Harvard

“Hey, Look! Professor Chung Has A Painting In The Exhib—-WHAT THE HELL?????”

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

While we’re on the topic of  “hate speech”…how about “hate paintings”? At public universities? Painted by faculty members?

An art gallery at the University of Alaska-Anchorage this month displayed the painting above, depicting actor Chris Evans as Captain America and holding  the severed head of President Trump while Hillary Clinton grasps Cap’s  legs like she is a slave girl and he is Conan the Barabarian.  The artist is UAA Painting Professor Thomas Chung, who  created the masterpiece as part of a faculty art program. Naturally it was accepted, just as it would have been if he had painted Thor holding up President Obama’s severed head. Of course it would have been accepted. After all, art is art. Academic freedom. Right?

Chung explains the artwork as something he chose to paint because he was upset at the results of the 2016 election. “I spent days just weeping,” he has said. Campus Reform quotes him  explaining his decision:

“I was really torn about putting this piece up at a faculty show, because I would never talk about my own political beliefs to my students. But I realized that I feel very strongly about this, and I think even students that might be pro-Trump supporters could benefit from having a conversation with me about why I feel this way—why I painted this.”

(By the way, the actual painting shows Evans/Captain America’s sex organs. None of the versions on the web do, though. Sorry!)

Random ethics observations, since I fear that painting may have caused some brain damage and I can’t seem to organize a coherent paragraph: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Harvard Soccer Team’s “Locker Room Talk””

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

bridge cards

This Comment of the Day is a week late, for which I apologize. The topic is still as vivid as ever however, especially since the episode in question, Harvard’s  premature ending of its men’s soccer team’s season because of real, bona fide, sexist locker room talk misogyny that escaped into the world at large, got filed in the “This will help elect Donald Trump” category. 

In the discussion threads, the themes expanded into race and “white privilege.” Chris Bentley, an African-American commenter here, reiterated a theme of some other posts here, that the players were punished under a double standard that allows women engage in direct sexually harassing conduct without disapproval. To this, another commenter protested….

Oh please. This is just right-wing PC nonsense, trying to deny that there is any difference between men and women. Earth to Bentley: there is a difference. Ditto between black and white. And a lot of it has to do with power. Hint: if you wanted power, and had the choice to be born as a) black or b) white, which would you choose? How about a) male or b) female? Get real – everyone knows there are power imbalances except in your fevered mind where “if the behavior were reversed” it would be unacceptable. The behavior ISN’T reversed, and can’t be, because the world is not wired that way.

Here was Chris Bentley’s brave and provocative response, the Comment of the Day, under the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Harvard Soccer Team’s “Locker Room Talk.” I’ll be back at the end for some additional comments….and a poem.

You are, very directly, telling me that regardless of what I think, or the experiences Ive had in my life, when it comes to having “power”, I will always fall short. And I’m the one spouting nonsense. Great pep talk, you should coach little leaguers.

If I had a choice to be born white or black, I would choose to still be born black. Not because it runs contrarian to what you believe, but because, as Ive told you on numerous occasions, I have never (that I am aware of) been the victim of racial discrimination, and, just so happen to be proud of being black, so there’s no reason for me to wish to be of a different race. Now you have previously pointed out that my life story is anecdotal, but this question is directly about what I would choose, and seeing the changing winds, about how its now en vogue to demean whites with impunity, especially white males, I’ll gladly continue being black, thank you very much.

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Harvard Soccer Team’s ‘Locker Room Talk'”

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments
Men are pigs, and how dare they stereotype us?

Men are pigs, and how dare they stereotype us?

Alizia Tyler, the provocative arch-conservative Ethics Alarms iconoclast whose comments here are frequently far longer than the posts she comments on, delivers the Comment of the Day.  It involves the controversy regarding the Harvard soccer team’s cruel “scouting report” on the sexual attributes of their female counterparts, and the college’s punishment it brought down on the team’s members.

Alizia’s particular focus is the response by the members of the women’s team, which was not the primary focus of the Quiz. Indeed, Alizia’s post is what first brought all of it to my attention. My reaction was, simply, that it is pure, indefensible bigotry. This isn’t about “men,” this is about jerks, and the letter tells us that these women think the two are one and the same. They are not. This is the same as blacks asserting that all whites are racists. It is a bigotry double standard. When women posture in public forums about their innate superiority, the reaction should be exactly as indignant and condemning as when a man says that women should be kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. It never is, however. Misogyny is disgusting. Misandry is cool.

