From Chris Rufo, at City Journal, "Left-wing DEI bureaucracy has captured Florida State University and installed radical politics as the governing value."
BONUS: At the New York Times, "Education Issues Vault to Top of the G.O.P.’s Presidential Race."
This man is amazing.
Behind-the-scenes: the provost and president of New College attempted to shut down our conversation with faculty and students, citing a threat against Trustee Eddie Speir. But Speir and I insisted that we continue with the program—and establish a new standard for open discourse.
Behind-the-scenes: the provost and president of New College attempted to shut down our conversation with faculty and students, citing a threat against Trustee Eddie Speir. But Speir and I insisted that we continue with the program—and establish a new standard for open discourse. pic.twitter.com/XW23nimZM9
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) January 28, 2023And watch, "My Speech to the Faculty at New College of Florida."
This story is completely accurate. I'm teaching on campus this semester, and whereas I normally have 40 students (the cap) in my Comparative and International Politics courses, neither class cracked 20 students at the start of the fall semester.
I also have a U.S. government class on campus, and it's full, but then, there aren't as many in-person, face-to-face classes scheduled compared to online remote (distance learning).
The pandemic has indeed changed things.
At the Los Angeles Times, "Overwhelming demand for online classes is reshaping California’s community colleges."
It's Lee Burdette Williams, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "College students' mental health is suffering. Downplaying challenges of living away from home for the first time won’t make it any better":
About three million first-time college students will soon be arriving on campus—most of them coming directly from high school. About one million of them won’t make it through their first year or return as sophomores. This attrition is financially and emotionally devastating for families, and destabilizing for colleges. What goes wrong for so many students? And how can we stop the bleeding? Financial challenges account for the largest chunk of these departures. But many others leave because the support services they and their parents feel they have been promised are often impossible for colleges and universities to provide. The number of students with mental health challenges has been rising for years—around 44 percent of all college students report symptoms of depression and anxiety. The rate of students taking psychiatric medication doubled between 2007 and 2019, and is now at 25 percent. But what concerns my colleagues and me is the growing expectation among parents and students that college administrators are there not to guide young people, whatever their challenges, in mastering the tasks of adulthood, but to spare young people from them. There are only about nine weeks between high school graduation and a student’s arrival on campus. That is very little time to prepare a teenager for the necessary shift from life under a parent’s management to (semi-) independent living. In as little as four weeks after classes begin, a first-year student who is unable to make that transition can end up unable to recover academically. I have spent my career working with college students from enrollment through commencement. As a dean of students—at the University of Connecticut, and later at Wheaton College—I talked with numerous parents who were startled to discover that their child had not been attending class, had not been turning in assignments, maybe hadn’t bathed in days. The parents had expected more supervision; we had expected more personal accountability. Caught in that gap was a student about to lose a semester of academic credit and thousands of dollars of wasted tuition and housing fees, often covered by loans that still had to be paid back. Here is my advice for students and their parents—as well as my colleagues in higher education—on ways to help make sure students are ready for college...
This is excellent.
At Amazon, Bryan Caplan, The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money.
For the full background, see "Presentism, Race and Trolls," at Inside Higher Ed.
