On the leftist takeover of American universities: looking back at John Silber
This new book – The Canceling of the American Mind, about leftism and cancel culture at universities in the US – looks interesting. It obviously harks back to Allan’s Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987, and about which I’ve written many posts over the years.
Bloom wrote about the beginning and middle of the story; now the whole thing is solidified and entrenched. But although Bloom’s descriptions of Cornell in the 1960s make one realize how long ago most university administrators were abject cowards bowing to the mob (Bloom called those administrators and professors “dancing bears”), I sometimes think of one university president who never caved. Once he was gone, his school – Boston University – was taken over like all the others. But John Silber fought quite a fight.
The word “controversial” was made for the feisty Silber. He famously did battle with Howard Zinn, a tenured professor at BU, many times over many years. You can read about it here:
Reflecting on the incident – which culminated with Silber invoking Martin Luther King, Jr.’s idea that those engaging in civil disobedience should welcome arrest and Zinn comparing him to Bull Connor – Silber held firm. “When there were students setting fire to buildings on the campus of Boston University, and when there were riots, and students preventing students from going into buildings, then I think being resolute was absolutely required,” he explained in an interview on the matter in 2006.
That it is almost unimaginable for a university president to be similarly resolute today reflects the hegemony of Zinn’s approach in the contemporary academy and highlights how courageous Silber was in his time. In addition to weathering criticism from Zinn, Silber stood up against a student “referendum,” in which 16,000 voted against allowing the Marines on campus. Silber responded simply, “I would be much more impressed by a thoughtful document that was brought in by one single student than I would by a mindless referendum of 16,000.” Like his counterpart, Silber’s strong perspective on campus issues was informed by a deeper philosophical approach, perhaps best summed up by Harold Willis Dodds – Princeton’s president from 1933 to 1957 – who famously said, “[i]deas should not be made safe for students, but students should be made safe for ideas.”…
… [also] BU was sponsoring a program to provide scholarships to black South African students, and Silber saw calls for divestiture as a form of virtue signaling. In a private meeting with protestors who demanded BU divest from General Motors and IBM, he asked, “[w]hy should we do that? Is it immoral to own that stock?” When the students responded that it was, he said, “[s]o then, we’re supposed to sell it to somebody? We can’t divest unless we sell it to somebody….If we sell it to somebody, we have just gotten rid of our guilt in order to impose guilt on somebody else.”
There’s much more, of course – including the fact that Silber ran for the Massachusetts governorship in 1990 as a Democrat. Those days are certainly gone.
NOTE: More here on Silber.
From personal experience higher education administrators are a disgusting class of people. Contributing is the fact that in the last 20 years, college administration became a profession. Previously, especially at small colleges, positions were filled out of the faculty who served a term and returned to the faculty. Now, deans etc are hired from outside and only care about their career path and not the school they are currently working. All have a presidency as their ultimate goal.
Invariably ‘the revolution’ eats its own, their day is coming and the more successful they are, the sooner that day shall arrive.
BU faculty and student activists were at war with Silber for years. He kept the school from going totally overboard with the woke stuff — similar to how old-time newspaper publishers kept their staffers in check.
Silber ran for the Massachusetts governorship in 1990 as a Democrat.
Yes. That was probably the last time a Massachusetts Democrat was more conservative than the Republican (not that the Republicans were very conservative either). Liberals and Progressives voted for William Weld, the Republican that year. Silber did come close to winning. I’d say it was the affluent suburbs that did him in, but he also didn’t pull down the usual runaway majorities in the cities.
Weld, who married into the Roosevelt family, ran for reelection against another Roosevelt, and beat him easily. He’s been kind of a political Don Quixote or modern Harold Stassen since the, poking his head out every so often to run for office or make an announcement.
I remember Silber, he was quite the character. Zinn wasn’t his only target. He really hated the English department because it had been captured by the feminists. A man way ahead of his time.
Physicsguy. I remember there was a time when there was approximately one administrator per five to ten faculty members. It’s now one per student. It’s a viral infection of the worst kind and will be a cause of death eventually.
I’m so old that I remember many Republicans among college faculty. Worse, many administrators were also. Some college presidents were retired generals!
