Dear Commons Community,

Just when we thought things could not be getting worse for Ivanka Trump, it appears that she has had very close personal ties to Rupert Murdoch.  The Financial Times reported the latest example of their closeness last week: that Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka was a trustee of the nearly $300 million fortune Mr. Murdoch set aside for the two children he had with his third wife, Wendi, who arranged the trusteeship.  Ms. Trump gave up that oversight role in December, before her father’s inauguration but well after Election Day.  That means the whole time that Mr. Murdoch’s highly influential news organizations were covering Mr. Trump’s campaign and transition, their executive chairman was entangled in a financial arrangement of the most personal sort — tied to his children’s financial (very) well being — along with the president’s daughter.  As further reported in the New York Times:

“The ties that bind the most powerful media mogul in the world to the leader of the free world just keep getting stronger. Or, more precisely, we keep learning just how strong they are.

The question is where that leaves the rest of the world when they’re done divvying it up.

They are Rupert Murdoch — the founder of the corporate news media giants 21st Century Fox and the News Corporation — and President Trump.

Referring to Ivanka Trump only as the president’s “daughter” fails to capture her true role. She is Mr. Trump’s most trusted confidante. And she is married to a key presidential adviser, Jared Kushner, who, as it happens, is so close with Mr. Murdoch that he even helped Mr. Murdoch set up his bachelor pad after his last divorce, The New Yorker reported.

The latest news about the Murdoch-Trump axis is acutely problematic for the leadership at The Wall Street Journal — owned by News Corp. — as it seeks to quell a rebellion by a group of staff members who believe that the paper has held them back from more aggressively covering Mr. Trump, they suspect, under pressure from Mr. Murdoch. (As Joe Pompeo of Politico first reported last week, a meeting to discuss their grievances is to take place at The Journal on Monday.)

But the relationship between the president and Mr. Murdoch has implications well beyond The Journal, given the global breadth of Mr. Murdoch’s media holdings, his history of putting them to use for political leaders who then help him with his own business needs and Mr. Trump’s own reactivity to the news media.

How it all affects the rest of us depends on how powerfully Mr. Murdoch’s news media properties swing behind the new presidential agenda and how much criticism of Mr. Trump they’ll abide from their journalists and commentators. And all of that could depend on what Mr. Murdoch wants from the administration, and how badly he wants it.”

Rupert Murdoch has always operated in questionable ways when it comes to trying to influence government leaders.  Ivanka and Donald Trump should make a statement about her relationship with Murdoch but they won’t.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michael Flynn resigned yesterday as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.  Flynn’s status was considered perilous after it was disclosed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other senior officials about his communications with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, a senior U.S. official told NBC News.    As reported by NBC and other media:

Flynn’s resignation (see letter below) came after a tumultuous few days of revelations about his ties to Russia and his role in attempting to ease sanctions that were put in place weeks before the Trump administration took office. 

In late December, President Barack Obama announced the sanctions, which included the expulsion of 35 Russian intelligence operatives, in response to Russian interference in the November election designed to help Trump win.

Flynn at first denied that he had discussed the sanctions when he spoke with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. He said the conversations concerned setting up a phone call between Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin and offering condolences after the murder of a Russian diplomat in Turkey.

But following a Washington Post report ― based partially on transcripts of the conversations ― Flynn’s office revised his earlier statements, and said that he couldn’t recall whether the topic of sanctions had come up. On Monday night, the plot thickened, with The Washington Post reporting that top officials at the Department of Justice warned the Trump administration weeks ago that Flynn might have been compromised by Russian influences and The New York Times reporting that the Army had investigated whether Flynn received payments from the Russian government in 2015.

Flynn, like Trump, has advocated a closer relationship with Russia as an ally in the fight against Islamic terrorism. He appeared at an awards dinner honoring the Kremlin-sponsored RT network in 2015, at which he was seated beside Putin.

It was also reported that retired Lt. Gen. Joseph Keith Kellogg Jr. will serve as acting national security advisor until a full-time replacement is named.  Kellogg, as well as Vice Adm. Robert Harward and retired Gen. David Petraeus are the three candidates in line to succeed Flynn, according to the administration.

It appears we are having some turmoil in the White House!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Bill Maher said he wants just one thing this Valentine’s Day. And that’s to “Make America Learn Again.”