From Dominic Green, at WSJ, "Progressive scholars increasingly abandon the past to focus on present-day politics":
Academic historians are losing their sense of the past. In his August column for the American Historical Association’s journal, Perspectives on History, James H. Sweet warned that academic history has become so “presentist” that it is losing touch with its subject, the world before yesterday. Mr. Sweet, who is the association’s president and teaches at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, observed that the “allure of political relevance” is drawing students away from pre-1800 history and toward “contemporary social justice issues” such as “race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism.” When historians become activists, he wrote, the past becomes “an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions.” Mr. Sweet knows his audience, so he did his best to appease the crocodile of political correctness. He denounced Justice Clarence Thomas for a gun-rights decision that “cherry-picks historical data” and criticized Justice Samuel Alito for taking the word “history” in vain 67 times in his Dobbs abortion opinion. But Mr. Sweet also pointed out that Nikole Hannah-Jones’s “1619 Project” isn’t accurate history, and that “bad history,” however good it makes us feel, yields bad politics. “If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise.” History’s armies of nonacademic readers will find this obvious and undeniable. Mr. Sweet’s academic peers, however, tore him to pieces on Twitter, accusing him of sexism, racism, gratuitous maleness and excessive whiteness. “Gaslight. Gatekeep. Goatee,” said Laura Miller of Brandeis University, detecting patriarchal privilege written on Mr. Sweet’s chin. Benjamin Siegel of Boston University, who thinks his politically correct profession is “leveraged towards racist ideologies,” called the essay “malpractice.” Dan Royles of Florida International University accused Mr. Sweet of “logical incoherence,” which is academic-speak for “idiot.” Kathryn Wilson of Georgia State detected an even more heinous error, “misrepresentation of how contemporary social justice concerns inform theory and methodology.” Other users accused Mr. Sweet of using a rhetorical device called the “white we,” pitching for a guest slot on Tucker Carlson’s show, and writing “MAGA history.” Many called any questioning of the “1619 Project” racist. David Austin Walsh of the University of Virginia advised historians to support the project regardless of whether they thought it good history, because criticism would be “weaponized by the right.” Mr. Sweet responded with the bravery that defines the modern academic. He apologized on the AHA’s website for the “harm to colleagues, the discipline, and the Association” that his “ham-fisted attempt at provocation” had caused, especially to his “Black colleagues and friends,” and begged that he be allowed to “redeem” himself. The AHA, which had done nothing to stem the tide of insults from its members, prevented nonfollowers from commenting on its Twitter feed, because, it said, “trolls” and “bad-faith actors” had joined the debate. One of the bad-faith actors was a racist agitator, Richard Spencer. His contribution, alarmingly, was hardly trolling. Mr. Spencer pointed out that Mr. Sweet was merely repeating the advice of the eminent 19th-century historian Otto von Ranke, who told historians to go into the archives and tell history “as it really happened.” We know a profession is in trouble when it takes the worst kind of amateur to state the obvious. “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child,” Cicero once wrote. “For what is the worth of a human life if it is not woven into the life of our ancestors by the record of history?” Even Ms. Hannah-Jones would agree with that. The AHA’s activist wing, however, disagrees. Like Cicero, who was both a politician and a historian, they see history as a rhetorical resource. Unlike Cicero, they see nothing good in their people’s history and only wickedness in their ancestors. When the purpose of history changes from knowledge of the past to political power in the present and future, historians become mere propagandists. Academics who succumb to the sugar rush of activism lose their sense of balance. Meanwhile, the AHA’s annual reports show that undergraduates and graduates are voting with their enrollments, with a related decline in job opportunities for holders of new doctorates. In 2016-17 alone, undergraduate enrollment fell by 7.7%. The number of new doctorates fell by about 15% between 2014 and 2019, and the number of job openings has halved since 2008. The latest AHA Jobs Report is a threnody of “program closures, enrollment declines, and faculty layoffs.” Signs of stabilization, it reckons, are a “false floor.” Why study history if all it equips you for is a nasty and crowded climb up the greasy pole of academic preferment? Much easier to pursue activism through the modish triad of sex, race and gender studies. All of which tends to confirm Mr. Sweet’s observations about the perils of presentism and activism...
From Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "Student Debt Forgiveness Is Biden’s Bluto Moment":
