Saturday, March 01, 2003
A 20 year US diplomat to Greece just wrote a "scathing letter of resignation" to the Bush Administration. At times he seems a bit over the top with his criticism, with statements like the following:
"But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally."
I'm not sure whether this statement is really justifiable. Nonetheless, the letter also contains a good deal of valid criticism.
Posted by Justin Sarma,
9:39 PM
-
Dean @ Dartmouth Fellow freedartmouther Graham Roth and I "volunteered" at a Howard Dean fundraiser yesterday evening, mostly to get a chance to see him speak in a small setting. At least that was the plan. On rather short notice, the event had to be moved from the Hayward Lounge at the Hanover Inn to the Top of the Hop. So the intimate enviroment was pretty much gone, but a lot more cash was able to squeeze itself in the room. There were less than a dozen students in a crowd that fully packed the hall. The crowd apeared to be a bit too heavy with people from the western side of the Connecticut River, especially in the elected official appartment.
Dean wasn't at all a bad speaker--but he didn't knock me over. While I understand his goal of establishing himself as a fiscal conservative, a balanced budget isn't a very exciting issue, especially for primary voters pissed at Bush. And I'm not too happy that his first visit to Hanover this year was for a fifty buck a head fundraiser, and not to speak to students.
One thing I particurally liked were the buttons that read "Give 'em Hell Howard" and the name tags that read "The Doctor is In." That's clever.
Posted by Clint,
6:07 PM
-
Gads... Please send your opinions on the auto-playing cheese song straight to Richie.
Posted by Jared,
1:15 PM
-
Shameless Self-Promotion
+
=
Richard Jay Nussbaum
My service is red hot!
Posted by Richie Jay,
10:10 AM
-
This Blog Needs Pictures
Posted by Richie Jay,
9:52 AM
-
Quick, what year was the U.S. Constitution Established? The traditional answer is 1789. But ask yourself why we all know July 4 is the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, but none of us know the day when the Constitution was established. And even weirder: the text of the Consititution clearly says it will be established after the ratification of 9 states, and our own New Hampshire was the ninth state to do so...in 1788. So I have contest for all of you: name the date the constitution was established (or, if you prefer, the date the constitution's provisions went into force) and why you chose that date. Send me an e mail: tpw-at-alum-dot-dartmouth-dot-org.
(I know, I am an utter nerd: why does this matter? In my defense, I got interested in this question while writing a paper on Oneida Indian Nation land claims. The Constitution says that states may not sign treaties. On Sept. 22, 1788, the State of New York signed a 'treaty' regarding Oneida land, which may be invalid if the U.S. Constitution was in force at that time. However, under the Articles of Confederation, it seems that states had some leeway to sign treaties with Indians. Which should we look to? The Supreme Court has ruled on this in the context of a state violating a contract, I believe, but I'm interested in whether your answer is the same, and the reasoning process involved. This involves some interesting questions about sovereignty. Now that explanation may not be much of a defense against my being a nerd, but this fascinates me, I'm sorry!)
Posted by Timothy,
12:24 AM
-
Breaking News.... Sources tell me Linda Kennedy will not be heading COSO next year, comes from the higher-ups.
Posted by Timothy,
12:00 AM
-
Friday, February 28, 2003 Yay!! I'm surprised it's made it this far, but the ban on the Under God is being upheld so far! Read about it here.
Peter Beinart explains how the US is screwing Turkey, and not the other way around. Excellent attack on coalition-building, American style. What was Eric Alterman saying about TNR? Oh, right, nothing. But here's his rag's perspective, a little vapid but still informative. Seems to me like the "conservative" TNR consistently makes smarter, more devastating critiques of Bush policy than The Nation. No wonder Alterman's whining.
Posted by Brad Plumer,
8:36 PM
-
re: He Strikes Again
In general I'm less than thrilled with abortion, but I'm completely with Laura on the AIDS-pledge fiasco. Not only are these conditions dangerous and impractical, but I don't see the US attaching moral strings to this little gift.
Posted by Brad Plumer,
8:07 PM
-
The emperor has no clothes!
Daily Kos has a good summary of the jockeying for position going on in the Security Council right now. In the end, the new resolution may hinge on two countries, Cameroon and Guinea. Kos goes on to comment:
This is ironic. Very ironic. Beyond ironic. Because in any coalition for democracy, these two are really awkward fits. They’re both stereotypical African "big man" dictatorships, ruled by leaders with, um, extensive human rights records. Not to mention criminal records.
I'm sorry, but no. You can't have it both ways. Either the UN is a credible organization whose members' opinions count, or its a ragtag group of deformed democracies and rabid despots whose moral authority may be legitimately ignored by the US. Kos can't seem to make up his mind. Nowhere does he worry that China and Syria fall well short of democratic standards. Nowhere does he fret that France is carrying on an imperialist invasion of its own.
So which is it? Graham and others, feel free to respond (and the D website was down, so Graham, I couldn't remember what you said in your latest article. Apologies for redundancies). Just about every appeal to the sanctity and necessity of the UN strike me as either flimsy or outright contradictory. Case in point above. The US gets blamed when it goes against the will of dictators, and then gets blasted when it starts building its own coalition of mustachioed villains.
I don't get it. I will readily oppose the war on the basis of humanitarian concerns, first off, and practical concerns, second. But I could care less about international organization arguments. This entire conflict has exposed the UN for the misguided farce that it really is. At the very least I hope that this whole Iraq catastrophe results in a more credible, more effective UN. But it will need serious revamping.
Update: another dictator against the US. Are anti-war voices ready to ally with Pakistan, Syria and China as the "lesser of two evils"? Are they willing to vault these countries into global prominence via organizations like the UN, if only as a desperate measure to contain the US? And haven't we chastized the US for following just this policy in that past?
Posted by Brad Plumer,
7:45 PM
-
He Strikes Again We thought it was too good to be true: $15 billion pledged in the fight against AIDS by Bush in his SOTU address. Now we know it is. The administration is considering extending the global gag rule to cover all organizations that receive funds to fight AIDS from the US. That means that abortion cannot even be discussed by health workers in clinics receiving funding. The clinics that offer AIDS treatment are very often also family planning centers and provide the only access to abortion in local communities. Not it looks like they might have to choose between the two. Next thing you know, clinic workers will only be able to offer "abstinence only" AIDS education.
Posted by Laura,
2:31 PM
-
Donahue: Canned because he is anti-war? An interesting article pointing out that Donahue was the highest rated show on MSNBC on cancellation (more than Hardball). The article goes on to argue that Donahue's cancellation was rather due to an internal MSNBC report that worried about having a raging anti-war liberal during the coming Iraq war while all the other stations waved the American flag.
Posted by Kumar,
10:58 AM
-
Rocky Mountain Oysters? "even kindergarten students are nuts for the balls"
Posted by Richie Jay,
12:49 AM
-
Thursday, February 27, 2003 Dissent A career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan resigned this week in protest against the country's policies on Iraq.
