Education

Observations on a Scenario in Which Everyone and Everything Involved Looks Bad Including the Schools and American Society in General

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Zoey (above), a high school senior at Ayala High School in Chino Hills, California —we don’t yet know her whole name—was expelled for cyberbullying, intimidation, harassment and attempting to cause physical injury to another person after she used her cell phone to live-stream a classroom brawl between fellow students. There seems to be some suspicion that she was in on the plot to attack one of the combatants, though Zooey denies it. The incident and the report covering it raise all sorts of ethics questions and conclusions.

Such as…

1. Why are students allowed to have cell phones in class at all, specifically cameras? The school has a rule against filming and posting occurrences in the school involving students, potentially embarrassing them, humiliating them and harassing them—why not just confiscate all of the phones before class so this kind of thing is impossible?

2. Zoey’s explanation: “In our generation, you go live to do makeup, to do everything, so it was just going live just to go live. It wasn’t my intent to purposely or try to cause harm to anyone.” I see Zoey has virtually reached adulthood without anyone teaching her that rationalizations aren’t valid reasons for unethical conduct, and “Everybody does it” is particularly wrong.

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Amazing Tales of “The Great Stupid”: the DEI Graduation Announcer

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Res ipsa loquitur. There is no excuse for this. Of course some of the names would give anyone trouble. But Thomas (at Thomas Jefferson University)? Elizabeth?

This was so bad the school issued an apology, though its explanation doesn’t pass the giggle test:

At a certain point, the DEI farce will reach an inevitable tipping point. Too many people are lazy, dumb, timid and gullible, but not enough are THAT lazy, dumb, timid and gullible to put up with clownish displays like the one Thomas Jefferson University inflicted on its nursing school graduates.

I Don’t Understand This “Niggardly Principle” Story At All…Or Maybe I Do and Am Just Afraid To Accept the Truth

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Now get this: In 2017, three 14-year-odlCalifornia teens, two of whom, Holden Hughes and Aaron Hartley, were about to begin attending St. Francis High School, a Catholic private school in Mountain view, were modeling anti-acne medicinal face masks that involved smearing dark green goo on their faces. (One of the boys had severe acne and his friends put the stuff on their own faces in an act of support). The teen who wasn’t headed to the private school snapped a selfie because the boys thought they looked funny. A similar photo taken a day earlier indicated that they had tried white medicinal face masks as well. 

A student at St. Francis found the image online and uploaded it to a group chat in June 2020. Not only was the George Floyd Freakout in full eruption, but the photo was circulated on the same day that recent SFHS graduates had posted on Instagram a satirical meme pertaining to Floyd’s demise, so the school was “triggered.” The gloriously woke student who decided to publicize the greenface photo claimed that the teens were using blackface; “another example” of rampant racism at the school, he posted, and urged everyone in the group chat to spread it throughout the school community—you know, to cause as much anger, division and disruption as possible.

I can’t find the name of that charming kid. He’ll probably be Governor of California some day.

Soon after this seed was planted, the Dean of Students at St. Francis Ray called the Hughes’s and Aaron Hartley’s’ parents to ask them if they were aware of the photograph. They explained that the teens had applied green facemasks three years earlier, long before the non-racial Minnesota incident that had no demonstrable racial significance and definitely no relevance to blackface. The parents added that the teens’ use of the acne medication had “neither ill intent nor racist motivation, nor even knowledge of what “blackface” meant.”

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The Student and the Homeless Man: A Cautionary Ethics Tale

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Or, “Why It’s Unethical to Behave in Defiance of Reality.”

Or, “Why the old saw ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ is constantly being affirmed.”

Or, “Why progressive wishcraft keeps blowing up in society’s metaphorical face”

Sanai Graden (left), a University of California at Berkeley senior (presumably you know what that means) was hit up by a homeless man as she visited Washington, D.C. He said his name was Alonzo, and told her he had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The sympathetic young woman paid for his medication at CVS. She also got him a hotel room for the night. Sanai was a TikToker , and told her followers that she needed to raise money for Alonzo, whom she called “Unc.” Soon she bought Alonzo, aka. “Unc,” a cell phone, and put him up in a hotel for a week.

