In Death Navalny Is Even More Dangerous To Putin’S Lies Parallel Is Seen
   
Serge Schmemann for The New York Times Opinion News Wire Article published in the San Antonio Light
February 17, 2024 November 2, 1971
    For most of the 12 or so years in which Alexei Navalny crusaded against the rule of Vladimir Putin the Russian president tried to avoid mentioning his gadfly by name even as he and his minions tried every which way assassination included to silence him. Yet when the news of Mr. Navalny’s reported death in a remote northern labor camp appeared on official Russian news sites it included the detail that Mr. Putin on a visit to the city of Chelyabinsk had been “informed.” Many official outlet …

Read the full article here.		     Theres a parallel between what happened at the U.N. and what happened in Saigon just eight years ago. On that occasion we pulled the rug from under South Vietnamese President Diem not so much because we wanted to hurt Diem but because the Kennedy administration felt it (and South Vietnam) would fare better with a new group in charge - Gen. Big Minhs crowd. Diligent efforts were made to fend for Diem give him asylum in the U.S. embassy and see him safely off to retirement in another country. But he was murdered and JFK grieved. So must President Nixon lament U.N.s execution of Chiangs China. He didnt want it to happen that way but miserable little forces ordained that it did. His thoughts probably will be troubled for a time. After all some of his early political progress was based on the support he received from the so-called China Lobby financed by rich American conservatives and Chinese expatriates of the stature of T.V. Soong Chiangs banker brother-in-law. The Presidents consolation may come from the fact that in effect 750000000 Chinese now sit where 14000000 had and that the U.S. took the prime role in making Chiang Kaisheks China self-supporting and will continue to give aid. The U.S. will survive in U.N. of course. But it wont ever again be as easy as it was. We must henceforth play the league wherein it is possible to lose to Albania.
A Borderline Crazy Campaign Strategy Wallace Strong In South
   
Jason Riley for The Wall Street Journal News Wire Article published in the Las Vegas Sun
February 13, 2024 September 27, 1968
    It may be the most bizarre presidential campaign strategy since Walter Mondale promised to raise taxes in 1984 and went on to lose 49 states to Ronald Reagan. Joe Biden has convinced himself that immigration is a winning issue for Democrats. The plan is to persuade voters that stratospheric levels of unlawful migration on his watch are entirely someone else’s fault. “I’ll be taking this issue to the country” the president announced last week from the White House. “Every day between now and November… …

Read the full article here.		     In one respect Wallace is doing extremely well. Gallup reports that he is not only well ahead in the Deep South states but that current survey evidence shows Wallaces support growing in the border states increasing the possibility that Wallace could carry most if not all of the 13 states of the South if the election were held at this time. The all South Gallup report shows 38 per cent for Wallace 31 per cent for Nixon 25 per cent for Humphrey and six per cent undecided in that region. But Wallaces vote in the Northern states is so low — 10 per cent in the East 15 per cent in the Midwest 11 per cent in the Far West — that he has little if any chance of winning electoral votes outside of Dixie. That means he has virtually no chance of winning the presidency by capturing a majority of electoral votes. With Wallaces electoral strength confined to one region the important next question is: Do either Humphrey or Nixon have a strong enough lead in the Northern states so that they can win a clear electoral vote majority with no Southern support at all? There are 538 votes in the electoral college with 270 required for election. If the 13 Southern states with their 145 electoral votes are split off a major party candidate faces the task of winning 68.7 per cent of the Northern electoral votes — 270 of the 393 votes to be cast outside the South. In order to win that many Northern electoral votes however a candidate does not need nearly that great a share of the Northern popular vote. The reason is that a slight lead in popular votes usually translates into a strong lead in electoral votes. A recent computer study based on the experience of the last several presidential elections shows that if a third-party candidate wins all the electoral votes of the South then one of the major-party
How We Squeezed Harvard To Push Claudine Gay Out The Future Of The University
   