The diplomat, John Brady Kiesling, the political counselor at the United States Embassy in Athens, said in his resignation letter, "Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson."...[LINK]
- from The New York Times
The article goes on to state that while such resignations are not unusual, rarely are they performed in such a public fashion. CNN is covering, as well.
Posted by Jonathan,
11:39 PM
-
Can dogs be racist? Slate asks this very important question (with a picture of a dog wearing a KKK hood!) and talks about the case of the prejudiced pit bull: Dogs can be trained to discriminate. Some Jamaican resorts feature dogs that chase blacks off the beach while leaving white frat boys to fry like bacon. South Africa's apartheid government bred "Boerbuls" by crossing Rottweilers, Dobermans, bloodhounds, German shepherds, and even wolves to create very aggressive dogs for its security services. In the 1980s, the Herstigte Nasionale Party advertised such animals as "racist watchdogs" created "especially for South African circumstances." In his 1982 film White Dog, director Sam Fuller explores the socialization of racism by having a black man attempt to retrain a dog taught to kill blacks—a so-called white dog—only to have the dog attack whites instead. Paramount found the film disturbing enough to block its release for more than a decade. (via The Corner)
Posted by Timothy,
11:09 PM
-
Nader favors pre-emptive action to take out nuclear reactors? But the Green Party counts on short memories. In 2000 it crowned Ralph Nader, the noted "consumer advocate" and most famous of non-Muslim Arab-Americans, its presidential nominee, and he too roared against pre-emption. But back in 1977, Nader had different views. Interviewed by New York City's Village Voice in its April 4, 1977, issue, he defended violence in words he now would probably like the country to forget. "What activists [attacking nuclear reactors] are trying to do is make new law based on the settled Anglo-Saxon tradition of self-defense," Nader said. "That is, if someone tries to break into your house you can retaliate lawfully. In the case of a nuclear reactor, the self-defense is projective. But what are you going to do: Wait until radioactivity is all over the place? Shouldn't you destroy property before it destroys you? Here you are violating a minor law to get judgment on a more important one." Now let's not get into side arguments. Nuclear reactors do not spew radioactivity all over the place. That's just one of environmentalism's standard fictions. Some 80 percent of France's energy generation is nuclear, but its people aren't dying like flies. What is interesting in the context of today's debate is that Nader was defending terrorist pre-emptive action by a small group of malcontents, yet he deplores such action by the president of the United States to prevent a nuclear and/or biological holocaust.
From Insight Magazine (yep, owned by the same company that runs the conservative Washington Times) I got this link from politicaltheory.info, a new Arts and Letters Daily-type webpage, but linking to specific topics relating more to political theory. (Also, they also just linked to my Nation article)
Posted by Timothy,
10:15 PM
-
More on Fred Rogers For those who felt as close to Mr. Rogers in their childhood as I did, here are some links.
Have you heard my favorite story that came from the Seattle Special Olympics? Well, for the 100-yard dash there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at the starting line and at the sound of the gun, they took off. But not long afterward one little boy stumbled and fell and hurt his knee and began to cry. The other eight children heard him crying; they slowed down, turned around and ran back to him. Every one of them ran back to him. One little girl with Down Syndrome bent down and kissed the boy and said, "This'll make it better." And the little boy got up and he the rest of the runners linked their arms together and joyfully walked to the finish line. They all finished the race at the same time. And when they did, everyone in that stadium stood up and clapped and whistled and cheered for a long, long, time. People who were there are still telling the story with great delight. And you know why. Because deep down, we know that what matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win too. Even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.
WQED Pittsburgh's tribute TV lineup tonight (if any of our readers or their parents are in the Pittsburgh area and able to tape it).
NHPTV (anyone know what campus channel?) will broadcast Our Neighbor, Fred Rogers at 8 tonight.
The following excerpt comes from "Fred Rogers and the Significance of Story", by George Gerbner.
His dreams, his stories, offer ways to control the chaotic life of the streets and neighborhoods in which many children live. Children are starving for story, the kind that builds on hope, the kind that echoes for a lifetime. We need story in our lives, not dreams based on greed.
Posted by Kumar,
2:29 PM
-
Sad Situation Much has been made of the fact that Bush and Republican-controlled Congress have not made good on their promises of financial aid to New York State since 9/11/01. This column makes the crisis that my old state is in very tangible.
what happened to "leave no child behind"?
Posted by Graham,
1:26 PM
-
Guess The Dems Are Good For Something Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee have put together this priceless website. I think I can take off from Bush-bashing for a whole week, since they've done such an excellent job for me. (Link via cursor)
Posted by Laura,
1:22 PM
-
It's gotten quieter According to CNN, the Department of Homeland Security has lowered the alert level to 'Yellow' because "things are not as loud." Hearing loss does tend to occur if you listen to that loud music all the time, Mr. Ridge.
Of course, the Department of Homeland Security Website (quite an unbelievable site, btw) is not updated yet, which could cause mass confusion amongst the population as to what color we really are at, which is just what the enemy has been waiting for. (As if the color actually meant anything).
Updated 2:15 PM: their site's been updated
Posted by Sam,
12:45 PM
-
Won't You Be My Neighbor? Dartmouth's own Fred McFeely Rogers, of Neighborhood fame, passed away today.
Posted by Richie Jay,
10:15 AM
-
Good Old Tim For the young ones who do not know what Mr. Waligore, a Free Dartmouth blogger and the George Washington of the Free Press, looks like, I found a paticularly poignant picture and article written by the Free Dartmouth blogger Rachel Osterman.
Posted by Kumar,
1:54 AM
-
An Update from the "Middle East's only Democracy" The Israeli Government, in accordance with the great democratic tradition of quashing political speech that may be unfavorable, has banned a domestically produced film on last spring's events in Jenin from showing within its own borders.
Posted by Clint,
12:44 AM
-
And... Clint, I have to say, it's just not nice to be a tease.
My most recent DFP article predicted (based on The Guardian's numbers) that "over one hundred Labour MPs would be likely to vote" against a Blair war resolution.
Tonight, I'm happy to be proven wrong: 121 Labour MPs broke ranks. The rebels included committee chairs, former and current cabinet members. They were joined by 52 of 53 Liberal Democrats; 13 Tories, including the party's former Chancellor, and several former ministers; and 12 members of the various Welsh/Scottish/Irish nationalist parties.
In all, 199 MPs out of 659 voted to take a "not yet" stance.
The Guardian--the world's greatest English language newspaper--is calling it the biggest parliamentary rebellion in a century. Think what that means: Through two world wars, a depression, disabling coal, rail and health crisises, Thatcherism and the Falklands, the third-way, dynastic successions, and the cold war, there has never been dissent in parliament that approached this level.
According to The Independent, the biggest applause from the Labour benches came when Jack Straw, Blair's foreign secretary, made the case against war as a straw man argument. I imagine when he started to knock it down, the applause changed to hisses and boos.
Alas, one loyal Blair cabinet minister was quoted: "...it won't change anything." True.
