War on Universities, Lawyers & Expertise

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superrific said:
A bit of knowledge might help. There's a reason why the "overhead" costs are high. If you don't understand -- which it seems clear that you don't -- then why are you participating? You should be asking questions.

What Dunning-Kruger idiots like you don't understand is that your ignorance is like a fucking disco ball. Anyone who knows anything about the topic can see that you know shit. It's because you have no idea what you don't know. I did that once during the CA wildfires. I got too carried away talking about a few things I do know (like gravity) that I started talking about shit I didn't know. And somebody who did know could immediately see -- like right away -- that I was talking out of my ass. He pointed it out, and unlike you, I stopped because I realized I had gotten way over my skis. Generally speaking, though, I do a very good job of talking about what I know and asking questions about what I don't.
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Also, there was that time when you were talking about PDEs :)
 
stankeylegjones said:
I know, I was just fucking around.
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I'll give you one thing: we had been talking about relativity versus quantum in terms of elegance. I like QED and QCD, think they are elegant. But the weak force is fucking ugly. No argument there. I never really learned the weak force, and I've been reading about it more over the past month. I don't think weak force should impugn the elegance of the entire theory, but it is certainly a slog.
 
superrific said:
I'll give you one thing: we had been talking about relativity versus quantum in terms of elegance. I like QED and QCD, think they are elegant. But the weak force is fucking ugly. No argument there. I never really learned the weak force, and I've been reading about it more over the past month. I don't think weak force should impugn the elegance of the entire theory, but it is certainly a slog.
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Kaku likes to describe the standard model as supergluing together a tiger, an elephant, and a bear (or three other animals of your choosing). I completely agree with him. I never really found an appreciation for it...too many parameters that must be set by experimental data, rather than coming out from first principles. It does, however, describe nature to a very high precision.
 
nycfan said:


“[describes government oversight of the leading universities in Egypt and Turkey undermining the quality of those universities] …

This sorry condition of major universities in the Middle East should be a warning to everyone who cares about higher education in the United States, American competitiveness, and U.S. soft power. There is no other country whose universities can keep up with the pace-setting, world-class nature of those in the United States, whose faculties and students can (until recently) pursue knowledge without fear of state interference.

The quality of American higher education built and nurtured on the principles of free inquiry is the reason why people all over the world want to send their kids to college in America.

Three of Erdogan’s children went to Indiana University. In Jeddah, it is hard to find a member of the Saudi business elite who has not attended UCLA or USC, and there are a noticeable number of Harvard, Yale, and Tufts graduates in Riyadh. When I was studying for my doctorate at Penn, there was an army of Turkish and East Asian students in attendance.

… All that said, any objective observation of what has gone down on campuses over the last 18 months makes clear that American universities have a range of problems, many of which are their own making. The stories of timorous leadership, rank antisemitism, left-wing dogmatism, and political activism masquerading as research are well-known by now. It seems that a large number of graduates are credentialed but are neither well-educated nor curious about the world—steeped as they are in the moral absolutism of contemporary pedagogy.

These are real problems, but, of course, the news stories and commentary about campus excess purposefully overlook how universities are critical to the development and understanding of artificial intelligence, discovering cures for various forms of cancer, developing a vaccine for AIDS, advancing quantum computing, understanding de-democratization, and gaining insight into ancient civilizations, to name a few random and notable examples.

In its zeal to punish universities and establish control over them, Team Trump—which is chock-full of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other elite school grads—is risking current and future achievements, inventions, and innovations. …”
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It's all about control of information and preserving alternate realities created by the Mad King.

Universities and the Press have the ability and duty in a free society to provide information, data, and discourse. They also spur progress (technology, medial therapeutics, societal) and the facts to make rational public policy decision.

All of this interferes with the Mad King's whims (and the attention they provide) which is going soooooo well.

As the Mad King is a narcissist and nihilist he really doesn't care
 
donbosco said:
Rutgers is proposing collective action for the Big Ten.

