Education

Ethics Dunce (Still!): Harvard University

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

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It’s quite possible, I think, that Harvard’s ethics rot is so entrenched and endemic that it can never be fixed, even by Barack Obama.

Here’s the latest revolting development. Harvard’s Interim President Alan Garber announced in an email that Professor of Jewish History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Derek Penslar will co-chair its new anti-Semitism task force, established to deal with the concerns of students, faculty, donors, elected officials and the public at large over demonstrations on the Harvard campus calling for the elimination of Israel and the murder of Jews.

Penslar is, shall we say, not the ideal candidate to encourage trust in the task force’s dedication to its task. He signed a letter in August accusing Israel of running a “regime of apartheid,” stating in part, “Without equal rights for all, whether in one state, two states, or in some other political framework, there is always a danger of dictatorship. There cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid, as Israeli legal experts have described it.” He has also said on more than pone occasion that the problem of anti-Semitism at Harvard is being exaggerated, while quickly pairing it with Islamophobia. “Yes, we have a problem with antisemitism at Harvard, just like we have a problem with Islamophobia and how students converse with each other,” Penslar said this month. “The problems are real. But outsiders took a very real problem and proceeded to exaggerate its scope.” Jewish Insider reported that Penslar told the Harvard Crimson in late December that the amount of media focus on anti-Semitism at Harvard has “obscured the vulnerability of pro-Palestinian students, who have faced harassment by actors outside of the University and verbal abuse on and near campus.”

Being “Pro-Palestinian” is the exact equivalent of advocating the killing of Jews, and will be until the official mission of Hamas and other Palestinian groups is altered to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

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Ethics Observations On The 2023 Gallup “Americans’ Ratings of Honesty and Ethics of Professions”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Not a surprise, but still an ominous trend...

As usual, those polled were asked, “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields — very high, high, average, low or very low?”

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Two Ridiculously Easy Questions For “The Ethicist” Draw Me To The Woodchipper…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Am I wasting my time? How can so much of the public be so hopelessly incompetent at analyzing basic ethics issues?

Two back-to-back questions to Kwame Anthony Appiah, the philosophy prof who moonlights as the Times’ ethics advice columnist, have me wondering if its time to do something more useful, like, say, anything. Both questions involved what is ethical to write about. Both questions shouldn’t have to be asked by anyone whose judgment regarding right and wrong is superior to that of the Clintons, or Willie Sutton. Both were deemed interesting and controversial enough to be featured by “The Ethicist” as if substantial numbers of his readers are likely to be similarly puzzled by the alleged dilemmas they present.

Really? The first inquirer asked if it would be unethical for a writer to use the real life stories of alcoholics that she heard in her A.A. meetings without their consent, as long as she didn’t use their names….just their “profession, physical appearance, hobbies and other specifics.” Participating in Alcoholics Anonymous is conditioned on absolute confidentiality. The answer should be self-evident. Why isn’t it?

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Oops! A Chief Diversity Officer Reveals The Real Biases Corrupting Her Field

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Attention should be paid.

In the latest issue of the “Monthly Diversity Digest,”  Dr. Sherita Hill Golden defined as her “Diversity Word of the Month” privilege as “a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group.” “Given”? She went on to write that

“Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it. People in dominant groups often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them. In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, and regardless of their stated intent.”

Golden then named these unfairly and unethically favored groups: “White people,” “Able-bodied people,” “Heterosexuals,” “Cisgender people,” “Males,” “Christians,” “Middle or owning class people,” “Middle-aged people,” and “English-speaking people.”

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Playing “Good Racial Discrimination” Whack-A-Mole

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Campus Reform and College Fix are two generally excellent sleuth sites from the Right that focus on progressive misconduct and indoctrination in higher education. There are no equivalent sites on the Left, because such sites would have material to report about once a week, if that. Since the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down affirmative action, which was always unfair and illegal, all manner of anti-white discrimination in academia, government, the corporate world and the professions are being exposed, attacked in court, and being reversed. The sheer number of these is staggering, however, and eternal vigilance is the price of an ethical culture. How many of these prejudicial and discriminatory programs are there? After careful research and statistics gathering, I can safely say “A lot.” Also: “Too many.”