Posted by Clint,
12:17 AM
-
Wednesday, February 26, 2003 Ashcroft on the Loose This is bad news: "Attorney General John Ashcroft is reportedly planning to reverse current policy on the availability of asylum for victims of domestic violence and issue new regulations which could severely limit the ability of women fleeing many forms of gender-based human rights abuses - including sex trafficking, sexual slavery, honor killing and domestic violence - from seeking asylum in the United States." More proof that all the rhetoric about saving Afghani women that the Bushies put out right around the time they invaded Afghanistan was total tripe.
What do a crumpled up tie, a golf bag, an antique dartmouth pennant, and a hastily cleared out office have in common?
The answer, hopefully with photo illustration, is coming tommorow, friends.
UPDATE: Well, I'm sad to see the fellas over at Dartlog have spoiled our fun. But at least their new association with Hanover's sketchiest frat/illegal multiperson dwelling is a matter of public record. Now I'm curious to know about Hanover zoning ordinances that may apply to businesses run out of residential buildings.
Posted by Clint,
11:06 PM
-
Saddam has simple tastes
While he may live in an archipelago of opulent palaces, when it comes to writing implements, he's just like you and me. Saddam could be seen wielding a common Uni-ball pen throughout the Dan Rather interview which aired on CBS tonight. Specifically it was an "eye fine" UB-157, which is, of course, available at Topside.
I found that to be, more or less, the most interesting part of the interview. If you want to judge for yourself, check out the transcript.
Posted by Clint,
10:50 PM
-
Equal Opportunity, Historical Injustices to Groups, and Radical Egalitarianism
"After all, the object here is to close all socioeconomic gaps between the races....There will always be differences in the abilities and achievements of individuals, but achievement differences correlate with race must never be tolerated. That gap must be fully closed." -Randall Robinson, The Debt
"for the purposes of distributive justice, groups don't matter and the past doesn't matter. Justice is concerned with living individuals and with future individuals. The view that groups don't matter I call ethical individualsim. The view that the past doesn't matter I call ethical presentism." -Jon Elster, "Ethical Individualism and Presentism"
Robinson says the gap between the races is traceable to legacy of slavery. Elster says we shouldn't be concerned about the past unless it leaves morally relevant traces on the present. Is group inequality, as oppossed to individual inequality a morally relevant trace? Even if some people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, why don't Blacks and whites succeed in equal numbers? Is this prima facie evidnece there in bot really equal opportunity for all individuals in America? And if there isn't, how do you correct for it or do you leave it alone? Mark van Roojen notes that if slavery and discrimination had not occurred, whites who are 'victims' of affirmative action would likely not be as rich as they are today, and would have to compete with more minorities: so they do not 'deserve' a job they would not have gotten in a world in which past (and present) discrimination had not occurred. (Of course, the problem is there certainly will some, if not as many, whites who would considered victims under this standard, is it fair to give a great number of Blacks something approaching equal opportunity at the expense of a few's equal opportunity? Is there something special about the status quo or are we as a society responsible for correcting the past and/or ensuring a fair future? If one white's rights are hurt to give rights to 1000 blacks is that unjust? This requires a non-consequentialist argument that correcting for wrong is unjust if it hurts others: specifically we cannot take race into account and help the victims of racism because of the past bad uses of race (hmmmm, anyone see a problem here?) Keep in mind that the argument against affirmative action partly depends on a notion that you are helping the disadvantaged (Blacks) at the expense of the possibly more disadvantaged (poor whites), but I don't see how you could indict Michigan's policy on this basis.)
George Sher notes that all pro-affimative action arguments based on diversity must rely on an idea of what groups should be considered to add diversity, and usually the groups singled out have suffered from historical discrimination. I support rectifying past discrimination. Can one rely just on 'diversity' and foward looking considerations to support affirmative action? But if you are not an egalitarian and believe in the crucial importance of inheritance and property rights, then don't you have to be historical? Robert Nozick, libertarian of the Gods, argues any pattern of distribution, however unequal, is just if it resuted from just (freely consented) transfers of property. But this is only true for Nozick if the intital appropriation of property is just. So why don't conservatives who respect property rights support reparations for unpaid slave wages, and possibly giving losts of wrongly stolen land back to Native Americans? (Nozick, by the way, allows rectification to take place based on rules of thumb if we don't have perfect information about how exactly rectify past injustices.) So conservatives, why don't you support repartions? Conservative Charles Krauthammer argues that we should give repartions for slavery so we don't have to have affirmative action. Jeremy Waldron says that property rights must change with circumstances, and we must take into account people's needs today. But he notes this only applies if people are honestly willing to look foward and envision more just distributions. I can see why radical egalitarians could be against reparations and (some) Native American land claims. But conservatives who point out egalitarians like rawls ignore history, and where goods and property come from, cannot themselves claim that history never matters. Food for thought.
Posted by Timothy,
3:47 PM
-
Important Homeland Security News
Ween has failed to secure a contract with Pizza hut to provide the jingle for their new "Insider" pizza.
Nonetheless, you can hear the failed jingle (in both family-safe and explicit versions) here.
Posted by Richie Jay,
3:05 PM
-
Saddam destroyed his WMD, but kept the blueprints.
...according to the highest profile defector that Iraq has ever lost.
His name was Hussein Kamel, and he was Saddam's son in law, cousin, and minister of military industry. He defected in 1995, and in debriefings with the UN inspectors, the CIA and the MI6, he disclosed that Iraq had destroyed all of its weapons stocks--but kept key instructional and production information. The UN interrogation team included the then chief weapons inspector, Rolf Ekeus, who had this to say about Kamel's quality of information: "almost embarrassing, it was so extensive."
According to the current Newsweek: "Still, the defector's tale raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist."
After a year in exile, Saddam pardoned Kamel in order to get him back to Iraq--and then promptly arranged his assasination.
I guess Bush, Blair, and most dissapointingly, Blix, forgot to tell us this.
Posted by Clint,
2:29 PM
-
Thomas Sowell: The Black Hole of Fact-Checking I haven't checked my facts, but apparently Tim didn't either. Here's a note sent to me from Ryan Samuels:
Tim Waligore wrote,"This memory is from a long time ago (so I risk being corrected by Observer posters), but didn't Sowell write a book called Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby? Whatever Sowell's stance on and concerns about the problems he faced from benefiting from affirmative action, it hardly seems compelling to say we don't need affirmative action by pointing to how he pulled himself "up by the good old bootstraps." Stephen L. Carter wrote that title. Does Mr. Waligore imply that Thomas Sowell, or any other black American of his generation, for that matter, owes his success in part to affirmative action? Does this not cheapen the achievement of those who really did not need the handicap? Do not these policies create this prejudice, which we see even from one of their strong supporters?
Posted by Nic,
12:33 PM
-
The Saddameter According to slate.com today's chance of an Iraqi invasion is a whopping 98 percent!
Posted by Richie Jay,
11:14 AM
-
Affirmative Action First of all, I didn't know we let Canadians post to the blog. Dood, what if he's a spy?
