The Federalist Society, Charles Koch, The Bradley Foundation and The U.S. Supreme Court; and The Future of Academic Freedom and Big Tech Intrusion

The Federalist Society, Charles Koch, The Bradley Foundation and The U.S. Supreme Court

Despite the clear language of the constitution that Congress shall have no religious test for the office of judge last week every Republican in the Senate except one put Amy Coney Barrett on an already packed right wing Supreme Court.

Barrett is a leader of the charismatic Christian cult called People of Promise. It is a group of Protestant and Catholic evangelicals who reportedly speak in tongues. They believe in the subjugation of women, oppose their right to choose, oppose gay marriage, and are authoritarian and pro corporate in the extreme.

Barrett earned her bones by my first clerking for the now dead Justice Antonin Scalia. She was part of the legal team along with John Roberts who helped republican George W. Bush steal the presidency by stopping the the recount of ballots in Florida in the year 2000.

The Federalist Society, led by Leonard Leo, has been responsible for packing the federal courts with over 200 largely unqualified young ideologues who serve for life. Leo, like the 6 of 9 Supreme Court justices, is an ultra right wing Catholic. For 20 years he has guided the Federalist Society. He is a member of Opus Dei, Latin for Gods work. It was founded on 1928 by a Spanish priest who was also a lawyer and supporter of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

Ultra right wing billionaire Charles Koch and the Bradley foundation have contributed to the efforts of the Federalist Society. Dark money is behind the appointments of the over 200 judges to the federal judiciary. Organizations funded by dark money find and encourage plaintiffs to bring cases challenging laws they dont like and write the briefs to submit to the judges they helped appoint.

Guest – Attorney Lisa Graves, created True North Research and is it executive director and editor-in-chief. Her research and analysis has been cited by every major paper in the country. Attorney Graves has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of government. She has served as chief counsel for nominations for the US Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy. She was a career deputy assistant attorney general at the US Department of Justice. Graves has spent the past 10 years investigating the impact of dark money on judicial selection.

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The Future of Academic Freedom and Big Tech Intrusion

Big tech companies rather than leaders of academic institutions, it seems, are fast becoming an arbiter of academic speech. Two weeks ago Zoom shut down a New York University-organized webinar; ironically it was on the issue of censorship by tech platforms. The webinar was going to take up the censorship of an earlier open classroom session at San Francisco State University, featuring Palestinian rights advocate Leila Khaled. It was part of a so-called Day of Action Against the Criminalization and Censorship of Campus Political Speech.

Canceling a campus event violates the principle of academic freedom that universities must observe. Allowing Zoom to override this bedrock principle, at the behest of organized, politically motivated groups, is a grave error for any university administration to make, and it should not escape censure from faculty

Guest – Professor Henry Reichman, former vice president of the American Association of University Professors and longtime chair of its committee on academic freedom and tenure. Reichman is especially qualified to discuss the issue. Professor emeritus of history at California State University at East Bay, Professor Reichman devotes nearly 300 pages doing so in his new book by Johns Hopkins University Press.

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