Christopher F. Rufo for The Wall Street Journal Larry Diamond published in the Stanford Daily
January 3, 2024 March 29, 1972
    The left has spent decades consolidating power across the institutions of American academic life. The crowning achievement of that effort was the diversity equity and inclusion bureaucracy—constructed to perpetuate progressive dominance of higher education by keeping conservatives out of the professoriate. Claudine Gay was in some respects the apotheosis of this process. Last year Ms. Gay an African-American political scientist with a thin publishing history became Harvard University’s 30th …

Read the full article here.		     There is no problem that besets a serious political leader more persistently than that of doubt— doubt not only about the wisdom of his or her positions and decisions but doubt as well about the very focus of his attention and energy. I remain deeply opposed to Administration policy on recruitment standards at the Placement Center and on the structure of the student judicial system. I am more than ever convinced that the firing of Bruce Franklin was a dangerous and tragic precedent in its implications for academic freedom. But I am coming to doubt seriously the worth of beating these kinds of issues to death with the style of ultimatum politics that has come to envelop them. We cannot afford to have so disproportionate an amount of the attention of the community and the time and energy of its leaders in the student body faculty and administration spent on issues and problems important in a moral or symbolic sense but peripheral to the question of the quality of the University and the direction of its future. We cannot afford to because there are issues that are very central to this latter question and in the rush of rhetoric and demands and disruptions and subsequent prosecutions we aren’t dealing with them. In fact I suspect most of us aren’t even conscious of them. As a community together we need desperately to start thinking and talking about them. What are these long term crises that cloud the University’s future? For one we are in a financial crisis of tremendous proportions. Anyone whose department or program has felt the cutting blade of BAP is painfully aware of this. Students and applicants who are neither rich enough to meet with ease the soaring costs of a Stanford education nor poor enough to qualify for large scholarships are painfully aware of this. Administrators who have had to compromise the autonomy of the University in order to keep it afloat financially are painfully aware of this. My view is that we can never hope to resolve this crisis without a massive infusion of federal aid. In fact one of the great issues for American universities is now being battled in the Congress; the nature and extent of that aid. A bill sponsored by Rep. Edith Green and passed by the House would offer aid to universities and colleges in the form of a block grant to the institution based on its annual number of credit hours. By using credit hours in the formula with which to compute the amount of federal aid this bill would encourage schools to grant credit for almost anything imaginable in order to get more federal dollars. But more ominously by offering the aid in the form of a block grant (an annually flowing faucet that could conceivably be turned off as easily as it is left on) the door is opened for accompanying federal control. Temptation The temptation for the government to attach restrictions on how the money can be spent—and on what a school must do or not do in order to qualify for it—is enormous. The Green Bill is an invitation to a kind of federal intimidation more potent than anything higher education has yet been subjected to. It must be defeated. Now lodged with the Green Bill in a House-Senate conference committee is a bill passed by the Senate and sponsored by Sen. John Pastore. It is vitally important to the future of this University. The Pastore bill provides for a program of federal aid which is focused on the individual student rather than on the school. The aid is offered directly to the student to carry with him to whichever college or university he chooses. With his own aid the student on the graduate level carries with him to the school of his choice a companion grant to the school to defray the costs of educating him. Decentralizing This bill offers financial aid to colleges and universities in a form to which intimidating restrictions cannot very easily be applied. It decentralizes the giving of aid and emphasizes the role of the student as consumer. By giving the aid to the student to take to whichever school he chooses the Pell bill provides ‘“‘competitive incentives for evolutionary reform” that will make each institution more attractive. If we are going to be able to be a leading creative force in higher education in the coming years we are going to need more money. Millions more. As an institution we are going to have to start thinking about how we are going to get it. Aid I think we will conclude that no matter how valiant an effort we make in raising contributions from alumni and other private sources we will not meet our needs and no matter how unreasonably high we raise tuition we will not meet our needs without massive federal aid. We must understand that the sources of and solutions to many of our problems are not internal to the University. If we are to win the adoption of a federal aid program of the form and scope so urgently needed we will have to affect national policy. If we are to change the chief source of research funding from the Defense Department to civilian agencies and if we are to change the focus of federal funding for University research away from meeting military needs and more towards meeting the human and environmental needs of this country we will have to affect national policy. And if we are to establish the kinds of close working relationships with other Universities that can make possible more coordinated national research into social political and environmental problems (using the resources and enthusiasm that Universities possess in such special abundance) it will mean organization and cooperation on a national level. It would be dangerous to imagine that in action on a national level lie the solutions to all our problems. But the present danger lies in our assumption that there are no solutions to be achieved on that level at all. Despite the questions and sharp disagreements over his internal positions Richard Lyman can be an important leader in arguing the case for colleges and universities in America. I believe he is willing to move toward the key national role he is capable of. But he is now unable to and will remain so as long as one flash crisis after another deflects his time and attention so completely away from larger problems. A nation in times of international crisis very often rallies around its president supporting his foreign policy initiatives even while it may differ bitterly over his domestic ones. Stanford is now in a comparable kind of crisis from without and it is time for people here with a wide range of political perspectives to follow this historical precedent and give our own president the support he needs in forging a “foreign policy”’ for the institution that will relieve its financial crisis reclaim the substantial degree of autonomy it has lost and strike new working relationships with other Universities that will move them all into a role of greater leadership and innovation in the quest for solutions to the social and ecological problems that plague the nation. (This is the first of two articles by Larry Diamond on the future of the University. The views expressed are his own and do not represent the Council of Presidents.)
The Truth About Critical Race Theory ‘Time Running Out On Us’
   
