help the people of Jammu and Kashmir the most. More investment, more industry, more private educational institutions, more jobs and more revenue will come,” he said, adding that “Kashmir’s regional leaders now feel they would not be able to whip up the fake issue of 'sentiment verses benefit'."Sentiment versus BenefitSentiment versus benefit, and economic, educational and financial benefits to be precise. Let's chew on that for a moment, and when we start drawing on the juice on that thought, we should think it through.For those of us here in the US, consider a hypothetical situation to understand what Arun Jaitley means. Say for example, I were born into a Hispanic family in California in the year 2000. In the year 2014, the population of Hispanics officially surpassed that of Whites in California. I am now a teenager dreaming of growing up and going to Stanford or UC Berkeley (just examples) for my college education, and later getting hired by Google or Facebook or any of the tech giants in California’s Silicon Valley. In effect, I have bright visions of my future as I see it playing out in my very own state, an economically vibrant part of the world.Now, a charismatic leader rises up in neighboring Mexico and starts a rant for the separation of California as a state from the US and its accession to Mexico, on the basis of an ever growing Hispanic majority in California.Is that a legitimate claim? Should I be thrilled with that?A final question to Kashmiris on BOTH sides of the borderIf you are a Kashmiri parent of Islamic faith on either side of the LOC, ask yourself this - would you be happier sending your child to one of the world renowned Indian Institutes of Technology or would your child have a brighter future attending the famous madrassas of Lahore?Your children will inherit the future you create for them.Sources:India's Move in Kashmir: Unpacking the Domestic and International Motivations and Implications - Christine Fair in LAWFARE, August 12, 2019Footnotes[1] Carla Stewart's answer to What are some real life examples, good or bad, of karma?[2] What is the Kashmir Issue?[3] History of Kashmir - Wikipedia[4] Rajatarangini - Wikipedia[5] Kalhana - Wikipedia[6] Sikandar Butshikan[7] Sikandar Shah Miri - Wikipedia[8] Carla Stewart's answer to What is your opinion about Pakistan becoming a secular country?[9] Indian Independence Act 1947 - Wikipedia[10] Radcliffe Line - Wikipedia[11] Operation Searchlight: Genocide unleashed on Bangalis in East Pakistan[12] Carla Stewart's answer to What are some real life examples, good or bad, of karma?[13] Militant Training Camps in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir: An Existential Threat[14] State Department Terrorist Designation of Hizbul Mujahideen - United States Department of State[15] L_2019209EN.01001501.xml[16] Amendments to the Terrorist Designation of Lashkar e-Tayyiba - United States Department of State[17] Terrorism Act 2000[18] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32003D0902:EN:HTML[19] Listed terrorist organisations[20] Sanctions List Materials[21] When I met Salahuddin in Pakistan[22] Kashmir: Its Aborigines and Their Exodus: Tikoo, Colonel Tej K.: 9781935501343: Amazon.com: Books[23] Infosys - Wikipedia[24] How Pakistan funds separatists, stone-pelters in Kashmir through illegal barter trade at LoC[25] ISI’s budget for Kashmir stone pelting is Rs 1,000cr - The Sunday Guardian Live[26] NIA roused after undercover STING on stone-pelter funding in Kashmir[27] Oracle to set up biggest development centre outside US in Bengaluru[28] Oracle's second largest campus will soon be a reality in Bengaluru[29] Azim Premji - Wikipedia[30] Azim Premji[31] Arun Jaitley, Bold Indian Finance Minister, Is Dead at 66

American Progress says:EconomyRaised housing payments for new homebuyers by about $500 in 2017. On its first day, the Trump administration reversed an Obama administration action to lower Federal Housing Administration, or FHA, mortgage insurance premiums for new homebuyers by 25 basis points, which could have lowered mortgage payments for 1 million households purchasing or refinancing their home this year alone.Attacked the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, which would have required retirement advisers to act in their clients’ best financial interest. President Trump delayed the rule’s implementation by 60 days and has ordered the department to re-evaluate the rule. This will make it much harder to save for retirement, as high fees from conflicted advice result in savers losing $17 billion in fees annually.Delayed court proceedings on the Obama administration’s expansion of overtime, failing to defend the pro-worker rule. This rule would have raised wages for workers by $12 billion over the next 10 years and extended overtime protections to 4.2 million more Americans. In his confirmation hearings, Labor Secretary nominee Alexander Acosta suggested he would attempt to weaken the overtime rule.Delayed enforcement of a rule to reduce workers’ exposure to deadly silica dust for three months. After more than four decades of development, this rule would protect construction and manufacturing workers from inhaling silica, which can lead to lung cancer, silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and kidney disease. It was projected to save more than 600 lives and prevent more than 900 new cases of silicosis each year.Repealed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, which ensured that federal contractors complied with worker protection laws before receiving government contracts. The order would have required companies wanting to do business with the government to disclose past labor law violations and come into compliance before receiving new contracts. Because of the repeal, millions of workers will be more vulnerable to wage theft, workplace injuries, and discrimination on the job. The order also would have protected women by banning forced arbitration in the case of sexual assault, harassment, or discrimination claims.Supported efforts in Congress to cut taxes on the wealthy that help fund the Affordable Care Act, or ACA. As part of Congress’s effort to repeal and replace the ACA, a move that President Trump supported, the 3.8 percent net investment income tax would have been repealed at a cost of $157 billion over 10 years, according to Congressional Budget Office, or CBO. This is revenue needed to fund important programs that ensure basic human living standards and retirement security for tens of millions of working Americans. Based on Trump’s rental real estate income alone, The Wall Street Journal estimated the repeal would have saved Trump $3.2 million in taxes in 2016 alone.Tried to cut his own taxes by millions of dollars while taking health insurance from tens of millions of Americans. Based on President Trump’s leaked 2005 Tax Return Form 1040, repealing the ACA could give Trump a personal tax cut of more than $2 million. At the same time, the House legislation to repeal the ACA would have taken health insurance from 24 million Americans.Assembled a team of wealthy financial industry elites to advise him on tax reform, which he promised would benefit the middle class. The tax code is the tool of choice when special favors are doled out to special interests. Despite his campaign promises to drain the swamp, President Trump has assembled a band of elites to construct his tax reform plan: three former Goldman Sachs executives, Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, and Steve Bannon; two more former executives from the finance industry, Justin Muzinich and Craig Phillips; and a former tax lobbyist for Fidelity Investments, Shahira Knight.Made it harder for veterans to find jobs with a federal hiring freeze. Veterans receive a strong hiring preference for federal jobs, and roughly one-third of all newly hired federal employees in 2015 were veterans. Even if many jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, are exempt from the hiring freeze, other vacant jobs will still be unavailable at other federal agencies.Proposed budget cuts that would devastate rural America. President Trump’s budget would eliminate programs that support rural jobs, housing, infrastructure, health care, and economic development. If implemented, these budget cuts would eliminate affordable housing for tens of thousands of struggling rural families; eliminate community service jobs for 18,000 senior citizens living in rural areas; and eliminate critical support for airline connections serving 175 small and rural communities.Proposed dramatically slashing job training programs and worker wage and safety enforcement. President Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2018 budget could result in 2.7 million adults and youths losing access to job training and employment services in 2018.Proposed budget cuts that would increase roadway congestion and reduce economic productivity. The budget calls for eliminating the TIGER grant program at the U.S. Department of Transportation, or USDOT, which funds innovative surface transportation projects. Additionally, the budget calls for the phased elimination of the New Starts program within the Federal Transit Administration, which funds major public transportation projects. Rail and bus rapid transit projects help to reduce roadway congestion and air pollution while spurring economic development.Proposed budget cuts that would threaten billions in loans and investments to distressed communities. The proposed budget would eliminate the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which supports billions of dollars in financing across low-income communities, including more than $300 million in rural and Native American communities, as well as the Economic Development Administration and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, costing another $300 million or more that is annually invested in community growth. Without federal support, economic development in these locations will suffer, including small-business development.Reneged on his promise to disclose his tax returns. President Trump’s refusal leaves Americans in the dark about whether any tax reform he proposes will benefit him or working Americans. Trump repeatedly stated before and after he was elected that he would disclose his tax returns. While initially he said he could not release them because he was being audited—a fact that does not prevent anyone from releasing their returns—his counselor, Kellyanne Conway has now said, “He’s not going to release his tax returns.”Proposed $6.7 billion cut to housing and community support programs. President Trump’s budget would eliminate the Community Development Block Grant, which is used by 1,265 local communities for important initiatives such as Meals on Wheels, neighborhood rehabilitation, the development of affordable housing, job training, and business expansion. The Housing Choice Vouchers program will also experience deep cuts in funding, as will other programs providing supportive services for the elderly and persons with disabilities. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, about 200,000 families will no longer receive a housing voucher to pay for their rental costs and could eventually face homelessness in a housing market where there is a severe shortage of affordable housing.Attacked neutral budget analysts so that lawmakers ignore negative effects from their policies. The Trump administration attacked the nonpartisan CBO in an attempt to preemptively discredit their estimates related to legislation repealing the ACA. These attacks continued after the CBO estimated that the House ACA repeal bill would take coverage away from 24 million Americans by 2026. This is part of a larger attempt by the Trump administration to discredit independent data and analysis in order to obscure the negative impacts that their agenda will have for working families.Undermined investor protection by making it harder for the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, to hold Wall Street accountable. An independent and vigorous Division of Enforcement at the SEC is vital to preserving free and fair financial markets for investors. After the Bernie Madoff scandal, Obama administration SEC Chair Mary Schapiro made it easier for Division of Enforcement staff to open investigations and issue subpoenas to protect investors and get to the bottom of suspected malfeasance. Chair Michael Piwowar inexplicably rolled back this change, hindering the SEC’s ability to protect the average investor from financial wrongdoing. He has also proposed rolling back key advances in corporate transparency, including regarding human rights risks in supply chains and the pay ratio between CEOs and the median worker.Proposed funding cuts for programs that help support and encourage small business development. President Trump’s budget cuts funding for several programs that help groups with historically low business ownership rates overcome barriers to becoming entrepreneurs, including the PRIME technical assistance grants for low-income micro-entrepreneurs; the Minority Business Development Agency, and the Economic Development Administration.Attempted to make it harder for entrepreneurs to get access to affordable health. The ACA helps millions of entrepreneurs obtain access to health care without relying on a spouse or employer, which allows them to take one of the necessary risks associated with starting a business. The proposed American Health Care Act, or AHCA, would reduce access to health care and make it more expensive for many people to get comprehensive health care coverage.Proposes leaving 23,000 calls for help unanswered from disaster-struck Americans. President Trump’s skinny budget proposed eliminating the Corporation for National and Community Service, which would also eliminate AmeriCorps, a vital service program that plays a critical role in mobilizing volunteers to aid with disaster preparedness and response.Proposed slashing the WIC program. President Trump’s proposal to slash funding for the WIC program puts basic food security at risk for thousands of families. At an annual food cost of about $513 per person, the $200 million cut could help pay for a year’s worth of food and formula for nearly 390,000 participating women, children and infants.Proposed elimination of the HOME Investment Partnerships Program. To date, HOME has helped more that 1.2 million families gain access to safe and affordable housing. But this successful program is also on President Trump’s budget chopping block, thereby threatening housing security for thousands of families.Proposed eliminating NeighborWorks America. NeighborWorks America provides grants to community development organizations that help build and maintain affordable housing. The program created 53,649 jobs and assisted 360,009 families with affordable housing in the last year alone.Environment and energyProposed cuts to energy programs that save people money. The Trump budget blueprint calls for a 5.6 percent cut overall to the U.S. Department of Energy. This cut, along with calls for additional funding to nuclear security and waste cleanup, mean that there will be steeper cuts for programs designed to develop household appliances that save families money. President Trump’s budget proposal also eliminates programs such as ARPA-E, which helps entrepreneurs develop clean, affordable energy, and the Weatherization Assistance Program, which upgrades the homes of low-income families with insulation and cost-effective energy efficient improvements to help reduce utility bills.Allowed a dangerous pesticide to stay on the market, despite it being a threat to children’s health. Chlorpyrifos a common agricultural pesticide that causes neurological harm in children exposed in utero. In 2016, the EPA’s scientists concluded that the agency should ban chlorpyrifos after finding unsafe levels of the chemical on apples, peaches, oranges, strawberries, and other fruits. Dow Chemical, one of the largest producers of products using this chemical, gave $1 million to President Trump’s inauguration committee and leads a presidential advisory committee on manufacturing. On March 28, Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected the findings of the agency’s scientists, denied a petition to ban the chemical, and delayed further action until 2022.Eliminated pollution standards for power plants and oil and gas facilities. In his final term, President Obama established the first-ever carbon pollution standards for power plants and the first-ever methane standards for oil and gas drilling facilities. These standards would have reduced soot- and smog-forming pollutants that trigger asthma attacks and cut emissions of carbon and other gases that cause climate change. On March 28, President Trump signed an executive order that started the process of nullifying these pollution standards and making it harder for future presidents to put them back in place.Proposed cutting EPA programs to clean up water sources. In February, President Trump proposed a budget for the EPA that would cut the agency’s funding by 31 percent and its staff by one-quarter. The president’s proposal targets several popular programs, such as regional efforts to clean up the Great Lakes, Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, and other iconic bodies of water.Proposed eliminating programs at the EPA dedicated to preventing children’s exposure to lead-based paint, which can cause neurological delays. An estimated 38 million U.S. homes contain lead-based paint, and in 2015, the Centers for Disease Control found that 243,000 children had elevated levels of lead in their blood. Lead is a neurotoxin that causes permanent nerve damage.Rolled back important protections for drinking water in coal communities. One of the Trump administration’s first actions was to nix the Stream Protection Rule put in place by the Obama administration to prevent coal companies from polluting nearby streams. Scrapping this environmental protection was a top priority of the coal industry at the expense of clean drinking water in coal communities.Repealed anti-bribery rule to the delight of the oil industry. President Trump eliminated an anti-corruption rule that had required oil and gas companies to disclose payments to foreign governments. When he was still the CEO of Exxon Mobil, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had lobbied to remove the rules established under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.Ripped off American taxpayers and avoided fixing the broken federal coal-leasing program. The Trump administration moved to preserve a loophole the Obama administration closed that allows coal companies to rip off taxpayers by allowing them to sell coal mined on federal lands to their own subsidiaries at artificially low prices and shirk royalty payment responsibilities.Halted the first comprehensive review of the federal coal program in more than 30 years while simultaneously opening public lands for new leases to mine coal. Federal coal lease sales only bring in, on average, $1 per ton in bids, and taxpayers are estimated to be losing $1 billion annually in lost royalty payments on undervalued coal sales.Proposed major cuts to the Department of the Interior’s budget that would impair critical maintenance of our national parks while making a public show of supporting them. A few weeks after proposing to cut $1.5 billion, or 12 percent, from the Department of the Interior’s budget, President Trump had Press Secretary Sean Spicer ceremoniously hand a $78,000 check—Trump’s first-quarter earnings—to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to help the National Park Service. Here’s the rub: Trump’s check only covers 0.01 percent of $1.3 billion in “critical systems deferred maintenance” that the National Park Service urgently needs.Pulled the rug from under private investors backing conservation efforts. As part of a sweeping executive order aimed at gutting actions the Obama administration took to address climate change, President Trump rescinded the presidential memorandum that encouraged private investment when developers work to mitigate impacts on natural resources. This action undercuts the economic and environmental gains that the fast-growing restoration industry has made recently to the tune of $1.15 billion between 2014 and 2015 in private capital invested in habitat conservation and water management. These relatively new environmental marketplaces rely on regulatory consistency