Anyway, about affirmative action, I thought that in its purest form, affirmative action is supposed to be just making sure that minority groups aren't being pissed on as much as usual. Or, a la OED,
action taken to affirm an established policy; spec. positive action by employers to ensure that minority groups are not discriminated against during recruitment or employment.
Of course, that's one of those tricky definitions that says a lot and means a little - I'll even accept that it's one of those things that sounds a lot better than it actually is. However, in response to comments about how change needs to happen at lower levels, yes. Of course it does, but this is the kind of change that people have been trying to make since there has been a middle class, and the most obvious explanation for why it hasn't worked can be summed up in a sentence: We need poor people to do our work. Of course, the idea in the 80s was that we'd start redistributing our poor-people need over to Mexico and such places, but it turns out that there still really aren't enough positions in the US for the rest of us.
More to the point, the kind of change of which Bider-Hall speaks is not coming any time soon, and, because of the self-perpetuating nature of poverty [if you'll excuse my Oscar Lewis interpretation of the situation] it is clear to most that the change must come from both directions.
As for race and affirmative action, I agree with Duquee that it is becoming less and less valid in terms of the creation of social equity.
This, of course, brings up a more important question that I don't believe has really been considered here. Dartmouth College, when talking about race, [and in fact, this comes straight from the Furster's mouth], says that it's not about some higher-reaching social goals, it's about academic diversity. That is to say that at a place like this, it's not about poor Cedric or the like [Cedric who is now a right-wing spaz who would probably spit at his former self], but just basically trying to ensure that you can have a class where most of the people aren't Whities or Asians. The validity of this goal must be discussed distinctly from the other loftier ones, I think, and in this case I do think it's valid, because it doesn't even pretend to address the concerns of which both Tim and Nick speak. As for State schools [of which we seem to speak with such disgust!], if their goal is to serve the "people", then they need to find the group that's least likely to succeed and help them out. In my liberal left-wing opinion, that groups is the poor, though the effects of racism and our culture's more couched but nonetheless persistent biases cannot be totally ignored.
Posted by Jared,
8:52 AM
-
My Ignorant but Well-Intentioned Comment on Affirmative Action: The Canadian Speaks Before I get into the issue of Affirmative Action, let me just apologise in advance (in true Canadian fasion) for any statements given that should not bear sccrutiny; I know little of politics and even less of the law. "America," Cornell West once told me, "is a funky place." I'm still finding the groove.
It seems to me that a private institution of learning, such as Dartmouth, stands by the criteria that it and it alone sets as those by which it admits students. Whatever Dartmouth practices, it preaches diversity and admits students in accordance with what it sees as beneficial to itself. Briefly, Dartmouth and other private schools, as well as businesses, churches, governments, and pivate associations practice and affirmative action of some kind or another. Affirmative action (lower case) is choosing by a set of criteria. If I am correct in my assessment of the situation concerning the U of Michigan, Affirmative Action at a state school is under attack, namely where it concerns the race of individual applicants.
The matter to me seems highly complex, not only legally (over which my intellectual grasp is weak) but also philosophically. We hear Affirmative Aftion thrown around, citing low incomes and historical oppression, and yet very rarely do I hear talk about a greater purpose or the goal of Affirmative Action than the anti-climactic "diversity." We at Dartmouth love to talk diversity, but Dartmouth is such a bubble, I believe even for administrators and professors, that there is no real understanding of what diversity really is as a mode of existence in the real world. Affirmative Action for diversity is all well and fine, but then let us not in the same breath mention poverty and historical opression, because those things are not a present reality at Dartmouth College as such (thank goodness!) and because the United States of America is an enormous country with an astoundingly diverse population (it doesn't need Dartmouth's help).
The U of Michigan, unlike Dartmouth College, exists in the real world, due greatly to the fact that it is a state school. State schools, it seems, deal with a dilemma: are they to benefit the individual or the state? It should be easy to resolve this quandry simply by affirming that the people are the state in a democracy. Even if we conceid that democracy is not an egalitarian operation, however, we find that it is imperfect in Michigan and, in fact, imperfect everywhere. Some people just don't seem to count as much as others. Education has been seen, since the time of the ancients, as a means to power. If the masses are educated, the power is shared amongst them. Therefore Michigan and the U of Michigan must consider this:
It is clear that all people are created equal. For historical reasons, however, some have dominated others, violating the sacred rights of equality, and have created for today a democratic deficit. One way to alleviate the democratic deficit is by equalising human beings through education in university. It is also the case, however, that the goal of democracy be that equal persons may obtain and education at a university as equals. Affirmative Action, therefore, openly violates a democratic principle in order to save it.
My view on this is that Affirmative Action is absurd. It flies in the face of liberal values. If we go back to examine the excuses for the very existence of Affirmative Action, that is the poverty and the historical oppression, we find that these excuses, in fact injustices, are allowed linger, unpurged. While the idea of educating certain individuals hailing generally from groups having born some injustice is well-intentioned, it is flawed. It has benefited some, but society is no more just, democracy no closer to its aspirations, and America no closer to freedom.
If I were to have my way with the state of Michigan I would reason thus: we, the citizens of Michigan, will not worry about the percentages of individuals varied in terms of race, ethnicity, origine, colour, sex, religion, gender, disability, or any other qualification of what are fundamentally equal human beings found in its state university system. Therefore, the state will do justice to its people. Where there is lack of adequate funding in lower education, funding will be made adequate. So with healthcare, transportation, and all other fundamental public services (yes, healthcare really ought to be a right). Where there is descrimination or persecution against any one within the boundaries of Michigan, the state will enforce its laws without hesitation and without mercy.
You may wonder now why I have digressed to revolutionise the state of Michigan from assessing Affirmative Action at the U of Michigan. Well, I think we all know that it's more than some kid's university application that's at stake. What is at state is the fundamental right of a human being to be a free and equal participant in a just and democratic society.
Posted by Anthony,
12:40 AM
-
Tuesday, February 25, 2003 SA takes a stand (or not) on Iraq Well, needless to say, the Iraq resolution that was passed by SA was not exactly what we in Why War had been hoping for. It gave a token donation to CARE, a humanitarian aid group, and a bunch more cash to sponsor panels on the war--not that they aren't already happening.
For those keeping score, that's: $400 bucks for EBAs, and $100 to feed starving Iraqis
Possibly the highlight of the night came when my "amendment"--which, no joke, proposed to change the word "the" to "an"--was offered to universal head nodding, only to be informed that the speakers list had been closed. A genuine Student Assembly constitutional crisis was adverted when Janos asked loyal Veep Julia Hildreth if the list could be reopened. Julia nodded her assent, a vote was made, the list reopened, my amendment offically offered by a member, and a roll call vote made. (The roll call vote was called for over a hand vote mostly for the novelty of it.) One hour to change one word.
Janos, I've gotta say--You have the patience of an unstoppable moving train.
