RUTHFULLY YOURS

Harvard’s Catharine MacKinnon correctly noted the Israel Defense Forces’ ethics. But when a colleague accused her of praising the Jewish state, the celebrated scholar went on the attack.

Before Kendall Myers was sentenced to life imprisonment for betraying secrets to Cuba, he was an avid proselytizer for the London Review of Books. As recounted in Toby Harnden’s 2009 Washingtonian profile, the former State Department analyst (who had spent 30 years spying for the Castro regime) would pass copies of the Review to his neighbor in the tony D.C. Westchester building along with the endorsement that the magazine was “much better on Palestine” than its American inspiration, the New York Review of Books. That publication, known for printing Tony Judt’s call for a binational Palestinian state and Peter Beinart’s jeremiads against the “American Jewish establishment,” was, Myers sniffed, “too Israeli.”

Myers has thankfully not been heard from, on politics or the relative merits of book reviews, since his sentencing nearly a decade ago. (“I see no sense of remorse,” the federal judge told Myers and his wife, who assisted his espionage, at the couple’s sentencing. “You were proud of what you did.”) But I was reminded of Myers’s recommendation when reading the letters section of the current London Review. There, the feminist American legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon can be found angrily responding to a review of her most recent book, Butterfly Politics. The reviewer, Lorna Finlayson of the University of Essex, had taken exception to MacKinnon’s 2008 acceptance of an honorary doctorate from Hebrew University in defiance of the academic Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement against Israel. (Moreover, “one of the people honored alongside her was Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher and critic of ‘Islamic extremism.’”) Adding insult to injury, MacKinnon returned to the Zionist entity in 2014, where she “delivered a speech at the Kiryat Ono Academic College in which she praised the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) as ‘the only army in the world that does not rape the women of its occupied people.’” Citing the Israeli historian Benny Morris’ work on the 1948 War of Independence and a 27-year-old Amnesty International report, Finlayson disputes that this is in fact the case.

Finlayson also takes issue with what she calls MacKinnon’s “broadly pro-American narrative when it comes to global politics.” MacKinnon, a critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and hardly a liberal interventionist, is guilty of this charge because she draws a parallel between terrorism and misogynist violence, seeing both rooted in a “masculine ideology.” This is revealing of a “pro-American narrative,” Finlayson argues, because, while women have done nothing to deserve the violence of a patriarchal society, the same can hardly be said of the terrorism directed at America and other Western imperialist states, responsible for the “destruction of entire Middle Eastern societies and their ways of life.”

In most academic circles, especially the ones inhabited by Catharine MacKinnon and Laura Finlayson, the accusation that one is acting as a useful idiot for George W. Bush is a scarlet letter, as depraved as liking child pornography or torturing animals. But the allegation that she is a handmaiden of American imperialism is not what prompted MacKinnon to write a letter to the editor. No, it was the fear that readers of the London Review of Books might mistake her for having even the slightest sympathy for the Jewish State which stirred the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at Michigan Law and James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School to action.

As you file your taxes, try not to think too hard about the revelation that your hard-earned money is helping someone achieve their dream of becoming a clown. Because, apparently becoming a clown requires going to college, and going to college requires taxpayers footing the bill. Next time you’re at the circus, demand a “thank you” from a clown.

CNS News provides more information about the bad news regarding the gross misuse of our taxes: “The federal government is funding a clown school located in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco-based congressional district that has classes and workshops on ‘Precision Idiocy’ and how to act like a ‘Buffoon,'” CNS wrote. “The school, which is called the ‘Clown Conservatory’ and is part of the nonprofit Circus Center, received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that runs from June 2017 through May 2018.” Clown Conservatory claims to be “the United States’ only professional training program for clowns and physical comedians.”

The Clown Conservatory is split into two sessions over 24 weeks. Tuition is $6,000. While much cheaper than many colleges, I’m not sure if the return on investment is quite the same.

Although, I may not be treating the Clown Conservatory fairly. As my editor pointed out, I may just be jealous. It’s true that I have taken mime classes and had to pay for them out of my pocket; I received no federal financial aid to help pay for my mime classes. So, in the issue of full disclosure, I may simply be bitter that I’m now having to pay for other people’s mime classes via my tax dollars. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Reality television personality Rick Harrison of the History Channel’s “Pawn Stars” lamented that too many high school and college students in America believe “capitalism is bad” and that the federal government can afford to “pay for everything.”

