15 min read
November 22, 2023
Dear Intelligent American,
Sì, miei paesani, it was rough in afflicted, post-war Italy, where fathers and husbands were desperate in the battle for scant jobs, driven to feed their kin and give evidence to their own manhood. Today marks the 75th anniversary of Vittorio de Sica’s remarkable Ladri Di Biciclette, known here at The Bicycle Thief. It is a wondrous and powerful film—of humiliation, pain, despair, faith, folklore, hunger, love, justice, mercy. Sometimes society ain’t so civil, folks.
(Current headlines bear that out, no? Yes, and in spades. This side of TikTok, a good place to keep up with the madness of incivility amok-running through our campuses is The College Fix.)
Back to de Sica’s classic: You say you have not seen it?! Remedy that grave errore, right here. And maybe right now: Watching The Bicycle Thief is a far better option than Black Friday shopping.
Cold Leftovers Are in Your Fridge; Meanwhile, Here the Fare Remains Plentiful, Hot, and Delicious.
1. At The American Conservative, Elizabeth Self and Brad Wilcox call out Big Business and Big Education for their complicity in boys’ failure to thrive. From the piece:
Consequently, one reason a growing number of men don’t view work as normal or desirable—or don’t have the capacity to focus and flourish in a job—seems to be that they are too addicted to the electronic opiates of our day. The research of the Princeton economist Mark Aguiar and his team suggests that screentime can account for nearly half of the drop in working hours for men in their twenties from 2004 to 2017. Over that time, recreational computer time rose by 60 percent among men. Many parents of teenage boys, of course, know that this problem begins well before males reach their twenties.
The bigger point is that many of America’s biggest businesses now profit off vices that rob males of their capacity to aim for and hold down a good job.
But it’s not just Big Business. It’s also Big Education.
In an interview with the George Lucas Educational Foundation covering his 2022 book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, social scientist Richard V. Reeves explained that boys are falling well behind their female peers. “There are very big gaps in terms of things like school [expulsions] and suspension,” he said, also noting a staggering difference in academic performance today by gender. Two thirds of the students with the top 10 percent in GPA scores today are girls; in the bottom 10 percent, two thirds are boys.
2. At Law & Liberty, Ojel L. Rodríguez Burgos reminds us of the late Kenneth Minogue’s warning that ideology is dangerous, and not going anywhere. From the essay:
“Ideology is the purest possible expression of European civilization’s capacity for self-loathing,” wrote Kenneth Minogue in his classic book Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology, published in 1985. These words resonate today as ideologues stir resentment and anger against the practices of Western civilization and its individualistic and enterprising individuals. . . .
In [The Liberal Mind], Minogue asserts that ideology is still very much alive within modern liberalism. He argued that modern liberalism had become discontented with the modern world due to the various forms of suffering afflicting both individuals and society. In response, modern liberalism turned to technical knowledge to prescribe solutions to these problems through state action, aiming to achieve an ideal society free from suffering. This shift marked a significant departure from the traditional emphasis on individual freedom within classical liberalism, with its modern counterpart now embracing what Minogue termed “liberal salvationism.” Liberal salvationism, according to Minogue, reflects the belief that through state intervention, human conduct can be reformed, leading to the emergence of a perfect and redeemed world.
Modern liberalism sought sustained intellectual and policy support for its campaign to redeem the modern world, and it found this support in universities. According to modern liberals, universities are tasked with contributing to the perfectionist ideal through their research and policy work, providing solutions to address suffering situations. This instrumental role assigned to universities by modern liberals stood in stark contrast to what Minogue considered to be the proper role of these institutions of higher education. In The Concept of a University (1974), Minogue, echoing Oakeshott, argued that academic inquiry within universities should not be driven by teleological concerns, which would make the institution susceptible to government and ideological intervention. Instead, he contended that academic inquiry should have a non-instrumental role in the thoughtful and intellectual pursuit of truth.
3. Whither “Diversity”: At The College Fix, Micaiah Bilger reports on a loaded word’s disappearance at the University of Tennessee. From the article:
The University of Tennessee System is getting ready to remove the word “diversity” from a number of its DEI efforts—even while its leaders say they remain committed to the concept.
The UT System Division of Diversity and Engagement will become the Division of Access and Engagement, and many “diversity” position titles, offices and committees will be renamed to reflect the change, The Daily Beacon student newspaper reported this week. . . .
