Links - 5th January 2019 (1)

Professor attacked for reporting that liberal administrators outnumber conservative ones - "Samuel Abrams, a political science professor at Sarah Lawrence College, has come under attack from students — and even his boss — after reporting on his survey which found liberal staff members on campuses outnumber their conservative counterparts by a ratio of 12-to-one. The self-described “conservative-leaning professor” recently published the results of his nationwide survey of roughly 900 administrators in an op-ed in the New York Times on Oct. 16 titled “Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators.”... Abrams’ office was vandalized by students furious over his column, some saying they felt “unsafe” by his presence, others demanding he quit... it wasn’t the negativity that has had the greatest impact on Abrams.“What really struck me was just how many emails I got that were actually positive that say someone needed to say this, thank you, here’s my story, here’s how I struggled with it, here’s what’s been frustrating for me. To me that is the greatest finding of the whole thing,” Abrams said... he felt his boss pressured him to quit or find another campus to teach at.“She said I had created a hostile work environment. If [the op-ed] constitutes hate speech, then this is not a world that I want to be a part of,” Abrams said.Reason also reports that Abrams said during his meeting with Judd that she implied he was “on the market for a new job.”“I am not on the job market. I am tenured, I live in New York. Why would I go on the job market?”"
Research is only good if it serves liberal ends
Facts make "minorities" feel "unsafe" - but vandalism to make non-liberals feel unsafe is good

Addendum:
Samuel Abrams Is Paying The Price For Truth - "his office door was vandalized, students called for him to be punished, anonymous individuals falsely accused him of sexual misconduct, and when Abrams urged the college president, Cristle Judd, to take a strong stand in favor of academic freedom, he said that she “asked whether he thought it was appropriate to write op-eds without her permission and further suggested that his article had been hostile toward his colleagues.” It turns out that Abrams’s ordeal isn’t over. Yesterday, a group of students calling themselves the “Diaspora Coalition” began a sit-in and issued an extraordinary set of demands, including demands aimed directly at Abrams. The protesters called on the college to “confront how the presence of Sam Abrams . . . affects the safety and wellbeing of marginalized students.”...
'The article revealed the anti-Blackness, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-woman bigotry of Abrams... We demand that Samuel Abrams’ position at the College be put up to tenure review to a panel of the Diaspora Coalition and at least three faculty members of color. In addition, the College must issue a statement condemning the harm that Abrams has caused to the college community, specifically queer, Black, and female students, whilst apologizing for its refusal to protect marginalized students wounded by his op-ed and the ignorant dialogue that followed. Abrams must issue a public apology to the broader SLC community and cease to target Black people, queer people, and women'...
matters get more alarming when professors and presidents take radicals seriously. Reportedly, the president of the college has already met twice with the protesters, and 25 professors have signed a petition declaring they “stand in solidarity with the student activism happening this week.” Years ago, when I’d speak about the larger dangers of the campus culture wars, I’d often hear adults dismiss my concerns by confidently stating that these students would “grow up” when they encountered the harsh and unforgiving “real world.” Well, campus radicals have encountered the “real world,” and they’re remaking it in their own oppressive image. The call-out culture has migrated from campus to corporations, and now everyday Americans live in fear that their words — even words uttered in good faith and with great respect — can cost them their livelihoods. And on campus, dissenters from campus orthodoxy often need not just tenure but a rare kind of personal fortitude, including the ability to withstand repeated calls for their termination, repeated disruptions of their work, and sometimes even outright slander.Publishing truthful information about ideological imbalances threatens no one’s “safety.” Questioning the priorities of progressive administrators endangers no one’s “wellbeing.” Colleges should not “protect” anyone from New York Times essays. And the fact that even a syllable of this nonsense is taken seriously by professional academics indicates that our culture of free speech is already in decline."
Anti-blackness etc just means anything undermining the liberal agenda with regard to blacks etc

Ohio University considers minorities-only gym: report - "Proposal would transform underused space"
How does letting fewer people use the gym increase utilisation?

Stanford adds male-focused gym hours following complaint about women-only hours - "Miranda has not responded to the devil’s-advocate argument that Stanford would never ban black people from a workout space if they made white people uncomfortable, or that the university would never deny that white-only hours amount to a “ban” on black people."

