Dartmouth Wins Three-Way Battle for Looking the Worst

This may head into TL/DR territory.  You have been warned.

The extent to which Curmie’s alma mater actually allows
Voice(s) Crying in the Wilderness
is not entirely clear.

Curmie had remained blissfully ignorant of an incident, or perhaps series of incidents, this spring at his undergrad alma mater, Dartmouth College, until reading about it on Ethics Alarms.  I usually see stuff from FIRE; no idea why I didn’t, this time.

A little personal history first.  I think it may become relevant…

My time “on the hill” was, to coin a phrase, the best of times and the worst of times.  It was certainly a period of change.  The administration building had been occupied by anti-war protestors a couple of years before I got there.  Direct US involvement in the Vietnam War and the accompanying draft had ended, but there was a lot of residue. The campus police once demanded to see my draft card when I was studying in the lounge of a classroom building my freshman year.

My freshman class was the second in the college’s 200+ year history to include women; the male/female ratio was 5:2 when I enrolled, 3:2 when I graduated.  The “Indian symbol,” a commemoration of the college’s origins as a missionary school for Native Americans, was officially discarded in my freshman year: a neat trick since it had never been officially adopted.  Many students and alumni were upset by both of these changes to tradition.  Others rejoiced.

Certainly the concerns of both the Native American community and the women on campus were ignored if not suppressed, not (just) by the administration, but by a lot of fellow students.  Politically, the student body was all over the map.  Curmie at the time was probably a little right of center, but had friends from across the spectrum.  One had a parent in the then newly-created Heritage Foundation, another was the daughter of a Democratic member of Congress.  I knew radicals and reactionaries and about everything in-between.

I’ve had little direct contact with Dartmouth in many years.  I send the alumni fund a little money each year, and I check the alumni newsletter for news of friends.  I bemoaned the choice of commencement speaker a few years ago. That’s about it.  So I can’t say for certain what the student body is like in terms of political philosophy.  I suspect it’s rather familiar, except that those in the center have been pulled in one direction or the other.  There probably aren’t a lot of moderates left on either side, as has been the case nation-wide of late.

The great thing about Dartmouth in those bygone days (and I hope this is still true) was that there wasn’t a department on campus that wasn’t at least very good, and most were excellent.  Curmie started as a pre-law Government major, added a Drama major, and ultimately dropped the former and entered the honors program of the latter. 

Interestingly, a course in Political Ideals helped prompt the change from both directions.  It was one of two courses I ever took anywhere in which I felt any pressure to agree with the professor on matters of opinion.  But it also introduced me to the study of dramatic texts as an exercise in more than simply literary analysis.  The idealistic and intellectual Doctor Stockmann in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People was used as an example of traditional conservatism (how far today’s GOP has wandered from that template!), and I became intrigued.  This was far from the only reason for my decision to change to a different career path, but it was certainly a factor, and it may have been the first catalyst.

But… enough of the scaffolding.  The story:

In January of this year, the Dartmouth chapters of the College Republicans, Turning Point USA, and Network of Enlightened Women (no arrogance associated with that title, right?) were scheduled to host an on-campus event, “Extremism in America,” featuring conservative journalist/media personality Andy Ngo and ex-antifa, now libertarian activist, Gabriel Nadales. 

At the last minute, college authorities, citing “safety issues” and “concerning information” from the local (Hanover, NH) police, apparently suggesting the possibility of violent protests, moved the event exclusively online, despite the fact that no one actually showed up to protest.  Later, they billed the sponsoring organizations $3600 for the added security.  (Note: the demand is a little more nuanced than that, but that’s the de facto gist.)  The zoomed event was seen by 177 unique viewers, with a peak viewership at a given moment of 94.  Filene Auditorium, where the event was originally scheduled, has a seating capacity of 221.  Organizers believe the event would have attracted more viewers if they’d had more time to distribute the zoom link; it’s difficult to argue with that.

OK: let’s start at the beginning.  Ngo and Nadales have both been all over the map in terms of any kind of personal philosophy.  Ngo, for example, has been a Buddhist, an evangelical Christian, and a loud and proud atheist.  That’s a pretty good range for someone still in his mid-30s.  A sympathetic reading of this phenomenon would be that he is a perfectionist, moving on from any ideology that does not express his true beliefs.  A more cynical interpretation is that he actually has no core values, but will pretend to do so if it gets him something we wants—fame, money, whatever.  But ultimately, none of this matters.

Nor does it matter that Ngo and Nadales, like so many others, left or right, on the traveling talking-head circuit, were booked not because they have anything terribly pertinent to say, but because they’re controversial (and little else).  Why else would the College Republicans’ previous event have featured Madison Cawthorn?  The College Republicans’ next guest?  They brought Ngo’s mentor, James O’Keefe, who has literally no integrity whatsoever, to Hanover a couple of weeks ago.  An opinion piece by Kyle Mullins in The Dartmouth (a.k.a. the “Daily D”) accurately describes the obvious conclusion: “The group’s decision to bring him to campus appears to be another example of trying to ‘own the libs,’ proving that they are more interested in self-victimization than in a free dialogue about conservative ideas.”  Curmie could not have put it better.

For all this, the fact that Curmie wouldn’t sit through an hour of listening to the likes on Ngo and Nadales (or Cawthorn, or O’Keefe) if he were paid to do so doesn’t mean that they have no right to speak, or that others have no right to hear them.  Things in this case are a little more complicated than that, of course, but deciding how much so probably tells us more about the reader’s politics than about what actually happened.

A couple of days before the event, event organizers learned of a protest by a group calling itself Dartmouth Anarchists.  The protest was to take place at Filene Auditorium, beginning an hour before the scheduled beginning of the event.  There then ensued a series of e-mails between Chloe Ezzo, a Dartmouth junior who is an officer in all three sponsoring organizations and apparently the lead organizer of the event, and various college officials, including a representative of the campus police and the events coordinator.  You can see at least some of that exchange here.

There was apparently an in-person meeting, as well.  What’s clear is that Ezzo suspected that “Dartmouth Anarchists” didn’t really exist, but, given the history of some antifa protests, wanted to take no chances.  It was her idea to ban backpacks at the event and to require a Dartmouth ID to attend an event originally intended to be open to the general public.  (There were also some COVID protocols.)  She asked about the possibility of metal detectors, but was told that was infeasible.

Jim Alberghini, the events coordinator, also wrote, prior to the event, that Ezzo and her fellow sponsors were “responsible for the smooth execution of this event…. as hosts you are responsible for the guests you invite to campus—including crowd behavior, violations of College policies, and any associated damage.”  He also urged moving the event online or requiring a Dartmouth ID; organizers rejected the former suggestion but had actually already proposed the latter.  What is conspicuous in its absence from Alberghini’s CYA e-mail is any indication that the sponsoring organizations would be responsible for the cost of security deemed necessary by College officials.