The Office of the Provost also told the student newspaper that its “colleges’ commitment to diversity remains as strong as always.”
Some speculated the name change has more to do with politics. In an interview with The Daily Beacon about the name change, Guy Harrison, director of DEI for the School of Journalism and Media, said some state lawmakers want to end DEI programs.
Harrison said he does not think anyone should “whitewash the word diversity out of things” because of politicians.
4. More DEI: At National Review, Jonathan Butcher finds it’s a house of cards, one that is collapsing. From the article:
The outbreak of antisemitism on campus is just the latest problem. DEI offices have been part of Soviet-style investigations of students based on anonymous reports for many years. BRTs, which are often overseen by or operate under DEI offices, allow individuals on campus to anonymously report something as small as a passing comment or a poster, and the report could trigger an investigation by administrators.
Cherise Trump, executive director of the student advocacy organization Speech First, said in an email, “The mere existence of an administrative body specifically designated to receive anonymous reports on incidents of ‘bias’ echoes sentiments of darker times and repressive regimes.”
Opinions from several federal judges and statements from the U.S. Department of Justice in cases challenging DEI-related activities have said these programs “dampen” or “chill” speech. Some schools have settled lawsuits filed against them for their BRTs by agreeing to scuttle these policies. The University of Michigan abandoned its BRT in 2018, which operated under its DEI program.
5. At Minding the Campus, David Randall explains new education legislation that seeks to restore knowledge about America’s founding and revitalize civic virtue. From the piece:
America needs to resurrect the education system that taught us the sources of our ideals and institutions of liberty, civic virtue, and republican self-government, and the long conversation to examine fundamental moral and philosophical questions through a study of the history and the greatest books of Western civilization. We need to revive our common civic education to educate a new generation of Lincolns and Pattons, Trumans and Kings.
Some part of the solution will be a reform of K-12 social studies education. But another part must be a reform of our colleges and universities. Above all, our students need to learn as basic, a common knowledge of where we came from, what we love, and what we share.
The model General Education Act (GEA) can make that happen. The GEA, jointly drafted and published by the National Association of Scholars (NAS, where I work), the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, and the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC), restores a common civic education to the center of American public university education. The GEA reforms and replaces the failed system of cafeteria-style distribution requirements geared to faculty research specialties, rather than to the true requisites of liberal education.
6. At the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, Elizabeth Weiss—a regular attendee of the annual American Anthropological Association summit—concludes that academic conferences have become scams. From the piece:
The bookroom, too, was empty. Previously, bookrooms had been where faculty browsed new publications and met acquisition editors who might have been interested in one’s latest book proposal. Last year’s bookroom at the AAA, however, had few publisher stalls and fewer books than can be found in just one of my rooms at home. Rules preventing the display of book covers with images of bones also rendered bookrooms and program materials less interesting than in previous years. The Society for American Archaeology (SAA), the largest archaeological conference in the U.S., essentially has a ban on such images. These bans have now spread to journals and smaller organizations.
Perhaps most disappointing of all was the lack of good talks. Last year’s talks on human remains included such embarrassments as a mea culpa from an anthropologist who had, in the past, done interesting work on prehistoric violence in the Americas; a forensic talk about missing young-adults in Mexico that focused on sounds (such as those of frying beans) rather than forensic data or methods; and a particularly painful keynote that was practically just a reading of a Native American activist’s CV. This year doesn’t look more promising. The program is full of topics on decolonization, reburial, and queer studies. The keynote will focus on these topics and on the issue of Indian Residential School clandestine burials that don’t actually exist. There are also a few presentations that border on the absurd (such as panels discussing ghosts) and the banal (such as anthropologists discussing their own parenting problems). The traditional anthropology, which focused on exotic places, new discoveries, and insights from the field that can help us understand humans, is long gone.
7. At Commentary, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik reflects on an important 1997 speech given by the late Antonin Scalia. From the article:
The occasion of the address was a ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day. The justice reflected that, as honored as he was to participate, he found the invitation difficult to undertake as a non-Jew: “I am an outsider speaking to an ancient people about a tragedy of unimaginable proportions that is intensely personal to them.” Scalia further reflected, “I am not only not a Jew, I am a Christian,” and said he believed that the anti-Semitism in Christendom had “helped set the stage for the mad tragedy that the National Socialists produced.” He stressed, however, that for him, the ceremony of the day was personal: “When I was a young man in college, spending my junior year abroad, I saw Dachau. Later, in the year after I graduated from law school, I saw Auschwitz. I will of course never forget the impression they made upon me.”
