Archive for 2022

THE PARENTS’ — AND CITIZENS’ — REVOLT: FIRST SAN FRANCISCO, NEXT UP: LOS ANGELES? “Beyond another opportunity to go long on popcorn futures, this is a sign that traditional liberals in the Democratic Party may finally be rousing themselves to take back their party from the insane people in the faculty lounges and New York Times editorial page that have largely taken it over.”

Plus: “About Los Angeles ‘obtaining’ this donor information not yet public—I wonder if it was leaked deliberately as a signal to other Hollywood people that it’s okay to oppose crime.”

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Trudeau’s Destructive ‘Emergency:’ The truckers protest could have been handled without abusing the law.

Mr. Trudeau justifies the “public-order emergency” by inflating the protest into a terrorist plot to overthrow government. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association disagrees and sued Thursday. It says the standards for an emergency—“threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property” that “seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians” beyond “the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it”—are not met.

Protests aren’t emergencies, and Western leaders had better get used to handling civil disobedience firmly without traducing civil liberties. Mr. Trudeau criminalized a protest movement, deputizing financial institutions, without due process or liability, to find and freeze personal accounts of blockaders and anyone who helps them. These extraordinary measures are a needless abuse of power. . . .

Weak responses to civil disobedience have hurt Canada for years. New gas pipelines are increasingly stymied by blockades, often by green or aboriginal activists. On Thursday men wielding axes attacked a pipeline drill site and its workers in British Columbia. That’s worse than anything the truckers have done.

In early 2020 Mr. Trudeau urged dialogue with pipeline blockaders. Facing Black Lives Matter protests in violation of Covid rules in June 2020, Mr. Trudeau joined in. But with the truckers, the Prime Minister refused to meet or compromise. Even as province after province ends Covid restrictions, he drags his feet.

The establishment sees environmentalists and Black Lives Matter protesters, however violent, as essentially allies. It sees working-class protesters, however peaceful, as deadly enemies. Each group is treated accordingly.

THE PRESS IS NOT A FRIEND OF FREEDOM, NOR AN ENEMY OF TYRANTS TODAY, IF IT EVER WAS:

WHY DOES THE NEW YORK TIMES HATE WOMEN? A response to the NYT’s ad unpersoning J.K. Rowling.

#RESIST: I saw this myself in Knoxville yesterday while buying gas.

Note that it was placed over an earlier one that someone, presumably a Biden supporter, tried to peel off.

Meanwhile, a reader sends this from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania:

Plus, from Newport, Rhode Island:

And there’s this from North of Dallas:

He writes: “Photo from ‘Far North’ Dallas last night (2/19). Resist Is Real. 5 stickers. 2 poorly removed stickers placed over 2 earlier poorly removed stickers. One recent sticker. Very busy 8 pump 7/11 location.”

Plus, from another reader: “Not sure if you’ve seen this phenomenon yet, but in hindsight it seems inevitable. I was filling up my gas tank in Manchester, TN yesterday and discovered they were selling Biden ‘I did that’ stickers at the check out counter. Why not? You can fight it or get your cut. I laughed out loud.”

And, finally, this variant from San Juan Capistrano, California:

The #Resistance is real, and it’s everywhere.

WELL, I DUNNO ABOUT A KNIGHTHOOD:

THOUGHTS ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM:

Institutional academic freedom, however, is commonly more limited than personal academic freedom. A professor’s freedom to teach English 101 is limited to what the English department requires in that course. The English department’s freedom to set the curriculum is limited by the minimum graduation requirements for each degree. And the university’s freedom is limited by the legislature’s decisions about what to fund and what not to fund.

Usually, legislators are content to leave universities alone to make their own funding decisions. This forbearance fails, however, when the academy becomes a force of ideological conformity. An egregiously imbalanced faculty can limit the ability of a college to expose students to a wide range of ideas, undermining its core mission. Furthermore, there is evidence that faculty on the left use their majority influence to enforce conformity through hiring and promotion decisions. That influence introduces bias in curriculum, speakers, programs and federal grants, inhibiting the robust academic dialogue that facilitates an apolitical search for truth.

In these cases, where there is viewpoint discrimination against ideas and scholars who are outside the norm, and even more so when that norm is at odds with the norms of the non-university community, there is a democratically justifiable reason for elected officials to intervene. The intervention should not reach to the level of defunding individual professors, but it certainly reaches to the funding of new academic units desired by the funding public.

Such an intervention may even be necessary to preserve the very basis on which academic freedom is justified in the first place: a true marketplace of ideas.

In my opinion, administrators have no claim to academic freedom, but they’re the ones calling the shots in many cases. If they attract the attention of the legislature, that’s their problem.

Plus:

Arizona led the nation in establishing “freedom centers” to promote civic education, leadership, statesmanship and the understanding and appreciation for freedom. The centers are now national models of debate and dialogue. Texas and Tennessee are now also considering or taking action on similar proposals at their flagship universities.

Left-leaning faculty at these institutions resist these programs, claiming that their very existence threatens academic freedom and faculty governance. But a public institution serves the public, and the real principle is not faculty governance but shared governance. Furthermore, the complaining faculty may need to check their privilege as members of the dominant ideology on campus. The lived experience of their colleagues with minority viewpoints may reveal that faculty governance can itself undermine academic freedom.

Just look at the political donation records of the faculty at any state university — including mine — and it looks like an ideological monoculture. If we want universities that “look like America,” maybe they should break down politically like America. Which would be a dramatic, wrenching change for basically all universities. But we’re told that we should embrace dramatic, wrenching, painful change in the name of diversity. So be it.

I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THINKING PEOPLE MADE FUN OF BOWDLERIZATION: How Sensitivity Readers Corrupt Literature. Instead of “sensitivity readers” we need “suck it up!” publishers.

PROFESSOR CARRINGTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “FLARES ON THE HORIZON: The northeastern limb of the sun is surging with flares–a sign that old sunspot AR2936 (described below) is about to return. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded this C5-class explosion during the early hours of Feb. 20th. The flare was stronger than it appeared. It was partially eclipsed by the edge of the sun. Unobstructed, the explosion was probably M-class. The underlying sunspot will soon emerge into view, potentially exposing Earth to a source of strong flares.”