THIS SENTIMENT SEEMS TO BE GROWING ACROSS THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM: Academia Is Too Important To Be Left To The Academics.
Archive for 2017
February 25, 2017
THIS IS WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY DO: Could the New York Times have found a softer couch for its recollection of the blind sheik? “Nearly a week after the death of the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman in a U.S. prison, the New York Times published an interview with his lawyer, Lynne Stewart, in which she remembered Rahman not as a terrorist but as the ‘personification of an American hero.'”
Shades of the Gray Lady’s glowing obit of Joseph Stalin, and fawning profile of Bill Ayers, the latter, in a macabre bit of synchronicity, published the morning of September 11th, 2001.
IS THERE NOTHING SHE CAN’T DO? Falcons WR Says Lady Gaga’s Halftime Show Impacted Atlanta In Super Bowl Versus Patriots.
Hey, Up With People — untanned, rested and ready for their long-overdue return to the big stage.
THE CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD ASSEMBLES: Unity! Pro-Ellison Democrats welcome new party chair Tom Perez with protest chant.
Related:
DEMOCRATS ELECT FORMER OBAMA LABOR SECRETARY TOM PEREZ AS NATIONAL PARTY CHAIRMAN, PJM reports.
Earlier: DNC chairman’s race deadlocked. “The leading contenders, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Tom Perez of Maryland, President Barack Obama’s former labor secretary, failed to clear the 50 percent-plus threshold among the 427 eligible voting members of the Democratic National Committee who voted on first ballot.”
Presumably intense Islamophobia led to Democrats rejecting Ellison. Though to borrow Henry Kissinger’s joke about the Iran-Iraq war, it’s a pity they both couldn’t lose.
As Scott Johnson notes at Power Line, “The mainstream media have followed the race with great intensity. It’s a little hard to fathom until you pause to reflect. They have a deep professional interest in the selection of their new leader.”
Related: ‘Because the Russians’? #DNCChair vote quickly switched from electronic to paper ballots.
Gee, why can’t the rest of us have those as well?
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: This Is Why I No Longer Identify As White.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: The Vagina (Non-Vagina) Monologues.
LIFE IN THE POST-ANTIBIOTIC ERA: Sink Full of Superbugs? Study Finds Surprising Way Germs Spread.
AT AMAZON, New Products in Camera, Photo & Video.
SOLUTION: BAN BIKES FROM THE ROAD. Self-Driving Cars Have a Bicycle Problem: Bikes are hard to spot and hard to predict. After all, human drivers have the same problem.
IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES.
And do not miss the lefty meme that Hitler built the Berlin Wall, which is why Trump is a baddie.
OH, I THINK THEY JUST PULLED AHEAD OF HER ON THAT FRONT: Law professors seek to have Kellyanne Conway disbarred for bringing “shame upon the legal profession.”
Here’s the actual letter, complete with the names of the law professors who have disgraced themselves. But if you want to establish a rule like this for all lawyers in the public eye, well, enjoy it. Sauce for the goose, and all that.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Suspension to be lifted for OCC student who recorded professor’s anti-Trump comments.
O’Neil’s Nov. 15 recording of Cox was prohibited by the district’s Student Code of Conduct and the California Education Code because he didn’t have Cox’s permission.
But, the OCC statement said, “without condoning the unlawful recording of a lecture, the student’s desire to voice his displeasure is understandable.”
“The student in this case felt he could not freely share his political views in a classroom, which is why he felt his only recourse was to record a lecture he felt was unfair,” according to the statement.
See, this is the kind of thing Betsy DeVos was talking about.
SUBSIDIZING CHARITY LIBERALLY: “Our Constitution enshrines two bedrock principles of Western liberal democracies: limited government and equal opportunity. Does the legal treatment of the charitable sector further these ideals, or undermine them?”
JORGE RAMOS: U.S. IS ‘OUR COUNTRY, NOT THEIRS.’
I’m so old, I remember when the left pretended that they rejected the concept of us versus them.
https://youtu.be/JbGyNtKKK5I
Just think of Jorge as a Democrat operative as well, and it all makes sense.
IN THE MAIL: From Michael Z. Williamson, Freehold.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Bushnell Trophy Cam HD Essential E2 12MP Trail Camera, 32% off.
And, also today only: Lenovo N42 Intel N3060 4GB RAM 16GB eMMC 14″ Chromebook, $147.99 (32% off).
And, of course, Fresh Lightning Deals, Updated Every Hour.
REPEALING AND REPLACING OBAMACARE: Draft legislation indicates the first step is ending the mandate.
The 105-page measure largely tracks talking points that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., unveiled last summer and a similar outline that GOP leaders recently gave lawmakers. The document is 2 weeks old, and GOP aides said it is subject to change.
Still, it provides some new details of Republican thinking and reaffirms others, such as blocking federal payments to Planned Parenthood for a year.
It also shows Republicans have begun translating their ideas into legislative language, even as they continue their seven-year struggle to unify their party behind a bill repealing Obama’s 2010 overhaul.
MALAYSIA THREATENS TO ARREST NORTH KOREAN DIPLOMAT: Unless he cooperates with Malaysian police investigating the murder of Kim Jong Nam (half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Kong Un).
Malaysia said earlier in the week that Hyon Kwang Song, a second secretary at the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, was wanted for questioning. Abdul Samah Mat, the police chief leading the investigation, said authorities would give the diplomat “reasonable” time to come forward. If he doesn’t, police will issue a notice compelling him to do so.
“And if he failed to turn up … then we will go to the next step by getting a warrant of arrest from the court,” Abdul Samah told reporters.
My Creators Syndicate column this week examined Kim Jong Nam’s assassination. (Bumped.)
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How Much Should the Government Subsidize Harvard?
Donald Trump made headlines a few weeks ago by suggesting on Twitter that the federal government should cut off funding to UC Berkeley as a result of the Milo incident. While this provocation was characteristically hyperbolic (probably intentionally so) a growing number of serious thinkers really are considering ways that the government might substantially restrict the flow of subsidies to selective American universities whose priorities aren’t necessarily in line with the public’s. . . .
There are indications that policymakers and voters might be drawn to some of these ideas. Connecticut’s Democratic legislature recently mulled the tax-exempt status of Yale’s $23 billion dollar endowment. Residents of Princeton, New Jersey filed a lawsuit (settled in the fall) to force their local university to pay property taxes. And Congressional Republicans have been scrutinizing the way well-endowed colleges spend their tax-subsidized war chests.
Academia likes to think of itself as an independent enclave and that any government pressure to change its ways (unless it is in service of leftwing ideological goals in areas like Title IX or affirmative action) amounts to an attack on the integrity of higher education. And while universities should be afforded broad latitude to govern themselves, it’s important for academic leaders to remember the extent to which they are reliant on a massive network of government subsidies—both in the form of explicit grants and carveouts woven into the tax code—and that the political basis for their privileged position is looking more tenuous by the day.
They seem clueless about this.