Is Hate a Liberal Value? Reflections on Newtown

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today:

1. When Twenty Minutes Is Forever. According to the CNN timeline for the Sandy Hook tragedy, "Police and other first responders arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the first calls." Twenty minutes. Five minutes is forever when violence is underway, but 20 minutes -- a third of an hour -- means that the "first responders" aren't likely to do much more than clean up the mess.

This has led to calls -- in Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, St. Louis -- for armed officers or staff at schools. Some object. But we have people with guns protecting airports, hospitals and politicians. And leading anti-gun crusaders like New York's billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg and press lord Rupert Murdoch are protected by armed security teams that could probably topple some third-world governments. Why are our children less worthy of protection?

Then there are our homes. If police took twenty minutes to respond at a school, how likely are they to get to your house in time? For those of us without "security teams," the answer isn't reassuring.

2. Is Hate A Liberal Value? A 20-year-old lunatic stole some guns and killed people. Who's to blame? According to a lot of our supposedly rational and tolerant opinion leaders, it's . . . the NRA, a civil-rights organization whose only crime was to oppose laws banning guns. (Ironically, it wasn't even successful in Connecticut, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.)

The hatred was intense. One Rhode Island professor issued a call -- later deleted -- for NRA head Wayne LaPierre's "head on a stick." People like author Joyce Carol Oates and actress Marg Helgenberger wished for NRA members to be shot. So did Texas Democratic Party official John Cobarruvias, who also called the NRA a "terrorist organization," and Texas Republican congressman Louis Gohmert a "terror baby."

Nor were reporters, who are supposed to be neutral, much better. As The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg commented, "Reporters on my Twitter feed seem to hate the NRA more than anything else, ever. "

Well, left-wing "tolerance" at work. Continue reading at that top link.

PREVIOUSLY: "Erik Loomis' Twitter Timeline Available Dating Back to June 2012."

Erik Loomis' Twitter Timeline Available Dating Back to June 2012

I wrote earlier, quite seriously, of Professor Erik Loomis:

No one's as stupid to violently rattle off the death chants while still an untenured assistant professor at a research university. "Dim bulb" is charitable.

Thinking back now, that's even an understatement, a big one. It's possible that no one --- no academic faculty member at a major college or university --- has ever acted as stupidly vis-à-vis his or her own viability as an employee. Loomis is behaving stupidly and recklessly, as if he's got a "termination wish" (like a death wish, but meaning instead a pathological need to get fired in pursuit of romantic martyrdom in some larger cause of crusading labor unionism, perhaps harking back longingly to an earlier, valorized era of violent class struggle).

In any case, see Robert Stacy McCain's report, "The Vocabulary of Professor Erik Loomis: ‘Motherf–ing F–kheads F–king F–k’."

Folks should be sure to read the whole thing at The Other McCain. Read it carefully. And then check the full Twitter timeline (available in pdf). Note especially how Loomis indulges in using the f-word quite a bit. Indeed, "overindulge" might be the better verb form (his f-bomb usage is clearly overdone and all too frequent, transparently uncomfortable as if a poorly-offered cover for insecurity). But it's always the context of things that's even important (an importance Loomis' defenders have proved beyond a reasonable doubt with their systematic omission of any of Loomis' statements outside of the key "metaphor" at issue). Rattling off death chants as an untenured faculty member isn't smart. But it's as dumb as one can possibly be to diss your own job responsibilities --- more so with so much obvious contempt for your institution and its structure of hierarchical authority. Here's a surprisingly revealing tweet as to Loomis' state of mind:

Again, read the full timeline for the context.

Committee service is a major part of serving as a professor --- and of the collegiate life of a university more generally. It's an especially important function to untenured faculty members because such work is a key manner in which unfamiliar and untested colleagues pay their dues. And it should be obvious, but when you're dissing committee work as pointless you are dismissing as useless the work of a great many of the leaders on a given campus, people who have put in enormous numbers of hours in attempting to have a voice in the institution's decision-making --- and to hopefully have a greater voice in final outcomes affecting the institution, the faculty, students, and the curriculum. Some faculty members earn most of their professional self-esteem through the work they provide on committees. It's a deeply embedded aspect of the academic culture. So, the kind of opposition to the norms of collegiality that Loomis demonstrates is utterly astounding --- even exponentially astounding, again, given that Loomis lacks the security of tenure. He is demonstrating that he is, by definition, as dumb as an ox. The problem with that, clearly, is that research universities are supposed to be populated with smart people. Really smart people. And a public university such as the University of Rhode Island is tax payer supported, so there's a particularly high level of public accountability. People on the outside, taxpayers as well as moneyed players supporting campus foundations, and so forth, want to think their support is in furtherance of an elite and respected body of scholars and practitioners. Educators at these places are cut tremendous independence because they are society's most esteemed role models. They are the masters of the (knowledge) universe who're transmitting society's essential values and learning to the next generations. But there are limits.

