There has been much discussion about the controversial mandatory lecture for first-year medical students at the University of California Los Angeles from a pro-Palestinian speaker accused of anti-Semitic postings and racist rhetoric. However, there is less attention to the fact that Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia was appearing because she is one of UCLA’s paid Activists-in-Residence.
Gray-Garica is described by UCLA as “a formerly unhoused and incarcerated poverty scholar who prefers to keep their face covered in public.”
UCLA also faced a controversy this week over a scheduled lecture by Dr. Helena Hansen titled “Beyond Magic Bullets: Whiteness as a Structural Driver of the Opioid Crisis.” Hansen blames whiteness for the recent opioid crisis. She is also the author of “Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America. The Hansen lecture was reportedly changes without any comment from UCLA. ”
In her two-hour lecture, Gray-Garcia dismissed modern medicine as “white science” and told the medical students to engage in a prayer to “mama Earth.” Students were expected to pray and affirm that “Mama Earth was never meant to be bought, sold, pimped or played.”
It was part of what was billed as a talk on “Housing (In)justice in LA: Addressing Unhousing and Practicing Solidarity.”
A complaint filed after the lecture alleges that students were expected to chant “Free, free Palestine” and when one student refused to stand during one prayer, an unidentified UCLA faculty member asked for the pupil’s name. The complaint alleges that students were concerned that they would face repercussions if they did not chant and pray on command.
In the lecture, posted online, Gray-Garcia keeps her face covered with a keffiyeh while veering off into a diatribe over the Gaza Strip. She also attacked the concept and defense of private property as “crapitalist lies” that kill “black, brown and houseless people.”
On the video, she exclaims “Not only are our bodies considered unclean in public, not only are our lives criminalized for being outside without a roof, but politricksters use us for their campaigns.”
Gray-Garcia was undeterred by the complaint or the criticism, posting on X the next day: “As we hold our relatives in Occupied Palestine, and all of Mama Earth in prayer and love, we need to make connections.”
There have been ample objections to this indoctrination session at UCLA, but the school has been criticized for years for its viewpoint intolerance and orthodoxy.
However, what is most disturbing is the decision of the university that higher education should have paid “activists-in-residence.” At a school notorious for excluding conservative and libertarian voices, it is doubtful that it would embrace a pro-life or anti-transgender activist in residence. Instead, the faculty can enlist the support of activists to push an ideological agenda in mandatory sessions like this one.
UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy has gushed with praise for Gray-Garcia’s “rousing remarks presented in the form of spoken word poetry.”
UCLA Luskin Professor Ananya Roy, who created the residency program, heralded how the activists-in-residence is part of “our effort to turn the university inside out.” Roy added that “at the Institute, we organize knowledge within, against and beyond the university. The Activist-in-Residence program brings to the university the movement scholars and public intellectuals who are teachers and guides for this praxis.”
The faculty, including Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris who is the Interim Dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA, obviously support this view of higher education.
The question is why taxpayers and donors should support such school-sponsored activism. I previously wrote about the “radical chic” of academia as well as the new focus on “activism” as a field of study.
Arizona State University offers a BA program entirely on “community advocacy and social policy” that focuses on “historically under-served individuals, families and communities.” Students “complete courses in two core areas: diversity and oppressed populations and social issues and interventions.”
Many schools offer “advocacy and social justice studies.” At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, students are offered the opportunity to “study social justice with distinguished instructors from a wide range of academic departments, from Afro-American Studies to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies.”
Camden County College offers a diversity and social justice degree based on the advocacy work of the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic, which “revealed the depth of social inequality and its life-or-death consequences.” Others offer “a certificate of proficiency in social justice and an A.S. degree in Human Services, Social Justice Advocacy.”
Many of us encourage political activism and engagement of our students. They need to bring their passion and voices to the debates today over issues ranging from abortion to the environment to wars.
We have long benefited from intellectual activists in our country, but they were intellectuals first and activists second. They were thought-leaders who used classic education to advance societal change.
Gray-Garcia embodies how academics are destroying the very intellectual foundation for higher education. Incorporating such “activists-in-residence” are extremely popular moves for faculty at schools like UCLA. However, they are hijacking higher education for their own political and professional purposes. The problem is that few have the courage to oppose such programs out of fear that they will be the next to be targeted in a cancel campaign or university investigation. Most remain in cringing silence as bizarre scenes like the one at UCLA play out on campus.
The one UCLA student who refused to pray on command was a courageous exception. However, we should all pray for the future of American higher education if Gray-Garcia is the measure of American intellectual thought.
“We have long benefited from intellectual activists in our country, but they were intellectuals first and activists second. They were thought-leaders who used classic education to advance societal change.”
No No No! This is where the universities went wrong. This is the sort of thinking that led to Feminism, Gay Liberation, and Multiculturalism, which is simply a cover word for Baby Daddy Culture. Etc.