If Harvard president Drew Faust had integrity and was not a biased, feminist social justice warrior, she would end the women’s soccer season too. It is, however, a useful microcosm of what men can look forward to under President Hillary.

Alizia has more to say. Here is her analysis of the letter, a Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Quiz: The Harvard Soccer Team’s “Locker Room Talk”:

 

From the Harvard Crimson and the letter published by the women’s soccer team representative:

“In all, we do not pity ourselves, nor do we ache most because of the personal nature of this attack. More than anything, we are frustrated that this is a reality that all women have faced in the past and will continue to face throughout their lives. We feel hopeless because men who are supposed to be our brothers degrade us like this. We are appalled that female athletes who are told to feel empowered and proud of their abilities are so regularly reduced to a physical appearance. We are distraught that mothers having daughters almost a half century after getting equal rights have to worry about men’s entitlement to bodies that aren’t theirs. We are concerned for the future, because we know that the only way we can truly move past this culture is for the very men who perpetrate it to stop it in its tracks.

“Having considered members of this team our close friends for the past four years, we are beyond hurt to realize these individuals could encourage, silently observe, or participate in this kind of behavior, and for more than four years have neglected to apologize until this week.

“We have seen the “scouting report” in its entirety. We know the fullest extent of its contents: the descriptions of our bodies, the numbers we were each assigned, and the comparison to each other and recruits in classes before us. This document attempts to pit us against one another, as if the judgment of a few men is sufficient to determine our worth. But, men, we know better than that. Eighteen years of soccer taught us that. Eighteen years—as successful, powerful, and undeniably brilliant female athletes – taught us that.

“We know what it’s like to get knocked down. To lose a few battles. To sweat, to cry, to bleed. To fight so hard, yet no matter what we do, the game is still out of our hands. And, even still, we keep fighting; for ourselves, yes, but above all for our teammates. This document might have stung any other group of women you chose to target, but not us. We know as teammates that we rise to the occasion, that we are stronger together, and that we will not tolerate anything less than respect for women that we care for more than ourselves.”
_____________________

There is something so creepy in this that has to be located and exposed.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Harvard Soccer Team’s “Locker Room Talk”

/ Jack Marshall / 156 Comments

harvard-soccer-team

A week ago I wrote about Donald Trump’s rebound at the polls, and noted, among the factors, this…

B. This just in, from  The Harvard Crimson: Female soccer recruits at Harvard were rated for their attractiveness by their male counterparts – and a sleazy document speculated on their favorite sexual positions. A ‘scouting report’ from 2012, has emerged, containing sexually explicit comments about women, alongside photographs of them. One soccer recruit was described as looking “like the kind of girl who likes to dominate, and likes to be dominated.” The nine-page document assigned each woman a hypothetical sexual position. This document was shared between members of the Harvard 2012 men’s soccer team, and scouting report appears to be a yearly tradition.

Wait…how can this be? When Donald Trump tried to explain away his vulgar conversation with Billy Bush as “locker room talk,” the news media sprinted to prove this was just another lie. Why, athletes in all-male settings never denigrate women or objectify them among team mates! Absolutely not!

Now we learn that Harvard has cancelled the men’s soccer season as punishment for “the widespread practice of the team’s players rating the school’s female players in sexually explicit terms,” reports the New York Times.

The university commenced an  investigation the men’s team after The Harvard Crimson reported last week, in the piece that prompted the Ethics Alarms note, that a player created a nine-page document in 2012 with numeric ratings, photos and lengthy evaluations of the freshman recruits of the Harvard women’s team based on their physical appearance. Apparently the practice had become a tradition.This was the response from the women’s team:

“Locker room talk” is not an excuse because this is not limited to athletic teams. The whole world is the locker room…. We are hopeful that the release of this report will lead to productive conversation and action on Harvard’s campus, within collegiate athletic teams across the country, and into the locker room that is our world….”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Was cancelling the soccer season a fair, responsible, proportionate and ethical response by the Harvard Administration?

Continue reading →

Donald Trump Is Bouncing Back In The Polls….Why?

