Harvard's 'Rebellious Daughter'

The wonderful thing about being a woman, wrote Agatha Christie, is to wonder what is going to happen to you next.

Curiously, the newly appointed President of Harvard, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust. feels the same way.  As Sara Rimer writes:

I’ve always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor — I never would have imagined that. Writing books — I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. — I’m not sure I would even have imagined that. I’ve lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened.

As described by Rimer, Dr. Faust fits perfectly into the liberal narrative.  Daughter of white Southern privilege, she rejected her past, marched in civil-rights marches, and became a feminist pioneer in the academy.  You can’t get any better than that.

If life sorta just happened to turn out right for Faust, that’s where happenstance ends.  She is going to make sure that things don’t sort of “just happen” for women at Harvard any more.

Asked Sunday whether her appointment signified the end of sex inequities at the university, Dr. Faust said: “Of course not. There is a lot of work still to be done, especially in the sciences.”

We can be sure that whatever that work is, it will not include “inclusion” for conservatives.  What was true in Boston for the Irish 150 years ago is certainly true in the university today: “Conservatives Need Not Apply.”

School Choice in Sweden: Who Knew?

For the last ten years in Sweden there is only one thing you can say about school choice.  It’s the law.

It must be the best-kept secret in education.  In other words, I never knew about it.  Not until I read about it last week in an article in the London Spectator (reg) that called for liberating schools in Britain.

Naturally, I blogged the article immediately.  But where could I get more information?

Google aside, where would you look?  I know where I would look.  I would look at the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation website.

What a surprise!  The Friedman Foundation has a white paper on the Swedish school-choice reforms, authored by Frederick Bergström and J. Michael Sandström (pdf here).

Here are the basic features of the Swedish reform:

• Independent schools and municipal schools are placed on an equal footing for funding.
• Any group can apply to open an independent school: non-profit, for-profit, religious.
• To get permission to open a new independent school you make an application to the National Agency of Education.  Few applications are turned down.  It is difficult for the local municipality to sustain an objection to a new school.
• No fees may be charged.
• The number of independent schools has quadrupled since 1992/93.  The market share of independent schools is now about 10 percent.
• Competition has improved the municipal schools.
• Teachers are happier in the independent schools.

Teachers are happier in the independent schools.  That could be a very big deal.  As Bersgström and Sandström write:

It should also be clear that teachers have no reason to fear school vouchers. To the contrary, when the choice of employer is not only between different municipalities but also between several independent schools, this seems to benefit teachers. Also, the working conditions in the independent schools appear to be superior to those in the municipal schools. This may be due to a less bureaucratic structure of the former.

 School-choice advocates should pay close attention to this.  We don’t know what is important to US teachers, but the chances are that they would appreciate improvement in working conditions—in the way they are treated—over more material things like money.

Right now teachers are being led by their unions to oppose school reform to the death.

But sooner or later teachers are going to find out from their friends that they might like teaching in an independent school.

Then we will start to see the wall of defiance start to break down.

And then, perhaps, parents in the United States will win the freedom to send their children to the school of their choice.

Profits and People Go Together

You know everything you need to know about Larry Kudlow from his reaction to the recent announcement of ExxonMobil's profits.

ExxonMobil just reported the largest annual profit ever by a U.S. company — a staggering $39.5 billion.

I say congratulations

Well, he would say that wouldn’t he. Kudlow is a Wall Street guy.

You know everything you need to know about Hillary Clinton from her reaction to the news of ExxonMobil’s profits.

At the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee, the senator from New York said, “The oil companies reported the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits and I want to put them in an alternative energy fund.”

Still planning to vote for her?  Think of what she is saying.

“I want to take those profits.” 

Boy oh boy.  After living down her aborted plan to nationalize 14 percent of the nation’s economy she doesn’t seem to have learned anything.

What happened to private property? What happened to limited government?

“I want to put them in an alternative energy fund.”

