Middle Eastern Crazies: The US Congress

I remember my frustration back in 2008. Republican presidential nominee John McCain condemned his opponent, then-Senator Barack Obama, for suggesting diplomacy was a feasible way to halt Iran's nuclear program.

During this year's tranche of diplomacy there was much head scratching amongst western thinkers about the potential for the Ayatollah Ali Khamanei or hardliners in the Revolutionary Guard to derail the deal. Embarrassingly the only party that threatens to kill the current agreement is the United States Congress.

Congressional Republicans' instragence poses a question just as relevant now and as in 2008. What end do Iran hawks think they will gain by killing the current deal? The present agreement does not prevent the United States from taking military action if it becomes necessary. Likewise Iran's agreement not to build a nuclear weapon, however ingenuine is at least as good as doing nothing while the Islamic Republic continues atomic work. Obviously the deal ends sanctions against Iran but these sanctions serve no purpose besides compelling Iran to accept such an agreement in the first place. Some opponents mutter about a better deal. Whatever their opinion of the President and Secretary of State John Kerry hey cannot seriously believe that the administration agreed to a worse deal than they thought they could get.

If Iran shows good faith then the current agreement will end the issue of nuclear proliferation in the Middle east for a generation. If Iran continues development then the president will be presented with the same choice as he would if congress rejects the bargain: bomb or acquiesce. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

I'm sharing the Biannual Newsletter via blog this year.

-JS

Hello All

It's that time of year again, summer solstice. For those of you who haven't received one of these before the intro is brief. Every year I send out two newsletters, on summer and winter solstice, to everybody I know. Please don't feel obliged to respod.

Yet again I am limited by technology from producing a very fine product but I do have a few interesting thoughts for you on the Tim Hunt scandal and Charlie Baker's mishandling of the MBTA.

I myself have slowly made my way through an extremely challenging six months. By January I had finally recovered from the broken leg I mentiones last December. In February I contracted appendicitis and after a weekend in the hospital I opted to treat it with antibiotics instead of surgery.

Meanwhile political conditions soured at my dear Trinity College. A sort of left wing radicalism very similar to that in the Tim Hunt article has created a dangerous climate around campus. Many have been purged. Other selfish individuals have tried to use the chaos. Meanwhile the College, its student life, and traditions have become casualties of this politics.

I am enjoying the summer weather and I hope to spend some time in Boston even as I spend the summer in Toronto where we are hosting the Pan American games. I wish you all the best.

Your Friend,

Jeffrey
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Charlie on the M(B)TA
        In the midst of last winter’s horrible blizzard an evil legend emerged. It sounds something like this:
The MBTA (Boston’s transit system, colloquially called ‘the T’)is horribly broken. It was over expanded by politicians more interested in ribbon cuttings than routine maintenance. They allowed the T to become inefficient and fall under the control of malevolent unions. Now only Charlie Baker, the new Republican governor, can fix the mess.
This legend has dominated then popular consciousness and has been accepted even in traditionally Democratic circles. Nonetheless it could not be further from the truth.
The T has been the primary focus of Massachusetts’ last two Democratic governors, Michael Dukakis and Deval Patrick. It was under the administration of the former in the 1980s that the core subway network was last expanded with the extension of the Red Line from Harvard Sq to Alewife. Meanwhile reports constantly attest to the T’s efficiency. It has about the same tax-fare revenue mix for ordinary service funding yet charges consistently lower fares than its peers around the continent.
Not only has the system failed to expand adequately to match the region’s growth but the T has been consistently underfunded by a series of GOP administrations and conservative Democrats (Speaker DeLeo I’m looking at you). At the turn of the millennium the T was laden with billions of dollars of debt and other obligations as a financing gimmick related to the Big Dig construction project. Meanwhile the funding legislation passed then was based on incredibly unrealistic projections of tax revenue. It is for this reason the T has accumulated a large maintenance backlog.
No attempt to fix this was made until the election of Governor Patrick who restructured the T making it subservient to the new Mass DOT board. He also attempted to fix the T’s funding problems but was partially stymied by the state legislature. Although the new revenue provided was inadequate to fully fund the T’s maintainence, it was enough to finally place an order to replace the ancient train cars operating on both the Red and Orange lines the latter of which is severely impeded at rush hour by a lack of functional cars.
Come this winter’s crazy weather the T suffered greatly. Naturally the above ground portions of the system were largely shut down due to the remarkable level of snow. In a once in a century storm it is only natural to have a once in a century shutdown. Most of the other problems on the underground portion of the network were due to the failure of the old Red and orange line cars, cars which are due to be replaced by the end of the decade. In essence the only real problems suffered by the T occurred on account of its slow recovery from republican governors.
Governor Baker seized upon public frustration to push his agenda. He forced out the MBTA general manager and compelled the resignation of all of Governor Patrick’s appointees to the Mass DOT board, a structure designed so that one governor could not suddenly influence it like that. Baker has also pushed the nlegislature to allow him to raise fares, appoint a control board reporting directly to him, and bring in outside non-union staff. The Governor has also not requested significantly more money despite the ongoing maintenance backlog and has also cancelled a number of Governor Patrick’s expansion plans such as commuter rail to Fall River and New Bedford. This certainly doesn’t seem like an attempt to fix the T rather it seems like an attempt to undo the work of past Democratic governors.
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The Apology
The British scientist Sir Tim Hunt really ought to drink his hemlock more peacefully. With the present stink some in society just might be prompted to doubt his public lynching. That would make for a terrible five minutes hate.

