In this latest nine-minute comedy/news bit from Bill Maher’s “Real Time,” a show that included Rahm Emanuel and Fareed Zakaria, Maher suggests who the Dems should run for President and Vice-President in 2028.
Ths clip, called “New Rule: The next Democratic Star” proffers a solution to the waning popularity of the Democratic Party and the increasing desire of its members to move to the center. Maher suggests John Fetterman as a potential Prez, because he comes off as someone who understands the average American. He also notes that Fetterman shares some of the features that helped Trump win, the most important being “authenticity, balls, and charisma.”
Yes, Fetterman had a stroke and suffers from depression, but Trump is unhealthy and suffers from narcissism. Fetterman, however, has sensible and potentially winnable political views; as Maher says, “Fetterman says the four words that strike fear into the heart of every Republican who wants to hang onto power: ‘I am not woke’.”
Maher also suggests Mayor Pete as a possible VP candidate, and I’m for that, too. (He notes that a disabled President combined with a gay VP surely checks as many intersectionality boxes as one person of color.) If not Mayor Pete, than Gretchen Whitmer.
This is a very good one; watch it!
Barnard College was founded in 1889 as a woman’s school because only men were allowed in the nearby Columbia University. Now the two institutions are affiliated and share considerable resources, including classes and dining halls. Barnard students also get their diplomas from Columbia University.
As you may know, three Barnard students were expelled this month for sit-ins in University buildings, and the expulsions are, so far, still in force. Because of that, a passel of pro-Palestinian protestors of unknown origin held their own illegal sit-in in Barnard’s Milbank Hall, a sit-in that included vandalism. And students also marched on Columbia University, injuring one worker and also committing vandalism. In neither of these last two cases were any protestors punished.
Over the last two years, Columbia has been an epicenter of pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic activity, so much so that the HHS has decided to review Columbia’s federal funding in light of their accused violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting “discriminationon the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.” (There’s a whole Wikipedia article on “Antisemitism at Columbia University,” a practice that goes back nearly 100 years but of course has ramped up since the Gaza War. Before she resigned as President of Columbia, Minouche Shafik created a Task Force on Antisemitism, but, given their laxity towards protestors who violated Columbia’s rules, I’m not expecting much from it. All I can say is that if I were a Jewish parent or student, even a secular one, I wouldn’t ever send my kids to either Barnard or Columbia, not only because of their pervasive antisemitism but also because loud and illegal demonstrations are constantly interrupting academic activities.
Columbia is also uber-woke, which is another reason to avoid it, since it practices indoctrination of students. To see how it works, let’s just look at one ideologically-based department, Women’s Gender and Sexuality studies. Click on icon below to see some stuff about it:
Here are two of the three pictures on the front page. I don’t think this department is going to abide by institutional neutrality! (There is of course no pro-Israel photo.)
As the reader who sent this to me said:
I guess the “Inclusive” part of DEI at the school does not include Jews or white males. But yeah — AAUP opposes institutional neutrality, arguing that it violates the academic freedom of departments to express their communal voice.
And on that front page, check out the articles.
Spotlight on Faculty Research:
Neferti Tadiar, “Why the Question of Palestine is a Feminist Concern”: “During our weeklong investigative trip, we were witness to multiple and varied testimonies to and clear evidence of the daily acts of violence, harassment and humiliation that Palestinians are subjected to, both massive and intimate.” Read the full article here.
See also: Neferti Tadiar, “Powers of Defending Freedom”
I’d suggest checking out Tadiar’s article for a real word salad that ignores the fact that Palestine, like many Arab countries, is explicitly anti-feminist. Dr. Tadiar, who is head of this department, includes this as the closing of her essay:
Ultimately, however, what makes the question of Palestine a feminist concern does not rest on any one of these analytical perspectives or points of critique. It rests rather on the connections that the oppression and struggle of Palestinians enables us to draw across those differences on which the oppression depends and that the question as it is now posed presumes. It is a feminist concern because it calls us to forge new relations beyond the province of interests and inherited forms of social belonging to which we might have become tethered and, for those of us not already called, to feel the suffering and aspirations of Palestinians as also our own. The strangulation of Palestinian life is, after all, not the accomplishment of one aberrant state, inasmuch as the latter is supported by a global economy and geopolitical order, which condemns certain social groups and strata to the status of absolutely redundant, surplus populations – an order of insatiable accumulation and destruction that affects all planetary life. The question of Palestine is thus an urgent question of a just and equitable future that is both specific to this context and to this people, and a general and paradigmatic global concern. To take a stand in solidarity with and to be involved in the struggle of Palestinians to resist and transform the conditions of their own dispossession and disposability – to join in their aspiration for collective freedom and self-determination – is also to participate in the remaking of global life, which cannot but be a paramount feminist act.
Also, have a look at the course offerings, which are heavily larded with Social Justice, though I do note one course on “Contemporary American Women’s Jewish Literature.” The rest of the courses comprise a farrago of courses with explicitly political aims, concentrating on victims.
But I wonder what kind of job a graduate in this department is suited for. I can think of only two: to become an academic in a similar department elsewhere, or go to work for a DEI organization.