"A Six-Figure Settlement on Campus Free Speech."

"On Thursday, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reached a settlement with Steven Salaita, a professor who had a job offer revoked by the school after he tweeted incendiary statements about Israel during the country’s war with Hamas in Gaza last summer."

"The story of Trumbo is a reminder that efforts to control screen content had existed in the past and there's always the chance..."

"... that in some case the political winds will shift and some of those ideas will become popular again in the future," says Jeff Smith, a University of Wisconsin film professor, expressing great pride in The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, a huge archive which includes — among much else (as you'll see in this short video) — materials relating to Dalton Trumpo Trumbo and Hollywood's era of "blacklisting":



As you may have noticed, there's a new movie, "Trumbo," starring Bryan Cranston.

ADDED: The commenters enjoyed my "Trumpo" for "Trumbo" typo, above, which I've preserved with a strike-through. Meaning was striven for: "Maybe AA typo'd 'Trumpo' because she sees Donald Trump as a maligned avatar of truth that the establishment is trying to suppress."

"Whiteness studies" — college courses with titles like "The Problem of Whiteness."

"At some universities, there are classes dedicated to understanding the notions of whiteness, white supremacy and what the field’s proponents see as the quiet racism of white people," writes Yanan Wang in The Washington Post.

The syllabus [for the Arizona State University course called "The Problem of Whiteness"] described “Critical Whiteness Studies” as a field “concerned with dismantling white supremacy in part by understanding how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced.”....

“White supremacy makes it so that white people can’t see the world they have created,” [the professor Lee] Bebout told The Washington Post. It’s a culture so pervasive that living in it, subscribing to it and upholding it feel as natural to most Americans as breathing air....

Bebout, who is white, said he was promptly attacked for promoting discrimination against white people. Fliers appeared around his neighborhood which featured a photo of him and the declaration that he was “anti-white.”...

The word problem (in the course title) seems intended to provoke, but the actual course may very well have intellectual heft worthy of college-level study. But if universities are dedicated to creating a welcoming climate and overcoming racial strife, they might want to use less antagonistic sounding titles. If, on the other hand, universities want vibrant speech on campus and expect students to handle racial provocation, "The Problem of Whiteness" is no problem at all.

[Bebout] said the class is not a critique of white individuals, per se, but rather whiteness as a form of institutional racism, where the experiences of people of color are rarely validated. In Bebout’s words, this centers around the conviction that “my experience as a white male should be the experience of everybody else, and there is something dysfunctional about them if they don’t see the world in the way that I do.”

Don't let the "my" confuse you. He doesn't mean himself. He's talking about the subjectivity of others.

It can be challenging to teach the shift in perspective that this theory requires.

That's a red flag: There's a required perspective. [OR: Is there?]

While anti-racist in its intent, whiteness studies can often yield counterproductive outcomes.

“We all think of ourselves as decent people,” [said Terrance MacMullan, a philosophy of race professor at Eastern Washington University], “so it’s very disconcerting to see yourself as someone who benefits from systemic racism.... One problem inherent in whiteness studies is that it might become a white pity party.... Instead of talking about how whiteness is problematic, it becomes about the problems of white people.”

That's making it sound as though it's built into the course that you must think a particular way, and you're doing it wrong if you disagree. The professor is strongly dedicated to controlling what the students make of the material they are presented with. It's inherent in the nature of the course that the professor would have to feel that way. It's the problem of The Problem of Whiteness.

ADDED: A "Problem of Whiteness"-type course will have some special problems, I would think, if the university has a race and ethnic studies requirement for college students. I don't think the Arizona State University has such a requirement, but there is a requirement for undergraduates at my university.

"Students form a perimeter around the #ConcernedStudent1950 tent village and ask media to leave."

"This is what civic-level censorship looks like at a university with the largest and oldest public college for journalism."



ADDED: The protesting students are making many rudimentary PR mistakes here and could use some training in basic protest technique. They end up looking repressive and brutish, right in front of a camera, and they keep cranking up the intimidation. The photographer knows he's getting video that he'll be able to put up on the internet, and he's using a very effective technique of remaining calm and standing his ground in the face of what looks like scary intimidation. I have walked with a camera into big, passionate protests here in Wisconsin, and — with a few exceptions — the protesters were much better prepared to resist making the photographer seem like a sympathetic victim.

