George Will.  Courtesy of The Hoover Institution.

Dear Commons Community,

Conservative commentator George Will pulled no punches as he tore into who he described as the “112 ignoble House Republicans” who voted over the weekend against sending aid to Ukraine.

Instead, they voted “to endanger civilization,” Will wrote in his latest column for The Washington Post published Wednesday.

“Hoping to enhance their political security in their mostly safe seats, and for the infantile satisfaction of populist naughtiness (insulting a mostly fictitious ‘establishment’), they voted to assure [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s attempt to erase a European nation,” Will fumed.

The bill was passed this week after months of deadlock.

But despite its eventual success, Will warned the “cabal of grotesques [in the GOP] might yet predominate.’”

Among that so-called cabal of Donald Trump-devoted Republicans, he named and shamed Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). They have staunchly opposed the funding of Ukraine’s defense from Russia’s ongoing invasion. Greene even threatened to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over his support for the bill.

Will ended his essay with an ominous thought.

“Today’s Moscow-Beijing-Tehran axis is, as the 1930s Axis was, watching,” he wrote, adding: “We can now see that the great unraveling that was World War II perhaps began with Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Without the benefit of retrospection, we cannot be certain that World War III has not begun.”

Will knows about which he writes!  “Grotesques” is a good word for this GOP crew!

Tony

Map of Where Students Are Protesting.  Courtesy of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dear Commons Community,

The anti-Israel protests are spreading throughout the country with students demanding that their colleges cut ties with weapons manufacturers that are supplying arms to the Israeli government. Many student protests are taking the form of “Gaza solidarity encampments” or “liberated zones,” inspired by pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University.

The Columbia arrests came one day after its president, Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, testified at a congressional hearing about her administration’s response to campus antisemitism since the Israel-Hamas war began.

The surge in activism comes at the end of the spring semester for most colleges. The central demands of each protest are the same: Institutions should divest their endowments from companies with ties to Israel and its military, as well as call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

See the map above for where encampments, multi-day protests, and sit-ins have appeared on campuses.

It is my sense that the protests will be expanding through the end of the Spring Semester. As we have seen at Columbia University in New York, these protests will challenge the wherewithal of university leadership.

Tony

Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani.  CNN.

Dear Commons Community,

Eighteen people including Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawyer Rudy Giuliani have been indicted for alleged conspiracy, fraud and forgery related to the 2020 election in Arizona. The Associated Press  reports that Arizona becomes the fourth state to bring charges against “fake electors.”

The indictment alludes to Giuliani as an attorney “who was often identified as the Mayor” and spread false allegations of election fraud. Another defendant is referred to as Trump’s “ chief of staff in 2020,” which describes Meadows.

Descriptions of other unnamed defendants point to Mike Roman, who was Trump’s director of Election Day operations; John Eastman, a lawyer who devised a strategy to try to persuade Congress not to certify the election; and Christina Bobb, a lawyer who worked with Giuliani.

The indictment released yesterday names 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Trump won Arizona in 2020. They include the former state party chair, a 2022 U.S. Senate candidate and two sitting state lawmakers, who are charged with nine counts each of conspiracy, fraud and forgery.

The identities of seven other defendants, including Giuliani and Meadows, were not immediately released because they had not yet been served with the documents. They were readily identifiable based on descriptions of the defendants, however.

Trump himself was not charged but was referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Arizona becomes the fourth state where allies of the former president have been charged with using false or unproven claims about voter fraud related to the election. Heading into a likely November rematch with Biden, Trump continues to spread lies about the last election that are echoed by many of his supporters.

“I will not allow American democracy to be undermined,” Democratic state Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a video released by her office. “It’s too important.”

What a crew!

Tony

Mike Johnson at Columbia University.  Timothy A. Clary / AFP – Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

House Speaker Mike Johnson called on Columbia University’s President Minouche Shafik to resign yesterday during a tense news conference where the crowd repeatedly interrupted the speaker and at times loudly booed him and other GOP lawmakers who were with him as they stood at the microphones.  As reported by CNN.

“We just can’t allow this kind of hatred and antisemitism to flourish on our campuses, and it must be stopped in its tracks. Those who are perpetrating this violence should be arrested. I am here today joining my colleagues, and calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos,” Johnson said.

Johnson visited Columbia University  to meet with Jewish students and delivered remarks with other Republican lawmakers. When Johnson and the GOP lawmakers walked up to begin speaking, there were loud boos.

During the question-and-answer portion, a coordinated chant of “Mike, you suck” erupted from the crowd. At another point during the remarks, the crowd started chanting loudly, to which Johnson said, “Enjoy your free speech.”

