Daily Archives: 27 December 2023

A Proposal for Harvard University

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Given the blatant antisemitic bigotry of Harvard’s President Claudine Gay, as well as her dishonesty, demonstrated by her plagiarism—She plagiarized her acknowledgments—and the antisemitism demonstrated by the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing body, and its open condonement of Gay’s bigotry and dishonesty, when that body unanimously supported retaining her as President, it’s clear that drastic changes to Harvard University’s governance is badly needed.

A Harvard professor has suggested a pathway to that.

One faculty member, citing a carve-out in the Massachusetts Constitution that reserves authority over Harvard to the state legislature, has urged Massachusetts lawmakers to install a government official on the board to provide more transparency and public accountability.

Here is the relevant section of that constitution, from Chapter V, Section I, Article III:

…it is declared, that the governor, lieutenant governor, council and senate of this commonwealth, are and shall be deemed, their successors, who with the president of Harvard College, for the time being, together with the ministers of the congregational churches in the towns of Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester, mentioned in the said act, shall be, and hereby are, vested with all the powers and authority belonging, or in any way appertaining to the overseers of Harvard College; provided, that] nothing herein shall be construed to prevent the legislature of this commonwealth from making such alterations in the government of the said university, as shall be conducive to its advantage and the interest of the republic of letters….

The professor is on the right track, but one government rep on a board of 13 or 14 won’t accomplish anything. The State needs to revamp the Corporation board altogether—maybe put on the board reps from the ministers of the congregational churches in the towns of Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester in sufficient number that their aggregation outnumbers the remaining members, if they’re not, instead, to replace the incumbents. Additionally—these are Critical Items—the State needs to remove the President’s sole authority over the board’s agenda and to eliminate the board’s authority to select their own replacements.

 

Massachusetts’ constitution can be read in its entirety here.

A Biden Administration Oxymoron

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OK, another Biden administration oxymoron. This one is the latest to deprecate our national security and to not favorably impress our friends and allies. William Luti (Captain, USN Ret, and Hudson Institute Adjunct Fellow), got right to it in the lede of his Christmas Wall Street Journal op-ed, quoting, as he did there, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh:

We’re not in an armed conflict with the Houthis…part of why we are in the region is to bolster our deterrence.

Because doing nothing in response to several multiples of overt attacks on US facilities, both military and civilian, deters the hell out of Iran and its terrorist satraps. It sure does: it deters the hell out of Iranian and terrorist restraint, and it declares open season on American facilities and on international shipping in international waters.

Contrary to the fetid imaginings of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his syndicate cronies SecDef Lloyd Austin and SecState Antony Blinken, actual deterrence includes, as Critical Items, actually shooting and killing those who attack us and our friends and allies.

Proper deterrence in the present case, real deterrence, would begin (not end) with destroying the two ports the Houthi terrorists have on the Red Sea and destroying the terrorists’ launch facilities inland. Proper deterrence would continue with the destruction of Iran’s ports on the Arabian Gulf, Hormuz Strait, and Gulf of Oman, which would limit the terrorist state’s ability to resupply its satrap in Yemen.

Proper deterrence would extend to destroying the attackers’ facilities in Syria and Iraq, limiting Iran’s satraps there. It would extend further to destroying Iran’s Ho Chi Minh Trail analog that runs from northwestern Iran through northern Iraq into Syria.

Deterrence does not consist of shooting down drones and rockets as the sum total. That just tells the terrorists that they’re down at the neighborhood gun range, practicing their shooting.

Luti described President Ronald Reagan’s response to an earlier Iranian attack, concluding his description with this:

As other Enterprise air-wing aircraft began their bombing runs, Reagan called off the attack after Joint Chiefs Chairman William Crowe said, “We’ve shed enough blood for one day.”

That was 35 years ago. Our enemies have gotten even worse. We won’t have done enough enemy blood shedding until those terrorist facilities are erased and Iran’s ability to resupply its satraps eliminated.

It’s time the Biden syndicate recognized the nature and the depth and breadth of the war that our enemies are inflicting on us and responded accordingly.