Saturday Miscellany

First, I think it’s more coincidence than causation, but on Wednesday I wrote about the Harvard student organizations that had signed an open letter to support Hamas. At the time I asked what impact this would have on their future job prospects. I suspected that future employers might well hold it against them.

No sooner than I had said it, but hedge fund tycoon Bill Ackman announced that he would never hire anyone who belonged to the organizations that had signed the letter. He asked to see a list of those who belonged to the groups. 

The reaction was swift. As more and more executives declared themselves on board with Ackman, others felt that he was being too hard on students.

Several student organizations removed their names from the list and more than a few student members resigned their membership.

Apparently, they were thinking like children. They did not understand that someone might hold them to account for their aberrant views.

Second, Ackman refused to change his position. When he as we all learned that the student members of the groups in question did not necessarily consent to the pro-Hamas statement, he said that they could exercise their option to put out a correction or to quit the groups.

In his words:

Claiming that you had no involvement or knowledge of the statement, but remaining a member of the organization without it withdrawing the statement is perhaps the worst of the alternatives, as it appears to simply be an attempt to avoid accountability while continuing to be a member of the organization. If you were managing a business, would you hire someone who blamed the despicable violent acts of a terrorist group on the victims? I don’t think so. Would you hire someone who was a member of a school club who issued a statement blaming lynchings by the KKK on their victims? I don’t think so. Would you want them to be an associate at your law firm? Of course not. It is not harassment to seek to understand the character of the candidates that you are considering for employment. In fact, as CEO, it is your obligation to do so on behalf of all of the other employees in your company, the clients and customers it serves, and all of your other stakeholders. I have heard that the above inquiry has made some members of the groups which put out the statement feel ‘unsafe,’ a word that is sadly overused in universities today. Ask yourself how unsafe it would feel in Israel beginning Saturday early morning and how unsafe it feels now? Ask yourself how unsafe your Jewish classmates feel when 32 clubs published a statement assigning sole responsibility for the heinous, deathly acts of terrorists to Israel and the Jews? Experience is making mistakes and learning from them. If you have made a mistake, acknowledge it, and immediately correct your mistaken actions. Public statements made by organizations of which you are a member can have a material negative impact on your reputation. I have learned from experience that the best time to fix a mistake is now.

Yes, indeed, reputation does matter.

Third, Tristan Hopper reminded us on Twitter that the Canadian government of Justin Trudeau has been treating Jews as part of the white supremacist cabal.

He write:

This is probably a good time to mention that the Trudeau government has subjected much of the civil service to mandatory training rooted in dogma holding that Jews are "beneficiaries" of white supremacy and thus an oppressor group.

Fourth, Hussein Aboubak wrote this on his Twitter:

Just a reminder that for four days now you have been watching people justifying mass murder. Nearly all the loudest voices trying to do so are coming from institutions of knowledge. This is how the Holocaust happened. It wasn't hillbilly white supremacists.

Heck, it wasn’t even white Christian Republicans.

Fifth, as for Black Lives Matter, they were happily endorsing anti-Semitism, well before last Saturday.

In 2015 BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors called for the destruction of Israel:

“Palestine is our generation’s South Africa,” she said. “If we don’t step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project called Israel, we’re doomed.”

Sixth, Nellie Bowles wrote this satirical commentary on her TGIF column from The Free Press. Consider it a critique of intersectionality. She was opining about the relationship between the Democratic Socialists of America, a very vocal supporter of Hamas terrorism and other branches of the radical left:

The obvious new symbol for members of the Democratic Socialists of America is a Hamas soldier. I can’t believe I never thought of it myself. Who would respect your pronouns more than a Hamas paraglider? Who would agree with the progressive prosecutor movement more than a Hamas paraglider? Hamas paragliders wait to be called out and called in. When I think of straight allies who support my gay rights and dignity, I obviously think of Hamas paragliders. This Is What A Feminist Looks Like (hint: it’s a Hamas paraglider, dummy!). Strong, rebellious, and arriving with panache to do an ethnic cleansing of the Jews? The Hamas paraglider has it all for the modern American left. 

Seventh, and then there is the case of Andrew Tate, a man who unfortunately has been lauded by certain conservatives. He was labeled a conservative influencer. He wrote this on his Twitter account:

Israel forced 5 vaccines in everyone’s arm. Forced. Rather live in Palestine and own my blood. Allah Akbar.

It is well past time to jettison Andrew Tate.

Eighth, the most recent results from the ACT college admissions tests shows that high school students are doing worse than ever.  

New data on ACT college admissions tests shows high school students' scores have plunged to the lowest in over three decades.

According to data published by ACT, the nonprofit organization that administers the college readiness exam, the average composite score on the ACT test fell to 19.5 for the class of 2023, a decline of .3 points from 2022. 

Ninth, in the world of mental health, America is not exactly thriving.  According to JAMA Pediatrics, 1 out of every 5 teenagers had major depressive disorder. But, less than half of them received treatment.

This assumes that effective treatment is available. True enough, some medication works wondes, but talk therapy and other forms of touchy-feely treatments are notably ineffective.

Tenth, as I pointed out above and as I have been arguing for many years now, the quality of therapy on offer is sub par. Now, we have more evidence, from The New York Post. Apparently, New Yorkers are trading their therapists for psychics. It’s not a rousing endorsement of the field. One suspects that the discarded therapists are all licensed professionals. Go figure.

Some New York area residents are fed up with their therapists, ditching their shrinks for psychics who give them “real” guidance instead.

Aria D’Amore, 35, an artist and model living in Jersey City, was dissatisfied with therapy for nearly 30 years, so she decided to seek guidance from an intuitive healer practicing tarot and astrology.

“I just kind of gave up on therapy after a while because I don’t find it helpful,” D’Amore told The Post.

“Therapists are in no rush to get your problems figured out,” she added. “It drags on. It’s a very long process.”

In fact, D’Amore doesn’t think therapy is ideal “for many people” due to the “cost barrier.”

I am not hereby endorsing psychics. I count among those who believe that coaching is more effective than most forms of therapy.

Eleventh, since I wrote about the Obama factor in the current crisis in the Middle East, I will share Mark Hemingway’s analysis of Barack Obama’s attitude toward Israel and toward Jews. After all, it was one of the intellectual bases for his turn away from Israel and toward Iran. So we are within our rights to expose it.

Hemingway wrote this in an article for The Federalist:

I hardly believe Obama is such a monster he secretly roots for atrocities in Israel, even if it seems he’s never met an antisemite he would willingly disown. Regardless, there’s no doubt that these horrifying nationwide terror attacks in Israel are Obama’s legacy, a result of his arrogant anti-American ideology put into practice. But after the weekend, even Democratic partisans are scrambling to distance themselves from the Biden and Obama administrations’ ill-advised cozying up to Iran. Now we need to follow through and make sure the Obama-Biden foreign policy legacy, and the dangerous ideology that motivated it, is rejected and held up for the failure that it is.

Twelfth, consider this:

More than two-thirds of active duty service members are within the overweight or obese ranges of the body mass index, according to a report by the American Security Project released Thursday.

Defense Department data shows that the obesity rate, calculated using a person’s age, height and weight, has more than doubled over the past decade, from 10% to roughly 21%. At the same time, more than half of young Americans now qualify as obese, and it’s the no. 1 disqualifier for recruiting prospects.

Our country is in the best of hands. Besides, our military might not be combat ready, but it is diverse and inclusive.

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