On the day of the event, there was a “routine” security check; Ngo said it involved bomb-sniffing dogs.  That assertion is uncorroborated, as far as I can tell.  Curmie wouldn’t trust Ngo not to exaggerate, but that’s different from saying he’s lying.  And Curmie has attended dozens if not hundreds of events (even excluding sports and the arts) at colleges and universities over the years.  With the exception of appearances of Presidential candidates (in one case a sitting Vice President) or an ex-President, none, not even the ones involving sitting governors or senators, have, to the best of my knowledge, had security checks at all.  So there was obviously at least a little concern (by whom, exactly?) for the safety of guests and attendees alike. 

And why the extremely late insistence that the event go online?  That’s unclear.  The Dartmouth reports that “Department of Safety and Security officers at the venue confirmed that the in-person event had been moved online, but did not explain why, referring comment to Safety and Security director Keysi Montas, who declined to comment.”  Not exactly the most shining example of transparency, that, but declining comment isn’t lying, and one supposes there could conceivably be a legitimate reason for the secrecy—protecting an undercover source, for example.  That’s a bit of a stretch, though, don’t you think, Gentle Reader?

Indeed, the Hanover Police deny making any recommendations that the event go online.  Curmie, who has dealt with that police force on several occasions over the years—before, during, and after his time at Dartmouth—is quite confident that they’d cheerfully throw Dartmouth under the proverbial bus, given the opportunity.  But would they lie to do it?  Curmie doesn’t trust them enough to say “no,” but it’s certainly a “probably not.”

College Republicans president Griffin Mackey offers a scathing take-down of the college’s position in a post on NHJournal.com a couple of days after the event.  I do encourage you, Gentle Reader, to follow the link and check out his full screed, but here’s a brief sample: “Dartmouth College decided to cancel based on information that had been available for days — if not weeks — before. Moreover, if the security concerns Dartmouth had were so grave, why did we host the virtual event in the same room we had intended for the in-person event?”

That’s a pretty impressive rant.  But just because X is wrong doesn’t mean than every version of not-X is right.  There are, for example, a couple of flaws in the arguments presented by Mackey and Ezzo.  Yes, the college is correct in saying that College Republican officers themselves had expressed security concerns.  They decided to go ahead with an in-person event despite those concerns, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t express them.  The real point is that there doesn’t seem to have been any new evidence of a potentially violent protest.  

Moreover, it’s clear from both Mackey’s post and one by Ezzo on TheCollegeFix.com that they claim agency in arranging for all those police officers, SWAT team members, etc., to be present.  So why shouldn’t they be responsible for picking up the tab for that increased security?  

It’s also a bit difficult for the college to punish the “Dartmouth Anarchists,” as Mackey and Ezzo insist should happen, since: 1). no one knows who they are, 2). therefore no one knows if they’re actually students, and 3). they only advertised a protest, and never (that Curmie has seen, at least) threatened violence.  They don’t have the right to prevent Ngo and Nadales from being heard, but they can certainly gather outside the venue and protest the event to their hearts’ content.

Unsurprisingly, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) got into the act fairly early on.  FIRE has a reputation for leaning a little to the right, but Curmie, being more of a civil libertarian than a traditional liberal, agrees with them more often than not.  This time… sort of.

At one level, FIRE’s claim that Dartmouth capitulated to a “heckler’s veto” seems accurate as far as it goes, but it also appears to be focused on a single facet of the larger picture.  To say the college handled the situation clumsily is truth bordering on understatement.  But for all their upside in terms of engaging the college community in considerations of different perspectives on current events, events like this with controversial speakers are lose/lose for colleges and universities in other terms. 

If such an individual, someone whose very presence has the potential to trigger a protest that could get out of hand, is invited by a student group, the college will find itself in a precarious position.  There are three choices, all bad: 1). decline to provide extra security and suffer the consequences if something does go wrong, 2). provide that security and be stuck paying for it, despite the fact that the college per se wasn’t the sponsor of the event (FIRE’s apparent belief that the college ought to pay for the added security because it has sufficiently deep pockets is particularly troubling in this regard), or 3). provide the security but expect the sponsoring organization to pay for it, whereupon they’ll whine to FIRE and to TheCollegeFix.com or MoveOn.org or whatever such platform best aligns with their politics about how their First Amendment rights are being trampled.

Who looks good here?  Literally no one.  FIRE seems to go heavier on the righteous indignation than on ethical and responsible argument.  The College Republicans do indeed seem more interested in controversy and victimhood than in raising the level of political discourse.  But, absent evidence they haven’t provided, Dartmouth officials look arbitrary, capricious, and authoritarian, perhaps even guilty of actively and intentionally undermining the event.  That’s not a good look.  At all.

Sigh.

Kent State and Today's Headlines

Today is a strangely emotional day for Curmie.  It was final exam day in what might well be the last course I ever teach, a little short of the 43rd anniversary of the first day of the first class of my teaching career.  It’s a day I had my first long (well over an hour) talk with one of the students in that class, a young woman whose skills I’ve respected for some time, but with whom I’ve never worked directly.  It is also, of course, Star Wars Day, and therefore filled with fuzzy memories of where and with whom I saw the original trilogy. (I’ve tried to watch a couple other movies in the franchise, but turned them off after less than half an hour.  No regrets.)

One of many chilling images from 52 years ago today.

But whereas today—literally, today—is, or at least could be, a turning point in my life, it’s what happened on this date 52 years ago that will continue to be the more significant event, even on the personal level.  I refer, of course, to the murders (and they were murders, even if no one was convicted of any crimes) of four Kent State University students by members of the National Guard.

If I were to list the half dozen blog pieces I like the most of the over 400 I’ve written over the last dozen years, there’s no question that this musing on Kent State, posted from a dormitory room on that very campus, would be included.  It wasn’t until long after May 4, 1970, that I became fully aware of the specific horrors of that day—that none of those killed were closer than 85 yards from the Guardsmen who were supposedly fearful for their own safety; that the Guardsmen were walking away from the student protesters before turning in unison to open fire on whoever happened to be in the line of fire; that 11 of the 13 casualties were shot from behind.

What I did know, only intuitively at first, was that everyone—from Richard Nixon to the local officials to Walter Cronkite—was lying to me.  Even my father’s words seemed hollow and evasive, even though uttered with great surety and apparent sincerity.  What happened in that early afternoon in eastern Ohio wasn’t self-defense; it wasn’t inevitable; it wasn’t triggered by the actions of radical peaceniks.  And it sure as hell wasn’t a small sacrifice worth making to restore law and order.

The coming of age I described in my post from almost seven years ago took place over time.  Yes, I could smell the heady aroma of bovine feces in the initial pronouncements, but even in junior high I knew better than to trust entirely in feelings rather than actual evidence.  Of course, as the facts emerged, my suspicions were confirmed and my anger crystalized.  It all played out rather like a Greek tragedy: I already “knew” where we were headed, and rather hoped that I was wrong, but eventually the evidence became too overwhelming to ignore.

