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March 31, 2006
The Problem with Teacher's Unions
Oh how I hate teachers' unions--let me count the ways!
1) By calcifying a pay system that rewards teachers for seniority rather than skill teachers' unions contribute to a system that loses lots of ambitious teachers to other fields while keeping lots of untalented or burned out teachers in the classroom year after year.
2) By standing firmly against any school experimentation, whether charter schools or school vouchers or greater control for principles, teachers' unions prevent us from trying alternative strategies that might work.
3) Finally, teachers' unions--or at least the New York State Unified Teacher's Union--celebrate rather bizarre characters as heroes, as James Taranto points out today. In the union's newsletter we're told the story of Jack Powell, a substitute teacher "who makes a principled stand."
Powell has lived frugally for years. He works about three days a week as a sub, earning about $70 a day, with no benefits. From March to October, he rides his bike 20 miles to work when work is available.So according to the teacher's union, it takes "courage" to voluntarily go on food stamps, and exemplifies how we ought to live? I certainly hope whoever approved that article never teaches one of my children.Sometimes he works for a funeral home to make extra money. The shawl he has wrapped around himself on this winter day, he says simply, doubles as a blanket.
"I do whatever it takes to survive and live a socially conscious life," said Powell, who has a tepee in his yard.
Part of that survival — or so he thought — included shopping at Wal-Mart to take advantage of cheaper prices for himself, his partner and her two children. Then his discussions about Wal-Mart with Sandra Carner-Shafran, a teaching assistant at BOCES and a member of the Board of Directors of New York State United Teachers, started churning inside him...
Powell put the brakes on his actions. Shopping at Wal-Mart? This is a place that encourages employees to get social services because it does not provide adequate health insurance or wages; sells goods made in sweatshops; and upsets entire communities by undercutting the downtown stores, then raising its prices when the locals go out of business.
"I don't like what Wal-Mart stands for," Powell said, noting the mega-chain's scanty health insurance for staffers. "Because of all those things they can lower the prices."
He and his partner agreed to go on food stamps for their family rather than shop at Wal-Mart any longer.
"I don't like to have to do that (use food stamps)," he said. However, the two children who are part of his family gave him extra courage because they had disliked shopping at Wal-Mart anyway, Powell said. They knew what the store stood for.
"I'm just trying to live my life. I try to set an example and do what I believe," said Powell.
Posted by Conor at 04:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Paying the Dane-geld
Eugene Volokh thinks this Rudyard Kipling poem is relevant to our times:
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: --
"We invaded you last night — we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: --
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"
Now it's the Danes who are being asked to pay the Dane-geld. Will they?
Posted by Conor at 03:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Big Government: You reap What You Sow
Libertarians are always warning that when the government seems to provide something free for citizens the bill is paid in lost liberty. Let's turn to the Netherlands, that bastion of democratic socialism, to see the libertarians vindicated:
AMSTERDAM — The Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) has proposed recovering part of the cost of study from highly-educated women who decide not to seek paid work.MP Sharon Dijksma, deputy chairperson of the PvdA's parliamentary party, believes the punitive measure is needed to stimulate more women to join the workforce. She outlined her ideas in 'Forum', a magazine published by employers' group VNO-NCW.
"A highly-educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to work - that is destruction of capital," Dijksma said. "If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at the cost of society, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished."
The MP said a fine for non-working mothers is a logical consequence of the PvdA's intention to introduce a 'feudal system', under which graduates repay money dependant on their earnings. "If someone chooses not to work, then a substantial repayment is in order," Dijksma said.
A high proportion of Dutch women traditionally favour working only part-time or staying at home to care for their families.
Posted by Conor at 04:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2006
In Iran, A Rape Victim Sentenced to Death
Amnesty International reports:
On 3 January, 18-year-old Nazanin was sentenced to death for murder by a criminal court, after she reportedly admitted stabbing to death one of three men who attempted to rape her and her 16-year-old niece in a park in Karaj in March 2005. She was seventeen at the time. Her sentence is subject to review by the Court of Appeal, and if upheld, to confirmation by the Supreme Court.According to reports in the Iranian newspaper, E’temaad, Nazanin told the court that three men had approached her and her niece, forced them to the ground and tried to rape them. Seeking to defend her niece and herself, Nazanin stabbed one man in the hand with a knife that she possessed and then, when the men continued to pursue them, stabbed another of the men in the chest. She reportedly told the court “I wanted to defend myself and my niece. I did not want to kill that boy. At the heat of the moment I did not know what to do because no one came to our help�, but was nevertheless sentenced to death.
A petition to spare her life can be found here. I've signed it; you should too.
Posted by Conor at 02:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Plight of Unwed Fathers
Cathy Young is talking about the institutionalized sexism that some men face while attempting to raise their children:
One of the men profiled in the article, 23-year-old Arizona resident Jeremiah Clayton Jones, learned that his former fiancée—who had ended their relationship—was pregnant and seeking to put up the baby for adoption in Florida, where they had met while attending college. An adoption agency called Jones to ask for his consent to the adoption. He refused, fully intending to raise the baby himself. But Jones did not know that in order to exercise his parental rights, he had to register with the state registry for unmarried fathers. Because he missed the deadline, he lost all his rights and has never seen his child, now 18 months old.Sadly, this case is all too typical. While divorced fathers complain that they are often treated as second-class parents, never-married fathers are much lower on the totem pole. True, their situation has improved since the 1970s, when an unwed father's children could be given up for adoption without his consent even if he had raised them.
Today, partly as a result of several legal controversies in which unmarried fathers successfully contested adoptions, the majority of states have "putative father registries" by means of which a man can assert his paternity. But the purpose of these registries often seems to be less to protect the rights of the father than to protect the rights of everyone else: the mother who wants to give up the baby, the adoption agency, and the adoptive parents. Some would say that they also protect the rights of the child. But that depends on whether you believe that a child is better off being adopted than being raised by the biological father.