Posted by Jonathan,
9:49 PM
-
Clarified Statements on Affirmative Action (or, what I meant by crying "racist")
I have two very important points I want to make in response to Tim's comments (which are insulting, kind of, but I think this bulletin would be more interesting if people were more vindictive against each other and less just sort of intellectually condescending -- the D has that trademarked anyway):
First: I don't sling the word racist around lightly -- ever. This blog may be the first time I've used the word in conversation in months. But I stand by my original statement: using race as a proxy variable for disadvantage is every bit as racist as using racial profiling as a proxy in traffic stops to catch more criminals. "Driving while black" = "Learning while black."
Second: I did not know Michigan also assigns points for being poor, and should check my facts next time. But that doesn't change my original point, which perhaps wasn't very clear: middle-class racial minority families have already overcome all of the problems with American race relations that are capable of being solved through government and other institutional programs. The people who need help are the severely poor people -- black, white, or otherwise -- who would benefit themselves and others immensely through higher education, but who don't have the same resume as people from rigorous schools.
So if there's already 20 points for poor people, what does that other 20 points for having an unusual skin color achieve?
(Didn't know Sowell was so young. I just assumed, based on his curmudgeonly language and my grandfather's devotion to his column, that he must predate affirmtive action.)
Posted by Nic,
9:05 PM
-
Stupid Statements on Affirmative Action (or, how to wrongly cry 'racist'!) Nick says: "So I repeat: affimative action is a good idea on principle, but it is not fair so long as it deprives poor whites of opportunity in favor of middle-class minorities. Michigan's 20 points for skin color is unfair and racist in its gross simplicity."
Sure, under Michigan's policy you get 20 points for being a minority. But you also get 20 points for being economically disadvantaged. OOPS. Who is actually being grossly simplistic and ignorant? Whatever the problems with this policy, it seems on the face stupid to argue that middle class blacks benefit at the expense of poor whites. If I'm wrong, tell me so, but here's the University of Michigan on their admissions policy:
"Fully 110 points are awarded for academic factors. While students who are underrepresented minorities can earn 20 points in this system, the same 20 points can be earned by those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged or who attend a high school that serves a predominately minority population, regardless of the student's race (however, the 20 points can only be awarded once). Geographic diversity is important, and students from Michigan's largely white Upper Peninsula earn 16 points."
Poor whites are no worse off vis-a-vis blacks if there had been no point system boost for either of them. Both are probably better off for getting that boost vis-a-vis the rest of the pool. The only thing I can see someone arguing is that poor whites should get more points than middle class blacks, but this would still leave a 'simplistic' point system of some type in place. I don't see how you could argue that giving middle class blacks and poor whites the same boost deprives "deprives poor whites of opportunity in favor of middle-class minorities." If Nick's logic applies elsewhere, I can't see how it applies here. I might give Nick the benefit of the doubt except he also made this statement:
"Bush's "top 10%" rule seems intended to force the state universities of Texas to accept more students from these poor high schools. Instead of looking at statistics on minority enrollment at UT, I would like someone to show me that more students were being accepted from Texas's poor, racial-minority-dominated high schools before the policy before I believe it isn't an improvement over Michigan's methods."
The reason why Texas' 10% policy works to put minority students into college is because the schools are largely segregated! If you want to argue that Michigan should segregate its primary and secondary schools and adopt a 10% system on the college level, all to avoid a point system at its state university, Ok... Otherwise don't talk to me about how Texas' policy is better and should be applied elsewhere. Texas' policy does not explicitly take into account race, but the top 10% is used as an even more crude proxy than race is. Adopting the 10% policy in Texas does not make much educational sense unless your goal is to have the result of more minorities accepted in to College. I think a better, fairer policy, and one that (suprisingly) takes into account individual circumstances as well as race and disadvantage, is simply to have some form of affirmative action. I think this is true even in Texas, but it is obviously the case in most other states.
(and yes, I do not like being impolite and calling these statements stupid and ignorant, but someone wrongly put the label 'racist' on policies I largely think are defensible and anything but that. I think this is especially the case when we're talking about a topic everyone knows about and has had time to form an opinion, which I hope would an informed one. I am not saying that about the rest of Nick's statements or judging his other arguments now. I will say I especially liked some of Scott's statements.)
P.S. Nick mentioned "conservative black thinkers like Thomas Sowell who really did pull themselves up by the good old bootstraps." This memory is from a long time ago (so I risk being corrected by Observer posters), but didn't Sowell write a book called Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby? Whatever Sowell's stance on and concerns about the problems he faced from benefiting from affirmative action, it hardly seems compelling to say we don't need affirmative action by pointing to how he pulled himself "up by the good old bootstraps."
Posted by Timothy,
8:25 PM
-
On other vaguely worrying fronts:
He also seems to be a bit of a cult figure: Dear Mr. LaRouche, For God almighty can you help and stop the killing of innocent people!!! NOW. If you cannot who can??? - from April 8, 2002
I'm not sure having Al-Jazeera on campus is particularly viable as long as it remains in Arabic exclusively. They do, however, have some really funny pictures of bush that they use in their backgrounds.
They're also not neccessarily a bad station, they're reporters are tenacious enough to have provided footage of the gulf war that was good enough for BBC, CNN and Fox all to show it and the BBC doesn't make deals easily.
A rather worrying site called Electronic Intifada has a guest editorial from the LAT that was written by its director and the AAADC's director.
...got sacked because his show sucked. Cable talk shows stifle and sanitize debate. PBS needs to do a commercial-free melee now and again to really get the issues out there.
Posted by Jonathan,
5:33 PM
-
Vast Conspiracy of "Liberal Media Bias" Fails
The most outspoken liberal on 24-hour news television is no more. MSNBC has given Donahue's short-lived, low-rated program the axe. Sharing a time slot with Fox News Channel's uberconservative O'Reilly, Donahue just couldn't compete. MSNBC.com
In completely unrelated news, MSNBC will soon be adding the ultraconservative Michael Savage to their television line-up, possibly in the now vacant 8-9pm time slot. Fair.org
Posted by Richie Jay,
5:13 PM
-
A Racist Defense of a Racial Policy Scott is correct to say that racial minorities are more likely to be less wealthy and come from poorer schools than whites, and if you can't directy observe wealth and school quality, then increasing minority enrollment will increase percentage of "disadvantaged" students. To econ dorks like me, this is called a proxy, and is helpful for figuring out whether social policy is necessary.
However, using a proxy like this to design policy is a very bad idea. If it is fair to accept minorities more because they are statistically more likely to be poor, then it is also absolutely fair to use racial profiling in police investigations, since racial minorities are statistically more likely to be violating certain laws than are whites. This is a double-edged sword.
So I repeat: affimative action is a good idea on principle, but it is not fair so long as it deprives poor whites of opportunity in favor of middle-class minorities. Michigan's 20 points for skin color is unfair and racist in its gross simplicity.