This wasn’t, I don’t think, political in the sense that had the other party been in office, it would have changed much.  No, it was generational.  My generation, especially but not exclusively the men, were cannon fodder for the politicians and the power-mongers.  The Vietnam War per se was bad enough, but at least we could understand the motives.  We might have rejected them, but we could trace a coherent line of reasoning.  What happened at Kent State (and Jackson State a couple weeks later), however, had no rational underpinning: it was a categorical rejection of all the precepts we had perhaps naïvely believed about the country.  It was life-changing for Curmie, and he suspects for many others, as well.

Now, assuming what virtually everyone believes will happen with respect to over-turning Roe v. Wade actually eventuates, we’re faced with another split.  This time those most directly affected will be young women instead of young men, but the structure of the issues remains familiar: the people making the decisions aren’t those who will bear the brunt of the burden.  They’re insulated by at least one, usually more, variables: age, gender, and economic status—the rich don’t care what happens in Mississippi if they can fly their loved ones out to Massachusetts or Illinois to have a procedure done.

None of this is to say that SCOTUS should (necessarily) have done differently (see last time for more on this), but there are ways in which the events of the week can turn out to be positive for those of a progressive mindset.  First off, overturning Roe doesn’t mean abortion will be criminalized, nation-wide.  Yes, there will be yahoos from red states who will seek to do so, and they’ll succeed in some places… in the short term.  But they’ve been trying to find creative ways around Roe for decades.  Now, apparently, they’ll get their way.  Be careful what you wish for, GOP.  You’ll likely find that your rallying cry whimpered its way to death alongside the SCOTUS ruling you so despise.

Moreover, just as the anti-war forces gained enough traction (and the suppression of those voices gathered enough antipathy) in the 1970s that even the Nixon administration had to take notice, the pro-choice forces will organize in time for the midterms.  This matters, especially since the performance of the Biden administration has been something short of impressive.  With the notable exception of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the nominees for a host of positions have been notable more for their “diversity” than for their expected competence.  Even Jackson’s nomination came after Biden had artificially narrowed the field to women of color… which rather takes away from the fact that she would have been a legitimate candidate without the affirmative action nonsense.

Curmie remembers saying to someone that he’d vote for a dead sloth over Donald Trump.  Serendipitously, the DNC massaged the primaries so the closest thing they could offer to approximate such a creature was nominated.  Curmie appreciates the opportunity to test his hypothesis.  Yep, still true.  And there’s no one on the GOP horizon who looks even vaguely palatable... which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Democratic leadership, except by contrast.

But it’s much easier to oppose something than to actually propose good new ideas.  And “just say no” has been featured in the Republican playbook on abortion for years.  It’s been a great fundraiser, if nothing else.  Now it’s gone.  “Right this wrong” is a far more rousing slogan than “Maintain the status quo!”.  Now, the energy is on the other side.  Far more people will rally, both literally and figuratively, behind what they perceive as an issue of gender-based discrimination than did so because a single petty criminal was inadvertently killed by an asshole (not necessarily racist) cop in Minnesota.  And the protests will almost certainly be less violent, making them less objectionable to those in the middle, politically. 

Progressives on abortion rights are likely to be progressives on other issues, as well.  The result, despite the fact that the Democrats seem to value diversity over equity, and that they aren’t doing much to reverse the wreckage wrought by the Trump administration, might well be a stronger showing in the midterm than is usual for the party in power.  Curmie isn’t necessarily predicting this, but he’d be far from surprised should it happen. 

Women of child-bearing years make up about a quarter of the total population, more than that among folks of voting age.  Even the idiots who manipulated the process to twice in a row nominate the only prominent Democrat who could possibly lose to Donald Trump (OK, Kamala Harris, too, I’ll grant that one) aren’t stupid enough to fail to remind voters of Republican attempts to deny abortion access to victims of rape or incest.  You are free to be an absolutist on this issue in ethical terms, Gentle Reader, but that’s not a winning proposition in political terms.

None of this, of course, ameliorates the plight of young women who happen to become impregnated in a radically red state after its testosterone-poisoned legislature concocts a new version of repression.  We mustn’t forget that.  But the draft of the imminent ruling in the Dobbs case should remind us of one thing: that battles in a courtroom are not insignificant, but the ones that really matter are at the polls.  This is imperative.  And, to tie all the day’s events together, we close with the wisdom of Yoda: “Do or do not.  There is no try.”

Vote, y’all.  May the 4th (or the Force) be with you.

5 Thoughts on the SCOTUS Roe Brouhaha

It didn't take long for the protests to erupt.

The recent release of what gives every impression of being a draft of an imminent SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade raises more complicated issues than Curmie has any intention of trying to address in one or two thousand words. Indeed, given the circumstances of the leak, we can be certain of very little. 

Five (relatively) brief points: 

1. The Leaker. One thing we do know is that the leaker—a staffer? one of the justices themselves?—is a scoundrel of the first order. It’s a draft, after all, apparently written three months ago. One presumes that the Court hasn’t already released a final version for a reason. We’re not even sure this is the latest draft of the document. Perhaps it’s just a matter of wanting to clean up some of the language. (Curmie just signed off on the proofs of a book chapter and devoutly wishes he’d had one more chance to fix a phrasing rather than simply proofread. He understands.) But it’s also plausible, though not likely, that one or more of the justices wants to modify their stance or even to change their vote. In the words of the great 20th century philosopher Yogi Berra, “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” 

The leaker, whoever that may be—there’s a lot of finger-pointing at the moment, but no actual evidence, at least that’s been made public—has, of course, violated all standards of propriety, confidentiality, discretion, and professional ethics. Assuming the culprit is a lawyer (a good bet), anything less than disbarment is an insufficient punishment. There may be criminality involved, too, although Curmie has no particular charges in mind. All this presumes, of course, that we ever find out whodunnit: a risky assertion at best. 

2. The Issues.  Access to abortion has been a complicated and contentious issue since well before the Roe decision in 1973. Curmie wants to go on record (again) that there are honest, intelligent, and moral people at about every point on the spectrum on this matter. (There are also evil people at both extremes, but that’s not the point here.) Nor are the positions necessarily staked out according to religious beliefs. True, the evangelical movement and the Catholic Church have been prime movers in pro-life circles, but Curmie knows pro-life agnostics and adamantly pro-choice Southern Baptists. 

Indeed, the Catholic position for centuries was that a fetus becomes “human” (and therefore that abortion becomes homicide) not at conception, but at “ensoulment,” the moment the mother is aware of the fetus’s movement… generally at about 18 weeks. Curmie may be getting along in years, but it’s not like he hung out at the local pub with Kit Marlowe, and he was already in college when the Southern Baptist Convention re-affirmed their church’s position to “allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”  

A 2019 Pew poll finds that a clear majority of American Catholics believe abortion should be legal in “all or most cases”; in 2018, voters in very Catholic Ireland overwhelmingly (66-34%) repealed the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution, the one that forbade abortion. Hardly the stuff of unwavering religion-based opposition, from either the Christian Church or its parishioners, this. The Bible, of course, has nary a word, either way. 

