Category: Academia

Swarthmore Trigger Warnings Protect Precious Pumpkins

Swarthmore Trigger Warnings Protect Precious PumpkinsStephanie Schuster of The Phoenix tells us that “trigger warnings” are common at Swarthmore College.

The Phoenix is the college’s campus newspaper. “Trigger warnings” inform students that course material has the potential to evoke physiological or emotional response to a past trauma.

“Trigger warning” advocates claim they are not censorship as they do not seek to ban content. An unspoken understanding, however, that one will get grief if one broaches certain subjects or expresses certain opinions is most certainly censorship. Trigger warnings obviously create such an unspoken understanding.

Further, they are infantile. One has to understand that the vast majority of college students are legal adults who can vote.

It used to be that some censorship was considered necessary for pop culture things — movies, music, the Comics Code Authority etc. — that would be seen by children and not-so-deep thinkers whereas in higher education the restrictions would be off as those getting such an education would need to be able to face the ugly stuff as they would be our leaders.

My how things have changed.

It is especially ironic that inspiration for “trigger warnings” comes from so-called “feminists”. Remember when women would get mad if someone told them they needed to be protected from the ugly things of life? LOL.

If someone is that unable to deal with  traumatic experiences that person is far better off in therapy than in an intellectual free-for-all where open discourse and the free flow of ideas are what should not just be expected but demanded.

It’s not concern for trauma but the need for drama that pushes trigger warnings.

To its credit, the American Association of University Professors has come out against trigger warnings. Maybe there is hope.

Hat tip Bob Small.

Swarthmore Trigger Warnings Protect Precious Pumpkins

French Academics Like Tea Party

Marion Douzou, a French PhD candidate who is researching the history of the Tea Party in Pennsylvania, will the speaker at tomorrow night’s (April 10) meeting of the Valley Forge Patriots. It starts 6:30 at P J Ryan’s Pub, 233 Bridge St., Phoenixville, Pa. 19460.French Academics Like Tea Party

Say what you want, French academics like the Tea Party. Here is Agnes Trouilet (third for left) marching with the Delaware County Patriot contingent in Springfield Township’s 2014 Independence Day Parade. Agnes was writing a thesis on the Tea Party movement for the University of Paris.

French Academics Like American Tea Party

Hunting Ground Concerns College Rape

The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) will partner with Oscar-nominated filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering and their film “The Hunting Ground” to increase awareness around preventing sexual violence on college campuses, according to Adam Kulikowski of the Center. The collaboration coincides with the start of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, a national prevention campaign facilitated annually by NSVRC. Hunting Ground Concerns College Rape

To kick off their partnership, NSVRC and “The Hunting Ground” — along with co-sponsors Women Organized Against Rape and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape — will host a panel discussion after a  showing of the film at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 3, at the Landmark Ritz Five Theatre, 214 Walnut St., Philadelphia. The panel discussion will feature the film’s producer, Ms.  Ziering, and state and local experts.

“The Hunting Ground,” which concerns sexual assault on U.S. campuses, has received more than two thousand requests from colleges and universities to host screenings of the film.

“‘The Hunting Ground’ is a powerful documentary that underscores the widespread problem of campus sexual assault,” NSVRC Director Karen Baker said.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month is observed every April. Free resources for parents, students, health care professionals, and members of the campus community are available at nsvrc.org.

Hunting Ground Concerns College Rape

Penn State Invites Terrorist Ayers

Bill Ayers Penn State Invites Terrorist Ayers
Obama ally and mentor Bill Ayers showing his love for America. On Sept. 11, 2001. Really.

An unrepentant  terrorist is scheduled to be a paid panelist  tomorrow, March 20, at at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law.

The terrorist is Bill Ayers who bombed the New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. .

State Sen. Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati (R-25) has written a letter objecting to Ayers appearance.

“The decision to allow Mr. Ayers to address your students and faculty in light of his violent past is difficult for me to reconcile,” Scarnati said.

It doesn’t matter Joe. It looks like Ayers is going to appear anyway.