In most states, the unwed father has to file with the registry either within a certain period of the child's birth—from five to 30 days—or, as in Massachusetts, at any time before the adoption petition is filed. But neither the mother nor the adoption agency has any obligation to notify the man of the adoption, or of the fact that he is a father or father-to-be.
Posted by Conor at 02:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sending the Wrong Message
This is troubling news:
Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.Glenn Reynolds gets it right:"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.
If you don't like ideas, don't bother arguing with them. Just threaten to kill people. They'll back down. Or at least their booksellers, universities, and governments will. How long before other groups take this lesson to heart?Advancing toward fascism, one cowardly institution at a time.
Posted by Conor at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thoughts on America
What can one say about Montebello High School? While rallying against tougher immigration laws student protestors lowered the American flag, raised the Mexican flag, then flew the Stars and Stripes upside down underneath it.
A protest can be chaotic and unpredictable. These students rushed out of class, their adrenaline pumping. Emotions ran high—some were rallying against laws that directly impact their mothers and fathers.
Even so, why did they use their protest to make a statement about America versus Mexico? Among Mexicans championing immigrant rights, why is there a faction that insists on denigrating the United States? Why are some people agitating for the right to live within the United States displaying symbols that suggest they find our southern neighbor a superior nation?
It doesn’t make sense… though you probably understand it as well as I do.
These protestors—and they don’t speak for all the protestors—look at America as a flawed country. They see poverty beside rampant materialism. In their daily life, they’re more likely to interact with a racist police officer or an unscrupulous contractor or a condescending shopkeeper than most Americans.
They see the hypocrisy in an immigration system that rarely punishes Americans who hire illegal immigrants, while routinely deporting the immigrants themselves.
They’ve got a point: America isn’t perfect. Many Americans are as quick to point out our flaws as any of the protestors we’ve seen this past week. Self-criticism is one of America’s strengths. We find flaws; then we try our best to fix them.
The criticism doesn’t faze most Americans. Even as we criticize this country we know deep down how great it is. We don’t need to say it out loud any more than we need to point out how athletic Michael Jordan is when we critique his baseball swing, or how beautiful a Hollywood celebrity is when we gossip about her ugly dress at the Academy Awards. We assume America’s greatness even when we lament its politicians, or its social problems or certain parts of its foreign policy.
Could it be, however, that America’s greatness is no longer something that every immigrant feels? Could it be that we name our strengths so seldom and our weaknesses so frequently that all perspective has been lost?
If that’s the case, I’d like to address all those immigrant protestors who view America as nation unworthy of admiration. Let me explain why so many Americans resent your judgment. Let me explain why we think you’re wrong. I’ll ignore every strength America possesses save those related to immigration, the topic you are protesting. I’ll argue that whatever our system’s flaws, it is the best immigration system that the world has to offer, which is a pretty good argument against disparaging our citizens and denigrating our flag.
America accepts more immigrants than any nation on earth, even if you don’t count the illegal immigrants within our borders. If you think we provide too few opportunities for legal immigrants, as I do, you must still acknowledge that every country on earth, the country of your ancestry included, provides far fewer opportunities.
Once here immigrants enjoy more economic opportunities than anywhere else on earth. In America Latinos aren’t even our most successful immigrant group economically, yet Latinos earn more here than they do anywhere else—their native countries included—and far more than, say, Algerian immigrants in France or Moroccan immigrants in Spain.
Let’s take the largest Latino group, Mexicans, who last year earned sufficient funds to support themselves and their families… and to send an additional $16 billion home to friends and relatives in Mexico. Do you realize how much that means to Mexico? $30,000 is an impressive annual income there. $16 billion is equivalent to providing roughly 530,000 Mexicans with $30,000 each. To be sure, Mexican immigrants work hard for that money.
It is equally certain, however, that they’d lack the opportunity to earn that money but for America, where the free enterprise system and low levels of corruption allow for the creation of wealth.
Do you perceive racism here? It does exist, as abhorrent as that is. Yet America is more welcoming to outsiders than any country on earth. We protect minorities as effectively as any nation, and far more effectively than most.
Of course, you know all this on some level, because you chose to leave your nation and to come to America among all the other nations on earth, most of which wouldn’t allow anyone from your nation to immigrate legally.
So if you are a legal immigrant, participate fully in the immigration debate. As someone who has written column upon column criticizing the current system, I’ll admit as quickly as anyone how flawed it is. If you’re an illegal immigrant, enjoy the fact that though you can’t vote, you can speak your mind here with impunity, a privilege undocumented foreigners enjoy in very few countries. I’ll acknowledge all accurate critiques; America is far from perfect.
However, don’t dare to denigrate this country. It insults us, sure, but that’s beside the point, which is this: given the merits of the American system compared to every alternative on earth, and the unprecedented success so many Latinos have achieved here, it makes no sense to single us out for special opprobrium.
If it made any sense, why would you be here instead of someplace else?
Posted by Conor at 05:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Peggy Noonan on Immigration
Peggy Noonan is perhaps the best columnist in America. Today she writes again about immigration. Here's an excerpt:
There are a variety of things driving American anxiety about illegal immigration and we all know them--economic arguments, the danger of porous borders in the age of terrorism, with anyone able to come in.Read the whole thing here.But there's another thing. And it's not fear about "them." It's anxiety about us.
It's the broad public knowledge, or intuition, in America, that we are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that, you'll lose it all.
We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no ambivalence. We had pride and appreciation. We were a free country. We communicated our pride and delight in this in a million ways--in our schools, our movies, our popular songs, our newspapers. It was just there, in the air. Immigrants breathed it in. That's how the last great wave of immigrants, the European wave of 1880-1920, was turned into a great wave of Americans.
