Month: January 2024

From the “The Trouble With Protesters” Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The trouble with protesters, to cut to the chase, is that a large percentage of them in virtually every protest and demonstration don’t know what they are chanting about and are just happy mob participants. I remember when my college was shut down by a student strike my freshman year, several of my friends were happily raising their fists and carrying signs despite the fact that they weren’t interested or informed on the matter being protested. They all reassured me that they were involved to meet girls. Later, in my first job after law school, the PR director I worked with in D.C. seemed to be attending a protest or rally every weekend. When I remarked that she was unusually politically active for someone who never discussed politics at all, she assured me that she just enjoyed the energy of crowds…and found it a good way to meet guys.

Since yesterday was “Capitol Insurrection Day,” which I predict will be made a national holiday as soon as Democrats get control of Congress, it seems a propitious opportunity to ponder an equally stupid protest in Clifton, Bristol (Great Britain). A resident reported that his Tesla’s tires were deflated, and on the windshield was this message:

Other automobiles on his street were also victims of tire-deflating. The group behind the mass flattening calls itself “the Tyre Extinguishers.” ( The play on words would work better if the Brits spelled “fire” as “fyre.”)

The annoyed Tesla owner told reporters, “It’s ironic, because I was trying to do the right thing by buying an electric car. It’s ridiculous and inconvenient. I get why [climate activism] is happening, but I’m not seeing the point of this.”

The point he ought to derive from the incident is that most climate change protesters know almost nothing about climate science and related matters, like the full environmental effects of electric vehicles. They are passionately protesting what they don’t understand sufficiently to have an informed opinion about, and therefore shouldn’t influence anyone beyond persuading observers that they are passionate, unethical dolts and blights on society.

One more point: deflating the tires of Teslas is a brilliant climate change protest compared to gluing oneself to a famous painting.

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Pointer: Curmie

Curmie’s Conjectures: The Belfry Theatre’s Crisis of Nerve

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

by Curmie

[ JM here: I want to let Curmie’s Conjectures stand on their own, so I apologize at the outset by intruding with a brief introduction. Lest anyone be dissuaded from reading the whole post because the author’s scholarly tone and apparent focus at the start suggests that this will be a narrow discourse on topics rather more relished by Curmie and me than by the majority of EA readers—theater and the performing arts—fear not. The tags on the article will be “Canada, censorship, the Hamas-Israel War Ethics Train Wreck, and political theater.” The post also involves some of the same considerations as one of mine two days ago. ]

There is a theory, one to which I subscribe, which suggests that the Dionysian Festival of classical Athens began not really as a religious observance in honor of a demi-god but rather as a means of consolidating the political power of the tyrant Peisistratus.  Whether or not this is true, there is no doubt that by 458 BCE Aeschylus’ Oresteia, widely acclaimed as “the world’s first dramatic masterpiece,” offers commentary on the reforms of the Areopagus enacted by the strategos Ephialtes some three years earlier.

There is no question that since that time the theatre has often—not always, but often—been political.  The 20th century offered more than a few examples of playwrights and production companies who, often at personal risk, critiqued the power structures around them: Jean-Paul Sartre took on the Nazis; Lorraine Hansberry, racism in the US; Athol Fugard, apartheid; Václav Havel, communism in Eastern Europe.

Not all such efforts were for causes most of us would endorse, of course.  Socialist Realism was a Stalinist policy under which all art had to support The Revolution: not just avoid criticism of the regime, but actively and explicitly endorse it.  More recently, the Freedom Theatre of Jenin (on the occupied West Bank) has been in the news.  A few weeks ago, one of the student organizations at my university posted an encomium to the company, which they described as “an example of creating liberating theatre and serving communities through theatrical pedagogy and profound performance.”  I remembered having written about that theatre a dozen or so years ago.  If I might quote myself for a moment: “Turns out that the Freedom Theatre was pretty damned proud of having turned out alumni who engaged in armed insurrection, and at least one of whom, a suicide bomber, richly merited description as a terrorist.” 

So no, propagandistic theatre isn’t always a good thing… but engaging with the world is.  Even subtle messages matter.  Under normal circumstances, Aunt Eller’s wish that “the farmer and the cowman can be friends” doesn’t amount to much.  But Oklahoma! hit Broadway after the declaration of war against the Axis powers and before D-Day.  “Territory folks” need to put aside their petty grievances when there’s a guy with a funny mustache who’s far worse than any of your neighbors will ever be.

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January 6 Ethics Outgrowths and Upheavals

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I’ll be damned if I’ll call them “insurrections.”

