Posted on by rjonakait

Do They Really Want Viewpoint Diversity?

The Trump administration is pressuring Harvard University to have greater “viewpoint diversity.” The Trumpistas have not defined the term nor is it self-evident. This is an administration that has sought to stop the consideration of certain topics in schools and elsewhere. We do know that they consider discussions of institutional racism and certain gender issues to be verboten in classrooms. Some people cannot enter the country if they have criticized Israel. Lawful residents may get deported if they speak out on behalf of Palestinians. The administration, apart from Harvard, is trying to prevent viewpoints from being heard, not expanding the diversity of them.

Many reports indicate that Harvard has few faculty members who identify as conservative. The inference from the right is that Harvard students are being indoctrinated with liberal thinking and that such indoctrination must change. If there is indoctrination, however, it is in a narrow curricular space. In many courses the political affiliation of the instructor does not matter. The content of math, physics, astrophysics, chemistry, molecular biology, and many other subjects will not be affected by whether the professor is conservative or liberal.

Of course, the political perspective of professors might intrude on certain subjects (political science, economics, etc.), but that does not mean that students are affected by those professorial views. I have not seen, but would like to, a good study of how student political thinking changes during one’s years at Harvard. This study would require the collection of similar data from other colleges to see if any shifts might be the result of Harvard’s education or is simply the normal maturation process that students go through everywhere. Of course, we already know that the supposed liberal indoctrination — if it is, indeed, there — does not always work. Many famous, adamant conservatives have gone to Harvard, including Ted Cruz, Steve Bannon, and Ron DeSantis. If they have escaped the liberal indoctrination and have learned to “think for themselves,” surely other Harvard students can do and have done the same.

A thought experiment: How effective is the so-called “indoctrination” by Harvard? If you personally know any Harvard graduates, how many are in positions that seek to radicalize the country? How many are commie-pinkos? As far as I can tell, Harvard has not been very successful in turning out cadres of radicals. The predominant choice for a starting job for Harvard undergrads is finance. They want to make money, not destroy the country. Something similar is the choice of business, medical, and law school graduates. This, perhaps, is not necessarily good for the country, but not in the way that the Trump administration fears.

And anyway, why should the Trump administration be able to dictate viewpoint diversity at Harvard or any other university? The Trump acolytes have not made that clear, but apparently it is because the federal government gives money to Harvard for research and programs, and they think that Harvard should toe the conservative line if they are to get those funds. That is not a sufficient reason. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which many conservatives opposed), specifically forbids discrimination by programs and activities that receive federal funds on the basis of race, color, or national origin. (It does not prohibit religious discrimination, but antisemitism has been seen as a form of discrimination on the basis of national origin. That is a story for another day.) However, that Civil Rights provision does not insist on “viewpoint diversity.”

If viewpoint diversity is required of an organization that gets money from the federal taxpayers. shouldn’t that mean that an activity or program that gets all of its money from us taxpayers should have to have viewpoint diversity, too? What entities get all  their funds from the taxpayers? Answer: any division of the federal government. If Harvard is required to have viewpoint diversity, surely the same should be required of the federal government Trump has tried to appoint right wing judges. That should end if his position on viewpoint diversity at Harvard is right. State Department appointments should be viewpoint diverse as should those in the Justice Department. And so on throughout the federal government. Perhaps the Trumpistas should be concerned about winning the day at Harvard. On the other hand, they have never been famous for philosophical consistency.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I frequent a library that has moved into a new building in my neighborhood. It is in fact one of the oldest lending libraries in New York City. Although it has modern novels (the library is now called The Center for Fiction and does not house non-fiction), I become intrigued by older books when I browse the open stacks. Often there will be a series by an author whom I have never heard of, and I wonder whether I should have. Today while looking for a classic mystery, The Detective by Roderick Thorp, I saw eight or ten shelved books that immediately struck me as from another era. The author listed on their spines, or in this case I perhaps should say authoress, was Mrs. Belloc Lowndes. I never heard of her. My three minutes of internet research after I got home revealed that her younger brother was Hilaire Belloc, whose name I had seen before but is another person I have never read. She was born in London in 1868 and died in 1947. During those 79 years, she published more than forty novels and also biographies, memoirs, and plays. Most of the novels were mysteries, which, according to one source, are “well-plotted.” Several of her books were made into movies including her most popular book, published in 1912, The Lodger, based on Jack the Ripper. That book was also made into an opera after she died. Has anyone read a book by this author? Should I? If I go back to the library to take out one of the three dozen of her books it has, I will have to remember the library’s shelving system. Belloc was not the first name of the author. She wrote as Mrs. Marie Belloc Lowndes. Doesn’t that mean that the book should be shelved in the B’s?  I did happen on a book by Mario Vargas Llosa, and it was in the V’s. But Belloc Lowndes’s books were placed in the L’s.

