Dartmouth alumnus Curmie—Can’t you just picture him leading that horse into the Dean’s office?—shared this letter he received as a member of the “Dartmouth community” from the school’s first female president, Dr. Sian Leah Beilock. It stands in stark contrast to the nauseating Columbia letter dissected here, and Emerson College’s president’s equally revolting letter I posted on here.
Yes, it’s more diplomatic than my letter would be, but that’s why I’m not a college president. And yes, Beilock’s use of the breathless “amazing”—apparently now taking over from “awesome”—is a bit disturbing coming from an adult in high places, but never mind. She has rescued some of the tarnished honor of the university presidents’ club.
You know, or should, that your conduct is unethical and outrageous when it makes Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) look good by comparison Gaetz voted against HR 690, as every member of the House should have since it is throbbingly unconstitutional on its face, no question, no argument, a flat out First Amendment violation. Gaetz told his followers on Twitter/X that he voted against the proposed legislation because it is a “ridiculous hate speech bill.”
“Antisemitism is wrong, but this legislation is written without regard for the Constitution, common sense, or even the common understanding of the meaning of words,” he wrote. Bingo. The bill, in weasel words remarkable even by recent Congressional standards, declares that “anti-Semitism” is a violation of title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq.), and embraces an expansive definition of the term “adopted on May 26, 2016, by the IHRA, of which the United States is a member, which definition has been adopted by the Department of State; and… includes the “[c]ontemporary examples of antisemitism” identified in the IHRA definition.”
The IHRA definition includes examples of pure speech, and I would expect any junior in high school to know that these cannot be criminalized:
Bernhardt isn’t the only noodle-spined, terrorism-enabling fool running an American college or university right now, but he’s as good a representative as any. I’m familiar with Emerson (most people weren’t before its students started demonstrating for more Jew killing as if there hadn’t too much of that already) because it resides in my old stomping ground of Boston, and my aunt Bea, 97-years-old and still as progressive as they come, graduated from there.
Over 100 Emerson students were arrested in downtown Boston’s Boylston Place alleyway in an early morning confrontation with Boston police last week. The students were illegally participating in an encampment protest by the student organization Students for Justice in Palestine. They also fought with police as the cops tried to do their jobs. But in his letter of three days ago, Emerson College President Jay Bernhardt said that he will urge the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office to drop all charges. Four Boston police officers were injured during the confrontation, one seriously. Never mind, though. These are only adults who can vote, buy liquor and and otherwise have full privileges of citizenship, and they violated the law in support of terrorists. Their hearts were in the right place. They meant well. Anybody can make a mistake. For a full list of the inexcusable rationalizations being used to let these idiots escape accountability for their ignorant, illegal and violent actions, see here, at the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations List. I’m guessing at least 40 of them apply, maybe more.
The escalation overnight in the anti-Israel, pro-Jew-killing demonstrations at Columbia University, temporarily at the top of the campus progressives-showing-their-true-stripes and “Oops, I guess we indoctrinated these gullible kids a little too much!” hit parades, was the breaking news I woke up to at 5 am when Spuds asked to go out. I have some ethics observations about this whole disturbing development (the Gaza support on campuses, not Spuds’ bathroom habits), which the Biden administration deserves to have hung around its neck like a stinking dead albatross for signaling that the U.S. sympathizes with terrorists just so it might pick up some Muslim votes in Michigan. In the process of researching that post, I encountered the reason for this one.
Deciding that the immediacy of the 1968 flashbacks justified bumping another post that I have almost completed, I checked the usually reliable news aggregating site Memeorandum (Ann Althouse’s favorite!) to find some early reports and commentary on the student terrorism fans at Columbia taking over Hamilton Hall. And I found…nothing. The top stories as of this moment [remember, by the time you read this, the list may have changed]:
#1: The Kristi Noem dog story! You see, that’s a top story because it reflects poorly on Republicans.
#2 according to the site is an FBI report that crime in the U.S. is really decreasing under Biden—as if there is any reason to trust the FBI any more, and as everyone I know in Northern Virginia is terrified to go into D.C. This is second on the list because it is going to take a huge “It isn’t what it is” push to convince voters that all of those chains moving out of inner cities because of runaway shoplifting are really doing it because they are racist.
#3? Another hit on a Republican, this time from that paragon of objectivity, Rolling Stone.
Coming in at #4…well, I don’t have to belabor the point. There are seventeen more “top stories,” including one about India operating a spy ring in Australia, and the drama at Columbia isn’t anywhere to be found.
Eureka! Now I know that whoever is running this news aggregator site is manipulating the news and trying to mislead the public in support of Joe Biden and the Democrats. Similarly, we have learned that the eruption of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic passion across the nation is just one more example of what a terrible, weak, foolish POTUS Joe Biden is, and how ethically corrupt his party and its supporters have become.
Here’s a third: journalism in this culture is untrustworthy and a metaphorical dagger in the back of democracy….but we knew that.
Wow, what could possibly account for that? The man is paranoid!