Osama Bin Laden was unavailable.

We will note that bin Laden appears to have treated his women better.

Penn State Invites Terrorist Ayers

 

Carlisle Moody: Handguns Stop Murders

In the days of old when knights were bold murder was pretty common.  In 13th century Europe, the rate was 22.68 per 100,000 rising to 40.79 per 100,000 by the 15th century. Carlisle Moody: Handguns Stop Murders

It was as though every place in Europe was Chester, Pa. Well, maybe not that bad. Figure Detroit or New Orleans.

But then something happened. In the 16th century the rate tumbled back to 20.28 per 100,000.

Carlisle Moody of the College of William & Mary says that the year the trend changed was 1505 and what happened was the handgun, namely the wheel lock pistol which by that year had become common enough to make a social impact.

The pistol put the little guy (and gal) on a equal footing with the big, strong, armor-plated club/knife/ax wielding thug.

Moody says the likely inventor of this device was Leonardo Da Vinci  which would make Leonardo the father of the handgun. Thank you Leonardo.

For what it’s worth, the authoritarian types didn’t like them from the beginning. The first gun control law happened  in 1517 when Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I declared “Inasmuch as certain persons in our territories of Lower Austria are in the habit of carrying self-striking hand-guns that ignite themselves which we are on no account prepared to allow . . .our nobles, stewards, administrators, chief justices, mayors and judges should under no circumstances permit such guns to be carried.”

Still handguns didn’t disappear and the trend continued. In the 17th century  the murder rate dropped big to 7.84 per 100,000. Moody says the big year was 1621 when the flintlock — which became the standard firearm for the next two centuries  — entered general use.

Moody notes the cost of firearms was rarely prohibitive for the masses. In 1699, a pair of pistols cost 5 shillings or about $41 in today’s dollars.

The European murder rate continued to fall reaching 1.18 per 100,000 by the 20th century. In Britain, by 1920 it had fallen to .84 per 100,000. That was the year The Firearms Act was passed essentially ending the English right to bear arms. Since then the British murder rate has risen to 1.44 (as of 1999) and the assault rate has exploded from 2.39 per 100,000 to 419.29.

Some other tidbits: Moody says London had a homicide rate of .26 per 100,000 in the 1820s before the first world’s first police force was created in 1829. It now has a rate of 2.28 per 100,000.

Carlisle Moody notes that three out of every four murder victims before 1850 would have survived with today’s medicine. He says, however, even dividing by four would not affect the pattern regarding the previous century murder rates.

Moody’s paper can be found here. The math is there to back up his claims to other academics and doesn’t have to be followed to get his point.

Hat tip James Delingpole of Breitbart.com.

Carlisle Moody: Handguns Stop Murders
Carlisle Moody is a member of the Economics Department at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

Carlisle Moody’s paper is titled Firearms and the Decline of Violence in Europe: 1200-2010.

 

 

High GPA Now Liability

It appears a high grade point average from a top school is now a liability.

At least at Google. The web goliath has spent years analyzing who succeeds at the company and have learned it isn’t the know-it-all with the pedigree, reports QZ.com

Apparently those with high grades lack the integral “intellectual humility”.

In other words, they take credit for when something good happens and blame all but themselves when something otherwise happens.

Further many schools don’t deliver on what they promise. A whole lot of money seems to be going to waste.

Google is now looking for people with learning ability — which means be able to process on the fly and pull together disparate bits of information — and the skill to argue passionately for a point yet be able to concede that someone else has a better idea.

It is turning out that often  the most exceptional people are those without college, says QZ.

High GPA Now Liability

High GPA Now Liability

 

Cheyney U Financial Collapse

Cheyney University, the nation’s oldest black college, is on the verge of financial collapse reports Reuters.

It’s rather remarkable since it’s owned by the State of Pennsylvania and is heavily subsidized by the taxpayer.

Reuters reports that its student body is now about 1,000 –down two-thirds from its 1983 peak — and its four-year graduation rate is just 9 percent.