As for the First Amendment: The students and the photographers have free speech rights against the government, but not against each other. At 1:43, the photographer calmly cites the First Amendment, which, he says, gives all of them all "right to be here," in the public space, which is true. One of the black female protesters says "We do have our space as human beings," to which the photographer responds, emphasizing each word: "There's not a law about that." The woman then makes what I think is the most interesting statement in the video: "Forget a law. How about humanity? Respect?" He says, "How about documenting this for posterity?"

That's right where a good conversation could have begun. The law is not the beginning and end of how people treat each other. There is etiquette and there is respect. There is even love. As human beings, we want all of that. Please respect our space is an understandable request that a person should evaluate in ways that go beyond legal rights. The photographer did engage on that level when he offered a counter-value, documentation for posterity.

Unfortunately, that one-to-one conversation ended when another woman barged in and started yelling, precluding the development of the issues about photographing people who don't want to be photographed, and the crowd —which probably didn't notice the touching moment when Respect and Documentation stood face to face —  got going with the old "Hey hey ho ho" chant format: "Hey hey ho ho/Reporters have got to go."

Commenting dispairingly and disparagingly...

... on the students at the University of Missouri Law School.

"What they are saying is that because I don’t think surgery will turn a man into a woman I should not be allowed to speak anywhere."

Said Germaine Greer.

Addressing claims that she had been hurtful towards transgender women, Greer added: “People are being hurtful to me all the time. Try being an old woman. For goodness sake, people get hurt all the time. I’m not about to walk on eggshells.”...

Asked about the petition [to stop her from speaking at Cardiff University, she said]: “I don’t really know what I think of it. It strikes me as a bit of a put-up job really because I am not even going to talk about the issue that they are on about."

The link goes to The Guardian, where the article is illustrated by a photo of Greer, in fully wrinkled old-lady form, next to a photo of Caitlyn Jenner that's been photoshopped beyond recognition to the point of looking like a 30-year-old. 

More here: "I don’t expect people to agree with me. On the other hand, I don’t expect them to throw things at me.... I just don’t think that surgery turns a man into a woman. A perfectly permissable view. I mean, an un-man is not necessarily a woman. We don’t really know what women are and I think that a lot of women are female impersonators, because our notion of who we are is not authentic, and so I am not surprised men are better at impersonating women than women are. Not a surprise, but it’s not something I welcome."

I'm especially interested in the propositions: 1. "We don’t really know what women are," and 2. "a lot of women are female impersonators." And, by the way, once you have this level of skepticism, the opinion about transgender people becomes almost meaningless. Greer doesn't seem ready to concede even that women are women.

AND: Elsewhere in The Guardian today, there's "From Twiggy to Germaine Greer: eight classic images of powerful women/The Design Museum’s new exhibition, Women Fashion Power, about the way influential women wear clothes opens on Wednesday. Here, from Twiggy in a trouser suit to the high-shine shoulderpads of Dynasty, eight women write about the most eye-catching looks in the show." The photo of Greer shows her at the age of about 36. The text is fully celebratory:
Click for more »

Elaborate NYT graphic makes me think something quite different from what they want me to think.

"Here are 120 million Monopoly pieces, roughly one for every household in the United States," says the text, and we see a large pile of green Monopoly "houses" (blocking the view of the White House), and when we try to scroll down, the screen zooms in, and we see a few red Monopoly "hotels" on the top of the pile. The text changes to: "Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House."

This is a great graphic. Loved it. But it got me thinking, and I read this:

They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters... Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago.

Now, first of all, we're talking about spending money on speech, that's what Citizens United "legalized." I'm putting "legalized," in quotes, because what the Supreme Court did in Citizens United was to perceive the existence of a constitutional right, a right to spend money on speech. These are not contributions to the presidential campaigns, but companies [in Citizens United and families and their companies in the NYT study] spending their own money to get their opinions out into the marketplace of ideas, just as The New York Times corporation spends its money to get its ideas out, including its idea that there's something spurious about corporations engaging in political speech.

And, second, if we're talking about families — 158 families — how are they "overwhelmingly... male"? Are there a lot of gay men spending this money or just heterosexual couples who somehow produce far more sons than daughters? Or is it that the NYT is operating within the old stereotype that sees a family with a man in it as headed by the man?

That said, what I really want to talk about is that pile of Monopoly houses, far, far outnumbering the hotels. There are 120 million households, and 158 spend half of what is  spent, and amount that's only $176 million. If all of the households gave just $5, that would be $600 million, vastly overwhelming those supposedly fearsome, overspending, rich, white men. That money could be given directly to that candidate (since it comes, obviously, nowhere near the limit).

