Ben Sasse

[mamselle]

Ummm...Sasse isn't going to FL to run vs. DeSantis.

M.

I thought Kay was asking if Crist had a chance to win. If he did DeSantis wouldn't be a bother to Sasse.

Ah, got it. Apologies for misreading.

M.

[mahagonny]

BTW, AA practices like Harvard discriminating against Asians in admissions would also qualify as a reason to say that racism remains a problem.

Sure.
Lots of things a person might be thinking about when asked a question like that. For example crime interracial crime among black-white being 80% black perp-white victim. Why would that be?

Someone, maybe it was Robin D'Angelo, came along and tried to redefine racism as solely 'what white Americans did to black Americans.' But maybe not everyone read the book.

and https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/07/who-racist-thomas-sowell/

The other questions in the NYT 'study' are equally suspect.

Without the racism, transphobia, homophobia (they've REALLY milked that one) bogeymen the democrats' platform has no energy. 'The left has bad ideas and the right has no ideas' - Ben Sasse

So what is CRT, Mahag?

And why do you ask that? Is it going to be be part of public school curricula? Why not leave it for folks who take that particular interest.

[Wahoo Redux]

So what is CRT, Mahag?

And why do you ask that? Is it going to be be part of public school curricula? Why not leave it for folks who take that particular interest.

I'm just curious to see if you actually know what it is.

[Anon1787]

[CRT] has been influential for decades.

Yes, it has.

And it is good to examine race, racism, and their consequences, right?  Harvard's stance on Asian admits should be included.

But it was only when rightwing media needed a rallying point that it became an issue for people who are easily influenced.

Your description of CRT does not explain why any of that is incorrect or an issue.

First it was denied that the CRT narrative is being taught. The next move in this language-power game has been to conflate discussion of race in U.S. history with CRT in order to accuse anyone who rejects the CRT narrative with wanting to whitewash American history. And the CRT narrative would not want us to consider Harvard's discrimination against Asians except to use it to illustrate the persistence of white supremacy in trying to sow racial division.

Like "vulgar" Marxism, CRT is a closed system impervious to falsification. Under Marxism, the state should have withered away with perfect communism a century ago, but those capitalists have proven to be a wily bunch. For CRT, replace capitalists with the white race who give the oppressed races a few crumbs when it suits their interest. The Civil War (with 600K casualties)? Interest convergence! Desegregation? Interest convergence! Affirmative Action? Interest convergence! A growing class of black capitalists and professionals, one of whom became president? Interest convergence! There's no way to disprove the claim that all progress is apparent rather than real.

I'll be accused of promoting blasphemous ideas of essentialism, epistemic foundationalism, and teleological metaphysics, but if you're going to play the postmodern language game, how can I transcend my positional self (to give some epistemic credence to the standpoints of others) and what are the grounds for refusing to try to maximize a feeling of power at the expense of the groups being socially reconstructed as "oppressed"? Alternatively, why not go full postmodern and deconstruct the old racial identities and socially construct entirely new non-racial identities? Contra Crenshaw, surely we can create non-racial identities that can become a better "source of strength, community, and intellectual development."

[jimbogumbo]

Sure.
Lots of things a person might be thinking about when asked a question like that. For example crime interracial crime among black-white being 80% black perp-white victim. Why would that be?

Much of crime involves someone who wants or needs stuff taking it from someone who has the stuff.

I will bet you the same ratio was at work with Irish on white non-Irish crime in New York and Boston the the 1800s early 1900s.

[mahagonny]

Sure.
Lots of things a person might be thinking about when asked a question like that. For example crime interracial crime among black-white being 80% black perp-white victim. Why would that be?

Much of crime involves someone who wants or needs stuff taking it from someone who has the stuff.

I'll agree to that, but add, much of crime involves malice. 'Malicious destruction of property' is different from, more serious than 'wanton destruction of property.' And in some states penalties are quire different.
There's very little wanton larceny or armed robbery. You would tend to understand you're not being nice.
If someone loots a retail store with already smashed windows and Al Sharpton calls it reparations I still call it malicious behavior. Although ironically but not surprisingly many of the victimized businesses were black-owned.
No one likes to admit it but the 'White Privilege' riff makes an excellent excuse to resent people under cover of the mob presence.
The vast majority of street crime is within the same race.

I will bet you the same ratio was at work with Irish on white non-Irish crime in New York and Boston the the 1800s early 1900s.

I'd be interested to know. But if you posted 'no black persons need apply' outside your small business today you'd have Merrick Garland and the FBI on you in short order.

ETA: There is a ton of anti-white racism disseminated today, only they call it 'scholarship.'

Wokeism, 'antiracism' are racism against blacks, by deciding that black students need lowered standards in order to be judged appropriately. John McWhorter Woke Racism.