that President Obama’s memorandum bolstered.Declared open season on baby bears and wolves in wildlife refuges. President Trump overturned a rule that had protected black bear mothers and their cubs from being hunted in their dens. The Obama administration’s “Fair Chase” rule, which applied to national wildlife refuges in Alaska, also limited baiting, trapping, and the use of aircrafts to track and shoot bears and wolves.Moved to weaken air quality standards for ozone. Ozone pollution is a key contributor to smog, which can cause more frequent asthma attacks and exacerbate lung diseases. President Trump’s EPA is moving toward changing air quality standards established under the Obama administration to allow greater ozone pollution. Ground level ozone pollution can increase the frequency of asthma attacks, cause shortness of breath, aggravate lung diseases, and cause permanent damage to lungs through long-term exposure. Elevated ozone levels are linked to increases in hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and premature death, and can cause pronounced health impacts in children and the elderly.Signed an executive order nullifying the “social cost of carbon.” President Trump essentially determined that climate change has no cost by eliminating a critical metric used to measure the benefit of cutting carbon pollution.Stopped rules that would limit dumping toxins from power plants. Trump’s EPA is stopping rules that would limit the dumping of toxins, such as mercury and arsenic, and pollution from power plants into public waterways. These would have been the first protections in more than 30 years to curb toxins and other pollutants in power plants.Changed standards to protect water and wildlife from lead poisoning. Hours after riding a horse to his first day on the job, Secretary of the Interior Zinke reversed a ban on using lead bullets for hunting in wildlife refuses. Lead content in these bullets can poison water and wildlife.Opened the door to reducing methane pollution standards. The president signed an executive order directing the EPA and the Bureau of Land Management to review the methane pollution standards for oil and gas drilling facilities and determine whether to rescind or revise them. Methane pollution supercharges global warming 86 times as much as carbon pollution.Took steps to reverse progress to date on U.S. preparations for climate change. President Trump signed an executive order rescinding previous executive orders related to preparing the U.S. for climate change; encouraging private investment in efforts to mitigate pollution; and ensuring our national security plans consider climate change impacts.Nominated an EPA administrator who denies scientific proof of climate change. EPA Administrator Pruitt told the media that he does not think carbon dioxide is the primary contributor to climate change. His statement is the climate science equivalent of saying the world is flat.Proposed budget cuts to that will cause 5.7 million low-income residents to lose assistance with their heating bills and about 673,000 to lose cooling assistance. President Trump’s proposal to eliminate the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, will be especially dangerous as more states experience extreme weather.Democracy and government reformImperiled American voters with untrue claims about illegal voting. President Trump’s empty claims of widespread fraud undermine the integrity of our elections and lay the basis for voter suppression efforts that attack our constitutional right to participate in self-government. When government officials spread lies that call into question the legitimacy of our elections, people lose faith in the democratic process. Instead of responding to the clear and present dangers of foreign interference and discriminatory efforts to keep some American citizens from casting their ballots, Trump chooses to spread baseless slander while calling for a witch hunt against American voters.Brought pay-to-play corruption to the presidency. The Trump family continues to promote their private business interests at home and abroad while profiting off of the presidency. Corruption, or even the appearance of corruption, diminishes trust in government and increases cynicism toward democratic institutions. At a time when 75 percent of Americans already believe that corruption is widespread in government, President Trump’s blatant disregard for ethics rules and constitutional prohibitions on presidential enrichment further undermine democratic norms and threatens our democracy, economy, and national security.Undermined transparency and accountability by continuing to hide his tax returns and withholding White House visitor logs. Due to his refusal to release his tax returns the full extent of President Trump’s indebtedness and foreign entanglements remains unknown. As a result, Americans cannot be sure that Trump is not providing favors and special treatment to his business partners or that foreign states and businesses are not leveraging influence over the Trump administration and its decisions. It is impossible for Trump to lead an effort to revise the tax code without Americans knowing how his proposals would line his own pocket. Changing the practice to stop disclosing White House visitor logs prevents the public from knowing who is accessing federal officials on a daily basis and keeps special interest influence shrouded in secrecy.ImmigrationSigned two Muslim and refugee bans, both of which have been enjoined by federal courts. In January, and then again in March, President Trump signed executive orders banning immigrants from seven—and then, subsequently, six—Muslim-majority nations for at least three months and halting the refugee program for four months. The January executive order sparked widespread protests at airports all across the country and was quickly blocked by a federal court in Washington state and then by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In early March, Trump signed a barely revised version of the original order, which courts in Hawaii and Maryland rightly acknowledged still constituted a Muslim and refugee ban. The core parts of the ban were once again put on hold.Made every unauthorized immigrant a deportation priority, regardless of equities. As a matter of the smart prioritization of resources, the Obama administration focused its immigration enforcement on serious threats to national security and public safety, as well as recent border crossers. Within days of taking office, Trump signed an executive order eliminating the Obama priorities, effectively making all unauthorized immigrants a priority for deportation, regardless of how long they have been in the country, their ties to families and communities, or other equities. In practice, this has meant that people like Guadalupe García de Rayos, a mother of two from Arizona who has been in the U.S. for over two decades, and Maribel Trujillo Diaz, a mother of four U.S.-born children have been deported.Made immigrant survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault afraid to turn to law enforcement for help. Aggressive immigration enforcement by the Trump administration—including a case in El Paso, where immigration officials arrested a victim of domestic abuse at a courthouse after she received a protective order against her abuser—has made immigrants and Latinos, regardless of immigration status, increasingly reluctant to come forward to report crimes. Prosecutors in Denver have been forced to drop four domestic violence prosecutions because immigrant victims no longer wish to cooperate. Another domestic violence case in Austin hangs in limbo under similar circumstances. Since last year, Los Angeles has seen reports by Latinos of sexual assault decline by 25 percent, and Houston has seen reports by Latinos of rapes decline by nearly 43 percent. By making everyone a priority, the administration has made no one a priority to the detriment of public safety.Arrested multiple recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Even though Trump has said that he will deal with young unauthorized immigrants with “great heart,” and even though Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly has said that he is “the best thing that happened to DACA,” the Department of Homeland Security has detained at least five recipients of DACA—which grants eligible young people a two-year reprieve from deportation and a work permit—since taking office. The detained include Daniela Vargas, Daniel Ramirez, Edwin Romero, Josue Romero, and Francisco Rodriguez. It is now also being reported that the Department of Homeland Security deported Dreamer Juan Manuel Montes while he was protected from deportation through DACA.Threatened to take away critical community safety funding from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions. As part of the January 25 executive order on interior immigration enforcement, President Trump threatened to take away federal funds from more than 600 so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. On March 27 Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatened to revoke Department of Justice grants that, among other purposes, help local law enforcement to eliminate barriers to processing rape kits, combat gang and gun crime, and stop human trafficking. The attorney general’s comments were swiftly denounced by the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Research shows that counties with sanctuary policies have lower crime rates and stronger economies than those without the policies.Scared authorized immigrants away from accessing benefits and necessary health care for which they and their children are eligible. Not long after the Trump administration took office, a draft executive order leaked, illustrating that the administration was looking to target even legal immigrants living in the United States. Among other provisions, the draft order would make lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, eligible for deportation if they use any type of means-tested benefit. The mere possibility of the order, as well as increased immigration enforcement, has had a chilling effect on communities across the nation. In California, for example, the Alameda County