A Spigot for Bigots

At issue this morning are one large union you may never have heard of and one union with a leader who may not be sharp enough to pursue cover on a rainy day. Working backward — a clue to the gentleman’s sense of direction — we happen upon the curious A.J. Duffy, the president of the Teachers Union for LAUSD. I caught an interview Mr. Duffy did recently with National Public Radio. Since the thuggish Mayor Wrong of Los Angeles has devoted his first year in office to deviously attempting to seize control of Los Angeles public schools, Mr. Duffy’s mind was being mined for insights into the new political apparatus. How does it work? the interviewer wanted to know. Who ultimately will be in charge of the public schools? Who will be the final-final authority? Better the interviewer should have probed my grandfather, who died two months before I was born. The trip inside Mr. Duffy’s mind was short, repetitive — and frustrating. Ain’t much there. The NPR reporter was patient and persistent, though. He noted that the Teachers Union, initially vehemently opposed to Mayor Wrong’s seizure of the wheel and the weal of public schools before later reaching what was called a truce with Mayor Wrong. As plans presently stand, three parties will have a piece of control — Mayor Wrong, his assuredly unequal partner the School Board, and their stooge, a Superintendent whom the first two parties will agree upon.

A Foggy Day in Duffy’s Mind

The NPR interviewer kept pressing the president of the Teachers Union to answer his central question — Who will be the final authority in the drastically revised structure of LAUSD — Mayor Wrong, the School Board or the mutually agreed upon Superintendent? Mr. Duffy, like a loyal lifelong unionist, served up a heaping stack of bologna. “It is a partnership, among everybody,” he said. The NPR interviewer would not let him get away with a lie. “If everybody is in charge, no one is in charge, no one can be held accountable,” the interviewer said, repeating one of life’s most reliable axioms. When he became president of the Teachers Union last year, Mr. Duffy was profiled as a nice guy who knows how to dance politically correctly. He Fred Astaire’d the NPR interviewer right into the ground, like a corkscrew. As if he were a windup doll, Mr. Duffy kept answering, “This is a partnership. Everybody is responsible.” Even if he were as dim as his pavlovian responses made him seem, surely Mr. Duffy comprehended the question. Over the years,though, he has learned to perform in public as a good unionist. On this day, he rated cheers from his well-done followers.

Somewhere, Over the Ocean 

Here is this morning’s snapshot of union bullying. Two months ago in London, the National Assn. of Teachers in Higher and Further Education, the largest academic union in England, voted to boycott any Israeli academic who would not publicly disavow Israel’s alleged “apartheid” (read: anti-Arab) policies. The much-trumpeted purity of academia is being muddied once again 70 years after Hitler by another political litmus test. This was the third time in four years that organized British professors, who are pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic, have sought to punish Jewish professors by barring them from speaking at British universities or being published in British academic journals. The teachers union since has merged with another. Meanwhile, the pro-boycott vote for the 70,000-member union was 106 to 71 to ban “wrong-thinking” Jews. Since the favorable vote is from the left, no criticism will be brooked.