The problem in academia is much worse than the presidents (plus: the Red Cross)
There have been demands that the three presidents – of Harvard, MIT, and Penn – step down because of their refusal to define calls for genocide of Jews as “harassment” and their insistence that it be put into “context” instead. The president of Penn has already resigned.
But I’m not at all sure that most of those calling for their dismissal understand the magnitude of the problem. It’s not about the presidents; they are merely the visible tip of an iceberg.
And “iceberg” isn’t really a good metaphor, either, because the problems in academia are enormous and have been visible for decades to those with a mind to look and understand. These three women probably weren’t even aware of how abhorrent their weasel words were, because on campus such utterances would be absolutely standard, or even considered not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel enough. After all, if the “context” of which they spoke is the poor beleaguered ever-the-victim Palestinians (or their enabling supporters) calling for genocide on Jews or Israelis, then that would make such calls perfectly okay on many if not most of today’s campuses.
So it’s certainly not just these three universities or just these three presidents. Many many colleges, and most administrators, have to have the same sort of attitudes to have been promoted to the point of getting anywhere near a presidency. Leftism and wokeness is required. It is the campus water in which these big fish – and littler fish – swim.
Take a look and listen:
Extraordinary video in which a Jewish student highlights the extent of antisemitism on campus at @MIT. Elite universities and their DEI bureaucracies have failed us. pic.twitter.com/X2lX9sMw8l
— Ed Leon Klinger (@edleonklinger) December 6, 2023
The magnitude of the problem is way beyond what most people ever suspected. There’s a reason that this author – and others – are asking whether Gen Z is lost:
This lack of education [of Gen Z], made worse by the pandemic, not only makes these young people less capable – it also empowers propagandists of the extremes to twist history for ideological purposes.
Political pluralism has now been all but extinguished on many university campuses. Liberal-arts faculties at elite colleges are overwhelmingly left-leaning. Among professors, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 20 to one. In some fields, like sociology and English, this ratio is more than 40 to one.
So by “lack of education,” the author doesn’t mean lack of attendance at schools and even universities. He means lack of education in actual knowledge and the values of Western civilization.
Which brings us to the Red Cross:
The parents of an Israeli being held hostage by Hamas were reprimanded by representatives of the Red Cross after they tried to ask the Red Cross to transfer prescription medication to their child. The Red Cross told them they needed to "think about the Palestinian side. It's hard… pic.twitter.com/CrtHLKRzZf
— Marina Medvin ?? (@MarinaMedvin) December 8, 2023
No surprise.
Both the situation in academia and the state of the Red Cross – and so many other institutions – illustrate Sullivan’s first law, which is this: “All organizations that are not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing.” Robert Conquest stated something similar.
Looking up O’Sullivan, I learned that he made the following observation in 2001:
After all, radical Islamists have three advantages on their side: demography (the populations of Islamic nations are increasing while the West suffers a ‘birth dearth’); rapidly growing Islamic diasporas in the West, fueled by illegal immigration; and official Western policies of multiculturalism (which not only encourage immigrants to retain their original cultural identity but even promote the ‘de-assimilation’ of previously assimilated minorities in the West)…the decline of Christian belief and social influence; and the habit of respecting other cultures as unities while treating the West as a kind of multi-cultural supermarket in which Western civilization is merely one rather dusty shelf. To these trends politicians add appeasement, both diplomatic (of neighboring North Africa) and electoral (of local Muslim constituencies)”
He leaves out what I think is the biggest influence: postmodern leftism, which defines jihadis as put-upon victims of Western oppression, and therefore excuses anything such people do, no matter how vile and barbaric. The left has utterly abandoned any overarching principles such as defense of human rights or the rights of women not to be gang-raped, as long as the perpetrators are groups defined as victims of the West. One might think that Jews have been the quintessential victims over time, but they have been re-defined as white oppressors for the purposes of modern leftist thought. That is not because of anything Israel has ever done, which is nearly always better than what 99% of the countries of the world do and is also better than what any other country under the same sort of attack would do. It is because Israel is a haven for Jews, and Jew-haters have been defining Jews as oppressors – and child-murderers, for example – since long before the Jewish state came into existence.
[NOTE: And yes, the three university presidents are women, and the university has been “feminized.” But far more important is that universities have been almost wholly taken over by the left. The problem will not be solved by male presidents, because just about all possible candidates conform to the same system of values as the three women presidents who testified in Congress.]
