Bob Kraft tells Columbia to get bent

[langer]

What is going on at these elite institutions where rich kids go to learn how to be better people than the poor people? There have been some anti-Jew and anti-American protesting going on. Why are those two linked, hmm, we'll never know. How does it happen...that's a puzzler.

Then you have zombie progs setting themselves on fire, for some reason. Mass murders happening all over, cities falling apart.

What is going on with liberalism. Is it that the dalliances with Communism are now coming back to bite? Could be. They love the pose don't they...but they're not smart or introspective enough to understand the longterm implications. Now we all have to suffer.

“I am deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to grow on campus and throughout our country,” Kraft added. “I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken.

https://nypost.com/2024/04/22/us-news/r ... ium=social

[Dan Smith--BYU]

Giving money to your alma mater is stupid, it has never resulted in improved education but instead construction bloat and more admins. He's a dum dum for not realizing this earlier.

Speaking of rich people and colleges:

https://twitter.com/burrytracker/status ... e.mu.nu%2F

Any tradesperson who votes for this grifter is a moron.

[Stosh-67]

These young antisemicrats are disrupting and prohibiting students from getting to classes, hindering the final 2 weeks of the semester, finals, in person time with professors, TA's etc.

Imagine your paying $75,000-100,000 for you kid to get an education and now Columbia is going remote thru the end of the semester.

These entitled, hateful, shameless, little pricks have some 20th century dictators smiling in their graves.
Hitler would be proud of them.

They need to have their masks removed and pictures posted on campus, online, sent to their parents, etc.
Unless their parent endorse this and are also Antisemicrats.

Who are funding these budding terrorist?

[Dan Smith--BYU]

Who are funding these budding terrorist?

Not surprisingly, antisemitic Jews like Soros.

Jews have long championed leftist movements on campus like DEI which hurts Jews more than any other group.

It's time for Western Jews to get their heads out of their asses and realize the antisemtism problem in America is on the left that the Dems are pro-Hamas.

Even Michael Moriarity is starting to wake up.

[langer]

Looks like the NFL is getting active.

Why do their social justice imperatives always seem to fund anti-American activities? Could it be Roger or someone above him calling the shots?

Or is it a conspiracy....

The left-wing nonprofit that bailed out anti-Israel protesters who blocked bridges and highways across the country last week was a multi-year partner of the NFL's "Inspire Change program" whose work is still promoted on the NFL's website.
Community Justice Exchange set up a "bail and legal defense fund" for those arrested during last week's A15 protests. The protests targeted major airports, highways, and bridges in dozens of U.S. cities including San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia. Their explicit goal was to disrupt economic "choke points" to maximize financial disruption, as explained on their website.

[Professor Half Wit]

You fellas are letting politics and culture wars distract your from the bigger problem at universities: the liberal arts are everywhere being gutted. Unis are hiring McKinsey and McKinsey says Plato doesn't put butts in seats or hoover up money from the customer.

Why is this a problem?

Because in 50 years, it may very well be the case that the liberal arts are ONLY taught at these elite institutions you hate. That means liberal arts for lefty elites, no liberal arts for anyone else.

Some will shrug. I think that's terrifying. I get that the liberal arts have drifted from their core conservative mission (and by conservative, I mean giving people a liberal education, not a liberal point of view) and, while I am MUCH MUCH more conservative about what an education should be than many of my colleagues, I think allowing the liberal arts to shrink (rather than be reformed) in response to market demands is a huge mistake.

But maybe I'm guilty of moral panic it doesn't matter since all the power players on the left and the right seem only to come out of these elite places. Zeke commented on this before: most students don't give a fuck about getting a liberal education and are not cut out for it. That's often (too often) true, but people should still be exposed to it. And its liberal administrators driving it in response to a market.

By all means, be angry at these institutions. But please don't let the shiny political object distract from a massive sea change (read dumbing down) coming to rest of higher education. I'm about tapped out and finally beginning contemplating whether I should leave and do something else. I could not have conceived it possible for me to have this attitude 12 years ago. My, my things changed fast.

You folks might think I'm a fool for my politics, but I teach THE foundational Western texts and only the foundational texts and I am becoming rarer and rarer. Soon to be endangered. By administrators, not looney lefty colleagues.

Also, maybe more conservatives should go to graduate school and get PhDs and enter academia. There's self-selection going, not selection bias, IMO.

[Dan Smith--BYU]

"Because in 50 years, it may very well be the case that the liberal arts are ONLY taught at these elite institutions you hate. That means liberal arts for lefty elites, no liberal arts for anyone else.