Posted by Nic,
5:05 PM
-
Well Scott... The point of Al Jazeera is not to listen to Arabic rambling, but rather to contrast the video depiction- while I'm sure FOX will have lots of cool diagrams and pictures of weapons bases exploding, Al Jazeera will have tons of images of dead children, civilian villages torn to shreds, water sources contaminated, electricty out, etc, which happen to be many of the reasons someone like you would be against the war. It strikes me as odd that you would not be interested in having your peers at dartmouth witness first hand validation of your reasons for opposing the war. Maybe you just hope that they'll blindly believe you.
Posted by janos,
3:59 PM
-
Thoughts for Scott 1. Good call on Al-Jazeera. In my 30 waking hours out of the past 32, it somehow didn't occur to me that Al-Jazeera broadcast in Arabic. So much for getting the opportunity to see that perspective. 2. Who cares if student bodies coming out against the war makes the news? Millions of protesters made the news, and that's about all they made (i.e., not a difference to the "democratic" government).
Posted by Jonathan,
1:59 PM
-
Juicy Rumsfeld Tip Wonder why our policy towards North Korea has been hands-off for so long, while Iraq is center stage? Well, this might be part of the answer: it looks like our own Secretary of Defense, good old Rummy himself, might have helped N. Korea develop its nuclear weapons program. This is from SwissInfo via Trish Wilson's blog: Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, was on the board of technology giant ABB when it won a deal to supply North Korea with two nuclear power plants. Weapons experts say waste material from the two reactors could be used for so-called "dirty bombs". Of course, this is eerily reminiscent of the Halliburton/Cheney connection during the Enron scandal. Why isn't this bigger news?
Posted by Laura,
1:40 PM
-
Thoughts for Jon 1. I'm in Arabic 2 right now, and I can't understand much of anything that goes on when watching Al-Jazeera. The are probably only a very small number of students here who would be able to have any idea what is being said on an Al-Jazeera broadcast. This seems ludicrous to me and there are many other world news sources that would be more valuable to the campus. 2. The idea is that if lots of other campuses (or if all the ivies) passed similar resolutions, it creates a news story that potentially could be picked up by larger media outlets. A poll from the D saying 70% of students oppose a war in Iraq is not a national news story. If all or most of the ivy league student assemblies pass a resolution opposing war, that can be a national news story. Even if other ivies won't pass a resolution, if lots of colleges and universities do, then it can become a news story
Posted by scott anderson,
1:17 PM
-
Why there won't be an anti-war resolution First of all, the anti-war resolution, in the form offered by Cornell and other universities, would simply not pass in this assembly. Too many people, including left-wingers, have issues with making a normative statement that would alienate large pockets of the campus without accomplishing anything except adding one small voice to the fray. If 20-50% of the campus (depending on how you read that poll) disagreed with our Dorm Improvement Campaign, we would still do it- a) because we are more informed than other people on campus with regards to that issue b) because their is a positive product coming out of our resolution. Neither is the case with a normative anti-war statement.
Instead, we tried to put together something that would continue campus discussion about the war. This sounds bland and neutral, but the idea of broadcasting Al Jazeera and the BBC in Collis is clearly not a Republican idea, but rather the product of some progressive brainstorming about how to make a difference in the way the war is felt at Dartmouth. There is a token contribution to a non-partisan aids group, and 400 dollars (yes, not a huge amount) that could go to the random groups on campus who would need funding to put on worthwhile events. Anyone who thinks about this for even 30 seconds will realize that most of the groups on campus seeking this funding will either be anti-war or questioning, as opposed to pro-war, so in that sense it could be read as an anti-war resolution, very subtely.
Finally, a nail in the coffin to the anti-war resolution was what came out of my meeting this weekend withthe other Student Body Presidents of the Ivy League. Brown and Cornell have passed resolutions, but NO OTHER school will. This wrecks any illusion of a unified Ivy LEague front against the war, which i think would have at least drawn a tiny bit of coverage. Yale Columbia and Princeton told me that they would not let an anti-war resolution even come to the floor. I did, and what you'll see tonight is what came out of committee. Im sure there will be an amendment to add a normative clause, but it will likely fail.
The reality is that anyone for the war, most people undecided about the war, and a sizeable number of people against the war don't think its SA's place to take a normative stance, nevermind the usefulness of doing so.
And there is my first post ever.
Posted by janos,
1:14 PM
-
Thoughts for Garg 1. Al Jazeera would be cool to have on TV here. 2. Who cares if the SA passes an anti-war resolution? They do better to prove they are working for the student body if they do something substantial rather than wasting time with a pointless resolution. Passing said resolution is not substantial, for reasons you touched upon, as well as others - most notably, that if millions of protestors don't discourage the war plans, an SA resolution certainly won't. It is about as useful as this resolution, which I now swear solemnly before you all to uphold for the remainder of my days:
Be it resolved that I, Jonathan Eisenman, agree wholeheartedly with Vincente Fox (for what, I don't know).
Posted by Jonathan,
12:57 PM
-
The SA War Resolution The Dartmouth Student Assembly, as far as I have been told, does not plan on passing an anti-war resolution even though a recent poll in the The Dartmouth found only 20 percent of student confident that war was a good idea. Why? Because whereas the anti-war activists get a big boost from such a resolution, the SA only has a downside. The D poll said more about campus opinion than any SA resolution does. A bunch of other schools have passed such anti-war resolutions, so SA members won't feel that special for passing one. On the other hand, passing an anti-war resolution will bring an onslaught of pro-war students that will decry the SA as irrelavent, non-representative and a bunch of liberal pinko pacifists. This remains a fundamental SA weakness. Because its claim to student representation is tenuous, it treads lightly when the going can get at all tough. Its understandable but what are the anti-war activists to do?
Two things that the SA is proposing in its effort to increase knowledge and the breadth of resources covering the war are: buying a continous BBC news feed into the center TV in Collis and bringing Al Jazeera to the Dartmouth cable lineup. Thoughts?
Posted by Kumar,
12:25 PM
-
Calling It Like It Is Eric Alterman has a great post on today's Altercation about TNR and their neoconservative trendiness. It's about time someone called them on it; you can only print so many articles bashing the U.N., praising Bush's foreign policy, etc. etc. before you start losing your liberal creds. At least, that's what one would hope.
Posted by Laura,
12:10 PM
-
I Love It when the Dartmouth Review does our work for us. Republican Governor of NH, Craig Benson, has appointed to the state's human rights commission someone who will not protect the rights of gays and lesbians in NH. State Democrats circulated this info, which Alex Talcott was kind enough to post to the Review website. Perhaps the paper's turning over a new leaf?
Posted by Karsten Barde,
11:39 AM
-
Dear President Bush,
I have just returned from having tea with my friend Jayson, a necessary step in attaining the persistent wakefulness required for doing the work that I'm shirking to write this letter. Jayson mentioned the many occassions during his stay in London that he had to enjoy tea at tea time. I reflected upon my experiences in the United Kingdom, beginning with my arrival there on September 11, 2001. I remember being glued to the TV as the Scottish proprietor of the bed and breakfast at which I was staying repeated over and over again: "It's a bloody act of war!" I remember the eerie feeling of calm I experienced as the towers fell. And then I remember laughing. I laughed hysterically. I knew with as much confidence as I had ever known anything that the American response to the attack on our country, our economy, our civilians would annihilate the perpetrators of the heinous act with a speed and precision unlike any known in history. The world would see why our nation is the most powerful to have ever existed. I had confidence.