We are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically now. We are assimilating them culturally. Within a generation their children speak Valley Girl on cell phones. "So I'm like 'no," and he's all 'yeah,' and I'm like, 'In your dreams.' " Whether their parents are from Trinidad, Bosnia, Lebanon or Chile, their children, once Americans, know the same music, the same references, watch the same shows. And to a degree and in a way it will hold them together. But not forever and not in a crunch.
So far we are assimilating our immigrants economically, too. They come here and work. Good.
But we are not communicating love of country. We are not giving them the great legend of our country. We are losing that great legend.
What is the legend, the myth? That God made this a special place. That they're joining something special. That the streets are paved with more than gold--they're paved with the greatest thoughts man ever had, the greatest decisions he ever made, about how to live. We have free thought, free speech, freedom of worship. Look at the literature of the Republic: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist papers. Look at the great rich history, the courage and sacrifice, the house-raisings, the stubbornness. The Puritans, the Indians, the City on a Hill.
The genius cluster--Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Franklin, all the rest--that came along at the exact same moment to lead us. And then Washington, a great man in the greatest way, not in unearned gifts well used (i.e., a high IQ followed by high attainment) but in character, in moral nature effortfully developed. How did that happen? How did we get so lucky? (I once asked a great historian if he had thoughts on this, and he nodded. He said he had come to believe it was "providential.")
We fought a war to free slaves. We sent millions of white men to battle and destroyed a portion of our nation to free millions of black men. What kind of nation does this? We went to Europe, fought, died and won, and then taxed ourselves to save our enemies with the Marshall Plan. What kind of nation does this? Soviet communism stalked the world and we were the ones who steeled ourselves and taxed ourselves to stop it. Again: What kind of nation does this?
Only a very great one. Maybe the greatest of all.
Do we teach our immigrants that this is what they're joining? That this is the tradition they will now continue, and uphold?
Do we, today, act as if this is such a special place? No, not always, not even often. American exceptionalism is so yesterday. We don't want to be impolite. We don't want to offend. We don't want to seem narrow. In the age of globalism, honest patriotism seems like a faux pas.
And yet what is true of people is probably true of nations: if you don't have a well-grounded respect for yourself, you won't long sustain a well-grounded respect for others.
Posted by Conor at 12:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Culture and Accomodation
Jonathan Zimmerman relates a thought-provoking anecdote about the challenges cultural differences can pose:
I don't remember her name. But I can still picture my sixth grade student's frightened expression when I asked her to give the first classroom presentation that morning."Where I come from," she said, in a quivering voice, "girls don't go first." She was an immigrant from a Muslim country in the Middle East whose family had moved to Baltimore a few years earlier. I was a young social studies teacher at her middle school, fired with passion and idealism. I believed in my heart that schools should respect national differences. But I also believed that we should treat boys and girls in an equal fashion.
So how should I have responded? For years, I've put this question to my graduate students. Most side with the girl, citing her distinct cultural background. By forcing the girl to go first, my students tell me, I would be telling her, and the class, that there's something inferior about her culture. And that's not a message our public schools should transmit.
A vocal minority of students bridles at this approach. Some invoke a brand of liberal universalism: Girls and boys are endowed with equal rights, no matter what different cultures might say about it. Others emphasize America's own national rights and imperatives.
Go here to see what he decided to do.
Posted by Conor at 12:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 29, 2006
How to Choose a College
If you are conservative or libertarian, are you better off going to a school with lots of other conservatives or libertarians? We can ask the same question on the other side: If you identify as progressive, should you look for schools with lots of progressives?As a conservative/libertarian who attended Pomona College, a liberal bastion, I agree. I learned as much arguing there as I did inside the classroom, although students less thick skinned than me found themselves intimidated by prevailing campus orthodoxies of thought.My own take may be idiosyncratic, but let me put in a plug for attending an institution that does not share your basic ideological outlook. I think we can all agree that an open and respectful environment is essential. But beyond that, I think there are real educational benefits to being outside your ideological comfort zone. In my experience, at least, we tend to learn most when we are challenged; being forced to explain why you think how you think is the best way to improve your thinking. As an old boss of mine used to say, "If everyone is thinking the same thing, no one's thinking much."
UPDATE: Ilya Somin has more thoughts:
The issue of intolerance for conservative and libertarian viewpoints on campus, raised by David's post below, is often discussed in terms of the harm to the students who suffer for expressing their views. The more serious problem, however, is the impact on the quality of discourse on campus for students of all ideologies.It is true that the vast bulk of the retaliation faced by students who express locally unpopular right-of-center views on intolerant campuses is relatively minor - social ostracism, petty harassment by the administration, and so forth. Most of the people involved will suffer little if any lasting damage. However, many will choose to keep quiet if the price of expressing their views is petty harassment or ostracism.
We can, if we want to, criticize these people and argue that they should be willing to take more risks. The practical reality, however, is that many (perhaps most) people care more about their social standing and about avoiding even minor harassment than they do about expressing their views on political issues. The predominantly leftist schools I attended were, on the whole, far more tolerant and open than 1980s Brandeis was, as David describes it. I usually said what I thought and didn't worry too much about the consequences (some of my classmates would say that I worried too little:)). Even so, I knew quite a few conservative (and even some moderate) students who kept their views to themselves for fear of hostile reaction.
The result may be a campus environment where debates about controversial issues such as abortion, race, or other matters will be one-sided because most of the adherents of the opposing view are keeping quiet. This reduces the quality of debate (and education) for all students, including those who adhere to the dominant view. The point applies to the expression of left-wing views at intolerant conservative institutions as much as the reverse. It just so happens that we have far more predominantly left of center schools than right of center ones. Thus, there is good reason to worry about political intolerance on campus even if we don't care much about the hurt feelings of conservative or libertarian students.
Posted by Conor at 03:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Spanish Media and the Rallies
LOS ANGELES, California -- The marching orders were clear: carry American flags and pack the kids, pick up your trash and wear white for peace and for effect.Many of the 500,000 people who crammed downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to protest legislation that would make criminals out of illegal immigrants learned where, when and even how to demonstrate from the Spanish-language media.