For someone like Loomis to show such outward contempt for all of this is simply mind-boggling. It's even more astounding given that Loomis spends so much time online. He should know better. The norms of academic hiring and promotion may have changed since 2005 when Daniel Drezner was denied tenure (largely on the suspicion that blogging was taking up too much of his time). But they haven't changed that much. It's just not well-advised to be so outspoken --- virtually all the time --- on social networking sites and on widely-read partisan blogs. For a lot of elite power-brokers in academe, such patterns of behavior are unscholarly. And to be so stridently unscholarly goes 100 percent against what the ideal candidate for tenure is supposed to be like. I would personally advise anyone entering the job market or working on becoming tenured to avoid hard-core partisan blogging and tweeting. To do otherwise is to court trouble, the kind of trouble that could ruin one's career. This is why I sense that what Loomis lacks in brains he more than equals in social insecurity. All that tweeting, and blogging too, is designed to buff this guy's creds among the hard-left commentariat. But for what? So the communist freaks at Crooked Timber will post a couple of huzzah! blog posts in solidarity. That's manifestly not worth it.

In any case, if anyone were really, truly looking to get Loomis fired this is the argument they'd want to make to the administration of the University of Rhode Island. One could contact the university and make the case that is isn't a matter of freedom of speech, or of academic freedom. It's a matter of basic professionalism toward one's vocation and the standards of institutional and professional decorum. Loomis reflects badly on the university. He reflects badly on the hiring committee that brought him there in the first place. Folks on the outside, the tax payers and other supporting constituencies will ask, "How could they have possibly hired this idiot? He's making the university look like a bloody circus." And they'll be well warranted to ask such questions. A lot of money goes into to recruiting and investing in productive academic colleagues. These are people who're expected to be teaching, publishing and performing community service. There are very high standards involved, or there should be. Which is why if people of professional standing raised these points to university president Dr. David Dooley it's quite possible the administration will reflect even more deeply on the problem in the days and weeks ahead. I mean, it's been well over a week since this story first broke and the university now has a huge and extremely prominent posting of the administration's condemnation of Professor Loomis. And looking at this again, President Dooley has updated the language since I last check over at the university's homepage:

Statement from URI President David M. Dooley

Over the past several days we have heard from many individuals concerning statements made or repeated by Professor Erik Loomis. Many writers forcefully expressed serious concern about his statements and many others expressed very strong support for Professor Loomis, especially in regard to his First Amendment right to share his personal opinions. In the statements at issue, Professor Loomis did not make it clear that he was speaking solely as an individual, and that the views he expressed were his alone and did not reflect the views of the University of Rhode Island. This was the rationale for our original statement.

The University of Rhode Island strongly believes that Constitutionally protected rights to free expression are the foundation of American democracy, and central to our mission of imparting knowledge and promoting the exchange of ideas. It is our conviction that Professor Loomis's personal remarks, however intemperate and inflammatory they may be, are protected by the First Amendment, as are the views of those who have contacted us in recent days.

Here's the link to the scanned document now available at the website.

I quoted and screencapped the president's initial comments at the time, dated December 18th, "University of Rhode Island Condemns Violent Labor Historian Erik Loomis." No doubt the backlash escalated enormously since then. In no time the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the story, "‘Head on a Stick’ Tweet Lands U. of Rhode Island Professor in Hot Water." And Inside Higher Ed also took it up, "Who's Overreacting? Professor's tweet and university's reaction stir debate on academic freedom."

So my sense is that this issue is far from over. It's Christmastime. That's the slowest time at the university. And if the administration feels it needs to have its statement placed so largely and prominently at the website, it's clear that the backlash isn't close to subsiding. People on campus will be dealing with these matters when business gets going again in the new year. Opponents of Loomis' tenure bid might not relent in their vocal outrage at this man's outward violence and incivility. But the more troublesome issue, on a practical working level, is Loomis' clear propensity toward uncollegialty and unprofessionalism. All together, the profanity-laced death chants, etc., and the dissing of the university's committee service responsibilities, could very well create a picture for outside constituencies of unworthiness for the honorific of academic tenure. As I've said, Loomis is really dumb. He's joking all about it over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, but when your professional future is so seriously on the line, this is hardly a laughing matter.

'There are circumstances in which I think I’d advocate for someone’s firing, even for things they said...'

