It probably no longer comes as a surprise to most graduates of Yale to receive an email letter from President Levin describing the school's latest encounter with the politically correct forces including recently 16 Yale students and recent graduates and the federal government's Civil Rights office. Formal speech codes have been in place on many college campuses for a number of years and have been written about and vigorously fought by David Horowitz's FRONT PAGE Magazine also for years. Horowitz travels to campuses all over the country trying to convince students and school administrations that these codes are antithetical to the mission of liberal education, free speech, and the democratic way of life.
In this WSJ article, Peter Berkowitz, a Yale College and Law School graduate, makes many of these same points. The bottom line argument of both Berkowitz and Horrowitz is that limiting free speech in any way by schools or the federal government, other than with "suasion, example, and discussion"** is a dangerous and slippery slope leading inevitably to thought control and a loss of freedom. What muddies the water at Yale, and other schools, is the federal purse strings and the threat that if the government endorsed and sanctioned correct language and speech is not observed, the subsidy spigot will be turned off. In Yale's case that amounts to 500 million dollars directed largely to the school of medicine for research. The prospect of losing these dollars results in the servile email from Levin announcing university-sponsored study groups and the like to get at the bottom of the complaints registered with the Civil rights Office by the 16 graduate and undergraduate female students. It grates to think that the head of a leading institution of higher education could possibly value federal subsidies over freedom of expression and inquiry, the primary mission of any university. Just maybe Yale would be better off dipping into its juicy 15 billion plus endowment and funding research that way as opposed to groveling before some statist bureaucrats in the federal government who actually want to see less freedom of thought and more restrictions on free speech. One also has to wonder if those 16 students and graduates are representative products of a Yale eduction these days.
** The conclusion in 1975 of a committee appointed by the then president of Yale, Kingman Brewster to explore the conditions of free expression on the Yale campus: "If the university's overriding commitment to free expression is to be sustained, secondary social and ethical responsibilities must be left to the informal processes of suasion, example, and argument."
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Educating kids
Given the crises of funding now going on at all levels of education this particular advice from the author of the comic strip "Dilbert" strikes home. A must read for all parents of school age children.
Monday, April 11, 2011
China's looming revolution
Everyone, especially those who have visited China, is impressed by the economic activity going on in that country as well as the apparent affluence of the people in the major cities. It seems like a disconnect that this kind of development can be going on in a communist run state where party apparatchiks are in charge. One has to understand that the apparatchiks have allowed capitalism to work its magic by staying out of the way except to make sure the state credit machinery works for the benefit of entrepreneurs. What we have seen is 30 years of 10% GDP growth and the creation of mountains of wealth and more millionaires than exist in the U.S. What's missing in this equation is political freedom and all the associated values we associate with that important condition in the west. Consequently many observers believe China is one big powder keg that one day will blow sky high, as soon as people demand their rights as free citizens. This article by Guy Sorman articulates the dilemma facing the communist leadership and predicts an unhappy ending at some point in time.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Gross speaks...and acts by selling treasuries
Bill Gross, largest bond fund manager in the country, warns in this article in Wapo that the U.S. has a year or two to get its fiscal house in order before it faces the same issues as Portugal, Greece, Ireland and the other basket cases with debt they can no longer manage. Meanwhile he has sold all his treasuries because he senses inflation in the air. Whatever this guy does in the investment arena is closely watched by all other investment managers so we can be sure they are all beginning to dump treasuries and batten down the hatches.
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