Awwww. How Christian! How kind! How progressive!

Her video became a Tik Tok sensation, with millions of views. Graden started a GoFundMe account, and it quickly raised more than $400,000. Her legion of followers multiplied: one admirer set up a GoFundMe for her that eventually raised over $26,000.

Isn’t that a nice story?

Then a report from local D.C. TV station Fox 5 revealed that “Unc” was Alonzo Hebron, 64, a long-time criminal who numbered among his convictions one for a violent assault on a homeless woman. In another, he stabbed a man in the neck with a screwdriver. Donors started asking for their money back.

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Ethics Dunce: Ohio State 2024 Commencement Speaker Chris Pan

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Usually the many Ethics Alarms train wreck graphics are reserved for official Ethics Train Wrecks, but not this time. The episode under consideration didn’t involve an actual train, but Ohio State alum Chris Pan‘s commencement address to about 12,000 2024 graduates was somewhat more literally akin to train disasters, at least ones involving trains leaping the tracks.

Outkick has tagged the speech the “Worst Commencement Speech Ever.” I doubt that it is that, but Pan’s self-indulgent blather might be the most unethical one ever—if there have been more unethical addresses, I’m not sure I would want to hear them even as an analytical exercise.

Let’s start with the fact that Pan conceived the speech while he was high on the psychedelic drug Ayahuasca. He admitted this later, and appears to be proud of it, or think its funny, or something. This makes him an Ethics Alarms certified asshole as well as an Ethics Dunce. When people are trusting you to perform at your best in support of an important task, project or event, you don’t impair yourself with foreign substances—not alcohol, not uppers or downers, and definitely not mind altering drugs. Doing so is deliberately defying common sense, personal responsibility, and well-established societal standards.

Moreover, you risk a debacle like the speech you will see in this video. If you like, you can skip the glowing introduction by OSU President Ted Carter, though it provides useful context as Pan was to humiliate Carter as well as himself. It’s a bit like knowing that they called The Titanic “unsinkable” before it sank on its maiden voyage. Pan starts speaking at the 1:47 mark.

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MIT Geniuses Finally Figure Out That Forcing Faculty To Pledge Fealty To Woke World Isn’t Academic Freedom

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

From one perspective, this development seems encouraging. Maybe the lesson of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is finally starting to take down the destructive DEI delusion.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it will end the use of diversity statements in the faculty hiring process. These statements, typically a page-long, were required of all faculty candidates so they could persuade the institution that they could be relied upon to support and enhance the university’s commitment to “diversity.” The statements are now routine in faculty hiring at many public and private universities, as well in corporations and other organizations. I confess that I had not focused on this development sufficiently; it is scary, and the mainstream media and its pundits apparently felt it was not something “the public has a right to know.” [The only previous Ethics Alarms essay on diversity statements is here. I helped sound the alarm, and then did nothing for two years.]

As she announced the reform, MIT’s president Sally Kornbluth, the lone survivor of the fateful Congressional hearing that led to the dismissal of two other female presidents of elite universities, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, condemned the statements as compelled speech. “My goals are to tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to M.I.T. and to make sure they thrive once here,” Dr. Kornbluth said . “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”

Interesting phrasing. If they “worked,” whatever sinister meaning that has, would she be eliminating them? The diversity statements are not just compelled speech, they represent compelled ideological conformity. That’s fascist stuff. Explain to me again: who are the “threats to democracy”? It also points to the other perspective besides the one I alluded to at the beginning. The fact that diversity statements has infested academia at all is ominous.