Ron DeSantis says he wants the United States to be like Florida. He doesn’t mention that Florida’s homicide rate is higher than New York City’s.

The Wisconsin woman with a second home in Yucatan volunteered at a Mexican library, which functioned as a daycare center after the grade school finished its day. Suzette, laden with pictures of Whitefish Bay in January, was off to explain snow to the kids. I wondered how that could be done with those who had never experienced any temperature below forty-seven degrees.

Before packing for a trip, I try on pants and shorts I plan to bring. I have learned that the closet where I store them often shrinks them. However, on my last trip I did not try on my swimming trunks before leaving. I found that the back of the dresser where they had been pushed had sprung them out.

The spouse, to my amazement, brought shoes she had not broken in on our recent trip. Soon we were all looking without success for corn pads for her sore toes. The spouse decided there were none in Yucatan because the locals all wore flip flops, which she cannot wear.

A good thing about alligators: Sometimes, but not often enough, they eat little, yapping dogs.

Have you ever wondered how much dogs contribute to pollution, food shortages, and global warming? They do, of course.

I hope that you have someone in your life who makes you feel like sunshine on a cloudy day.

Posted on by rjonakait

Denying Arizona

Here an election denier, there an election denier, everywhere an election denier. It does not scan well, but that’s the way it is. The 2020 election was stolen or unconstitutional, so the claims go. We hear about suitcases in Georgia, ballot dumps in Detroit, the Pennsylvania governor illegally changing the election rules, forbidden ballot harvesting everywhere. Time and again, these cries have been shown to be nonsense, but they keep getting repeated. (Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently issued an order changing some election rules in counties hit by hurricane Ian, an understandable action but similar to the one taken by the Pennsylvania governor in response to the pandemic and difficulties with mail deliveries. I have yet to see conservatives railing that DeSantis’s order is unconstitutional and will make the upcoming Florida election illegal.)

If election deniers are asked why they believe what they say they do, many repeat the refuted claims. As Kevin Young says in Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News: “Repeating a lie in two different places counts as verification.”

However, the important question to ask election deniers is not why they assert fraud in 2020, but instead to ask them what information would convince them that their belief is false or at least make them hesitant about their assertions. And, as Arizona indicates, there is no such information that would convince them. There were several Arizona election audits. One that chose random ballots confirmed the official outcome. Another audit of all the ballots again confirmed the official outcome. But these did not change minds. They were done by government officials, and so they must have been part of some giant conspiracy. Therefore, a partisan audit of the most Democratic part of the state was done. This canvass, instead of finding that Trump had the election stolen from him, found that Biden got a few more votes than were officially recorded. You might think that would have ended the claims of Arizona election deniers, but you would have been thinking rationally with common sense. Instead, the Republican nominee for governor, Kari Lake, and others running for various Arizona offices, continue as election deniers. I sometimes wonder if election deniers would change their minds even if Jesus descended to state that Biden got the most votes, but I doubt it. (Author Eddy Harris once described a conversation with a white woman in Mississippi whose mother belonged to a whites-only church in the 1960s. The older woman was asked whether Jesus would have allowed African Americans to worship in his church. “Of course he would have,” she said, “but Jesus would have been wrong.”) The head-in-the-sand stance of election deniers is not just simple ignorance. As Eric Hoffer said, “Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.” (I don’t think many election deniers are heavily invested in African proverbs, but a Nigerian one said, “Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.”)

Some deniers do try to shift the topic and claim that their concern is that voters don’t have confidence in election outcomes, and it is important for the country to have faith in the balloting. This “concern,” of course, places us in a land of circular reasoning. Present and former government officials, media hotshots, and other notable people promote the lie of a stolen election and then act aghast that people who listen to them distrust our election system. (I have wondered how the MyPillow guy became an important person when he seems by looks and reasoning as if he should only be a minor joke in a Pixar feature. French Proverb: “Ignorance and incuriosity are two very soft pillows.”)