There’s a lot of malarkey talked about alternative energy.  So far, it is expensive energy favored by, and likely to benefit, only liberals and farmers.  From a practical point of view, just to keep them off our backs, it seems reasonable to give liberals some play money so they can build wind farms in the high Sierras — but not in sight of Ted Kennedy’s compound in Hyannisport.  And why not pay some farmers to grow switchgrass on the High Plains?

But to talk of taking oil company profits and putting them in an alternative energy fund — well, that strips the veil of the alternative energy game.  It reveals it for what it is: Yet another Democratic plan for patronage, privilege, and subsidies.

But let’s get back to ExxonMobil.  As Kudlow points out, ExxonMobil made $377 billion in sales; paid taxes of $100 billion; reported profits of $40 billion.

So, for Hillary Clinton, presumably, taxes of 25 percent of sales isn’t enough.

Still planning to vote for Hillary Clinton?

Let’s get this straight.  A corporation that makes a profit is a corporation that is using resources wisely.  A corporation that reports a loss is a corporation that is wasting valuable natural and human resources.

Hillary Clinton wants to turn ExxonMobil’s profit into a loss.

Richard Feynman, Kantian

Last week there was a bit of a flap over global warming.  The lefty Guardian reported, according to Nick Schulz

"Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study."

 Yes, apparently the American Enterprise Institute had actually offered money for papers by scientists on global warming.  The call for papers didn’t actually say that the scientists were expected to act as global-warming “deniers.”

The call for papers by AEI explicitly states that "The purpose of this project is to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC process, especially as it bears on potential policy responses to climate change."

But hey, you think we lefties are dumb or something?  We can read between the lines and detect a conflict-of-interest better than most!

But Nick Schulz took the opportunity to deliver a little homily about the uncertainty of science.  He quoted Richard Feynman:

All scientific knowledge is uncertain.

Not some knowledge.  Not most knowledge.  All knowledge.  So when we talk about a scientific “consensus” on global warming, how exactly does that mesh with the idea that “all scientific knowledge is uncertain?”

This idea about the uncertainty of knowledge began with the doubting of Descartes and reached its modern fortissimo with Kant, who famously asserted that we could never know “things-in-themselves.”  All we can know is appearances.  And the question Kant raised was: Given the limitation of our human senses, how do we know that we are getting the whole story when we sense an appearance?

Significantly, it was shortly after Kant formulated his radical new philosophy that mankind discovered that the visible light with which we look at the world was a tiny octave in the vast “invisible” electromagnetic spectrum.  Then there was that smart Jewish kid from Ulm.  You know what he came up with.

When discovering something as radical as that, it helps to start with the concept that all knowledge is uncertain.

Let us review the Feynman quotation in full:

All scientific knowledge is uncertain. This experience with doubt and uncertainty is important. I believe that it is of very great value, and one that extends beyond the sciences. I believe that to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. You have to permit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right. Otherwise, if you have made up your mind already, you might not solve it.

Here’s a bit of uncertainty for you.  It appears that sunspot activity is at a thousand year high right now.  It was at a Maunder minimum, with almost no sunspots, back in the 17th century.  Remember?  That was during the Little Ice Age. 

Yeah.  Go ahead and check it out on Wikipedia.

If School Choice Can Work in Sweden...

While we Yanks and the Brits agonize over school choice last-ditch union leaders like Randi Weingarten hiss about people who don’t care about kids.  But the socialist Swedes have gone ahead on school choice anyway. As Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth write:

Those denouncing the [school-voucher] system as the product of discredited right-wing ideology will have difficulty explaining its success in Sweden, arguably the most socialist country in the developed world. School vouchers were proposed in 1991 by its shortlived Conservative government, yet the scheme proved so popular that it has been preserved and expanded by the Social Democrats.

Sweden’s conservatives had no real plans on how to implement school choice.  But it turned out that they didn’t need to.  But they went ahead anyway.

To their astonishment, take-up was huge. They had unwittingly harnessed one of the strongest forces in civil society: parents’ determination to do what is best for their child.

 And now, of course, every government school principal and every government teacher in Sweden knows that a dissatisfied parent can leave tomorrow.  Just like a dissatisfied customer at Wal-Mart.

