Moral Bankruptcy of Some University Managers

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

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.

A Modest Proposal

The Wall Street Journal editors (I seem to have been picking on them lately…) have a modest proposal regarding student debt and forgiveness.

Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program in 2007. It lets borrowers who work for government or tax-exempt organizations get unpaid debt forgiven after 10 years of payments. Its supposed goal was to help government and nonprofit employers compete with private businesses that can pay more.

The editors correctly note that in the years since its inception, the program has become badly abused and used to reward[] a politically favored group of workers and can make it harder for private businesses to compete. Based on that, the editors recommend the Republican-majority houses of Congress repeal the program altogether.

They’re correct in that, but I’d go a ways farther. Congress should make student loan relief available through our existing bankruptcy laws. Additionally (critically additionally), Congress should take the Federal government out of the student loan business altogether: no more Federal government student loans and no more Federal government guarantees of other lenders’ student loans.

And one more step: require colleges (including junior and community colleges) and universities and trade schools to publish the regionally average salaries and wages for each major the school offers or each trade certification program the trade school offers at the five-years employed mark. Associated with that, those schools should be required to be the ones extending the student loans or be either co-signers or guarantors of other lenders’ loans to their students.

Without the ability to hide behind Other People’s Money in the form of purely third party or Government loans, the abuses likely would screech to a halt.

Why Would They Want To?

The lede says it all, even if the article is a bit dated now.

The leader of Senate Democrats moved to take the threat of a government shutdown off the table, following a grueling intraparty fight in which lawmakers struggled with how best to resist President Trump’s fast-paced efforts to slim down federal agencies.

Why would the Progressive-Democratic Party object to slimming Federal agencies and making them more efficient?

Oh, wait—this is the Party that insists Government knows better than us poor, benighted and ignorant average Americans, and that the way to make Government more efficient is to grow it in both financial and physical size and give it more control over our lives.

Couple Thoughts re Newsom and Progressive-Democrats

California’s Progressive-Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom, is looking to improve his standing among Conservatives. He’s even taken to hosting right-leaning and extreme-right guests (vis., Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, respectively) on his new podcast (which strikes me as nothing more than an attempt to manage his image).

As Newsom prepared to launch his new podcast, the governor told his team one of the themes he wanted to explore was how Republicans have been able to beat Democrats on messaging and win the White House.

What is the Progressive-Democratic Party doing, that it loses elections lately, and what must Party do to win. That seems to be Newsom’s thrust.

Then there’s this:

[Progressive-]Democrats are struggling to unite around a strategy to take on Trump and the GOP, which has complete control of power in Washington.

What is Party doing, that it loses elections to Trump and Trump supporters, and what must Party do to regain power in Washington.

Notice the common theme here. Newsom and Party, separately and together, are not the least bit interested in what’s good for our nation; neither is the least bit interested in looking to us average Americans and finding ways to satisfy our needs and wants.

Party—Newsom serves for the moment as Party’s canonical example of this theme—are interested only in its members holding high office and in holding personal political power.