Your government has failed America, President Bush. My confidence in the greatness of my country has been steadily eroded by your administration. You seek to allay my fears of terrorism and my fears of being unemployed. How can you possibly hope to address my fears and build my confidence in our Homeland Security (a stupid term, by the way) and my prospects of being employed when thanks to you I have lost confidence in my country, period? It took until this morning for me to recollect the exact feeling of confidence in my nation that I had on that morning in September, and to piece it together with your failure to retain that confidence. This is not the failure of anyone else. The buck stops on your desk, Mr. Personal Accountability.
As you have taken my confidence in America, consider this my vote of no-confidence in you. This is beyond dislike of your policy or suspicion of your motives. This is beyond giving you more time to enact "sweeping reform." Your failure to decisively strike a blow against those who so decisively struck one against us is the end of any possible confidence you deserve. Give me back my country, President Bush.
Posted by Jonathan,
6:36 AM
-
Gulf War Deaths She has revised it and now estimates 205,500 Iraqis died it says later in the interview.
Another thing I found interesting was this:
"In modern warfare, postwar deaths from adverse health effects account for a large fraction of total deaths.... In the Gulf War, far more persons died from postwar health effects than from direct war effects."
Maybe this is one reason why there was so much less public outcry during the gulf war than vietnam? If the deaths are less direct, it's easier for people to ignore them.
Posted by scott anderson,
2:02 AM
-
OpEds From the D The recent rash of conservative war and affirmative action OpEds in the D has led me to a couple of conclusions:
1. Conservatives have too much free time (not that much time is spent writing most D OpEds, but...). This is understandable since the extent of the college republicans' activity is a ten person get together in Fuel and there is little other conservative action on campus.
2. Conservatives have no other outlet for their ideas since the Review has made itself so irrelevant in recent years. They are publishing only once in a blue moon and have made so many ridiculously callous and racist comments over the years that it has alienated many conservatives such that writing for the D is their only recourse.
3. I'm utterly shocked that the D did a poor job of titling Stefan's piece, that really just isn't like them to have nonsensical headlines.
Posted by scott anderson,
1:49 AM
-
158,000 Iraqi Men, Women and Children...
...died in the last Gulf War according to a quashed report by a Commerce Department demographer in the Census Bureau of Foreign Countries. Very interesting article and interview from BusinessWeek.
Posted by Clint,
12:53 AM
-
Re: Title IX Just found this in the 2/25 edition of the NYT. Apparently, it's not just the FemMaj who's criticizing the Commission's findings: some of its members are also protesting.
Posted by Laura,
12:51 AM
-
The Bush Administration ...is now proposing to scrap all public testing requirements and oversight of missile defense technology. I see two pitfalls of such a policy: There's the obvious danger that hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent deploying a faulty missile defense program. But there's also the more subtle threat that this plan could potentially lend our foreign policy a dangerous sense of false confidence. It is conceivable, for instance, that our leaders could invade North Korea in the coming years, counting on this poorly tested missile shield to protect the West Coast from North Korean retaliation. An unreliable missile shield might even put us in more danger than none at all, so it is in our vital self interest as citizens to press this administration for transparent weapons testing.
Posted by Justin Sarma,
12:23 AM
-
Count me for what? A minority poster? Well, yea, I'm brown, that'll do :D. Moving from color to affirmative action based on it: Scott is right and I must admit I'm an example. I went to a private school and got a boost not only as a minority but as an international minority, I don't know if Dartmouth realized and accounted for this but I also applied to Michigan and apparently they didn't. However, given that a state school is looking at applications largely from the state's public school system I don't see how one can justify getting rid of affirmative action at Michigan unless the socioeconomic status of a great number of minority families within that state has changed.
Posted by Nikhil,
12:01 AM
-
Monday, February 24, 2003 Re: Is this me? Well, why not count Jared and Nikhil? I can't see how one couldn't. In other words, I'll see your Stevenson and Kung and raise you a Garg.
Posted by Clint,
11:42 PM
-
Bush and Title IX: Hitting Below the Belt This Wednesday, the Bush Administration's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics will be presenting the Department of Education with recommendations that endanger Title IX's future. This is from the Feminist Majority: The Commission, stacked with opponents of Title IX and representatives of big sport schools, never attempted to quantify the impact of its recommendations on the participation of women and girls in athletics. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, the effect on women and athletics will be disastrous. Under one proposal set forth by the Commission, college women would lose 50,000 participation opportunities and $122 million dollars in athletic scholarships. High School girls would lose 305,000 participation opportunities. The Commission has also approved requiring women and girls to prove their interest in sports in order to be given opportunities to participate. Looks like this is what they were up to while we were all out buying duct tape.
Posted by Laura,
10:12 PM
-
Is this me? Someone from the Dartmouth Observer wrote: "I'm expecting Free Dartmouth and maybe Dartlog to weigh in, but I thought it appropriate to post this on a blog with more than one dedicated racial minority poster." As per Free Dartmouth, are they talking about me? I have to say, it sure does feel good to be essentialized.
Posted by Kumar,
9:21 PM
-
Defending Affirmative Action Nic raises a good point that the primary barriers that people face in getting into and succeeding at a good college are class barriers rather than racial ones. A poor white person from a bad school who had to log many hours a week working to help put food on his family's table will be facing much more of an uphill battle than a minority student from an upper middle class family attending a good high school. However, it is very difficult for a school (especially one the size of Michigan) to gauge the actual struggle that each applicant faced and assess his/her background. I would argue that affirmative action is a very good thing in that the consideration of a student's race is an approximation of class. While this obviously is a very crude approximation, there are a lot more poor minority students that are helped than rich white students that are hurt. Short of examining each student's application thoroughly to find out exactly what their socioeconomic status is, there is no better way to do this than to allow race as a factor in college admissions. Especially in the case of a large university like Michigan where a more detailed application review process would be impossible, using race as a factor for admissions is the best way to even the playing field and I implore anyone to provide a better, feasible alternative.
Posted by scott anderson,
7:10 PM
-
Attack of the Drones? It may sound like Star Wars, but it's actually Fox News reporting (although their world view sometimes seems to echo the Star Wars world of good vs. evil and nothing in between). "...information about Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) [drones] program has caused a "real concern" among defense personnel, senior U.S. officials tell Fox News. They're worried that these vehicles have already been, or could be, transported inside the United States to be used in an attack, although there is no proof that this has happened."
This is irresponsible journalism at its best, and this type of hysteria-mongering headlines are driving this country to the brink of insanity. Next thing you know, every radio-controlled plane in the country is going to be confiscated by the FBI. And are Iraqi "drones" really more of a threat than average, run-of-the-mill, psychotics?