The school’s fiscal problems are laid upon the feet of the students unable to repay debt and increasing pension costs.

The school was founded in 1837. Reuters describes Cheyney as “located in the Philadelphia suburb of the same name”. Good luck in finding such a suburb. The school’s 275-acre campus spills across Thornbury Township, Delaware County and Thornbury Township, Chester County.

Cheyney U Financial Collapse

Cheyney U Financial Collapse

 

 

Obamacare Deceiver Got Rich Off Obamacare

Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who has boasted about how he deceived the “stupid” American people to get Obamacare passed, has been paid  $5.2 million by the federal government and 12 state governments for consulting services to assist in the design and implementation of the “Affordable” Care Act, reports Breitbart.com.

Gruber  certainly  did deceive a lot of people who put their trust in traditional media authorities. These weren’t the conservatives though, and most of those he did successful deceive are of the “fooled me once shame on you,” types which bodes ill not just for the future of the old media establishment but for the Democrat Party itself.

Obamacare Deceiver Got Rich Off Obamacare

Obamacare Deceiver Got Rich Off Obamacare

Jews Attacked On US Campuses

Noted pollster Frank Luntz has produced a video describing an horrific outbreak of antisemitism on US college campuses. It has  involved physical assaults and at least one hospitalization.

The perps are the usual suspects namely progressives seeking turmoil to give meaning to pathetic lives, and Muslims.

American Jews, please wake up. The people who claim to guided by tolerance are anything but. They are liars. Stop believing them.

Here is the video

 

 

Hat tip Donna Ellingsen

 

Jews Attacked On US Campuses

Jews Attacked On US Campuses as described by pollster and researcher Frank Luntz

Goddard Hipsters Tap Capital Punisher As Commencement Speaker

Danny and Maureen Faulkner Goddard Hipsters Tap Capital Punisher As Commencement Speaker

Danny and Maureen Faulkner at their wedding in 1979

The hipster undergrads at the Vermont campus of Goddard College have tapped murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal to be a “commencement” speaker this Sunday, Oct. 5, showing they are just fine with capital punishment providing the subject of such is one whose existence violates their sense of aesthetics.

Danny Faulkner, the Philadelphia policeman who Jamal murdered on Dec. 9, 1981 solely because he was a Philadelphia policeman doing his job, is one such whose life the hipsters hold cheap.

Jamal, of course, will not be able to appear in person so he will subject the hipster undergrads to his hipster, progressive, transgressive wisdom via a recording which we suspect will justly bore them silly.

May it last at least two hours.

Goddard is a private liberal arts college with campuses in Plainfield, Vt, Port Townsend, Wa. and Seattle, Wa.  that is designed to be an experimental and non-traditional educational institution.

It holds 20 commencement ceremonies annually to provide personalized graduation ceremonies in each degree program, according Interim President Bob Kenny.

The choice of the murderer Jamal was made by the students but is strongly supported by the administration showing that the school’s support for selective capital punishment goes all the way to the top.

“Choosing Mumia as their commencement speaker, to me, shows how this newest group of Goddard graduates expresses their freedom to engage and think radically and critically in a world that often sets up barriers to do just that,” Kenny said.

Daniel J. Faulkner was murdered two weeks before his 26th birthday. He was the youngest of seven children in an Irish Catholic family from Southwest Philadelphia.  His father, who drove a trolley car, died of a heart attack when Faulkner was five. Faulkner’s mother went to work and relied on her older children to help raise him. Faulkner dropped out of high school, but earned his diploma and an associate’s degree in criminal justice while serving in the United States Army.

After leaving the army In 1975, he  worked briefly as a corrections officer, and then joined the Philadelphia Police Department. Aspiring to be a city prosecutor, Faulkner enrolled in college to earn his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

He married in 1979.

His wife, Maureen, has been an outspoken defender of the truth about what happened that night and the guilt of Jamal and the cruelty of his act.

May Goddard and the soulless bastards who support it rot.

Goddard Hipsters Tap Capital Punisher As Commencement Speaker