For English-speaking America, the mass protests in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities over the past few days have been surprising for their size and seeming spontaneity.
But, like rallies involving other segments of American society, they were organized, promoted or publicized for weeks by Spanish-language radio hosts and TV anchors as a demonstration of Hispanic pride and power.
Posted by Conor at 01:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Red Bull & Vodka
Even if you feel sober after drinking a Red Bull and Vodka... you're not.
Posted by Conor at 01:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Be Like Mike... Drink Gatorade
It's a whole blog dedicated to Gatorade!
Posted by Conor at 01:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Collapse of Sweden?
Will Sweden survive the 21st Century? Fjordman doesn't think so. This post on rape in Sweden is one of the most disturbing things I've ever read.
Posted by Conor at 12:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Against Open Borders
Among those marching for illegal immigrant rights the Civil Rights Movement looms large. “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought the same way,� says Joseph Hernandez, who marched in Monday’s student walk-out. “We are all human and we all have the same rights,� says Chinonso Ezeh, another student. “This is America."
Pundits are beginning to pick up on the same theme.
“Historians, politicians, and civil rights activists hail the March on Washington in August 1963 as the watershed event in the civil rights movement,� Black News columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote this week. “It defined an era of protest, sounded the death knell for the near century of legal segregation, and challenged Americans to make racial justice a reality for blacks. But the estimated million that marched and held rallies for immigrant rights in Los Angeles and other cities dwarfed the numbers at the March on Washington. If the numbers and passion immigration reform stirs mean anything, the judgment of history will be that it also defined an era, sounded the death knell for discrimination against immigrants, and challenged Americans to make justice and equality a reality for immigrants, both legal and illegal.�
A careful historian, however, sees profound differences between the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and the illegal immigration marches we’re currently seeing in our communities.
On August 28, 1963, when Martin Luther King gave his “I Have A Dream� speech, he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial invoking the heroic deeds of a great president and the principles established by America’s founding documents.
“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,� King said. “This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.�
In contrast, the illegal immigration marchers assert universal human rights, waving foreign flags as if to underscore the point. Whether rightly or wrongly, they believe that being human gives them the right to immigrate anywhere they choose to seek work, be near family members and raise kids. As they chant the slogan, “There’s no such thing as an illegal person,� the implicit message is that the United States sins against justice whenever it enforces any limits on immigration.
Whereas Martin Luther King worked to apply rights inherent in the American system to black citizens, today’s illegal immigration marchers are asserting rights found outside the American system, and demanding radical changes to our system to accommodate those rights.
I’m sympathetic to these immigrants and the case that they are making. It seems unfair that those lucky enough to be born American are automatically afforded economic rights that outsiders lack. I truly wish our world could accommodate open borders—I hope one day we reach that utopian reality, and I support high levels of legal immigration partly because I believe justice demands it.
Unlimited immigration is nevertheless a radical idea, and an awful one. There isn’t a single nation in the world that embraces it. That’s because by necessity nations aren’t simply economic entities producing wealth to be divided up as fairly as possible.
Our nation’s primary purpose is protecting the rights of citizens by establishing a framework for governing ourselves. Unlike Latin America, where corrupt governments are only tenuously answerable to their citizens, American democracy is vibrant and responsive, and an engine for the greatest material prosperity the world has ever known. That’s no accident. An educated citizenry that participates in government by choosing leaders, eschewing tyrants and voting for laws makes our prosperity possible.
Open borders would end that prosperity, eliminating the very incentive driving people to immigrate here in the first place.
It isn’t that illegal immigrants are bad people. It isn’t that they are lazy or inferior to Americans—quite the contrary. We must limit immigration because our ability to incorporate newcomers into American life, though impressive, isn’t unlimited. Anyone who favors citizen participation in democracy, a minimum wage, shared American values, relative economic equality among citizens or some sort of social safety net should quickly see that chasing a utopian scheme for open borders would destroy all these things.
Even most illegal immigrants currently within our country would be hurt if we truly adopted open borders. After all, the protestors waving Mexican flags this week come from a country far wealthier than many in the world. If America so chose, we could find sub-Saharan and southeast Asian immigrants far poorer than the Latinos who currently come here, as willing to work hard, and perhaps more willing to abandon ties to their homeland in the assimilation process.
"What are they going to do without all the Mexicans if they kick us out?� Chino High School student Kimberly Bermudez asks. “Mexicans do everything. America wouldn't work without us.�
In fact, Mexicans are no more or less special than any other nationality, something truly open borders would quickly make apparent. Surely Ms. Bermudez sees that Nigerians, Ethiopians, Kenyans, Guatemalans, Thais, Vietnamese, Philippinos and Haitians would compete for jobs currently done by Mexicans as surely as they would undercut their wages.
If justice really did require open borders, people whose flags weren’t flown during the recent rallies might rightly ask why Mexican proximity to the United States privileges their immigrants above the rest of the world.
In reality, however, justice demands a system of limited legal immigration—one that preserves American values and prosperity both for present citizens and future immigrants. Those who advocate the notion that any limits on immigration are unjust, or that everyone has a right to live and work in America, should be careful what they wish for. Since 1776 the United States has been a goose laying golden eggs for immigrants the world over. Open borders will kill it.
Posted by Conor at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 28, 2006
Wednesday Column - "What Part of Illegal Don't You Understand?"
In small towns throughout Mexico and Latin America children grow up amid crushing poverty and a complicated mythology about the United States. As their fathers labor for a rich landowner or a local merchant, never earning enough to improve their lot, they hear stories about an uncle or a cousin who headed north. Sometimes the story is about how they died crossing the desert. Sometimes it is about how they worked washing dishes for 5 months, turned to selling marijuana and got thrown into an American prison, then killed during a race riot by a black inmate.