Community Food Bank saw 40 families cancel their food stamps and another 54 eligible families choose not to apply for food stamps. Other reports indicate that some immigrants are taking their names off of the list to receive baby formula or keeping children away from child care centers.FaithTrampled on the religious liberty of Muslims with his attempts at unconstitutional travel bans. President Trump’s January 27 executive action on refugees and revised March 6 executive action both aimed to prohibit travel to the United States for nationals of Muslim-majority nations and fundamentally reshape the refugee admissions program to prioritize the claims of Christians. Trumps actions have alienated the Muslims communities not only within the United States but also around the world, damaging critical relationships with national security allies.Attempted to redefine religious liberty only for those who share a conservative Christian faith. From the anti-Muslim travel bans to disturbing Holocaust-denying remarks, the administration is a threat to religious minorities, many of whom are already vulnerable to rising incidents of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bigotry.Promises to destroy the Johnson Amendment, which prevents nonprofit organizations—including houses of worship—from endorsing political candidates. A leaked draft executive order indicates plans to insert religious exemptions in federal nondiscrimination protections, revealing a pattern of attempts to redefine the foundational value of religious freedom so it will only protect people of faith who share conservative Christian beliefs.Gun violence preventionSigned a law that weakens the firearms background check system and undermines enforcement of the current law that prohibits certain individuals with a serious mental illness from gun possession. Using the shortcut process of the Congressional Review Act, President Trump repealed a Social Security Administration regulation that formalized the process by which the agency could provide to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, the names of beneficiaries who—because of serious mental illness—are prohibited from gun possession under federal law. This action represents a significant step backward from recent efforts at the federal and state level to better enforce current law by ensuring that all records of prohibited purchasers are provided to NICS.Made it easier for fugitives to buy guns. Under federal law, anyone who is “a fugitive from justice” is prohibited from buying and possessing guns. Since at least 2006, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives have disagreed over the proper scope of this law, with the FBI adopting a position that it applies to all individuals with an outstanding arrest warrant while the ATF argued for a narrower interpretation that it applies only to individuals who had left the state where the warrant was issued. Because the FBI is the agency that operates the background check system, that agency’s interpretation prevailed. However, in February 2017, the Department of Justice issued new guidance resolving this dispute by adopting ATF’s interpretation and dramatically narrowing the category of individuals with active criminal warrants who will be prohibited from buying guns.Health careAttempted to repeal the ACA. Repeal of the ACA would cause significant stress and anxiety for millions of families who rely on it for coverage. The AHCA would have resulted in 24 million more people being uninsured in 10 years—breaking President Trump’s promise to cover “everybody.” It would also have broken Trump’s campaign promise not to cut Medicaid.Undermined the ACA marketplace. The Trump administration has already undermined the ACA marketplace by refusing to officially abandon its efforts to repeal the law. In addition, its refusal to commit unequivocally to paying the cost-sharing reduction subsidies is generating massive uncertainty for insurers. This uncertainty is having a direct impact on the marketplace by encouraging insurers to quit the market in 2018 or raise premiums.Began to undermine Medicaid. In a letter to governors by Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma, the administration encouraged states to pursue harmful changes to their Medicaid programs, including work requirements and increased cost-sharing.Made ACA marketplace enrollment more difficult. In the final days of the most recent open enrollment period, the Trump administration cancelled Get 2019 health coverage. Health Insurance Marketplace TV ads and email outreach, which are critical in helping people remember the deadline and enroll in time. Although some of this was restored after a backlash, a former Get 2019 health coverage. Health Insurance Marketplace chief marketing officer estimated that the administration’s actions reduced enrollment by 480,000 people.Stripped Title X funding. With Vice President Mike Pence’s tie-breaking vote, the Senate voted to overturn Obama era protections for Title X providers. Trump signed the bill, which allows states to block Title X funding. Title X funding provides critical reproductive, educational, and counseling services related to family planning and contraception to 4 million clients each year.Reinstated the Global Gag Rule. One of Trump’s first actions as president was to reinstate the Global Gag Rule, which prevents recipients of U.S. foreign aid from offering any information, referrals, services, or advocacy regarding abortion care—even if they do so with separate funding sources. The Global Gag Rule will lead to more maternal deaths, more unintended pregnancies, and higher rates of unsafe abortion.Proposed cutting funds for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.The Trump budget proposes a $50 million reduction in funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, which works with organizations across the United States to implement evidence based, proven programming.Proposed defunding Planned Parenthood. President Trump’s health care bill, the AHCA, would defund Planned Parenthood, which served 2.5 million patients in 2014.Higher educationProposed deep cuts to programs that help make college more accessible and affordable for low-income students and students of color.President Trump’s budget proposed more than $5 billion in cuts to valuable programs, including the Pell Grant program and the work-study program, which provide needed funds to help low-income students afford the rising cost of college. The cuts also target important college-access programs—including TRIO and GEAR UP—that provide supports such as tutoring, mentoring, and research opportunities to low-income and first-generation students.Rescinded protections for student loan borrowers. On March 16, the Trump administration withdrew measures to protect struggling student loan borrowers and made repayment more difficult by allowing debt collectors to charge a 16 percent fee—even when the borrower agrees to make good on their debt within 60 days. On April 11, the Trump administration stripped away important measures that would hold student loan servicers accountable when their actions are not in the best interest of students. It has been well-documented that servicers sometimes place borrowers in repayment programs that could ultimately make it more difficult for them to repay their debt.Failed to help students when a critical resource for financial aid and loan repayment was shut down. In March 2017, with no advance warning, the IRS and U.S. Department of Education disabled a key web-based tool that helps millions of students apply for aid and repay their loans. Failure to notify students put financial aid applicants at risk of losing access to grant aid that helps pay for college and put student loan borrowers at risk of seeing their payments jump by hundreds of dollars.Endangered students by appointing for-profit college officials to top positions. Robert Eitel, senior counselor to Secretary of Education DeVos, joined the administration well before he even left his job at Bridgepoint Education—a for-profit college company facing multiple federal investigations. And Taylor Hansen, a former lobbyist for for-profit colleges—whose father’s student loan debt-collection company sued the Obama administration—served on the department’s “beachhead” team.Undercut students’ civil rights by naming skeptics to top civil rights positions. The nominee to serve as general counsel in the Department of Education, Carlos Muñiz, defended Florida State University against allegations that it protected a star quarterback from rape charges. And the new head of the Office for Civil Rights, Candice Jackson, has claimed she experienced discrimination for being white and called the women who accused President Trump of assault and harassment “fake victims.”K-12 educationProposed completely eliminating federal funding for after-school programs. In President Trump’s budget, the administration zeroed out the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which provides $1.2 billion to districts across the country for after-school programs that support students and working families. This funding serves more than 1.6 million students participating in these programs.Proposed completely eliminating federal funding to support teacher quality. In President Trump’s budget, the administration zeroed out Title II of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which provides $2.4 billion to states and districts for teacher recruitment, training, retention, and support. This cut translates to a loss of 40,000 teacher salaries.Nominated the highly unqualified and anti-public school Betsy DeVos as secretary of education. DeVos’s only experience with education is as a lobbyist and megadonor pushing private school voucher schemes in states across the country. Instead of working to support public schools and the students that attend these schools, she has called public education a “dead end.”Rescinded the Obama administration’s regulations that supported school accountability under the new Every Student Succeeds Act. Through the Congressional Review Act, Congress and President Trump eliminated key protections and guidance for states and districts to implement the law, leaving significant confusion at the state