[Sun_Worshiper]

What a surprise to see this turn into yet another white grievance thread

[mahagonny]

What a surprise to see this turn into yet another white grievance thread

Ouch!! Hey cut that out. I'm trying to enjoy a polo match.

[Wahoo Redux]

First it was denied that the CRT narrative is being taught. The next move in this language-power game has been to conflate discussion of race in U.S. history with CRT in order to accuse anyone who rejects the CRT narrative with wanting to whitewash American history. And the CRT narrative would not want us to consider Harvard's discrimination against Asians except to use it to illustrate the persistence of white supremacy in trying to sow racial division.

Like "vulgar" Marxism, CRT is a closed system impervious to falsification. Under Marxism, the state should have withered away with perfect communism a century ago, but those capitalists have proven to be a wily bunch. For CRT, replace capitalists with the white race who give the oppressed races a few crumbs when it suits their interest. The Civil War (with 600K casualties)? Interest convergence! Desegregation? Interest convergence! Affirmative Action? Interest convergence! A growing class of black capitalists and professionals, one of whom became president? Interest convergence! There's no way to disprove the claim that all progress is apparent rather than real.

I'll be accused of promoting blasphemous ideas of essentialism, epistemic foundationalism, and teleological metaphysics, but if you're going to play the postmodern language game, how can I transcend my positional self (to give some epistemic credence to the standpoints of others) and what are the grounds for refusing to try to maximize a feeling of power at the expense of the groups being socially reconstructed as "oppressed"? Alternatively, why not go full postmodern and deconstruct the old racial identities and socially construct entirely new non-racial identities? Contra Crenshaw, surely we can create non-racial identities that can become a better "source of strength, community, and intellectual development."

You know, Anon, you are I would agree on more things than we disagree on. 

There's this guy:  NYTimes: 'Mary Poppins,' and a Nanny's Shameful Flirting With Blackface

Part of the new film's nostalgia, however, is bound up in a blackface performance tradition that persists throughout the Mary Poppins canon, from P. L. Travers's books to Disney's 1964 adaptation, with disturbing echoes in the studio's newest take on the material, "Mary Poppins Returns."

One of the more indelible images from the 1964 film is of Mary Poppins blacking up. When the magical nanny (played by Julie Andrews) accompanies her young charges, Michael and Jane Banks, up their chimney, her face gets covered in soot, but instead of wiping it off, she gamely powders her nose and cheeks even blacker. Then she leads the children on a dancing exploration of London rooftops with Dick Van Dyke's sooty chimney sweep, Bert.

This might seem like an innocuous comic scene if Travers's novels didn't associate chimney sweeps' blackened faces with racial caricature. "Don't touch me, you black heathen," a housemaid screams in "Mary Poppins Opens the Door" (1943), as a sweep reaches out his darkened hand. When he tries to approach the cook, she threatens to quit: "If that Hottentot goes into the chimney, I shall go out the door," she says, using an archaic slur for black South Africans that recurs on page and screen.

The 1964 film replays this racial panic in a farcical key. When the dark figures of the chimney sweeps step in time on a roof, a naval buffoon, Admiral Boom, shouts, "We're being attacked by Hottentots!" and orders his cannon to be fired at the "cheeky devils." We're in on the joke, such as it is: These aren't really black Africans; they're grinning white dancers in blackface. It's a parody of black menace; it's even posted on a white nationalist website as evidence of the film's racial hierarchy. And it's not only fools like the Admiral who invoke this language. In the 1952 novel "Mary Poppins in the Park," the nanny herself tells an upset young Michael, "I understand that you're behaving like a Hottentot."

The author, a college professor, goes on to argue that in the midst of her chimney hijinks, Mary Poppins stops and reapplies her makeup, smearing herself with soot, and thereby portraying "black face" as a comedic element (which garnered the author a good deal of derision).

Look, Western culture was deeply, deeply racist.  Every time we go back to look we will find racism, hegemony, abuse, appropriation, and xenophobia in our collective Western heritage----we just will.  Do we need to constantly relive it?  And yes, we still have problems with racism, but things are much, much better now, and while there is predictable backsliding, we are still moving forward.

I have been told with unmistakable condescension, by faculty secure in their redoubts of tenure, that I need to keep in mind what America owes past generations of exploited minorities----a history I and everyone I know are already aware of----when I dared to question the ethics and legality of "diversity hires."  I was being told, essentially, that I need to buck up and step aside (even though I was nowhere near any of this exploitation) to pay for the sins of the fathers.  If said faculty really, truly believe this they should walk their talk, resign their posts, and write their presidents, the school newspaper, and FOX News that they are resigning specifically so that a minority faculty member can take their vacated place.

Harvard is absolutely invoking a racial quota and should be held accountable.

