A new report reveals startling rates of infection with HPV — the most common sexually transmitted disease among teens and adults in their twenties:
A new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths may help health experts finally understand why rates of mouth and throat cancer have been climbing for nearly 25 years. The evidence makes it clear that oral sex practices play a key role in transmission.
The new data, published online Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., are the first to assess the prevalence of oral HPV infection in the U.S. population. The findings indicate that the virus is not likely to spread through kissing or casual contact and that most cases of oral HPV can be traced to oral sex, which many Americans mistakenly view as a safe practice…
HPV is best known as the cause of cervical cancer, which kills 4,220 women in the U.S. each year, according to the National Cancer Institute. The virus can also cause vulvar, anal, penile and various head and neck cancers. A study published in October in the Journal of Clinical Oncology traced more than 70% of new cases of oral cancers to HPV infection, putting it ahead of tobacco use as the leading cause of such cancers.
If present trends continue, HPV will cause more cases of oral cancers than cervical cancer by 2020, according to the October study.
In a Minding the Campus essay, history professor K. C. Johnson writes about the ridiculously low standard of justice that now prevails (thanks to the Obama administration) in allegations of sexual assault on campus. Johnson is upset over both the low standard (endorsed by the supposedly civil libertarian but actually very authoritarian Obama administration) and the fact that the New York Times has once again written a story framed to make readers think that the accused (a Yale football player) must be guilty — shades of the Duke case. The Times would rightly be furious if criminal defendants were treated like this, but goes into a coma when the accused are male college students.
Last week the Washington Post ran a silly op-ed by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger regarding Fisher v. University of Texas and why the Supreme Court should not hear the case. Here is my (alas, unpublished) letter to the editor in response:
The theme of Lee C. Bollinger’s January 16 op-ed, “College diversity at risk,” is that universities are “unifying social institutions” and, therefore, should be allowed by federal courts — indeed, “encourage[d]” by federal executive-branch guidance — to consider race and ethnicity in deciding who is admitted and who isn’t. I repeat: Mr. Bollinger believes that to sort students by their skin color and what country their ancestors came from, and to treat some better and others worse based on which race/ethnicity box they check, will help “unify the country” and “overcome divisiveness” and “serve [a] unifying function” and help us “learn what we have in common” and “unify[] and elevat[e] U.S. society” and “fulfill our founding ideals of equal opportunity.”
The only possible explanation for this op-ed is the fact that Mr. Bollinger is the president of Columbia University and has spent his entire career in academia, showing that there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual can believe them.
. . . and the answers voters should be looking for:
Q. What do you think of affirmative action? Do you want to abolish affirmative action?
A. Americans should not be treated differently because of their skin color or what country their ancestors came from. Period. We should all agree on that, because we’re all Americans. No discrimination, no preferences, no quotas, no goals based on race or ethnicity.
Unfortunately, many so-called affirmative-action programs do just that, and they need to be changed. President Obama has acknowledged that there’s something wrong when well-to-do students (he gave the example of his own daughters) who apply to college are given a preference over students from poverty-stricken homes — just because the rich kids may have skin that’s a little darker than the poor kids, who happen to be white.
That’s not what affirmative action or civil rights was originally supposed to be about. Now, if a program is designed to stop discrimination, that’s great – and it should stop it for everyone. If a program reaches out beyond an old-boy network, that’s great, too — but it should reach out to everyone. If a program is designed to help poor people, or small companies, or people who are the first in their families to go to college — again, fine, but that can describe people of any color and all ethnic groups.
Diamonds in the rough come in all colors, you know.
A review of a new book about the Obama marriage describes the first couple’s well-educated and successful African-American friends. Several are physicians and a couple are wealthy businessmen. In the words of the author of the review, “They talk about how African-Americans of their class and generation feel the weight of race most acutely in relation to affirmative action, sensing that whites often think they have not truly earned their place at Harvard or Princeton or on the medical faculty.” (Emphasis added)
Imagine, they’re bosom buddies with the president of the United States, and they still have this insecurity, although the review goes on to say that “they soft-pedal such discomforts.” That’s big of them. This proves true what critics of affirmative action have said from the very beginning, that racial favoritism would have a stigmatizing effect. Such favoritism also clearly perpetuates racial self-consciousness instead of allowing it to dissipate, and thus calls forth a demand for more remedies to relieve the “weight of race.”
Politicians almost never speak the truth about indoctrination on college campuses. Showing himself an exception to that rule, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said this week that “we’ve lost our higher education . . . a long time ago.”
Leftists, he continued, use universities to brainwash students for the purpose of “holding and maintaining power” — for which reason “it’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college.”
Of the reigning orthodoxy within higher education, Santorum added:
If they taught Judeo-Christian principles in those colleges and universities, they would be stripped of every dollar. If they teach radical secular ideology, they get all the government support that they can possibly give them.
He concluded by urging his Florida audience not to support campuses which are hurting the nation:
I’ll bet you there are people in this room who give money to colleges and universities who are undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids with left-wing ideology. . . . And you continue to give to these colleges and universities. . . . Stop it.
Thank you, Santorum, for this rare breath of fresh air.
Charles Murray’s latest book is entitled “Coming Apart,”and in a Minding the Campus essay, Richard Vedder argues persuasively that our higher-education system has played a significant role in that.
In today’s feature at The College Fix, York College student Judith Ayers reports how students in Prof. Joel Rogers’s law class were asked to go the extra mile on behalf of a private political project he leads:
Rogers offered students the chance to work for an organization he has been developing for the last several years called the American Legislative Issue Campaign Exchange (ALICE). It is intended to function as a liberal counterpart to the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The goal of ALICE is “identifying, supporting and assisting 10,000 progressive local elected officials.”
In the email to his students Rogers wrote, “[The organization] would be administered as a values-based 501(c)(3) organization, also offer model legislation, and also do so in a wide variety of areas. But it would differ in at least three ways. First, its central aim would be approximately opposite to ALEC’s, viz. to help state and local officials advance shared prosperity, sustainability, and effective democratic government (aka “high road” ways of governing ourselves and the economy). Second, it would include models of local as well as state legislation, and executive orders as well as laws. Third, at least at first, it would be limited to such model bills/orders, not other supports…”
Rogers said that although grades had not yet been posted when he sent the email, he had already finished calculating the grades, and that students’ participation in ALICE did not reflect on their grades. “I wasn’t forcing them to participate. I was presenting them with an opportunity.”
In this post, AEI’s Andrew Kelly comments on what he calls Obama’s Stephen Colbert Moment — calling out colleges and universities for displeasing him with tuition increases.
Obama’s talk about getting tough with colleges over tuition is pure political blather. One reason costs keep going up, thus necessitating tuition increases, is that schools keep adding administrative positions like Chief Diversity Officer. College spending is responsible for the jobs of a great many of Obama’s most zealous supporters.
It’s easy to demagogue college costs, but this is nothing more than theatrics.
In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Jane Shaw and I argue that a free market in postsecondary education, far from leaving any students out or behind, would benefit all. The heavy federal thumb on the scales favoring accredited college-degree programs lures many students into educational options that are not very good for them, while impeding the growth of alternatives that would serve many students better.
