Cornell Insider

a blog by the writers of the Cornell Review

Archive for October, 2009

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Limbaugh’s Last Words

Posted by Oliver Renick on October 17, 2009

For those that have been following the Rush Limbaugh v. Football saga, it came to an end last week as Rush was told to back out of

Photo from Associated Press

Photo from Associated Press

the potential investment group that was looking at buying into the St. Louis Rams franchise.  Essentially the radio talk show giant wanted to be the largest stock-holder of the Rams football team, but was met with a barrage of attacks from the left, including Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, football players and commentators, and just about anyone aiming to perpetuate the enormous fallacy of a racist Limbaugh in hopes to prevent a conservative from attaining such a position.

Well here is Limbaugh’s last word (probably not) on the subject, published in the Wall Street Journal.  Although I often have my own disagreements with Rush, I am completely on his side in this one.  The success of this movement by his opponents is absolutely sick, and it is a testament to the growing power that is held by the liberal media.  His last paragraph hits the nail on the head:

There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. “Racism” is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests. These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society

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Quick Update: Flurry of SA Activity

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on October 16, 2009

Reverse order for the housing lottery, and Community Clause 2.0 is now in effect.

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Investing in a College Education

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on October 14, 2009

Via MR, here’s an interesting piece on the non-pecuniary benefits of schooling. The authors of the paper cited in this article point out that, “despite the erosion in the monetary returns from college since 2000,” there are still large non-pecuniary benefits to higher education. These include: increased enjoyment of work, better decisions about health, marriage, and parenting, more patience, less likelihood to engage in risky behavior, etc.

Basically, the paper suggests that college is still a “worthwhile investment”  if you consider the non-monetary returns you get from a university education. But is this really that startling of a conclusion? How many students at Cornell (whose parents pay full tuition) decided to come here over a cheaper state school because of a higher predicted earning potential? I would guess very few. I think a lot of people who fit into this category -I’m from Virginia, so I passed on one of the best state university systems in the country- would agree that students come to Cornell for the prestige of the school, the quality of instruction, the boundless educational opportunities on campus, and the chance to be surrounded by equally intelligent and motivated peers. If the “investment” of college were strictly considered in monetary terms, you would see a lot more students passing on higher education to take real  jobs out of high school. (And as our camping friend showed, you can make lots of money in the real world).

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Politics of Spite?

Posted by Lucia Rafanelli on October 13, 2009

About a week ago, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman authored an article entitled “The Politics of Spite,” attacking the Republican party for being emotionally immature and for valuing party politics over the well being of the country. In his extremely mature article, in which he compares the Republicans to a “bratty 13-year-old”, Krugman accuses Republicans of acting based on “spite pure and simple” and alleges that they oppose everything good for President Obama, regardless of whether it’s “good for America”.

Krugman first attempts to illustrate these points by pointing out that some conservatives were joyous at the news of Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympic bid. This loss, however, is so trivial that it could hardly be considered detrimental to America. Further, it is certainly not valid to extrapolate from the reactions of a few conservatives to this one issue- minuscule compared to the real problems our country faces today- the worldview and motivations of an entire political party on all issues.

Krugman attempts to give his argument weight by asserting that the Republicans’ opposition to healthcare is based largely on such purely partisan concerns. He argues that “the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare” and that this is hypocritical because it contradicts Republicans’ traditional opposition to unlimited welfare spending.

Apparently, it never occurred to Krugman that such criticisms of liberal healthcare reform were meant to showcase its hypocritical nature, to demonstrate that the Democrats’ healthcare plans may actually hurt the very people they attempt to aid-the disadvantaged who need help to afford insurance. Whether or not this is true is a question to be answered another time, but, nonetheless, the Republicans’ criticisms of healthcare reform’s potential effects on Medicare spending deserve to be treated as serious arguments that deal with an important nuance of a complex issue; they should not to be immediately disregarded as childish and irrelevant trivialities.

Krugman also failed to notice that such criticisms are hardly the crux of the Republican opposition to liberal healthcare reform. The Medicare issue has been sidelined by concerns regarding the impact of proposed reforms on insurance premiums, whether government money would be used to insure illegal aliens, whether a so-called “public option” would destroy the quality of healthcare in the US, and whether government involvement in the privately run health sector is philosophically legitimate. Any analysis of the “main GOP line of attack” regarding healthcare that does not include these issues is severely lacking and incredibly inaccurate.

Moreover, I take issue- and I think we should all take issue- with Krugman’s malicious characterization of the Republican party. This is not because I don’t think people should openly disagree with each other about political issues. It is not because I do not value meaningful political debate. In fact, it is just the opposite. It is because I value this type of discourse- which provides for the development a healthy and thriving democracy- that I oppose such generalizations and broad mischaracterizations as those found in Krugman’s article. These elements actually discourage meaningful debate by encouraging more ad-hominem-style exchanges concerned more with comparing one’s political opponents to spoiled teenagers than attempting to intellectually refute their arguments.

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MRM#20

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on October 12, 2009

- If you’re from the D.C./Maryland/Virginia area, go to the National Mall today to check out the Solar Decathlon competition. If

examiner.com

examiner.com

you’re not, at least read about Cornell’s awesome house here.