Instead of complaining about 158 families spending $176 million (which strikes me as a fairly paltry amount, especially since only $2,700 can be given to a candidate), the clamor should be about the need for everyone to give just a little money to someone. Skip one cup of coffee, one cheeseburger, one movie, and give the money to the candidate you like best. It could be so easy.

And yet bitching about those terrible rich people — those terrible male white people — serves other political interests... interests that the rich white males who own The New York Times have a constitutional right to push with all the powerful rhetoric and lovely graphics they can muster.

ADDED: Why did the NYT draw the line at 158 families? Why not analyze the top 150 families or the top 200? I can't help feeling that the Times drew the line where it would make the other facts seem most dramatic. We're told they contributed "nearly half of the early money." Why not draw the line at exactly half? If we included the next 10% or 20% or 30% of the early money, how many families would we see and how different would the conclusions have to be?

UPDATE: Power Line links to this post and says:

The rich people who own the New York Times, and the reporters and editors who work for them, are very clear about their own First Amendment right to devote corporate assets to weighing in on the issues of the day, but they are eager to deprive everyone else of the same right, especially those who don’t agree with their far-left perspective....

What the New York Times really objects to is diversity. The only way to get free speech nowadays–diverse free speech, anyway–is to pay for it. Thank God there are a handful of people with the means and the will to do so.

And Jaltcoh, at Facebook, quotes my statement — "if we're talking about families — 158 families — how are they 'overwhelmingly... male'?" — and somebody suggests: "Single-person households that only contain men?" That makes me say:

If that's what it is, then I object to the use of the word "families." Has the NYT picked up the sentimentality of politicians, who continually talk about "families," as if single people didn't exist? The word "households" appears in the article, and I think anyone talking about demographics needs to notice the difference between "families" and "households" and be more careful.

"Why do so many people think he’s good? Have you looked at his paintings?"

"In real life, trees are beautiful. If you take Renoir’s word for it, you’d think trees are just a collection of green squiggles."

Renoir is considered a good painter because his work is featured in museums, [Max] Geller added. But upon further inspections of his paintings, that line of argument “seems pretty fallacious”....

The Renoir Sucks at Painting... Instagram account... has even received the wrath of Genevieve Renoir, who says she is the painter’s great-great-granddaughter.

On one photo, Genevieve commented: “When your great-great-grandfather paints anything worth $78.1m dollars … then you can criticize. In the meantime, it is safe to say that the free market has spoken and Renoir did not suck at painting.”

Geller, who turned her comment into its own post on the account, said: “I think that is one of the most absurd and insane arguments for anything, the idea that we should let the free market dictate quality.”

Ms. Renoir's argument — staunchly opposed by Geller — bears an intriguing similarity the old free-speech argument that Oliver Wendell Holmes made back in 1919: "[T]he best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market."

Would you call that — using Geller's words — "most absurd and insane argument for anything, the idea that we should let the free market dictate quality."
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A "loophole" that lets candidates — like Carly Fiorina — get away with "coordinating" with Super Pacs.

The NYT seems to be sounding an alert over something completely bland and banal:

The Federal Election Commission forbids direct coordination between campaigns and super PACs, lest candidates effectively rely almost entirely on the huge, unlimited donations of a small number of billionaires. But in 2016, the groups are aggressively exploiting gray areas and loopholes in the rules, few of which the commission – deadlocked with its three Republican and three Democratic members – has hastened to close.

Oh, those terrible deadlocks. Now, what is this loophole that the Commission is allowing to exist?

Candidates and super PACs are free to coordinate their plans if the information is shared in public view.... posting video on YouTube, and... signal[ing] a preference for positive advertising [on] Twitter...

Mrs. Fiorina and other candidates... have taken it a step further: making available advance travel schedules.... Under the rules, Mrs. Fiorina’s super PAC... could not even call her campaign staff members to see where and when she is headed next. But Mrs. Fiorina has cleverly sidestepped that prohibition: Her campaign has created a public Google calendar, which it updates weeks into the future, showing the events she has planned.

Putting video on YouTube, tweeting about the kind of message you want to get out, and having an on-line calendar of upcoming events... that counts as "clever"? I guess "cleverly" bolsters the characterization of the permissibility of this speech as a "loophole" in the campaign finance law. But it's simple, obvious free speech from the candidate. I don't see how the Commission could change this or why we should feel that it should change.

The Times has a quote from campaign finance lawyer: “Essentially, it inoculates a case of coordination by making it public.” Like there's a real disease here. Inoculates.