Well, it's no surprise, but this idiot progressive Bijan Parsia, in the comments at Loomis' latest Lumberjack ball-buster, advocates getting conservative academics fired for speech with which he disagrees:

Did Erik call, in any meaningful way, for anyone to be jailed for political advocacy? Are a few tweets sufficient? What actions were the tweets either intended or likely to trigger?

Contrariwise, people didn’t just tweet back: “I hope you get fired.” Or “I think you should be fired”. Or “You don’t deserve to be a professor.” They did things like call the FBI and the University (indeed, they called Erik’s ultimate boss). There were people calling for that as well (e.g., in this comment).

I don’t know that there were any direct calls for Erik’s firing from blog proprietors and there were a round of posts (e.g., Instapundit’s) saying that Erik wasn’t making threats, etc.

Given e.g., Malkin’s history, I’m not so convinced that the intended effect of all this wasn’t exactly what happened.

Now, with the possible exception of the call to the FBI (really?!) and some arguably defamatory statements, none of this is illegal. Nor, I think, should it be. There are circumstances in which I think I’d advocate for someone’s firing, even for things they said. I want those to be relatively rare, of course. Probably even exceedingly rare. I prefer them to be cases where there is a direct job connection.

An interesting case is Brad Delong’s explorations as to whether John Yoo’s tenure should be revoked.

(Personally, I think even if the case is reasonable, it wouldn’t be worth pursuing because of the potential backlash and precedent.)

Look, there's one standard for free speech. You're either for it or you're against it. Professor Parsia (yeah, a professor; follow the link at his login creditials) would like John Yoo's tenure revoked. He cites Brad DeLong. I don't care to follow the links, although I'm pretty sure what the outrage is. Hint: think "enhanced interrogations."

These people are authoritarian tools, progressive tools. I made the case against such hypocritical idiots yesterday: "Smirking Spectator? Guilty as Charged."

And Robert Stacy McCain has an update on Loomis the Lumberjack: "‘Candyass Blogger’ Update: Free Speech Absolutists Who Banned Mr. Althouse UPDATE: ‘These Are Historical Dildos’."

Hey, speaking of the "Candyass Blogger," remember this? "Althouse Slams Robert 'Porn Guy' Farley!" Douchebag.

The Post-Newtown Witch Hunt

From Michelle Malkin's syndicated column:

In the aftermath of the horrific Newtown school massacre, Americans from all parts of the political spectrum agree that we need to pay more attention to mental health issues. Public death threats and incitements to violence must be taken seriously. The incendiary witch hunt against law-abiding, peaceful gun owners is neither noble nor effective. It’s just plain insane.

Over the past week, I’ve witnessed a disturbing outbreak of off-the-rails hatred towards gun owners and 2nd amendment groups. Whatever your views on guns, we can all agree: The Newtown, Conn., gunman was a monster who slaughtered his own mother, 5 heroic educators, and 20 angel-faced schoolchildren. He ignored laws against murder. He bypassed Connecticut’s strict gun control regulations and he circumvented the Sandy Hook Elementary School’s security measures. Every decent American is horrified and heartsick by this outbreak of pure evil.

But tens of millions of law-abiding men and women own and use guns responsibly in this country. The cynical campaign to demonize all armed men and women as monsters must not go unanswered. What’s most disturbing is that the incitements are coming from purportedly respectable, prominent, and influential public figures.

Consider the rhetoric of University of Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis. He teaches “U.S. environmental history, the Civil War, late 19th and early 20th century America, labor history, and the American West” in the university’s history department. Online, however, Professor Loomis is a militantly unhinged foe of all things conservative.

This week, the nutty professor took to Twitter to rail against law-abiding gun owners and the National Rifle Association. “Looks like the National Rifle Association has murdered some more children,” Professor Loomis fumed. “Now I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick,” he added. (LaPierre is Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the NRA.) Professor Loomis was just warming up.

“F**k the National Rifle Association and its policies to put crazy guns in everyone’s hands,” Professor Loomis tweeted. “You are g*dd*mn right we should politicize this tragedy. F**k the NRA. Wayne LaPierre should be in prison,” he spewed. “Can we define NRA membership dues as contributing to a terrorist organization?”

Continue reading.

Michelle cites numerous other examples of leftist loons chanting death to conservatives, and she writes:

So, it’s come to this: Advocating beheadings, beatings, and mass murder of peaceful Americans to pay for the sins of a soulless madman. But because the advocates of violence fashion themselves champions of non-violence and because they inhabit the hallowed worlds of Hollywood, academia, and the Democratic Party, it’s acceptable?

Blood-lusting hate speech must not get a pass just because it comes out of the mouths of the protected, anti-gun class.