So how do we restore faith in our elections? Of course, the right answer is for all those who have created the problem to admit that the 2020 election was secure, but they have not found that path to such righteousness. Instead, their answer for people to feel better about elections is to make it harder for some people to vote. This, at least, makes a bit of sense. You might believe that the fewer who can vote, the less chance of fraud. If we can rig it so that I am the only voter, I assure all that there will be absolutely no fraud in the elections. Democracy might suffer, but who cares?

When there is no information that will change your mind, you live ignorantly. A philosopher said: “The recipe for perpetual ignorance is to be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.” Ignorance has always been an unfortunate part of America. If you can’t cite examples, you haven’t been paying attention. Maybe America’s greatness has depended on ignorance, or at least that is what election deniers seem to believe. Their unspoken slogan really should be Make America Ignorant (Once) Again. MAIA. That could have a nice ring to it and could become a popular name for this generation of Arizona baby girls, and surely so named, their parents should be completely confident that their children will absolutely, positively never be able to be groomed for anything on the LGBTQ spectrum. On the other hand, I counsel the election-denying parents from naming their sons MAGA, as tempting as that must be, unless they want their children to avoid the military and affront God by breaking that commandment on adultery.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

The baseball game was on a streaming service. When I muted the sound to read, closed captioning came on. I assume that the captions were not entirely accurate, or the commentary was unusual. One time when I looked up from my book, I found out that the Yankees were playing the “Baltimore Oreos” and another time a player struck out with a “swing animist.

The main point to watching the Yankees right now is Aaron Judge. Each time he comes to bat, I wonder what his birth mother is thinking.

I don’t know the couple, but from public presentations they look happy. There are pictures of them looking tenderly and smiling at each other and laughing together. No one seems to doubt their marital devotion, and perhaps more wives could learn from this marriage. Wives should never, ever, ever burden their husbands with the stuff that is truly important to them. Keep it to yourself and don’t share. And husbands—and I suspect this will be easier for many of us—should never, ever pry into what our wives consider important. Apparently, this has worked for Ginni and Clarence Thomas.

Whenever there is an evacuation order because of a predicted natural disaster, some people don’t leave. Who are they? Are they just a random collection of the affected people? Or do they tend to share certain demographic characteristics? If so, what are they? And is more effort and money spent helping these people on average after the event compared to those who evacuated? Do we ever try to collect that difference from them?

Hurricane Ian should produce self-reflection, but I doubt Ron DeSantis does much of that. He has been quite strong in stating that the current federal administration from the President on down comprise incompetent socialists. Even so, the man came hat in hand–close to groveling–asking for federal assistance for Florida. He was met with words of graciousness: This is America, and this is what Americans do: help each other. Did DeSantis blush? I didn’t see it, did you? He should have. A decade ago when new to Congress he voted against aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy. He had “principled reasons,” which few ever thought were sincere. It was a political stunt to appeal to supporters who were happy to stick it to the liberal Northeast. Those “principled reasons” are not mentioned by DeSantis now as he begs for federal aid. The virtue of DeSantis is flexible, as flexible as . . . . What simile do you have? I’ll try one. His virtue is as flexible as that of Brett Favre’s.

Brett Favre might have been the poster child for the Mississippi scandal, but clearly there is corruption there that goes beyond one ex-football player. Case in point is the shocking water problem in Jackson, which gets reported as a problem separate from the use of welfare money for volleyball courts. But they are both examples of the same broken system that is Mississippi. There are reasons why it is so poor. I have a car old enough to have an outmoded sound system with a CD player. My collection of discs has been sitting untouched on shelves for years, and I thought I would listen to them again while driving. I grabbed four or five, and by happenstance found myself listening to Nina Simone singing her famous song from years ago, Mississippi goddam. I recommend it.

I was told this was a state motto of Alabama: Thank God for Mississippi.

Brett Favre has said that he thought that he had suffered three concussions in his pro football career, which ended in 2010. He counted three because he had been knocked unconscious three times. (Gosh. How many times have you been rendered unconscious by your work?) Since then, he has learned more about concussions, and has realized that every time he saw stars or heard ringing in his ears, he probably had a concussion. By those standards, he had “thousands” of concussions. He has talked, quite touchingly, about not remembering part of the childhood of his oldest daughter and that he does not remember at all her playing soccer. (Hence his eagerness to build a volleyball court in her honor?) Perhaps these are extenuating circumstances for Favre (well, no, they’re not), but I doubt that Ron DeSantis has similar extenuating circumstances for his flexible virtues. Instead, he is like a pocket left after floodwaters recede, scum.