The problem is indeed extremely vast and as you’ve outlined. It’s a safe bet that a solid majority of people doubltess have no idea just how truly vast it is. I can only hope that these recent events will at least make parents and donors a bit more aware of the true state of higher education in this country (not to mention throughout the West in general). Personally I believe that things will only change on campuses across the land if and when the money dries up because people stop sending their kids to these cesspit schools and donors stop writing massive checks, and conversely schools that promote traditional Western values are rewarded with greater enrollment and donations. I currently don’t have a great deal of faith that such things will happen in a big hurry though.
It seems — on reading Joel Kotkin piece at SpikedOnline — that we in the West are universally suffering from the hyper-monopolisation of the Left of every institution. (SEE the link in the line “There’s a reason that this author – and others – are asking whether Gen Z is lost:” ABOVE.)
The Amies of the Left in business, universities, charities, and takeover of organised religions, and schools. They dictate new norms. They inculcate armies of young True Believers. I don’t see how Victor David Hanson could disagree, despite commenting almost exclusively on American matters where the divide can — however wrongly — cast in narrower, less stark, terms.
The cure comes when the young can find their place in the stream, heading up a verification past, absent the radical equalitarianism of DIE and multicult.
How then to reach present day parents with children in the home? The message of our exceptional times through exceptional progress has not even been made to them. The children Believe the radical nihilistic, neo-Marxist Left and its Bill of Criminal Indictments.
Among professors, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 20 to one. In some fields, like sociology and English, this ratio is more than 40 to one.
This has been the case in the US for decades. Apparently, none of the ‘right’ people have uttered a peep about it. And now those ratios are invading – have invaded – the hard sciences with DEI demands. Even civil engineering magazines have meekly surrendered to the party line years ago.
Time for a change, sooner the better.
Uhhh, Neo, did you check to see if this was the International Red Cross? That seems likely under the circumstances.
I noted this query in the prior thread where this was called attention to, I think.
If I am correct, and it IS the IRC, well, they were co-opted by the USSR 50 years ago. So no surprise that they are thoroughly waaaaaaaaaaaaaay left.
I have no idea if the American RC has shifted left as well since then, but they were always a lot more balanced in the past than the IRC. By multiple orders of magnitude.
}}} with DEI demands.
I have been arguing this for over a year, now —
Stop spelling it DEI.
Spell it DIE. And I mean, actually spell it out, D-I-E.
And when you get corrected, and you will, don’t argue!. Just laugh and say, “LOL… yeah, I keep getting that backwards….” and ignore it… then, five minutes later, spell it D-I-E once again.
Take it, make it something to laugh at. This is straight out of the Left’s own playbook, and it is exactly the way to attack it. Make it sound stupid and an object of ridiculue. Arguing does no good, they don’t care about reason and logic. But making fun of their stupidity, well, that’s gonna hurt.
This was an interesting and depressing read:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-which-river-to-which-sea-anti-israel-protests-college-student-ignorance-a682463b
Apparently, most of the students jumping on the “hate Israel” bandwagon don’t have a clue about anything.
re: O’Sulican in 2001
He gets close to one thing, but doesn’t out-and-out-say it: The Left is VERY anti-Christian.
Oh Bloody Hell: I will follow your suggestion for DIE.
Henry Abramson discusses the WSJ article by Prof. Hassner referenced above, and, well, in Prof. Abramson’s view it’s not altogether an unhopeful thing, owing to the mere possibility of education taking the ignorant out of their fell condition: https://youtu.be/SXutcRX5FZ0?si=dXgiDZBQKCb0nSAg
Again, not a guarantee, but a possibility.
The International Red Cross were corrupt long before the ussr co-opted them.They’re the same delightful,folks who came back from their inspection of Terezin in 1943 to report that the fuhrer had built a wonderful city for the Jews.
“Elite universities and their DEI bureaucracies have failed us.”
Only 2 questions…
1. Who is “us?”
2. “Failed ” at what?
DIE has always been fundamentally anti-Western and anti-Christian. I saw it in grad school almost 40 years ago so my take is that it is succeeding as planned. It’s proponents are entrenched in the highest levels of western cultural leadership. So for some value of “us,” it’s working just fine.
It should be burned out with fire…IMO, but that could be just me.
Well the left is a death cult after all.
“And yes, the three university presidents are women, and the university has been “feminized.” But far more important is that universities have been almost wholly taken over by the left.”
Right. To the extent that causation is operative in that, it’s that the women were at least assisted by the left in getting to their offices. It is a big feather in the cap of any academic institution to get a person with any intersectional check marks into an important position. Harvard clearly won that contest. I wonder what the actual academic records of those three women are.