The politics of the shooting are just getting going, if the Memeorandum feed is any indicator. [Added: Byron York indicates that things have gotten so bad that President's Obama's announcement of a commission to study gun violence is a way to "freeze" the politics and defuse the push for gun control legislation on the Hill: "Obama, Reid slam brakes on gun control."]

Meanwhile, Badger Pundit dug up Professor Loomis' dissertation abstract, and boy, what a find. Robert Stacy McCain has this, "He’s a Lumberjack, and He’s OK: The Wobbly Scholarship of Erik Loomis, Ph.D."

Expect updates...

PREVIOUSLY: "University of Rhode Island Condemns Violent Labor Historian Erik Loomis."

University of Rhode Island Condemns Violent Labor Historian Erik Loomis

The letter is posted to the main page at the university's website:

Statement From President David M. Dooley:

We appreciate your comments about a faculty member's recent personal social media posts. See URI President's Dooley's response.

My good friend Professor Daniel Nexon is not pleased, "Academic Administrative Fecklessness." But I'll disagree just a bit. As I noted previously, Loomis' timeline was practically splattered with blood from all the violent tweets and retweets he'd been sending out. It looked literally as if he'd blown a gasket, losing complete control of his faculties. At that point it became no longer a free speech issue but a public safety issue.

And it's not just on Twitter. Loomis' oeuvre featured death to conservatives as a supplementary byline. I've blogged on this for some time, for example, "Erik Loomis, University of Rhode Island History Professor, Calls for 'Decades-Long Fight to the Death' Against Conservatives." And on Loomis' Twitter threats, see "Obama and Progressives Exploit Child Killings to Advance Far-Left Agenda."

And see the search entry for "death threat connoisseur" Erik Loomis at Twitchy.

Added: At The Other McCain, "University President Repudiates Professor’s Violent Anti-NRA Messages."

MORE: From Robert "Che" Farley, who clearly advocates bloody eliminationist politics, "Intimidation." These assholes have no clue.

Modern Workplace Distractions

These are office and work-station distractions. Things are a little different in my profession. In the classroom much of my job is working to minimize distractions, keeping students on task. The technology is everywhere. Students must put it away or you'll have multitasking nightmares.

But see the Wall Street Journal, "Workplace Distractions: Here's Why You Won't Finish This Article":

In the few minutes it takes to read this article, chances are you'll pause to check your phone, answer a text, switch to your desktop to read an email from the boss's assistant, or glance at the Facebook FB -1.43% or Twitter messages popping up in the corner of your screen. Off-screen, in your open-plan office, crosstalk about a colleague's preschooler might lure you away, or a co-worker may stop by your desk for a quick question.

And bosses wonder why it is tough to get any work done.

Distraction at the office is hardly new, but as screens multiply and managers push frazzled workers to do more with less, companies say the problem is worsening and is affecting business.

While some firms make noises about workers wasting time on the Web, companies are realizing the problem is partly their own fault.

Even though digital technology has led to significant productivity increases, the modern workday seems custom-built to destroy individual focus. Open-plan offices and an emphasis on collaborative work leave workers with little insulation from colleagues' chatter. A ceaseless tide of meetings and internal emails means that workers increasingly scramble to get their "real work" done on the margins, early in the morning or late in the evening. And the tempting lure of social-networking streams and status updates make it easy for workers to interrupt themselves.

"It is an epidemic," says Lacy Roberson, a director of learning and organizational development at eBay Inc. EBAY -0.25% At most companies, it's a struggle "to get work done on a daily basis, with all these things coming at you," she says.

Office workers are interrupted—or self-interrupt—roughly every three minutes, academic studies have found, with numerous distractions coming in both digital and human forms. Once thrown off track, it can take some 23 minutes for a worker to return to the original task, says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies digital distraction.

Companies are experimenting with strategies to keep workers focused. Some are limiting internal emails—with one company moving to ban them entirely—while others are reducing the number of projects workers can tackle at a time.

Last year, Jamey Jacobs, a divisional vice president at Abbott Vascular, a unit of health-care company Abbott Laboratories, ABT -0.24% learned that his 200 employees had grown stressed trying to squeeze in more heads-down, focused work amid the daily thrum of email and meetings.

"It became personally frustrating that they were not getting the things they wanted to get done," he says. At meetings, attendees were often checking email, trying to multitask and in the process obliterating their focus.

Part of the solution for Mr. Jacobs's team was that oft-forgotten piece of office technology: the telephone.

Mr. Jacobs and productivity consultant Daniel Markovitz found that employees communicated almost entirely over email, whether the matter was mundane, such as cake in the break room, or urgent, like an equipment issue.