None of this is to discount the reservations of those who do oppose abortion for whatever reason. The majority is not always right. But it’s worth noting that as the majority of the general population’s support for the legality of the procedure seems increasingly secure, the pro-life movement seems to have increased its fervency. 

The case that’s before the Court at present, the one that Justice Alito (who wrote the now-leaked opinion draft), et al., are considering, concerns a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. The question before the Court, of course, is not whether such a law is a good idea, but whether it’s constitutional. Roe v. Wade suggests that perhaps it is not; the solution, in the minds of the conservative majority, is to overturn Roe, which is what appears to be happening. (Key word: “appears.” We shall see.) 

3. The Aftermath.  Assuming what now seems probable actually happens, the proverbial fecal matter will interface the whirling rotors in a matter of weeks, at most. Every conservative male-dominant state legislature will attempt to be the first to impose absurd restrictions on abortion rights, and if they can’t get there first, they’ll have a pissing contest to see whose new law is the most draconian, the most misogynistic, the most medically ignorant. 

Someone somewhere will decide that not only is it illegal to get an abortion here in Trumpistan, it’s also illegal to leave the state to have the procedure done elsewhere. Sooner or later, even this SCOTUS will have to recognize that this system cannot be sustained. That might work out OK for the nation, but not for the individuals affected in the here and now. Oh, wait. Concern for the individual rather than seeing someone as part of a group: that’s a conservative notion. Oh, to hell with it. This is about showing them uppity fillies who’s boss. (Apologies for the correct spelling in the previous sentence… I just… couldn’t.) 

4. A Possible Analogy from Curmie’s Professional Life. Many years ago, in (checks the Google machine) 1991, Curmie got a phone call from a reporter for a second-tier national newsmagazine, asking for comment about a recent controversy concerning the New York premiere of the musical Miss Saigon. Jonathan Pryce had played the leading male role of the Engineer in London, and producer Cameron Mackintosh wanted him to reprise the character on Broadway. Actors Equity Association objected to casting Pryce, who is white, in the role of a Eurasian character. (Pryce, being from the UK, was not a member of the American branch of Equity, and therefore needed a waiver from the union.) Mackintosh—no shrinking violet, he—threatened to cancel the production. AEA backed down. 

Anyway, the reporter wanted my opinion on the matter. Exactly why they’d care what an Assistant Professor at a small college in Iowa thought about the matter was never made clear. But they asked, so I told them I thought Equity had erred twice: that the initial opposition was misplaced because the character was half white, but that once having taken their stand on moral/ethical grounds, they looked weak and irresolute when they capitulated. (My comments never made it to print, by the way.) 

This is sort of the same structure my thinking takes as regards Roe v. Wade. I would have preferred that an American actor got the role of the Engineer—I suspect Americans can play French-Vietnamese characters as well as Welshmen can—but there was no real reason to break long-standing tradition by denying an established star like Pryce the necessary waiver. Similarly, Curmie is pro-choice, but Roe v. Wade is a bad decision. It’s not SCOTUS’s job to make new law, and try as you might, you can’t really find a constitutional imperative to legalize abortion nation-wide. “Should there be one?” is a different matter. 

But the rest of the parallel holds, as well. Once Equity publicly raised objections to Pryce’s casting, they were obligated to maintain that ethical position instead of appearing to have been bought off (which, of course, they were). Similarly, as all current SCOTUS members averred in their confirmation hearings, Roe is now the law of the land, and it should take more than partisan politics to overturn it. The presumption rests with the status quo, as every debate coach in history has intoned ad nauseum. 

5. The Political Manoeuvring. All of which brings us to the politics of the situation. Let’s face it, that whole “law of the land” rhetoric is simultaneously true and, on the part of the conservative bloc of SCOTUS in this particular case, very much intended to deceive… not that such insincerity differs much from the litany of evasions and half-truths that have characterized every confirmation hearing Curmie can remember. 

Current thinking is that Chief Justice Roberts would vote to uphold the Mississippi law but against overturning Roe v. Wade. Assuming this to be true (and you know what they say about assuming), that places the perfidy of Mitch McConnell front and center. In the three Senatorial elections prior to McConnell’s refusal to give Obama nominee Merrick Garland even a hearing (there was an election coming up, you see), Democrats got over 6 million more votes than Republicans. But because of the way the Senate is configured—Wyoming has as many senators as California, for example, despite having less than 1.5% of the population—McConnell was “majority leader.” 

Fast forward to 2020. A president who, because of the arcane electoral vote system, was elected despite receiving nearly 3 million fewer votes than his opponent, made his third (!) nomination in his single term in office. Despite there being far less time prior to the election than there was for Garland, McConnell proclaimed that it was his job to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed. Note, Gentle Reader, that he wasn’t arguing for a fair hearing. He was being, as he has always been, an unscrupulous partisan hack. (It’s not clear that McConnell is any more unethical than his Democratic counterparts, but he’s prouder of it.) This time, McConnell was majority leader despite his party having received over 24 million (!) fewer votes in the senatorial elections that led to the 2020 Senate. Nonetheless, despite the obviously unethical power play, Barrett was narrowly confirmed. 

The longest-serving Justice, Clarence Thomas, has been on the Court since 1991. In the time since Thomas’s confirmation, Democrats have held the Presidency for 17 years, Republicans for 14. Yet two-thirds of the members of SCOTUS were nominated by Republicans. There are as many justices nominated by Republicans who lost the popular vote as there are who were nominated by Democrats. Ah, American democracy in action! 

This is not to say that Democratic nominees are inherently better than Republican ones. Curmie has a good deal of respect for John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch, for example, objecting to the latter only for the totally-not-his-fault fact that the position he holds should have gone to Merrick Garland. But Brett Kavanaugh, irrespective of what may or may not have happened between him and Christine Blasey Ford when he was in high school, demonstrated a level of petulance in the hearings that ought to disqualify him from judging a high school speech contest, let alone a Supreme Court case. And Barrett was chosen for two reasons: she’s an ideologue, and she wasn’t yet 50. (To be fair, both were at least initially rated as “well qualified” by the ABA.) 

So… even allowing for the absurdity of the enormous over-representation of small states in both the Senate and the Electoral College, it’s really the chicanery of Moscow Mitch that has brought us to where we are today. Confirm Garland, confirm Gorsuch (the first Trump nominee), admit you don’t have time to vet a Supreme Court nominee for a lifetime appointment after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Even if the GOP goes all-in on having a lame duck Senate confirm a lame-duck President’s nominee (not the best look, politically), that still leaves a majority (assuming what we hear about Roberts to be accurate) to uphold Roe v. Wade. If the extremely late nomination of Barrett were delayed or withdrawn, as it should have been, there’s a better than even chance that the Mississippi law would be thrown out and Roe wouldn’t be even under serious threat. This, of course, assumes that a Democratic nominee would be subject to the same litmus test on this issue as a Republican nominee, just in the opposite direction… a fairly safe assumption. 