“Kids come out of high school today, they think corporations are bad. They think capitalism is bad. The No. 1 thing in the world that has brought people out of poverty is capitalism,” Harrison said at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside D.C. on Friday.

“We have a generation of young people who think the government can just pay for everything and they have no understanding of how government works and … who we are, why we are and why this country has become such a great country,” he added. “You have kids in college who really think this is a bad country – trust me, I’ve been to India, this is a great country.”

Harrison, co-owner of the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, told the audience that he would not have been able to overcome his battle with childhood epilepsy and succeed in any other country.

“I had to drop out of high school because I was so sick and I became very, very wealthy because I tried really hard. I failed a lot of times, but eventually I got it. There’s no other country in the world, I believe, I could have done that in. So this is a great country,” he said. “When they are argue that this country is terrible, ask them: What country do you think is so great then? Because you’re never going to be able to find a country like this. I don’t know how else to put it.”

In Mitch Albom’s magical book titled The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, “narrated by the voice of Music itself,” there is a singular line that describes what is sorely lacking in our world today. Many people speak of the cultural changes – perhaps even the cultural rot – demoralizing far too many Americans. Instead, we need, as Albom asserts, an understanding that “the secret is not to make your music louder but to make the world quieter.” Given the cacophony of brutal words spewed online via Twitter or by so many in show business and politics, we need a return to quiet introspection. It is imperative that we approach subjects with reason and logic rather than capitulate to the empty barrels that make the most noise.

In the world of education, it is long overdue to expect – in fact, demand – not perfection, but surely excellence. The soft bigotry of low expectations is producing a crop of young people who are functionally illiterate, historically ignorant, and frighteningly incoherent. For starters, the teaching of phonics must begin in kindergarten. I have college students who cannot sound out words or names because they were never taught how to use phonics. Moreover, students do not know what an anthology is because books are now replaced with readings on the internet. They have no clue about biblical or mythological allusions. There is a constant level of superficiality despite the plethora of information available to them. Few have learned the skills of separating the wheat from the chaff.

The so-called adults in the room are abdicating their responsibilities to mold and lead young people to make in-depth and thoughtful decisions. Instead, the focus is on who can scream the loudest and who can virtually blackmail higher authority. Facts are forsaken while censoring ideas is accepted, even applauded. This is not a good silence.

We need to return to ideas and language that evoke the sublime, not the gutter talk that pollutes so much conversation these days. We need to instill a return to the days of the “magic words” such as “please” and “thank you.” I cringe every time a person says “no problem” when I say “thank you.” It implies that being polite is a hardship in the first place.

Dizzy Gillespie once said, “It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.” In fact, “[s]ilence enhances music” just as pauses offer think time. But there are few rests in life anymore. It is a constant din.

Who knew that removing the federal government from debates over school bathroom policies would be considered an assault on LGBT rights? That’s the argument activists made last week when the Department of Education (DOE) announced that it would begin enforcing Title IX the way the federal government always had, up until the second term of the Obama administration. That’s when the Obama DOE announced that the word “sex” now meant “gender identity” — and ordered schools to open up their bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and dorms accordingly.

It’s understandable that many ordinary Americans recoiled at this transgender mandate. Most Americans — including those who identify as transgender — aren’t activists and want to find ways to peacefully coexist. Most can understand why a man who identifies as a woman doesn’t want to be forced into the men’s room but also understand why women don’t want a man in the ladies’ room. These concerns are even more heightened when dealing with students.

New transgender policies raise five distinct areas of concern — privacy, safety, equality, liberty, and ideology — and the Trump administration is right to reject the radical Obama policies in favor of letting local officials work to find reasonable compromises.

“What made the event so memorable was how uneventful it was. This is what counts as a triumph on an American campus today. ”

Waiting to enter the university building that would house Thursday evening’s debate, I encountered a security guard, ruddy and robust. From a private firm, he looked unsure of his role on a college campus. “Expecting trouble?” I asked. He was noncommittal but gave off a whiff of apprehension. “Things could get out of hand,” he said. “A white supremacist’s coming to speak.”

The lecturer to whom he referred so damningly—and inaccurately—was Charles Murray, a libertarian social scientist who’s had more controversy thrust upon him than almost any other American public intellectual. Critics say that the disputation that shrouds Mr. Murray is entirely deserved, and many regard him in precisely the terms the unknowing guard had used.