But sometimes the story ends happily. The uncle or cousin earns enough to get married, to buy a house and to send his children to college. Each time someone in the town gets a new satellite dish to prop beside their two room house word spreads that the money came from a son or nephew in America. Sometimes a man returns from America rich enough to retire. He builds a new home on the edge of town, drives a car newer that everyone else’s and buys tequila for his friends at the local bar.
His children wear Nike shoes, and go to study in Mexico City.
If you’re a child growing up in that town, it doesn’t matter how many people are killed crossing the desert. It doesn’t matter how many illegal immigrants live ten to a room in America, never escaping poverty. You believe that if you head to America you’ll be among the immigrants who make it.
Today’s composite character, 29 year-old Manuel Garcia, came from a small town like that. His views about illegal immigration are very different from those we’ve heard in previous columns. He marched in Los Angeles last week, a Mexican flag draped over his shoulders. If you hooked him up to a lie detector test and offered him $350 for his blunt views on immigration, here’s what he’d say:
“My father worked his whole life, and when he died he left his family poor, hungry, with nothing. I’d rather die that have my wife and my daughter end up that way.
“When I came here my two friends got caught. I got through. My friend’s cousin said he’d hire for construction if I gave him my last $100. I’ve worked there for four years now, sending most of what I make home to my wife and kids.
“On the bus once someone asked me why I came here illegally, like a criminal. I never understood this. In my village the laws are for the rich people. They use the law to keep their power. If you are rich, you can break the law and no one stops you. The poor, even if you follow the law the police can say you broke it. You give them money or you go to jail. It all depends on whether you were born rich.
“Then there is God’s law. My mother taught the bible to us kids. Jesus said to honor God, and to treat others like you want to be treated. If you live with Mexican laws, you come to see that these are the laws a good man must follow.
“When I came here illegally I assumed that here in the United States it is the same thing. I understand now that Americans follow the laws more. I admire this. Still, I’d come illegally even today. Illegal immigration laws are like Mexican laws: the lucky people, the rich ones born in America, are just using their power to get what they can from poor Mexicans. They let us work, but they make us illegal because if they let us in legally they’d have to pay us more, treat us better.
“If America really doesn’t want us coming here, then why do they let so many come? It is Americans who hire us. Yet we’re blamed for coming here. We work hard. We make lots of money for Americans, and take just a little to send home to our families.
“You insult us for being illegal. Who enables us to be here?
“I’m proud to be here because I’m providing a future for my family. We Mexicans who make it across the desert, work hard for our families and don’t rob or cheat people… we Mexicans who follow Jesus’ law… we should be proud. That’s why I wear the Mexican flag.
“I yearn to bring my wife and my daughter here. We’d miss our little town. There isn’t any future there, though. If we could be here together, legally, then I’d fly the American flag every day. I’d tell my kids, this is a place where the law is fair for everyone.
“If my family can’t come here, do you expect me to fly your flag? If you want to deport me, even though I work hard for Americans who hire me, do you expect me to love your country? If you call me a criminal, a dirty Mexican, but you let me stay as long as you can make money on me, do you expect me to respect the laws Americans break?
“What part of illegal don’t you understand?�
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Press Think
FARK: "Government investigators sneak enough radioactive material into the US for two dirty bombs. CNN alerts Al Qaeda."
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Moral Outrage at Yale
David Bernstein is blogging about moral outrage at Yale Law School. I wonder whether any law students will protest the former Taliban official at the undergraduate campus.
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Afghanistan's Constitution
Andrew C. McCarthy is pretty unhappy with Afghanistan's constitution:
Here’s a riddle: What begins with words “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,� a formal Islamic salutation also commonly used by militants in their warnings, fatwas, and claims of responsibility regarding terrorist acts?American newspapers and television networks are in for a scolding too. I had no idea how extreme parts of the constitution are despite reading numerous stories about it.What extols the virtues of “rightful jehad� (also known as jihad) in its very first sentence?
What in its first article declares its sovereignty to be an “Islamic Republic,� and in its second installs Islam as the official “religion of the state�?
What, in its third article announces to the world that, within the territory it governs, “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam�?
What sets the national calendar by Mohammed’s historic journeys, requires the promotion of religious education, and even mandates that its national anthem must contain the battle cry “Allahu Akbar� (God is great!), most familiar to Westerners in recent times as the triumphant invocation of terrorists doing their dirty work?
What requires that same battle cry to be grafted onto its national flag, along with “the sacred phrase of ‘There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet’�?
What, in the formation of families and upbringing of children, requires the “elimination of traditions contrary to the principles of [the] sacred religion of Islam�?
What requires the nation’s president to be a Muslim, and to swear to Allah, at the beginning of the oath of office, “to obey and safeguard the provisions of the sacred religion of Islam�? What requires the same oath of all public ministers?
What permits its judges to be schooled in Islamic jurisprudence (in lieu of any civil legal training) and requires that, upon assuming their offices, those judges take an oath “to support justice and righteousness in accord with the provisions of the sacred religion of Islam�?
What permits its highest court, even if predominantly comprised of judges trained in Islamic law, to interpret for all departments of government the meaning of any law or treaty?
What requires, when no other law directly applies to a question, that the courts decide it “in accord with the Hanafi jurisprudence� (Hanafi being one of the four major schools of Sunni Islamic law), with the lone exception that Shia Islamic principles can be applied in legal cases exclusively involving Shiite Muslims?
What permits any of its terms to be altered with the sole exception that: “The provisions of adherence to the fundamentals of the sacred religion of Islam and the regime of the Islamic Republic cannot be amended�?
The answer, which will come as no surprise to followers of the Abdul Rahman apostasy trial in Kabul, is the Afghan constitution. This is the celebrated foundational law which came into force on January 4, 2004, to the ringing praises of Zalmay Khalilzad, then the American ambassador under whose kneading the drafting process was completed.
