U.S. Society

The Entertaining Prof. Jennifer L. Hochschild Car on the Harvard President Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

If you enjoy watching a Harvard professor revealing herself as complete asshole to colleagues, students, the news media, everyone, really—and who doesn’t?—-you’ll love this story.

Harvard professor Jennifer L. Hochschild was one of the scholars ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay plagiarized on the way to academic infamy. She was also one of those who lacked the integrity to agree to what should have been obvious, which is that having a record of serial ethical misconduct was something no president of Harvard could or should weather. Like many on the DEI side of the culture, her response to the revelations of Gay’s lack of fitness for her job was to attack the conservatives, notably gadfly Christopher Rufo, who uncovered the damning evidence that Gay was a cheat. Rufo cites among his own credentials“a master’s from Harvard,” and Hochschild set out to tar him as a hypocrite for this, tweeting,

Even if the criticism of Rufo were justified—more on that in a nonce—this was a damning tweet…for the professor. Attacking the messenger who carries unwelcome but accurate information is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem attack, and exactly the kind of weak reasoning and unethical practice the world’s most self-congratulatory university is supposed to purge from its graduates. But those determined to protect Gay, Harvard’s diversity-hire, “historic” female president “of color” by any means possible, stooped to this gutter tactic en masse and almost the second Gay’s embarrassing performance at a congressional hearing focused national attention of her deficits and the sick university culture she represented. Her performance was just fine because conservatives criticized it.

The tweet was especially odd for Hochschild, who teaches at the very same Harvard Extension School whose students she slammed as “not really Harvard grads.” The “X” community quickly slapped a “context” note on the tweet…

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Ethics Quote of the Month: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“So… it didn’t work to change the culture temporarily, to deal with Trump, that horribly abnormal President. The old culture didn’t just pop back into place when Trump was gone. You have to take care of a culture and maintain its values in good times and bad.”

—Retired law professor and active blogger Ann Althouse, reflecting on how the cultural norms violated by the Left to “get” Donald Trump didn’t recover once he was out of the White House.

Ann warrants a Super Bingo for this. It neatly fits in with the EA post about what we are facing once the courts make it official that Presidents can be prosecuted for their acts while in office. Her observation—spot on—was prompted by the Politico piece, “Bosses in the Biden admin are pressed over young staffers’ anonymous letters/Protest letters, like those over Israel, were rare in past administrations. White House veterans can barely contain their disdain over how times have changed”. Ethics Alarms posted many articles about how members of Trump’s staff and other officials in his administration, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, behaved unethically by abusing their positions of trust, leaking confidential information, and working behind the scenes to sabotage their superiors. The government simply cannot function without government staff and subordinates accepting the basic principle that while they are employed, as Paul Begala (the loyal Clinton henchman) says, “If confronted with a decision that crosses one’s ethical, moral, social, political lines, the choice is clear: Shut up and support it, or resign.”

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The Rest of the Story: One of Biden’s Ridiculously Unqualified Judicial Nominees Has Been Forced Out.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Last March, Ethics Alarms reported on the stunning lack of ability and expertise being demonstrated by some of President Biden’s appointments to federal judgeships. At least Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) had some fun exposing their incompetence, though Democrats and pundits in the mainstream media mocked him for what they termed his “gotcha!” questions….you know, horribly unfair queries like “What’s a Brady motion?,” which any first year law student should know.

The worst of Biden’s dim legal bulbs was probably Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren, nominated to serve as a U.S. District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Washington. Kennedy’s questioning revealed her to be almost completely unfamiliar with the U.S. Constitution. Kennedy asked her, “Judge, tell me what article V of the Constitution does?”  “Article V is not coming to mind at the moment, she replied.  “How about article II?” he asked, Her response: “Neither is Article II.” I wrote of the judge’s performance a year ago,

This is more than evidence of incompetence, it shows arrogance. The woman is going to be vetted in a Senate hearing; wouldn’t you think she would at least do a little bit of preparation? Nah…she knows she’s assured of being confirmed, because no Democrat would dare vote against a female nominee “of color” no matter how unqualified she appeared to be, After all, as Senator Murray said, Murray said, what matters most is “a judiciary that reflects the diversity of this country.”

And indeed,  Sen.  Murray really did say she was very qualified for the job and “truly exceptional”—as in exceptionally not-white and exceptionably female. Well, it turns out that Murray was wrong, and so was I. Bjelkengren was informed that she wasn’t going to make it after all, and is one of five nominees whose nominations to the bench expired at the end of 2023 who was not among 18 nominees the White House resubmitted to the Senate this week.