This and many other such occurances teach us two main lessons. The first concerns the limits of thought about individual rights during the Enlightenment and middle twentieth century. These systems construed a need to preserve individuals rights by protecting them from state punishment. This approach is no longer applicable to the cosmopolitan anarchy of the present millennium. What is indisputable is that Tim Hunt has been utterly ruined on account of his individual speech. The problem is that speech is only protected against the state. This protection is worth nothing in practical application because, just as if there were no such right, an individual is sure to be irreperably harmed because of what he says.

Luckily there is a solution to this first problem. Anti-discrimination laws prohibit private actors from harming individuals based on attributes like race or gender. It would be easy to extend this to speech.

The second issue that the Tim Hunt saga brings to the fore is that of the crazy lynch mob culture present in our society. It is understandable that the media sometimes makes a circus of silly things but this case is on another level entirely. The Nobel laureate scientist supposedly make a quip about women at a conference in South Korea. He claims his remarks were taken out of context.

Now apparently all that happened is that a man uttered a vague complaint about the other sex—something all women and men have done from the dawn of time and will continue to do until the extinction of the human race. Is anyone not guilty of the same?

Yet even if Tim Hunt had forcefully made the case for the banning of women from science and stuck to his position through all the backlash there would be no reason for what has occured. Particularly in academia but also life in general there is a need for new, contraversial, and unpopular viewpoints. This world has seen many days where a man would be similarly faulted for suggesting women be allowed into labs. I am not sure of the conditions by which he was fired from University College London but I had been under the impression that this was the purpose of tenure. Is this not the purpose of a university? And who either in the academy or life will have confidence to air an unpopular viewpoint after what has happened? And who can be sure that after some joke he too will not be ruined. Society has been very wicked indeed.

Compromise-The UTSU Board Reform Meeting

Last Wednesday three students, Ryan Gomes, Natalie Petra, and Nish Chankar hosted a meeting to work towards developing a new structure for the UTSU Board of Directors. This was necessary because of recent structural changes to the student union.

Last year the UTSU began taking steps to transition to an organizational structure under the new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (CNCA). The old structure which apportioned seats for election to various colleges and faculties would no longer be tenable without a number of tweaks. Meanwhile many of the colleges and faculties have been deeply dissatisfied by the corruption within the UTSU and have held referenda resulting in which students expressed their desire to leave the union.

The CFS Party controlled UTSU executive saw an opportunity and acted to push through a new self-serving structure. They would create "constituency directors", elected by UofT at wide with portfolio's focusing on different campus groups. The idea was quite clever; opposition to a gay or a female students constituency director would make the opponent look hostile to those groups rather than a constitutional structure. This would allow the CFS Party to eliminate the dissenting groups' directorships under the pretense of social justice.

The plan almost worked however, at the UTSU annual general meeting this October, the CFS  Party's opponents managed to deny their opponents the 2/3 majority necessary to make the changes. Thus the justification for the recent meeting.

After hours of discussions with stake holders such as UTSU execs Yolen Bollo-Kamara, Cameron Wathey, and Najiba Ali Sardar, the group came up with a new plan. The so called "Hybrid Proposal" would in effect allow for some college and professional faculty representation while also creating a significant number of equity/other directorships.