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments

trumpstar

Ann Althouse writes in horror that the Bloomberg poll, a poll that polling guru Nate Silver marks as one of the best, has Donald Trump making up most of what was a 9 point lead just a week ago. “How is it possible?” she asks?

Here is how it’s possible. Americans deeply, deeply resent the tactics and unethical methods of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, as well as, and even especially, the biased news media that has, it was just reported, been 91% negative regarding Donald Trump. Althouse anticipated this backlash back in September, when she quoted journalist/author Robert Wright, who said he was concerned that the media would be so “ham-handed” in its pro-Clinton/anti-Trump bias that “it wouldn’t work.”

In the competition of who is more unfit to lead, Trump wins in a landslide. However, Clinton’s supporters, staff, minions and party have earned the “Most Unethical, Undemocratic, Totalitarian” prize, by at least as large a margin:

1. On CNN’s “State of the Union” last week,  Jake Tapper grilled Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, about Robert Creamer and Scott Foval, the  Democratic operatives who were caught in a Project Veritas video sting talking about instigating violence at a Trump rally.

TAPPER: Have you looked into whether or not Democratic operatives paid by the Democratic National Committee were actually instigating these horrific actions, these violent actions we saw at Trump rallies? That’s — I’m sure you would agree, if that’s true, that’s really offensive.

MOOK: Well, violence is unacceptable. These individuals no longer have a relationship with the DNC. They have never had a relationship with the Clinton campaign. And my understanding is that the events that are referenced happened, I think, in February of last year. They didn’t have a contract with the DNC until June.  But, putting that all aside, this was, again, a video that was leaked out for the purpose of damaging the campaign. It’s edited, so we don’t know what the full context is. And there is — there’s no evidence whatsoever that we have been able to find that anyone ever did anything like this when they were working for the DNC.

Wait, what? Mook just admitted that the DNC hired these Nixonian thugs after they disrupted the Trump events. Before that, they were doing this stuff for free? They were only fired after the video was released.  How does the fact that they aren’t under contract any more serve as a defense of their activities? White House logs show Creamer visiting the White House hundreds of times.  Why?

Mook’s “They have never had a relationship with the Clinton campaign” is such a weaselly line. How about an unequivocal denial that the campaign knew about or coordinated with these cheats? Where is that? Then he defaults to attacking the methods by which these operatives were exposed, just as Clinton’s mouthpeices, like Donna Brazile, have tried to blame Wikileaks for what the Wikileaks leaks show.

Do Democrats just shrug off this kind of anti-Democratic activity as standard “by any means necessary” tactics? What kind of leader obtains power this way? I guarantee that independents, conservatives and uncommitted voters are frightened and disgusted by it. If voting for Trump is the only way to register that disgust, then he’ll be the beneficiary of the backlash.

2. Yesterday “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams, who is a Trump supporters, posted this:

I’ve been trying to figure out what common trait binds Clinton supporters together. As far as I can tell, the most unifying characteristic is a willingness to bully in all its forms.

If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.

If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.

if you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.

On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.

We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.

We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that.

Yesterday, by no coincidence, Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos all published similar-sounding hit pieces on me, presumably to lower my influence. (That reason, plus jealousy, are the only reasons writers write about other writers.)

Joe Biden said he wanted to take Trump behind the bleachers and beat him up. No one on Clinton’s side disavowed that call to violence because, I assume, they consider it justified hyperbole. 

Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?

I admit to having no respect for Trump supporters (as opposed to Never Hillary Trump voters), just as I have no respect for the tactics Adams describes. He exaggerates in the last section, but otherwise, he is accurate. Never before has a political party and its followers, aided by the news media, tried to “otherize” a major party candidate, and to make it dangerous in schools and workplaces to express support of a candidate. That’s not democracy. Continue reading →

Asian-American Students Take Aim At What’s Unethical About Affirmative Action

/ Jack Marshall / 79 Comments

Good.

The ethics problem with affirmative action is that its utilitarian trade-off is undeniably unfair and hypocritical. In order to admit African-American students whose test scores and grades would not normally allow them to be admitted to elite institutions, racial preference is used to justify not admitting white students whose credentials would otherwise qualify them for entry. Diversity justifies racial discrimination.