1. Free the Peshawar tree! Here is a flagrant example of unethical treatment of vegetation. 125 years ago, an inebriated British officer, James Squid, was staggering toward a tree in Landi Kotal, a town near the Torkhan border of Pakistan. Convinced that it was the tree that was moving rather than him as he tried to lean on it for support, Squid declared the tree under arrest. It was then duly chained to the ground, and the chains remain to this day. This plaque tells the tragic tale:

2. Moving on to humans, Greta Thunberg, who just turned 21 and no longer can claim the credulity of extreme youth to excuse her demagoguery, quietly took down her tweet from 2018 quoting a distinguished scientist’s conclusion that the human race was doomed if global warming wasn’t shut down in five years.

3. Is THIS a frivolous law suit? Jonathan Turley thinks so, but I have my doubts. Frustrated New York City Major Eric Adams, beside himself over his charge actually having to live up to its proud status as a “sanctuary city,” announced this week that he is suing bus companies, seeking $700 million in damages for their carrying illegal immigrants into the Big Apple. Turley reminds us that the Biden Administration is flying the same scofflaws to New York.

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Its Post-Harvard President Firing Tantrum Shows That The Left Is Even More Corrupt Than We Thought! Part III: The News Media and the Race-Baiters [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In a recent essay, Victor David Hanson concisely summarizes why the Left’s angry narrative that Claudine Gay was forced out as Harvard’s president because of racial discrimination is untenable and self-damning. He wrote in part,

…In the respective press releases from both Gay and the Harvard Corporation, racial animus was cited as a reason for her removal. Gay did not even refer to her failure to stop antisemitism on her campus or her own record of blatant plagiarism. Yet playing the race card reflects poorly on both and for a variety of reasons. One, Gay’s meager publication record — a mere eleven articles without a single published book of her own — had somehow earned her a prior Harvard full professorship and presidency. Such a thin resume leading to academic stardom is unprecedented.

Two, the University of Pennsylvania forced the resignation of its president, Liz Magill. She sat next to Gay during that now-infamous congressional hearing in which they both claimed they were unable to discipline blatant antisemitism on their campuses. Instead, both pleaded “free speech” and “context” considerations.

Such excuses were blatantly amoral and untrue. In truth, ivy-league campuses routinely sanction, punish, or remove staff, faculty, or students deemed culpable for speech or behavior deemed hurtful to protected minorities — except apparently white males and Jews. Yet Magill was immediately forced to resign, and Gay was not. Also noteworthy was Magill’s far more impressive and extensive administrative experience, along with a more prestigious scholarship that was free of even a suggestion of plagiarism.

Academia’s immediate firing of a white woman while trying desperately to save the career of a less qualified and ethically challenged Black woman will be seen not as a case of racial bias but more likely of racial preference.

And yet one after another of the prominent pundits, journalists and commentators immediately worked hard to spread the “Gay was a victim of systemic racism” narrative. In so doing, they discredited themselves and the ideology that warps their judgment and ethics.

Presidential candidate Cornel West, a former Harvard professor, wrote, “How sad but predictable that the same figures and forces enabling the ethnic cleansing and genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza – Ackman, Blum, Summers and others – push out the first Black woman president of Harvard! This racism against both Palestinians and Black people is undeniable and despicable! I have experienced similar attacks from the same forces in academia with too many of my colleagues remaining silent! When big money dictates university policy and raw power dictates foreign policy, the moral bankruptcy of American education and democracy looms large! But we shall remain strong in our fight for Truth Justice Love!”

Al Sharpton told his MSNBC audience that the Harvard president’s resignation is an “attack” on “every Black woman” in US.

Mara Gay, one of several NYT’s race-baiters, told MSNBC that”This is really an attack on academic freedom … This is an attack on diversity. This is an attack on multiculturalism, & … I don’t have to say that they’re racist, because you can hear and see the racism in the attacks”

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Is the Biden/Special Prosecutor/Biased MSM Hand-off To Terrify Voters Deliberate?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I don’t think so, because I don’t think they are that smart. But if it is deliberate, I have to admit that it’s pretty slick. Unethical, despicable and dangerous, but slick.

Let’s start with Biden’s speech yesterday, described as his first campaign speech of 2024. The Democrats are really going to do it; they really are going to base their whole campaign on Big Lies (and smaller lies) and fearmongering. Biden’s speech was basically “Soul of the Nation” (aka. “The Reichstag Speech”)II. The first time around, it was already the most irresponsible, unfair, and dangerous speech a President of the U.S. has ever delivered. I wrote that the speech signaled the “complete corruption of the Democratic Party for anyone to see who isn’t in an ethics coma.” That was a correct analysis. Nevertheless, Biden, his party and progressives think it “worked,” so now we’ll be hearing it over and over again.