The pair instructed workers to let the importance and complexity of their message dictate whether to use cellphones, office phones or email. Truly urgent messages and complex issues merited phone calls or in-person conversations, while email was reserved for messages that could wait.

Continue reading.

Top Five Fox News Blogger Picks From Aleister at American Glob

Check it out: "Five Bloggers I’d Like to See on FOX News."

Both Althouse and Instapundit are mentioned, plus others you're undoubtedly familiar with.

Michelle Malkin's a blogger and appears regularly on Fox. We need lots more like her.

The Joy of Hate

Greg Gutfeld's new book, The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage.

Gutfeld goes on about intellectual fascism, at the clip:

RELATED: "Progressives Are the Biggest Threat to Freedom of Speech in America." Progressives are the least tolerant people despite espousing tolerance as basic to their creed. They're awful, just f-ked people.

Butler University Liberal Arts Indoctrination

Quite the story, "STUDENTS TOLD TO DISAVOW 'AMERICAN-NESS, MALENESS, WHITENESS, HETEROSEXUALITY'."

Professor Paul Frampton Convicted in Denise Milani 'Honey Trap' Case

Well, clearly those big breasts proved too hard to resist.

At ABC News, "Paul Frampton: Court in Argentina Convicts UNC Professor of Drug Smuggling":

A court in Argentina has convicted an Oxford educated University of North Carolina professor of attempting to smuggle four pounds of cocaine into the United States.

Paul Frampton, a 68-year-old esteemed professor of physics and astronomy, says he thought he was flying to South America to meet with a bikini model but ended up getting caught in what they call a "honey trap."

Frampton flew to Bolivia from North Carolina earlier this year after communicating with someone who claimed to be Denise Milani, winner of Miss Bikini World 2007. She never showed up.

Instead, Frampton says he was met by a man who gave him a suitcase, identifying himself as an intermediary for Milani, and instructing him to take it to her in Argentina.

Once there, he says he could not find her and decided to board a plane home, with that suitcase in hand. Police opened it up at the airport and found more than four pounds of cocaine inside.

"He has a high IQ, is well-known and very distinguished in the field of physics and other scientific areas, but when it comes to common sense he scored a zero," said former DC homicide investigator Rod Wheeler.

The Argentinean court sentenced Frampton to serve four years and eight months in custody after prosecutors there presented evidence of text messages they say Frampton sent to the person he thought was the model, saying, "I'm worried about the sniffer dogs," and "I'm looking after your special little suitcase."

The University of North Carolina has cut off Frampton's salary in a move that prompted dozens of his colleagues at the university to sign a letter of protest to administrators.

"As more information about his case becomes available ... it becomes more and more obvious that Paul was the innocent, although very gullible, victim of a scam," the joint letter said.

Many wrote separate letters of reference on a website they created to support the embattled professor, who is hoping to serve his time under house arrest in Argentina at a friend's apartment.

From prison Frampton has said, "It does seem unfair that an innocent scam victim is treated as a professional drug smuggler."

Well, it's hard out there for swinging academics.

There's an ABC News video here: "Professor Paul Frampton Convicted of Drug Smuggling."

And see the Independent UK, "The Denise Milani conspiracy: 'Honey trap' professor gets five years in Argentina jail," and "The case of Denise Milani and the British scientist proves – set a honeytrap and men fall in every time."

BONUS: At Hollywood Tuna, "Denise Milani Picture Moment."

Ideological Discrimination at University of Iowa Law School

At The TaxProf, "Jurors Agree: University of Iowa Law School Discriminated Against Faculty Applicant Due to Her Conservative Views" (via Memeorandum):

Following up on my previous posts (links below) about Teresa Wagner's federal lawsuit: Des Monies Register, Jurors Say They Saw Hiring Bias at University of Iowa; But University, Not Former Law Dean, Wronged Conservative Job Applicant:

A federal jury believed the University of Iowa’s law school illegally denied a promotion to a conservative Republican because of her politics, former jurors told The Des Moines Register.

However, jurors said they felt conflicted about holding a former dean personally responsible for the bias. They wanted to hold the school itself accountable, but federal law does not recognize political discrimination by institutions. “I will say that everyone in that jury room believed that she had been discriminated against,” said Davenport resident Carol Tracy, the jury forewoman.

Meanwhile, attorneys for Teresa Wagner on Tuesday filed a motion for a new trial in the case that scholars agree could have national implications in what some argue is the liberally slanted world of academia.

Des Moines Register editorial: U of I Needs to Respect Diversity of Thought, Too: The Claim of Political Bias in Hiring at the Law School Should Not End with the Deadlocked Jury...