I missed “Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course” in the Times two weeks ago. Fortunately a non-Ethics Alarms-reading friend sent me this column by the usually astute and trustworthy Holman Jenkins at the Wall Street Journal. (Aside:I continue to wonder why so few of my friends and long-time associates read this blog, and none of my family members. It must be me, or as one friend who does read Ethics Alarms once said in a moment of self-doubt, “All my best friends hate me.”) His assessment of the significance of the piece tracks exactly with mine, and he seems to be coming from a similar point of view: he doesn’t have any illusions about Donald Trump, but he still finds the Times’ dishonest and biased coverage of him since Trump’s election despicable. Except this one initial arch comment—Gee, imagine not trusting intelligence agencies!—I’ll leave the commentary to Jenkins with a few footnotes from me:
The New York Court of Appeals overturned the felony sex crimes conviction of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein yesterday. The 4-to-3 decision held that the trial judge deprived him of his right to a fair trial in 2020 when he allowed prosecutors to call witnesses who said Weinstein had sexually assaulted them despite the assaults having never been charged as crimes or proven to have occurred. Using allegations of past bad acts to prove guilt in a criminal trial is generally forbidden in New York and other U.S. jurisdictions with limited exceptions. Since Harvey is already serving a prison sentence for another set of crimes that will keep him locked away until he is almost 90, the decision is more symbolic than useful to Weinstein. But it still needed to be made.
“I condemn the antisemitic protests.That’s why I have set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
—President Joe Biden answering a shouted question at an Earth Day event at Prince William Forest Park in Triangle, Virginia outside Washington, DC.
Joe Biden saying something stupid, incomprehensible or dishonest is a virtually daily occurrence, but some of his statements have significant consequences, taking them out of Julie Principle territory. This one continues his astounding effort to try to pander to both sides of the Hamas-Israel conflict and their respective supporters simultaneously. It is such an obviously impossible and indefensible mission that it’s amazing that there is anyone who isn’t disgusted and insulted by it, for it is predicated on the belief that everyone is even dumber than Joe.
The almost unanimous mainstream media mockery of former President Trump briefly snoozing during the kangaroo court “hush money” trial isn’t the most noxious example of biased, hostile news media coverage as the Axis attempts to, again, clothesline the American leader so many of them have pledged to destroy (Hi there, NPR!) , but it’s particularly contrived and ignorant. Attention should be paid: these are the people crippling democracy while claiming that they want to save it.
The idea, of course, is tit-for-tat: Republicans and conservatives (along with anyone with eyes and ears who isn’t so biased they can’t think) have been pointing out the obvious crisis that the man supposedly overseeing our government is failing mentally and physically, unable to keep a full schedule or speak coherently, almost certainly operating with a metaphorical hand shoved up into his suit and head to give the (barely credible illusion) that he is really calling the shots, in thrall to a dangerous far left cabal, and too old to be safely entrusted with the Presidency even if all of the forgoing weren’t true. Therefore the counter argument, juvenile as it is (“So’s your old man!”) is to default to “wahataboutism” (as well as the usual anti-Trump Big Lies). Trump’s too old! Trump’s no more able than Biden!
…someone just has to figure out how and why. Or just assume how and why. Oh, hell, just hand over the reparations already!
Researchers believe that black Americans are likely to have more trouble sleeping than the white Americans who oppress them. In fact, the darker your skin color is, the less sleep you get, says Dr. Dayna A. Johnson, a sleep epidemiologist at Emory University. “The theory is that racial minorities experience a stress that is unique and chronic and additive to the general stressors that all people experience,” said Johnson, a sleep disparity pioneer. “We all experience stress, but there are added stressors for certain groups. For certain populations, racism fits into that category.”
A Johnson-headed study published in the journal “Sleep” claims to find that experiencing racism and can cause people to have problems falling asleep. (What did the researchers do, hire people to racially discriminate against their subjects before bedtime?) The study also concluded that people who anticipate racism may experience interference with their sleep-wake cycle because the dread causes their body to be in a heightened state of anxiety, with higher blood pressure and accelerating heart rate. By this, I glean that being told by the media, politicians and race-hucksters that American society is all racist all the time causes black Americans to lose sleep. Got it. And being white, this is my fault.
Yes, I know I’m breaking my own rule about not using unflattering photos of Hillary Cinton, a pledge I made during the 2016 Presidential campaign I think—it might have been earlier. She deserves it in this instance.
I feel genuine compassion for Hillary, just as I do for Al Gore (and Samuel J. Tilden) up to a point. It must be terrible to win the popular vote for President of the United States and lose the election. I think it must be a little like what I am trying to deal with right now after waking up one morning and finding my wife dead.
Hillary is bitter and angry, and I understand that. The ethical mandate in such a situation is to strive to deal with these emotions with dignity, and, in her position as a public figure that many Americans admire and respect (mistakenly), to serve as a role model for everyone else who finds themselves suddenly losing something or someone that assumed they had firmly and safely in their embrace.
She’s failed that mandate spectacularly and repeatedly. Clinton lost the Presidency, not only by the quirk of the Electoral College, but also through her own perfidy, arrogance and incompetence, yet she refuses to take responsibility for any of that. In her view, at least publicly, it is all Donald Trump’s fault, along with the”deplorables” who voted for him. From the moment she learned that she had lost the 2016 election in a stunning upset, Clinton has set out to do everything and anything she can to hurt him, beginning with declaring his election illegitimate, spawning the Russian collusion investigation that crippled his Presidency, and using every opportunity to trigger the Trump Deranged with inevitably diminishing returns.
Ethics Alarms 