These remarks were interesting enough, but the most important part of the speech was yet to come. Scalia stressed that it was not enough to remember the Holocaust. Rather, he said, one must mark the sort of society in which it occurred: “The one message I want to convey today is that you will have missed the most frightening aspect of it all, if you do not appreciate that it happened in one of the most educated, most progressive, most cultured countries in the world.” The Germany of the early-20th century, he noted, “was a world leader in most fields of art, science, and intellect.” Its universities were some of the most celebrated on earth. Yet this did not prevent Nazism from suffusing society; in fact, German education and Nazism went hand in hand.
Then, suddenly, Scalia switched from past to present and focused on his own family: “This aspect of the matter is perhaps so prominent in my mind because I am undergoing, currently, the task of selecting a college for the youngest of my children—or perhaps more accurately, trying to help her select it.” American parents, Scalia reflected, place so much value today on what is taught in academic institutions, yet the opportunities afforded there, he argued, are “of only secondary importance—to our children, and to the society that their generation will create.” The Holocaust, Scalia argued, is a reminder of the importance of imparting moral wisdom above all else, and it is this, he was implicitly saying, that parents must bear in mind as they ponder the intellectual future of their progeny.
8. At Tablet Magazine, Shalom Goldman remembers civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, who echoed Martin Luther King’s support for Zionism. From the piece:
When remembered today, Rustin is known for his greatest accomplishment, the organization of the August 1963 March on Washington at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. As the other speakers at the rally were reluctant to follow King at the rostrum, Rustin wisely placed King last. Over 200,000 people attended the march. Rustin wrote that there was “electricity in the air. Everyone who was there knew that the event was a landmark.”
With the rise of what he condemned as Black separatism Rustin was alienated from many activists in the Civil Rights Movement, the most radical of whom dubbed him an Uncle Tom. Disillusioned with the direction of the movement, Rustin turned his attention to international affairs and to forging links between American socialists and socialists in Europe and the developing world.
It was in that context that he first visited Israel, which in the 1960s and ’70s, had many links to international socialist groups. Rustin traveled to Israel twice, in 1969 and in 1982. That first visit was to a conference at Hebrew University on technology and human development. He toured the country and met Prime Minister Golda Meir. As Rustin biographer Jervis Anderson noted, “Of the many Israeli leaders Rustin met, Golda Meir captivated him most. She likewise was enchanted by him. . . . If he wasn’t already a Zionist before their first meeting, then he surely must have become one during the long and animated political discussions they held in her office.” Out of that visit came many of Rustin’s pro-Israeli declarations, including a statement on “American Blacks and Israel” and a 1975 speech condemning the U.N. resolution on “Zionism as Racism.” Rustin spoke at a rally in New York City condemning that resolution. Over 100,000 people heard Rustin’s rousing speech.
9. At Plough Magazine, Adriano Cirino looks at a Medellín neighborhood—once plagued by cartels, bullets, and steep climbs—that has turned its pain into art as it emerges from a bloody past. From the article:
On December 25, 2011, ten months after the work began, the citizens of Las Independencias inaugurated their escalators. Simultaneously, the city invited neighborhood artists to do graffiti on the façades of nearby houses. The atmosphere was celebratory, and not only because it was Christmas. In a real way, these escalators set the citizens free.
Medellín was named “the most innovative city in the world” in 2013, in a contest promoted by Citigroup, the Wall Street Journal, and the Urban Land Institute. Since then, tourism has exploded. Visitors come from all over the world, now drawn to something beyond the narco-tourism and sex tourism that still persist. The new attraction is Comuna 13, and the transformative possibilities of social urbanism. According to government data, the Comuna 13 escalators received approximately one hundred and seventy thousand tourists in 2018, 70 percent of them foreigners. And the trend is upward: January 2019 saw close to forty thousand visitors.
This has, of course, changed the neighborhood. The universal problem of gentrification exists here too: while some residents are celebrating the increased value of their homes, others complain about the hike in prices and the cost of living.
Today Las Independencias is a community in which the local and the cosmopolitan cut across each other, collide, and fuse. Consider the foreign lingo that lends names to local attractions, artistic groups, and establishments: Graffitour, Black & White, Coffee Shop Com. 13. In this neighborhood, walls once studded with bullets are transformed by artists’ hands into illuminated manuscripts: the pages of their own recent history, aglow with beauty and memory. The houses, in their turn, shelter a greater and greater variety of businesses – barber shops, grocery stores, clothing and souvenir shops, bars, and galleries.