The speech cites “the soul of the nation” almost immediately. It is riddled with lies, familiar ones, like calling the January 6 rioting an “insurrection” (thus telling the legally ignorant that the Supreme Court should obviously allow Democrats to block Trump from running) and saying “Jill and I attended the funeral of police officers who died as a result of the events of that day.” The Bidens attended exactly one such funeral, and it has been reported over and over again that officer Brian Sicknick died of a stroke days after the riot, and that there was no indication that his death was related to the events of the 6th. The New York Times issued a false story that they had to retract, and Biden has been citing the misinformation for almost four years.

The whole speech is an attack on Donald Trump and his supporters, massaging and distorting Trumps words repeatedly. Of course we got the spin that Trump said “he’d be a dictator on day one.” That’s pure deceit, as we’ve discussed. Biden said: ”He called and I quote, the terminate, quote, this is a quote, the termination of all the rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the U.S. Constitution should be terminated if it fits his will. Even found in the Constitution, he could terminate.” (That’s a “quote,” mind you!) Here’s the actual quote, from one of Trump’s typical rants on Truth Social a year ago:

“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

It was an especially stupid outburst even for Trump, and it begged to be weaponized by the Democrats, but the post was not an assertion that Trump as President could or would “terminate” the Constitution.

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Comment of the Day: “Its Post-Harvard President Firing Tantrum Shows That The Left Is Even More Corrupt Than We Thought! Part II: Claudine Gay’s Disgusting NYT Op-Ed”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I owe Tom P. this Comment of the Day. In the post, I asked EA readers to check out the Times’ readers’ reactions, because I dreaded reading them. He was the first to provide an overview. I am most grateful.

It is not surprising, but still discouraging, that the early responses were positive to Gay’s truly awful attempt to shift the blame for her rapid demise as Harvard’s president to the critics and “racial stereotypes,” as well as implying what Hillary Clinton would call a “vast right wing conspiracy.” I cannot conceive of any good faith examination of the events leading to Gay’s resignation leading to the conclusion that anyone was responsible for her forced exit other than her, and to a lesser extent, the Harvard Corporation that elevated her, enabled her, and tried to cover for her, ultimately making a bad situation worse. Every attempt to defend Gay has fallen into three categories, and often all three: ignoring the facts (which Gay does in her Times op-ed), excusing plagiarism and endorsing the untenable double standard of holding students to a more exacting standard of integrity than Harvard’s faculty, deans, and president; race-baiting, which is particularly hard to justify under these facts when Gay’s race (and gender) have been the Golden Tickets that got her the job in the first place, and a “we can’t let them win!” rationalization. None of the four is rational or worthy of respect.

Tom’s survey, however, is encouraging. It suggest that all the metaphorical dust being thrown in the eyes of the public by Gay, progressives, pundits and the media, isn’t going to be sufficient to fool enough of the people enough of the time, as Honest Abe might put it.

Here is Tom P.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Its Post-Harvard President Firing Tantrum Shows That The Left Is Even More Corrupt Than We Thought! Part II: Claudine Gay’s Disgusting NYT Op-Ed”...

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Per your request, below are my observations of NY Times readers’ comments.

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On James Bond, The BFI’s Trigger Warnings, and “Poisoning the Well.”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

And now for something completely stupid…The British Film Institute, which screens classic films in its Southbank location in London and has the mission of preserving British cinema, has slapped a ridiculous trigger warning on the early James Bond movies, along with some others from the same period. It reads,

“Please note that many of these films contain language, images or other content that reflect views prevalent in its time, but will cause offence today (as they did then). The titles are included here for historical, cultural or aesthetic reasons and these views are in no way endorsed by the BFI or its partners.“

The “Look out! You’re going to be offended if you are right-thinking Brit!” is offensive itself for many reasons, as that description might suggest. The BFI is for adults, not children; there’s no need to warn grown-ups about characters smoking, naughty bits, violence and the terminology of the time. The date should be enough: “Oh, right, this film is six decades old! Things were different then!” The BFI is treating viewers like idiots, as well as imposing its woke, nanny sensibilities on others.

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Ethics Dunce: Business Insider

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

And here is yet another despicable example of an unethical backlash in reaction to Claudine Gay’s wholly deserved exit as president of Harvard University.

Billionaire hedge fund manager, major Harvard donor and Harvard alum Bill Ackman has been among the most outspoken critics of Gay, beginning with his disgust at the then-Harvard president’s infamous performance under questioning at a Congressional hearing. He was adamant that the subsequent plagiarism revelations mandated Gay’s resignation, and after she did resign earlier this week, he wrote on X that Gay should be fired from the faculty as well. “Students are forced to withdraw for much less,” Ackman tweeted. “Rewarding her with a highly paid faculty position sets a very bad precedent for academic integrity at Harvard.”

