CHANGE: Faith-Based ‘War Room’ to Halt ‘Straight Outta Compton’s’ Box-Office Run: “Religious drama has inside track on $13 million Labor Day weekend win. Robert Redford‘s ‘A Walk in the Woods’ and ‘Transporter Refueled’ head for $9 million.”

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A STATE UNIVERSITY SETS ITSELF AT ODDS WITH ITS STATE: University Of Iowa Gets President That Faculty Hate:

Come November, the University of Iowa will have a businessman with little experience in academe at its helm — and many faculty members and others in Iowa City aren’t happy about it.

The Iowa Board of Regents on Thursday unanimously appointed former IBM senior vice president Bruce Harreld as Iowa’s next president, despite outspoken criticism of Harreld as lacking the necessary qualifications to lead a university.

Harreld was one of four publicly announced finalists for the position and the only one without experience in higher education administration. He is a consultant who formerly worked as an executive at IBM, Kraft General Foods and Boston Market Company restaurants. His higher education experience is limited to eight years as an adjunct business professor at Harvard University and Northwestern University.

Faculty members have expressed concerns that Harreld lacks the knowledge and skills to work under a shared governance model and understand the complexities of leading a multibillion-dollar academic and research organization. Many worry that he will view the institution with a corporate mind-set, and that he will allow the regents to make the wrong changes to the university.

Other state universities, take note.

TEACHING FRAGILITY: In this video, Greg Lukianoff talks with Atlantic editor James Bennet about the “tidal wave of reaction” to his article with Jonathan Haidt, “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

COLLEGE ANGST? Don’t blame Tiger Mom.

I BLAME GEORGE W. BUSH: 60,000 Antelopes Died in 4 Days — And No One Knows Why.

THE POLITICS OF STAR TREK, as charted by Timothy Sandefur of the Claremont Institute, who writes, “Over nearly 50 years, Star Trek tracked the devolution of liberalism from the philosophy of the New Frontier into a preference for non-judgmental diversity and reactionary hostility to innovation, and finally into an almost nihilistic collection of divergent urges. At its best, Star Trek talked about big ideas, in a big way. Its decline reflects a culture-wide change in how Americans have thought about the biggest idea of all: mankind’s place in the universe.”

As midcentury-era New Deal liberalism gave way to the New Left of the late 1960s and the sybaritic nihilism of the following decade, Gene Roddenberry wasn’t immune from going off the rails himself during this period while Star Trek was off the air. This passage in Sandefur’s article brilliantly charts the chasm between the original Star Trek and its morally relativistic successors:

Aired in 1966, [the classic original series first season episode “The Conscience of the King”] is a commentary on the pursuit of Nazi war criminals, and it typifies the original Star Trek’s moral outlook. During the show’s three seasons, over 20 former Nazis were tried for their roles in the Holocaust, including five who only two weeks after this episode aired were convicted for working at the Sobibór extermination camp. Intellectuals like Hannah Arendt were preoccupied with the moral and jurisprudential questions of Nazi-hunting. “Conscience” puts these dilemmas into an ambitiously Shakespearean frame.

Like Hamlet, Kirk faces a crisis of certainty. “Logic is not enough,” he says, echoing Hamlet’s “What a rogue and peasant slave am I” soliloquy. “I’ve got to feel my way—make absolutely sure.” Yet one thing Kirk is already sure about is justice. Hamlet may curse the fact that he was ever born to set things right, but he knows it is his duty. Likewise Kirk. When McCoy asks him what good it will do to punish Kodos after a lapse of two decades—“Do you play god, carry his head through the corridors in triumph? That won’t bring back the dead”—Kirk answers, “No. But they may rest easier.”

For Shakespeare, justice is less about the good prospering and the bad suffering than about a harmony between the world of facts in which we live and the world of words we inhabit as beings endowed with speech. When the two fall out of sync—when Claudius’s crime knocks time “out of joint”—the result is only a perverse and temporary illusion. And Kirk is, again, not impressed by illusions. “Who are you to [judge]?” demands Kodos’s daughter. Kirk’s devastating reply: “Who do I have to be?”

This clear-headedness had evaporated by December 1991, when the movie sequel Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country appeared, only months after Roddenberry’s death. The previous films had focused on questions of loyalty, friendship, and Spock’s need for feeling to leaven his logic, but this one, written in part by Nimoy, would be the first devoted expressly to political subjects. It comments on the waning of the Cold War by portraying the first steps toward peace with the Klingons. Yet the price of peace, it turns out, is not merely to forgive past crimes, but for the innocent peoples of the galaxy to take the guilt upon themselves.