At the same time I absolutely believe in "white privilege."  Any thinking person does.  And I would not for a second deny its effect on my life and the lives of everyone else currently on the planet. 

Can I believe in white privilege and still maintain that I, Wahoo Redux in the 21st century, born in 1965, am not to blame for this and should therefore not be held accountable?  Yes, I can.  This includes the Queen of England, may she rest in peace.  Ask for my help, don't try to guilt or badger me into it. 

I guess the point is that people with intemperate, one-sided opinions actually solve very little in this day and age.  Some people are clinging to modes of protest that were appropriate in the 1950s and '60s but seem to be backfiring now.  The result is other people who develop equally intolerant and equally counterproductive oppositions and feel the need to invoke "communism" as a strawman argument. 

[mahagonny]

At the same time I absolutely believe in "white privilege."  Any thinking person does. 

As well as do many others who do very little thinking.

And I would not for a second deny its effect on my life and the lives of everyone else currently on the planet. 

the issue should be less whether there is such a thing but what it is responsible for. If you say 'black men are more likely to be pulled over by a cop' you can check the accuracy with statistics. We'd probably agree, mostly, on what the statistics showed. But if you say 'and because they are, they shouldn't trust the police' you are saying something highly debated.

[Golazo]

Ben Sasse did some questionable things as Midland's president, liking hiring an athletic director with no experience who was arrested for misconduct with student athletes https://theindependent.com/news/local/former-gicc-coach-arrested-for-soliciting-sex-from-midland-athletes/article_015ba6f4-e45d-11e2-a670-0019bb2963f4.html, investing heavily in athletics, eliminating tenure, and pushing fundraising while retention fell and graduation rates didn't improve (https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2022/10/07/sen-ben-sasse-was-university-president-nebraska-how-will-he-be-uf/). I can't imagine any reason other that politics that someone would go from a tiny religious LAC to a huge R1.

I would be pretty furious with this hire if I worked at UF (and equally upset if a Dem with similarly limited qualifications was appointed).

[mythbuster]

The current article in CHE details some of that. https://www.chronicle.com/article/it-could-have-been-worse-higher-ed-reacts-to-ben-sasse-at-u-of-florida.

The fact that DeSantis' chief of staff of was Sasse's designated liaison during this process is very telling.

Apparently in his recent Atlantic op-ed he says he wants to eliminate the credit hour. Good luck doing that in a multi-campus system where students transfer between schools at the drop of a hat!

[Hibush]

Ben Sasse did some questionable things as Midland's president, liking hiring an athletic director with no experience who was arrested for misconduct with student athletes https://theindependent.com/news/local/former-gicc-coach-arrested-for-soliciting-sex-from-midland-athletes/article_015ba6f4-e45d-11e2-a670-0019bb2963f4.html, investing heavily in athletics, eliminating tenure, and pushing fundraising while retention fell and graduation rates didn't improve (https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2022/10/07/sen-ben-sasse-was-university-president-nebraska-how-will-he-be-uf/). I can't imagine any reason other that politics that someone would go from a tiny religious LAC to a huge R1.

I would be pretty furious with this hire if I worked at UF (and equally upset if a Dem with similarly limited qualifications was appointed).

Maybe the governor is mad that Fuchs didn't run UF into the ground fast enough.

[Hegemony]

In the Atlantic article Sasse says he wants to "overhaul the credit-hour system," but doesn't say what he finds wrong with it, how overhauling it would help problems with students not finishing, and what he proposes to put in its place. So his op-ed will probably appeal to those who cry "We need total reform of everything!", but not to those who want the nuts and bolts laid out.  He strikes me as one of those people who comes in to a system new to them and doesn't take the time to learn the ins and outs before proposing drastic changes which everyone knows will cause problems down the line. So many people think complex situations have easy solutions: "Is the house falling down? Let's burn it down and stick up a tent! Lots of people have lived in tents over the centuries!"

[mythbuster]

For those interested, here is the Atlantic article. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/student-loans-forgiveness-higher-ed/639438/
It came out before Biden announced his student loan forgiveness plan.

I work at one of the lesser units of the Florida SUS system. I have sense of the amount of bureaucracy built into the system. His call to eliminate credit hours will go nowhere, unless Rodrigues decides to eliminate it for the entire system. Because the entire system is built on course equivalency across universities. I shudder in horror of what that would look like.

But, Sasse's shot fired at the accreditors was manna to DeSantis. It's already been written into law that we have to find a different accrediting agency  every time we go up for renewal! Here's the link for that one: https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/education/2022-04-19/floridas-public-colleges-and-universities-have-to-try-to-find-new-accreditors. All because SACS made comments on the recent fights over academic freedom.

The big one to keep an eye on going forward is the post-tenure review business. That is currently being hashed out between the unions/admins/government officials. It's the rare case where the union and the admins are both on the same side.