Anecdote about how absolutely Not Recent At All this stuff is: as a staff member at a small college I recall a moment thirty years ago in a meeting which included both faculty and staff (small school, we all fit into one big room). One prof was talking about something or other that touched on politics, mentioned Democrats and Republicans, adding after the latter that “Some people are Republicans. I don’t know why.” And then he paused for a moment, like a comedian dropping a quip and waiting for the reaction. Which he got–much tittering among the crowd. It was the delivery that really made me realize the lay of the land: he *knew* he was going to get some kind of favorable reaction.
And this was a *relatively* conservative institution in a very conservative state.
Yesterday watched a Caroline Glick interview with a woman on the body recovery team, preparing them for burial. From what she said most women bodies showed raped, and many bodies were chopped up, burned or otherwise mutilated, another video on Legalinsurrection.com shows an male hostage alive them killed and mutilated though no way to know before or after murdered.
The Left will continue to argue it has not happened but they will close their brains to any evidence.
Heather Mac Donald’s take on the feminization of the universities; a very interesting read;
https://www.city-journal.org/article/in-loco-masculi
As Neo says, neither male nor female can rise to the top position within a university unless they are full fledged members of the woke, liberal progressive religion.
However, Heather Mac Donald’s article suggests (or maybe states explicitly) that the feminization of the university makes intolerance and conformity even more pronounced within the universities.
Anyway, Mac Donald’s article is a very interesting read.
Insufficiently Sensitive:
Plenty of people have been uttering plenty of peeps about it for decades. But it’s a hard thing to stop for a host of reasons. Once a certain number of leftists – with tenure – enter an institution, and affirmative action also selects for minorities, the thing snowballs and quickly reaches critical mass. Leftists in departments hire more leftists, until it’s all leftists in some departments and enormous majority leftists in others.
William Manchester’s (“Goodbye Darkness” and “The Last Lion”) father served with the Marines in WWI. He was badly wounded–I believe he lost the use of one of his arms, like Bob Dole in WWII–and had to spend a long time in a military hospital. According to his son, he had absolutely no use for the Red Cross reps who visited him in hospital. IIRC, one them wouldn’t give him a pack of cigarettes unless he paid for it first. The Salvation Army guy gave him a pack of cigarettes. Manchester’s father always gave money to the Salvation Army after that.
As Michael Caine told Bob Hoskins in “Mona Lisa”: It’s the little fings, George. The little fings.
If I were to have a bumper sticker on my casket, it’d say “It’s never just one thing.” More formally, that’s called “causal density.” In this case, I don’t think that the feminization of American universities can be separated from their takeover by the Left. It’s all mixed up together. That’s been my experience, anyway.
Yesterday, I made a pitch for Heather MacDonald’s article on the feminization of universities. Today, John Tyler does too. Once(?) more, here’s a link:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/in-loco-masculi
P.S. In universities, feminization isn’t confined to women.
https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1734315730219549111?s=20
I’ve been following the craziness at the universities for a long time; still I’ve been surprised at just how extreme things have gotten as revealed by the reactions since October 7. Thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson and myself at Weimar Germany, 1918-1933…and the USA in the Present Era:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/70322.html
“Well the left is a death cult after all.”
Aside from being om’s usual playground snark…this is partially true.
Much, if not all, 21st century leftism is deeply rooted in evil, in the Biblical sense. What we naturally and politely call misguided or wrong (in terms of economics, cultural mores, social policy or foreign policy) is at heart deception, lying & inversions of the truth. It yields death & degradation (hence the partially true from above) as an intention. Evil cannot build the good beautiful or true. It can only deceive and therefore warp, corrupt, & imitate. It seeks to tear down that which is intended for good & the flourishing of the human spirit in service to its own destructive ends.
As the Boss notes…a goodly number of people have been standing fast against this tide for years…just not enough I guess…that whole “critical mass” thing & as I’ve often seen written here, some of us have been polite & thought reason would win the day. We chose badly. Now we’re going to have to fight or be devoured.
ObloodyHell:
Uhhh, Neo, did you check to see if this was the International Red Cross? That seems likely under the circumstances.
Nor relevant.
In 1951, Kansas City suffered a disastrous flood, destroying my family’s property. Afterward, my father had nothing good to say about the RC.
Why? When men were working on the dike trying to bring things under control, the Red Cross charged the men a dime for a cup of coffee. Today, that comes to $1.18.