His plan will feed inflation and hurt him politically.If political moves received letter grades, Joe Biden’s student loan “forgiveness” mark might rank down there with the Deltas of “Animal House.” Think of it as the president’s Bluto moment. In case the White House missed it, Democrats had recently been getting it together. After an 18-month food fight over the Biden agenda, the party finally united to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. It suckered spend-happy Republicans into passing a semiconductor bill that vulnerable Democrats could brag about back home. The left has successfully fanned fears on abortion, putting GOP candidates on the back foot. And Donald Trump is in the headlines—right where they want him. Then along comes Blutarsky, and seven years of college down the drain. It would be hard to fashion a program that carries more political risk for less political reward. In the name of paying off that powerful voting bloc known as “overeducated and underemployed deadbeats,” Mr. Biden is dumping on his own inflation message, dividing his party, and insulting any American who has ever worked, saved or paid a bill. Inflation remains voters’ biggest worry, and they understand Washington’s role in feeding it. Only recently they watched General Motors and Ford hike the prices of electric vehicles by $6,000 to $8,500—roughly pacing the $7,500 tax credit the Biden “inflation reduction” law bestows. Cause, effect. Millions of American parents read Mr. Biden’s Wednesday loan announcement as news that they will be paying $10,000 more for tuition next year (and the year after that, and after that) as colleges reap the loan windfall. Inflation remains voters’ biggest worry, and they understand Washington’s role in feeding it. Only recently they watched General Motors and Ford hike the prices of electric vehicles by $6,000 to $8,500—roughly pacing the $7,500 tax credit the Biden “inflation reduction” law bestows. Cause, effect. Millions of American parents read Mr. Biden’s Wednesday loan announcement as news that they will be paying $10,000 more for tuition next year (and the year after that, and after that) as colleges reap the loan windfall. It won’t stop with college inflation, even Democratic economists warn. Every $20,000 of loan forgiveness is $20,000 the favored college forgiven can blow on urban loft refits or Hawaiian vacations. “Pouring roughly half [a] trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning is reckless,” Jason Furman, the Obama administration’s top economist, tweeted. Americans already doubted Mr. Biden’s new climate and health law would do much to lower prices, but they’ll draw a direct line from the loan bailout to further price hikes. A CNBC poll says nearly 60% of Americans fear this handout will make inflation worse. The plan rips a new fissure in the Democratic Party, as nonsuicidal members run for cover. Maine Rep. Jared Golden called loan forgiveness “out of touch.” New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas said this is “no way to make policy.” Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet noted that the plan doesn’t address the underlying problem of rising tuition. Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, running for the Senate, said the forgiveness “sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet.” What unites these Democrats? Each is in a competitive race, and they clearly already see the potential to alienate large cross-sections of the American electorate. Sure, loan forgiveness may benefit up to 40 million people, and energize Gen Zers and some millennials to vote for the Democrats they were going to support anyway. What about the other 220 million voting-age Americans who are being asked to float the upper crust’s seminars on gender identity and social justice? Democrats desperately need suburban voters this fall. Those would be the same suburban parents who are already furious over school closures and woke education, who scrimped and saved to pay through the nose for college, and who now look like chumps as they prepare to pay more. The CNBC poll finds that 65% of those 35 to 64—prime college-parent age—feel loans should be forgiven for no one or only for those in need (the Biden plan favors top earners). That share is even higher—78%—for those over 65. Party leaders have fretted for years over how to handle Democrats’ cratering support among the working class. This is the answer? The loan handout is a thumb in the eye to every American who went to trade school, got an apprenticeship, took out private loans to start a small business, or simply went to work—and now must not only grind out a living and keep up with inflation but cover the poor financial decisions of the college elite...
This is fucking outrageous.
My grad school loans are just now nearly paid off --- 23 years after I finished my Ph.D. at UCSB. Is Old Joe going to make the debt relief retroactive, for the millions upon millions of judicious and hard-working Americans who made good on the debt they took out?
Completely un-American, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed debt cancellation as "socialist."
At the Los Angeles Times, "Biden will cancel $10,000 of student debt for many borrowers":
Individuals earning less than $125,000 annually would qualify for relief and those who received Pell grants could receive an additional $10,000. WASHINGTON — President Biden moved Wednesday to cancel $10,000 in student debt for individuals earning less than $125,000 annually while extending a pause on loan repayments for all borrowers through the end of the year, all as part of a broader effort to overhaul the federal system and ease financial burdens for the middle class. Biden’s action will also make people who received Pell grants to help cover the cost of college eligible for up to $20,000 in loan relief. And a new income-based repayment cap will ensure borrowers pay no more than 5% of their monthly income toward their undergraduate loans as long as they aren’t behind on payments. Some analysts believe that change may prove even more significant than the debt forgiveness. Lamenting that “an entire generation is now saddled with unsustainable debt” because the cost of higher education has skyrocketed in recent years, Biden described his action as a matter of economic fairness that will “provide more breathing room for people” and boost America’s competitiveness. “My plan is responsible and fair. It focuses the benefit on middle-class and working families. It helps both current and future borrowers and it will fix a badly broken system,” Biden said. “It’s about opportunity. It’s about giving people a fair shot.” The overall package, which Biden said will benefit 43 million Americans, is a win for activists who have pushed for such action as a matter of economic fairness. But the amount of debt Biden has decided to erase is less than many activists had