Arts & Ammo

Professor Threatens To Sue Students

It should not surprise us that the paranoid world of academia has produced a professor who is threatening to sue her students for discrimination. Dartblog has the story. Priya Venkatesan sent this email to her class:

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:56:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Priya.Venkatesan@Dartmouth.EDU
To: “WRIT.005.17.18-WI08″:;, Priya.Venkatesan@Dartmouth.EDU
Subject: WRIT.005.17.18-WI08: Possible lawsuit

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal [SIC] discrimination laws.

The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit.

I am also writing a book detailing my experiences as your instructor, which will “name names” so to speak. I have all of your evaluations and these will be reproduced in the book.

Have a nice day.

Priya

Dr. Venkatesan taught writing, so maybe the students should consider a counterclaim for malpractice. (This may not be news, but Dr. V gets feelings from the outside world. One can hardly wait for the book, so to speak.)

It’s hard to imagine what discrimination the students could commit against a professor, other than failing to give her high marks in their evaluations. Dr. V’s email should be a complete defense to that claim.

The last word has Dr. V headed for greener pastures at Northwestern University. What is Northwestern thinking?

April 30th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Education, Law | no comments

Hair - Plus 40

Forty years ago today, the musical Hair opened on Broadway.

It was a phenomenon, to say the least, and became an artistic icon of its very peculiar and self-obsessed generation (of which I am one). Whatever opinions you hold of that generation, and whatever memories or fantasies you have about those times, it was a generation with its own music, and Hair was a major element in its repertoire.

I made a comment recently in another context that seems applicable here:

We could teach the history of the 20^th century through the pop music that gave voice, for better or worse, to every social whim and cultural upheaval. But young people today share music primarily in the technological sense. Music does not give them a common voice; they all have their individualized playlists.

Jim Rado maintains the official web site for Hair with lots of pictures, history, and some sound files.

HAIR was created as an original idea by Gerome Ragni (Jerry) and, myself, James Rado (Jim). We collaborated on the story, text, characters, dialogue and lyrics over the years 1965, 1966 and 1967. From the start, I envisioned that the score of HAIR would be something new for Broadway, a kind of pop rock/showtune hybrid. At first we had considerable difficulty, and we rejected several composers, until finally, in early 1967, we found the music for our lyrics. It was a case of love at first hearing. The composer was Galt MacDermot. It was more than a fulfillment of a dream. I would call it a clear illustration of a marriage made in heaven.

HAIR has played pretty much continuously ever since its opening at Broadway’s Biltmore Theatre on West 47^th Street in 1968, and it was translated into many languages and produced around the world, from Japan and Australia to South & Central America, from Europe to Israel. Once the initial popularity waned, it seemed for a spell that HAIR was not an especially viable commodity; there was a major slump of interest in it from around the mid 1970s into the early 80s, to my recollection. But then, in the mid-80s, a new interest arose which took hold and grew.

Visit the site and reminisce.

April 29th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Music, Theater | no comments

Zero Tolerance/More TV

Professor Christopher Ratte is an archaeologist. He needs to watch more TV.

Instead of wasting his time excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey, he should have plopped himself down in the barcalounger and obsessed over American Idol. It might not have made him a better archaeologist, but according to the Detroit Police, it would have made him a better parent.

According to WZZM13, Ratte bought a lemonade at the ball park for his son, a produced called Mike’s Hard Lemonade, without knowing that it contained alcohol.

“I’d never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it,” Ratte of Ann Arbor told me sheepishly last week. “And it’s certainly not what I expected when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old.”

Ignorance is no defense. Anyone who watches TV would have seen the ads and been on notice.

A medical examination ordered for the boy showed no signs of intoxication. Still, he was placed with Child Protective Services. They refused to release the boy to his two aunts, one a social worker and the other a licensed foster parent. The boy stayed in foster care for two days, and it was a week before Ratte was allowed to move back into his own home.

The police were imposing a zero tolerance standard without regard to the realities. Mark Steyn recently wrote on two other instances of zero tolerance. A first-grade student in Woodbridge, Virginia slapped a classmate on her bottom. The school called in the police:

[A]t the ripe old age of six, he’s been declared a sex offender by Potomac View Elementary School. He’s guilty of sexual harassment, and the incident report will remain on his record for the rest of his schooldays — and maybe beyond.