The students at the meeting deserve a lot of credit for coming up with a framework acceptable to many hostile parties. Nonetheless the Hybrid Model represents a setback for opponents of the current CFS controlled union. It is likely that once the new system is hammered out, representatives from the dissenting bodies would make up a smaller proportion of the board than under the previous model. By comparison failure to pass a new structure would leave the Union in legal limbo-an unfortunate situation but still one of the few options on the table that might force the UofT administration to overcome their qualms and take meaningful steps towards fee diversion. Despite all the effort, the CFS Party's opponents should not accept any deal that would dilute college and faculty representation on the Board.

A Boston Olympics?

It's official; Boston has been selected by the US Olympic Committee to make the country's bid for the 2024 Olympics.
If Boston is selected by the International Olympic Committee the region will host a massive influx of people within a decade. The Olympics could provide that catalyst for much needed infrastructure and transit funding which otherwise would be hard to achieve in light of a Republican governor and the Commonwealth's recent budget difficulties.
If selected the city will benefit remarkably since most of the new facilities will be useful in the long term. The Olympic village will serve as dorms at UMASS Boston which has been desirous of converting away from its existence as a commuter campus. This dual use will make the buildings easier to fund while also helping spark a renewal of the surrounding area necessary for a center of student life.
Likewise the aquatic center could also become a part of one of the region's many universities. Recent speculation suggests that Tufts is the most probable candidate. The Olympic stadium, once renovated, could serve the Revolution MLS team which is currently looking for a new facility closer to downtown.
The Olympics also would help establish Boston as a destination for tourists and major firms that too often skirt the city en route to New York and Washington. Already Massachusetts, after countless years of loosing congressional seats to reapportionment, has progressed to the top half of the nation in population growth. Bringing home the Olympics could turn old New England into a premier center of growth for the first time in centuries.

Gay Marriage, Abortion, and Social Liberalism

When we talk about American politics today and somebody brings up "the Social Issues" he almost always means gay marriage and abortion. These two ongoing debates have been shackled together for decades as matters that pit the urban creative elite against more traditional heartland voters. America had gradually moved leftwards with the pro-choice movement leading the charge. Over the past ten years however there has been a remarkable divergence. In 2004 Karl Rove and the George W. Bush campaign put a gay marriage ban on the ballot in Ohio in an effort to motivate social conservatives to come vote for against gay marriage and while in the voting booth re-elect the president. Bush's victory in Ohio that year was the difference between his successful re-election and what otherwise would have been a Kerry presidency.

Fast forward ten years and courts are readily striking down gay marriage bans from state to state.
Opposition to the new marriage equality movement has become socially unacceptable in all but the most traditional circles. The progress has been astounding.

Meanwhile the abortion debate has hardly changed at all. In fact Republicans are using the state legislatures they control to chase abortion providers out of their states at an astounding pace. For us on the political left this is too often painted as a sort of residual bigotry. But why is the pro-life movement slowly gaining strength in a nation where opposition to gay marriage is rapidly collapsing?

The answer is in the details of the debates over these issues. America has long accepted that the law has no business regulating sex or the sort of relationships people form. Most social conservatives today would not advocate a criminal penalty for sodomy―for them it is simply not a matter for the law. Thus liberals have gone on to argue that gay marriage ought to be simply another facet of regular marriage. Homosexual couples act in just the same ways as straight couples when married. They simply want the same institutions for the same conduct. Thus it becomes a matter of civil rights. When two sets of people who act in the same way receive different treatment under the law, there is a serious problem. The argument is premised in the idea that gay people simply wish to be allowed to conduct themselves in the same way as the rest of us outside of their sex lives. An argument that allows gay couples to act as if they are married in every way except maintain the formal status raises the obvious question: why can't they have the formal status. Thus as the left has spread the argument that homosexual Americans are no different from anyone else those listening naturally come to the natural conclusion. Gay people ought to be treated like anyone else.

Regarding abortion social liberals are equally virulent in spreading their message. "Women have a right to do what they want with their bodies. Denying them the ability to end a nine month phenomenon is tantamount to making the condition of their bodies something that is publically legislated". This is a good argument on its own. The trouble is that social liberals seem to be ignoring the argument of their opponents. The right believe that a foetus is a living person and that allowing ordinary women to kill a living person is tantamount to murder. Of course the logical core of the liberal argument is that a foetus is not a living person like you or me. But instead of explaining when, if not at conception, life beings, the left wing media simply scream about property rights more loudly.