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Ethics Heroes: 13 Federal Judges

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Thirteen federal judges—appellate Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, Matthew Solomson of the U.S Court of Federal Claims, District Judges Alan Albright and Matthew Kacsmaryk, Stephen Vaden, who sits on the United States Court of International Trade; plus judges David Counts, James W. Hendrix, Jeremy D. Kernodle, Tilman E. Self, III, Brantley Starr, Drew B. Tipton and Daniel M. Traynor—have all announced in a letter to Columbia University’s president, that beginning with the entering class of 2024, they “will not hire anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or law students.”

“Since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, Columbia University has become ground zero for the explosion of student disruptions, anti-semitism, and hatred for diverse viewpoints on campuses across the Nation, ” the letter begins. “Disruptors have threatened violence, committed assaults, and destroyed property. As judges who hire law clerks every year to serve in the federal judiciary, we have lost confidence in Columbia as an institution of higher education. Columbia has instead become an incubator of bigotry. As a result, Columbia has disqualified itself from educating the future leaders of our country.”

After suggesting measures that need to be taken to restore trust in the institution, the judges conclude, “Recent events demonstrate that ideological homogeneity throughout the entire institution of Columbia has destroyed its ability to train future leaders of a pluralistic and intellectually diverse country. Both professors and administrators are on the front lines of the campus disruptions, encouraging the virulent spread of antisemitism and bigotry. Significant and dramatic change in the composition of its faculty and administration is required to restore confidence in Columbia.”

It is a responsible, powerful, and much needed response, both to the institution and the students who have demonstrated both an absence of critical thinking and judicious temperament as well basic respect for their fellow students, liberal education, and the law.

Now do Harvard.


The Latest From Harvard Is So Irresponsible and Incompetent That It Shocks Even Me

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

And I have absolutely no faith or trust in this arrogant and rotting (a bad combination) institution. But I still didn’t think its leadership could be this stupid. Hence my brains and skull fragments being all over the ceiling…

Harvard’s 2024 commencement speaker will be Maria Ressa, the CEO of the Philippines-based news site Rappler and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Sounds Harvard-y eneough, doesn’t she? Except that in January, Ressa signed a letter accusing Israel of “unabated killing of journalists in Israeli airstrikes since the start of the Israel-Gaza war”while calling for “immediate end to the bombardment of journalists and apparent targeting in some cases of our colleagues in Gaza and the region.” (This a dubious accusation at best.)

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Comment of the Day: “Fat-Shaming Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I have such a strong visceral reaction to this provocative Comment of the Day, a personal account by Joel Mundt, that I’m going to eschew my usual introduction and let you make your own judgments without any influence by me. Here it is, in reaction to “Fat-Shaming Ethics” and the lively comments it has generated so far…

***

I’m going slightly off-topic, and I apologize in advance…

I’m of the opinion that shaming is, to a degree, a good thing. In my opinion, it’s a form of non-physical discipline that emphasizes embarrassment and plays on an individual’s need to be liked and to be more like the collective. It’s a way to manipulate desired behavior using something of a “group intervention.”

A perfect example of this is…well…me. As an elementary student, I had a reputation of being really smart, but also talking out-of-turn an awful lot in class, which was disruptive. My 5th-grade teacher, Mrs. Crooks, sought me out and purposely got my name on her class list. Nobody wanted her as their 5th-grade teacher…she had a terrifying reputation among younger students. I didn’t know it until years later, but she had talked to my parents ahead of time, explaining that I would be her student, and she would break me of my disruptive ways.

And she did her best! I was punished in the most imaginative ways for speaking out of turn, like being ordered to walk around classroom without making a sound for 10 minutes while she taught the other students, or playing the part of the “silent i” in front of the class when learning to spell words like “receive”. She was modestly effective…until the day of “the sign”. I was talking out of turn yet again and Mrs. Crooks told me – in front of the class – that my punishment was to write the words “I’m a big mouth” on a piece of paper, then glue it to a piece of cardboard she gave me with a string in it, then wear it around my neck…outside during our lunch recess with the entire school.

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