Some will shrug. I think that's terrifying."

The left (not liberals) are not interested in learning Western civ, they are interested only in destroying it.

Western civ in colleges has been under attack since the sixties and Harold Bloom wrote about it over thirty years ago.

Some conservatives are interested in Western civ but they are a small group at places like Hillsdale.

Most cons are practical and go into STEM or the trades.

As Mike Rowe pointed out, no Hamas riots going on at welding schools.

If you get down to it, there was a time in America when most kids who went to good HIGH SCHOOLS had a good understanding of Western civ.

Which gets back to my point of ZERO correlation between spending and quality of education.

[Professor Half Wit]

"Because in 50 years, it may very well be the case that the liberal arts are ONLY taught at these elite institutions you hate. That means liberal arts for lefty elites, no liberal arts for anyone else.

Some will shrug. I think that's terrifying."

The left (not liberals) are not interested in learning Western civ, they are interested only in destroying it.

Western civ in colleges has been under attack since the sixties and Harold Bloom wrote about it over thirty years ago.

Some conservatives are interested in Western civ but they are a small group at places like Hillsdale.

Most cons are practical and go into STEM or the trades.

As Mike Rowe pointed out, no Hamas riots going on at welding schools.

If you get down to it, there was a time in America when most kids who went to good HIGH SCHOOLS had a good understanding of Western civ.

Which gets back to my point of ZERO correlation between spending and quality of education.

You're only seeing a fraction of the pie, Dan. You keep making this political. You are not following what is happening in schools that don't show up in headlines for political reasons. Liberal arts programs are being slashed and cut because students are not majoring in it. Students are not majoring in things like Classics and Philosophy not because these have been hijacked by leftist crazies (sure, at Yale, ok, but not what's happening at most schools), but because they just want job training. ADMINISTRATORS are killing these programs because they say that's what the MARKET dictates.

All due respect to Mr. Rowe, nobody at Sheboigan State or St. Saint U SLAC you've never heard of are protesting and rioting either.

Uni's are being run like for profit companies making decisions based on market forces. The liberal arts in deep trouble MUCH more from this than lefties (and *some* lefties are a threat to the liberal arts) who hate Western Civ.

Also, Hillsdale is just the rightwing version of lefty schools you hate. St. John's, Aquinas College, and Chicago's liberal program are the true models.

[Dan Smith--BYU]

Wit, you are grieving at a funeral for someone who died thirty years ago. Very few people since 1990 studied LA Western canon. That was replaced by I Rigoberto a long time ago. The Great Books series came out around then to compensate for the fact it wasn't taught anymore.

The good news is that if someone is interested and motivated to study the classics, they can do it on YouTube for free. Because of YouTube, I learned about Turgerev and read Fathers and Sons. And Alexander Pope, whom I now reference all the time.

My side lost this battle in the late 1980s, and ironically it was capitalist foundations such as Ford that helped defeat it by financing grievance studies programs.

[Professor Half Wit]

Wit, you are grieving at a funeral for someone who died thirty years ago. Very few people since 1990 studied LA Western canon. That was replaced by I Rigoberto a long time ago. The Great Books series came out around then to compensate for the fact it wasn't taught anymore.

The good news is that if someone is interested and motivated to study the classics, they can do it on YouTube for free. Because of YouTube, I learned about Turgerev and read Fathers and Sons. And Alexander Pope, whom I now reference all the time.

My side lost this battle in the late 1980s, and ironically it was capitalist foundations such as Ford that helped defeat it by financing grievance studies programs.

Not the point. You kill off these departments, you kill access to the Western culture at the uni level. Which expects a level of rigor and thinking much greater than high school. (And by the way, if you were to teach some freshmen, you'd be horrified at what is obviously NOT happening in high school.) All due respect to YouTube, you can't have a conversation with it, it won't make you write papers on it and it does not train you to develop a liberal habit of mind. Marx thinks the revolution educates, but I think essays are more effective.

If you think you can grasp the Critique of Pure Reason from YouTube, have at it.

I'm super dubious the right values the liberal arts anymore than the left does. Like I said: we're heading back to pre-WW ii where only the elites at the elite institutions will have access to PhDs to learn with and from who take these texts seriously. The rest get YouTube. Full circle, here we come.

[Dan Smith--BYU]

All of this is the result of and far less important that the fact that three generations of bad education policies by rotten people have destroyed minds and attitudes thanks to leftist indoctrination. Columbia ironically used to be the model of a good Western civ education.