Dear Commons Community,

Yale University will change the name of its Calhoun College after protesters said the Ivy League school should drop the honor it gave to an alumnus who was a prominent advocate of U.S. slavery.  As reported in Reuters:

The college is named for John C. Calhoun, a South Carolina native who served as U.S. vice president under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. He graduated from Yale College in 1804.

Yale said it will rename Calhoun College for Grace Murray Hopper, an alumnus who received a PhD in mathematics and mathematical physics in 1934. It described Hopper, who died in 1992, as a trailblazing computer scientist and a brilliant mathematician who also served as a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.

“The decision to change a college’s name is not one we take lightly,” Yale President Peter Salovey said in a statement about the residential college’s name that has existed for 86 years.

“Calhoun’s legacy as a white supremacist and a national leader who passionately promoted slavery as a ‘positive good’ fundamentally conflicts with Yale’s mission and values,” he added.

The Ivy League school in New Haven, Connecticut, is among several universities that have recently faced calls to dissociate themselves from symbols associated with racism.

The decision was made after a meeting with the university’s board of trustees, the university president said.

For those who worked in the early days of computer programming, Hopper was one of the great luminaries. Below is a brief bio of Hopper from my book, Online Education Policy and Practice… (Taylor & Francis, 2017).

Tony

======================================================================================

Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper received her masters degree in mathematics in 1931 from Yale University and shortly thereafter began teaching at Vassar College. In 1934, she was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics at Yale.  In 1943, she joined the Navy Reserve and was assigned to work with the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, where she learned to program the Mark I computer. As one of the lead programmers for the Mark I, she became a close colleague of Howard Aiken and assisted in the design of the Mark II and Mark III computers.   Hopper’s greatest contributions were in the field of computer programming.  She popularized the term “computer bug” and helped advance the development of computer subroutines.  The latter made computer programming far more efficient and provided for utilizing the same computer code over and over again.  She is also credited with developing the concept of the compiler which allows programs written on one machine to be easily converted to another machine.  Mechanical relays would no longer need to be rewired and instead could receive a new set of instructions via paper tape.

      After World War II, Hopper resigned from the Navy and left the academic world for private industry where she continued her pioneering work in computer programming.  She worked with J. Prescott Eckert and John Mauchly in designing new computers including Univac I and later coordinated the development of the Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL) which became the first machine-independent language and a mainstay of business applications for decades.  In 1969, she was awarded the first ever Computer Science Man-of-the-Year Award from the Data Processing Management Association. In 1973, she became the first person from the United States and the first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.

Dear Commons Community,

Ford Motor Company announced yesterday that it plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years in Argo AI, an artificial intelligence start-up formed in December that is focused on developing autonomous vehicle technology.   The move is Ford’s biggest investment in self-driving car research. Argo AI will develop the technology exclusively for Ford at first, and then plans to license its technology to others.  As reported in the New York Times:

“The investment is a way for Ford to tap into Silicon Valley talent and make headway in a competitive space. Former Google and Uber self-driving technologists will lead the effort out of Pittsburgh, a hub for robotics and autonomous vehicle research, and satellite offices will be in place in the San Francisco Bay Area and southeastern Michigan.

Argo AI will operate as a subsidiary of Ford; the automaker will be the majority shareholder. But Argo AI will also use shares of its stock to lure robotics and engineering professionals from other companies, a challenge in a field where companies like General Motors, Chrysler, Uber and Google are all racing to bring autonomous vehicles to the mainstream.

“If we can combine the best of a start-up and marry that with proper equity compensation, then that’s the best of both worlds,” Mark Fields, president and chief executive of Ford, said at an event with reporters in San Francisco on Friday.

The move comes as Ford positions itself as not just a manufacturer of cars, but as a provider of “mobility services,” enabling people to get around without owning cars. That is especially important as companies like Uber and Lyft, ride-hailing services popular in urban areas, have reduced the need for people to have their own vehicles.

Ford sees mobility services as potentially more profitable than its traditional business of making and selling cars. Manufacturing vehicles requires billions of dollars in investments in plants and engineering — costs that are often difficult to recoup. Company executives have said mobility services could generate returns of around 20 percent, compared with the 8 percent it earns on making vehicles today.”