At best, we’re once again in the realm in which SCOTUS, unelected and chosen by the chance of who happens to be in the position of political power when an opening occurs is making new law… it’s just that this time they’re doing so in the opposite direction from what happened a half century ago. (Side note: Roe v. Wade was decided by a 7-2 vote; the majority opinion was written by Nixon appointee Harry Blackmun, so this wasn’t always a purely partisan matter.) Whatever your feelings about Roe v. Wade, whatever your political leanings, you can’t be happy with what appears to be happening. If you’re pro-life, it’s at best the right response for all the wrong reasons. If you’re pro-choice, it’s an abomination. 

The worst part, though, is that Mitch McConnell’s reptilian smirk won’t be going away any time soon.

The Perqs, Hazards, and Irrelevancy of Celebrity: The Britney Griner Case

Britney Griner playing for the US Olympic team.

WNBA star Britney Griner’s ongoing detainment by Russian authorities is beginning to make headlines for not making headlines. That is, it’s been long enough since her arrest in February that the lack of information about her status is itself newsworthy. The recent release in a prisoner exchange of American Trevor Reed has helped to bring Griner’s case to the foreground again. 

Well, that and statements like this one by the likes of Aron Solomon, chief legal analyst for Esquire Digital, who apparently thinks the following is a useful contribution to the conversation. “What if this was Kyrie Irving? It would be the front page of every paper every single day, Kyrie still in detention. But with Brittney Griner, it hasn’t been.” 

With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning… how is this moronic? Let me count the ways. First off, ongoing situations—the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa, the hostage situation at the American Embassy in Iran, COVID-19 statistics—don’t make news every day. After a while, something has to change for the story to be newsworthy. Americans are already tiring of hearing about the situation in Kyiv; the Ukrainian flag is seen less frequently now, and the news agencies are going to be led by their audiences to cover whatever the big new story is. So, if it were Kyrie Irving instead, the same phenomenon would be happening. 

There could probably be a better example than Kyrie Irving, of course, if Solomon really wants to make a point. Irving, a flat-earther and anti-vaxxer, is one of the stupidest and apparently most annoying people on the planet. If he were in a Russian prison, it would be about all Curmie could do to avoid saying “they can have him.” Try LeBron James or Stephen Curry if you’d like to pretend to know something about basketball, Ace. 

Most importantly, what we’re talking about here is an American citizen in the foreign jail. Why should she get any more attention than Trevor Reed? Be honest, Gentle Reader… had you ever heard of him? I bet his family cares more about his release than about hers. The rest of us should care at least as much, partly because all the evidence suggests that he was innocent, and we don’t know about her. 

Certainly the Russian government is not famous for its pursuit of either inclusion or justice in general. Griner, for better or worse, checks all the right boxes to be set up on phony charges: wealthy (estimated net worth about $5,000,000), American, black, openly gay. And it seems a bit extreme, even for Russians, to test vape cartridges for hashish oil. So there’s a real possibility that she is a real victim. But we can’t be sure, or even especially confident, of that. 

Not everyone arrested in Russia is innocent, and plenty of other folks have believed, naïvely, that they could outwit the authorities, or that their fame could protect them. It may or may not be significant that whereas mentions of Reed or Paul Whalen, another American detained in Russia, almost inevitably suggest—or even assert outright—the men’s innocence, no such proclamations (at least that Curmie has seen) have been forthcoming about Griner. This could be a strategic move not to irritate the Russians… or it could be that what isn’t said is as important as what is. 

One of the secondary issues that was highlighted in the first round of stories about the Griner case was what she was doing there to begin with. (I won’t bother to link one particular article; if you’ve found your way here, Gentle Reader, the chances are pretty good that you can handle the Google machine.) The short version is that she plays for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA off-season. The longer version is that a lot of WNBA players also play in Russia, because the pay is significantly better. 

Griner makes an annual base salary of $227,900 (plus bonuses) to play for the Phoenix Mercury, just short of the WNBA maximum salary (there is such a thing!) of $228,094. Add to that an estimated $1 million from Nike, plus a handful of other endorsement deals, and Curmie doubts that she’ll be struggling to scrape together the funds to get the large fries with her #3 special. But she’s making an estimated $1 million to play in Russia, and that’s a lot of money, even if you’re already making a lot. 

Of course, after her playing career is over, she’ll continue to rake in a fair amount in endorsement deals, and the chances are that she’ll become a coach or television analyst or something like that. There is—or at least would have been—little doubt that she’ll make more in salary and endorsements (let alone investments) every year for the rest of her life than Curmie and Beloved Spouse combined. 

But it’s worth noting that Russia pays several times as much as the WNBA, and Griner’s salary for the Mercury is less than 1/200 of what Stephen Curry gets paid to play for the Golden State Warriors. Yes, you read that correctly. Curmie is going to sidestep the issue of whether that pay differential is legitimate or not. (You can check out the last couple of paragraphs of this seven-year-old piece on the pay difference for men’s and women’s soccer players for an overview of some of the considerations.) 

What matters for this essay is that the disparity exists. For all the allegations of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia in the US, Russia is worse on three of the four and as bad on the other. Still, a million bucks is enough for most people, even those who would be most likely to experience bias, to at least contemplate living under an authoritarian regime for a few months, especially since, in Griner’s case, she’d been doing it for several years. Ekaterinburg may not exactly feel like home to her, but it is at least familiar. And the teams themselves seem to take good care of their players. 

So that part, at least, is understandable. What we don’t know, what we may never know for certain, is whether her celebrity made her hubristic or whether it made her a target.

Musk, Twitter, and Orwell

Let’s face it: ain't nobody wanna see a picture of Elon Musk's ugly face.

Curmie wrote a couple of days ago that he might have something to say about Elon Musk’s imminent purchase of Twitter. Turns out, he does. Somewhere between joy of seemingly everyone to his right and the terror of those to his left lies Curmie’s perspective. 

Musk, of course, fancies himself as a sort of Nietzschean übermensch, so superior to us mere mortals that he cannot be expected to abide by quotidian standards of integrity, much less compassion or empathy. Curmie, equally obviously, views him as just another wealthy and petulant narcissist with delusions of grandeur. Oh, and an asshole of the first order; mustn’t forget that. 

To be honest, Curmie doesn’t much care what happens to Twitter. He has two accounts—one, as Curmie, is used almost exclusively to announce a new post on this blog. I haven’t tweeted anything from my personal account in years. I follow only a handful of people I haven’t bothered to unfollow since I stopped being anything like an active participant on the platform. I do check in occasionally to see what’s happening at favorite museums, theatre companies, and the like, but I sure as hell don’t use Twitter as a primary news source. For these reasons, Curmie’s own world has more to fear from the intrusions into education policy of a self-important pseud like Bill Gates than from anything Elon Musk might do, whatever new direction of Twitter might take. 

