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The Fight Over Schedule F
Before former President Trump left office, he issued an executive order to reclassify nearly 70% of federal civil service bureaucrats into a new job category dubbed “Schedule F.” Schedule F employees would lose many of the civil service protections. President Biden rescinded the executive order, but a major promise of the former President’s campaign is that he would reclassify and fire large numbers of the civil service and replace them with loyalists.All Categories
The Sanctimonious Hypocrites
Roger BerkowitzI wrote about the free-speech case against Princeton Professor Joshua Katz two weeks ago. Now Katz has been fired from his tenure-track position not for his criticisms of colleagues, but for not cooperating with an investigation into a consensual relationship he had with a student nearly two decades ago. Katz’s wife Solveig Lucia Gold writes about her husband and how she has lost all faith in Princeton and Universities.
Russian Fascism
Roger BerkowitzTimothy Snyder explains how Russia is a fascist state today and why that matters.
The Fountain of Eternal Youth
Roger BerkowitzWilliam Deresiewicz argues that the “young progressive elite” has traded independence and critical thinking for an immaturity that submits to authorities. The result, he argues, is a stunted development for many of the best and brightest young people in the country.
Jerry Kohn, Doctor of Humane Letters
Roger BerkowitzI was fortunate enough to be gifted the opportunity to award Jerry Kohn an honorary degree in Humane Letters yesterday at the 2022 Bard College Commencement. There is no one more deserving of a degree in humanity and letters than is Jerry and it was a special day. Here is the commendation I wrote.
The Ukrainian Twitter Wars in Africa
Roger BerkowitzThere is a certain overconfidence in the circles I frequent that the world is against Russia and for Ukraine and Nato. But more than half the world is tacitly or explicitly supporting Russia in its war with Ukraine. The Economist looks at the Russian propaganda campaign aimed at non-western countries in Africa and Asia.
Making Distinctions in Thinking About Racism
Roger BerkowitzHannah Arendt is a thinker who insists that we make distinctions. One of Arendt’s most controversial distinctions is that between racism and what she alternatively will call “race thinking” in The Origins of Totalitarianism, and then "prejudice" in many of her later essays. In the wake of the shooting in Buffalo last week, John McWhorter made his own distinctions while trying to understand the place of racism in U.S. society. McWhorter argues that we use the word racism today to mean too many things. He states that we need to distinguish between different aspects of what we call racism in order to think more clearly about the problems and prevent such tragedies as the shooting in Buffalo.
Academic Freedom vs. Free Speech
Roger BerkowitzWendy Brown is interviewed by David Marchese about the politics of speech codes, wokeness, and academic freedom on college campuses.
Airfare vs. Warfare
Roger BerkowitzAs the world comes to the realization that old-fashioned ground warfare may be in our present and our future, the New York Times’ Azmat Khan has written a deeply researched account of the U.S. air war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Faculty Against the Administrators
Roger BerkowitzThere is no dictatorship in the United States threatening university administrators and faculty with prison for violating national security laws. And yet Sergiu Klainerman argues that too many administrators are acting as if there were. According to Klainerman, even those administrators who profess to support freedom of expression and academic freedom are so cowed by DEI administrators that they refuse to publicly stand up for the academic freedom of their professors.