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John Yoo hosts this week where there is so much free trade in ideas that you'd need a 1,000% tariff to slow it down. Which the U.S. Court of Intenational Trade attempted to do for about six hours, during which time the 3WHH panel chews up the ruling and spits it out like a bad piece of Icelandic cod. (Which happens to be where Steve, now dubbed as the "International Man of No-Mystery," happens to be at the moment, which is why this episode comes with more than the usual amount of viking jokes and Norse epic poetry.) Anyway, the gang predicts this issue is likely to be another win for Trump when the dust settles.
But first the gang also ponders whether Trump is overdoing it with his attack on Harvard. Is it possible to overdo the attack on Harvard? You'll have to give a listen to this ad-free episode to find out.
John Yoo
'Lucretia'
Steve Hayward
Discussion (3)
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My answer is "no". Harvard is one of, if not the flagship university in this country. If they are brought to heel, then other schools may soon follow . . .
OTOH, I'll listen to the podcast because there's always a plus to hearing different viewpoints and discussions, even if you think your own position is right. This is one advantage conservatives have over the left - a true open mind . . .
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One of the reasons many companies fail is inertia - they've been doing the same thing for so long, people and processes are entrenched, it's hard to right the ship and make needed changes to get back on track. So you either shake things up by upsetting the applecart (re-organizing, layoffs, re-structuring, resource assessments and placement, etc) or you leave yourself open to failure. Worse, if there's enough assets or money coming in, you put a target on your back for takeover and it'll be a bloodbath by the new owner.
Harvard and other institutions like it are so in love with Harvard that the 2x4 is the only way to provide a shock to the system. Only then can you build back what's really in the Harvard scope, and mission, and pare off the crap that's attached itself like barnacles to the ship that they've never bothered to scrape off, once.
Harvard's not entitled to federal grants, regardless of the value to the broader public of research that's funded through taxation (and borrowing). However, for valuable research, if the public policy is to achieve a reduction in cancer deaths, then funding research directly related to bringing about that outcomes makes sense.
It does not make sense for taxpayers to fund Indonesian pottery studies.
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Steve, forty years ago, when “affirmative action” (the ancestor of “DEI”) was principally for the benefit of black people, my father (retired engineering professor) examined public data about the University of California and found that the primary beneficiaries of “affirmative action” at the time were foreign-born students. Hardly the descendants of American slave beneficiaries for which “affirmative action” was sold to the public. My father did not publish anything about that, as he did the analysis for his own curiosity, he was an engineering professor, not a social scientist, he did not have the sophisticated tools that an research paper would require, and he considered most research papers a waste of the trees cut down to produce the paper on which they were printed.
He then went on to examine retention of students admitted under affirmative action, and found a lot of what is now called “academic mismatch.” And he found that affirmative action academic mismatch led to a lot of failure and dropping out. He was focused on engineering students, but looked through the whole California state university system, including the University of California, California State Universities, and the California Polytechnic Colleges (CalPoly). The students admitted to UCBerkeley or UCLA engineering under affirmative action failed or dropped out at a very high rate as compared to students who attended “lesser” institutions. And those students who failed or dropped out left the system. They didn’t transfer to another institution. So, the students who started at a more academically appropriate institution (such as UCRiverside or CalState Long Beach or CalPoly Pomona) were more likely to have an engineering degree (and in turn a good-paying job) in a few years than were the students admitted under affirmative action to UCBerkeley or UCLA, who ended up with nothing except a feeling of failure.