Again, the most consequential vector in all this is the failure of trustees as fiduciaries. One thing Republican state governments can start doing is to amend the law on the governance of non-profit corporations. In the case of four-year institutions and stand-alone graduate and professional schools, one reform might be to require that boards be elected by those alumni who are registered to vote in the state in question.
==
You could add an optional addendum to the standard voter registration form asking people to list their educational history. County boards of election could then send facsimiles of these pages to the state board to build a common repository, then county boards could draw from the common repository to build an alumni roll for each institution within the county (which could then be audited by comparing it to the institution’s annuals and other records).
==
The dimensions of a given board to be elected would be a function of the number of alumni on the voter roll but would always be more than four and less than twenty.
==
Anyone on the roll could run for a board seat bar those excluded due to rotation-in-office rules. Elections could be held every four years on the last year of a quadrennial cycle. You show up at the county board of elections in question, fill out a form, put down a modest deposit (refundable if your vote total is high enough) and leave a personal statement of up to 600 words.
==
The board would mail out dossiers to everyone on the roll which include a booklet of personal statements, a ballot, a set of return envelopes (one requiring a signature for comparison) &c.
==
There would not be a single stereotype of the candidates on the ballot, but rather as many stereotypes as candidates running, with an equal number printed of each stereotype, equal numbers of each mailed out, and each candidate having an equal chance to occupy a particular spot in the line up. The balloting would be ranked-choice.
==
There are other regulatory measures you could attempt, applicable to state schools if not all schools. One might be to require the provosts and instructional deans be term-limited positions filled from the institution’s tenured (or emeritus tenured) faculty and require any occupant to have a minimum of six years service at the institution ‘ere occupying such a position. Another might be to require the president be a minimum of 55 years of age and have spent no more than seven years in the employ of higher education during the course of his life. Another might be to require each faculty contract be subject to a vote of the board, yeas and nays recorded, at the time when their initial appointment is considered, at the time a renewal of their contract is considered, and at the time a grant of continuous tenure is considered. Another might be to require that faculty be shifted to emeritus status (at which time they are relived of administrative duties and paid by the credit-hour) when they are eligible for Medicare, eligible for full Social Security, and have paid into TIAA CREF for a minimum of 35 years (pro-rating periods of p/t employment). Another might be to limit the number of tenured slots to < 40% of fte faculty and to require a faculty member be a minimum of 45 years of age and have 12 years of service 'ere being granted tenure.
Ranked choice ballots are an awful idea. They are always, always, always gamed by the most organized of the groups running, which is invariably the most left-leaning.
}}} I sometimes think of one university president who never caved. Once he was gone, his school – Boston University – was taken over like all the others.
From the wiki:
Considering the vast extent of the ignorance of economics she repeatedly demonstrates, for her to have graduated “cum laude” with a degree in economics shows that BU is producing “diversity graduates” these days.
And it makes it no surprise that she was stuck bartending despite graduating “cum laude”. Anyone who interviewed her would have to be awestruck at her near absolute dunderheadedness and lack of comprehension of even basic economic principles.
Meanwhile, “On the Democratic Party’s Takeover of the American Republic….”
“New J6 Footage Shows Capitol Police May Have Incited Riot By Firing Munitions Into Peaceful Crowd”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-j6-footage-shows-capitol-police-may-have-incited-riot-firing-munitions-peaceful-crowd
Who knows? Anything is possible. Nothing can be believed (especially anything emanating from the “Biden” administration or their media/infotech catamites).
But to create riot conditions, The Pelosi Corps didn’t have to fire munitions: all they had to do was fire tear gas (or the equivalent) and/or “guide”/push them into narrow closed spaces (sound familiar?) and then start whacking ’em with truncheons or the equivalent (sound familiar?)
To be sure, one woman—a member of the military—WAS shot by someone who was later lauded as a HERO.
File under: The 2021 Pelosi Riot.
The existential battle for Israel.
(And, perhaps, ultimately, for the West…)
“The Inside Story of How Palestinians Took Over the World;
“The brilliant Palestinian plan to capture the pliable minds of American college students was laid out in front of me 25 years ago, during a very sinister business meeting in Israel.”—
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/365220/the-inside-story-of-how-palestinians-took-over-the-world/
H/T Powerline blog.