sought, complicating an issue the White House hopes will boost Democrats in the midterm election and drawing criticism from both parties. While progressives had hoped Biden would go even further, Republicans and some moderate Democrats bristled at the price-tag, asserting that spending an estimated $400-600 billion to cover the forgiven loans would exacerbate inflation. “This announcement is gallingly reckless — with the national debt approaching record levels and inflation surging, it will make both worse,” said Maya McGuinness, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington organization that opposes the student loan forgiveness program. Biden, who returned from a two-week vacation Wednesday morning, had vowed to act before Aug. 31, when the latest pandemic-driven moratorium on federal student loan payments runs out. He said this extension would be the last one and that payments would resume in January 2023. “It’s time for the payments to resume,” he said. President Trump first suspended payments in March 2020, and Biden has granted four extensions. So far, the suspensions have cost the federal government more than $100 billion. More than 40 million Americans owe a collective $1.6 trillion in federal student loans. A fight over student loans could slow the Democrats’ recent momentum and threaten their coalition’s cohesion. The president and his party have seen their poll numbers rise in recent months, buoyed by a series of events that have altered the political landscape in their favor. The Supreme Court’s late June decision overturning Roe vs. Wade alienated women across political lines. The high-profile hearings further illuminating Trump’s key role inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection received broad television coverage and hardened perceptions of Republicans as the more extreme party. And Democrats’ passage of three major bills — a climate, prescription drug and tax overhaul, new funding to boost domestic manufacturing of microchips and enhanced healthcare for veterans exposed to toxic chemicals on the battlefield — has shown the public that Biden is far from a do-nothing president. Before the abortion decision, the Jan. 6 hearings and the flurry of new legislation, some senior Biden aides believed significant student loan debt forgiveness was one of the few measures that could excite the Democratic base and help the party survive a tough election cycle. Despite public and private pressure from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Biden has long questioned whether forgiving as much as $50,000 in debt would be prudent. Schumer spoke by phone with Biden on Tuesday night “to make a final push to the president to cancel as much student loan debt as he can,” according to a Democrat familiar with the conversation. On Wednesday, Schumer and Warren sought to quell criticism from the left, issuing a joint statement heralding Biden’s final decision as a historic first step. “With the flick of a pen, President Biden has taken a giant step forward in addressing the student debt crisis by cancelling significant amounts of student debt for millions of borrowers. The positive impacts of this move will be felt by families across the country, particularly in minority communities, and is the single most effective action that the President can take on his own to help working families and the economy,” their statement said. “No president or Congress has done more to relieve the burden of student debt and help millions of Americans make ends meet. Make no mistake, the work — our work — will continue as we pursue every available path to address the student debt crisis, help close the racial wealth gap for borrowers, and keep our economy growing.” Some activists also cheered the announcement. “Today, with President Biden’s announcement, 12 million American borrowers have had their educational debts erased,” said Melissa Byrne, executive director of We the 45 Million, a group that advocates for student debt forgiveness. “This is a historic first step — establishing the clear authority that the president has to cancel student debt — but this should just be the beginning.” But key Democratic constituencies, including young voters, Black Americans and civil rights groups like the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, have pushed hard for more forgiveness, and may be disappointed. Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, had blasted Biden in a statement Tuesday, stating that if reports of the president having settled on $10,000 in debt forgiveness are correct, “we’ve got a problem,” likening the decision to past federal policies that have been detrimental to Black people...
I took out zero loans for my Bachelor's degree. I worked, and hard. At Fresno State, where I took my B.A. political science, I worked 35 hours a week pumping gas at the local Chevon station, not far from my dad's house. It was 2:00 to 9:00pm Sundays through Thurdays, and 4:00pm to Midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. I started that job at $4.25 miniumum wage, only getting bumped once with a raise to $4.75. On my days off I'd stay on campus all day, after classes, going to the cafeteria, the library, and the student union to hang out and study. My time was completely taken up and I had little for nightlife. I met my future wife in my last year, and she moved to Santa Barbara with me (before we were married) after I was accepted into the Ph.D. program.
I paid my dues.
In graduate school I ended up taking out about $65,000 to $70,000 total. I could have borrowed much, much more, but I was careful. I worked weekends (again at a Chevron station in downtown Santa Barbara) my first year in the program. I could've borrowed more, but my (future) wife and I didn't want to get too deep into debt. We had no idea I'd get a full four-year ride starting in my second year, the U.C. Regents Fellowship, which paid for everything. That was merit based, by the way. I fucking earned that fellowship by kicking ass that first year. I have great memories and wouldn't take back a thing.