The timing of Johnson’s visit comes as the embattled speaker is facing an onslaught of conservative criticism and as a handful of members, led by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have threatened to oust him. The pressure Johnson is under has only intensified after he helped steer a foreign aid package through the House that included assistance to Ukraine, which many hardline conservatives vehemently opposed.

Following the tense news conference, Johnson defended his appearance at Columbia in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, saying he chose to get involved in what was unfolding on the school’s campus because the “speaker speaks for the House of Representatives.

“I felt it was very important for that voice to be heard, not just about what happens in Columbia, but about what is happening right now around the country,” he said on “OutFront.” “We have to stand unequivocally for the right and the good and I’m calling on all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to speak out against this, not to endorse it, not to coddle these people, but to say this has to stop.”

When pressed about the heckling, Johnson noted that he was “not surprised that they didn’t welcome our visit because we’re calling out their activities.”

For Johnson and the Congressional Republicans to call on anybody to resign a leadership position takes real Chutzpah. They have made a laughing stock of the Congress as the epitome of a legislative body that cannot get anything done because of their own infighting.  He should be calling on GOP representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz to resign.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last night, my wife Elaine and I were watching the Bret Baier evening news on the Fox News Channel.  He has a daily segment where he brings in a panel of three pundits usually two conservatives and one liberal to discuss the most newsworthy events of the day. Before the segment, Baier announced that the panel would be discussing the college protests against Israel and the Trump hush money trial.  Good I thought.  When the panel came on, it spent about ten minutes on the protests and ten seconds on the Trump trial.

This morning Reuters had an article entitled, “Cable news coverage of Trump trial reflects a U.S. divided” that reviewed a study of 2-1/2 hours of news coverage at Fox News and MSNBC.  Its conclusion was that the two networks skewed the coverage to their own political orientations “creating alternate realities for viewers, reaffirming existing beliefs.”  Below is the entire Reuters piece.  It provides good insight into why our country is so politically polarized.

Tony

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When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s hush money trial began in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday, cable TV news coverage of the case was as divided as America itself.

A Reuters review of 2-1/2 hours of daytime coverage showed the distinctly partisan approaches of the Fox News Channel and MSNBC News to the trial taking place in the midst of an election campaign pitting the former president against Democratic President Joe Biden.

Fox News, which is the country’s most watched conservative cable television network and  Republican, gave significantly more air time to other national news including protests on U.S. college campuses against the war in Gaza.

Liberal-leaning network MSNBC, a home for anti-Trump voices, focused solely on the trial.

The split-screen-like coverage reflects a U.S. cable news ecosystem that creates alternate realities for viewers, reaffirming existing beliefs, say U.S. journalism experts.

Cameras are not allowed in the courtroom, forcing Americans to rely on media outlets for news of what is unfolding out of public view, including cable channels Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to silence her about a sexual encounter she says they had and which he denies.

Much is at stake. Some public opinion polls suggest some voters may choose not to vote for Trump if he is convicted.

What people watch on cable news reaffirms their ideologies, Stephanie Edgerly, professor of journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, told Reuters.

“We start to see that having really powerful effects on how they see the world: what they think is right and wrong and who they’re going to vote for and how favorable or unfavorable they view presidential candidates,” said Edgerly, who studies news audiences.

MSNBC’s top anchor, Rachel Maddow, who was inside the courthouse during opening statements, described Trump as “annoyed” and “resigned, maybe angry.”

“He seems like a man who is miserable to be here,” she said on the air later outside the courthouse.

Fox News senior correspondent Eric Shawn had a different view of Trump’s demeanor, saying the former president had sat quietly at the defense table during proceedings.

The ticker at the bottom of the MSNBC screen covered nearly every trial development as a “breaking news” flash.

MSNBC repeatedly flashed a quote from the prosecution saying, “It was election fraud, pure and simple” and another from the defense saying “nothing wrong with trying to influence an election.”

In contrast, the hour-long Fox program “The Faulkner Focus” spent less than 10 minutes on the trial, focusing in part on potential flaws in the prosecution’s case.

During the Fox show “Outnumbered” co-host and former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told a roundtable of panelists that her former boss looked “strong” and “confident” and that Democrats were misguided in thinking the case “would mire Trump in negative coverage.”

Of the two Fox legal analysts who spoke on the air, one was critical of the prosecution’s efforts and the other described the case as the “weaponization of the criminal legal system.”

Asked for comment on their coverage, a Fox News spokesperson said the network’s newsgathering teams had been reporting on all facets of Trump’s hush money trial. Representatives for MSNBC did not respond to a request for comment.