and local level. The Trump administration has also signaled that it will take a very lax enforcement stance with states, opening the door for states to ignore their responsibilities to protect vulnerable students.Rescinded the Obama administration’s regulations that supported improving teacher preparation programs. Through the Congressional Review Act, Congress and Trump eliminated requirements for states to make sure that teacher preparation programs are helping prospective teachers gain the skills needed to be successful in the classroom and support student learning. Without these regulations, states will continue to struggle to improve teacher preparation programs and support the most effective programs.Proposed cutting $9 billion from public education while spending $1.4 billion on school choice. This proposal includes harmful private school voucher schemes and the creation of a new $250 million federal program that will allow taxpayer dollars to flow to private schools, which are not accountable; can discriminate in admissions and discipline; and are not subject to basic monitoring, oversight, and civil rights laws.Proposed cutting crucial support for school reform efforts. By zeroing out support for the AmeriCorps program, President Trump would undercut many of the most successful education organizations—from KIPP Public Charter Schools, to Teach For America, to City Year—that have had positive effects on students across the country and rely on that program.JusticeNamed Jeff Sessions, a long-time opponent of civil rights, as attorney general, the top law enforcer in the nation. Sessions co-sponsored the First Amendment Defense Act, a draconian measure that prohibits the federal government from taking “discriminatory action” against any business or person that discriminates against LGBTQ people. The act aims to protect the right of all entities to refuse service to LGBTQ people based on two sets of religious beliefs: “(1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.” As a federal prosecutor in 1983, Sessions prosecuted a trio of voting rights activists for voter fraud. As the chief enforcer of the civil rights laws of the United States, it is almost impossible to imagine how he will now protect the very community for which he endorsed discrimination.Appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch—a judge with a long record of ruling against the rights of workers, women, and students with disabilities—to the Supreme Court. Justice Gorsuch will rule on fundamental constitutional issues—including civil rights, the role of money in politics, and reproductive rights. For example, he will soon vote on whether the Court should allow North Carolina’s 2013 voting bill—which a lower court said targeted black voters with “almost surgical precision”—to remain in effect.Pressured the Senate to enact the “nuclear option” to get his Supreme Court nominee confirmed. Nearly every other justice on the Court had bipartisan support and crossed the 60-vote threshold at some point during their confirmation process, but many senators objected to President Trump’s nominee. The nuclear option means Senate leaders can now confirm Trump’s ideologically driven judges with a simple majority.Undermined the legitimacy of the court system. As a candidate and as president, Trump has attacked judges whose rulings he does not like and undermined the legitimacy of these courts. He called a judge who ruled against his discriminatory Muslim ban a “so-called judge.” During the campaign, he said that a Mexican-American judge could not be impartial in a lawsuit against Trump due to his ethnicity. These attacks on the third branch of government undermine the founders’ separation of powers as well as the very rule of law.Nominated ideological extremists to federal courts. The Trump administration is already vetting conservative ideologues to appoint to federal courts. President Trump’s nominations, particularly for seats on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, signal an aggressive push to bend the federal judiciary ideologically. Trump has well over 100 seats to fill—thanks to Senate obstruction during President Obama’s term—and Trump recently announced that the administration would no longer seek the recommendation from the nonpartisan American Bar Association.Proposed eliminating the Legal Services Corporation. Already scarce access to justice will be put even further out of reach for 60.6 million low-income Americans under President Trump’s proposal to eliminate the Legal Services Corporation—the nation’s main funding stream for civil legal services.Tried but failed to stop Baltimore police reform efforts. Attorney General Sessions asked a court at the last minute not to accept a consent decree that was supported by the Baltimore police commissioner, mayor, community members, and career Department of Justice attorneys. The federal court rejected Sessions’ motion, allowing needed police reforms that would build trust between the police and the communities they serve to proceed.Attempted to bring back the war on drugs. The outdated strategy was ineffective and caused long-term devastation to thousands of families. Attorney General Sessions is implementing a tough-on-crime approach that would increase federal prosecutions and long prison sentences even for low-level, nonviolent offenders. Even as the Trump administration pushes outdated law-and-order policies, Democratic and Republican governors are making progress on sentencing reform, drug treatment, and alternatives to incarceration.Supported outdated and ineffective criminal justice reforms that have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Attorney General Sessions should be focusing on the need for police reform; supporting innovative crime-reduction strategies; and ensuring drug treatment and alternatives to incarceration are available. Yet, instead, he has ordered a review of current pattern and practice cases of police misconduct where evidence and a clear record has shown a police department has acted with systemic misconduct. He has also questioned decades of research and science rejecting a tough-on-crime approach.Reversed the Obama era Department of Justice’s order to stop contracting with private prison facilities. Private prisons create a perverse incentive to incarcerate more people since these companies are motivated to increase profit, which is generated only if there are more inmates filling their facilities. Private prisons that contracted with the Department of Justice were found by the department itself to be less efficient and have more issues with security and management.Racial justiceSupported economic policies that are detrimental to communities of color. Many of the budget cuts proposed by President Trump would cut key social service programs. For example, 41 percent of the 9 million Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, recipients are people of color. The budget also eliminates the Minority Business Development Agency, which promotes business development for people of color—the fastest growing segment of the population.Supported education policies that do not support students of color. The Trump administration supports cuts to Pell Grants and tuition assistance programs as well as cuts to after-school programs that would affect 1 in 4 African American students. The administration also supports voucher programs that do not encourage the success of students of color.Pushed environmental policies that will negatively affect communities of color. As noted above, the EPA wants to eradicate programs dedicated to reducing exposure to lead paint, which disproportionately affects communities of color. The EPA is also cutting funding for the environmental justice office that had just been set up to specifically deal with lead, pollution, and other issues facing communities of color.LGBTQTurned a blind eye to illegal anti-transgender discrimination in schools. The Trump administration revoked Title IX guidance issued by the Department of Education clarifying schools’ long-standing obligations under federal civil rights law to treat transgender students equally and with dignity. Transgender students face pervasive harassment and discrimination in schools, impeding these students’ ability to learn. Nearly 1 in 6 out transgender K-12 students have been forced to leave school because of this harassment.Erased LGBTQ people from federal surveys, making it impossible to know if government programs serve them fairly. The Trump administration removed questions about LGBTQ people from key federal surveys about programs that serve seniors and people with disabilities, without which policymakers and advocates cannot ensure LGBTQ people have equal access to key government services such as Meals on Wheels. The administration also appears to have included—but then gone back and omitted—questions about LGBTQ people from the American Community Survey, an annual survey that gathers information about Americans’ educational attainment, housing, and health coverage.Appointed longtime opponents of LGBTQ rights—including members of anti-LGBTQ hate groups—to key administration positions. Many of President Trump’s appointees, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, made their careers standing in the way of LGBTQ rights—and now, they’re in charge of agencies that enforce those very rights. The appointments get even more disturbing the closer you look: Trump tapped Ken Blackwell, a former fellow at an anti-LGBTQ hate group, as a domestic policy adviser; selected leaders of the hate group C-FAM for the president’s delegation to the United Nations; and appointed Roger Severino, a longtime opponent of transgender civil rights, to run the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights.Proposed slashing funding for research to cure HIV/AIDS. President Trump has proposed devastating cuts to health research, including $6 billion in cuts to the National Institutes of Health in the budget and a $50 million cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV research and prevention programs. The administration has also pushed a $300 million cut to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR—an extraordinarily successful program that provides lifesaving