That all came from intellectual activism.
I can not think of one thing good that came from intellectual activism post-Eisenhower.
The phrase “thought leaders” makes me shudder. I get an image of a wolf leading around a flock of sheep. We need more of our own independent thought, not to look to leaders to think for us.
Our constitutional republic is truly falling like the Roman Empire . . . unless the majority of the people begin to take a substantive stand that includes free speech, open debates and VOTING.
UCLA has officially become a Woke Cult. John McWhorter’s description of Wokism as a religion complete with Illuminati demanding complete obedience to its Priesthood is reified in Wokifornia.
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I knew people who used to talk like Lisa “tiny” Gray-Garcia but then they got sober.
As Mexicans say ¡chιηgαο!
🤡
Agreed.
What a waste of time and loot. Don’t see this in China. Japan, Russia or Nigeria. Just another example of Neo-Racism in The Twenty-First Century. https://shorturl.at/pqT48
Just stupid. Time to defund colleges. The world will be smarter.
That is the California voters consistently vote for. Even more so since ballot harvesting. Their voice is clear.
It will only get worse as middle and upper income taxpayers and their employers head for the exits.
Picking sides in the (latest) israel v hamas crap is impossible for an objective analyst and being forced to choose/support/accept one or the other is oppression.
What does this required class have to do with being a medical student?
This is so troubling! Mandatory is inexcusable. Agreed — time for the schools to face loss of federal funds for this type of bigotry. The teachers who endorse this should have names on a list instead of students. How will we ever get back to an America where free speech is tolerated even if we disagree but where we have rights to not attend. We are lead by cowards until it hits their own children, homes and communities.
No, the title is most offensive member of the radical left that has checked the most boxes to buy votes for biden.
It amazes me that 1) alleged institutions of higher education even offer these types of degrees, and 2) people are willing to incur mountains of debt to obtain them. What kind of jobs does one find seeking people with degrees in “social advocacy” and the like? The answer is probably teaching the next generation of indebted students with utterly worthless degrees. It has become a self-licking lollipop that contributes nothing to society as a whole. They remind me of the old Soviet “political officers” implanted in every enterprise, university or military unit to ensure adherence to Soviet orthodoxy while contributing absolutely nothing to the groups’ actual purposes.
Anonymous said: “It amazes me that 1) alleged institutions of higher education even offer these types of degrees, and 2) people are willing to incur mountains of debt to obtain them.”
Re your 2nd point: Do you seriously think that most “students” seeking such a degree are actually paying for it with their own money, rather than with a student loan that they never intend to repay, and/or some BS government grant using money extorted from the US taxpayer? The existence of that free ride explains the apparent disconnect in your first point.
Number 6,
If we truly have hit peak woke, the value of these degrees is going to become increasingly obvious, i.e. worthless.
Read an article last week about corporate CEOs are putting on the brakes for DEI, laying off DEI employees with no intent to hire in the future, and reducing DEI programs as they have no value added.
Good times!
What the heck was that?
OT, but somewhat related to wokeism and absurdity, another fine article by The Free Press, Addiction Activists Say They’re ‘Reducing Harm’ in Philly. Locals Say They’re Causing It.
“Addicts have turned a minority neighborhood into an open-air drug market. Residents blame the mostly white advocates for ‘destroying’ their community.”
https://www.thefp.com/p/harm-reduction-kensington-causes-harm
Those students paid money for this. Even the Nazis didn’t make the Jews in the camps pay to listen to ant-Semitic harangues.
Well Jonathan, rest easy. The FBI and CISA are scouring the social media postings of that brave UCLA student who refused to pray on command to see if he has posted any disinformation or inflammatory rhetoric. They should have their case presented to the U.S. Attorney shortly. Not to worry…….
OK; we know what has to happen, we need to give a high colonic to every institution in this nation, starting with the White House all the way down to the local dog catcher. How are we going to do this when we do not have sufficient “warriors” to fight against what has been a long slog since the first transcendentalist first thought of molding man into a perfect being through societal modulations. We ignored this as a silly notion only attractive to a certain idealist segment of our society. At our peril, we did this for a century. How long do you think it will take to undo this? and by what means since we have lost control of most societal institutions. (refer to the current story asserting that NPR is nothing but a prog shill company). Writing articles to conservatives about the egregious prog/left will not move the needle but Trump seems to be willing to shout such things to the rafters yet he is denigrated, not only by the left, but by a good portion of the right who seem to think that there is a middle road in a civil war – there is not. The left is hell-bent on consuming/obliterating the right – we have 2 choices at this point, fight or bend over and take it.
time to end Federal Aid and student loan backing for Colleges
Let Democrats fund their own failures!
If this person is the chair of the Activist in Residence program, is the title for this position AIRHead?