A 2022 study published by the National Academy of Sciences that analyzed 10 years of cable television news found a growing partisan gap, particularly after the 2016 election that Trump won, as networks like Fox News and MSNBC shifted to the right and the left of the political spectrum respectively, especially in their prime-time programming.

Separate research from last year, by University of California, Berkeley, political scientist David Broockman and Berkeley alumnus Joshua Kalla of Yale University, found that many Americans were in “partisan echo chambers,” where they only consumed television news that reinforced their existing political and social biases.

“Most people who tune in to Fox News lean to the right, but Fox draws them further to the right,” the authors wrote. “Likewise, MSNBC is pulling those to the left further left. And neither side almost ever watches the other.”

The Fox News spokesperson pointed to data from Nielsen MRI Fusion showing the network has the most politically diverse audience in cable news with more Democrats, Republicans and independents watching Fox News than any other cable news network.

When the court wrapped up for the day, Trump came out to speak to the media, calling the case unfair and denying wrongdoing.

MSNBC carried his remarks live for a few minutes before cutting him off, with anchor Andrea Mitchell saying the former president was trying to minimize the case against him.

“This has nothing to do with the federal government,” Mitchell added, responding to Trump’s claim that legal cases against him were being driven by the Biden administration.

The hush money case is being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney. The federal government is not involved.

Credit…Maddie Fischer

Dear Commons Community,

Craig Foster, a co-founder of the Sea Change Project and an Academy Winner for his documentary “My Octopus Teacher” in 2021, had a guest essay in The New York Times Monday (Earth Day), entitled, “An Octopus Took My Camera, and the Images Changed the Way I See the World.”  He recounts his encounter with an octopus which stole his camera while he was filming creatures off the coast of South Africa.  I found it a fascinating read.  Here is an excerpt.

“I was gifted with a new way of seeing the day I got mugged underwater. I had been filming creatures living in the Great African Sea Forest off the coast of South Africa about a year ago when my camera was grabbed straight out of my hands by a young octopus thief. Wrapping her arms around her bounty, she zoomed backward across the ocean floor.

This was not the first time I’d found myself at the mercy of an eight-armed robber. A couple of years earlier, another curious octopus stole the wedding ring off my wife’s finger, never to be recovered. Octopuses love novel shiny things. Peering into their dens, I’ve found earrings, bracelets, spark plugs, sunglasses and a toy car with a revolving cylinder that the octopus spun round and round with its suckers.

As I wondered how to get my camera back without alarming my young friend, something surprising happened. She turned the camera around and began to film my diving partner and me.

The intriguing images she captured — videos of her own arms draped over the camera lens with our bodies in the background — had a profound effect on me. After many years filming octopuses and hundreds of other animals that call the Sea Forest home, for the first time I was seeing the world — and myself — from her perspective.

We must have looked strange to her in our masks and with our underwater flashlights. But in that moment I remembered that despite all our technology, we are not so different from our animal kin. Every breath of air, every drop of water, every bite of food comes from the living planet we share.

Credit…The octopus, via Craig Foster

Monday is Earth Day, and I am tempted to ask myself how humanity can save our wild planet and undo the devastation we have unleashed upon the natural world. Where I live, in the Cape of Good Hope, I am privileged to be surrounded by nature, but we are grappling with pollution and dwindling numbers of shellfish, fish, raptors and insect species. Worldwide, we are at a tipping point with an estimated 69 percent decline in wildlife populations.”

Great story and message!

Tony

Metamorworks/Shutterstock.com

Dear Commons Community,

For the past year,  I have had the pleasure of editing a special edition of Education Sciences that is now available online at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education/special_issues/T3XIO39D6Z

Entitled, “Is Online Technology the Hope in Uncertain Times for Higher Education?”, it contains ten articles provided by thirty-one experts who offered their research as a basis for considering the question posed in this special edition. From their work, it is clear that colleges and universities are rapidly migrating to online technology in order to support instruction, research, counseling, academic services, and administrative efficiency.  

I thank Education Sciences for giving me the opportunity to edit a volume on such a critical topic. Most important, I thank the authors who contributed their research to this volume. Their work provides valuable insights for all interested in the future of higher education. Their perspectives are based on the study of issues across institutions in different parts of the world.  They have examined a variety of topics including data analytics, student evaluations, generative artificial intelligence, and MOOCs, to name a few, and  employed a wide variety of research methods: quantitative, qualitative, and mixed.  Sample sizes ranged from three case studies to a review of over two million responses collected on a student database.  

It was a pleasure working with this group of scholars and the staff at Education Sciences.