Freedom to set up a school is enshrined in the Dutch constitution [no kidding!], and today two in three state-funded schools are privately run. This bottom-up approach means more, smaller schools: the average school roll is 200 in Sweden and 190 in the Netherlands. In England it is 890 and rising: closures are running at the level of 120 schools a year.

Think of that.  Lots of little schools all over the place.  Mothers could walk their kids to the school on the corner, and if they didn’t like the nearest school they could go to another one.  What a concept!

Come on America! What are we waiting for?

Compassionate Democrats Love Lavish

Does it really matter that presidential candidate John Edwards, whose campaign centers on a Two Americas narrative about rich and poor, has just built a lavish mansion reaching the imperial size of 27,000 sq ft?

Not really.  As Mike Baker points out, we are really missing the point. 

After introducing their new home on her husband’s campaign Web site, Elizabeth Edwards explained the couple had taken special precautions to make the house energy efficient &3151; keeping in line with Edwards’ environmental platform.

So that’s all right.  Still, as efficient as it no doubt is, I doubt if I could afford the energy bills.  28,000 sq ft is a lotta space to keep warm in the winter and cool in the sweltering North Carolina summers.

And what about Grandma Nancy Pelosi.  Apparently her needs for air transportation are somewhat larger than former Speaker Denny Hastert.  And according to Fox News she blames the Bush administration for “publicly mischaracterizing her need for a larger military aircraft to travel back and forth from the West coast.”

Old Denny used to tool around in a government C-20.  That’s the military version of a Gulfstream III that seats 10-12 people.  But the C-20 may not have the range to get to California without refueling.  And that would be a security risk.  Anyway how big of a plane does Pelosi want?  According to ABC News:

Various Republican officials in recent days have claimed that Pelosi has requested a C-32 plane for her travels -- a luxurious and specially configured version of the Boeing 757-200 commercial intercontinental airliner. The plane seats 45 passengers with business-class accommodations and a crew of up to 16, depending on the mission. It features a communications center, a fully enclosed stateroom for the primary passenger, a changing area, a conference facility, an entertainment system, and a convertible divan that seats three and folds out to a bed. The C-32 can cost as much as $22,000 an hour to operate. It’s normally used by the first lady, the vice president, Cabinet officials and members of Congress upon request.

There is only one way to characterize the behavior of the various Republican officials: mean-spirited.

Of course it is true that the gas-guzzling house of John Edwards and the gaz-guzzling plane for Speaker Pelosi hardly fit the imaage of a party that believes that Americans are far too wasteful and that global warming is going to put us under water and do for us all.

But the “little people” have never begrudged their leaders a little luxury.  They do draw the line when it comes to businessmen and Republicans, however.

 And rightly so.

The New "A" Word

Who knew?  Be very careful who you call “articulate.”  Because they might be offended.  Or at least their political supporters might be offended.

Certainly someone who feels that they are overdue for a “talking-head” appearance might be offended.

Anyway.  There’s another important thing for you to know so that you can pass as enlightened and bien-pensant.  Here it is:

Don’t call any prominent African American like Senator Barack Obama (or is it person of color, today) “articulate.”  Bad form old chap.  That goes for you Senator Biden and you President Bush.

As you might expect, professional African American Clarence Page is all in a twitter.  He thinks that while average folks might rate the “articulate” firestorm as 2 on a scale of 1 to 10, “with many black Americans, it’s a very strong 2.”  What’s needed is some pompous pundit-speak:

[P]residential campaigns can be teachable moments in the long saga of American history. It is a time for Americans to learn more about their fellow Americans as we choose someone to lead us. We shouldn’t be afraid to talk to each other. Just don’t forget to listen.

That will be the day.

Conservative Jonah Goldberg is just fed up.

I think complaints from elite blacks about the overuse of the word "articulate" are well-taken to a point. However, not only is it not the code word some are making it out to be, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and even Biden himself are routinely described as "articulate," and President Bush is relentlessly dubbed "inarticulate," yet nobody thinks that means he’s being called "black."

 Yeah.  But don’t make the mistake of treating Hillary as just one of the guys, Jonah.  Remember what happened to Rick Lazio?