Continue reading.

Hey, when you go after bias at the universities, you're hammering away at the enemy's beachhead of Marxist cultural power and ideological indoctrination.

More at Volokh, "Jurors in Bias Case Believe University of Iowa Engaged in Ideological Discrimination."

Progressives Are the Biggest Threat to Freedom of Speech in America

An excellent clip from FIRE.

Rauch, who is a far-left progressive, nails it on who's the biggest threat to freedom of speech, thought and expression in the country today. What's surprising, though, is that harassment-blogger Walter James Casper III "liked" it on Twitter --- tweeting it out a couple of times in fact. And it's ironic too, since Repsac3 is the epitome of the hateful, speech-controlling progressive that Rauch is denouncing. From racism to anti-Semitism to the recent attacks on Ann Coulter at Fordham, Repsac3 is down with it. He never, ever speaks out against it, and in fact joins in with his progressive hate-commentariat in mounting campaigns of personal destruction against those with whom he disagrees. I've chronicled Repsac3's criminal campaigns of intimidation many times. If he truly "likes" the ideas of Jonathan Rauch he should in fact practice them. Sadly, the record shows that while the demonically hate-addled Repsac3 purportedly champions this kind of classical liberal thought, his actual political loyalties are with those who stand against it. It's not just that Walter James Casper III is a stupid man. It's that he's also been psychological corrupted by progressive evil. Where there's a bodily inclination in him that says leftist thought suppression is not just wrong but massively vile, his raging primordial rage at conservatives kicks in to advance the exact kind of censorship that Rauch excoriates above. Repsac3 is a rodent of a person, and hardened, blackened chip of human refuse. Honestly, his only hope is to follow the words of people like Rauch and literally repent his ideology of hatred and secular demonology.

PREVIOUSLY: "Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview: Greg Lukianoff, 'How Free Speech Died on Campus'."

Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview: Greg Lukianoff, 'How Free Speech Died on Campus'

At the Wall Street Journal, "How Free Speech Died on Campus":

At Yale University, you can be prevented from putting an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on your T-shirt. At Tufts, you can be censured for quoting certain passages from the Quran. Welcome to the most authoritarian institution in America: the modern university—"a bizarre, parallel dimension," as Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, calls it.

Mr. Lukianoff, a 38-year-old Stanford Law grad, has spent the past decade fighting free-speech battles on college campuses. The latest was last week at Fordham University, where President Joseph McShane scolded College Republicans for the sin of inviting Ann Coulter to speak.

"To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans . . . would be a tremendous understatement," Mr. McShane said in a Nov. 9 statement condemning the club's invitation to the caustic conservative pundit. He vowed to "hold out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed."

To be clear, Mr. McShane didn't block Ms. Coulter's speech, but he said that her presence would serve as a "test" for Fordham. A day later, the students disinvited Ms. Coulter. Mr. McShane then praised them for having taken "responsibility for their decisions" and expressing "their regrets sincerely and eloquently."

Mr. Lukianoff says that the Fordham-Coulter affair took campus censorship to a new level: "This was the longest, strongest condemnation of a speaker that I've ever seen in which a university president also tried to claim that he was defending freedom of speech."

I caught up with Mr. Lukianoff at New York University in downtown Manhattan, where he was once targeted by the same speech restrictions that he has built a career exposing. Six years ago, a student group at the university invited him to participate in a panel discussion about the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that had sparked violent rioting by Muslims across the world.

When Muslim students protested the event, NYU threatened to close the panel to the public if the offending cartoons were displayed. The discussion went on—without the cartoons. Instead, the student hosts displayed a blank easel, registering their own protest.

"The people who believe that colleges and universities are places where we want less freedom of speech have won," Mr. Lukianoff says. "If anything, there should be even greater freedom of speech on college campuses. But now things have been turned around to give campus communities the expectation that if someone's feelings are hurt by something that is said, the university will protect that person. As soon as you allow something as vague as Big Brother protecting your feelings, anything and everything can be punished."...

In his new book, "Unlearning Liberty," Mr. Lukianoff notes that baby-boom Americans who remember the student protests of the 1960s tend to assume that U.S. colleges are still some of the freest places on earth. But that idealized university no longer exists. It was wiped out in the 1990s by administrators, diversity hustlers and liability-management professionals, who were often abetted by professors committed to political agendas.

"What's disappointing and rightfully scorned," Mr. Lukianoff says, "is that in some cases the very professors who were benefiting from the free-speech movement turned around to advocate speech codes and speech zones in the 1980s and '90s."

Continue reading.

'For all its issues and faults, California is the closest thing that the U.S. has to European-style social democracy...'