Porn star gives college students 'Intro to BDSM' training - "Funding for the events comes largely from the Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College, which collects mandatory student fees"

Nazis: A Modern Field Guide - "Very few of the real Nazis who survived the end of the Nazi regime are still alive today, and fewer still would express lingering adherence to Nazi ideology. Moreover, the whole architecture of Nazi ideology was based on the formation of a viable mainstream German political movement oriented toward the creation of a world-conquering white supremacist prison state. Thankfully, no such movement exists. Which means that real Nazis are effectively extinct... The unusually rich collection of photos, newsreels, books, ideas, personalities and quotations that emerged from the Nazis period is such that anyone seeking to attack his or her enemies by cherry picking history can usually find some stray image or set of words from the Nazi historical record that aligns, in some way, with the object of attack. George W. Bush was compared to Hitler by some liberals when he invaded Iraq. Barack Obama was compared to Hitler by some conservatives, who claimed that the Affordable Care Act mandated the use of “death panels.” Take enough pictures of a person going about their daily activities, and you will eventually get a shot of them giving something that looks vaguely like a Nazi salute. Indeed, there is a perverse incentive for modern activists to imagine that we inhabit an age in which Nazis are powerful and ascendant—because this conceit gives moral grandeur to their own activism: It allows them to position themselves as moral heirs to the French Resistance, the martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the Allied armies that defeated the Nazi menace."

Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review: What Neither the Republicans Nor the Democrats Understand About Obamacare - "Both sides don't understand that this was not about Obamacare. It was about health insurance security.Obamacare guaranteed people that they would never again be turned down for health insurance because of a preexisting condition. It assured those who couldn't afford to buy health insurance they would be given financial assistance. And, it offered the expansion of Medicaid to the poorest.Obamacare offered health insurance security--at least, it turned out, to those with the lowest incomes.But Obamacare also devastated the individual health insurance market with its prohibitively high prices and out-of-pocket costs for the middle-class... Republicans have seemingly never understood that Obamacare has worked well for low-income people who get the biggest premium and out-of-pocket subsidies. It has worked well for those eligible for Medicaid in the states that have expanded it. And, it has been critically important for those with preexisting conditions. And, that three deep red states--Nebraska, Utah, and Idaho--voted last week to expand Medicaid clearly says that even in the reddest states what people want is health insurance security not only for themselves but for their neighbors.But what Democrats have never been willing to admit is that the program has been devastating for the middle class--those who get no subsidy, or a relatively small subsidy--for the way it has wrecked their individual health insurance market."

Why Did so Many Wanted Nazis Convert to Islam? - "This alliance between the Nazi swastika and the Islamic Koran is well explained in a 1942 article written by Johann von Leers, the best known of Nazi converts to Islam. Published in the newspaper “Die Judenfrage”, the article presented Judaism and Islam in terms of Hegel’s thesis and antithesis: “The hostility of Muhammad towards the Jews had a consequence: the Oriental Jews were totally paralyzed. If the rest of the world had adopted a similar policy, we would not have the ‘Jewish question’. Islam has made an eternal service to the world by preventing the conquest of Arabia by the Jews”... The collaborator of Goebbels, Johann von Leers, was solemnly received in Cairo by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini: “We thank you for having fought against the powers of darkness incarnated by world Jewry”
They were anti-Zionists who were outraged at Israel's treatment of the [Muslim] Palestinians and wanted to show solidarity with "minorities"

Free speech at university: One in five students says it’s acceptable to use violence - "US colleges have long had a liberal bent to them. What is striking, though, is how far students of that majority political view are willing to go nowadays to protect it, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.A Brookings Institution report this week, pulling data from a survey of 1,500 undergraduates at four-year universities across 49 states, found that 19% of students agree with the following statement:A student group opposed to the speaker uses violence to prevent the speaker from speaking. Do you agree or disagree that the student group’s actions are acceptable?And 44% replied “no” to the following:Does the First Amendment protect “hate speech”?(Those 44% are wrong. ”Hate speech,” with some caveats, is legally protected under the US constitution.)The full set of questions and responses reveals a telling divide on university campuses, and a fairly ironic one, at that: Though college students by and large want their schools to be bastions of free speech and free thought, many of them also do not believe “offensive” or “hurtful” comments or speakers have any place within that ideology. John Villasenor, a public policy professor and the author of the report, remarked in his conclusions that “a majority of students appear to want an environment that shields them from being exposed to views they might find offensive.”"

University alerts students to danger of leftwing essay - "Students at the University of Reading have been told to take care when reading an essay by the late Professor Norman Geras, in order to avoid falling foul of Prevent... Geras was professor emeritus of government at the University of Manchester until his death in 2013. He rejected terrorism but argued that violence could be justified in the case of grave social injustices."

Midwives rail against proposal to call women persons in new code of conduct - "WHEN a person’s waters break and that “person” goes into labour, we’ve gone too far.That sums up the position of Australia’s midwives, who have had to fight to get “woman”, rather than “person”, into their new code of conduct.The Nursing and Midwifery Board took the nation’s 30,000 midwives by surprise when it drafted the new code and replaced references to “woman-centred care” with “person-centred care”. The Board invited submissions on the draft code and they flooded in, from the profession, academics and individuals. UniSA midwifery professor Mary Steen told The Advertiser it was a “wise decision” to retain woman-centred care.“Midwife means with woman,” she said. “The woman is at the centre of a midwife’s scope of practice, which is based on the best available evidence to provide the best care and support to meet individual women’s health and wellbeing needs.”... “Person-centred care also removes the woman from the central role in her child-bearingexperience and renders her invisible,” she says in her written submission.Australian College of Midwives spokeswoman Sarah Stewart said midwifery had to be about women.“Once we start moving down the road of talking about women as persons, we lose women’s identity — that fundamental essence,” she said.“Women are struggling to have their voices heard enough as it is.“It’s another chip at women’s identity. That’s my personal view.”... "the absolute vast majority of people we care for are women"... Other submissions to the Board argued Australia’s code should be consistent with those internationally, which still referred to the care of women."
The trans agenda is stalled for a short period of time in one area