Resolution to Establish a Mutual Defense Compact for the Universities of the Big Ten Academic Alliance in Defense of Academic Freedom, Institutional Integrity, and the Research Enterprise - Rutgers University Senate

senate.rutgers.edu senate.rutgers.edu



Resolution to Establish a Mutual Defense Compact for the Universities of the Big Ten Academic Alliance in Defense of Academic Freedom, Institutional Integrity, and the Research Enterprise


Whereas, recent and escalating politically motivated actions by governmental bodies pose a significant threat to the foundational principles of American higher education, including the autonomy of university governance, the integrity of scientific research, and the protection of free speech;


Whereas, the Trump administration and aligned political actors have signaled a willingness to target individual institutions with legal, financial, and political incursion designed to undermine their public mission, silence dissenting voices, and/or exert improper control over academic inquiry;


Whereas, the Big Ten Academic Alliance represents not only athletic competition but also a longstanding tradition of academic collaboration, research excellence, and commitment to democratic values and shared governance; Whereas, the Big Ten Academic Alliance includes 18 universities with thousands of instructors serving over 600,000 students;


Whereas, the preservation of one institution’s integrity is the concern of all, and an infringement against one member university of the Big Ten shall be considered an infringement against all;


Be it resolved that, the Rutgers University Senate urges the President of Rutgers University to formally propose and help establish a Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC) among all members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance;


Be it further resolved that, under this compact, all participating institutions shall commit meaningful funding to a shared or distributed defense fund. This fund shall be used to provide immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement;


Be it further resolved that, participating institutions shall make available, at the request of the institution under direct political infringement, the services of their legal counsel, governance experts, and public affairs offices to coordinate a unified and vigorous response, including but not limited to: Legal representation and countersuit actions; strategic public communication; amicus briefs and expert testimony; legislative advocacy and coalition-building; related topical research as needed.


Be it finally resolved that, this resolution be transmitted to the leadership of all Big Ten universities and their respective governing boards and shared governance bodies, and that the President of Rutgers University take a leading role in convening a summit of Big Ten academic and legal leadership to initiate the implementation of this Compact.


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Don't all entities that receive government money also receive government oversight? Is this just a question of degrees of oversight?
 
superrific said:
No, they do not. They can be required to account for the funds they receive. They cannot be "overseen" by the government to the extent that word has any meaning.

I thought you were a libertarian. Geez.
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Maybe not oversight, but requirements for doing business with the government. I believe that past administrations had a requirement for minority employee percentage in order to do business with the government.

I do lean libertarian in a lot of ways, but there is a clear chasm between what I want and what is reality. The libertarian part of me would just be constantly saying the government shouldn't be funding this, the government shouldn't be funding that, the government shouldn't be funding that either...
 
My husband and I were discussing this very thing over the weekend, the way the zeal and rhetoric of the second Trump administration is starting to feel like a MAGA brand version of China’s cultural revolution.

GIFT 🎁 🔗—> Trump Has Found His Class Enemy

IMG_6374.jpeg


“… They [capitulating. Ig Law and Universities] assume that he [Trump] merely craves gestures of submission—and that once obeisance has been paid, he will move on to his next target.

That, however, underestimates the social revolution that the Trump administration is trying to unleash. Its goal isn’t just to shatter a few institutions. It intends to crush the power and authority of whole professions, to severely weaken, if not purge, a social class.

The target of the administration’s campaign is a stratum of society that’s sometimes called the professional managerial class, or the PMC, although there’s not one universal moniker that MAGA applies to the group it is now crushing. That group includes society’s knowledge workers, its cognitive elite, the winners of the tournament that is the American meritocracy. It covers not only lawyers, university administrators, and professors, but also consultants, investment bankers, scientists, journalists, and other white-collar workers who have prospered in the information age.

Back in the 1990s, as the group began to emerge in its current form, the liberal economics commentator Robert Reich hailed its members as “symbolic analysts”—people who identify and solve problems by thinking through ideas rather than via physical labor. A decade later, the urbanist Richard Florida put forth an even more triumphalist term: the “creative class.” That is, its members had the academic training to master the complexities of a globalized economy, the intellectual skills to conquer the digital world. …”
 
nycfan said:
My husband and I were discussing this very thing over the weekend, the way the zeal and rhetoric of the second Trump administration is starting to feel like a MAGA brand version of China’s cultural revolution.

GIFT 🎁 🔗—> Trump Has Found His Class Enemy

IMG_6374.jpeg


“… They [capitulating. Ig Law and Universities] assume that he [Trump] merely craves gestures of submission—and that once obeisance has been paid, he will move on to his next target.

That, however, underestimates the social revolution that the Trump administration is trying to unleash. Its goal isn’t just to shatter a few institutions. It intends to crush the power and authority of whole professions, to severely weaken, if not purge, a social class.

The target of the administration’s campaign is a stratum of society that’s sometimes called the professional managerial class, or the PMC, although there’s not one universal moniker that MAGA applies to the group it is now crushing. That group includes society’s knowledge workers, its cognitive elite, the winners of the tournament that is the American meritocracy. It covers not only lawyers, university administrators, and professors, but also consultants, investment bankers, scientists, journalists, and other white-collar workers who have prospered in the information age.