A mind-boggling blog post and comment thread at the communist academic blog, Crooked Timber, "Open up your Golden Gate":

I think it’s important to situate “California is ungovernable”–which has *never* been true in any recognizable sense–in the broader political discussion about American political life. For all its issues and faults, California is the closest thing that the U.S. has to European-style social democracy. It has strong state-provided social services, such as a very robust state OSHA program, relatively pro-worker wage-and-hour laws, and a massively successful (if declining) public university system–which provides far more to state public life than in other states with premier universities, such as Massachusetts, where such are privatized. It has politically active unions like the CTA and CNA on the winning side. It has strong environmental protections and lots of public lands and public trusts. It has a broadly politically empowered populus in its major cities; and so forth.

This isn’t to say that California is perfect, by any means. But it is to say that reiterating the discourses without situating them in those broader conversations often tends to legitimize a discourse that implies that social democracy is “ungovernable” and neoliberalism is a neutral, invisibile, natural state of affairs.

This state's bankrupt, but for these idiot commies, it's like heaven on earth.

Meanwhile, "Prop. 30 Won't Quench California's Big Government Thirst."

The Democrats own it now, as if they hadn't already. The state's going down. Ten percent unemployment still after almost four years, and listen to these shitbag progressives sing the praises of the bankrupt blue state morass. We're about as close as you'll get to a European social democracy, alright. Take your pick: Greece, Spain. Shoot, Italy, the San Bernardino of Europe, came close to dragging down the entire European project all by itself. No matter, let's raise taxes. Yeah, that'll work. Forward! To growth and prosperity!

Wake me up from this nightmare. This country is populated with chest-thumping pinhead progressives who haven't got a freakin' clue.

Professor Grover Furr Denies Stalin's Crimes Against Humanity

The guy's a Stalinist holocaust denier.

At The Other McCain, "The Stalinist at Montclair State."

The murderous brutality of Stalin is one of the best-established facts of 20th-century history, and whatever “research” Professor Furr claims as the basis for his bizarre revisionism is likely akin to the “research” of Holocaust deniers, 9/11 Truthers and other fringe crackpots.

The crime is that this guy is teaching at a public university. It's not surprising, though. Recall my post on Professor Robert Farley, who claims to be an expert on counterinsurgency, who showed "Che" for his students in class: "Patterson School of Diplomacy, University of Kentucky, Screens Steven Soderbergh's Che to Commemorate Fiftieth Anniversary of Bay of Pigs."

America's campuses are the training ground for the revolutionary cadres. For more on this, lots more, see Legal Insurrection, "“Shock the System” week at College Insurrection."

Marxist Professoriate Gets More Marxist, Survey Finds

I'm not kidding, either. When we had a S.F State urban hip-hop professor give a lecture a couple of years ago at my college, I asked him point blank during the Q & A if he really believed in the revolutionary agenda that he was spouting and teaching to his students. I asked him straight up, "Do you want to see the overthrow of capitalism in the U.S.?" He didn't even blink. Absolutely he said. And then I asked for a show of hands among my faculty colleagues for how many agreed. Every single hand went up. When you're constantly marinated in the hard left-wing curriculum of the social sciences and humanities, after a while you start to identify with the most radical theories and epistemologies. The promise of America's founding is jettisoned for a bastardized and simplistic Howard Zinn outlook on the world. We routinely have far-left speakers at the college and they're welcomed with open arms, drawing huge contingents of student Che wannabe mass-murderers. It's pretty pathetic, but it is what it is.

In any case, check this report at Inside Higher Ed, "Survey finds that professors, already liberal, have moved further to the left":

In the 1998-9 survey, more than 35 percent of faculty members identified themselves as middle of the road, and less than half (47.5 percent) identified as liberal or far left. In the new data, 62.7 percent identify as liberal or far left.

More:

Neil Gross, a professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, has written extensively on faculty political issues. He is the co-author of the 2007 report that found that while professors may lean left, they do so less than is imagined and less uniformly across institution type than is imagined, and that many are in the political middle.

He said that he couldn't be sure why more professors were identifying as far left, but that "during periods of significant economic downturn, and significant rise of inequality, it's not surprising" that such a shift would take place, especially given that in academe, "radicalism is still a live possibility."

Gross said that the "optics" of the data could lead to criticism of higher education. "From the vantage point of some folks, that will make academe look bad. For others, it will make academe look like a place concerned with the country."