- A Cornell PhD wins a Nobel Prize.

- Cornell retained the #15 spot in recently released international rankings.

- A roundup of Obama Peace Prize editorials from RCP. Glenn Reynolds also links to a cartoon roundup. VC also provides a Top 10 List.

- Cornell plans to save $40 million by buying fewer Post-It Notes.

- Good news, 2013′s, look’s like you’ll be able to graduate after all.

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The Choice of American Decline

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on October 10, 2009

Is America in decline? Has America reached the limits of its influence as a global superpower, and will we see a further dilution of America’s power in the coming years? In light of the global financial crisis and the election of President Obama, (as well as more recent events like the abandonment of missile shields in Europe, the growing influence of the G-20, and falling confidence in the dollar), America’s status as a global superpower has come under more scrutiny.

These days, the popular and prevailing ideas are that America is not an indispensable superpower and that “multipolarity” is good for international politics. There are some dissenters like Josef Joffe, as well as me and my Georgetown colleague (sorry for the shameless self-plug), but we are a minority.

In his most recent article for the Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer disagrees with both camps, saying that there is no such thing as an inevitable trajectory for America’s future in international politics. Here’s a short excerpt that highlights his main argument:

Among these crosscurrents, my thesis is simple: The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline–or continued ascendancy–is in our hands.

The rest of the article is a great analysis and assessment of  Obama’s foreign policy and how it is directly affecting America’s standing in the world. In my opinion, this is one of Krauthammer’s best articles of late, and that’s saying a lot. Highly recommended.

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Nobel ‘Piece’ Prizes: Iranian Cleric, Prof. Eric Cheyfitz, Prof. Jolene Rickard

Posted by Oliver Renick on October 9, 2009

from zazzle.com

from zazzle.com

The only plausible answer to the Obama Peace Prize is that it is, in fact, just one of many to be

from ohiohistorycentral.com

from ohiohistorycentral.com

distributed this time around, making his just one segment of a larger distribution process.  Since just about everyone, including liberals and Obama himself, has openly acknowledged that this bestowal is either manipulative, unwarranted, or disgraceful, I shall propose the other recipients of each Nobel ‘piece’ Prize.  The requirements are simple: demonstrate no significant accomplishments towards world peace (deadline today).  Here are today’s laureates:

Iranian Cleric Mojtaba Zolnour – for his aggressive stance and undying love for the hate of the state of Israel.  Most recently, Zolnour, the Ayatollah’s right-hand man of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, said that Iran will “blow up the heart of Israel if the Jewish state or the United States attacked Iran.”  In case this didn’t get the message across clearly enough, he was kind enough to provide a visual as the icing on the cake, adding: “Iranian missiles will hit Israel before the dust settles.”  Last time I checked Obama was not planning on bombing Iran – and with his new Nobel status, this is even more unlikely. Sorry, Motjaba, your hatred will have to remain bottled up for another day.  I guess this explains why the table reserved for ‘Mojtaba Zolnour’ at Hillel’s Jewish speed dating night at Trillium was empty.  Mr. Zolnour, I put you first on my list today because not only do you bring nothing to the table of world peace, you also take much off of it.

Those in charge of the anti-Columbus Day rally – for their public display of revisionist history and anti-American sentiments.  According to today’s article in the Sun, it seems as if the demonstration followed this syllabus: discuss why Columbus was evil, discuss why America is evil, discuss Program Houses.  Where did the program house guy come from?  The program house advocates always somehow manage to stick their nose in at any demonstration, meeting, student assembly, or Skorton announcement they can squirm into.  The correlation? Some analogy about how Cornell is the United States and program houses are American Indians.  Just a wee bit of a stretch.  This has nothing to do with world peace, so it deserves to be a laureate.

Professor Eric Cheyfitz (at Columbus rally) – for the apparent deficiency of subjectivity in his English classrooms.  The professor said in a quote to the Sun that he “teach[es] Columbus’s journals as examples of the beginning of genocide in the Americas.”  Interesting – I actually took a fantastic Freshman Writing Seminar where we read the journals of Columbus, Cortes, and Cabeza de Vaca.  The only difference it seems is that my instructor allowed us to READ and ANALYZE the books instead of directly imposing his opinion on us and teaching with an objective.  Teaching Cheyfitz’s way would be like having students read the Bible in order to be appreciative of the great acts of Jesus Christ.  Do we have classes like that? No, because that’s not how you read a book.  You read it and discuss it and analyze it with minimal preconceptions.  Biased teaching helps nobody; here’s your Piece Prize, Eric.