I know, though, my story is like so many others, folks who themselves and their families scrimped and saved just for the chance to attend college, much less a Ph.D program. *That's the American way.* If Republicans don't campaigh the hell out of this issue they're bloody stupid. LOTS of folks will be pissed that their working- and middle-class tax dollars are going toward debt bailouts for college graduates who make more than they do, and will make way more in the future.
It's class warfare. It's a fundamental violation of society's social contract, and bitterly unfair.
Still more at that top link.
From John Sailer, at UnHerd, "Ideological litmus tests are becoming the norm in America":
Ideological litmus tests are becoming the norm in American academia. Already, many universities require faculty job candidates to submit “diversity statements” — 19% of the faculty job listings in one recent survey. Now, similar requirements increasingly apply to sitting faculty members, as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements and criteria have become standard components of the promotion and tenure process. To give one example: last year, the highly-ranked Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine released its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Strategic Action Plan, listing dozens of “tactics” for advancing social justice. Here is an example: “Include a section in promotion packages where faculty members report on the ways they are contributing to improving DEI, anti-racism and social justice. Reinforce the importance of these efforts by establishing clear consequences and influences on promotion packages.” The reference to “consequences” reads like a warning to dissenters, especially given that concepts such as “equity”, “anti-racism”, and “social justice” often simply connote adherence to progressive political views. Thanks to the ubiquity of Ibram X. Kendi’s work, many American professionals are primed to point out that anti-racism, far from merely being “not racist”, entails embracing “race conscious” policies, coupled with the belief that any disparity is by definition racism. With official DEI requirements for promotion and tenure on the rise, Kendian “anti-racism” has come closer to a formal requirement for many in academia. In its 2022 survey of tenure practices, the American Association of University Professors found that 21.5% of the institutions it surveyed had DEI criteria in their tenure standards. For larger institutions, it was 45.6%.As diversity officers increase, so too will their preferred policies. Unfortunately, the diversity statements can easily stamp out dissenting viewpoints. At UC Berkeley, for example, job candidates will receive a low scores on their diversity statements for “explicitly state[ing] the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’”, and a high score for “Discuss[ing] diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as core values that every faculty member should actively contribute to.” Institutions from Emory University to the Texas Tech University Department of Biological Sciences have adapted the UC rubric, proudly policing the core values of faculty. DEI requirements for promotion and tenure often come in the form of evaluation criteria, rather than required statements. The California Community Colleges (CCC) system — the largest system of higher education in America, serving almost two million students — recently mandated that all faculty, staff, and administrator evaluations “include DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] competencies and criteria as a minimum standard for evaluating the performance of all employees.” The resolution mandating these competencies employs unmistakably ideological language...
Still more.
Out today, from Will Bunch, at Amazon, After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics―and How to Fix It.
Very much worth your time.
From UCLA Anthropology Professor Joseph Manson, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "The ideological takeover of my university has ruined academic life for anyone who still believes in freedom of thought'."
Here's the discussion at Glenn Loury's Substack, "What do we know about the effects of DEI initiatives? In one sense, we know quite a lot."
And at the video, these are great guys:
From Bari Weiss, "Graduation Week With Common Sense:"
There is no more reliable cliché in the news business than “if it bleeds it leads.” But the rule of thumb that was just as dependable, if not quite as catchy, in the years I spent at legacy newspapers is this one: campus craziness sells. It sold to readers of The Wall Street Journal just as reliably as it did to readers of The New York Times. If conservatives and progressives can unite over anything it’s that neither can resist hate-reading a story about Oberlin kids protesting the cultural appropriation of dining hall banh mi. Until very recently, though, neither group took those kinds of stories very seriously. Neither did most of the editors who commissioned them. They were not unlike the crossword puzzle: a fun distraction. A nice mix for the reader dutifully getting through serious, important coverage about foreign policy and the economy and politics. Sure, sure, the kids were doing crazy things. And yes, some of it was a little excessive—even most of the progressives could agree on that. But this was college! Remember Berkeley and Columbia and Cornell in the 1960s? Campus was always a radical place. Everyone assumed that the kids would grow out of it. That the politics of the quad would inevitably fade as these young Americans made their way in the world, onto marriage and kids, onto mortgages and life