Category Archives: morality

Disingenuous Excuse-Making

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That’s what seems to be the case involving Columbia University’s interim president Katrina Armstrong and a variety of personages criticizing her decisions, or their lack, or their careful vagueness, regarding Columbia’s rampant antisemitic bigotry and overt support for “protestors” supporting terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank.

Armstrong’s waffling on those items already has cost her university $400 million in Federal grants and contracts, yet she continues to waffle.

Chief among her excuse-making supporters is Johns Hopkins Medicine International President, Charles Wiener:

She’s in a situation now where every minute, every hour, there’s no way she’ll be able to do anything that pleases everybody[.]

Armstrong isn’t there to please everybody; she’s not even there to please anybody at all. She’s there to do the right thing: put an end to the school’s antisemitic bigotry that exceeds the bounds of free speech by overtly denying others their rights to free speech and religion—even merely to attend class—and expel the terrorist-supporting “protestors,” including faculty members; have those “protestors” who are not students or faculty arrested for their trespass; and have those—student, non-student, or faculty—involved in stealing university buildings (which is what their “occupations” amount to) and vandalizations arrested and brought to trial for their criminal acts.

Full stop.

Then the newswriters of this WSJ piece offer their own shabby excuse:

Armstrong has walked a fine line between acknowledging that some aspects of the university need to change while also asserting the importance of the school’s academic independence.

No. There is no fine line here. There is no academic freedom in an environment where the school’s Jewish students are prevented by those terrorist supporters from speaking, prevented from getting to class, even physically attacked simply for being Jewish, much less speaking anyway.

Ans this:

If she cedes [sic] to White House demands over campus antisemitism allegations, she risks revolt from faculty fearing a loss of academic freedom.

More excuse-making. Faculty members who revolt over this are simply self-selecting for prompt termination. Getting them out of the way would both reduce the bigotry that so rampantly denies Jewish students their free speech rights and increase academic freedom by removing those who insist that academic freedom means being free to do things their way only.

Armstrong needs to stop waffling. Or she needs to be replaced by someone willing to make the hard decisions necessary to reduce the bigoted attacks on disfavored groups and get rid of the “protestors,” and to enforce those decisions.

Update (compared to when I wrote this): Columbia University has, finally, acceded to many of the government’s demands regarding curbing its antisemitic bigotry and support for terrorists.

Another Reason Why…

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…no member of the Progressive-Democratic Party can be trusted in any way. Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), for instance, in her letter to Businessman Elon Musk, who’s working the additional duty [sic:] of pro bono member of DOGE’s leadership, claimed that:

American taxpayers will shoulder the burden of tax cuts for Tesla, and they deserve answers about your efforts to secure massive tax breaks for billionaire corporations[.]

Here are some facts underlying Tesla’s income tax liability:

• much of Tesla’s $7.1 billion in net income last year doesn’t come from selling electric vehicles, solar panels, or battery storage
• $2.8 billion came from the sale of regulatory credits to other auto makers that need to comply with government EV mandates
• $1.6 billion in interest income on cash and short-term investment holdings. [Progressive-]Democrats can thank the Biden inflation for allowing companies to earn higher interest on their cash holdings
• Tesla recorded nearly $600 million in book income from price appreciation in its bitcoin holdings, but this is akin to an unrealized capital gain
• [Tesla] lost money every year it was in business from 2003 until 2020. All companies are allowed to carry forward net operating losses to offset future tax liabilities
• [Progressive-Democrats] exempted most net operating losses from the Inflation Reduction Act’s 15% corporate alternative minimum tax, including categories that include Tesla’s loss carry forward
• Tesla recorded $625 million from tax credits for its electric vehicles and $756 million for its solar and energy storage business last year

o these tax credits can also be carried forward to offset future tax liabilities
o Tesla had $1 billion in renewable energy tax credits on its books at the end of last year

Warren, and all of her Party cronies, are well aware of these things. Warren, and her cronies in Party, lie.

Moral Bankruptcy of Some University Managers

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The Trump administration is investigating quite a number of universities over allegations of rampant antisemitism and discrimination generally infesting them. The managers of those institutions are upset, and with their upset, they’re demonstrating their blatant moral bankruptcy.

