While I certainly suspect that there are more conservative generals than liberal generals, there is no way to really know the ratio. While in active duty, they have to serve both in Republican and Democratic administrations; as a result, I don’t see active duty officers spouting off on the politics of the day. Patton and McArthur did while in active duty, but I do not recall anything in recent history.
Liz Magill (UPenn), Claudine Gay (Harvard), and Minouche Shafik (Columbia) all had to resign because they just could not figure out a way to say that harassment of Jewish students is bad without trying to offend anyone, I suppose. It was embarrassing and cringe-worthy to watch.
One of the things that bothers me is that many of the students at Ivy League schools don’t attend class. I’ve heard graduates on Freakanomics talk about how they spent the undergraduate lives playing frisbee instead of going to class. That medical students pick one person a week in a group to take notes in class (different students every week) and then send the info to their groupmates and never get involved in the discussions.
There’s a reason why conservatism is underrepresented in academia (if in fact it is, which is a question). The last interesting conservative I read was Edmund Burke, or maybe Thomas Hobbes. Of course, leftists have said foolish things too. But wisdom is generally in short supply.
Grade inflation is largely explained by the near-extinction of tenure. Faculty without tenure protection can only serve customers, not students. Maybe the only solution is to abolish grades, or limit them to pass or fail. Better yet, abolish them entirely. Some schools have done this, without harm.
Business schools are a contradiction in terms.
Military contractors posing as academics should work directly for the Pentagon. I hear it has a very big building.
Medieval schools did without administrators. So can we.
Truth has a liberal bias, I’ve been told. The problem for conservatives is that their world is now dominated by opinion rather than facts. And those opinions are justification for greed and hate. Logic and critical thinking are looked upon as liberal bias.
The basic conservative truth is: Ideas shouldn't be discarded just because they're old. The basic liberal truth is: Ideas shouldn't be rejected just because they're new. Both are correct. Which you prefer is a matter of personal inclination, and should be respected as such.
The problem with all this anti-woke, anti-diversity nonsense isn’t just the inequity part. It’s that the anti-crowd is missing all the fun. When I was at Penn in the 70s, I took a few English courses. I read mostly White male American and Western European authors. Some good writers. It wasn’t until the last 10 years, when I joined a book club and started a short story club that I realized what I was missing.
We’ve read works by (or narrated by) men, women, LGBTQA, Whites, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians, Indians, Southerners, Westerners, Canadians, Mexicans, Eastern and Western European, aliens, dogs, angels, people from the future, people from the long ago past, an 8-month old fetus, computer generated (in part), honest crooks, crooked crooks, and the list goes on.
They have so many different and similar ways of telling a story. The stories they tell are imaginative, heartfelt, optimistic, sad, epic, narrow, and everything in between. It’s just fun. Reading books by carbon-copy writers – no more.
From reader Eric Young:
While I certainly suspect that there are more conservative generals than liberal generals, there is no way to really know the ratio. While in active duty, they have to serve both in Republican and Democratic administrations; as a result, I don’t see active duty officers spouting off on the politics of the day. Patton and McArthur did while in active duty, but I do not recall anything in recent history.
Liz Magill (UPenn), Claudine Gay (Harvard), and Minouche Shafik (Columbia) all had to resign because they just could not figure out a way to say that harassment of Jewish students is bad without trying to offend anyone, I suppose. It was embarrassing and cringe-worthy to watch.
From reader Myra Chanin:
One of the things that bothers me is that many of the students at Ivy League schools don’t attend class. I’ve heard graduates on Freakanomics talk about how they spent the undergraduate lives playing frisbee instead of going to class. That medical students pick one person a week in a group to take notes in class (different students every week) and then send the info to their groupmates and never get involved in the discussions.
From reader Robert Zaller:
There’s a reason why conservatism is underrepresented in academia (if in fact it is, which is a question). The last interesting conservative I read was Edmund Burke, or maybe Thomas Hobbes. Of course, leftists have said foolish things too. But wisdom is generally in short supply.
Grade inflation is largely explained by the near-extinction of tenure. Faculty without tenure protection can only serve customers, not students. Maybe the only solution is to abolish grades, or limit them to pass or fail. Better yet, abolish them entirely. Some schools have done this, without harm.
Business schools are a contradiction in terms.
Military contractors posing as academics should work directly for the Pentagon. I hear it has a very big building.
Medieval schools did without administrators. So can we.
Truth has a liberal bias, I’ve been told. The problem for conservatives is that their world is now dominated by opinion rather than facts. And those opinions are justification for greed and hate. Logic and critical thinking are looked upon as liberal bias.
BTW, I’m a former Jewish Penn faculty member.
The basic conservative truth is: Ideas shouldn't be discarded just because they're old. The basic liberal truth is: Ideas shouldn't be rejected just because they're new. Both are correct. Which you prefer is a matter of personal inclination, and should be respected as such.
The problem with all this anti-woke, anti-diversity nonsense isn’t just the inequity part. It’s that the anti-crowd is missing all the fun. When I was at Penn in the 70s, I took a few English courses. I read mostly White male American and Western European authors. Some good writers. It wasn’t until the last 10 years, when I joined a book club and started a short story club that I realized what I was missing.
We’ve read works by (or narrated by) men, women, LGBTQA, Whites, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians, Indians, Southerners, Westerners, Canadians, Mexicans, Eastern and Western European, aliens, dogs, angels, people from the future, people from the long ago past, an 8-month old fetus, computer generated (in part), honest crooks, crooked crooks, and the list goes on.
They have so many different and similar ways of telling a story. The stories they tell are imaginative, heartfelt, optimistic, sad, epic, narrow, and everything in between. It’s just fun. Reading books by carbon-copy writers – no more.