Of course, it is never a good thing to have so many communications outlets—Twitter, Facebook, the Washington Post…—de facto in the hands of a single fatcat, but it’s difficult to mourn overmuch the transfer of power in news organizations and media platforms to single sultans from cabals of oligarchs. Musk, to be sure, has the economic power to do whatever he wants. There’s a meme out there that if you made $200,000 every day since Columbus sailed the ocean blue, you still wouldn’t have accumulated as much money as Musk proposes to drop on this single purchase. Curmie did the math; it checks out. Curmie isn’t convinced that Musk is the smarter and harder-working of the two of us, but grants that he might be. In all modesty, however, Curmie doubts that Musk exceeds him in those areas by the over 200,000:1 ratio of our net worths. No, he doesn’t inhabit the same world as you and I, Gentle Reader. 

So, even more than is his usual practice, Curmie raises a skeptical eyebrow at Musk’s gallant knight on a white charger shtick. Musk claims in a recent tweet to be a liberal, but his fellow liberals have turned into… anarchists? communists? nothing but Woke Folk? Something awful, whatever they are. Let’s be real: there may be actual liberals whose net worth hovers at or near a billion dollars. (Side note: Bruce Springsteen and Dolly Parton combined don’t have a billion dollars.) But you don’t accumulate hundreds of billions if you care about anything or anyone but yourself. In other words, as his many costly vanity projects demonstrate, Musk is another boring and hedonistic super-rich guy. His actions are entirely by, for, and about Elon Musk. Yawn. 

But all of this dances around the core issue: Musk’s claim that he will restore free speech to the platform. Let’s start with whether that needs doing to begin with. The answer is… sort of? probably? I guess so? There was, of course, considerable brouhaha when the soon-to-be former management of Twitter kicked Donald Trump off the platform. Liberals of a certain stripe ignored the notion of free speech and rejoiced; conservatives of a certain stripe ignored the fact of Trump’s prevarications and erupted in righteous dudgeon. 

All of which means, if Curmie might resurrect a term that was very au courant in his grad school days, that the situation is vexed. Was Trump claiming as fact statements that are at best unsubstantiated opinions? Yes. Is shutting down the free flow of misinformation and disinformation a good thing? Ah, here’s where things get dicey. Obviously, for example, when a political figure with millions of followers (in this case) suggests a remarkably stupid solution for a deadly pandemic or pretends it will all just disappear irrespective of what the epidemiologists say, that’s not a good thing for the society in general. 

But falsehoods, even intentional ones, are legally protected speech provided they don’t cross the line into libel/slander or incitement. Denying access to a public figure, even a controversial and mendacious one (and what politician isn’t at least the latter), is of questionable constitutionality and even more questionable ethics. Curmie is enough of a civil libertarian to believe that the answer to bad speech is good speech rather than suppression, for both ethical and pragmatic reasons. 

And isn’t allowing the heretical preferable to suppressing what might turn out to be true? Remember, Galileo got into big trouble for suggesting, correctly, that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe. Minority opinions, even those of an infinitesimally small number of people, sometimes turn out to have more substance than initially believed. And one person’s fundamental truth is another person’s crackpot theory. Good ideas might take a while to supplant bad ones, but they’ll get there. And in practical terms, allowing any subgroup to claim victimhood with even a modicum of legitimacy is positive for neither the culture at large nor the corporate bottom line when those folks depart en masse. 

It’s also important to remember that conservative plaints about unfairness are simultaneously legitimate and exaggerated. Curmie doubts that any dispassionate observer would conclude that Twitter or Facebook have been entirely even-handed in their monitoring of users’ commentary. I mention Facebook here although it’s not directly relevant to the current situation because the same allegations currently being leveled against Twitter were once made against Facebook (they still are, but Twitter seems to be the Flavor of the Month). Indeed, many conservatives fled Facebook for Twitter a while back. 

As noted above, Curmie has little direct contact with Twitter, but Facebook did shut down the ability of Curmie or indeed anyone else to post a link to this blog for nearly a year. Curmie doubts that was because he was too conservative for the Zuck and the gang. Unlike Donald Trump, of course, Curmie has no platform from which to challenge the banishment, or even to ascertain what, precisely, he’s alleged to have done to violate the precious “community standards.” 

It’s also true that liberal friends of Curmie have been sent to Facebook Jail for up to a month at a time for posting political comments or memes that are no more problematic than what I see on a regular basis from conservative friends. Lefties aren’t the only ones who too often claim victimhood when the root cause is general incompetence rather than bias. They do, to be sure, but they’re far from alone. 

If Elon Musk wants to show how welcoming he is to disparate views, he’s off to a bad start, as this image demonstrates. Even in the unlikely event that Musk really is sincere about being a “1st Amendment absolutist,” welcoming even criticism of himself, of course, the process of opening up wider avenues of free speech across the Twitterverse will be met with as much opposition outside the US as inside. In particular, the European Union, unencumbered by constitutional protections for free speech, will be a significant barrier. They do like their regulations and their governmental intrusions, after all. And Musk’s assertion that he simply wants to follow the law runs into problems when the laws are fundamentally different in different countries. 

But the real problem will be in keeping twin promises: free speech and the elimination of spam. The chances Musk will obtain both goals simultaneously are precisely zero, not (only) because Musk is longer on braggadocio than on ideas, but because it simply can’t be done. There are half a billion tweets worldwide every day. There’s no way to monitor that much traffic without in some way getting computers involved. But that means somebody has to program them. And those people are going to have their own versions of what is acceptable and what is not. Moreover, there are always work-arounds: Curmie, hardly a technological wizard, couldn’t link to this page, but he could suggest on the Facebook page that Curmiphiles might find new stuff at “manjushri924 dot blogspot dot com.” Blocking all that spam? Not gonna happen. 

More to the point, it’s virtually impossible to program for all possible contexts. Can you set up a program to prevent certain words? Sure, but it takes a lot of sophistication to tell if the word “breast” signals the possibility of an accompanying pornographic image, the part of the chicken used in a recipe, or the process of moving a stage curtain out of the way. Curmie’s all-time favorite example of algorithm-induced silliness was The Case of the Sexy Onions, which he wrote about last summer. 

Moreover, the lines between truth, exaggeration, and untruth are thin and permeable. And that doesn’t even count the inability of computer programs (and often their programmers) to recognize irony or even humor in general. (Curmie’s written about that, too, in a post titled “Facebook and Other Censorious Asshats.”) 

What Musk proposes to do does in fact mean that there will be (slightly) less censorship (or whatever the corporate as opposed to governmental term might be) on Twitter. Liberals are probably right to be less than enthusiastic about this prospect in purely partisan terms, but conservatives ought to be cautious, too. Curmie thought Donald Trump was a narcissist rather than an ideologue; Elon Musk takes that concept to hitherto unimagined new heights. Musk likes the power his wealth allows him to wield. He likes the sound of his own voice. He thinks he’s Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and Leonardo da Vinci rolled into one. He’s the very definition by example of loose cannon. Be careful what you wish for, GOP. 