treatment to 11.5 million people worldwide and has broad bipartisan support.Barred refugees and asylum seekers fleeing anti-LGBTQ persecution from protection in the United States. President Trump’s refugee suspension blocked LGBTQ Syrian and Iraqi refugees from finding protection in the United States, leaving them stranded in countries where they are persecuted. His policy of detaining all immigrants who enter at the southern border and expanding the populations targeted for deportation traps LGBTQ asylum seekers in dangerous immigrant detention facilities and increases the risk that they will be wrongly deported to countries where their lives are at risk. The administration also decided to close the only dedicated transgender immigrant detention pod in the country, leaving transgender immigrants in detention at risk.National securityMade Americans less safe from the Islamic State, or IS. The anti-Muslim bigotry of the Trump administration makes every American less safe by helping IS and other terrorist groups recruit followers. As one IS commander in Afghanistan put it, the Trump administration’s “utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands.” The original Muslim ban included Iraq, where Iraqi soldier fighting alongside U.S. forces against IS called it a “betrayal.”Made Americans more vulnerable to pandemic diseases such as Zika and Ebola. Massive cuts in aid, diplomacy, and health proposed in President Trump’s FY 2017 budget would end the Global Health Security account, which works to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks around the world, including Ebola. In his proposed budget, Trump has also called for the elimination of funding for the Fogarty International Center, which supports global health research initiatives, including for infectious diseases research in developing countries.Undermined American jobs and security by ceding global leadership to Beijing. President Trump has taken no actions to achieve more balanced trade with China. He recklessly toyed with overturning nearly 40 years of official policy recognizing “one China” but backed down during his first call with the Chinese president, showing that his threats were hollow. Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson claimed they would stop China from building on disputed islands in the South China Sea, but China proceeds to do what it wants, where it wants. Trump’s summit with President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort resulted in no progress on any difficult issues. Beijing sees Washington as hot air with little substance. Trump’s all talk, no action approach is encouraging repression over freedom and making authoritarian leaders confident that repression will be tolerated.Oversaw an increase in civilian deaths from U.S. military operations. After years of decline, civilian deaths from U.S. military operations have surged under Trump, destroying families, undermining strategic aims, and providing a propaganda boon to U.S. enemies. U.S. military spokesperson Col. Joseph Scrocca said “[More civilian casualties] is probably detrimental to the strength of our coalition. And that’s exactly what ISIS is trying to target right now.” Civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria have spiked in 2017, already far surpassing the total for all of 2016. Trump’s first major raid as president, in Yemen in January, was decided over dinner in the White House—far outside the regular process—and resulted in dozens of civilian deaths.Threatened national security and hurt the integrity of America’s democracy by an ongoing lack of transparency and refusal to disclose details about his finances and ties to Russia. Americans cannot know who President Trump might owe money or what obligations or commitment he and his team could have to Russia or other foreign powers. Trump’s refusal to condemn the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 elections; release his tax returns; step away from his business; and support an independent commission and special counsel to get to the bottom of Russia’s influence over the 2016 election are a green light to Russians and others who want to meddle in U.S. democracy. All Americans from all political parties are vulnerable when foreign influence, money, and hacking can run roughshod though America’s democratic institutions.This list is just a sample of the ways in which President Trump and his administration have already broken their promises to Americans and revealed their true priorities. As this list grows, real damage is being done to communities and working families across the nation. Trump should heed their calls to put the needs of ordinary Americans ahead of corporations and the wealthy.

There is a Liberal bias in American Universities, and in some places, including many of the most prominent universities in the country, an extreme Left Wing bias. If you find this hard to believe, the first thing you need to accept is that college isn’t what it used to be 5 years ago.In a few cases, there is a fair explanation for why this could naturally happen. One is the nature of the conservative motivations for education from those on the left. For most conservatives, college is a time to gain skills necessary for employment. While most professors will admit that their conservative students perform just as well as their liberal counterparts and often better, many of the fields they enter into do not require more than a four year degree. Consider Business or Law Enforcement. With many liberals, the fields they are seeking are academic and require much more study. This, I have found, to be a perfectly logical and acceptable explanation for why more students of a liberal persuasion would pursue a life in academia and thereby shift the balance.My friend Ian McCullough, a liberal, also provides a few very good reasons in his answer for why such a liberal lean could naturally and with absolutely no malice or nefarious schemes to bias the system. There are others as well, but with credit to my friends on the left who acknowledge the liberal bias, this doesn’t go far enough to explain the real numbers being reported in the system, nor do they really acknowledge the gravity of the situation current college students are experiencing because of the extreme bias in the system.Samuel Abrams, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, did a study in 2014 measuring back over the last 25 years to measure the dispersion of left leaning professors to those of the right. What he found was staggering. In colleges, liberals have always been more embraced, at least since Abrams began his study. Beginning in the mid 90’s, however, conservatives and especially moderates have been replaced by more extreme liberal biases.Figure 1. Ideological Positions of Faculty in American Colleges and Universities: 1989 – 2014. Data courtesy of the Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, plotted by Sam Abrams.For certain parts of the country, this was far more pronounced. Abrams broke down the disparity geographically and saw that while liberals outnumbered their conservative counterparts throughout the nation in representation in institutions of higher learning, in places like the New England states, the disparity was as high as 28 to 1.28 to 1… Come on. There is simply no rational explanation for a 28 to 1 disparity that is innocent or lacking some major degree of intolerance to opposing points of view. Given that we are talking about the some of the world’s leading intellectual institutions, the level of intolerance that could have created a 28 to 1 disparity. Furthermore, given the outsized influence that these particular universities have over the educational system, it should bother people that they are so repressive towards differing points of view in their hiring practices.Another study Published in Econ Journal Watch, reviewed over 7,000 where they found that Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 12 to 1. Compare this to a 1968 study that put the Democrat-to-Republican contrast in history departments at 2.7 to 1. Furthermore, it broke it down by department, where economics was the most friendly to conservatives, at a ratio of only 4.5 liberal professors to every conservative. Another study resulted in only 7% to 11% of faculty members in social sciences and humanities are Republicans, according to surveys. At the extreme, the Econ Journal Watch found that History departments, where the leanings of your old High School teachers were long gone, had liberals outnumber conservatives by a 33 1/2-to-1 ratio. It was even shown within these departments that it was easier to find a Marxist than a Republican. Perhaps now it makes sense that mention of the Gulag Archipelago, Christian genocide in the Soviet Union, artificial famines in China under Mao, or why Communism killed over 100,000,000 people in the 20th century never seemed to make the syllabus, but man… those Americans with their economic imperialism and long history of oppression. Wow. Thank goodness for higher learning.This brings to mind the quote from one of the fathers of Conservative theory, something no one learns about in college, Edmund Burke.Honestly, how many people had no clue who originally said that, and honestly, how many people calling themselves educated have no clue who this man is? Chances are, you didn’t learn about him in college and if you know, you found it out on your own. That should be the first indicator that there is something wrong with this imbalance due to that bias.Some of the excuses being levied for this is that the college experience simply makes conservatives or moderates liberals, as if the institutional process civilizes them from their barbaric or neanderthal ways. Wow, is that arrogant. That certainly doesn’t explain the Burke thing, though. Others, that the filtering process for universities (their costly expense) filters out the poor and the uneducated, which is presumably where most conservatives hail from. Given how radically contradictory this is to the notion that conservatives are all rich and greedy, only interested in maintaining the status quo, I wonder how apologists can possibly rationalize the two competing views. A better (while still incorrect) explanation offered by the New