Scrapbook
Scrapbook Stupid Professor Tricks The chairman of Duke University's philosophy department, a man named Robert Brandon, has gotten himself in a bit of hot Internet water over a quote he recently...
...Cross-referencing the names of 178 Duke humanities faculty members and deans against the state's voter lists, the university's student conservative association found 142 registered Democrats, 28 independents, and 8 Republicans...
...Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin, a CCL member, said he consulted University General Counsel Robert W. luliano '83, the University news office, and University spokesperson Robert P. Mitchell before the decision...
...Court of Appeals for the D.C...
...There is a good reason for this too...
...Here, it's not a labeling problem at all...
...Members of academia tend to be a bit smarter than average...
...CBS News, for example, stopped calling him that sometime in the fall of 1996, roundabout the time they stopped using his services altogether...
...Scrapbook Stupid Professor Tricks The chairman of Duke University's philosophy department, a man named Robert Brandon, has gotten himself in a bit of hot Internet water over a quote he recently gave to the Chronicle, Duke's principal campus newspaper...
...In the world of appellate law, the undeniably conservative Silberman is the closest thing there is to a universally admired man...
...In 1980, according to Phillips, Silberman "attended at least one of the 'October Surprise' meetings where an Iranian representative discussed what Iran would want in exchange for keeping the hostages" (until after Reagan could be elected president...
...Um, anybody home over at NPR...
...The general character, quality, and intelligence of which was beautifully captured by reporter Cindy Yee's "react piece" in the very next edition of the Chronicle, last Tuesday, which contained the following, timeless passage: Some argued that the political imbalance within the humanities departments is to be expected, and in no way reflects the University's lack of commitment to true intellectual diversity...
...Well, the whole thing right away created quite a lot of "Oh, dear, how gauche...
...That's an 18-to-1 partisan imbalance, for those of you doing the math at home...
...Well, folks have long since wised up...
...On NPR, he's just "commentator Kevin Phillips...
...There is a good reason for this...
...We try to hire the best, smartest people available," Brandon said of his philosophy hires...
...And also the fear of looking foolish, apparently...
...Two members abstained...
...Baldegg said that she did not think the process was especially difficult...
...Mill's analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia...
...Which is a policy, The Scrapbook humbly submits, that our friends over at National Public Radio ought to consider belatedly adopting...
...And yet there was Phillips—on NPR just last Monday— falsely accusing Silberman, President Bush's appointee to co-chair the new post-Iraq intelligence review commission, of past involvement in Middle East "cover-ups...
...Then, years later, "Silberman was one of two judges in a 2-1 decision that overturned Oliver North's Iran-contra conviction...
...We don't have high expectations of NPR, but even they can do better than this...
...I needed to see if there were liability issues," McLough-lin said...
...If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire...
...Consider Phillips's amazing and altogether baseless slander of Laurence Silberman, senior judge of the U.S...
...I don't think we faced any opposition...
...tongue-clucking down in Durham...
...his professional reputation is beyond reproach —as many, many perfectly liberal, perfectly Democratic lawyers and fellow jurists will tell you...
...Here's one for you, Professor Brandon: Maybe you've got no conservative or Republican colleagues in your department because no such person would even think to apply for a job with the likes of you...
...few people, at this point, would dispute that Silberman's ruling was the correct one...
...Needless to say, Professor Brandon's remark about knuckle-draggingly stupid Republicans instantly made its way into the blogosphere, where Brandon was just as instantly—and justly— ridiculed for (a) his ignorance of elementary logic ("stupid people are generally conservative" does not mean that "conservative people are generally stupid...
...For more than a decade already, the network's been reserving regular air time for little pretaped opinion droppings from Phillips, and a search through the Nexis transcript database suggests— amazing, no?—that they've never once the whole while called the man a Republican...
...In early December, Katharina C. Baldegg '06 and Camilla A. Hrdy '05, the two students who proposed the magazine, met with McLoughlin to begin the approval process for H Bomb...
...Fourteen members of the CCL approved H Bomb—a magazine that will be similar to the Vassar publica-tion—as an official Harvard publication...
...In order to avoid liability, students will not be able to take nude pictures inside of Harvard buildings, according to McLoughlin...
...NPR's always been admirably scrupulous about that...
...It seems that an undergraduate student group, the Duke Conservative Union, took out ad space in the Chronicle for an open letter addressed to university president Nan Keohane, in which the Union alleged an "increasingly politicized"—and ideologically monochromatic—atmosphere in the school's humanities departments...
...And what has this amusing datum got to do with Professor Brandon, the philosophy department chair...
...CCL, which is composed of students, faculty, and administrators, approves the creation of all new student groups, including publications...
...b) his ignorance of 19th-century philosophy and politics...
...Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh was upset about that, Phillips points out, arguing that President Bush should have chosen an "honest" man instead of Silberman...
...Trouble is, he's also a venomous conspiracy theorist...
...hardly anybody calls Phillips a "Republican" these days...
...Stupid Student Tricks (and administrators who fall for them) From the Wednesday, February 11, edition of the Harvard Crimson: After flipping through the pages of Squirm, a Vassar College erotica magazine, the Committee on College Life (CCL) voted to approve a student-run magazine that will feature nude pictures of Harvard undergraduates and articles about sexual issues at its meeting yesterday...
...Speaking of Fools Remember how, back in the mid-1990s, CBS News used to constantly have Kevin Phillips on its broadcasts as a "Republican political analyst"— even though all he ever seemed to do was fulminate about "his" party's various evil deeds...
...Players in the NBA tend to be taller than average...
...The "October Surprise" conspiracy theory—as was eventually confirmed by multiple American news organizations, Democratic investigators in the House of Representatives, and a Senate subcommittee chaired by one John F. Kerry —was a top-to-bottom fabrication originating with followers of Lyndon LaRouche...
...Hrdy said that "initially there was some concern about the nudity aspect," but that CCL members eventually "got past the fear of porn...
...Oliver North's Iran-contra conviction was overturned because Lawrence Walsh had obtained it on the basis of evidence hopelessly tainted by North's testimonial immunity grants from Congress...
...and (c) Brandon's general vanity and . . . well, knuckle-dragging stupidity...
...It further seems that the Union, by way of support for this claim, included in its ad the results of a most interesting exploration through publicly available North Carolina voter-registration records...
...Circuit...
...People have been very open about it," she said...
Vol. 9 • February 2004 • No. 23