Administrators, professors and prospective students at major universities across the country are expressing concerns about the future of higher education as the Trump administration restricts funding for DEI and investigates schools for charges of antisemitism.
School officials “are in an impossible situation with facing the unknown as to what may happen down the road,” Ohio University alumni association board member Kim Barlag told The Wall Street Journal.

There’s nothing at all impossible about doing a right thing, nothing at all impossible about moving against the bigotry rampant at those institutions. Many of those institutions’ managers are just sulking and doing the academic equivalent of holding their breath until they turn blue. Typical is this from West Virginia University via its “spokesperson” April Kaull:

[O]ur nation’s research universities cannot maintain research programs essential for continued national prosperity [unless Federal research funding is continued].

This is cynical and disingenuous, and grown adults should know better than to throw a temper tantrum. It’s perfectly straightforward for university managers to do the things promised in those universities’ bragged about policies—free and unfettered enquiry, with freedom of speech and of academics. In fine, stop the antisemitic bigotry, cut out the discrimination on any basis other than plain academic talent and performance, expel those students who routinely violate those tenets, and fire those university personnel—including tenured professors—who violate those tenets. That just takes a modicum of moral courage.

Of course, I’m being generous to suggest these personages are morally bankrupt—that implies that they had morals to begin with. Condoning, or even merely accepting, bigotry—antisemitic, racial, sexist, whathaveyou—demonstrates a complete lack of moral sense.

Another Target for Reduction

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DoJ’s Civil Rights Division is, as ex-AG Eric Holder (D) once bragged, Justice’s “Crown Jewel.”

But that’s only because it’s populated with far-Left lawyers who grew up in the ACLU’s extremist creche. Indeed, as Hans von Spakovsky noted from his time in the division,

Nearly all the career lawyers come from liberal advocacy groups, and all carry in the mindset: “I can do exactly what I was doing for the ACLU, only now with the power of government behind me.”

The division is infamous for its resistance to authority other than its own, which it coalesced out of the æther:

…resistance to direction, even direct orders. Career attorneys refuse to work on cases with which they disagree. Others mulishly take part with the goal of misleading superiors on legal questions or sabotaging cases. Lawyers send letters, make threats or initiate proceedings without sign-off from leadership.

These are bureaucrats who’ve self-selected for RIF as part of the initial round of reduction in personnel. Following that initial culling, the division would benefit, and so would DoJ and more broadly us average American citizens, from a much broader and deeper RIF of personnel and concomitant elimination of all of those job slots.

Here’s hoping Harmeet Dhillon is confirmed and she gets the backing she needs. That reduction in personnel job slots is the first step in quelling the naked revolt in the division and bringing it back under control.

Chit Chat

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The Trump administration has cut $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University, and a number of Federal agencies have ended their association with the school, both over the school’s management team’s overt decision to support pro-Hamas “protestors'” assaults on the school’s Jewish students and those “protestors'” seizure of and vandalism in school buildings. That tacit support clearly illustrates that management team’s own intrinsic antisemitic bigotry.

Now—and only now—is the head school manager, Interim President Katrina Armstrong, talking about beginning to enforce long-extant rules of comportment as applied to Jewish students and all other students and student groups. She wrote a letter.

“[T]he funding cuts will “immediately impact research and other critical functions,” she wrote.

She takes the cuts “very seriously” and is prepared to work with the government on its “legitimate concerns[,]” she wrote.

“When I accepted the role of Interim President in August 2024, I knew Columbia needed a reset from the previous year and the chaos of encampments and protests on our campus[.] The University also needed to acknowledge and repair the damage to our Jewish students, who were targeted, harassed, and made to feel unsafe or unwelcome on our campus last spring[,]” she wrote.

She “accepted” her role seven months ago.

Chit chat.

What has she actually done? She could have called in campus police and the city’s police to arrest these lawbreaking sham “protestors.” She didn’t do that beyond a couple of token/scapegoat arrests.

She could have expelled every one of those lawbreaking “protestors.” She didn’t do that.

She could have identified to the Federal government those lawbreaking “protestors” present on student visas with a view to having their visas canceled and those students sent back to their home countries. She didn’t do that.

In response to the funding and contract cancelations, she at the least could have done those last two. Instead, she chose to write a letter and call it a day. ‘Twas a very famous…victory.

Her words are insulting to our intelligence, and they’re insulting to the school’s Jewish student population.