And then this:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently heard oral arguments in the case of Savana Redding. Back in 2003, Savana was an Eighth Grader at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, when the Vice Principal, Kerry Wilson, “acting on a tip,” discovered a fellow student to have a handful of ibuprofen tablets in her pocket. The other girl said she got them from Savana, who denied it. She had no tablets in her own pockets or in her backpack. Vice Principal Wilson, whose mind works in interesting ways, then decided that Savana might be hiding the ibuprofen in her cleavage or her crotch. So, without contacting the girl’s parents, he ordered a school official to strip-search Savana. She was obliged to expose her breasts and “her pelvic area.”

Now you can be suspended from school just for drawing a gun (not like Wyatt Earp, but like . . . with a crayon).

Dave Kopel wrote in 2001:

Today’s restrictions go by the name of “zero tolerance,” and for once, this is a government program aptly named. To have “zero tolerance” is the same as to have “no tolerance,” which is the same as being “intolerant” or “bigoted” — the precise opposite of “celebrating diversity” or “embracing tolerance.” And just as we might expect as much from programs that revel in intolerance, “zero tolerance” is used by an increasing number of so-called “educators” to suppress the behavior of students who deviate from today’s politically correct norm.

Yes, but I think there is another dimension to this. We apply zero tolerance primarily where children are involved. Facile rules substitute for parenting and demonstrate how adults can no longer act in loco parentis. Adults have lost their ability to correct bad behavior with reference to any moral standard, and consequently they can justify punishment only when they lack the discretion to take any less onerous action.

Zero tolerance makes it safe for someone in authority to enforce a rule. Without discretion, however, enforcement frequently leads to absurd results.

April 29th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Education, Law | no comments

The ABA Run Amok

The American Bar Association is the entity that accredits law schools in this country. That accreditation is critical. In many states, students must graduate from an accredited law school to be eligible to sit for the bar exam.

The Wall Street Journal tells the story of George Mason University and how the ABA has required it to change its affirmative action policies in order to maintain its accreditation. These changes are not required for GMU to be in compliance with the law, but merely to be in compliance with the ABA’s arbitrary standard. According to The Wall Street Journal, GMU had significant minority outreach programs in place. It even accepted significant numbers of minority students, many of whom eventually chose to attend a different school. That was not enough for the ABA. The ABA required GMU to lower its standards in order to enroll what the ABA deems to be a sufficient number of minority students. If GMU is correct that these students run an unacceptable risk of not completing law school, the students will nonetheless be saddled with considerable debt from student loans.

Perhaps the ABA believes that the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger allows it to force law schools into affirmative action orthodoxy. If so, it is mistaken. In Grutter, a razor-thin majority held that the Constitution permitted the University of Michigan Law School to discriminate against whites and Asians to obtain a racially diverse class.

That decision, however, was rooted in the notion that “universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition.” In the majority’s view, universities are not subject to the same equal-protection standards as other governmental entities; they are instead entitled to deference in their academic judgments. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor put it, “‘[t]he freedom of a university to make its own judgments . . . includes the selection of its student body.’”

That freedom has been taken away by the ABA. The ABA, however, receives its authority to accredit law schools from the U.S. Department of Education. The federal government should not permit the ABA, as its designee, to impose a quota system that the government has no authority to implement and that runs counter to the law announced in Grutter.

April 28th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Law, Politics | no comments

Who’s a Yokel?

Michael Hirsh at Newsweek argues that the South has risen again, and he’s not happy about it. Barbarians are running roughshod over the sophisticated Northerners and changing everything for the worse.

What sent Hirsh into this tizzy? He leads his article complaining that Carly Smithson was voted off of “American Idol” by Southerners because she sang “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Yes, according to Hirsch, the ignorant unwashed in the South applied their knowledge of Christian doctrine to determine that the song is blasphemous and outvoted enlightened Northerners like Hirsch who find great artistic merit in the song. Who’s the yokel in this equation?

Tell me what you think
About your friends at the top
Now who d’you think besides yourself
Was the pick of the crop?
Buddah was he where it’s at?
Is he where you are?
Could Muhammmed move a mountain
Or was that just PR?
Did you mean to die like that?
Was that a mistake or
Did you know your messy death
Would be a record breaker?