File under: Palestinian/Democratic Party Rules….
+ Bonus:
“Jihadi Journalism” by Richard Landes
https://whiterosemagazine.com/jihadi-journalism/
H/T Powerline blog.
Ranked choice ballots are an awful idea. They are always, always, always gamed by the most organized of the groups running, which is invariably the most left-leaning.
==
You don’t understand the process.
its the solution to a a non existent problem
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/11/so__it_wasnt_the_sidewalk_after_all.html
I agree that ranked choice is an awful idea. I live in a state where ranked choice voting is used for federal offices, and it is in fact co-opted by the most well organized leftists. Perhaps ranked choice sounds good in theory, but in practice it is a scam, in my opinion. I understand it all too well.
I agree that ranked choice is an awful idea. I live in a state where ranked choice voting is used for federal offices, and it is in fact co-opted by the most well organized leftists. Perhaps ranked choice sounds good in theory, but in practice it is a scam, in my opinion. I understand it all too well.
==
Mr. Ferrell. What ‘ranked-choice’ is for an election with a single-victor is a species of runoff voting. It cannot be ‘gamed’ any more than runoff elections or first-past-the-post elections can be ‘gamed’.
With chilling clear-sightedness, Peter Berkowitz explains how multiculturalism, as it has evolved and has been repurposed (or perhaps was planned to be from the very outset), has transformed into the cultural ichneumon wasp that Richard Fernandez warned about close on to 15 years ago.
“Antisemitism, Multiculturalism, and Barbarism”—
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/11/19/antisemitism_multiculturalism_and_barbarism_150082.html
H/T Powerline blog.
Marcuse and his intolerance for conservative ideas seems to be a personality trait. It appears to me that the innate trait of open-closed mindedness is operating.
I had a cousin who was a leftist. Her whole family were steeped in Marxist theory. They all believed in the oppressor/oppressed model of life.
Back in the day, I wrote a book that followed the life of a character who was conservative. The book described various problems and challenges that the character faced and how he solved them.
My cousin read the book and told me that she couldn’t grasp the ideas presented. It all seemed quite foreign to her. By contrast, I received a lot of feedback from readers who understood and appreciated the story.
Some people, and Neo is an example, are more open-minded than others. They can assimilate new facts and ideas. They can test these against other facts and ideas and reach new conclusions. A large percentage of people can’t do that. Whatever beliefs they were raised with become their default beliefs for life.
It’s why education and the control of it is vitally important. We have a generation or more of people who have been taught the oppressor/oppressed model and who have not been taught anything about critical thinking. Most will never change their minds. Academia as it has become is not a force for good.
https://twitter.com/aaronsibarium/status/1725948749325742190
J.J., what was the name of the book?
How is ranked choice the same as a runoff election? I thought runoffs were between the two candidates with the highest total votes. Does ranked choice allow for a candidate that would not make the runoff to win?
Can A with say 49% of first-choice votes and B with 49% of first-choice votes lose to C with 60% of the second-choice votes?
I have no familiarity with this system.
Also, I might not vote in the main election but will vote in a runoff election.
yes that seems ridiculous, what problem was it designed to solve?
Marcuse and his intolerance for conservative ideas seems to be a personality trait.
–J.J
Marcuse indeed made much mischief. I wouldn’t say it was a matter of personality but the standard leftist requirement that what is moral and just is whatever furthers leftist ends and conversely what obstructs the left is immoral and unjust.
His key statement in this regard is “Repressive Tolerance.”
_________________________________
THIS essay examines the idea of tolerance in our advanced industrial society. The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed. In other words, today tolerance appears again as what it was in its origins, at the beginning of the modern period–a partisan goal, a subversive liberating notion and practice. Conversely, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.
https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html
_________________________________
Tolerance is oppression.
Intolerance is liberation.
Here’s a more accessible take:
https://fee.org/articles/why-free-speech-on-campus-is-under-attack-blame-marcuse/
Ilana. the title is “The Wisdom of Walter.” It was self-published back in the day when I thought I had some interesting things to say. It’s old and out of print. It was my adventure into being a writer that helped me realize that, as an author, it was one book and done.