Star Trek VI opens with a shocking betrayal: without informing his captain, Spock has volunteered the crew for a peace mission to the Klingons. Kirk rightly calls this “arrogant presumption,” yet the Vulcan is never expected to apologize. On the contrary, the film summarily silences Kirk’s objections. At a banquet aboard the Enterprise, he is asked whether he would be willing to surrender his career in exchange for an end to hostilities, and Spock swiftly intervenes. “I believe the captain feels that Starfleet’s mission has always been one of peace,” he says. Kirk tries to disagree, but is again interrupted. Later, he decides that “Spock was right.” His original skepticism toward the peace mission was only prejudice: “I was used to hating Klingons.”

This represented an almost complete inversion of Star Trek’s original liberalism, and indeed of any rational scale of moral principles at all.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Rand Simberg.)

KEEP IT TO YOURSELF, SEXISTS! Vanderbilt Women’s Center to Lecture Men on ‘Healthy Masculinities.’ Women telling men how to be masculine. Because diversity!

AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Men’s Denim Store.

Plus, deals on Hunting & Tactical Knives.

And please remember: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your shopping through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support this blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. I very much appreciate it when you do.

FASTER, PLEASE: Meltdown-Proof Nuclear Reactors Get a Safety Check in Europe: Researchers say they could build a prototype of a molten salt reactor, a safer, cleaner nuclear power option, in 10 years. “First built and tested in the 1960s, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, molten salt reactors would be the first genuinely new technology for nuclear power generation to reach the market in the last three decades. Producing zero carbon, they use a radioactive solution that blends nuclear fuel with a liquid salt. They can run on uranium, but are also ideally suited for thorium, an alternative nuclear fuel that is cleaner, safer, and more abundant than uranium.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Some Unsolicited Advice on How to Eat Better at Your Roleplaying Game Sessions: “All stereotypes aside, cheese puffs and Mountain Dew isn’t going to be able to sustain you,” Moe Lane posits in his latest RPG column at the PJ Lifestyle section.

EXPLAINED: Why Imperial Stormtroopers Miss So Much. “Adam Savage of MythBusters fame decided to try and figure out just how fast the… whatever it is coming out of the blasters actually moves. Using the height Harrison Ford and the width of a door as visual references, Savage performs some arithmetic to come up with a shockingly slow speed: 130 miles per hour over 40 feet. For comparison, your average bullet comes out of the barrel moving at around 1,700 miles per hour. Stormtroopers may be better served by ditching the blasters for a good semi-auto.”

DAVID HARSANYI: Remember the Rule Of Law Is Only Sacred When It Furthers a Liberal Value. “As far as I can tell, there are only three unassailable constitutional rights left in the United States: the right not to be ‘discriminated’ against, the right to have an abortion and the right to have a gay marriage. In the eyes of liberals, nothing—not the freedom of association or religion or anything else mentioned in the First Amendment or Second Amendment—will ever supersede these consecrated rights.”

IF 2014 WAS THE YEAR OF THE HECKLER, 2015 is shaping up to be the Year Of The Tattler.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 849.

EUROPE IN CRISIS: Hungary Passes Draconian “Emergency” Immigration Laws.

Using the immigration crisis as a pretext, Hungary’s ruling party has passed a series of “emergency” laws that trample on several basic liberal values—and, probably not coincidentally, may not affect only immigrants. . . .

The immigrant crisis is of course real, and it’s legitimate for nations to reassert control over their borders. But history shows us that unscrupulous actors will gladly use legitimate crises to seize extraordinary powers.
As several Hungary-watchers have told us, this move by Orban’s Fidesz serves two purposes. First, it takes the issue away from the far-right Jobbik party, which has been surging in opinion polls. Second, it provides a handy cudgel with which to bludgeon its opponents on the left. Many opposition parties in Hungary have committed to helping migrants through grassroots efforts—as part of one such effort, the country’s former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany has been taking in migrant families for one or two nights in his home. Early reads of the bills indicate that this kind of program may now be in trouble.