Asian-Americans have long been an embarrassment to this theory. Even though it is another minority group that was the target of institutional and social prejudice in this country, and despite added disadvantages of language and culture, Asian Americans as a group have better test scores and grades than the supposedly privileged whites. Not only does this fact call into question some assumed explanations for the consistently lagging performance of African-Americans, it also threatens diversity policies by raising the possibility of a student body disproportionately Asian American, with whites students being squeezed out at one end by  superior Asian-Americans  and on the other by Affirmative Action-assisted blacks.

How have universities avoided this problem thus far? They have avoided it by applying quotas to both Asian-Americans and African-Americans. The problem is that the quotas on Asian Americans limit their numbers, regardless of their qualifications. Continue reading →

More Fake News! How Untrustworthy Are Hard Right Websites? THIS Untrustworthy….

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

How are these for headlines and web news stories?

Apparently the candidates debates have caused amass amnesia about what competitive debating is all about...

Apparently the candidates debates have caused amass amnesia about what competitive debating is all about…

Students support ‘affirmative suicide’ to combat ‘white privilege’ (Red Alert Politics) “The myths of white privilege and institutionalized racism have engulfed nearly every college campus in the country including Harvard University …”

VIDEO: Students debate at Harvard whether whites should kill themselves (eag news) “White lives do not matter, according to a student debater/activist …”

BLM activist advocates white genocide at Harvard  (All Lives Matter) “Video for Harvard white suicide…”

BLM activist advocates white genocide at Harvard … (Daily Wire)  “Debater At Harvard Says White People Should Kill Themselves… Harvard caught in anti-Trump, “death to whites” cover-up”

Debater At Harvard Says White People Should Kill Themselves Because Of Their White Privilege (Louder with Crowder) “Harvard Tries Hiding ‘Debate’ Video: ‘Kill Yourself over White Privilege …”

Activist: White People Should Kill Themselves to Atone For ‘White Privilege’ (Alex Jones’ Infowars): “Student debate highlights shocking anti-white racism at Harvard University”

Good heavens! What’s going on at Harvard?

The answer: Nothing whatsoever. Continue reading →

Slate: ‘How Dare A Billionaire Donate $400,000,000 to Harvard?’

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments
See, Ozmandias? You should have opted for school of engineering.

See, Ozmandias? You should have opted for the school of engineering.

Slate’s article by Jordan Weissmann, its senior business and economics correspondent, about the largest donation ever made to Harvard University is one of those monstrosities that has great value as an ethics test. If you think his argument is reasonable, then you need help.

Essentially, the Slate piece is the ultimate example of an unethical argument I have focused on before, which can be summarized as, “If you give to what you care about rather than what I care about, then your donation is unethical.”

Unless your contribution is to ISIS, or isn’t really a contribution but an attempt to buy access for your own purposes (like with, to pick an example out of the air, a donation to the Clinton Foundation), there is nothing unethical about a $400,000,000 donation, which is what John Paulson just gave to Harvard University’s endowment for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The school will be renamed after Paulson, which Weissman also finds repugnant. The title of the piece: “Billionaire’s Ego Donates $400 Million to Harvard.”

Let me pause here to note that I refuse to give my money to Harvard, which solicits me regularly. The university is rich, I’m not, and I prefer to give my charitable gifts to Georgetown Law Center, specifically to the student theatrical organization I founded there, which like all theater groups, needs funds. I am sure Weissman finds my contribution unethical as well, because, really, what good are the arts compared to what he has decreed is worth giving to as the “more pressing causes in the world”?  As he sees it, that is, but that’s all that matters.

Let me go through Weissman’s many objections that cause him to sneer at Paulson’s charity:

1. “Gestures to Ivy League schools …inevitably have as much to do with the giver’s ego as their sense of altruism.” Yes, and so do almost all philanthropic donations, regardless of source and objective. The motto in fundraising (I was a professional fundraiser for a decade) is that donors give money for their purposes, not yours. People who give a lot of money to good causes like to have some recognition, and they deserve it.  Apparently Weissman believes that the only ethical donations are anonymous ones, because that’s modest. I’m impressed by anonymous gifts, though they often have selfish motivations as well: the donors don’t want to be hounded by more fundraisers. Nevertheless, that lack of modesty is so trivial as a flaw in large charitable contributions that to harp on it is perverse. Successful people tend to have egos that are often in proportion to their accomplishments. The construct of the left is, we know, that accomplishments and success are just randomly distributed fruits of privilege, ergo the self-esteem that often results from such success is as unsavory as the privilege that generates it.