In contrast to aficionados of Andrew Lloyd Weber, argues Hirsh, Southerners can’t help being coarse and stupid. It’s in their blood. The South was settled by Scots-Irish, a warlike breed, who had to fight Indians to survive, and therefore learned to loath the genteel folks on the East Coast. Southerners naturally adopted Andrew Jackson as their hero. Hirsch says,

The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores. Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest. But that latter sensibility has been losing ground in population numbers–and cultural weight.

Hirsh snarls that he now has to endure lapel pin politics and “the shallowest sort of faux jingoism.” (Would he prefer real jingoism?)

It has gotten so bad that “Hillary Clinton panders shamelessly to Roman Catholics.” Huh? Hillary is from the Chicago suburbs, and Roman Catholicism is hardly the dominant religious force in the South. And didn’t Hirsh just tell us that the Scots-Irish were famous for booting the Catholics out of Northern Ireland? But that’s beside the point, you see, because the Catholics agree with Southern Evangelicals on abortion, and that makes Catholics part of the Southern conspiracy to “transform the sensibility” of the country.

What evidence does Hirsh cite for this transformation and its Southern origin? None. In fact, he trots out a professor to say that Hirsh has it all wrong.

“I’m suspicious of that argument,” says Gaines M. Foster of Louisiana State University, author of “Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865-1913.” “The Civil War was essentially about preserving slavery and acquiring independence. And the South lost both of those things. And gave them up.” Beyond that, the Old South is gone with the wind in other ways, having suffered a hybridization from Northern and Midwestern influences. “At least one of four people in the South were not born here. Even ‘Southern’ is now a fuzzy term,” Foster told me.

Undeterred by this rebuke (Foster is from a southern university, so we can ignore him) Hirsh smugly plugs on because he just knows things have changed and that Southerners are at fault. Why, just the other day he was watching HBO and saw John Adams and Thomas Jefferson having intelligent discourse.

What does seem foreign to us today is the dedication to free thought and, even more, free moral choice that so dominated the correspondence between those two great minds.

Apparently, Hirsh sees the history of our nation as one in which peace-loving secularists arrived in Massachusetts and made fast friends with the Indians. They set up universities, wrote eloquent letters to each other about free thought, and sang kitschy blasphemous songs that they regarded as high art. They wore sophisticated awareness ribbons instead of crass lapel pins. Their harmonious lifestyle was shattered one day when Robert E. Lee marched his marauding hordes north of the Mason-Dixon line. The South got what it deserved, and things were okay while Southerners were content to sit on the veranda sippin’ mint julips and swattin’ flies, but they’ve been getting entirely too uppity lately.

I guess this is what they teach at colleges outside Looziana.

Now Southerners want to transform the nation from its original vision: give the populace guns, take away the time-honored practice of unrestricted abortion, change the definition of marriage to exclude same-sex couples, inject religious values into political debates, deprive the United Nations of its sovereignty, and force us all to wear lapel pins. Yeah, those Southerners have sure inflicted some radical changes. All that might be tolerated, but skewing the results of “American Idol” is really beyond the pale.

Don’t you get me wrong. Don’t you get me wrong.
Don’t you get me wrong, now Don’t you get me wrong.
Don’t you get me wrong. Don’t you get me wrong.
Don’t you get me wrong, now Don’t you get me wrong.

- “Jesus Christ Superstar”

Hirsch’s rant is a great example of free thought: thought free of evidence or rational argument. Maybe he needs to spend less time watching TV and more time listening to Southern composers. His parochialism (or is it Northern jingoism?) is astonishing. All of which just goes to prove there’s no redneck like a Yankee redneck.

April 26th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Music, Politics | one comment

A Toast to New Orleans

Since we’ve been considering the plight of New Orleans today, it seems fitting to stop by the Library Lounge at the Ritz Carlton and let Chris make us not one, but two, martinis. Keith Marszalek provides the video and each of you owes him a drink.

April 25th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Leisure | one comment

Rebuilding Big Easy

My ties to New Orleans are not insubstantial. I lived and worked there quite a few years, attended Tulane, and spent an equal number of years close by in Baton Rouge. Like many non-natives, however, I have mixed feelings about the city. Its unique culture makes it both a wonderful place to be and a terrible place to live. For many reasons, I left Louisiana before Katrina.