insurance policies, and onto jobs at places like JP Morgan and Bain, Amazon and Random House. This isn’t at all what happened. Rather than those institutions shaping young people in their image, it’s the young people who are fundamentally reshaping those institutions in their own. As Andrew Sullivan put it: We all live on campus now. It turns out those campus stories were serious in ways many couldn’t—and still refuse to—imagine. But you already know that. If you’re a Common Sense reader you’ve long noticed that one of our main areas of focus from the start has been education. Our reasoning is simple: We believe that if you want to understand what’s coming for the country and the culture you better pay very close attention to what’s happening on college campuses. Also: our high schools. And increasingly, our elementary schools. Even our kindergartens. That’s why we’ve done deeply reported stories about the transformation of America’s elite high schools and the radicalization of our medical schools and our law schools. It’s why we have been ahead of the curve in our reporting on the terrible consequences of Covid lockdowns. It’s why we’ve run whistleblowing essays, like Paul Rossi’s first-person account of his refusal to indoctrinate his students and Gordon Klein’s essay about suing UCLA. It’s why we’ve reported on the smearing of parent activists and free-thinking professors—and introduced you to courageous figures like Kathleen Stock, the University of Chicago’s Dorian Abbot, and Peter Boghossian, who resigned his post as a philosophy professor at Portland State University last year with these words: “For ten years, I have taught my students the importance of living by your principles. One of mine is to defend our system of liberal education from those who seek to destroy it. Who would I be if I didn’t?” For every professor who refuses to cave, though, there are so many more who don’t. Indeed, the major theme that has emerged in our reporting is institutional retreat—schools that have abandoned their founding mission, leaders that have decided to follow, and professors paid to think for themselves who seem very scared of doing so. Exhibit A: Suzy Weiss’s story last week on the destruction of David Sabatini, the world-renowned molecular biologist who, until recently, was a star at MIT’s Whitehead Institute. Now he’s unemployed. Sabatini is a symbol of a system and culture that has eaten its own. But it’s not all bad news—not by a long shot. Just as we have exposed what’s gone so wrong, we have been moved as we watch people, often ordinary Americans, try to make things right. Those builders include the parents behind the homeschooling boom—which appears to be even bigger than we understood when we reported on it back in September; the fascinating group that has convened around Synthesis; and those who have planted a flag in Texas with the University of Austin, or UATX. Since Pano Kanelos, the university’s inaugural president and former head of St. John’s College, broke the news of the new university in Common Sense half a year ago, UATX reports that they have raised over $100 million in donations, pledges, and land from more than 1,000 donors. Perhaps most amazingly, the school has received some 5,000 inquiries from prospective faculty. This summer, they are offering their first summer school program in Dallas. I’ll be there, along with teachers like Niall Ferguson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rob Henderson, Thomas Chatterton-Williams, Nadine Strossen and Arthur Brooks. None of these projects lack naysayers. But I’m bullish on the builders...
Keep reading, especially for all the links she's posted.
According to this mornings WSJ newsletter, "The latest Covid surge expands beyond the Northeast":
Places from the Midwest to Florida and California are under rising pressure. The most recent weekly update of a CDC metric that uses case and hospitalization data to determine community levels of Covid-19 ranked 137 counties as “high,” up from 79 a week earlier and 14 in mid-April.Of course this isn't good news, but it's especially troubling in my case because as long as mask mandates continue, I'll still be teaching online --- with my hearing, I need to see a student's face. So, I told my administration that I'm not coming back to teach on campus until all mandates are lifted. That's supposed to be next semester, but if the state, LA. County, or the City of Long Beach maintains indoor masking, I'm toast.And let's be honest, while the grading for online classes is not just burdensome and heavy, it's even more so a long, monotonous grind. In an "asynchronous" class there's really no direct, face-to-face contact with students, unless on of them requests virtual office hours by Zoom, which is rare.Well see, in any case. Meanwhile, at the Journal, "Latest Covid-19 Wave Expands to More of U.S.":