This is, to be blunt, un-American crap.

2. Harvard “does not strictly need more money, especially compared to the financially strapped colleges that typically educate lower-income students.” First of all, this is demonstrably false. Harvard does need more money if it is going to expand and improve its School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, secure that school’s financial health in perpetuity, and do so without sacrificing other objectives it deems important. Harvard also educates lower-income students, the best and brightest of them, and thus the best resources money can buy are expended on the students most likely to make the best use of them for the benefit of society. Weissman believes this is wrong, and that the 400,000,000 should be given to lesser schools, with less of a track record of spending money wisely, while educating less promising students.

I am in sympathy with that argument to some extent. The marginal utility of all that money is less at Harvard than anywhere else, and I can envision the donation having a far more sweeping impact elsewhere: giving it to Sweet Briar, for example. That does not mean there is anything wrong in any way with bolstering Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The donation is an unequivocal, absolute good.

The money could have been spent “better”? That’s your opinion. It’s not your money. Shut up. Continue reading →

The Irony Of Wikileaks: Yes, It Is Despicable…But It’s Still Useful To Know That PBS, Ben Affleck And Prof. Henry Lewis Gates Are Despicable Too.

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
Batman is ashamed of you, Ben...

Batman is ashamed of you, Ben…

Once a secret is out, it isn’t a secret any more. Once privacy is shattered, it’s gone: that egg can’t be put back together again. I wish Sony’s e-mails hadn’t been hacked: everyone who isn’t operating under a policy that mandates that their communications must be archived and available for media and public examination, like, oh, say, Hillary Clinton, has a right to have private business and personal communication.

Julian Assange is a fick, and an uncommonly arrogant one. He encourages, aids and abets the theft of proprietary information in the interests of world anarchy, which is in the interests of nobody. So let’s see now…North Korea hacks Sony to chill our First Amendment rights, and Wikileaks helps magnify the damage by spreading private e-mails and documents far and wide.

Yechhh.

But it’s all out there now, and there is no virtue in averting our eyes and plugging our ears. There is a lot of unethical conduct exposed in those 30,000 documents and 170,000 emails hacked from Sony, and while the means by which it was exposed was illegal and wrong, we should still learn from what is now public information.

The fact that PBS and Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates Jr. can’t be trusted, for example, is good to know. Continue reading →

Case Study In “When Ethics Fail, Law Takes Over”: Harvard’s Prof-Student Romance Ban

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Harvard_yard_winter_2009j

Harvard used to just say “it’s wrong,” but left it up to the faculty’s ethics in the school’s infinite faith in its own superior virtue. My Freshman Humanities professor, poet William Alfred, was married to a former student. As is usually the case in this matter, ethics alone often wasn’t enough to restrain the lust of  many aging, prestigious, powerful professors facing a veritable cornucopia of luscious, young, ambitious co-eds they could court using brains, worldly wiles, charm and the promise of good grades. Now the profs have more to bolster their self-control…from the New York Times:

Harvard University has adopted a ban on professors having sexual or romantic relationships with undergraduate students, joining a small but growing number of universities prohibiting such relationships. The move comes as the Obama administration investigates the handling of accusations of sexual assault at dozens of colleges, including Harvard.

The ban clarifies an earlier policy that labeled sexual and romantic relationships between professors and the students they teach as inappropriate, but did not explicitly prohibit professors from having relationships with students they did not teach.

Harvard said in a statement released Thursday that the change was made after a panel reviewing the institution’s policy on Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, determined that the university’s existing policy language on “relationships of unequal status did not explicitly reflect the faculty’s expectations of what constituted an appropriate relationship between undergraduate students and faculty members.” It said the committee revised the policy “to include a clear prohibition to better accord with these expectations…Besides banning sexual and romantic relationships between professors and all undergraduates, the policy also bans such relationships between teaching staff, such as graduate students, and the students who fall under their supervision or evaluation.

Good. Long overdue.

This is also an excellent use of Harvard’s status and leadership, as the oldest and most famous institution of higher learning. Other universities will now suddenly be responsible as well.

Gee, do you think Harvard took my advice?

Nahhh.