Tony

Anti-Israel demonstrators create encampment on the lawn of Columbia University yesterday. (Courtesy of James Keivom)

Dear Commons Community,

Columbia University canceled all in-person classes today after anti-Israel protesters inundated the campus this weekend, erecting an encampment and resulting in the arrest of over 100 individuals — leaving many students at the school fearing for their safety.

Embattled President Minouche Shafik, who has vowed to crack down on antisemitism, told students in an email that they “need a reset” as the increasing level of conflict has caused safety concerns for many students. And that all classes will be conducted online.  As reported by CNN, the New York Post and other media.

“I am deeply saddened by what is happening on our campus. Our bonds as a community have been severely tested in ways that will take a great deal of time and effort to reaffirm,” Shafik wrote. 

“Students across an array of communities have conveyed fears for their safety and we have announced additional actions we are taking to address security concerns.”

Those fears, expressed by many Jewish students, were addressed yesterday by Rabbi Elie Buechler, a rabbi associated with Columbia University’s Orthodox Union Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, who urged Columbia and Barnard students to go home — and stay there until conflicts on campus dissipate.

Shafik said tensions across campus have been “exploited and amplified by individuals who are not affiliated with Columbia who have come to campus to pursue their own agendas.”

“I understand that many are experiencing deep moral distress and want Columbia to help alleviate this by taking action. We should be having serious conversations about how Columbia can contribute,” Shafik said.

Shafik acknowledged there will be many opinions on how the university can do this, but noted they could not “have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view.”

The university insists it will not tolerate the protesters camping out in front of its library. 

“We are a caring, mature, thoughtful and engaged community. Let’s remind ourselves of our common values of honoring learning, mutual respect, and kindness that have been the bedrock of Columbia,” Shafik wrote.

“I hope everyone can take a deep breath, show compassion, and work together to rebuild the ties that bind us together.”

The campus — and others around the nation — have been struggling with antisemitic protests since Hamas terrorists pulled off a sneak attack on Israel on Oct. 7, with the Jewish state responding with a counter-offensive  that has killed thousands in the Gaza Strip.

The show of blatant support for Hamas on American college campuses has rattled some students, particularly Jewish students.

Cool heads and firm leadership have to prevail here!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Noah Charney’s The Thefts of the Mona Lisa:  The Complete Story of the World’s Most Famous Artwork.”  Charney is a professor of art history specializing in art crime.  For lovers of the Mona Lisa and Leonardo  da Vinci, Charney’s book will be a fun and quick read.  Charney provides good details on da Vinci, the Mona Lisa, and especially its theft from the Louvre in 1911.  There are intriguing sections on Pablo Picasso and his thefts of artwork from the Louvre especially Cycladic statues that inspired his own paintings. The best parts of the book are surely the descriptions and motives of the thief, Vincenzo Peruugia, an Italian handyman at the Louvre who had easy access to the Mona Lisa.  He testified that he stole the painting to return it to Italy where it belonged believing that Napoleon Bonaparte stole it originally. There might have also been other motives including ransom money that are interesting speculations.  

If you are a da Vinci or Mona Lisa fan, you will enjoy Charney’s book.

Below is an excerpt of a review that appeared in goodreads.  

Tony

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If you read one book on the Mona Lisa, let this be it. From the artwork to its theft and role in popular culture, The Thefts of the Mona Lisa provides the complete story, as written by a best-selling, Pulitzer finalist.

Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait, called the Mona Lisa, is without doubt the world’s most famous painting. It achieved its fame not only because it is a remarkable example of Renaissance portraiture, created by an acclaimed artistic and scientific genius, but because of its criminal history. The Mona Lisa (also called La Gioconda or La Joconde) was stolen on 21 August 1911 by an Italian, Vincenzo Peruggia. Peruggia was under the mistaken impression that the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Italy during the Napoleonic era, and he wished to take back for Italy one of his country’s greatest treasures. His successful theft of the painting from the Louvre, the farcical manhunt that followed, and Peruggia’s subsequent trial in Florence were highly publicized, sparking the attention of the international media, and catapulting an already admired painting into stratospheric heights of fame.

This book reveals the art and criminal history of the Mona Lisa. Charney examines the criminal biography of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, with a focus on separating fact from fiction in the story of what is not only the most famous art heist in history, but which is the single most famous theft of all time. In the process he delves into Leonardo’s creation of the Mona Lisa, discusses why it is so famous, and investigates two other events in its history of theft and renown. First, it examines the so-called “affaire des statuettes,” in which Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire were arrested under suspicion of involvement in the theft of the Mona Lisa. Second, there has long been a question as to whether the Nazis stole the Mona Lisa during the Second World War—a question that this book seeks to resolve.