Huxley – what I’m referring to is Steven Pinker’s personality trait (one of the big five) of open mindedness to closed mindedness. At one end is the person who is always open to new ideas and may change their minds quite easily. In the middle is the person who can change their minds, but not easily. At the far other end of the scale is the person whose mind, once made up, never changes.
Add into this the view one has of the world:
1.A place where people can affect their life journey by hard work and making good decisions.
2. A place where you are stuck on whatever rung you were born on and the “man” is keeping you there, and there’s not much you can do about it.
When you are closed minded and believe the latter version of life, you will embrace statism and its “solutions” to create equity. Any arguments against your beliefs sound foreign, even immoral to you. Hence, they must be censored or banned. That is what I think I see in Marcuse and many Marxist/statist/socialist thinkers and activists.
Maybe that’s too simple an explanation, but I’m a simple-minded man. 🙂
I think there are several other, though related, problems (or “issues”, if one prefers):
1. Extreme, OTP theorizing (which, too often for the sake of humanity, ends up removing humanity from the equation).
2. The belief in one’s superior intelligence and the belief that that intelligence enables one to make choices for others, in fact a whole lot of others. Some of these choices involve killing a lot of those others… (See #1 above.)
3. The belief in the perfectibility of the human condition (as opposed to the improvement of the human condition—it’s when “improvement” elides with “perfectibility” that the sh*t hits the fan…the question being when does that subtle(?) shift occur? (Kinda like the “shift” from “multiculturalism” from meaning “many cultures” to mean “a certain culture—in too many cases the native culture—is inferior and should be discriminated against in the interests of JUSTICE and FAIRNESS”….)
(See #1 and #2, above.)
4. Messianism. Or perhaps more accurately, messianism WITHOUT God to temper things…well, perhaps (See #3, above.)
To be sure, WITH God in the equation it’s complicated—problematic(?)—enough…
5. Etc.
6. OMMV…. (See # 5, above.)
Correction: OTP should be OTT.
How is ranked choice the same as a runoff election? I thought runoffs were between the two candidates with the highest total votes. Does ranked choice allow for a candidate that would not make the runoff to win?
==
1. The closest analogue to a ranked-choice contest would be a convention where everyone votes for their preference on the first ballot. If no candidate receives a majority of the ballots cast, the trailing candidate is eliminated and you vote again among the remainder. You repeat the process until some candidate wins a majority. With each successive ballot, disappointed voters redeploy to the candidate they find most palatable among the remainder and some leave the hall. You could have a convention which operated something like a run off by eliminating all but two candidates on the first ballot and compelling a vote among those two; that would be less time consuming but it’s a cruder way of gauging the preferences of the electorate. The utility of a ranked-choice ballot is that it indicates how the ballot is to be tabulated given a particular contingency. You only have to cast one ballot, rather than have multiple contests as you do in a runoff election. It is sometimes called ‘instant runoff’ voting for that reason.
==
In an election to an executive position or to a seat on a conciliar body from a single-member constituency, you do as follows:
==
2. Determine the number of 1st preference votes each candidate has. Blank and spoiled ballots are excluded from the tally.
==
3. If no candidate’s 1st preference votes give him a majority of the tally, you eliminate the caboose candidate and distribute each of the caboose candidate’s ballots to the surviving candidate who ranks highest on a given ballot. If none of the surviving candidates are marked on a given ballot’s preference ranking, said ballot is excluded from the tally.
==
4. You repeat the foregoing two steps until someone has a majority of the tally.
==
5. You can add some short cuts to reduce the time you spend tabulating. The short cuts reduce the number of candidates who survive to the 2d round of tabulation.
==
a. After you enumerate everyone’s first preference votes, arrange them from top-to-bottom according to their tally. Then calculate a running balance of votes received, starting with the candidate with the smallest tally and then moving up the line up. Moving down the line up, calculate the gap between each candidate and the subsequent candidate. If at any point as you move down the line up the gap between candidate n and candidate n+1 exceeds the running balance of votes given to candidate n+2 and all succeeding candidates, you can eliminate candidate n+1 and all succeeding. In that circumstance, even if every 1st preference ballot earned by candidates n+2 to the end of the line up were awarded to candidate n+1, he still could not catch up with candidate n. This method is utile in elections when you have a short menu of competitive candidates and a mess of minor candidates nowhere near them.