10. At The Messenger, Howard Husock posits that the IRS is suppressing Boomer charitable giving. From the op-ed:
There is, however, the potential for a generational flood of generous giving to arise—were it not for arcane and illogical IRS rules that inhibit it. As baby boomers hit their 70s, they find themselves suddenly required to start drawing cash out of their 401(k)s and IRAs. These “required minimum distributions” are substantial: traditional IRAs and 401(k)s and 403(b)s (for nonprofit employees) hold an estimated $14 trillion. That implies a looming tax liability of some $2 trillion. But diverting even a small percentage of that away from Washington and toward the thousands of charitable nonprofits of American civil society is discouraged by the tax code.
Monies required to be withdrawn from retirement accounts must, by law, be taxed as income. That’s because they’ve not been taxed previously; putting aside funds in “tax-advantaged accounts” reduces income at the time they’re deposited. They are, instead, taxed upon “distribution”—and not unfavorably for retirees, who may well find themselves in a lower tax bracket than when they were working.
But directing some of those withdrawals to charitable giving does not mitigate that tax bite. Donations must be made with income after taxes have been paid on it. The charitable deduction will not likely reduce the tax bite—because so few taxpayers now itemize.
11. At First Things, Helen Andrews asks what has happened to the American Civil Liberties Union. From the essay:
The ACLU really did stand for sincere liberalism during the middle decades of its existence, and perhaps for even longer than that. In the 1990s, when New York City’s Ancient Order of Hibernians wanted to keep a gay pride float out of its century-old St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the local affiliate of the ACLU took the parade organizers’ side. From the 1980s until recently, ACLU lawyers filed numerous amicus briefs against ordinances that banned protest and prayer outside abortion clinics, even though the organization was institutionally pro-choice and had its own “reproductive rights” division. For ACLU lawyers, it was a point of pride that they defended the free speech rights of pro-lifers with whom they disagreed.
Recently, something changed. Impartial liberalism is no longer the ruling ideology at the ACLU. The organization’s social media accounts now regularly weigh in on matters in which civil liberties either are not at issue or seem to lie on the other side. When Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on grounds of self-defense after shooting three assailants at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the ACLU Twitter account lamented that Rittenhouse “was not held responsible for his actions.” In a departure from longstanding practice, the organization began making political ads on behalf of candidates, $25 million worth in the 2018 midterm cycle. A million dollars were spent on an ad opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, not because of his legal views but because he had been accused, on flimsy evidence, of sexual assault.
In 2018, a memo titled “ACLU Case Selection Guidelines: Conflicts Between Competing Values or Priorities” formalized the end of the old era. Due to “limited resources” and the ACLU’s need “to recruit and retain a diverse staff,” its lawyers would now avoid taking clients whose “views are contrary to our values.” Among the criteria its lawyers would use when choosing cases were “the potential effect on marginalized communities” and the “harmful impact on the equality and justice work to which we are also committed.”
12. At Baltimore Fishbowl, Aliza Worthington reports on a huge fundraising campaign that is bankrolling an all-girls charter school in “Charm City.” From the beginning of the story:
An all-girl college-preparatory public charter school in Baltimore is launching a fundraising campaign to support its mission of transforming Baltimore, one young woman at a time.
The Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (BLSYW) is continuing its “Campaign for BLSYW” with the goal of raising $10 million. The funds raised will be used to enhance academics, bolster Whole Girl Wellness programming, ensure 100% college acceptance and future success for graduates, and securing the BLSYW endowment for the school’s future in Baltimore City.
BLSYW announced that the campaign has achieved 85% of its fundraising goal, raising over $8.5 million, including $500,000 for the 10th annual (Em)Power Breakfast. The breakfast welcomed over 600 supporters to the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor for a morning of BLSYW pride and celebration.
Lucky 13. At The University Bookman, the great George Nash reflects upon the importance of the late Russell Kirk’s consequential work, The Conservative Mind, on the 70th anniversary of its publication. From the essay:
Kirk’s text was not only a 450-page distillation of the thinking of 150 years of the intellectual Right; it was also a spirited assault on every left-wing panacea and error imaginable. The perfectibility of man, the contemptuous rejection of tradition, political and economic leveling—these were, in Kirk’s view, the most prominent among post-1789 attacks on the social order. Liberalism, collectivism, socialism, atomistic individualism, fanatic ideology: these were some of his targets. At times he criticized capitalism and industrialism; the automobile, for example, he labeled a “mechanical Jacobin.” Kirk, in short, left no stone unturned in his challenge to the gods of modernity.