Professor Jolene Rickard (also at rally) – for revisionist history that almost had me convinced! Here is Rickard’s direct quote: “My ancestors buried their weapons of war under the tree of peace, the white pine…I exist as a Haudenosaunee woman because [they] gave their lives so that I can carry on the message of freedom to the next generation.”  Professor Rickard is referencing her nationality of the indigenous “People of the Longhouse” or Iroquois Indian Nation.  While these Native Americans brought five different tribes under one association through the Iroquois League, they have less than clean hands in the realm of violence.  Yes, they may have buried their WMDs under the tree to keep themselves focused while assembling a wampum belt, but for a lot of the time, they were burying their weapons into the heads of Frenchman, Europeans, other Indians, and each other.  Why? Because there used to be a lot of beavers roaming the Finger Lakes area and everybody wanted them.  Yes, including the Haudenosaunee, and they attacked and took over lands of other Natives to…gain capital.  Revisionist history is bad, and especially in this case, distorts historical efforts towards peace.  For Rickard’s one sidedness, she gets the final fifth of my Piece Prize.

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(More) Student Assembly Brilliance

Posted by jdfarragut on October 8, 2009

I’m currently sitting at the S.A. meeting–Dean Hubbell, the Review’s biggest fan, is sitting directly in front of me, among three other people–where the Slope Day budget is being discussed.

Best S.A. logic of the day: We need to increase funding for Slope Day because then we’ll be able to afford better performers, and if we have better performers, fewer people will feel the need to drink on the slope, which will increase safety and decrease drinking-related costs! So by increasing costs, we actually decrease costs. This man deserves a position in the Obama White House designing health care policy.

I couldn’t tell who it was that said it, but I’ll update this when I figure it out.

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A new breed of affirmative action

Posted by Oliver Renick on October 7, 2009

From colostate.edu

From colostate.edu

Every year, thousands of college applicants are accepted, not solely because of, but with the additional help of affirmative action policies in American colleges and universities.  The subject is a hotly debated one: on one hand, the intended purpose is to increase racial equality and provide opportunities for supposedly underrepresented minorities and genders in different areas of society (i.e., education, employment) – on the other hand, opponents claim it embraces reverse discrimination and has not been proven to significantly improve the socioeconomic status of minority groups.

I fall into the ‘opponents’ category, and instead, advocate a different type of affirmative action: one based on class rather than race (or gender).  This stance has been gaining momentum, and has recently been reaffirmed in Tel Aviv sociologist Sigal Alon’s paper in American Sociological Review, as covered on insidehighered.com. Her extensive study shows that, despite growing numbers of college graduates, the class divide has actually grown.  This observation lies in contrast with sociological theory, which proposes that higher numbers of college grads will in turn bring up the less advantaged in society.  So why the discrepancy between theory and reality?

The key factors, she writes, are that demand for higher education outpaced supply (even with all of that growth in available slots), that testing became a more important factor in admissions at more institutions, and that wealthier families are much speedier to adapt to changes in admissions rules.

As the number of applicants to higher education grew, high school students of higher socioeconomic status were more apt to receive extra support from tutors, extra teaching, study guides / books, and better high schools.  Alon characterizes this property as a result of the sociological theory of ‘adaptation.’

Parents of all economic classes want their children to succeed, but the wealthier ones “better understand the postsecondary landscape and competitive admission process and they invest in resources to promote college attendance,” she writes. As a result test score gaps of high school seniors — grouped by economic background — have grown during recent years.

Even though colleges have tried to adjust to this through such methods as SAT-optional applications, the result will be unchanging; higher classes’ ability to ‘adapt’ will be the case no matter what new strategies for applications are imposed by colleges.  So what is the purpose of race-based affirmative action?  Why are underrepresented minorities given an advantage over others – moreover, why are they in fact underrepresented?  Advocates of this type of affirmative action point to two reasons: 1) to revert minority disadvantages as a result of institutionalized or incidental discrimination, or 2) because certain minorities have been shown statistically to have a greater likelihood of lower socioeconomic status, so exposure to higher education will gradually undo this situation.

There are two problems here. Although racism unfortunately still remains in regions of our country, the fact is that ‘institutionalized’ racism is close to being practically nonexistent.  Furthermore, many of the minorities attending colleges and universities are just as well-off and of equal social status as their Caucasian peers.  I have no statistical backing to this statement, but I would say that at Cornell, I know many students of ‘diverse’ ethnicity that come from much more wealthy and advantaged families than my own.  So what is the goal of current policies – to help advance minority communities or to bring up those who do not have the same advantages as others?  I would hope that everyone would agree that our goal should be to assist the people who are disadvantaged.

Schools can do this through a new breed of affirmative action, a “class-based affirmative action, in which current and future adaptation by wealthy families is balanced by an admissions edge given to those without the means to match those advantages.”  In a class-based affirmative action process, every ethnicity will be represented proportionally in each respective socioeconomic pool, and if certain ethnicities are in fact more common in ‘disadvantaged’ echelons of society, then we are simultaneously accomplishing the goal of aiding those targeted minority groups.

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The Economics Art Gallery

Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on October 7, 2009

There is now a temporary art studio in the foyer of the Economics Department in Uris Hall. According to to the Economics Department, “while the faculty, staff, and students in the department continue their normal business and scholarship, the artist-in-residence will share their space to make a new artwork.” Live views here.

[UPDATE]

Insider reporter Dennis Shiraev does a little investigative reporting into this ‘art’ scene down at Uris. Here’s the shot of him in action:

So does this make the the Insider temporary artists?

So does this make the the Insider temporary artists?

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