On illiberal higher ed, brave men in Nicaragua, ‘broken windows’ in New York, a hope-giving Palestinian, and more
When people talk about “diversity” in education, they usually mean race, sex, and all that. But here is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, talking in 2020: Diversity “means diversity of perspectives as well. I mean, people are not clones of one another, and so we gotta figure out how to take into account other perspectives and not feel so challenged by them that we’re not able to have civil discourse.”
This goes against the spirit of our age. Thank goodness.
A few weeks ago, I sat with about 15 college students, talking with them. I heard their stories — war stories. Do conservatives sometimes exaggerate political correctness on campus? The imposition of “woke” dogma on students? Sometimes, surely — but, baby, it’s real. Have no doubt.
Students would tell you more — publicly — if they weren’t so afraid. I think of a term used by Natan Sharansky: a “fear society.” Some campuses, to some degrees, are fear societies — in that people are afraid to say the wrong thing, lest they be ostracized or clobbered.
Some of the students I talked with are liberal-minded. But they are being pushed to the right, by leftist professors and administrators, bent on indoctrination, instilling fear. I said, “Is it safe to say that professors and administrators are creating right-wingers, whether they know it or not?” The students laughed and said yes, absolutely.
Over the years, I have sometimes referred to myself as a “backlash baby.” I reacted to what I found, in college. Does that make me a reactionary? Well, in my defense, there was so much to react to . . .
One of the students I recently met is not quite formed, politically. She is figuring things out. And why not? I said to her, “If you’re unsure what you think, or what to say, can you just keep quiet in class? And if you do have views, but would rather not air them, can you keep them to yourself? Can you just let them dwell within you?” Not really, she said — because they force you to confess your “privileges,” etc.
I mentioned this on Twitter — and someone said it reminded him of a sentence from 1984: “The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.”
To be continued . . .
• Three years ago, I wrote a piece called “Nicaragua in Hell: Ortega’s crackdown and the people who resist it.” One of those people is Félix Maradiaga, with whom I also podcasted. He wanted to run for president. And he is now a political prisoner. He has just been sentenced to 13 years, and so has Juan Sebastián Chamorro, another opposition politician. Their crime? “Conspiracy to undermine national integrity.” In other words, they opposed the government.
Their trial was the usual farce. It was held in a prison, not in a court of law. The defense lawyers were forbidden to speak to their clients. The defendants were not permitted to speak at all.
Maradiaga, Chamorro, and their fellow political prisoners are held in cruel and inhumane conditions. The hold of this little sadist, Daniel Ortega, and his comrades over Nicaragua has to break sometime. That will be a very happy day.
• An article in the New York Post was headed, “NYPD revives ‘broken windows’ policies as Adams fumes over weekend shootings.” Eric Adams is the mayor of the city. As far as I’m concerned, “broken windows” should never need reviving, because it should be a constant of policing and city government: If a window is broken, you fix it, so that bad characters aren’t tempted to think, “Disorder and lawlessness are okay here. No one will do anything about it.”
A police official was quoted as saying, “We’re going back to what works. This is exciting times.”
May it prove so.
• The attorney general of Alabama is Steve Marshall. He is a Republican. He was in Washington to testify against the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. He had an exchange with Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island:
Whitehouse: “Is Joseph R. Biden of Delaware the duly elected and lawfully serving president of the United States of America?”
Marshall: “He is the president of this country.”
Whitehouse: “Is he the duly elected and lawfully serving president of the United States?”
Marshall: “He is the president of our country.”
Whitehouse: “Are you answering that omitting the language ‘duly elected and lawfully serving’ purposefully?”
Marshall: “I’m answering the question. He is the president of the United States.”
Whitehouse: “And you have no view as to whether he was duly elected or is lawfully serving?”
Marshall: “I’m telling you, he’s the president of the United States.”
Whitehouse: “No further questions.”
You can watch the exchange here. As I see it, the attorney general was petulant — not answering the question and at the same time claiming he was. Giving the same answer, or non-answer, like a robot. I think he should have stated his view. “No, he’s not legitimately elected,” or whatever. Or said, “I don’t care to answer the question.”
I have a question of my own: Can a Republican afford to say that Biden was indeed legitimately elected? Must every Republican cooperate in the Trumpian lie about the election? If so, we are at a very ugly pass.
Imagine it: lie as loyalty test. Pretty bad.
• All of our lives, we have read about people receiving a high-school diploma at a very advanced age. Here is another such story, from the Washington Post. The new diploma-holder is a buck oh one: 101.
Merrill Pittman Cooper, 101, had a distinguished career as one of the first Black trolley car drivers in Philadelphia, and a powerful leader in the union. But when he was a teen during segregation in the 1930s, his single mother was too poor to pay his school tuition.
In 1938, he had just finished his junior year of high school at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., a boarding school founded after the Civil War that initially educated formerly enslaved children.
Cooper said he realized that his mother, who worked as a live-in housekeeper, couldn’t afford to make the final tuition payment for his senior year. He encouraged her to move them to Philadelphia, where she had family.
“She worked so hard, and it all became so difficult that I just decided it would be best to give up continuing at the school,” he said.
That is love.
He took a job at a women’s apparel store in Philadelphia to help pay the bills, then was hired in 1945 as a city trolley car operator, he said.
“It was tough when I first started,” said Cooper, remembering the racism he endured. “I wouldn’t want to repeat some of the things people said to me when they saw me operating the trolley. We had to have the National Guard on board to keep the peace.”
He was proud of his career, but there was always one thing that bothered him. He wished he had graduated from high school and received his diploma.
One of those American stories.
• Shall we have a bit of language? I read an article recently that had the phrase “major bombshells.” “Bombshell” ought to take care of the “major” part, do you agree? A minor bombshell is more like a dud.
• Martin Pope has died at 103. He was a notable chemist. And his name was not always “Martin Pope.” He was born “Isidore Poppick.” The obit in the New York Times tells the tale:
In 1938, as an undergraduate at the City College of New York studying physical chemistry, the 20-year-old Isidore Poppick published a research paper in the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society.
After serving as a first lieutenant in the Army Air Forces in World War II, he sought employment. Aware of an undercurrent of antisemitism, Dr. Pope applied in 1946 for a position at the American Cyanamid Company using two names: Isidore Poppick, with the published paper listed on his résumé, and Martin Pope, with no such record.
“Martin Pope received an application, and Isidore Poppick received a notice that no positions were available,” Dr. Pope said. “I decided to use Martin Pope as my new name.”
• As regular readers know, I like wordplay a lot. But “ensushiastic”? No. Just rubs me the wrong way. Hard to explain.
• This sign says, “Behind every child who believes in themself is a parent who believed in them first.” English has changed a lot since I learned it. I don’t think I’ll ever get with the program — and I don’t want to.
(It occurs to me that “themself” is a contradiction in terms.)
• This is the politest No Smoking sign I’ve ever seen:
• A friend and I were in a restaurant. The waitress was a student at Columbia U. We asked her, “Where are you from?” We meant, “Where in the United States?” She seemed an American, speaking like a native-born American. She said, “Guess. And I’ll tell you: It’s neither North America nor South America.”
Doing some “profiling,” I guessed Israel. She said, “Close. The sister state.” She meant that she was Palestinian. She said that she was participating in Shabbat dinners with classmates at Columbia.
“Sister state.” (As opposed to eternal enemy.) Shared dinners. Hell, there may be hope for the future yet . . .
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