Back in the 1990s, as the group began to emerge in its current form, the liberal economics commentator Robert Reich hailed its members as “symbolic analysts”—people who identify and solve problems by thinking through ideas rather than via physical labor. A decade later, the urbanist Richard Florida put forth an even more triumphalist term: the “creative class.” That is, its members had the academic training to master the complexities of a globalized economy, the intellectual skills to conquer the digital world. …”
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“…Rather than merely replacing its ideological foes—by installing its own appointees in federal agencies—the administration is bent on destroying their institutional homes, and the basis for their livelihood.

That’s the lesson of the Department of Government Efficiency. In short order, DOGE has engaged in mass firings—sweeping attacks on the civil service as an autonomous bastion of power.

The administration has moved to uproot the diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy that sprawls across corporations and nonprofits. Although the federal government cannot crush entire universities and law firms outright, Trump has attempted to undermine their business models.

… In its strange inversion of American politics, the Trump administration has come far closer to executing a Marxist theory of power than any of its progressive predecessors. It has waged class warfare, not against billionaires but against a far more ubiquitous enemy. And it has done so with a certainty that justifies terrible excesses, a desire to purge that it has only just begun to realize. …”
 
nycfan said:
“…Rather than merely replacing its ideological foes—by installing its own appointees in federal agencies—the administration is bent on destroying their institutional homes, and the basis for their livelihood.

That’s the lesson of the Department of Government Efficiency. In short order, DOGE has engaged in mass firings—sweeping attacks on the civil service as an autonomous bastion of power.

The administration has moved to uproot the diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy that sprawls across corporations and nonprofits. Although the federal government cannot crush entire universities and law firms outright, Trump has attempted to undermine their business models.

… In its strange inversion of American politics, the Trump administration has come far closer to executing a Marxist theory of power than any of its progressive predecessors. It has waged class warfare, not against billionaires but against a far more ubiquitous enemy. And it has done so with a certainty that justifies terrible excesses, a desire to purge that it has only just begun to realize. …”
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“…In the 1930s, the political theorist James Burnham was a disciple of the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Burnham absorbed Trotsky’s core complaint with the Soviet Union: that it had been hijacked by a clique of bureaucrats who tended to their own interests at the expense of society, and had veered from the righteous path.

… [Burnham’s anti-Soviet politics had no place on the American Marxist left of the time, so he turned right wing, although he] retained a strain of his former idol’s old analysis. Nearly everywhere he turned, he saw the danger of a domineering bureaucratic caste, even in the United States, the heart of the free-market economy.

In his 1941 book, The Managerial Revolution, Burnham argued that within the American corporation, power actually resided with managers, … [and the] same dynamic held in government. It was bureaucrats, not members of Congress, who determined the path of democracy. The bureaucrats were an authoritarian cabal in the making.

The book became an unlikely hit, selling more than 100,000 copies. Burnham’s critique of the managerial elite also became a canonical text for young conservatives such as Buckley. Over time, Burnham’s idea thrived and morphed to keep pace with the zeitgeist.

… The other development was COVID-19. At the behest of public-health authorities, societies ground to a halt.

The shutdown exposed the entitlements of life in the PMC, whose members holed up in their homes, streaming movies and baking bread, as others exposed themselves to the disease in the course of packing meat and delivering groceries.

The opinions issued by the likes of Anthony Fauci became the basis for a new gripe: that arrogant experts were using a once-in-a-century pandemic as a pretext for stifling reasonable policy debate and exerting their own control over the country.

Many titans of Silicon Valley, not just Thiel, were attracted to this critique, although they were arguably members of the PMC themselves, or at least had attended elite universities and frequented fancy conferences in mountain resorts.

But they resented how the underlings in their own companies forced them to adopt progressive politics as corporate policy. And as engineers, who believed in the gospel of tinkering, they never considered themselves card-carrying members of the PMC establishment. …”
 
nycfan said:
“…In the 1930s, the political theorist James Burnham was a disciple of the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Burnham absorbed Trotsky’s core complaint with the Soviet Union: that it had been hijacked by a clique of bureaucrats who tended to their own interests at the expense of society, and had veered from the righteous path.

… [Burnham’s anti-Soviet politics had no place on the American Marxist left of the time, so he turned right wing, although he] retained a strain of his former idol’s old analysis. Nearly everywhere he turned, he saw the danger of a domineering bureaucratic caste, even in the United States, the heart of the free-market economy.