This is largely on account of a book Mr. Murray co-wrote in 1994, “The Bell Curve.” Sections of it have been brandished as proving Mr. Murray believes that differences in IQ among individuals are attributable to race. Ergo, he’s a toxic racist. Mr. Murray’s lecture at Middlebury College last year was disrupted violently, sending his faculty escort to the hospital. This evening, Stanford took no chances.

Two hundred yards away, at a picturesque spot called History Corner, was a group of student protesters who didn’t want Mr. Murray on campus. “Hey hey, ho ho, Charles Murray’s got to go,” they chanted. Their gusto was impressive, though their lack of originality left me feeling shortchanged. Was that the best they could do with their world-class education? The drabness of their prosody was lifted somewhat by a spirited young rapper, although her punch line, “F— Steve Bannon, f— the Western canon,” seemed misdirected.

Mr. Murray had been invited by Stanford as part of a new university initiative “to help promote discussion of a diversity of perspectives” on campus. He was to debate Francis Fukuyama, perhaps America’s best-known political scientist, on the subject of “Inequality and Populism.” In the weeks preceding the event, argument had raged among students, and some faculty, about the merits of inviting Mr. Murray. Objections to his presence came at a furious pace and fell into two categories.

The abstract of a paper by Jacob S. Bennett published in the scholarly journal Whiteness and Education, Feb. 6:
IT IS HARD TO THINK THAT THIS IS REAL AND NOT A PARODY…..RSK
The goal of this interpretive study was to further research in the field of Whiteness studies by empirically analysing how a racially conscious white male teacher interacts with his minoritised and White students. The teacher’s classroom was examined using Critical Race and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Two empirical assertions were developed based on the continual search for disconfirming evidence within interview and observational data. Results show the teacher participant created a learning environment in which his black minoritised students felt comfortable, trusted, and respected.

It started innocently enough, with a poster advertising a Women In Math club event at BYU that featured “data science, topology, number theory and dynamical systems.” It had photographs of the people who would speak at the event.

But because those speakers are men, it was attacked:

The College Fix reports that the school apologized for the optics, which were accidental, but it wasn’t enough for some people:

When the university’s math department apologized for any offense taken Wednesday morning, while saying they were amused by the optics of the poster, that just led to more accusations of being insensitive to women or marginalizing them somehow.

Well, the optics were amusing. You see, while some were tweeting out things like this:
Naty Clementi @ncclementi
Replying to @stephdriggs
The might have change the poster but it seems that there will be 4 dudes talking anyways. This is the definition of mansplanning in a poster…
Dr. Batman @BackFromTen
Replying to @stephdriggs
Yeah, I think the issue here is that a group of men is going to give some sort of workshop to women about women… mathematically mansplaining. Bring in some outside female mathematicians if you don’t have any.

Well, the poster was designed by Bryn Balls-Barker, a research assistant at Brigham Young University. A woman.

Whoops.

Unfortunately, this is the world we live in today. People see four dudes speaking to a women’s math club, and automatically are offended. It couldn’t possibly be anything but nefarious. They want to get offended.

The truth is, nothing happened. There was no “mathematical mansplaining” taking place. Balls-Barker argued: “A lot of my success in statistics has come from networking, which has included men, and I think it was a good idea to try to include more voices in your department in the club.” In other words, she invited the male speakers to provide networking opportunities for the women. CONTINUE AT SITE

A writing guide at Purdue University advises students to avoid words with “man” in them — such as “mailman” and “mankind” — in order to write “in a non-sexist, non-biased way.”

“Although MAN in its original sense carried the dual meaning of adult human and adult male, its meaning has come to be so closely identified with adult male that the generic use of MAN and other words with masculine markers should be avoided,” the guide states.

“Writing in a non-sexist, non-biased way is both ethically sound and effective,” it advises. “Non-sexist writing is necessary for most audiences; if you write in a sexist manner and alienate much of your audience from your discussion, your writing will be much less effective.”

According to the guide, “mankind” should be replaced with words such as “humanity,” “people,” and “human beings,” and “mailman” should be replaced with “mail carrier.” One of the other words it cautions against is “man-made,” suggesting that students use instead the word “synthetic,” “manufactured,” or “machine-made.”

I’m all for gender equality, but I have to say that this seems a bit overblown. I’m a woman (not to brag), and I can tell you that there is approximately a zero percent chance that seeing a word like “mankind” in someone’s work would “alienate” me as the guide suggests. It’s just not that serious, and I’m just not that sensitive.