It is easy to sum up his book’s historical significance. With eloquence and conviction Kirk demonstrated that reflective conservatism is neither a smokescreen for selfishness nor the ritual incantation of the privileged. It is an attitude toward life with moral substance of its own. A century earlier, John Stuart Mill had dismissed conservatives in Great Britain as “the stupid party.” Only three years before the publication of Kirk’s book, an eminent American literary critic had opined that liberalism was the “sole intellectual tradition in the United States.” After the appearance of The Conservative Mind, the American intellectual landscape assumed a different shape. Kirk’s tour de force—an uncommon fusion of scholarship and passion—breached the thick wall of liberal condescension. It struck a powerful blow at the liberals’ superiority complex. He made it respectable for sophisticated Americans to identify themselves as men and women of the Right.
Most importantly of all, The Conservative Mind stimulated the development of a self-conscious, conservative intellectual movement in America after the Second World War. In the words of the book’s publisher, Henry Regnery, Kirk gave an “amorphous, scattered opposition” to liberalism an “identity.” In the years to come he labored unceasingly to elevate the movement’s discourse and its vision.
Bonus. At The Lamp, Jude Russo sees the end of youth, the onset of gray, and maybe even dotage in the distance. From the reflection:
Still, I must face facts. I am not the man I once was. A frank inspection in the mirror finds bags under the eyes, the hint of a dewlap under the beard, eyebrows that have grown unruly. The teeth, although strong, were already yellow by the end of college. The twice-annual disruption of public order arising from “daylight savings time” inevitably results in a three-week spate of listlessness and depression as my sleep schedule adjusts. I can no longer eat fatty foods in the evening.
Mortality has begun to set in. And why not? I have a job, I have children, I have a mortgage and a lawn to mow and taxes to pay and various relations to pacify. Why shouldn’t my hair be gray? I have always been aware, perhaps morbidly so, of the slow but swiftening march toward death; when I was a child of about six, I would give my parents detailed instructions regarding my funeral arrangements. (Of particular concern, what was to be done with my stuffed rabbit—at that age, imaginary friends seem very real, and what if Peter Rabbit here outlives me? I nevertheless settled on the pharaonic expedient of having him buried with me in the casket. I can only imagine what my poor mother thought of all this.) Yet it all seems to have started to become real very suddenly.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. At Philanthropy Daily, Patrice Onwuka advises how donors can fight rising anti-Semitism on college campuses. Read it here.
Due. On the new episode of AmPhil’s “Givers, Doers, & Thinkers” podcast, host Jeremy Beer interviews the great Leslie Lenkowsky about America’s giving landscape and the future of philanthropy. This is a truly greater listen. Catch it here.
Tre. It’s coming up quick: On the afternoon of Tuesday, November 28th (3:00 to 4:00 p.m., Eastern) you’ll want to clear your calendar in order to catch the important Center for Civil Society webinar on The Future of Christian Higher Education. Jon Hannah, boss of C4CS, will be joined by Pepperdine University’s Pete Peterson and Malone University’s David Beer for a frank and illuminating discussion. Yes, there’s still time to register—do that right here.
Quattro. You bring the libation, we’ll supply the wisdom: A new “Scotch Talk” takes place Wednesday, December 6th (from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., Eastern), in which Jeremy Beer and Walter Coughlin of Coughlin & Company will discuss cutting-edge ways that nonprofits can save money through the intersection of fundraising and finance. Find out more, and register, right here.
Cinque. What’s a nonprofit to do if it needs to firm up its grant-writing chops? The answer: Take AmPhil’s “Elements of Grant Writing” Master Class, the one coming up fast and furious on Thursday, December 7th, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern). You’ve been granted a wonderful opportunity! Take advantage of it: Get complete information right here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: Why did the bicycle go to the psychiatrist?
A: Because it had cycle logical problems.
A Dios
Dear correspondent Suzanne prompted a thought about another wonderful old film, this one British and silly-funny, Passport to Pimlico. Watch it here. Maybe after The Bicycle Thief.
May We Be Struck by the Desire to Express Gratitude,
Jack Fowler, who can be found in a tryptophan-haze at jfowler@amphil.com.
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