Is anyone seriously going to dispute that? The only argument can be that Harvard has allowed other professors to get away with plagiarism with no more than some embarrassment as their punishment. See my Ethics Scoreboard post The Plagiarizing Professor, and the weekly Standard’s Laurence Tribe and the problem of borrowed scholarship. (And don’t forget that my professor at Harvard for the American Presidency course was Doris Kearns, later Goodwin, who had a major plagiarism scandal after leaving the faculty.) In another post on the topic, I concluded, “Harvard …has a full-blown plagiarism problem among its faculty, and it is more than likely that it has extensive company among other prestigious universities. Institutions of higher education must unite and begin serious and extensive inquiries into the extent and the causes of a trend that threatens the integrity of scholarship and undermines the ethics of America’s students.”

Needless to say—well, apparently it does need saying because the “Everybody does it” excuse has been cited repeatedly in defense of Gay—the way to fix a faculty plagiarism problem is to stop tolerating plagiarism by members of the faculty.

But I digress. This post is about Business Insider. What BI broke as a scoop late yesterday was that its minions had uncovered evidence of plagiarism by Bill Ackman’s wife Neri Oxman, who was a tenured professor at MIT from 2017 to 2021. “Oxman plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation, Business Insider found, including at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation,” Business Insider crowed.

To which I respond, “So what?” Sure, shame on her, but why is that newsworthy? Oxman’s plagiarism has nothing to do with the president of Harvard. It has nothing to do with Harvard. It does not mitigate Gay’s misconduct in any way. It does not prove that Bill Ackman is a hypocrite: he’s not a scholar, nor an academic, and he presumably married his wife for reasons unrelated to scholarly attribution practices. At best, BI is engaging in obnoxious “whataboutism.” At worst, its slap at Ackman through his wife is like the plague of “swatting” going around lately. Ackman helped bring down Gay, so Business Insider sets out to disrupt Ackman’s family.

Nice.

Assholes.

Oxman addressed the question of her plagiarism on Twitter/X, and also revealed that she was blindsided by the Business Insider reporter, who contacted her yesterday and gave her little time to review his findings and respond before BI’s hit piece went up. She described the aspects of her dissertation that had attribution issues and involved quotes without quotation marks, said she regretted them, apologized to the authors involved, and said she would ask M.I.T. to allow her to make corrections where necessary. Her post is a completely reasonable response to BI’s findings, indeed exactly the kind of response Gay should have made, but didn’t and hasn’t.

But again, it doesn’t matter. Oxman isn’t the president of a university. She isn’t a university faculty member. She isn’t a candidate for political office, like Joe Biden was when he plagiarized a speech, or Elizabeth Warren was when it was revealed that she copied someone else’s recipes for her cook book, “Pow Wow Chow.” Oxman authored one scholarly product while a student that inadequately credited sources; Gay’s plagiarism was present in several separate works published as professor. Oxman was targeted by Business Insider to strike at her husband.

So this is the way its going to be, is it?

You can find my honors thesis on “The Great Man Theory and the American Presidency” in Widener Library, guys, and my book (with historian Ed Larson) can be purchased here. Go for it.

Most Odious Response to Claudine Gay’s Demise Yet: Hossam (Sam) Youssef, Ph.D

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Now THAT’s anti-Semitism!

Since he asked: Why yes, Alan Garber who is the interim president of the Harvard until a permanent replacement for Claudine Gay is selected, holds Harvard professorships in health care policy, economics, and public policy. As the school Provost, he was the obvious choice to step in. Funny, it didn’t even occur to me that he is Jewish.

Youseff’s credentials are here.

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Pointer: Campus Reform

Friday Open Forum, Full Attribution Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“Family, friends, colleagues, students and postdocs, alumni, distinguished guests” [ Gay, C., Harvard Inaugural Address, 2023] and Ethics Alarms readers: “My hope is that” [Gay,C. ‘It’s not my fault!’ op-ed, New York Times, 1/4/23] this open forum will reflect “your own commitment….to the common cause of” [Gay, C., Harvard Inaugural Address, 2023] ethics consideration and exploration, and that “any temptation to use” [ Ormsby, J.; Translator’s Introduction to “Don Quixote” (Project Gutenberg, 1997.] anyone else’s ideas or wording will ” be resisted” [Ibid.] today. Our goal here, after all, is to”question the world as it is and imagine and make a better one” [Gay, C., Harvard Inaugural Address, op.cit.] as we inspire “a new birth of” [Lincoln, A; “Gettysburg Address,” 1863] ethics awareness in our culture.