New Orleans is the last place you want to be during a disaster. The city simply lacks the leadership, efficiency, and motivation to plan and execute anything more complicated than a parade. (But then, what’s more important than a parade?)

Two potential disasters always loomed. One was that the Mississippi River would stop taking orders from the Army Corps of Engineers and find a new route to the gulf, bypassing New Orleans. And it was only a matter of time before the perfect storm swamped New Orleans. We knew this, so Katrina was no surprise.

Nor was it a surprise to see the disaster response breaking down, the blame shifting, or ad hoc and feckless efforts to recover. I have not been surprised by anything related to Katrina, until I read Kimberly Hendrickson’s “Common Ground in New Orleans” today in City Journal. She describes an effort by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University to study the city’s reconstruction. She emphasizes the cooperation between traditional left-wing and right-wing approaches, market solutions versus nonprofit community organizations, and how shared culture at the neighborhood level is generating results:

There is no shortage of commentary on the Gulf region about social divisions and bigotry. What is unique and inspiring about Mercatus’s work is that it accentuates the benefits gained by belonging to a particular group and the social capital generated by shared neighborhoods, shared values, and shared history. The free-market advocates are, in other words, reminding students of city politics that the story of race, ethnicity, and religion need not always be the story of ill will and oppression. They are also reminding their libertarian friends that there is more to healthy cities than properly functioning markets: culture matters.

* * *

There is something to be gained by combining the Left’s emphasis on community action with the Right’s emphasis on entrepreneurial behavior. Both sides seem to agree, in the chaos after the disaster, that a healthy skepticism about government is called for, along with the championing of decentralized, bottom-up solutions.

There is no doubt that New Orleans has a unique character that attracts many people. Those who grew up there or adjusted to its lifestyle are loath to leave, and those who remain after Katrina are demonstrating admirable fortitude. So perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that the local culture might be the rallying point.

There are too many good things about New Orleans to be indifferent to its success or failure, and I hope that this report will prove to be the rule and not the exception.

April 25th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Politics | one comment

The UK’s Music Manifesto

“There is no truer truth obtainable / By Man than comes of music.” – Robert Browning

Frank Furedi compares Browning’s conception of music to current attitudes rooted in skepticsm and moral insecurity.

For example, the UK government-sponsored Music Manifesto pays lip service to the idea that ‘music is important in itself’ but only as a prelude to treating music as a means to an end. So, after praising its alleged educational and therapeutic benefits, the authors of the Music Manifesto assert that ‘we believe that music is important for the social and cultural values it represents and promotes, and for the communities it can help to build and to unite’. Apparently music is also good for business and economic wellbeing - as the Music Manifesto declares: ‘We also recognise music for the important contribution it makes to the economy.’ The manifesto has little interest in music as such; instead its energy is devoted towards promoting the political, social and economic merits of music.

Music has utilitarian value, but the Manifesto misses the larger point when it views music simply as a means to an end. Furedi explains some of the problems that arise from taking this narrow view of the arts.

First, there is the tendency to judge art by the audience it attracts.

[Culture Minister Hodge] observed that ‘the audiences for many of our greatest cultural events - I’m thinking in particular of The Proms - is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this’. In essence, she was arguing that one should judge the merits of a concert on the basis of who’s in the audience. . . .

For Hodge, and other supporters of the politicisation of culture, the value of classical music is called into question by the fact that apparently the ‘wrong’ people listen to it.

Second, seeing that classical music appeals to societal elites, the government irrationally concludes that it is not suitable for the disadvantaged.

Paradoxically, the most inflexible elitist snobs turn out to be those members of the educational and cultural establishment who have so little faith in the ability of children to appreciate and learn about classical music. Their anti-elitism is a populist gesture designed to flatter ordinary folk and reassure them that not much is expected of them. Sadly, such a populist orientation does little to overcome the disadvantages suffered by children in economically deprived areas. On the contrary, the provision of so-called ‘music-making opportunities’ instead of music education only serves to consolidate disadvantage. These children are being denied the opportunity to undertake the voyage of discovery that can sometimes occur when one is exposed to an education in music.

“Music-making opportunities” used to mean playing an instrument or singing in a choir. Music making was an important component of music education. Furedi notes that “music making” now means pretending to be a DJ. Manipulating knobs does not teach kids anything about music, but it points out how we have moved from a culture that makes music to one that merely consumes music.