One of the reasons we have so consistently decried the failure of the elites in regard to immigration is that it opens the door to illiberal politicians. Recently in the West, this has manifested itself as bluster—think Donald Trump’s calls for undoing the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship provisions, or any number of rants from the leaders of euroskeptic parties—like France’s Front National—that are out of power but popular in the polls.

We’ll have to see how far, and to what ends, Fidesz wants to push its newly-acquired powers. But a new, uglier phase in European politics could be upon us.

I’m afraid so.

COMPASSION: Revealed: How the five wealthiest Gulf Nations have so far refused to take a single Syrian refugee. “Gulf nations argue that accepting large numbers of Syrian refugees is a serious threat to the safety of [their] citizens because terrorists could hide themselves among civilians.”

A NICE ANALYSIS FROM EUGENE VOLOKH: When does your religion legally excuse you from doing part of your job? Hey, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a hijab-wearing Abercrombie salesgirl just a couple of months ago, religious accommodations were great.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

NOTHING AT ALL SUSPICIOUS HERE: Clintons personally paid State Department staffer to maintain server. “That State Department staffer, Bryan Pagliano, told a congressional committee this week that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination instead of testifying about the setup.”

Hillary’s spin: Just trying to save the taxpayers money!

IS THIS THE HOPE OR THE CHANGE? Latest California Proposal Features Gas Rationing.

As Obama promised the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008, energy prices will “skyrocket”; Sacramento, already infamous as the source of the highest gas prices in America, seems determined to make that the one campaign promise Mr. Obama delivers on.

HOW DOES THE 2016 RACE FOR THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION PLAY OUT? Ranking the strengths, weaknesses, and prospects of all 17(!) Republican candidates.

Note that this list doesn’t include SMOD 2016, whose firm-but-fair positions on the issues are looking better every day.

TAMARA RICE LAVE: Affirmative consent and switching the burden of proof.

I have been thinking a lot about affirmative consent in sex cases. I understand why advocates want affirmative consent as a policy matter; certainly, people should ensure that they are only having sex with partners who actually want to be doing whatever conventional or freaky act they happen to be engaged in. But I have a problem with legally requiring affirmative consent. I don’t see how making a person prove that her partner consented doesn’t switch the burden of proof to the accused.

When I was a public defender, I used to always remind jurors that because the BOP was on the prosecutor, I could literally say nothing, and still, if the D.A. didn’t prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, they would have to acquit. But with affirmative consent, the accused must put on evidence. If the university proves by a preponderance of the evidence that a sex act happened, the student has violated the university code of conduct unless he can convince the fact finder that the complainant consented.

Alas, New York and California have enacted affirmative consent laws, and other states are considering following. I find this trend to be extremely troubling and am relieved that at least one judge is similarly critical of affirmative consent.

There should be more.

HEADLINES FROM 1973: What Is de Blasio Going to Do About Those Times Square Breasts?

Paul Kersey, Travis Bickle, call your office.

TRYING TO AVOID EMBARRASSMENT: Rolling Stone files motion for protective order in Virginia dean’s defamation case.

Lawyers for Rolling Stone magazine yesterday entered a motion aimed at limiting the amount of information and documents disclosed in the ongoing defamation case filed this year by Nicole Eramo, a University of Virginia associate dean whose actions were depicted in the November 2014 Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus.” That story, which narrated an alleged gang rape at a campus fraternity house, was later exposed as a fraud, prompting a review by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a retraction.

Though the Columbia report laid bare the faulty editorial procedures behind “A Rape on Campus,” written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely (a named defendant in Eramo’s suit), Rolling Stone is apparently seeking to limit how much more information can leak into the public realm through this proceeding. “The Parties acknowledge that disclosure and discovery activity in this litigation is likely to include production of confidential, proprietary, or private information for which special protection from public disclosure and from use for any purpose other than prosecuting this litigation may be warranted,” reads the proposed protective order. Though Eramo’s legal team isn’t opposing the order, it comes at the behest of Rolling Stone.

The proposal would secure confidentiality for disclosures that fall into any one of several baskets, including information whose release is barred by statute, trade secrets or “commercially sensitive” information, “unpublished newsgathering materials” and “information of a personal or intimate nature regarding any individual.” For the consideration of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, the Erik Wemple Blog has a great interest in “unpublished newsgathering materials.” We oppose this motion!

The protective order would “survive” the litigation and could be undone only by a court order or a request from one of the parties.

I think all this information is a matter of great public interest, and it’s very important that it be made public.