I don't know why folks like this guy Gross try to sugarcoat it. It's bad. It doesn't just "look bad." It's just bad. We are dumbing down students by denying them critical thinking skills. We're turning them into far left-wing robots ready to rubber stamp the latest far left-progressive rage, whether it's supporting stupid shit like "Israeli Apartheid Week" or the reelection of our hopelessly dishonest, Communist-trained President Eye-Candy Clusterf-k.

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Is College Really for Everyone?

Well, the educational system just assumes that it is. Mostly, though, kids have to find out for themselves, and that wastes a lot of people's time and resources. Perhaps there's a better way.

In any case, from Patrice Apodaca, at The Daily Pilot, "Is College Really For Everyone?"

Supreme Court Oral Arguments in Major New Affirmative Action Case

Althouse reports on the coverage from SCOTUS blog, "Justice Breyer directly asked whether Grutter — the case approving of a type of affirmative action admissions — should be overruled?"

And then going straight to SCOTUS blog, see the roundup, "Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin." And especially, Lyle Denniston, "Argument recap: Will Grutter be reshaped? (FINAL UPDATE)":

Affirmative action is alive but ailing, the idea of “critical mass” to measure racial diversity is in very critical condition, and a nine-year-old precedent may have to be reshaped in order to survive. Those were the dominant impressions at the close of a one-hour, nineteen-minute argument in the Supreme Court Wednesday. There is almost no doubt that the University of Texas’s affirmative action plan for admitting its freshman classes is in trouble with four Justices, but has at least qualified support from three others. The one most in doubt among the eight taking part: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. He wanted to be convinced that the program does not use race at all costs, and it appeared that he was not.

Continue reading.

Plus, Jess Bravin at the Wall Street Journal, "Justices Clash on Affirmative Action." And from David Savage, at the Los Angeles Times, "Ruling out race in college admissions: How far will high court go?"

And from earlier at the Times, from Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr., "Do race preferences help students?" And a rebuttal from Rachel Godsil, FWIW, "Affirmative action and the unprepared minority myth."

But see Elizabeth Price Foley at Instapundit, "A LIBERAL CRITIQUE OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Richard Kahlenberg has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, evaluating the insanity of today’s affirmative action efforts by universities and colleges..."

Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram is 'Very Sad' That Communist Historian Eric Hobsbawm Has Died

Chris Bertram is professor of philosophy at University of Bristol, in Southwest England. He's an expert on Rousseau, apparently, and, from what I gather, a fan of Karl Marx as well, or some variation of Marxism. Most interestingly, he's a defender of Joseph Stalin, or at least the Stalinist model of Soviet Communism, from what appears in the comments at his post at Crooked Timber, "Eric Hobsbawm is dead."

Perhaps he's just being playful, but Bertram's sense of humor is rather Stalinist as well:

Jonathan, ajay …

Annoying as our commenters often are, I’m not persuaded that it would less bad to murder them if there were more people around.

But especially interesting is Bertram's response to A.N. Wilson indictment of Hobsbawm at London's Daily Mail, "He hated Britain and excused Stalin's genocide. But was hero of the BBC and the Guardian, Eric Hobsbawm a TRAITOR too?"

Read that, and then Bertram's comment here:

That Daily Mail piece is truly marvellous. One of the upsides of the death of someone like Hobsbawm is that all the real arseholes are given an opportunity to remind us all what arseholes they are, and A.N. Wilson is no exception. The DM, of course, was rather partial to the Third Reich.

He doesn't dispute the facts in evidence regarding the Communist Hobsbawm. He simply, rather childishly, calls Wilson an asshole and the Daily Mail a Nazi organ.

Of course, this is Crooked Timber, an extreme left-wing academic blog, with contributors such as the socialist crank political scientist Henry Farrell, who I've blogged about many times. (Farrell got all butt-hurt when Glenn Beck singled out violent socialist Frances Fox Piven in his broadcasts a couple of years back.)

In any case, recall the comments from Bret Stephens' essay previously, "Eric Hobsbawm and the Details of History."

Contemporary leftists embrace their extremists and totalitarians, from the Occupy Movement to dictators like Fidel Castro. And for some, even Joseph Stalin wasn't too extreme. You simply cannot find comparable affinity to far-right extremism among today's conservatives in American politics. And it says something that it's the right that the mainstream press has attacked remorselessly this last few years as essentially white supremacists and Klansmen, while we have a president who was trained by Communist Party members and who palled around with Weather Underground terrorists in the radical leftist marination of Chicago's community organizing thug politics. All of these points are facts. The left has no problem with socialism and Communist Party politics --- for progressives and Democrat Party hacks, there are no enemies on the left, as I've long argued at this blog. Indeed, one of the lasting implications of the Obama interregnum will be the degree to which the extreme left ideological fringe has been mainstreamed in current political life.