In his 1941 book, The Managerial Revolution, Burnham argued that within the American corporation, power actually resided with managers, … [and the] same dynamic held in government. It was bureaucrats, not members of Congress, who determined the path of democracy. The bureaucrats were an authoritarian cabal in the making.

The book became an unlikely hit, selling more than 100,000 copies. Burnham’s critique of the managerial elite also became a canonical text for young conservatives such as Buckley. Over time, Burnham’s idea thrived and morphed to keep pace with the zeitgeist.

… The other development was COVID-19. At the behest of public-health authorities, societies ground to a halt.

The shutdown exposed the entitlements of life in the PMC, whose members holed up in their homes, streaming movies and baking bread, as others exposed themselves to the disease in the course of packing meat and delivering groceries.

The opinions issued by the likes of Anthony Fauci became the basis for a new gripe: that arrogant experts were using a once-in-a-century pandemic as a pretext for stifling reasonable policy debate and exerting their own control over the country.

Many titans of Silicon Valley, not just Thiel, were attracted to this critique, although they were arguably members of the PMC themselves, or at least had attended elite universities and frequented fancy conferences in mountain resorts.

But they resented how the underlings in their own companies forced them to adopt progressive politics as corporate policy. And as engineers, who believed in the gospel of tinkering, they never considered themselves card-carrying members of the PMC establishment. …”
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“… Elon Musk, for one, adopted a Burnham-like disdain for the PMC as a business plan.

When he took over Twitter in 2022, he laid off 80 percentof the workforce… [a]s the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Antonio García Martínez put it, Musk was taking a stand against “the professional-managerial class regime that otherwise elsewhere dominates.”

Not only did he treat this caste with disdain; he implied that it was doomed to the dustbin of history, because its members’ functions could be so easily subsumed by artificial intelligence. A shared hatred of the PMC drew Musk to Trump, and the Twitter purge foreshadowed Musk’s approach in government.

… Contempt for the “unaccountable bureaucratic managerial class” was a dominant theme of Project 2025, the playbook produced by the Heritage Foundation.

… Hatred for the PMC burns so intensely that it becomes the justification for sacrificing research into cures for cancer and ignoring accumulated expertise about the workings of the economy.

In a way, Trump is practicing his very own form of Maoism, a cultural revolution against the intelligentsia—what the Communist Party of China memorably deemed the “stinking ninth”class.

Although Trump’s purges have been tame by comparison, there are parallels.

Like Trump, Mao wanted to create manufacturing jobs in the homeland. Defying expert opinion and shunning economic common sense, Mao launched his Great Leap Forward—a disastrously unsuccessful policy of rapid industrialization—in the late ’50s. During that period and the subsequent Cultural Revolution, he resorted to scapegoating his own PMC, especially the professoriate and other cultural elites. (“Better red than expert” was a rallying cry.) His minions subjected its members to public humiliation and horrifying violence; the state exiled members of the urban bourgeoisie to the countryside for reeducation.

It’s a stretch to imagine such a scenario unfolding on American soil. But voices in MAGA are floating versions of these ideas. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently told Tucker Carlson that fired federal workers could supply “the labor we need for new manufacturing.” That is reeducation, Trump-style.

The lesson of the Cultural Revolution is that purging the PMC culminates in economic stagnation at best. … the global economic turmoil that has followed Trump’s tariff announcements hints at the perils of banishing and stigmatizing expertise. This is the dark reality of the Trump project—a vision far more comprehensive, and therefore far more corrosive, than an autocratic president’s mere thirst for vengeance.“”
 
Exhibit A of MAGA Brand Maoism — Elon Musk:

IMG_6377.jpeg



Exhibit B — Russ Vought

www.propublica.org

“Put Them in Trauma”: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda

Private videos reveal Trump adviser Russ Vought’s “shadow” plans for using the military on protesters, defunding the EPA and villainizing civil servants.
www.propublica.org www.propublica.org

“… In private speeches delivered in 2023 and 2024, Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, described his work crafting legal justifications so that military leaders or government lawyers would not stop Trump’s executive actions.

He said the plans are a response to a “Marxist takeover” of the country; likened the moment to 1776 and 1860, when the country was at war or on the brink of it; and said the timing of Trump’s candidacy was a “gift of God.”

…“We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do,’” he said. Vought held up the summer 2020 unrest following George Floyd’s murder as an example of when Trump ought to have had the ability to deploy the armed forces but was stymied.
… Another priority, according to Vought, was to “defund” certain independent federal agencies and demonize career civil servants, which include scientists and subject matter experts.
… “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

“We want to put them in trauma.” …”

 
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