IS and Neo,
Yes, there’s always been more D than R in academia. From my experience, starting about 2005 as older classical liberal Democrat faculty retired they were replaced by radical leftists.
My first 20 years I had many friends across the humanities, social studies, and arts. We may have disagreed on politics, but they were always respectful of my views. They all retired and I found myself viciously attacked by the growing majority of radicals now occupying the faculty. Got out in the nick of time.
“Socrates often criticized Athenian democracy. He especially criticized it for the selfish individuals who gained power and wealth by using speech-making tricks and flattery to gain the support of citizens. Much of his criticism took place during the 27-year Peloponnesian War between Athens and its great rival, Sparta.”
Sparta won…
“Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.” John Adams
It is vain to protest that America is not a democracy but rather a Constitutional Republic. Vain because its representatives are ‘elected’ and those who seek election, in the aggregate reflect the public that elects them. Dumb down the public with a March Through the Institutions and you dumb down their representatives. Who soon realize that voting largesse (pork) from the public treasury results in reelection. Corruption cannot but follow.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.” Alexander Fraser Tytler
I hate NGO’s.
In re “Plenty of people have been uttering plenty of peeps about it for decades.”
David Foster’s post & a comment to it link to two of Hanson’s articles, which make for an interesting comparison across the intervening 7 years (ONLY 7?!?)
https://victorhanson.com/weimar-america/
February 22, 2016
https://victorhanson.com/weimar-america-2/
December 4, 2023
The problem with University leaders & administrators & faculty is not only their bigotry but also their lack of qualification for their jobs per se.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/12/harvards_president_claudine_gay_accused_of_plagiarizing_emdr_carol_swainem.html
NOTE to OBH et al : Murray clearly agrees with you on “Stop spelling it DEI.”
Re: DEI vs DIE
I can see why our woke friends would avoid the acronym DIE.
I wonder, though, whether they know DEI is Latin for “of God.” That would be pretty clever.
I don’t believe they are that clever, but that is their intent — to claim a divine mandate.
The decline of academia into woke madness is a terrible loss and danger.
However, it looks to me that academia is imploding. It no longer supports its mission to conserve and advance Western Civilization. It provides less and less value to students to prepare them for real work and careers. Its costs have greatly outpaced inflation for decades.
Academia is losing its credibility and its usefulness. Parents, students and employers are not amused
If one really want to learn something the resources of the internet and now AI are incredible for self-learning.
I suspect conservatives won’t have to stage a long march through the institutions. The institutions are destroying themselves.
huxley:
I suspect conservatives won’t have to stage a long march through the institutions. The institutions are destroying themselves.
———————————
Indeed.
Anti-west, identitarian garbage is almost entirely absent from trade schools.
Here in Israel, “modern” Orthodox Jews first established their own university, and now the “ultra” Orthodox have started their own institutions focused on career training in electronics, computer science, and medical fields. There is also a film/media school under Orthodox auspices.
We have a nephew who never went to college – he’s a self-taught expert in robotics and automation who is now working for an Army subcontractor in lieu of military service.
People like these have already begun to work alongside/replace the Lefties who are now the (left-leaning) face of Israeli hi-tech.
And we’re only just beginning to realize the potential of remote learning… these old schools d/won’t know what hit them.
Will anyone mourn the loss of academia-driven “progress” in the visual and performing arts? Yet there’s plenty of art being created and shared – just not credentialed or patrolled by the elite.
Some savvy small publisher will re-issue “Everyman’s Library” type student editions of the classics – with a companion youtube/website. No bar to those who really want to learn… The universities themselves are already granting such access, albeit limited… If the credentials have been devalued, we will just go back to having people who “read history”.
So yesterday I mentioned that the process of changing higher ed is massive and one reason is that Trustees are often minions of the president. In just the opposite of what the situation should be, the Trustees often hold those positions due to the president and therefore don’t have any motivation to actually oversee what the president is doing, or hold the president accountable.
And I wake up this morning to this nugget:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12854495/claudine-gay-remain-harvard-president.html
The article goes on to state she will remain “with the support of the Board”
Quo est demostratum
I can see why our woke friends would avoid the acronym DIE.
IED is more apt, given the damage it causes.
Which tells you this the preferred pattern of the board
…aaaannnd another federally funded bubble bursts.
Years ago, some brainiac in government noted that our middle class had access to such things as education, housing, and medical care. “Hey, if these are markers of the middle class, if we fund these kinds of things, we’ll expand the middle class!” So our brilliant federal government started shoveling money at programs in these areas.