This is a smart decision by an old and venerable company that needs to position itself for the future in the high-tech artificial intelligence arena.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Dear Commons Community,

Betsy DeVos fled a small group of protesters outside a middle school in Washington D.C. yesterday at one point hiding in her sport utility vehicle as a man wielded a cardboard sign before she finally entered.

Video (see above) of the episode at Jefferson Middle School Academy from a local television station showed a handful of people heckling and following Ms. DeVos as she tried to enter the school. She turned away with a man escorting her as one demonstrator shouted, “Go back! Shame, shame.”   As reported by the New York Times:

The exchange could be the first of many such encounters as protesters and opponents of Ms. DeVos say they plan to remind her of the fierce opposition she faced throughout her nomination process and continues to face as she weighs sweeping policies, such as encouraging private school vouchers. Activists have said they would protest her at every opportunity, including during school visits.

“We will unleash our activists in a way that I don’t think any secretary of education has ever experienced,” said Heidi Hess, a campaign manager for Credo, a mobile phone company with a liberal activist arm. “If she holds field hearings, we will make sure we pack them with activists. If she travels for meetings or if she visits schools, we will confront her with protesters and have people lined up to ask her questions.”

..Ms. DeVos eventually made it into the school and later told reporters the school was “awesome.”

“It was really wonderful to visit this school, and I look forward to many visits of many great public schools, both in D.C. and around the country,” Ms. DeVos said. “Thanks very much.”

Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C. also said that the city wants Ms. DeVos to visit its schools.”

I agree with Mayor Bowser!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times editorial today takes it to Kellyanne Conway and the “cartoonishly crass” way she hawked Ivanka Trump merchandize on Fox News.   Here is the editorial:

Kellyanne Conway’s White House Infomercial

By the Editorial Board

Feb. 9, 2017

===========================

In Thursday’s episode of “QVC: White House Edition,” Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to President Trump, hawked his daughter’s fashion line on national television.

“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff, is what I would tell you,” Ms. Conway said in an interview on “Fox & Friends.” “I’m going to give a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”

That’s cartoonishly crass, but perhaps not surprising, considering the example set by the president himself. On Wednesday he turned the power of his office against Nordstrom, attacking it for dropping Ivanka’s clothing line.

Ms. Conway’s remarks, made from the White House briefing room, plainly violated federal ethics regulations, which state that an employee “shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity.”

“Using public office for private gain” could be the motto of this administration, which is largely disregarding laws and customs meant to assure that presidents won’t let their financial interests get in the way of leading the nation. (This president, of course, has at least one immediate issue of his own: the violation of his 60-year lease of the government-owned Old Post Office building in Washington, which bars any elected official from being the lessee.)

Ethics experts and good-government groups were quick to pounce on Ms. Conway’s impromptu infomercial, and her ethical violation was so glaring that even some Republicans in Congress took note. Her words were “wrong, wrong, wrong, clearly over the line, unacceptable,” said Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Mr. Chaffetz called for the White House to refer the matter to the Office of Government Ethics, which could recommend disciplinary actions against Ms. Conway, including suspension and loss of pay. A referral would be the right way to deal with this. (The White House said that she has been “counseled,” which sounds like something between a wink and a slap on the wrist.)

Whatever happens to Ms. Conway, the deeper concern here is over the administration’s insistence on treating the White House as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization. If Mr. Trump truly cares more about his new job serving the American people than about serving the family empire, he knows what to do: release his tax returns and sell his businesses.”

The critical line for me in this editorial was the last:  “If Mr. Trump truly cares more about his new job serving the American people than about serving the family empire, he knows what to do…”   I don’t believe that Mr. Trump has any concern about putting his business interests ahead of the country’s interests.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Jill Carroll, a writer in Houston, had an op-ed piece in yesterday’s Chronicle of Higher Education, detailing her life as an adjunct and why she is happy she left it. Here is an excerpt:

“At the height of my adjunct “career” teaching writing, world religions, and general humanities courses, I taught up to 12 courses a year at three different institutions in the Houston area. I juggled about 400 students a year in my courses, and each student wrote three to five papers. Do the math — that’s a lot of grading.

I worked that oxymoronic full-time adjunct load for a decade — in addition to teaching a few continuing-ed courses just for kicks and extra income. In short, I taught more students and graded more papers in a decade than most of my full-time colleagues at the same university would teach in their entire careers.