Ambassador Khalilzad — who would later bring this same magic touch to Iraq — cooed at the time that the new constitution “set[] forth parallel commitments to Islam and to human rights.� This was double-edged diplo-speak. If by “parallel,� Khalilzad meant there were some sonorous human-rights tropes in the document, that was surely true — enough to camouflage, at least for a while, the embarrassing fact that the Taliban itself could have ruled without much difficulty under the constitution’s terms. But if one takes “parallel� as it is normally understood — i.e., as connoting a sense of rough equality running along two related tracks — the State Department was deluding itself. Or deluding the rest of us.
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March 27, 2006
Explosive New 9/11 Testimony
I'm generally against the death penalty, but I can't say I'll be upset if this guy gets fried:
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Laying out a stunning new version of his terrorist mission, al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he was supposed to hijack a fifth jetliner on Sept. 11, 2001, with would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid and fly it into the White House.But the jury also heard the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, now in U.S. custody, repeatedly state that Moussaoui was to be a part of a second wave of attacks unrelated to Sept. 11. In a 58-page statement read to jurors, Shaikh Mohammed said that he only wanted Middle Easterners for Sept. 11 so that Europeans like Moussaoui stood a better chance of mounting a subsequent attack after security was increased.
Testifying against the advice of his court-appointed lawyers, Moussaoui shocked the courtroom. Jurors who will decide whether he is executed or imprisoned for life were almost motionless during his nearly three hours on the stand. They didn't look down to take notes; all eyes locked on the bearded 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent — the only person charged in this country in connection with Sept. 11.
His testimony started in familiar territory. He denied he was supposed to be the so-called missing 20th hijacker of Sept. 11. He testified he was not intended to be a fifth terrorist on United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed into a Pennsylvania field — the only plane hijacked by four instead of five terrorists.
Then came the shock.
Defense attorney Gerald Zerkin: "Before your arrest, were you scheduled to pilot a plane as part of the 9/11 operation?"
Moussaoui: "Yes. I was supposed to pilot a plane to hit the White House."
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Western Civilization in Perspective
In a recent column Mark Steyn quotes Prince Charles talking to a gathering of 800 Islamic scholars:
"The recent ghastly strife and anger over the Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes of our failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others. In my view, the true mark of a civilized society is the respect it pays to minorities and to strangers."It is rather incredible that an educated man, speaking to scholars from countries where minorities and strangers are tortured and murdered, concludes that the violence faced by Western countries over the Danish cartoon affair is due to our intolerance.
If the true mark of a civilized society is indeed how it treats minorities and strangers, Western societies are the most civilized the world has to offer.
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March 26, 2006
Everything You Need to Know About Health Care Reform
In three posts Jane Galt explains why we're unlikely to save lots of money on health care, why various schemes for socializing medicine are bad ideas, and a better solution that will improve the quality of health care while ensuring that the poor won't die because they cannot afford treatment.
Posted by Conor at 07:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Marriage and Black Culture
Joy Jones: "Marriage is for white people."
That's what one of my students told me some years back when I taught a career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in Southeast Washington. I was pleasantly surprised when the boys in the class stated that being a good father was a very important goal to them, more meaningful than making money or having a fancy title."That's wonderful!" I told my class. "I think I'll invite some couples in to talk about being married and rearing children."
"Oh, no," objected one student. "We're not interested in the part about marriage. Only about how to be good fathers."
And that's when the other boy chimed in, speaking as if the words left a nasty taste in his mouth: "Marriage is for white people."
He's right. At least statistically. The marriage rate for African Americans has been dropping since the 1960s, and today, we have the lowest marriage rate of any racial group in the United States. In 2001, according to the U.S. Census, 43.3 percent of black men and 41.9 percent of black women in America had never been married, in contrast to 27.4 percent and 20.7 percent respectively for whites. African American women are the least likely in our society to marry. In the period between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate in the United States declined by 17 percent; but for blacks, it fell by 34 percent. Such statistics have caused Howard University relationship therapist Audrey Chapman to point out that African Americans are the most uncoupled people in the country.
How have we gotten here? What has shifted in African American customs, in our community, in our consciousness, that has made marriage seem unnecessary or unattainable?
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March 25, 2006
Mad Regulatory Disease
Reason reports on the tyranny of government regulation.
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Midwest in the House
Lazy Muncie is the hottest new music video.
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The Plight of Women
Ayaan Hirsi Ali puts feminism's focus where it ought to be:
Every year, from 1.5 million to 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence or neglect.Perhaps the most shocking development is the regression of women's safety in Europe, where honor killings, genital mutilation and rape is rising do to immigrant populations avoided by police and largely uncriticized by mainstreat Western feminist organizations.How could this possibly be true? Here are some of the factors:
In countries where the birth of a boy is considered a gift and the birth of a girl a curse from the gods, selective abortion and infanticide eliminate female babies.
Young girls die disproportionately from neglect because food and medical attention is given first to brothers, fathers, husbands and sons.
In countries where women are considered the property of men, their fathers and brothers can murder them for choosing their own sexual partners. These are called "honor" killings, though honor has nothing to do with it.
Young brides are killed if their fathers do not pay sufficient money to the men who have married them. These are called "dowry deaths," although they are not just deaths, they are murders.
The brutal international sex trade in young girls kills uncounted numbers of them.
Domestic violence is a major cause of death of women in every country.
So little value is placed on women's health that every year roughly 600,000 women die giving birth.
Six thousand girls undergo genital mutilation every day, according to the World Health Organization. Many die; others live the rest of their lives in crippling pain.
According to the WHO, one woman out of every five worldwide is likely to be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.
What is happening to women and girls in many places across the globe is genocide. All the victims scream their suffering. It is not so much that the world doesn't hear them; it is that fellow human beings choose not to pay attention.
It is much more comfortable for us to ignore these issues. And by "us," I also mean women. Too often, we are the first to look away. We may even participate, by favoring our sons and neglecting the care of our daughters. All these figures are estimates; registering precise numbers for violence against women is not a priority in most countries.