Curmie’s initial thought was to close this essay with a quotation from the great 20th century philosopher Pete Townshend: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” There is much to recommend this sentiment. There may be a slight shift in what gets the censorial axe, but don’t expect much of a change qualitatively or quantitatively. There will still be a good deal of whimsicality and capriciousness in the decision-making, and some changes Musk proposes won’t ever get off the drawing board. 

Still, the process seems rather Orwellian. The trouble is that liberals are the end-of-the-book self-denying Winston Smith in 1984, content in the oblivion that comes from hearing only one point of view and accepting it as fact even when they have first-hand evidence of its falsity. Conservatives, on the other hand are the sheep, cattle, and horses from Animal Farm, naïvely placing absolute faith in the notion that Napoleon Musk and his porcine minions care deeply about them. Curmie would dearly love to be wrong about either of these observations. He fears he isn’t.

"Not the Path to Knowledge"

It’s been several months since Curmie wrote a blog post… or, rather, since he finished one. There have been a dozen or more false starts, but Curmie does write in what is sometimes called “long form”: seldom does a post fall short of 1000 words, and they’re often twice that. That means they generally take quite a while to write, and often don’t get finished in the couple hours available on a particular day. Then, with the passage of time, one (or both) of two things is likely to happen: either the issue passes out of currency, or someone (often, several someones) writes a piece that says what Curmie would, and at least as well. The result is that such an essay gets linked on Curmie’s Facebook page and everyone moves on. 

There have been a couple of near misses in the sense that I’ve written often fairly lengthy comments on the Ethics Alarm blog (a couple have been “Comments of the Day” in recent days), since I have yet to fully internalize the notion that my best stuff ought to go on my own page. Certainly, there have been ample opportunities of late to awake (not to be confused with becoming Woke) from my blogging slumber—the ongoing saga of Ron DeSantis vs. Every Strawman Ever Created, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, etc. I may yet return to some of these topics, but the story with which I emerge from hibernation is one I first encountered on Ethics Alarms. 

It’s also not by accident that the targets of Curmie’s… erm… Curmudgeonliness here are those who embarrass him precisely because he shares a profile with them. Curmie has been an educator by profession for over 40 years, and his politics are probably to the left of at least 80% of the American public (and 98% of his Congressional district). So when the idiocy of Woke Folk pseudo-educators brings shame to progressives and (actual) educators alike, it’s time to fall back on an over-used but not irrelevant declaration: we’re not all like that. 

Bet you didn't think this would be the 
center of an educational controversy.

So, here we go… An unnamed social studies teacher at San Francisco’s Creative Arts Charter School was discussing the significance of the invention of the cotton gin, surely one of most significant moments in the history of agriculture. To demonstrate her point, she brought in some cotton bolls, pointing out the sharpness of the edges and the difficulty of extracting the seeds. 

In other words, to show the importance of the cotton gin to the economic development of the country, especially the South, she showed students what the alternative would be. (Curmie remembers his own experience of cotton bolls when he was about 8. They’re nasty things to deal with by hand.) This might not be inspired teaching, but it is good teaching, and it ought to be applauded. Remember, the lesson was about the cotton gin. 

Ah, but you see, it was slaves who had been tasked with the job of rendering the bolls suitable for turning into fabric, slaves whose hands were injured in the process. So the lesson about the importance of a technological advance wasn’t really about that at all; it was… well, it was very, very, bad, whatever it was. 

Literally the day after that lesson the school director, Fernando Aguilar, was apologizing (!) for the “unacceptable, harmful” and “inappropriate” teaching that did not reflect the school’s “anti-racist, progressive-minded curriculum.” Oh, horseshit. Speaking as someone who considers himself both anti-racist and progressive-minded (albeit in the conventional meaning of those terms, not their Woke definition), do NOT, Idiot Administrator, link me to this foolishness. Actually, that’s not the right term. “Foolishness” implies triviality. This is an attack on the entire purpose and function of education. It’s a lot worse than merely foolish. 

Of course, the school manages to enlist testimony from professional victims grand-standing jerks parents and from the Wide World of Academe. Apparently teachers aren’t allowed to… you know… teach about slavery except as some abstract evil. No, actually it was a quite concrete, real-world, phenomenon. Providing students—black, white, or otherwise—with a tangible demonstration of one of the effects of that system strikes career educator Curmie as excellent pedagogy. 

Ah, but we might “trivialize the subject” or “traumatize the children,” according to Hasan Kwame Jeffries of Ohio State. He also fears “re-trauma.” Where the hell does that “re-“ come from? Junior high students today have never suffered from slavery, or even segregation. That prejudice still exists is undeniable. But it isn’t in the same universe as the conditions of the mid-19th century and before. And Jeffries’s objection to “any kind of simulation, any kind of re-creation” does not sit well with this theatre professor who deals with what Aristotle called “the imitation of an action” on a daily basis. 

Meanwhile, parent Rebecca Archer whines that putting raw cotton in the hands of black or mixed race students “evoke[s] so many deeply hurtful things about this country,” and offers the penetrating insight that students don’t need to have first-hand experiences with slave labor to have empathy for slaves. Sigh. 

Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim victimhood because your great-great-great-grandparent experienced slavery and simultaneously forbid anything that gives the slightest whiff of what slaves experienced. Nor is Curmie persuaded that holding a cotton boll for a few seconds is much akin to slavery per se. We either talk about slavery or we don’t. And Curmie is all in on “we do.” 

The object is not to make kids, whatever their heritage, feel bad about themselves—Curmie feels neither guilt nor shame for what happened over a century and a half ago hundreds of miles from any place his forebears lived; nor should anyone else, irrespective of their age, race, religion, or indeed any other demographic criterion. These moments in history are perhaps uncomfortable. That’s not merely OK; it’s a good thing, at least by the time a student is in junior high. Ripping off the scab of ignorance so the wounds can be disinfected is far preferable to allowing them to fester. 

One of the few voices of reason in the education establishment is Zeus Leonardo, who, in addition to having a remarkably cool name, is a professor in UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. He observes that “Being uncomfortable is part of learning, and part of the learning is in the discomfort.” Yes! 

Of course, there are those who need to be perceived as victims or they would evaporate like dew in an Arizona August morning. If they can’t complain that the real history of this country isn’t being taught, they’ll complain that it is. Naturally, the teacher in question was suspended for five weeks, and one can reasonably suspect that her subsequent apology was coerced as a condition of her reinstatement. It has all the authenticity of the fake confessions of American POWs in the Korean War. The problem here goes beyond punishing a teacher for doing nothing wrong. Her travails are the direct result of doing something right.  Humiliating good teachers for doing their jobs has become a blood sport.  This must stop.