Rising cases prompt more calls for precautions but not mandates in hot spots like New York City.The latest Covid-19 case surge is expanding beyond the Northeast, with places from the Midwest to Florida and California under rising pressure. Fueled by highly contagious versions of the Omicron variant, the tide is posing a test of how much new infections matter in a changing pandemic. Though built-up immunity in the population has kept more people out of hospitals, federal health officials on Wednesday urged people in hot spots to take precautions, from booster shots to pre-gathering tests and masks, to limit the virus’ spread. “We’ve got to do what we can to prevent infections,” said Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator. “We’ve got to do what we can to ensure that infections don’t turn into severe illness.” The seven-day moving average of new Covid-19 cases recently topped 94,000 a day, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show, nearly four times lows reached in late March. The true number of new cases is likely significantly higher, epidemiologists say, because so many people are self-testing at home or not testing at all. The rise in cases hasn’t translated thus far into major surges in severe illness. The seven-day average of confirmed cases in hospitalized patients reached about 18,550 on Wednesday, up from lows near 10,000 in mid-April, but far below a record peak above 150,000 in January. The numbers include people who test positive on routine screening after getting hospitalized for other reasons. The daily average of reported deaths has slipped under 300 a day, the lowest point since last summer. But new cases still cause disruptions and carry risks including the possibility of developing long-lasting and sometimes debilitating symptoms, epidemiologists and public-health experts say. The more an outbreak spreads, the more likely it will reach the most vulnerable including elderly people and others with compromised immune systems, the experts say, and the more likely the virus will continue to mutate. “Vaccines are very effective for reducing severe disease and death but don’t eliminate severe disease and death, and so reducing spread, reducing cases is also important,” said Julia Raifman, an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told the WSJ Future of Everything Festival that scientists have yet to determine whether certain variants of the virus are more likely to lead to long-term symptoms. The latest upswing in cases began in late March in the Northeast, the early hot spot for the Omicron BA.2 subvariant. Virus experts believe spread was muted at first by a mix of immunity-boosting factors: timing, right after a major winter surge, and a similarity to the version of Omicron behind that surge...
Still more.
I'll keep you posted. I'm scheduled for three classes on campus for fall, but that could change.
It's Dara Horn, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "It turns out that nobody’s SAT scores can provide immunity to propaganda":
Twenty-five years later, I still remember the theatrics involved with becoming an editor at the Harvard Crimson, the newspaper produced by Harvard undergraduates every day for the past century and a half. The newspaper’s office had a room upstairs called the Sanctum, so named because only those who had jumped through the paper’s prescribed journalistic hoops were allowed to enter—and then only for Sunday night editorial meetings, at which the coming week’s worth of unsigned editorials were debated and approved under strict secrecy. Newly minted editors were welcomed into the room with the question, “What are your politics?” One’s answer determined the side of the room where one would sit for these debates. Many participants cared deeply about these discussions—though this being the 1990s, many more didn’t, and attended mainly for the fun of it. My peers were largely the children of baby-boomer parents who had morphed from flag-burning hippies to mall-hopping yuppies; Gen Xers like us took people’s self-important opinions with a very large grain of salt. In the Sanctum, I sat on the left by vague default, but didn’t attach much meaning to it. I was far from alone: A good number of editors didn’t even bother to remain on their side of the Sanctum, instead simply choosing the comfiest chairs. When I later became one of the editors responsible for drafting each week’s worth of unsigned opinions about subjects like university workers’ strikes, affirmative action, and the Clinton impeachment, I learned that the only real sign of success was to say something interesting enough to generate a dissent. The only way to do that, of course, was to marshal the facts and explain why they mattered. When an editorial prompted other editors to write a dissent objecting to it—about, for instance, a campus visit by China’s then-premier—it was the ultimate compliment. You’d actually had something to say. I hadn’t thought about any of this for ages. My work as a writer for the past 20 years has been almost entirely solitary; none of my books involved convincing a roomful of people of my point of view. But I was reminded of this ancient student ritual last week when my phone blew up with messages from dozens of irate former Crimson editors, including many actual journalists, a group of alumni going back several decades. The current Crimson editorial board, in a somewhat modified version of the procedures I remembered, had just published an unsigned editorial fully endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, reversing its position from two years earlier. There was no official editorial dissent. Afterward, copies of this editorial were posted publicly in undergraduate dining halls, just in case anyone missed it. The BDS movement, as it’s known, is old news on college campuses and elsewhere; it’s been around long enough that it no longer bothers to hide its goal of eliminating the world’s only Jewish state. But I had to hand it to The Crimson for timing, given that the editorial followed several weeks of terror attacks in Israel during which 15 people were stabbed, shot and car-rammed to death while engaging in such provocative behaviors as drinking at a bar or walking down the street...
The Crimson editorial is outrageous, though not surprising.
Read it here: "In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanctions and a Free Palestine."
And see, "The Crimson Faces Backlash Over Editorial Endorsing BDS Movement," and "To the Editor: From Six Crimson Alumni In Regard to BDS."