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"It's Not Islamophobia When There Really Is Something to Fear"
Trying to prevent people from being killed for their religious beliefs is not an "assault against Islam." It's defense against Islam, or to be precise against a certain strand of Islam that regrettably cannot be dismissed as just some unimportant lunatic fringe.Be sure to read this whole post.
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One liner of the Day
"The founding fathers didn't trust George Washington with unlimited power. Why should we trust George Bush?"(link)
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March 24, 2006
Thoughts on Afghanistan
Over at the New Republic's discussion board I'm engaged in a debate about the war in Afghanistan. A commenter named Biggarcon writes: "Our best hope to defeat terrorism is to live honorably and give terrorists little or no reason to attack us."
I submit that it is impossible to both live honorably and give terrorists little or no reason to attack us.
Islamic terrorists seek, among other things, to gain political control over the Middle East and Europe, to re-establish the historic Muslim caliphate at the head of a far-reaching imperial empire and to institute Sharia law.
Isn't it obvious that if we let them perpetrate a genocide against Israel's jews, or oppress Hindus and Christians in the Middle East, or enact laws that call for the stoning of adulterous women and homosexuals, then we are not living honorably?
Isn't it as obvious that if we oppose these things Islamic radicals will continue to have a reason to perpetrate terrorist attacks against us?
Biggarcon quotes Ghandi, writing, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
Fine. Here's the change I want to see in the world: I want a world where tyrants like the Nazis, the Taliban, genocidal Hutus, Muslim killing Serbs, and all the rest are opposed immediately and definitively by people of goodwill, who outnumber them so overwhelmingly that they can only succeed in murder when good people, whether through cowardice or pacifistic rationalizations, do nothing.
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The Fog of Journalism
Liberty Just in Case wonders why decorated veterans aren't getting more press coverage. (via Instapundit)
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The Language of Business
Heh.
It reminds me of this story.
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Jihad Light
Poisoning beer is abhorrent on the same karmic level as stealing surf boards or taking candy from babies.
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The Taliban at Yale: Is He The Most Deserving Afghani?
Given a choice between educating an Afghani woman or an official of the Taliban government, Yale chose the latter.
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Joke of the Day
What's the difference between a scientist and a communist? A scientist would've tried it on rats first.
(Thanks to Tom Meyer for the punchline.)
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"To All the Women I've Rejected"
A college admissions officer is troubled by a new trend: discriminating against female applicants to maintain a gender balance on campus.
Few of us sitting around the table were as talented and as directed at age 17 as this young woman. Unfortunately, her test scores and grade point average placed her in the middle of our pool. We had to have a debate before we decided to swallow the middling scores and write "admit" next to her name.It's academia's nightmare: they must choose between diversity and feminism.Had she been a male applicant, there would have been little, if any, hesitation to admit. The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.
We have told today's young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today's most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How's that for an unintended consequence of the women's liberation movement?
The elephant that looms large in the middle of the room is the importance of gender balance. Should it trump the qualifications of talented young female applicants? At those colleges that have reached what the experts call a "tipping point," where 60 percent or more of their enrolled students are female, you'll hear a hint of desperation in the voices of admissions officers.
Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender balance matters in ways both large and small on a residential college campus. Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns out, fewer females find your campus attractive.
What are the consequences of young men discovering that even if they do less, they have more options? And what messages are we sending young women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission to the nation's top colleges? These are questions that admissions officers like me grapple with.
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The Good News
(CNN) -- An Afghan man possibly facing execution for converting from Islam to Christianity is expected "to be released in the coming days," a source with detailed knowledge of the case said Friday.
Word of Abdul Rahman's release comes after days of international pressure and the day before the Afghan Cabinet was scheduled to discuss the case of the 41-year-old father of two. On Thursday, top Afghan clerics urged Muslims to kill Rahman if the government freed him.
Speaking Friday to reporters in Mexico, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. government is working with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government to free Rahman.
Karzai's government came to power after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the fundamentalist Taliban, an oppressive regime notorious for publicly executing people like Rahman.
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A Great American Dies
Best of the Web Today links to a stirring obituary:
Desmond T. Doss, Sr., the only conscientious objector to win the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II, has died. He was 87 years old.Now that's supporting the troops.Mr. Doss never liked being called a conscientious objector. He preferred the term conscientious cooperator. Raised a Seventh-day Adventist, Mr. Doss did not believe in using a gun or killing because of the sixth commandment which states, “Thou shalt not kill� (Exodus 20:13). Doss was a patriot, however, and believed in serving his country.
During World War II, instead of accepting a deferment, Mr. Doss voluntarily joined the Army as a conscientious objector. Assigned to the 307th Infantry Division as a company medic he was harassed and ridiculed for his beliefs, yet he served with distinction and ultimately received the Congressional Medal of Honor on Oct. 12, 1945 for his fearless acts of bravery.
According to his Medal of Honor citation, time after time, Mr. Doss’ fellow soldiers witnessed how unafraid he was for his own safety. He was always willing to go after a wounded fellow, no matter how great the danger. On one occasion in Okinawa, he refused to take cover from enemy fire as he rescued approximately 75 wounded soldiers, carrying them one-by-one and lowering them over the edge of the 400-foot Maeda Escarpment. He did not stop until he had brought everyone to safety nearly 12 hours later.
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March 23, 2006
"The Obligation of Unwanted Fatherhood"
Jeff Jacoby writes on the man attempting to litigate his way out of child support payments:
The culture used to send a clear message to men in Dubay's position: Marry the mother and be a father to your child. Today it tells him: Just write a monthly check. Soon -- if this lawsuit succeeds -- it won't say even that. The result will not be a fairer, more equal society. It will be a society with even more abortion, even more exploitation of women, even more of the destructiveness and instability caused by fatherlessness.That sounds about right to me. Read the whole thing.And, in some ways saddest of all, even more people like Matt Dubay: a boy who never learned how to be a real man.
