The company you keep

During my 37 years on the faculty (I’m emeritus now) of Saint Louis University, I never expected to find my university included on a list of elite and Ivy League research universities. And yet, here we are:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is cutting academic ties between the Pentagon and 13 leading universities in a performative campaign against “wokeness” and alleged anti-Americanism. The disfavored schools, according to a Feb. 27 memo from Hegseth’s office, currently educating are:

 

  • Harvard University
  • Saint Louis University
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Tufts University
  • Georgetown University
  • Carnegie Mellon University
  • Brown University
  • Columbia University
  • Yale University
  • Middlebury College
  • Princeton University
  • The George Washington University
  • College of William and Mary

 

Kinda makes me proud.

On the other hand, among the “favored” universities are my alma maters University of Tennessee and University ot North Carolina, a distinction they share with academic powerhouses like Liberty University, Pepperdine University, Baylor University, Regent University and Hillsdale College. That’s embarrassing. 

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/a-mad-king-who-enjoys-watching-things-go-boom

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yes, the CDC can change its mind

The Nobel Laureate economist Paul Samuelson famously acknowledged in a Meet the Press interview: “Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” This observation applies to the advice from medical authorities such as the CDC and WHO during the COVID pandemic. Some members of the public are fond of pillorying these agencies for having published different guidelines at different times, as though health officials are in the business of issuing ex cathedra dogma rather than responding to incomplete and ambiguous information. Science doesn’t deal in proof, it deals with the weight of evidence. A scientific hypothesis is one that is capable of being tested and falsified by experiment. I get it. I used to teach problem-based learning to first year medical students, and they often struggled with what to do with incomplete and ambiguous information, which is what physicians in clinics do every day. Sometimes, one cannot wait for all the tests to be completed and all the data analyz...
Read more

About that Trump lawsuit

So Trump is suing Rupert Murdoch for defamation because of the release of a salacious doodle. Nothing remarkable about Donald J. Trump weaponizing the legal system against his opponents, I know. But there are some things that do bear remark here: “ . . . he's suing Rupert Murdoch personally. But you know who he's not suing? Lachlan Murdoch, who's actually the chairperson of News Corp and Fox, who's actually the decision-maker. Rupert Murdoch has no official role there anymore. He's an adviser.   “So, I thought that was revealing in a lot of ways, because it isn't just about going after the entity. It's sort of this expansion spillover, trying to send as much of a message as you possibly can. He's sort of hitting every potential lever, not just against Murdoch and that empire, but then all the other media properties in the future. It's also about sending an example.” “HAYES: Yeah. That, to me, is the point here, is that these lawsuits are not lawsuits...
Read more

I agree with RFK Jr.

Though it feels weird to say it, RFK Jr and I agree on something: curtailing direct-to-consumer marketing of pharmaceuticals. “ The Trump administration is discussing policies that would make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to patients, in a move that could disrupt more than $10 billion in annual ad spending.   Although the US is the only place, besides New Zealand, where pharma companies can directly advertise, banning pharma ads outright could make the administration vulnerable to lawsuits, so it’s instead focusing on cutting down on the practice by adding legal and financial hurdles, according to people familiar with the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.   “The two policies the administration has focused in on would be to require greater disclosures of side effects of a drug within each ad — likely making broadcast ads much longer and prohibitively expensive — or removing the industry’s ability to d...
Read more