==
b. A simpler short cut is to eliminate any candidate who fails to receive a certain percentage of the 1st preference tally, say 2%. This method is applicable when you have a mess of minor candidates but there are no large drop offs in support from one candidate to a succeeding candidate in the 1st preference tally.
==
6. It’s important to stage the electoral contest in a salutary manner. You can have party silos, wherein each party holds caucuses, conventions, petition drives, and primaries to designate candidates for the ballot and you end up with one candidate for each participating party (as well as non-partisan candidates in certain cases). You can also have a ‘jungle’ system, where all aspirants are on the general election ballot, each with a self-declared party preference. The latter is more appropriate in constituencies where the parties are not competitive; in our time, that’s in core city constituencies for the most part. If you have party silos in non-competitive constituencies, what you get are competitive primaries and pro-forma general elections.
==
7. Whether it is for a primary election or a general election in a ‘jungle’ system, it’s important to have a sensible system for designating candidates for the ballot. You can do this through caucuses of dues paying members (for primary contests only) , petition drives or through requiring a candidate and his sponsors to put down a monetary deposit that they lose if the candidate fails to reach a certain threshold of support. The Alaska contest that so irritated people started out with 34 candidates on the ballot; that’s an indicator that the constitution and laws of Alaska need to be amended to institute finer screens for aspirants. IMO, if you’re routinely producing primary ballots or general election ballots with more than seven candidates on them, your screens aren’t fine enough. A petitioning system which requires you get valid signatures from 2% of a partisan segment of the voter roll (Republican registrants, Democratic registrants, &c) or 0.55% of the no-preference registrants on the roll and also requires you circulate only in that segment of the voter roll to which you yourself belong (Republican, Democratic, no-preference &c) might suffice. An alternative, where you must get 0.7% of the whole voter roll, might suffice. A passable formula for a monetary deposit would be (Y x f x t) / n, where Y is the Census Bureau’s calculation of annual personal income flow in the jurisdiciton in question, t is the the term of office (two years, four years, &c), n would equal 1 foor an executive office and whatever the membership might be for a conciliar body or a court, and f would be a fudge factor. A passable fudge factor might be 6 x 10^(-7), so a deposit to run for the U.S. House at this time would be around $38,000 depending on the state.
Hi, Art Deco. Thanks for the summary of ranked-choice. Interesting system.
Two questions I had, or one question and one soliloquy:
1) What would be the effect of some kind of single-pass RCV system, but with some kind of weighting factor associated with the choices other than first? I wondered about that when you mentioned the shortcut mechanisms. It might be immaterial, but I wondered if you have any knowledge of any attempts at that sort of thing.
2) In your points 6 and 7, you mentioned some different circumstances in which RCV can be best utilized. It made me reflect a bit on whether it is really sensible for society to strive for a one-size-fits-all election system. I suppose that since there is one Union, there is necessarily one system at the federal level; but it raises the interesting question of whether there might be more benefit than a lot of people realize if there were to be different systems for different states, municipalities, and so on. What is really healthiest for Illinois, for example, may be different from what is best for Florida or Ohio.
What is really healthiest for Illinois, for example, may be different from what is best for Florida or Ohio.
==
I’m not seeing the utility of a weighting system for subsequent choices on a ranked-choice ballot.
==
IMO systems for nominating and designating candidates should vary between different localities within a state and between one type of election and another, not from one state to another.
==
In regard to elections to executive positions seats on conciliar bodies from single member constituencies, you can If you have party registration in your state, classify each constituency by comparing the population of the largest body of registrants to that of the 2d largest. If the ratio of one to the other exceeds 2:1, make use of a ‘jungle’ system to designate candidates for the ballot. If less than 2:1, make use of party silos.
==
In regard to elections to conciliar bodies from multi-member constituencies, you might use party silos to nominate slates, with seats distributed according to a species of proportional representation.
==
In regard to judicial elections and those for offices auxilliary to or adjacent to the courts, you might use a jungle system for all elections. In a jungle system, the individual candidate recruits circulators to get on the ballot or recruits sponsors to pay a deposit with the party label existing as information to the voter. You don’t have parties as corporate bodies nominating candidates.