For a while, I was sort of an adjunct guru. I self-published a book called How to Survive as an Adjunct Lecturer: An Entrepreneurial Strategy Manual and ended up writing a monthly advice column on The Adjunct Track for The Chronicle. I also provided coaching to other non-tenure-track instructors to help them figure out ways to work the system and squeeze as much money out of it as possible. The idea was to come as close as they could to an income that honored their knowledge and credentials — or to at least not have to wait tables on nonteaching days to make ends meet.

I did well financially. I made my mortgage every month and managed to save a little. But I shoveled my share of hate mail from people who said I was justifying an exploitative system when, really, all I was trying to do was find a way to survive (maybe even thrive for a few moments) within it.

Back then, there was talk of revolution, of course. Most of us, at least in the humanities, had read enough Marxist critical theory in grad school to envision ourselves joining in some sort of massive collective uprising to overturn academe and force it to give us full-time jobs. Many of us would have settled for having our own desks, school email accounts, phones, photocopying privileges, and maybe free access to the campus health clinic: Adjuncts of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but the rolling briefcases you pull around in lieu of an office!

It seemed clear to me then — as it does now — no such revolution would take place. The market is still glutted with fresh Ph.D.s, especially in the humanities, who will accept adjunct positions just to stay in academe and not feel like they wasted their time and money on an expensive degree. I can’t blame them. Even if a university’s contingent faculty could manage to organize enough to collectively strike — a big “if” — the campus would shut down for a week or two, but soon would find plenty of replacements to staff the vacated positions.

Also, it seems to me that in our post-2008-recession era, adjuncting is now just another example of the gig economy. Adjuncts do short-term contract work alongside Uber drivers, Taskrabbit workers, and people who sell their skills on Fiverr. Increasingly more people are freelancers in America’s late-stage capitalism. Fewer and fewer companies pay full-time salaries with the hefty benefits packages of even a decade or two ago. The country as a whole, it seems, has become more comfortable with — or at least resigned to — contingent employment models. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

Her conclusion:

“They were good times. They were exhausting and frustrating times, too. I’m glad they are over.  I never intend to grade another paper.”

Jill’s story is important for those of us who teach in doctoral programs designed to develop academicians.  While applications continue to be strong for Ph.D. programs, we have to be honest with our students and ourselves about career possibilities.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In 1986, Coretta Scott King prepared a 10-page letter urging Congress to reject Jeff Sessions’ nomination to be a federal judge.  The letter from King to the Senate Judiciary Committee is credited in helping to block the confirmation of Sessions for the federal judgeship. 

Tuesday evening Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was silenced while reading the same letter from Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor in opposition to Jeff Sessions’ nomination as attorney general.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked Rule 19, which forbids speaking ill of other senators. Sessions was confirmed for attorney general.

A sad state of affairs!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Betsy DeVos was confirmed yesterday as Education Secretary with Vice President Pence casting the deciding vote as the 100 senators split 50-50.  Two Republicans joined 48 Democrats.   The New York Times has a scathing editorial referring to DeVos as “the perfect cabinet member for a president determined to appoint officials eager to destroy the agencies they run and weigh the fate of policies and programs based on ideological considerations”.  Ross Douhat in his column reminds his readers that the bulk of DeVos’s pro school-choice position places her only somewhat to the right of former President Obama’s and Arne Duncan’s pro-charter-school positioning, and close to centrist Democrats like Senator Cory Booker. The Chronicle of Higher Education  this morning comments that she has said very little about higher education and that she is essentially a “K-12 person”. So what are some of the possibilities.

First, we need to remember that the bulk of all education spending comes from states and localities and there can be fierce resistance on the part of the policymakers at this level to any major overhaul of the public schools. 

Second, her school choice position is directed more at inner city and religious groups than suburban and rural constituents.  Most parents in the latter traditionally strong Republican areas are fairly happy with their public schools and are reluctant to see tax dollars flow out of their districts.  As a result, the Republican Congress may slow down some of DeVos’ agenda.

Third, DeVos may end up  using her position as Education Secretary to criticize and bully public education, much like Bill Bennett did in the Ronald Reagan administration.  While there was lots of anti public education vitriol in the 1980s, there wasn’t much in the way of policy.

In sum, it was a sad day yesterday for public education but there may be some small glimmers of hope that all is not lost.

Tony