Be Careful What You Wish For on Social Programs
Nathan Glazer, the last of a group of famous neocon social scientists, died at the age of 95 on January 19 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. (He resisted the label “neocon.”) Glazer consistently warned that vast government plans to improve the lives of the poor often come to grief or create new problems of their own. “The evaluations of the specifics of the first ten years after the launching of (the War on Poverty) confirm that nothing worked and in particular, nothing in education worked.” He concluded that the family was the key institution to positive social change and that rights are inherent in individuals, not groups. The article here by Howard Husock of the Manhattan Institute ran in 2011 when President Obama planned an extension of the War on Poverty.
You, Too, Can Turn in Your Classmate
The campus police of the University of Illinois have issued calls for students to report “acts of intolerance” to the schools Bias Assessment and Response Team. It said, “acts of intolerance create an unsafe and unwelcoming environment for campus community members. Please let us know if you feel unsafe.” According to BART, bias is defined as “actions or expressions that are motivated at least in part by prejudice against or hostility toward a person or group because of that person or group’s perceived age, disability, status, ethnicity, gender, identity-expression, national origin, race, religion/ spirituality, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, etc.” Those reported to BART may be required to participate in mediation or other educational conservations.
More Evidence of Professorial Political Bias
University of North Carolina business professor Michael Jacobs polled 40 Republican students at his school and found that all but two believed they would be penalized for not expressing the professor's politics in a test answer. The professor claimed that faculty should pledge to respect ideological diversity and that chancellors who are too afraid to promote tolerance for ideological diversity should be fired. “One of my top MBA students, who I would categorize as moderate, recently told me that she will no longer participate in class discussions that involve social or political issues for fear of being branded by the ‘progressive police,’” the professor said. Read the story at Campus Reform.
More Risible News From Yale
As you recall, the campus exploded in outrage in 2015 when Prof. Erika Christakis challenged a Yale diktat warning students not to wear offensive costumes for Halloween. (“If you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away,” she wrote in a campus-wide email. Her husband Prof. Nicholas Christakis, threatened by a group of offended students, quit as master of Silliman House after getting zero backing from Yale. In a review of The Coddling of the American Mind in the American Interest, writer Aaron Sibarium says Christakis' successor at Silliman, psychology professor Laurie Santos, has a program for happiness that includes this advice:
- Avoid binding attachments and obligations; these will stress you out and make you sad.
- Focus on cultivating your own mind and mental habits so that you can be happy regardless of your external conditions, a self-reliant ray of sunshine.
- Prioritize instrumental knowledge that helps to achieve your goals; in particular, learn how to manipulate others to your advantage.
Columbia’s Comedy of Errors
A comedy act by a former member of Saturday Night Live was shut down in mid-performance at Columbia University Friday night because students felt the humor was racist and anti-gay and made them feel unsafe. Nimesh Patel was performing for the campus Asian American Alliance’s charity event. One joke referred to being black and gay as a double vulnerability. So, a complaining student wrote in the Columbia Spectator, “If you’re black and gay, you don’t need a straight South Asian guy to point out that your life is hard because you’re black and gay.” You can read more at Reason.com.
The moral weakness within the hierarchy and priesthood is THE reason I left the catholic church. Not just me, also my mother, 2 brothers, 2 sisters and 27 of our children. Not a church of moral fortitude as is evident by this article.
You guys disappoint me. You should be on God’s side instead of the devils side. Also, don’t you know that our Constitution supports freedom of speech, which obviously your university does not. You have been seduced by far left philosophy which is against God and Country.
I am embarrassed for my alma mater. They have rally gone off track
Thank you for making a broader audience aware of this incredible set of “events”. Not being the kind of “questioning Catholic” they seem to wish to serve, I plan to be very selective as to which receive any financial support directly, from my parish or our diocese. Perhaps they can find more palatable supporters on the far Left. Perhaps the LGBT advocate community they favor will enroll and/or donate enough to keep them afloat.
Catholic colleges seem to be particularly hostile. When was the last time you saw a nun that wasn’t a leftie ?
“philosophy instructor Cheryl Abbate listed several possible topics of discussion, but said one of them –gay marriage—could not be addressed because any opposition argument would offend homosexual students, and besides society has already agreed that gays can marry.”
Let’s play find and replace.
In 1860, “philosophy instructor Cheryl Abbate listed several possible topics of discussion, but said one of them –slavery—could not be addressed because any opposition argument would offend slave owning students, and besides the Supreme Court has already stated in the Dred Scott case that giving African Americans standing in American courts, would result in giving ” to persons of the negro race, …the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, …to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased …the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went” which of course would be disastrous.
There’s double irony here — flipping the argument around and also the substance of the decision in Scott vs Sanford was predicated in part on preventing political speech and freedom of association
So Catholic doctrine is now excluded from discussion at a Catholic university. And instructors who dare to say so are rendered persona non grata for it.
I sense that the typical American “Catholic institution” is no longer hospitable toward Catholics or Catholicism…and I wonder to what extent that effect will overtake Catholic parishes nationwide.
Is there some kind of fund or crowdsource to help sue the school’s little panties off?
Even the Devil deserves an Advocate.
Marquette is courageous compared to Loyola (Chicago)