Press Overview – 5 January 2018
Education
Memo to Harvard: Shut Up, J Marks, Commentary Mag
Tax Reform’s Warning Shot for Universities, Howard Husock, City Journal
Don’t feel guilty about our colonial history, Nigel Biggar, The Times
Nearly 60 Oxford academics are accused of bullying don who defended the Empire by writing an open letter criticising him, Eleanor Harding, Mail Online
Ethics and empire: an open letter form Oxford scholars
When Institutions Go Left, Emmett Tyrrell, RCP
Higher Education’s Deeper Sickness, John M Ellis, WSJ
Inside the fight over how to address San Francisco’s ‘state of emergency’ for black student achievement, Joy Resmovits, LA Times
PC & Identity Politics
Chess champion to miss Saudi Arabia tournament over women’s rights, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, The Guardian
How the ‘feminist’ left let women down in 2017, Nicole Russell, NYP
P.C. Language Saved my Life, Giancarlo Valentine, NYT
The Author: Language is meant to be inclusive, but most important, it is meant to expand, to be updated and challenged by the times. However, language can also repress: It’s not a coincidence that the people who are most often allowed to deem the world too sensitive and politically correct are the ones who wield power and privilege over others. For black people, this means white people; for gay people, this means straight people; and for trans and gender-nonconforming persons, this means the world.
A Reader Comment: My objection to this essay is that it reinforces the culture of taking offense where none was intended, and further, that it amplifies the competition among people who perceive themselves as “oppressed” as to who (or whose ancestors) have suffered the most. Less important, but still significant, is the assault on grammar and the shaming of those of us unwilling to muddy the language further by making the meaning of formerly unambiguous pronouns “them” and “they” (third person plural) uncertain when there was already a perfectly serviceable pronoun, “one,” that would have allowed for ambiguous gender without further damage to the clarity of language.
The Eleven Most Ridiculously PC Moments of 2017, Katherine Timpf, National Review
Current Affairs
Democrats, Taxes and Freedom, William Murchison, RCP
How the Era of the Big-Name News Anchor Crashed to an End, Lloyd Grove, Daily Beast
A Big, Beautiful Trump 2018 Issue, Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ
Congress’s Gift to Blue-State Taxpayers, Alfredo Ortiz, WSJ
Donald Trump Evicted Elizabeth Warren from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Ronald L. Rubin, The Weekly Standard
A US drugmaker offers to cure rare blindness for $850,000, Meg Tirrell, CNBC
The Prince and the Community Organizer, Spectator
Videos