But too much easy money distorts the markets. So we have a long-running healthcare crisis, and a housing crisis, and now our entire education system is imploding. There are others areas of the economy perverted by government subsidies, such as the agriculture sector.
So yes, the long-term solution is to drastically cut funding. By trying to make the markers of middle class available to more people, the feds have screwed things up royally across wide segments of society. This will take generations to unravel.
Niall Ferguson on the treason of intellectuals.
“Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich.
See here:
https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-treason-intellectuals-third-reich
As an aside; Joe Biden has now drafted Hillary Clinton to help out his presidential campaign.
Well folks; you heard it here first: Hillary Clinton will be the demokratic nominee for president.
She does not have the obvious-for-all-to-see , train wreck baggage of Newsome (such as excrement maps, tent cities, etc).
Also, her many many past misdeeds have been swept under the rug by the media and the deep state, so for all intents and purposes she has a clean slate and she has name recognition and there is no demokrat alive that will not support her (once Biden bows out).
As for her age, she is younger than joke bidet and about the same age as Trump.
Coincidentally, Bari Weis has just published an essay entitled “How to Really Fix American Higher Education” (http://tinyurl.com/2t7yx4xt).
I think most of Neo’s readers know that Bari Weiss has started “The Free Press” substack after quitting “The New York Times.” She’s no longer a Progressive, but not (yet?) a Conservative. Sometimes I’m frustrated by her stubborn attachment to the Left, but it’s interesting to watch her stumble towards conservative views. In my more optimistic moments, I hope that Weis’s changes are indicative of a new conservative critical mass. Also, she writes well.
If you have a few minutes, I think this one’s worth reading.
Physicsguy LINKS to Daily Mail piece, and concludes Harvard Board backs her and she ain’t going anywhere.
But the drip is continuing and will deepen damage to the Harvard brand.
From Redstate, scholars find dozens more examples of plagiarism by her
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2023/12/11/scholars-find-dozens-more-examples-of-plagiarism-by-harvard-president-claudine-gay-n2167444
I’ll bet she’s gone by the New Year. She’s damaging the brand and sticking with her proves the Board is callow and indifferent to quality. Damaged goods “for sale.”
That, and rank hypocrisy. “Harvard University’s plagiarism policy specifically holds the student responsible for citing sources, and the sanctions against violators include expulsion from the institution.” Except black female diversity hires….
https://redstate.com/mccabe/2023/12/12/exclusive-carol-swain-weighs-on-charge-harvards-prez-claudine-gay-plagiarized-her-n2167448
Drip, drip, derp,
“I’ll bet she’s gone by the New Year. She’s damaging the brand and sticking with her proves the Board is callow and indifferent to quality.”
I’ll take that bet! 😉
However, your statement that the Board is callow and indifferent to quality is exactly my point not only for Harvard’s board, but the majority of Trustees in higher ed.
The drip, drip, drip, is hopefully waking the general public up to the decades old mess that is higher ed. IF students start staying away and opting for jr colleges and trade schools that might have an effect, but only in the long term. Don’t expect any change to come from within the academy.
IED is more apt, given the damage it causes.
Ha ha! And let’s not neglect EID.
Eid is a festive Muslim holiday that marks the end of Ramadan or the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
https://parade.com/1180633/jessicasager/what-is-eid/
Cornhead concludes in reply to me:
“ The drip, drip, drip, is hopefully waking the general public up to the decades old mess that is higher ed. IF students start staying away and opting for jr colleges and trade schools that might have an effect, but only in the long term. Don’t expect any change to come from within the academy.”
Yes. And that’s how the Anti-DIE movement on the Right began, then migrated to the middle and moderate and politically inactive parents in Virginia in 2022. And that’s how we capture more of the field of public opinion.
Bill Ackman calls Claudine Gay’s memo really a Business Plan. He links to a friend of a friend (of mine in academic history circles), C. Bradley Thompson who received i5 from a source at Harvard.
Claudine Gay’s memo, breathlessly cheerleading the Woke Revolution. Talk about mendacious fad following!
After caterwauling about Covid, she continues. “Meanwhile, a second pandemic is unfolding, one with deeper roots in American life. People across the world have risen up in protest against police brutality and systemic racism, awake to the devastating legacies of slavery and white supremacy like never before. The calls for racial justice heard on our streets also echo on our campus, as we reckon with our individual and institutional shortcomings and with our Faculty’s shared responsibility to bring truth to bear on the pernicious effects of structural inequality.”