It’s hard to imagine what societal benefits could accrue from acquainting kids only with second-rate music and encouraging them to take only a passive role. It would be the same as trying to interest kids in playing football by giving them video games.

April 24th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Music, Politics | no comments

The Pot Is Melting

Enoch Powell has once again become the subject of debate in Britain. Powell is best known for his April 20, 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech in which he warned of cultural unrest that would result from the immigration policies of the U.K. That speech earned him the label of racist, cost him his seat in Parliament, and failed to reverse the tide of immigration. Forty years later, Powell is all over the news.

In his 1968 speech, Powell made dire warnings about what would happen in parts of Britain if mass immigration was allowed to continue.

He painted a picture of disaster for the nation, including a reference to the Roman poet Virgil, warning “like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.

The comment was taken as a warning of escalating crime and violence on the streets, and Powell’s observation that Britons were becoming strangers in their own country sparked protest marches to Westminster by workers, declaring Powell’s views were right.

The event making Powell once again newsworthy is a recent poll by the BBC, released on the anniversary of Powell’s speech, that shows growing resentment of immigration and fear of violence. According to Reuters:

Almost two out of three Britons fear race tensions could spill over into violence and half the population want immigrants to be encouraged to leave, a poll showed on Friday. . . . Of the 1,000 people sounded out by Mori pollsters for the BBC, 60 percent said Britain had too many immigrants.

Tony Blankley comments today and on this poll and the rising Euro-Muslim tensions.

In a similar poll taken for the Davos World Economic Forum, stunning numbers of Europeans fear a “threat” from Muslims with whom they “interact”: 79 percent of Danes, 67 percent of Italians, 68 percent of Spaniards, 65 percent of Swedes and 59 percent of Belgians.

* * *

These disturbing polls from BBC and Davos should constitute another undeniable warning to the gutless, defeatist European leaders. Take action to protect your people and their cherished Western values, or the people will take matters into their own hands. And for us in America, impending European unrest should be seen as a cautionary tale.

The fact that Britons are voicing these concerns more openly may be a harbinger of worse things to come or may provide the impetus to begin addressing the issue more intelligently. The current fashion of pretending that immigration has no consequences and dismissing opponents as racists is not a good strategy.

A more intelligent approach would start with the acknowledgment that Western values matter and should be preserved. They are the pot, which must retain its form. If the pot itself melts along with its contents, there will indeed be chaos. Once that preliminary matter is settled, a more reasoned debate can take place over how much the pot will hold and how much heat it can withstand.

The ultimate goal should be to welcome as many people as possible, of whatever origin, to the enormous benefits that flow from a culture that prizes individual rights, liberty, and the rule of reason. It is not merely a question of immigration; it requires us to regain the moral confidence to export those cultural assets once again.

April 23rd, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Politics | no comments

Comedy 9/11

If the Erfurt Opera can make a mockery of 9/11 by staging Verdi at ground zero, should we expect something better from Hollywood? Politico.com reports on the upcoming 9/11 comedies:

Consider Boll’s “Postal,” opening nationwide May 23. Touted as a “shock comedy,” the film begins by depicting the Sept. 11 hijackers making moronic comments about the paradise that awaits them. The film is likely to offend just about everyone with its premise that includes “a gang of bosomy commandos [who] face off against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in an epic battle that will determine the fate of the world.” Since its opening cockpit sequence was first promoted on YouTube last May, it has been viewed more than two million times.

This comes as Victor Davis Hanson laments that Hollywood

. . . is more interested in political correctness than profits, as the Iraq War movie bombs attest. Talent is no longer gravitating to Hollywood, but staying put in Europe and Asia. Alternate media, from the Internet to video games to cable television, mean that fewer go to the movies anymore (I went once in the last 12 months). The old bread-and-butter genres—like the Western or the war movie—are either moribund or merely landscapes for political revisionism.

Why do these movies bomb? According to Knight Ridder:

Americans recognize that there’s something tasteless about directors living their cushy, sheltered lives in sunny California and making films that savage the behavior of soldiers in a war while those very soldiers are still fighting and dying for their country.

War comedies are not unheard of, but Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz would not have been funny in 1944.

April 22nd, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Film | 2 comments