Lesson for Singapore: concentration of power in a few led to Venice’s downfall - "Venice rose to become a great maritime empire (Stato da Mar in the Venetian dialect) because it gave its citizens a say in their governance and a chance to share in its growing prosperity. In 1171, the powers of the Doge, the de facto monarch, were diluted and devolved to a Great Council comprising mostly merchants... Venice sealed its fate when it concentrated all political and economic power in the hands of a minority.Doubtless there are other important factors accounting for its decline, such as the rise of bigger maritime powers like the Netherlands and England, but the corrosive effects of letting a few decide all and take all snuffed out Venice’s elixir of life and vibrancy... If Singaporeans need a further, and Asian, example of how political stratification and concentration of all power in the hands of a few brought down an empire, they might want to look at Han dynasty China. What prevailed then was a lang-li society, as eminent Chinese historian Qian Mu called it, with lang being the body of officials in central government, appointed because they scored well in imperial examinations, and li, the lower-ranked officers who carried out policies decided by the former.As it turned out, the lang class colluded with eunuchs in the imperial court as well as relatives and appointees of the empress in grand larceny.Open rebellion followed not long after... Leslie Fong is a former editor of The Straits Times"
Social studies!

As a Toronto Mob Brays, David Frum and Steve Bannon Joust over Populism’s Split Soul - "Some of the placards betrayed signs of haste—including signs held up by a couple that read, “Fuck You Nazis,” and “Nazis, Get Fucked,” on matching sides of a grease-stained pizza box. But the sentiment came through loud and clear: It’s 1933. Which side are you on? Fortunately, the scene inside the debate hall—where 2,800 audience members had assembled to see Frum and Bannon debate the resolution, “The future of western politics is populist not liberal”—did not quite align with the Nazi Party Congress. The Nazis took a decidedly uncharitable view toward dissidents and hecklers. But when two protestors interrupted the debate by unfurling banners from balconies and (in one case) loudly denouncing us as racists, they received polite applause for their moxie. Indeed, moderator Rudyard Griffiths informed the first that she was welcome to stay, banner and all, if she would simply stop yelling. It was only when she kept on jabbering that two officers escorted her out with all the gentleness of an elderly relative being walked to her pew at a wedding. Clearly, these officers would never have cut it as brownshirts... Bannon parried effectively when Frum took him to task for the dog-whistle anti-semitism that infects low-end conservative media. “They don’t target [George] Soros because he’s Jewish, but because he’s effective,” Bannon countered—adding that he had modeled his own N.G.O.s on Soros’ organization because he admired Soros’ success so much... Forceful interruption of public events is almost always wrong. If I see you reading a book that I dislike, I have no right to grab it from you. In a free society, there can be no equivalent of the Saudi religious police, monitoring public behavior and discourse and interrupting things of which they disapprove."

Portrait of the Artist as a False Accuser - "How should we feel about a false accuser turning her story into a commercially successful art project—even as the target of her claims hovers on the brink of suicide and bankruptcy?... Once a best-selling author and department chair, he became a middle-aged husk whose only income derived from shovelling gravel at minimum wage. On social media, and even among former friends and peers, he was written off as a rapist. Only now is his reputation finally being rehabilitated.The professor in question was, of course, former University of British Columbia creating writing chair Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo... the case against Galloway fell apart. A former B.C. Supreme Court justice, Mary Ellen Boyd, found that MC’s story didn’t hold up under investigation. As noted by Brad Cran in his exhaustive Quillette report, a handful of much more minor accusations hurled at Galloway also dissolved as soon as Boyd started asking hard questions. Following protracted negotiations, UBC paid Galloway C$167,000 in damages for public statements that violated his privacy rights and harmed his reputation—followed by another C$60,000 several months later. (As for, MC, her real name—Caralea Cole—is now common currency in the media following a widely reported defamation suit launched against her, and several dozen others, by Galloway.) Yet MC stood by her accusations. Indeed, she claims a second form of victimization—the loss of her voice as an artist during the years that have passed since her consensual affair with Galloway... Not only will wealthy New Yorkers have unsubstantiated accusations against him hanging on their living-room walls, they will be paying for the privilege, with the proceeds going to the woman who ruined his life"
False accusers are still victims, it seems