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Driving Under the Influence
You shouldn't drive drunk.
And if you do, you definitely shouldn't rear end someone before falling asleep with a beer in your lap.
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Photo of the Day
I took this in Cinque Terre in May, 2005. Most weekends I think about how nice it would be to go for the weekend... Then again, I may well end up having a few beers over great conversation Friday or Saturday... and who can complain about that?
Posted by Conor at 04:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
On Polygamy
William Saletan on why we should allow gay marriage but not polygamy:
Fidelity isn't natural, but jealousy is. Hence the one-spouse rule. One isn't the number of people you want to sleep with. It's the number of people you want your spouse to sleep with.
Posted by Conor at 03:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A Slip of the Tongue
Should this man be fired? I don't think so.
Posted by Conor at 03:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A Genocide No One Will Stop
The Wall Street Journal: "One lesson of Darfur is that there really are limits to American power, and in its absence the world's savages have freer reign."
It's another argument for the Glenn Reynolds strategy for preventing genocide: give everyone a gun.
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Killing Them with Laughter
A USA Today op-ed has a wonderful suggestion: we should start ridiculing terrorists.
History teaches that ridicule weakens the moral and political capital of our enemies. Ronald Reagan employed it with great effect during the Cold War. We all remember the "evil empire" speech, but what about the jokes? Two guys were standing in line at the vodka store. They were there for half an hour, then an hour, then an hour and a half. "I'm sick of this," one finally said. "I'm going over to the Kremlin to shoot (Mikhail) Gorbachev." The man left and returned about an hour later. "Well, did you shoot him?" "Heck no," he responded. "The line up there is a lot longer than this one."The author argues that demonizing our enemies raises their stature, while ridiculing them weakens their ability to instill fear.
Many of Reagan's comments reached the underground press in the Soviet Union, no doubt encouraging dissenters against communism. Reagan understood that sowing fear in the West was a potent weapon for Moscow. By laughing at communism, the spell of fear was broken. It was the same during World War II. A cartoon of Donald Duck mocking Hitler and Mein Kampf no doubt was demeaning to the Führer.We haven't employed ridicule in the War on Terrorism:
Thus far, the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorists has been to demonize them. "Their vision of the world is dark and dim," President Bush said in January at Kansas State University. "They have got desires to spread a totalitarian empire." During his March 11 radio address, he said: "The enemy we face has proved to be brutal and relentless."So how do you ridicule the enemy?Certainly, their actions and goals warrant such treatment. But that alone is a tough strategy to maintain psychologically because it can be exhausting.
I'm not suggesting that Bush start cracking Osama bin Laden jokes. And we should not mock Islam. Reagan joked about communist leaders but never about the Russian people. What the Bush administration can do is mock the terrorists.The Missing Link finds this an excellent idea--expect a few examples in future posts.For example, we should note that these self-professed warriors hide while they pay impoverished young men and women to become human bombs. We should play up Osama's privileged background. We should highlight the terrorists' ridiculous failures. The reality is that much like Soviet officials, terrorists are full of grand illusions about themselves and their mission.
The war on terror has military, political and economic dimensions. But it also has a critical psychological component. The terrorists are not 10 feet tall. We should engage in a psychological war that brings these thugs down to size.
One concern, though: has America become so humorless and hypersensitive that we're unable to employ humor as well as past generations? We'll see.
Posted by Conor at 02:42 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
The Taliban at Yale
John Fund at the Wall Street Journal continues hammering away at Yale for admitting a Taliban spokesman as an undergraduate and refusing to forthrightly explain and defend their decision:
Given his record as a Taliban apologist, Mr. Hashemi has told friends he is stunned Yale didn't look more closely into his curriculum vitae. "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay," he told the New York Times. So how did he end up in the Ivy League? Questions start at the State Department's door. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the Judiciary Committee's border security panel, has asked the State Department and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to explain exactly how Mr. Hashemi got an F-1 student visa. Yale's decision tree is clearer. Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions until he took the same post at Stanford last year, told the New York Times that Yale had another foreigner of Mr. Hashemi's caliber apply but "we lost him to Harvard" and "I didn't want that to happen again." Mr. Shaw won't return phone calls now, but emails he's exchanged with others offer insights into his thinking.Whether or not Yale cares what the outside world thinks isn't really the point. What is the point? An institution ostensibly dedicated to academic inquiry is unwilling to defend its intellectual positions. It's just one more piece of evidence that their position is indefensible.The day after the New York Times profile appeared, Haym Benaroya, a professor at Rutgers, wrote to Mr. Shaw expressing disbelief that Mr. Hashemi, who has a fourth-grade education and a high school equivalency certificate, could be at Yale. Mr. Shaw replied that he indeed had "non-traditional roots [and] very little formal education but personal accomplishments that had significant impact." Mr. Benaroya was stupefied; did Mr. Shaw mean accomplishments that had a "positive impact, not terroristic and totalitarian impact"? Mr. Shaw responded: "Correct, and potential to make a positive difference in seeking ways towards peace and democracy. An education is a way toward understanding the complex nuances of world politics."
Back in the early 1990s, when he was dean of Yale College, Yale history professor Don Kagan warned about what he called the university's "mutual massage" between value-neutral professors and soft-minded students. He is even more critical now: "The range of debate on campus is more narrow than ever today, and the Taliban incident is a wake-up call that moral relativism is totally unexamined here. The ability of students to even think clearly about patriotism and values is being undermined by faculty members who believe that at heart every problem has a U.S. origin." Mr. Kagan isn't optimistic that Yale will respond to outside pressure. "They have a $15 billion endowment, and I know Yale's governing board is handpicked to lick the boots of the president," he told me. "The only way Yale officials can be embarrassed is if a major donor publicly declares he is no longer giving to them. Otherwise, they simply don't care what the outside world thinks."
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