Category Archives: culture

Free Assembly

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Beginning with the freshman class that enters in fall 2017, Harvard University students will no longer be allowed to hold leadership positions in campus groups while also maintaining membership in the exclusive, single-gender final clubs that dominate the school’s social scene.

And

The policy barring students from holding leadership positions in official groups while being members of what the school calls “unrecognized, single-gender social organizations,” also extends to the younger fraternities and sororities.  Students will also not receive the dean’s endorsements for elite scholarships and fellowships if they’re found to be members of the groups.

Whatever happened to freedom of association?  It’s true enough that Harvard is a private institution, but as the Supreme Court has held about private enterprises on a number of occasions vis-à-vis other venues, it has enough of a public institution characteristic—accepting a broad reach of students, just as any other private business, a store for instance, accepts a broad reach of customers—that it needs to act like one here.

It’s also true enough that the 1st Amendment’s right of the people peaceably to assemble only enjoins the Federal government.  However, the principle is no less valid in its applicability to a university.

Institutional Racism

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Now our public schools are actively teaching racism to our children.

…administrators at Raoul Wallenberg High School decided last September to forgo the democratic process in student elections and appoint members of the freshman class to most of the seats on the student council.  The freshman president and all student leaders for other grade levels were still elected.

Part of the reasoning behind the change was to “encourage more diversity in our student leadership,” according to Principal Cheryl Foster, who responded to questions from the San Francisco Examiner through a district spokesperson.

Because, like all voters in the eyes of the Left, these students are just too grindingly stupid to know what they must do, and so their Know Betters (at least one of whom was either too afraid, or too contemptuous, of the press to respond directly) must choose for them.

But these worthies gave their game away.

…school officials tried to court her [Christina Martinez] son, James Ortiz, 15, onto the student council because of his surname.

And

Assistant Principal Zaia Vera reportedly told Martinez she wanted Ortiz in office because it would make the student government look more diverse.  Asian girls were the predominant candidates for student office in recent years.

“She said to me, ‘Mrs Martinez, you could understand as a fellow Latina what we’re looking for here,” Martinez, who is not Latina, recalled.  “‘We only have Asian girls run for office and we want the Wallenberg website to show not only Asian girls.'”

Asian girls are the epitome of evil, you see.  But that’s not all of it.  Of course, Vera knew Martinez and her son were not Hispanic; like any competent high school official, Vera knew her students and their parents.  This is just Vera’s and Foster’s stinking racism.

Their racism is doubly damaging: not only does it deny others a fair shot—they’re explicitly held back in this case solely on the basis of their race—or perceived race—it tells the favored minority—Hispanics in the present case—that they’re inherently inferior, with no hope of success without such precious coddling.

If the district officials had any integrity, they would fire Foster and Vera for cause.

Sovereign Choices

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Holger Schmieding, London’s Berenberg Bank Chief Economist, is dismayed that the UK might quit the EU.  The subtitle of his op-ed piece in the WSJ fully sums up his concern:

Rules from Brussels can border on the absurd, but what hurts the UK most are the policies its own politicians enact.

It also demonstrates how badly he misses the point of the movement to leave the EU.  It’s certainly true that Parliament is fully capable of enacting, and it often does enact, utterly foolish policies.  But at least they’d be sovereignly done, and not forced on them by a remote, extra-national quasi-government.

The Bias of Professors

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One example is from the faculty of George Mason University.

George Mason University’s faculty governing body on Wednesday called on its administration to suspend the naming of the law school after Justice Antonin Scalia.

By a vote of 25-12, the university’s faculty approved a resolution asking for an indefinite delay of the renaming.

Why the delay?  First comes the obfuscation:

The faculty resolution questions how the money was being used and expressed concern that the donation could generate negative publicity and that the donors could wield too much influence over the law school’s mission.

They argue in all seriousness that this has something to do with the new name of George Mason’s Antonin Scalia School of Law.  Apparently the freshman logic classes some of the professors pretend to teach aren’t safe spaces for those same professors.

The heart of the matter had been addressed earlier.

Last week the faculty senate passed another resolution that called the name change “problematic” and characterized Justice Scalia as intolerant to gays and minorities.

This is a cynical distortion of Scalia’s views.  Scalia was a textualist who insisted—and whose oath of office, the same oath that “living Constitutionalists” like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took, bound him to that—that the Constitution and the laws enacted by Congress and the President actually meant what their texts said.  This required Scalia, and it should have required the Ginsburgs on the Court, to rule on what the laws said, not on what the Justices might have wanted the laws to say.

But that’s anathema to current professors, who insist that the law should say what the judge wants it to say, consistent with that judge’s (especially a Liberal judge’s) personal social agenda and sense of justice.

Never mind that it’s the citizens of the United States whose social agenda is the only legitimate agenda, never mind that justice is what the citizens of the United States say it is, through our elected representatives.  For these Liberals, we citizens don’t know what we’re doing, and we need to be overruled by our Know Betters.  Like professors.

Narcissism and Scientism

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These are two different concepts, but I’m not convinced they’re unrelated.

First is a Wall Street Journal Notable & Quotable:

[The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5] . . . criteria for narcissistic personality disorder include these features:

Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
Exaggerating your achievements and talents
Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate…
Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner

And

You may have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation.  To feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make yourself appear superior.

Second is another Notable & Quotable:

Now…science and especially science bureaucracy is a career, and one amenable to social climbing.  Careers attract careerists, in [Paul] Feyerabend’s words: “devoid of ideas, full of fear, intent on producing some paltry result so that they can add to the flood of inane papers that now constitutes ‘scientific progress’ in many areas.”

And

If science was unprepared for the influx of careerists, it was even less prepared for the blossoming of the Cult of Science.  The Cult is related to the phenomenon described as “scientism;” both have a tendency to treat the body of scientific knowledge as a holy book or an a-religious revelation that offers simple and decisive resolutions to deep questions.  But it adds to this a pinch of glib frivolity and a dash of unembarrassed ignorance.

Hmm….