Campus Reform threw its metaphorical flag on USC and Compton College, which announced that they have created a “Faculty Prep Academy” for “students of color” only. You could stop right there: that’s illegal, and the schools must know it’s illegal. Never mind: apparently the theory behind such efforts is that they can get away with it.

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Friday Forum Open For Business…

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Things are getting ugly out there. My favorite story that I haven’t written about yet is the New York City school that has kicked out the students so it can house illegal immigrants. The kids will he schooling over Zoom—and we all know how well that works. Guess how the MSM is reporting it, if it is reporting it at all? Media Matters called the play: “Right-wing media melt down over NYC using a public high school to shelter migrants overnight ” during a winter storm. “Republicans pounce!”

Oh…that’s lovely “Emily Pellegrini” above, the sensational digital model created with the assistance on an AI program. After just four months on Instagram, she has nearly 150,000 fans and is well on her way to being a web influencer. I think Natalie Portman should sue, especially since Emily may be a better actress than she is.

But I digress. See if you can find some of the beauty in ethics today.

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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Its Post-Harvard President Firing Tantrum Shows That The Left Is Even More Corrupt Than We Thought! Part I: Introduction

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Introduction

The worst part of writing a daily ethics commentary blog arrives when a juggernaut ethics train wreck starts causing carnage in all directions. Following the story is critical to the mission here, but doing it thoroughly makes Ethics Alarms less interesting, more predictable, and boring both for me and the readers. Examples of this phenomenon are, unfortunately, numerous. I’m sick of writing about Donald Trump’s miserable habits and rhetoric. I’m sick of writing about the Left dividing the nation, wrecking democracy, and crushing institutions to try to avoid having to defeat him fairly. I got thoroughly sick of writing about a dumb, corrupt, arrogant Democratic Representative who pulled a fire alarm like a 13-year-old to disrupt a House vote, and who should have been harshly punished for it…but was allowed to get away with an obvious lie. Etcetera: the mainstream media bias that so many progressives refuse to admit…the George Floyd Freakout…the DEI scam….the January 6 narrative….you can list them as easily as I can.

And I am really sick of writing about Harvard’s unethical culture, but having to watch and write about the Claudine Gay scandal is the worst yet. This story should have been quickly resolved, allowing Ethics Alarms to concentrate on more legitimately contentious matters. The facts aren’t in dispute, or shouldn’t be, embarrassing though they may be: [Added: I’ll get around to placing links to the corresponding EA posts, I hope, when I have time. You can also find them by searching for “Claudine Gay,” Harvard,” or by clicking on the “Claudine Gay” tag after the post.]

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Will Someone Please Explain To Me Why A School Board Would Settle This Case?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The settlement was for the defendant school board to pay the grand total of $101 toformer student Brielle Penkoski three years after she was sent home from the Livingston Academy public high school (in Tennessee) for wearing the shirt above. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media hasn’t carried this story, as damages that tiny are considered symbolic at best. However, the fact that the defendant paid at all is symbolic, and from my viewpoint, it symbolizes a misreading of the First Amendment.

Yeah, yeah, the settlement came with the typical boilerplate language stating that the result comes “without acknowledgement of wrongdoing on the part of any party or the agents or employees of any party, which wrongdoing is expressly denied.” But Christian Right publications and websites are cheering the result—the school board will also pay the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees and costs—as vindication.

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Unethical Quote of the Month and Ethics Dunce: Ex-Harvard President Claudine Gay

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

I was prepared to write a sympathetic and generous post in response to the resignation of Claudine Gay from the presidency of Harvard University. It must be a crushing blow for her, both personally and professionally. At this moment, I can’t think of a fair analogy from the past in any field: the closest I can come is Richard Nixon’s forced resignation from the American Presidency. She was celebrated as a great trailblazer as the first black and first black female president of the world’s most famous university only a few months ago. Her fall was rapid and ugly.

I an not sympathetic any more, however. Her Unethical Quote of the Month is her resignation letter, which you can read here. It is disgraceful. She never alludes to her failure to adequately address the anti-Semitic and pro-terrorism demonstrations on the Harvard campus. She never mentions her plagiarism in multiple scholarly papers, without which she probably could have survived the criticism arising from her inept testimony in Congress. What she says, in the midst of empty rhetoric about her aspirations and how much she cares about Harvard, is this:

“[I]t has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

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