York Times was that Conservatism has simply changed and that no one could bear it any longer, or at least, that it became intolerable to the academic environment.Again, this excuse fails a logical test. If such an evolution took place, then we would have seen some measurable change in the broader culture, but at the same time that the universities became stark and suddenly more left wing, the nation stayed exactly the same, as shown by this graph depicting the ideological positions of America.What the evidence shows is that while the United States has remained remarkably ideologically consistent, the universities have become extremely left/leaning, radically and disturbingly so in the New England states and particularly in the social sciences. So there really isn’t a good reason for 28 to 1. For that sort of dispearity to exist, much more powerful and far more far more complex reasons must exist for than the often levied and extraordinary condescending “because smart people are liberal,” and many of them, aren’t innocent or even accidental.Frankly, there was a few rational reasons for a left leaning influence in the universities, but that has compounded itself many times with those left leaning voices pulling more like themselves in and pushing out all the others on an institutional level. Specifically, the problem with the left wing, let’s call it what it is, radicalization of the universities is that draws from selection biases in the way professors are brought in to teach the “liberal” arts, humanities, and social sciences. Not all, but a fair enough proportion of the professors did not gain their credibility from their early academic fields, but through activism. Look, say whatever you like about activists and the need for them, but they don’t produce unbiased people willing to accept critical analysis that may invalidate the cause they’ve championed for years. Often, after whatever gains are made, they have few employment options beyond pursuing fields in politics or becoming professors of social sciences.A problem with people going into science fields who have an agenda? They don’t produce quality science. A scientist works toward discovery, with no real goal in mind other than to discover what is unknown. They aren’t there to prove a point. These activists turned professors, however, build careers around continuing their advocacy, whether intentionally or not. Rather than a simple quest for discovery and education, they are institutionally encouraged to be fixated on researching topics related to their personal connections to the issues. This has been called by one professor of Psychology, John Ruscio “me-search”. The problem here is that, rather than simply teaching what is needed to understand a fundamental course, or in discovering new relevant truths, courses become grounds for activists turned professors to continue their original work, often at the cost of the actual science in those fields.An example? Women’s studies. When you’ve built your work around decades of theory predicated on the narrative that women are institutionally repressed by society and source as proof for this evidence such as the “Wage Gap”, you really don’t want to deal with arguments that invalidate that data point central to your theory. However, when evidence turns up showing that simply taking the difference between the averages of all women and all men may not be a quality metric with which judge the entirety of American culture to be systemically sexist, we aren’t presented with that argument in the curriculum. Furthermore, saying that factors such as the number of women who choose to leave work to start families as compared to men across the society, the amount of time taken off by women, the fewer average hours worked by women, or the relative unwillingness of women to take on dangerous (and more often higher paying) jobs, or even simply the argument that men are more likely to ask for more money, aren’t taught either. Continuing on, when evidence such that the freer a society gets for women, as defined by the feminists themselves, such as we see in the nordic and other parts of Europe, we see more gender based delineation in the types of work that women choose to take on than those societies which are deemed less free for women, meaning that the freer women are to make their own choices, the more the supposed wage gap increases due to the jobs they choose. All this considered, it becomes clear that whatever wage gap that exists is due far more to the choices and freedoms these women have, than some systemic repression of a tyrannical patriarchy. In fact, when factoring for these choices, the wage gap narrows to almost nothing, and in fact, reverses in many liberal cities for young women without children. This argument really sucks if you’ve built a career proving the Patriarchy, so it’s little wonder that it isn’t thoroughly explored more by students of these professors.And it’s very difficult for professors to adapt to new information when they were not brought into the education via the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, but as activists who continue to believe they fighting for a cause. That’s why these arguments don’t appear in campuses open discussion. Instead, they are labeled “sexist” or that they are “creating a hostile environment for students” where they don’t feel “safe”, and any professor who does allows such discussion might find themselves in a punitive meeting with their school’s ethics and diversity officer.That isn’t hyperbolic, as a similar case to this example took place in Canada last month. At Wilfrid Laurier University, a teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd was branded as “transphobic” and scolded by her supervising professor, Nathan Rambukkana, during a meeting with the Ethics and Diversity Officer of Wilfrid Laurier following the supposed complaint from a student. Her crime? Showing a video of a debate taken from Canadian public television featuring one Canadian professor of Psychology, Dr. Jordan Peterson. Her true crime, however, wasn’t in showing the video, but failing to do so “critically”, making it known that she and the university don’t support his views. That is to say, her job was specifically to not be neutral, which was what she thought her job was supposed to be. During the reprimand, which her supervising professor communicated to her as a simple meeting, the university officials informed her that the video was “problematic” because Dr. Jordan Peterson was a “key member of the Alt-Right” and that he uses the website Patreon “made by the Alt-Right to fund hate speech”, and that by showing a video representing him neutrally she was “fostering an atmosphere of transphobia on the campus.” The reprimand even compared what she did to “neutrally playing a speech by Hitler.”I can say this. I’ve followed Dr. Peterson very closely over the last year, and watched a lot of his videos. I’ve also written extensively on the Alt-Right, specifically in creating a book aimed at educating readers on understanding and dismantling their movement. That he would be compared to the Alt-Right is patently absurd. Then to say that representing one of his videos is the same as “neutrally playing a speech by Hitler,” is the sort of accusation which should see heads roll during more rational times. As an additional note, I’ve also used patreon for four years and can say that they have intentionally banned violators such as this campus tribunal has indicated, with most of their creators being creators of music videos and comics. Hardly the pipeline to hate speech described by the “campus diversity officer”. What Peterson is rather famous for is his fight against Canada’s recent Bill C-16, which mandates compelled speech for professors according to the guidelines of extreme left wing narrative board of inquiry over Canada’s education system.What seems clear is that, like at many other campuses, (see Duke LaCrosse Team) judgement was cast down based on the complaint of a single individual who was offended and when that offense met with a far left Progressive narrative of the campus,was acted upon without any investigation other than what the professor had heard through a very biased grapevine, and used to create a repressive, even fearful atmosphere for people who did nothing wrong.What seems equally questionable is the creep of the Humanities into the hard Sciences. By this, I’m referring to Feminist Biology, which isn’t the biology of women, but a program at the University of Wisconsin where the field is viewed through the lens of feminism and the female perspective. To quote one professor, it exists because “in order to do science well, we can’t ignore the ideas and research of people who just so happen to not be male,” though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that men need to be censored from the field, given that women have far surpassed men at earning Biology degrees and saying that they aren’t respected in the field ignores how many of them are being given Nobel Prizes for their contributions. Historically, men dominate the sciences, but if any quality Biology program is teaching current Biology, then I don’t see how they would be guilty of teaching about only men. Given also that such a program would specifically filter out the “ideas and research of people who happen to be male”, are not these feminist biology student being denied the foundational work of the first scientists in the field that the world of later male or female scientists are built on? The logic of the class is what it is, but what is perhaps most troubling is that this program wasn’t governed by the Biology Department of Wisconsin University, but under the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. To say nothing else, I should think that hard scientists would find that concerning.This creep can be felt in other ways to students, where more and more of their bloated transcripts are being filled with courses outside their chosen fields to “gain a deeper appreciation in the Humanities”, which is itself becoming more radicalized. Perhaps a little emphasis in economics could have explained the consequences of their rising student loan debt due to these additional classes and given them an appreciation for how hard