PURE BANDWAGON JUMPING. Never mind that more elegantly and reductive the horrors of inequality can be explained by differential national IQs, as Richard Lynn explains in detail in 2008s “The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ, and Inequality Worldwide.” Online details here
https://human-intelligence.org/national-iq/
BUT THAT’S racist HARD DATA! YOU CAN’T DO THAT!
Well, because the Far Left’s iron grip on institutional education is monolithic and monopolistic, they can…. Except for the young boy in “The Emperors New Clothes”. Pace “South Park” on Comedy Central, wherein young children are ever proved wiser than their elders in a serial animated satire. Unleashing the stallions of Ridicule that the Left forever hates.
And thus the critical tide turning against DIE grows.
I think some institutional adjustments might help higher education. (Boards of 5-19 members, elected by a postal ballot of those alumni registered to vote in the state where the institution is located). One of the 1,001 disappointments administered to us by Republican state legislators is that they have been perfectly otiose about addressing problems to be found in the state institutions where they account for a secure majority. That having been said, a huge problem is to be found in the culture of the professional-managerial bourgeoisie, which is completely indifferent to the preferences and priorities of ordinary people.
TJ, it’s actually me you quoted, not Cornhead
thats a remarkable misreading of reality on gay’s part, I mean world class,
yes chris rufo and chaya Raichik’s investigation lit the match behind the anti zombie movement, the parallels to Romero and Kirkman cannot be closer,
Maybe instead of an iceberg the Hydra is a better example either the mythological creature or perhaps a more direct analogy the Marvel Comics evil authoritarian organization.
WRT Red Cross.
Asked my father-Infantry platoon leader and occasional company commander until they could find another captain ETO–about this.
Said that when truckloads or trainloads of wounded arrived at hospitals, they were filthy from fighting, fouled by blood plus their own waste as they could not move while being transported.
Had to be cleaned up outside before being taken into the medical facility. Red Cross women did that.
No mention of paying for donuts or coffee, but he only saw the RC in the previous situation.
}}} The International Red Cross were corrupt long before the ussr co-opted them.
Mmmm, well, they may well have corrupted them further back than I am aware of… 😛
}}} Oligonicella:
Mrrr…. yeah, that sounds pretty obnoxious, but it could have been a local admin who was a cheap asshole.
I’ve never heard any significant widespread complaints about politics of the ARC, which is the real issue, here — though there may be some more recent that I’ve not caught — I have heard lots and lots of complaints about the politics of the IRC dating back to at least the 70s, and, according to the above, perhaps even back to the 30s.
The issue here is not whether the ARC is a particularly good charity, as much as whether their politics make them even more obnoxious.
}}} Art: One of the 1,001 disappointments administered to us by Republican state legislators is that they have been perfectly otiose about addressing problems to be found in the state institutions where they account for a secure majority.
Florida’s legislature has actually been pretty good like that. Even more so than Texas, I’d assert.
Anybody get the reference?
I don’t want to be near Marshfield, MA on an afternoon when the air gets all shimmery, like before a thunderstorm.
Don’t want to have to answer.
A round-up of posts on academia, its problems, and possible reforms — or not.
Mostly from Powerline’s headline picks and follow-ons from those links.
Good analysis and sound advice, which there is no chance the leftist administrations will voluntarily embrace.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/college-presidents-are-lying-about-free-speech
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4356430-it-cant-be-that-hard-to-manage-free-expression-on-campus/
Victor Davis Hanson cuts to the bottom line.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14756
Powerline also recommended a long but worthwhile post by William Voegeli, examining the differences between wokeism and leftism (such as they are), through reviews of several new books by woke leftists increasingly cognizant that they might be sliding down the wrong arc of history.
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-wokes-on-them/
I’m quite fond of Professor Voegeli’s wit as well as his wisdom.
https://www.williamvoegeli.com/
I used to volunteer with the American Red Cross. If they ever charged a soldier or sailor for anything, it was because the US military wanted it that way. And in fact, they did charge a dime for coffee and a doughnut in WW 1, sometimes. The ARC most definitely didn’t want to and has hated ever since the hit to their reputation.
During floods I carried hot food to sandbag crews and public safety workers. I’d show up with 12 bags full of McDonald’s cheeseburgers. People working would step out of the line, wolf down one or two and go right back in.
For fire victims we arranged temporary housing and provided cash or gift cards for people to buy needed things including clothing. No one ever paid for any of it.
That service alone–showing up to counsel and aid fire victims–would be worth supporting the American Red Cross. But they do quite a bit more.