Christopher F. Rufo for The Wall Street Journal News Wire Article published in the Des Moines Register
October 4, 2020 October 30, 1970
    Moderator Chris Wallace asked President Trump during last week’s debate why he “directed federal agencies to end racial-sensitivity training that addresses white privilege or critical race theory.” Mr. Trump answered: “I ended it because it’s racist.” Participants “were asked to do things that were absolutely insane” he explained. “They were teaching people to hate our country.” “Nobody’s doing that” Joe Biden replied. He’s wrong. My reporting on critical race theory in the federal government …

Read the full article here.		     Despite repeated warnings about the danger of large-scale racial conflict Americans continue to allow the existence of a gap — a widening gap — between the nation’s promise and its performance. That gap has been pointed out again by Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. As a nation firmly rooted in the rule of law Father Hesburgh said the other day we are firmly committed to the principle that laws must be enforced. Those who look to the law as an impartial arbiter of right and wrong and find that some laws are implemented while others are not despair of the fairness of the system. A recent Civil Rights Commission report amounted to a sad commentary on the breakdown of federal laws and executive orders against racial discrimination. As a result said Father Hesburgh the credibility of the government’s total civil rights effort has been seriously undermined. The commission report said that most agencies tended to view civil rights enforcement as an impediment to their main function and many officials failed to use the sanctions available for enforcement purposes. The commission found for example that no federal contract has been canceled because of failure to end discrimination although such authority has existed for several years. We are a result-oriented nation said the Catholic educator. We judge the effectiveness of institutions on the basis of the results they achieve. By this yardstick progress in ending inequity by the application of law has been disappointing. Adding a new entry to federal law does not guarantee results. Among Americans however there is an unfortunate tendency to assume that everything is going to be all right once Congress has acted and the President has waved his pen. They move on to something else. Now the situation is critical. As Father Hesburgh put it Weve had a great in society generally. Weve had a lot of violence. Weve had some assassinations. I think that time is running out on us as a nation. Bringing an end to racial strife and tension is still the major unfinished business of this nation as the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders advised the people more than two and a half years ago. That commission said There can be no higher priority for national action and no higher claim on the nation’s conscience. The nation plays loose with its own life and the lives of its people when this sound advice on civil rights is ignored. People who are contented with things as they are tend naturally to assume that others can only be activated by some unfathomable prejudice when they point out the need for change.