If Curmie has learned anything in a teaching career that stretches over six decades, it’s two things: 1). Someone will always claim to be better at my job than I am…until they have to actually do it. 2). The real division in educational philosophy isn’t between liberals and conservatives, although it often appears that way. It’s between those who seek the truth and those who, thinking they’ve found it, attempt to impose their ideology on others. Curmie has known any number of excellent teachers from across the entire political spectrum; they’re from the former category. And there are plenty of doctrinaire bullies across the full range of political persuasion, too. Guess which category they’re from. 

The struttings of conservative yahoos who, for example, believe that romantic relationships between men and women can be “innocent” (a.k.a. asexual), but any same-sex couple is not only inherently founded on sexuality, but overtly about the act itself rather than the relationship: these people drive me crazy. But I’m most ashamed of those who have strayed so far from the the etymology of the term “liberal” (Latin for “free” or “unfettered”) that the description is precisely as apt as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” I just want to slap them all. (Note: snowflakes of all varieties being what they are, I hasten to add that I want to slap them, but have no intention of doing so. Don’t want to get sued or prosecuted…) 

Closing thought: Curmie and Beloved Spouse have been watching the old “Cosmos” series from 1980. Big quote from tonight’s episode: “The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or politics, but it is not the path to knowledge.” Yeah, what Carl Sagan said.

Scattered Musings about Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory is rampant in American elementary and secondary schools, according to the Right.  Or non-existent, according to the Left.  Or, according to others on the Left, necessary.  What’s key here is that no one this side of Humpty Dumpty can agree what the term means.  Are there some zealots who would think reparations ought to be paid to anyone with a sufficiently high melanin count?  Yes.  Are there similarly some people who think it “un-American” to mention the name of Sally Hemings?  Yes.  Do either of these things fall under the heading of CRT?  Uh… maybe?

Curmie takes what he’s going to call the “Competitive Diving” approach to many such matters.  That is, an athlete’s score in a diving competition is determined not by the average of all judges’ opinions (and also by degree of difficulty, but that’s irrelevant to this argument), but by that average after the high and low scores are discarded.  Maybe we should ignore the foam-flecked ideologues on both sides, in other words.

Curmie, in some ways, represents the quintessence of privilege: white, male (and born that way), heterosexual, Ivy-league educated, at least culturally Christian.  His grandparents weren’t rich, by any means: one grandfather owned a rocky New England hillside farm of about 100 acres; the other managed a neighborhood grocery store.  But Curmie grew up in a decidedly middle-class environment.  Nor has he ever been truly poor: falling further into debt because there isn’t enough in the bank account to cover the entirety of the credit card bill is different than having to choose between eating and buying needed medicine.

Curmie’s personality features an independent, libertarian streak; his personal Facebook page announces his politics as “contrarian.”  This isn’t (merely) being cute.  Rather, the more he sees of any ideology, the more the faults in that approach are highlighted.  He’s never been ultra-conservative, but he was certainly more likely to vote for Republicans when he lived in the town with the biggest Democratic caucus in the state of Iowa than he’s been more recently.  Indeed, he’s probably never been more liberal than he is now, in a time and place in which an idiot like Louie Gohmert can get re-elected without even any real opposition. 

Curmie’s politics are, of course, (currently, at least) well to the left of the national center.  He voted for Democrats against Donald Trump in the last two Presidential elections, and indeed hasn’t voted for a Republican for any Congressional or gubernatorial position since moving to Texas over two decades ago.  (Kay Bailey Hutchison would have been a real possibility, but she was defeated in the primary by the odious Ted Cruz; John Cornyn, who is probably no worse than most other party hacks on either side of the aisle, actually had a reasonable opponent last time out.  Curmie would vote for Voldemort over Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, or Louie Gohmert.)

Having now entered semi-retirement, Curmie is no longer accepting new advisees, but is keeping the four holdovers who chose to keep him as their advisor.  Three of the four are non-binary.  Coincidence?  Probably.  But there’s no question that he’ll advocate for both their general and specific interests, as he has done for years for black and Latinx students.  Still, he recognizes that terms like “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” are not redundant, and that sometimes, for example, equity and diversity are in fact at odds.  In such cases, Curmie will always choose the former; a lot of university administrators will choose the latter, primarily because at the moment it’s the path of least resistance (they’re intellectual cowards, and having actual principles is hard!).

Contemplations of gender, sexual orientation, and especially race are therefore far more complex and nuanced than the True Believers on either side would have us believe.  So whereas Curmie feels no personal guilt nor any need to make amends with respect to what happened over a century and a half ago, hundreds of miles away from any of his forebears, acknowledging not merely that life isn’t fair, but that it’s often been more unfair to some groups of people than to others seems appropriate.

Curmie’s netpal Jack Marshall wondered this morning, “How many supposedly educated American[s] know about the significance of this date?”.  Well, that depends on how you frame the question.  If it’s about the date per se, Curmie would have struck out without getting the bat off his shoulder.  But mention that it’s the anniversary of Kristallnacht, and I’ll do a lot better.  Curmie learned about this horrific event in a world history class in high school—a class taught (perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not) by a US Army WWII veteran with a German surname.

What Curmie didn’t learn about in high school were the massacres at Wounded Knee in 1890 or Tulsa in 1921, or the fact that the original GI bill was structured to deny benefits to black veterans, or the wartime internment of US citizens who happened to be of Japanese descent.  Intentionally or otherwise, what we learned in history classes was filtered, sanitized and viewed through a very Caucasian lens.  Of course, Curmie’s hometown was overwhelming white and overwhelmingly Christian, so these omissions and commissions were both more and less insidious than would have been the case in a more integrated environment.

Noticing the “other” in an increasingly more heterogeneous society is, of course, imperative.  But what do we do with those now-foregrounded recognitions of subjectivity, which are at the core of CRT?  Treating someone differently because they’re different from you may be an admirable exercise in empathy… or it may be a toxic cocktail of virtue signaling and condescension: “we can’t expect that person to compete on a level playing field; after all, they’re [insert demographic marker here].”  This latter example is one of tolerance, the evil cousin of inclusion: “you are inferior to me because of objective factor X, but I will treat you well, ostensibly at least, because I wish to be regarded as a good person… all the while comfortable in my presumed superiority.”

Finally, of course, it’s important to differentiate between equal opportunity and equal outcomes.  Professional sports are in some ways the ultimate meritocracy: teams want to win.  (Perhaps the Colin Kaepernick case is the exception that proves the rule.)  But it would take a real fan to name even two or three American-born white players currently in the NBA.  The flip side is true in swimming, despite the presence of the likes of Cullen Jones and Simone Manuel.  Socio-economic factors and availability of training facilities and venues account for some of the discrepancy… but all of it?  Curmie can’t muster more than a “maybe” on that one.

Untangling all these strands is rather like trying to get the mats out of a long-haired pet: maybe it will work, but there are times we have to clip the tangle out rather than hoping to unravel it.  A little good will towards our fellow travelers, who are as confused and fallible as ourselves would go a long way.