Posted by Dan,
6:10 PM
-
Stefan Responds Whoever posted the response to my op-ed in the D today (why no names on these recent posts?) should be aware of a few points. 1. I did not refer to affirmative action as "inferior action" -- that headline was supplied by the editors of the D, and the phrase, you will note, never appears in the body of my piece. I cannot even begin to guess at what it was supposed to mean.
2. I grew up in a small rural town on the Connecticut/Massachusetts border -- not in a suburb of Chicago. I spent nine months in Illinois during my senior year of high school. Loyola Academy is not the "second-rate parochial school" to which my article referred -- that was a reference to Northwest Catholic High School in Connecticut, which was very well attended by black students from Hartford, New Britain, New Haven, etc.
3. I did not argue that I have "slogged through the mud" to get to Dartmouth, although I might well argue that the effort I put into high school does constitute some measure of "slogging." All that is meant by "slogger" is one who has to succeed *entirely* on his own merits. You simply cannot apply that to somebody who gets twenty points for no reason.
I'm sure whoever wrote the post I'm responding to is very pleased with his super-sleuthing, but he (or she) got a few things wrong, and I don't appreciate being misrepresented.
Thanks, Stefan Beck
Posted by Kumar,
4:59 PM
-
Crying Foul Sorry Richie Jay, but I have to come to Stefan Beck's defense:
(1) Dan Knecht's editorial in favor of affirmative action was one of the worse staff columns the D has published this term. Stefan didn't do a great job tearing it apart, but his editorial seems to have been intended more as a response than as a rebuttal.
(2) It doesn't matter where Stefan grew up or went to school, and it speaks poorly of you that you sling around demographic statistics about his hometown as if they were relevant facts. The same arguments have been made by conservative black thinkers like Thomas Sowell who really did pull themselves up by the good old bootstraps. To dismiss Stefan as an overprivileged white kid demeans the whole discussion -- should overprivileged white guys be prohibited from arguing against affirmative action, but overprivileged, guilt-plagued liberal white guys are allowed to defend any affirmative action policy without being attacked? Or are you arguing that only racial minorities may have an opinion about affirmative action without bias? Where did you grow up, Richie Jay, and what was the median income there?
(3) I am going to say that affirmative action is necessary, but that many universities implement it in a way that stacks their PR photos with a smorgasboard of ethnicities without actually achieving any sort of real diversity. Whereas Dartmouth really does look at each person's background, using racial dummy variables as Michigan is doing gives most of the benefit to middle- and upper-class racial minority families. I can regale you with anecdotal evidence of this from my own high school. This is the higher education equivalent to the old "many of my best friends" defence of racism.
Universities need to let go of the idea that being "need-blind" in admissions makes them somehow more fair, when in fact it will just hide the divide between the minority communities in America's cities that could benefit hugely from affirmative action, and the well-off middle class families that are getting an unfair share of this admissions advantage.
Bush's "top 10%" rule seems intended to force the state universities of Texas to accept more students from these poor high schools. Instead of looking at statistics on minority enrollment at UT, I would like someone to show me that more students were being accepted from Texas's poor, racial-minority-dominated high schools before the policy before I believe it isn't an improvement over Michigan's methods.
Posted by Nic,
3:56 PM
-
Inferior Action? Stefan Beck '04 pens a misguided attack on affirmative action in today's Daily Dartmouth.
Referring to affirmative action as 'inferior action,' he demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of racialized heirarchies of privilege and inequitable access to resources such as higher education (and the suburbs).
He writes, "Nobody should accept a springboard to greatness while others must slog through the mud," implying that because he is white, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and attended a school with the word 'academy' in its name, he slogged it all the way to Dartmouth, while those students of color who receive a "twenty-point freebie" at Michigan should feel cheated for being allowed to simply prance their way into that institution of higher learning.
I will not use this space to argue for or against the merits of Michigan's point system (not being a UMichigan admissions officer, I admit that I have not had adequate access to applications and decision-making meetings in order to decide whether or not the process is as fair as it can be). However, I will restate that Mr. Beck, despite seemingly good intentions, fails to recognize that his privately-educated, almost exclusively white upbringing 10 miles north of Chicago (Wilmette, IL: 0.6% Black, Median Household Income: $107,000) may have entitled him to different things than many of his peers 10 miles to the south (Chicago, IL: 36.8% Black, Median Household Income: $39,000).
Posted by Richie Jay,
9:39 AM
-
Guilty even if proven innocent... This ridiculous article in the New York Times discusses prosecutors' straight faced argument that even if a defendent on Death Row could be proven innocent, they should be executed. Reasons include, and I'm not kidding, the prosecutor's frustration at having to call the victim's family.
"To make sure we are clear on this," Judge Michael A. Wolff of the Supreme Court replied, "if we find in a particular case that DNA evidence absolutely excludes somebody as the murderer, then we must execute them anyway if we can't find an underlying constitutional violation at their trial?"
Again, Mr. Jung [the prosecutor]said yes.
Posted by Jared,
7:36 AM
-
Sunday, February 23, 2003 The Web Never Lies?, Part Deux Karsten: Even more gems from googlism. Apparently the "fancy algorithm" really likes the Dartmouth Review.
Some more results:
JAMES WRIGHT: First result: James Wright is watching you.
DARTMOUTH: First two results: Dartmouth is 'pc hell' Dartmouth is "pc hell"
Posted by Richie Jay,
4:45 PM
-
Scottish land reform: an even better idea than single-malt whiskey This article on Scottish land reform is the most interesting read I've come across in the NYT for a long time.
The Scottish Parliament overwhelmingly passed a land reform bill (101 to 19) that allows small-scale tenant farmers, whose ancestors landowners pushed off their land 200 years ago to expand their estates or make way for sheep, to collectively buy back this land--whether the landowner wants to sell or not. Redistribution is long overdue given that half of private land is owned by just 343 people and only half of Scotland has gone on the market in the past century.
The most interesting thing of all is that the Queen is expected to sign the bill into law later this year. No blood, no fuss, no Mel Gibson in a kilt.
Next step: Britain enacts a buy-back plan for Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Posted by Ms. Anthrope,
1:07 PM
-
Still Missing Napster The legality of electronically exchanging music isn't exactly a partisan issue, but Reason magazine, an ardently free-market publication, agrees with me; copyright laws do little to support creativity and much to stifle new talent. I sense the beginning of a trend.
Posted by Laura,
11:48 AM
-
An Unlikely Ally I really love it when even the diehard conservatives start agreeing with the liberals. It seems to be happening more often latey. In today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman makes an articulate critique of the culture of fear the Bush administration has created and exploited since 9/11. It's about time one of those free market/rational actor types realized how they'd been hoodwinked.
EDIT: Several fellow bloggers have pointed out to me that it's not fair to label Friedman a diehard conservative, and I agree with them. I apologize for the perhaps over-zealous word choice. I was thinking more along the lines of Friedman's hardline support of free market capitalism, particularly in his incredibly popular book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. My point was that even those who may support conventional Republican ideas on the economy are still having trouble with the Bush administration.