Good.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Reason’s Liz Wolfe

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“If debates had been forums where legitimate policy differences were explored in a long-form, meaningful way, then I’d probably be frustrated by this chaotic turn. But they weren’t, they sucked, and now they’re (mostly) dead.”

—Reason’s Liz Wolfe reviewing the Haley-DeSantis debate along with Trump’s counter-programming “town hall” on Fox News

She adds elsewhere in her article,

“Has the old-school debate format been broken? In the past, debate stages were crowded, debates were relatively few, and nobody really dared opt out of them—even during primary season. Now, it’s all just chaos… if you didn’t watch any of the debates or counterprogramming, you probably made a good choice.. it’s actually kind of awesome how the pageantry of debates has been cracked open, how more formats than ever before are being experimented with…and how candidates such as Trump are making unconventional campaigning choices—opting out of all primary debates—in lieu of playing the game.”

It’s too bad, but Wolfe is right. From the very beginning, debates have injected random, misleading factors into the election process. For every instance where a debate legitimately illuminated something important about one of the candidates, there have been 20 where they had a disproportionate effect on public opinion. The main problem is that debating skill, or even public speaking skills, are not necessarily markers of leadership competence. Vivek Ramaswamy has been giving a master class on that.

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Ethics Dunce: “Face the Nation” Host Margaret Brennan

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ooooh, I would fire Brennan for this if I were in charge of CBS news.

Brennan tried to cross-examine Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on last weekend’s “Face the Nation” about his stance on the 2020 election. “Back in 2021, you were the lawmaker who circulated the legal brief known as the “Texas Amicus Brief [actually Texas v. Pennsylvania] challenging the 2020 election outcome in a number of states,” Brennan stated, “which by CBS editorial standards makes you an election denier.”

“That’s nonsense,”Johnson replied, and when Brennan said: “Can I get you on the record on that?,” he continued, “I’ve always been consistent on the record. Did you read the brief? Did you get a chance to read what we filed with the Supreme Court?”

Her shocking answer, a veritable huminhuminhumina if ever there was one:”Well- I have read extensively some criticisms of that…”

Oh! She read some criticisms of the brief by her biased, propagandist colleagues, so that was sufficient preparation, she believed, to call someone who supported the brief’s arguments an “election denier.” That’s like using a book review to write a book report on a book you never read.

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What Is the Ethical Reaction to “Urn Boy”?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Social media-user “Casual Thursdays” reported on this story as it unfolded:

Connor Padgett was the name eventually attached to the unforgettable image. It has yet to be explained how or why Padgett got himself wedged into the urn. In her long reign as TV’s top comedienne, Lucille Ball’s writers got her head stuck in a loving cup and her whole body trapped in a suitcase, but never an urn. It is clear, however, that Padgett was not inclined to stay in good humor during his ordeal. Moreover, thanks to the inevitable cell phone video, his humiliation has “gone viral” and will either haunt him until the end of his days, or become a treasured piece of family lore.

He was eventually broken out of his restraints with a hammer. The urn was reputedly worth thousands of dollars, which Connor presumably has to pay to the owner. Some of the social media reactions were clever: “He should have to live his life in there like a hermit crab” was my personal favorite.

But back to ethics: what is the ethical response to Connor? The Golden Rule tells us that we should treat him like we would want to be treated, except that if I did something this stupid, I would be abasing myself mercilessly, particularly after getting the bill.

My verdict is that this is a Nelson:

What do you think?

Three Ethics Failures Almost Kill a 12-Year-Old and Make a Seven-Year-Old A Killer

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

My son, a gun-lover from an early age, collected airsoft gun replicas. They are very realistic, though they shoot plastic pellets, not bullets, except for their orange tips. Once I was approaching our house at night after walking the dog and found police surrounding our back-up car. A neighbor had reported someone appearing to hide guns in the back seat. After I explained that the “guns” were toys, my son gave the police their introduction to airsoft, showing off his whole collection. They were impressed.

In Monroe County Georgia, a seven-year-old picked up a real revolver thinking it was an airsoft replica, and shot his 12-year-old sister. Fortunately she was wounded but not killed, and a greater tragedy was averted. The pro-Second Amendment website “Bearing Arms” astutely identifies the two breaches in gun safety that led to the episode:

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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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