Of course if social liberals convince American voters that a foetus is not a human being then the case against abortion will immediately collapse. Who would want to tell somebody "no you can't remove an object from your body"?

Of course, mainly as a way of riling up a base with a desperate fear that their bodily functions will be regulated, the political left continues to harp on about property rights. The trouble is that nobody denies the property aspect of the matter it's just that everybody regards life as more important than property. If the pro-choice movement explains why this is not a life issue they'll win. It's a pity most social liberals are so stupid.

The Syllabi Scandal

The Arts & Science Council, on which I serve, is the chief governing body of the University of Toronto's faculty of Arts & Science. Recently the Dean's office released a report about a new online tool the faculty is developing to standardize the production of syllabi. In essence it would be a digital form containing fields for required course information. Each professor would be required to fill out the form in lieu of a paper syllabus. The new standardized syllabi would be offered online.

The university administration evidently didn't expect this to cause significant controversy. They calculated that this would simply be one more element of university modernization akin to applying a new coat of paint. Those supporting the idea were gravely mistaken.

The trouble with this matter and why it garnered so much opposition is in what it represents: a transfer of power from individual professors to the Dean's office. A traditional view of education is as a transaction between professor and student. The one wants to learn what the other has to tell him and is willing to provide compensation for the trouble of doing so. Of course there is a need to facilitate this relationship and at a large institution like the University of Toronto there is a need to provide administration to serve as an intermediary between students and faculty.

Of course in the modern university administrators have moved far beyond clerical work. Today they manage massive grants, solicit contributions from donors, provide resources for students such as healthcare, promote the University's brand, manage student life, and even lobby politicians. Modern universities have a dual concept--as places where students and professors are linked a la airbnb and also as massive research and youth centered management centres.


The trouble with the proposal from the Dean's office is that it represents an ongoing shift away from faculty-administration dualism and towards the establishment of the primacy of the latter over the former. Administrators no longer manage all the mechanisms around professors to make it easier for them to teach; administrators now tell faculty how the administration thinks they should instruct students.

The problem this dynamic threatens is the very nature of education itself. Administrators under pressure from business interests are trying to turn education into a standardized commercial product. Education is ultimately a form of providing what one, a teacher, specifically has. An administration cannot very well know what one professor might decide to tell his students versus another. Only a teacher can know what he has to say and it is very hard for a third party to distinguish between the different voices of distinct individuals with the same qualifications and duties.

Education fundamentally cannot be standardized because its value is inherent. Any attempt to quantify it will leave us with well qualified yet uneducated students. There is no need to spend a lot of money on professor's as standardized information providers who are meant to provide a standardized "learning outcome" for a given course regardless of who is teaching. It's a relatively logical jump to start requiring the same syllabus for the same course through the new online tool. One professor said at the council meeting "I want to be able to put a picture of a cow on my syllabus"; he wants for it to be under his control.

There's nothing wrong with administration as a facilitator and offering to put faculty information online is a good form of facilitation. The problem is in coercing scholars to jump through a bureaucratic hoop. That changes who holds power. Dean Cameron please make the new tool non-mandatory; that will effectively disseminate most information while preserving the independence of education which is the bedrock of UofT.

Nota Bene: I will address restoring the process of learning in classes at a later date.

On Campus Sexual Violence

My guess is simply seeing the words “Sexual Assualt” in this title have stirred many of you to anger or concern. I am aware that anything which is said on a topic such as this will be a lightning rod for controversy. Nonetheless I feel that I cannot let it go unaddressed and so in the following paragraphs I will discuss the issue and hopefully add something new to the conversation we as a society are having.

So what is there to be said? Sexual Assault on Campus (which is the setting I’ll be focusing on here) is a lot like racism; all of the easy policy solutions have been taken. Much of the discussion involves commentators like myself calling for “robust policies” and “new approaches” as if the problem is some document or doctrine.

Likewise there is too much of a willingness to separate universities from society as a whole. Such ideas run headlong into the administrative complexity of modern society. If a student from one university sexually assaults a student from another institution we would most certainly categorize the offense as being “on campus” or related to that issue. Yet which institution should investigate or conduct disciplinary proceedings?

One of the sad failings of our modern society is how we seem to outsource important matters to private institutions. I think that it should not be a football league that is primarily responsible for punishing domestic abusers any more than I believe universities are best equipped to investigate rape. Society must take more responsibility for consoling victims, investigating incidents, and punishing wrongdoers. It is our society rather than any university or college that is in need of…um…a robust policy.