Saturday Miscellany

First, it took them far too long, but the Biden administration has joined with other world leaders in calling for Hamas to release the hostages they have been holding for some 6 months now.

The Daily Mail has the story:

President Joe Biden joined leaders from 17 other countries on Thursday in calling on Hamas to release all the hostages being held in Gaza.

All of the countries have citizens being held hostage by Hamas. In addition to demanding their release, the leaders call for an 'immediate and prolong ceasefire.'

'We call for the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas and Gaza, now for over 200 days,' the leaders say. 'They include our citizens. The fate of the hostages and the civilian population in Gaza, who are protected under international law, is of international concern.'

'We emphasize that the deal on the table to release the hostages would bring an immediate and prolonged ceasefire in Gaza, that would facilitate a surge of additional necessary humanitarian assistance to be delivered throughout Gaza, and lead to the credible end of hostilities.'

As of early April, 133 hostages remained in captivity in the Gaza Strip.

Surely, these dumbass world leaders did not really believe that Hamas really wanted a ceasefire and humanitarian assistance. As long as these leaders were trashing the Israelis, Hamas concluded that they were winning and that Joe Biden had their back.

Second, you remember the pier that we are building in Southern Gaza, the better to facilitate the transport of humanitarian assistance for the human shields held by Hamas.

Well, Ryan Saavedra has reported that Hamas has greeted the construction with a round of artillery shells:

Palestinian terrorists fired mortar shells at a pier that is being constructed by U.S. forces to bring aid into Gaza The mortar attack occurred as United Nations officials were touring the site with Israeli troops on the coast of central Gaza, the IDF says in response to a query on the incident. The IDF says the UN officials were rushed to a shelter by troops amid the attack. A Hamas official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the militant group will resist any foreign military presence involved with the port project.

Third, on the campus front of the war against terrorism, we learn that the president of Columbia University has a rather sketchy academic publication history:

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak reports:

Nemat Shafik - @Columbia Prez only has 1 well-cited publication in her life, in Oxford Econ Papers 1994. This paper is lifted almost entirely from a 1992 report coauthored with consultant not credited in the publication. This is wholesale intellectual theft, not subtle plagiarism.

Reminds you of Claudine Gay, doesn’t it.

Fourth, on this score I have hardly been derelict. As it happens, the more America’s great academic institutions become war zones, the more America’s corporate chieftains and hedge fund tycoons are ceasing to recruit from them.

These young people are destroying the value of their diplomas. Apparently, they are not as smart as we thought they were.

The New York Post has the story:

The violent, antisemitic protests at some of the nation’s elite colleges has forced top corporate recruiters to assess the quality of the education dispensed at these places — and whether they should look elsewhere for job candidates, the Post has learned.

Activist investor Daniel Loeb, a Columbia University graduate, has begun to reconsider whether to focus offering jobs at his hedge fund to fellow alums and other Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Penn amid their tepid responses to the protests on their campuses, he told The Post.

The anti-Israel protests now at Columbia, and throughout some of the country’s once revered, top-tiered universities are tarnishing degrees from these places, these people say.

At issue: Can schools that rationalize non-stop protests while allowing course curriculum that imbibes students with a leftist interpretations of world events be trusted to produce quality job candidates?

The re-evaluation of the elite-school degree comes amid a broader crackdown on strident political dissent in the office environment. 

Now, recruiters say, many that haven’t tapped down on violent protesters or moved their curriculum away from “woke” core courses are paying the price in terms of the perceived diminished value of the degrees they are handing out when students begin to look for jobs.

Now, that Ivy League degree is going to become an impediment.

Fifth, I have occasionally remarked that the bloom is coming off the feminist rose. Women are asking themselves whether feminism really helped them.

Now, Petronella Wyatt-- formerly the girlfriend of one Boris Johnson-- asks the hard question in the Telegraph:

Where, for instance, does it [feminism] leave women like me, when we have reached the age of 54, as I have, and find ourselves both single and childless? Hugging the collected works of Proust, or engaging in furtive sojourns to the pub that bring remembrances of things pissed? One in 10 British women in their 50s have never married and live alone, which is neither pleasant nor healthy. 

Wyatt identifies the problem:

Feminism made the error of telling us to behave and think like men. This error was a grave one, and women like myself are paying for it, like gamblers in a casino that has been fixed. We are not men, and in living the single life, with its casual encounters, we play for much higher stakes and have more to lose. I wish I had not been taught to throw the dice so high. Even Shakespeare’s princes needed someone to look after them in their old age.

Sixth, Louis Gerstner, formerly of IBM, argues that a budding corporate executive cannot learn how to manage when he is working remotely. For those who have not been following my numerous expressions of doubt about the value of remote work, here is another better informed opinion, from the Wall Street Journal:

The class of employees for whom working in a solitary setting is highly detrimental is people who aspire to lead or manage others in an academic, nonprofit, governmental or business institution. One learns how to manage and lead principally by watching others demonstrate how—or how not—to do so.

He continues:

Another skill you can’t learn sitting at home is motivating others to reach for success. Leadership involves getting people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. This requires articulating and continually reinforcing an external purpose and a visceral sense of teamwork. It isn’t a cold digital process; it is a human and at times personal connection with all the members of your team. It manifests itself in immediate and constructive feedback. None of us are born with these skills, nor are we conditioned or trained to do them well. Watching others who have successfully developed this leadership capacity is, in my mind, the singular way to learn it. There are, of course, many other skills that are learned “on the job” principally by watching others demonstrate them. We also learn a lot by failure—not only our own but that of others.

Seventh, large numbers of Americans believe that illegal migration is a major problem. More and more of them support the idea of mass deportation.

David Strom reports:

Axios commissioned a Harris poll and discovered something unsurprising, even if the establishment was shocked. 

Americans support mass deportations of illegal aliens. I suspect they would support mass deportations of some legal aliens who express anti-American views as well, come to think of it. 

Eighth, Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Virginia used to be the top ranked high school in the nation. Then, the grandees who run the place decided that it needed more diversity and inclusion. They decided to dispense with the test driven admissions criteria, thus reducing the number of Asian students. The result, from Number 1 to Number 14.

The Coalition for TJ; Fighting for Merit reports:

TJ for the first time dropped out of the top 10 of the US News list of top US high schools, falling from being number 1 2020-2022, to 5 in 2023, to now 14 in 2024 as its college readiness score and state test assessment scores fell dramatically.

Ninth, it could not have happened to a nicer guy. Adam Schiff parked his car in a garage in San Francisco. When he left it unattended, thieves broke in and stole his suitcase. 

Kevin Fagan has the story in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Hello to the city, goodbye to your luggage. That was Senatorial candidate Adam Schiff’s rude introduction to San Francisco’s vexing reputation for car burglaries Thursday when thieves swiped the bags from his car while it sat in a downtown parking garage.

The heist meant the Democratic congressman got stuck at a fancy dinner party in his shirt sleeves and a hiking vest while everyone else sat in suits. Not quite the look the man from Burbank was aiming for as he rose to thank powerhouse attorney Joe Cotchett for his support in his bid to replace the late Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate.

“I guess it’s ‘Welcome to San Francisco,’ ” Cotchett’s press agent Lee Houskeeper, who was at the dinner, remarked dryly.

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