[Professor Half Wit]

All of this is the result of and far less important that the fact that three generations of bad education policies by rotten people have destroyed minds and attitudes thanks to leftist indoctrination. Columbia ironically used to be the model of a good Western civ education.

I do think graduate departments of education have done a lot of harm since the 70s.

Latin and Greek used to be taught in high school!

The standards have gotten bad. Very bad.

[Dan Smith--BYU]

You would think at some point possibly four decades ago people like Kraft would have realized that alumni contributions make everything worse.

It doesn't take money and new buildings to make education great. How many lazy rivers and sports arenas did the Lyceum have? Maybe a few olive trees.

[Professor Half Wit]

You would think at some point possibly four decades ago people like Kraft would have realized that alumni contributions make everything worse.

It doesn't take money and new buildings to make education great. How many lazy rivers and sports arenas did the Lyceum have? Maybe a few olive trees.

The Academy, however and in fact, was in a very nice park with flowers and statues.

[Dan Smith--BYU]

https://babylonbee.com/news/columbia-pr ... dent-loans

[Professor Half Wit]

https://babylonbee.com/news/columbia-pr ... dent-loans

Try to remember that protestors are a tiny minority of the students. My very conservative mother was asking me about the professors leading protests at UT, Austin and isn't that awful. To which I said, yes, but think about how many students attend UT and think about how many faculty are employed at UT and how many of both are actually involved. Setting aside one's view of these things, overgeneralization has has been and will always be a fallacy.

[.Kodiak]

Try to remember that protestors are a tiny minority of the students. My very conservative mother was asking me about the professors leading protests at UT, Austin and isn't that awful. To which I said, yes, but think about how many students attend UT and think about how many faculty are employed at UT and how many of both are actually involved. Setting aside one's view of these things, overgeneralization has has been and will always be a fallacy.

All true.

That said, if this was the Proud Boys, or even the College Republicans, protesting the border these schools would have shut that shit down YESTERDAY. Arrests and expulsions would have been likely.

None of this crap ends until people on both sides stand up to and condemn the radical idiots that dominate the newsfeed. You have some, like Bill Maher, who are finally seeing the light but it's like "dude, you've been a leading instigator and enabler of this shit FOR YEARS"...little late to be taking the high road, but I guess better than never.

[Dan Smith--BYU]

Might I suggest twenty t shirt cannons and 50 pounds of bacon to clear the occupation.

[Professor Half Wit]

Try to remember that protestors are a tiny minority of the students. My very conservative mother was asking me about the professors leading protests at UT, Austin and isn't that awful. To which I said, yes, but think about how many students attend UT and think about how many faculty are employed at UT and how many of both are actually involved. Setting aside one's view of these things, overgeneralization has has been and will always be a fallacy.

All true.

That said, if this was the Proud Boys, or even the College Republicans, protesting the border these schools would have shut that shit down YESTERDAY. Arrests and expulsions would have been likely.

None of this crap ends until people on both sides stand up to and condemn the radical idiots that dominate the newsfeed. You have some, like Bill Maher, who are finally seeing the light but it's like "dude, you've been a leading instigator and enabler of this shit FOR YEARS"...little late to be taking the high road, but I guess better than never.

I don't understand why these students think what they're doing is going to accomplish anything.

Marx thinks the revolution educates, but I rather think writing essays does a better job.

[.Kodiak]

I don't understand why these students think what they're doing is going to accomplish anything.

There's always been a grievance counter-culture crowd that have a biological need to be "part of something bigger". I would guess most are on the spectrum, at minimum, if not actually suffering mental illness.

So you have a small group that have a legitimate connection and real beef. And then you have an even smaller group who are there, I think, to exploit the situation as cover for criminal acts. Most of the rest, and usually the loudest and most unruly, are just your typical virtue-signaling losers (usually college-aged white dudes struggling to get laid).

[Professor Half Wit]

I don't understand why these students think what they're doing is going to accomplish anything.

There's always been a grievance counter-culture crowd that have a biological need to be "part of something bigger". I would guess most are on the spectrum, at minimum, if not actually suffering mental illness.

So you have a small group that have a legitimate connection and real beef. And then you have an even smaller group who are there, I think, to exploit the situation as cover for criminal acts. Most of the rest, and usually the loudest and most unruly, are just your typical virtue-signaling losers (usually college-aged white dudes struggling to get laid).

I must have sublimated into reading all the time.

It took a couple years to sort out that talking about Hegel wasn't an attracting stimulus.