paying it off will be if you only ever paid attention in humanities courses.Moving on, conservatives also note the problems inherent in the system by way of how professors and graduate students are promoted and advance in their careers, by means of peer-review publications. The process of peer review is fraught with controversy from scientists questioning if the system is valid for the progress of scientific discovery and acceptability, from bias to outright censorship. It can range from committees made of department heads giving the ten ton hammer to articles and manuscripts they find objectionable on any number of issues to the simple process of a journal editor sending an article to a few friends to see if they like it, where two thumbs up mean it gets published and a rejection sends the piece to the Void of Lost and Forgotten Knowledge.There are many unhappy with the system of peer review, so does this process result in censorship for or a lack of advancement for conservatives specifically? According to numerous professors, yes it does.The following was submitted by a conservative professor, Matthew Woessner, whose main work argues against the notion of that conservative views are repressed in the colleges, but here, he must contend the peer-review process, coupled with the extreme diversity problem among educators, makes it difficult for conservatives to find opportunities for advancement.The more pernicious problem occurs when right-leaning scholars submit their work for blind review with prestigious publishers or in peer-reviewed journals. Even if we presume that most journal referees are sincerely trying to judge a work based on its scholarly merits rather than its social or political implications, a jury pool dominated by left-leaning scholars will almost certainly subject right-leaning papers to greater scrutiny, highlighting their methodological shortcomings and challenging their overall conclusions. If the academic universe were evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, the unconscious tendency to challenge dissenting viewpoints would hamper the publication of conservative and liberal work at roughly the same rate. However, with a vast majority of academics falling on the left side of the political spectrum, this is an issue that, in all probability, tends to hamper the publication of conservative-leaning ideas. Thus, professors whose political instincts are right of center must either focus on non-ideological scholarly questions or endure a special degree of scrutiny as they seek to secure publication of their ideas.Richard Vatz, professor of rhetoric and communication at Towson University was less forgiving.For many decades, there has been a stunning — and manifestly appalling — general prejudice against conservatives in higher education, evidenced by curtailments on their academic freedom and freedom of speech.It is difficult for conservatives to get hired, and once hired, it is difficult for them to get promotion and tenure — particularly in the humanities and social sciences, wherein liberal orthodoxy rules.This has resulted in fewer conservatives finding their way into academe as a profession, which liberals disingenuously claim is the result of universities having limited economic attraction for those on the right, not as a result of unfair practices.He continued in a follow-up to his original piece published in The Chronicle of Higher Education - Anti-Conservative Bias in Academe is Real.Furthermore, over the past five years, outright repression of conservative views has increased to the point of direct hostility against professors and students who harbor them. A book Passing on the Right documented the growing tension and fear many conservatives have in academia. It notes that belief in campus discrimination against conservatives is widespread: 81% of conservative professors say they feel it, and even 30% of liberal professors agree that conservatives face a hostile ideological workplace. The book also lists numerous accounts brought forward to show that this radicalizing process is getting worse and having expressed impacts on the careers of conservative professors and the orthodoxy being pushed to students. Among the examples given were a professor accused of training his students to be Nazis after defending the post-9/11 War on Terror where his door was covered with swastikas, a Jewish historian calling for political diversity on a panel on reparations being called a racist and a Nazi by his colleagues, the ostracism of one professor who accepted a job in the Bush administration by colleagues, and even pro-life sentiment at a Catholic college being viewed as “shocking” and “venomous.”Continuing on, the book details requests for academics seeking to do research on topics controversial or challenging to left -wing narratives, such as reverse discrimination against whites and/or men facing rejection for explicitly political reasons with reaction such as: “The findings could set Affirmative Action back 20 years if it came out that women were asked to interview more often for managerial positions than men with a stronger vitae.” If all this weren’t enough, the book also notes one study finding sociologists were willing to give preferential treatment in offering a job to a communist over a Republican.Altogether, this process seems to have the impact of further increasing the disparity between right and left on college campuses. Most importantly, in recent year, this disparity has manifest as outright intolerance of conservative views and students by extremists allowed to rise through the academic system unchallenged. Noteworthy examples include those gathered by Sankar Srinivasan whereby A professor called students ‘future dead cops.’, another writing reports that Having 'white nuclear family' promotes white supremacy, or when Drexel was forced to suspend a professor after hateful tweets following the Las Vegas shooting. His exact words were “All I want for Christmas is a White Genocide” and “It’s the white supremacist patriarchy, stupid.” An important note, Drexel didn’t suspend him as a form of disciplinary action but because “he was receiving threats,” and that “his and the student’s safety was their top priority.”I’ll make an opinion statement here, Drexel would make a clearer statement that their student’s safety mattered if they fired the professor calling for a majority of them to be murdered. Again, that’s just my opinion.Then, of course, we have the professor who let her class protest Trump instead of taking the final exam and the one who offered extra credit to students who protest against President Trump. No bias here, folks. More recently, there was the masked professor in California who attacked pro-Trump protests with a bike lock (Former professor suspected in Berkeley bike-lock attack enters plea in Oakland court). Wonder what his classes were like. And just this last month, a student newspaper which published the article 'Your [white] DNA is an abomination'.“When I think of all the white people I have ever encountered - whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, friend, police officers, et cetera - there is perhaps only a dozen I would consider ‘decent,’” student author Rudy Martinez writes in the University Star.Without much biological explanation, Martinez informs white readers, “You were not born white. You became white… You don’t give a damn.” Later in his rant, he calls the police “fascist foot soldiers” and says a “white supremacist inhabits the White House.”How a student at a major American university, in Texas no less, could come to such conclusions as rational and acceptable to print is the real heart of the matter.Liberals in higher education are so over represented, and conservative voices so marginalized in both hiring and promotion practices, that the theories, ideas, and norms of an ever more left-leaning academia are completely and totally unchecked by dissenting arguments. It is, in fact, reaching a tipping point to the where the very idea of criticism toward these theories and ideas is itself being outlawed on campuses. With the propagation of campus speech codes, to censur both student and professor curriculum, the encouragement of campus courts falsely accusing students of all manner of criminal and non-criminal acts that destroy their future prospects of a career, the acceptance of safe-space mentalities to free students from critical thought and ideas that challenge their orthodoxy, the dogmatic enforcement of political correctness in lectures by campus “ethics and diversity” officers, the banning of conservative lecturers paid for by student donation from entering the campus, and finally the outright tolerance of hate speech such as saying that all Republicans are Nazis and that white DNA is an abomination, liberal schools have lost the right to call themselves institutions of higher learning.They have for too long accepted processes which encourage an ever present left-word shift, to the point that there was no one left to be critical of their ever more apparent radicalization.In the best case scenario, the environment of college campuses is producing a generation of students who are completely unaware of views which contradict mainline Progressive ideology, making them weaker thinkers incapable of dealing with conflicting views, having never experienced their own views challenged in the institution specifically created to do so. This hurts liberal students far more, as the conservative students must grapple with being challenged with every lecture, and those who remain steadfast are empowered with the rationale for their beliefs honest critical analysis offers them, but which is denied to their liberal students. In the worst case, the colleges are evolving into toxic grounds for free thought and becoming a bedrock of poorly vetting theory which borders now on orthodoxy, one which is taken as fact without criticism, and is being used to prop up hateful movements under the guise of their own victimhood.All that to say, well done young lady.Thank you for reading. If you liked this answer, please upvote and follow The War Elephant. If you want to help me make more content like this, please visit my Patreon Support Page to learn how. All donations greatly appreciated!