Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, comments this morning on President Doanld Trump’s visit to the G-20 meeting and especially about his meeting with Vladmir Putin.  Dowd meanders a bit but finally gets down to her barbs about Trump and Putin.  She comments:

“In his attenuated first meeting with his side bae [boyfriend], Trump staged a Kabuki show of confronting the former K.G.B. agent.

Their conversation boiled down to this:

Trump: “Did you do it [attempt to influence our election]?”

Putin: “Nyet.”

Trump: “Whew! Glad that’s out of the way. So let’s do a joint cybersecurity program and share our passwords.”

Putin: “Da.”

He should have had a showdown to rival the one Adlai Stevenson had at the U.N. with the Soviet ambassador on the Cuban missile crisis. “I am prepared to wait for an answer until hell freezes over,” Stevenson snapped.

Trump should have slapped down the evidence and doled out the punishment. Instead, he and Putin commiserated about bumptious journalists.

“Polonium [poison[ works well,” Putin was probably saying.

“Spasibo [Thank you]” Trump probably replied.

In the end, Trump and fellow bumbling neophyte Rex Tillerson opened the portal wider for Putin to sneak through in coming elections.

I don’t know how much information the tyro pol in the Oval has absorbed — or even wants to absorb — in his dumbed-down briefings. But, brainwashed by his father’s exhortation that the world belongs to “killers,” Trump clearly doesn’t recognize the danger before him.

This is a simple fact he might want to let sink in: The Russians do not have our best interests at heart. They are conjuring Trump’s worst “1984” fear: playing him for a sucker.”

This sucker is the President of the United States with all its resources at his disposal.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Betsy DeVos made a career of promoting local control of education, now as U.S. Department of Education Secretary, she is signaling a surprisingly hard-line approach to carrying out a federal education law, issuing critical feedback that has irked state school chiefs and conservative education experts alike.  The New York Times has a featured article on DeVos’s apparent change of position.  Here is an excerpt:

“President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 as the less intrusive successor to the No Child Left Behind law, which was maligned by many in both political parties as punitive and prescriptive. But in the Education Department’s feedback to states about their plans to put the new law into effect, it applied strict interpretations of statutes, required extensive detail and even deemed some state education goals lackluster.

In one case, the acting assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, Jason Botel, wrote to the State of Delaware that its long-term goals for student achievement were not “ambitious.”

“It is mind-boggling that the department could decide that it’s going to challenge them on what’s ambitious,” said Michael J. Petrilli, the president of the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who worked in the Education Department under President George W. Bush. He called the letter “directly in opposition to the rhetoric and the promises of DeVos.”

After more than a decade of strict federal education standards and standardized testing regimes, the Every Student Succeeds Act was to return latitude to the states to come up with plans to improve student achievement and hold schools accountable for student performance.

It sought to relieve states from the federal pressures of its predecessor, which required that 100 percent of the students of every school reach proficiency on state tests or the school would face harsh penalties and aggressive interventions. Unlike No Child Left Behind, the new law does not set numerical achievement targets, nor does it mandate how a state should intervene if a school fails to reach them. The law does require that states set such benchmarks on their own.

Proponents, especially congressional Republicans and conservative education advocates, believed that a new era of local control would flourish under Ms. DeVos, who pointed to the new law as illustrative of the state-level empowerment she champions.

But her department’s feedback reflects a tension between ideology and legal responsibility: While she has said she would like to see her office’s role in running the nation’s public schools diminished, she has also said she will uphold the law…

Mr. Botel defended the department’s feedback, saying it was measuring state plans against federal statutes — including a requirement that plans be ambitious.

“Because the statute does not define the word ‘ambitious,’ the secretary has the responsibility of determining whether a state’s long-term goals are ambitious,” Mr. Botel said.

In the department’s letter to Delaware — which incited the most outrage from conservative observers — Mr. Botel took aim at the state’s plan to halve the number of students not meeting proficiency rates in the next decade. Such a goal would have resulted in only one-half to two thirds of some groups of students achieving proficiency, he noted.

The department deemed those long-term goals, as well as those for English-language learners, not ambitious, and directed the state to revise its plans to make them more so.

So far, 16 states and the District of Columbia have submitted plans, and more states will present plans in the fall. Delaware, New Mexico and Nevada were the first three to be reviewed by Education Department staff and a panel of peer reviewers.”

It will be interesting to see how this evolves.  I predict DeVos will look to intrude on state and local education rather than take a hands-off approach.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Frank Bruni in his New York Times column yesterday sees similarities in the hubris displayed by Donald Trump and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.  Here is an excerpt”

“The stories of the disgraced New Jersey governor and the disgraceful American president overlap. Christie was “Trump before Trump,” Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told The Washington Post’s Robert Costa in an article published late Monday. “He does what he wants to do, and his success can be traced to that. But there are consequences, of course, when you work that way.”

Steele could as easily have been talking about Trump, and when Costa referred to the “defiance that has both lifted and hobbled Christie’s political career,” he brought to mind Trump’s temperament and trajectory, whether he meant to or not.

The twins of tantrum, Christie and Trump had almost identical political appeals. They mocked propriety. They broke rules. They assertively peddled the impression that as happy as they were to make friends, they were even happier to make enemies, because that meant that they were fully in the fight.

In an era of resentment and anger, many voters thrilled to the spectacle. The problem with other politicians, these voters legitimately reasoned, was too much indulgence of vested interests and too cowardly an obeisance to convention. If you didn’t slaughter the sacred cows, you’d never get to the tastiest filet.””

But Christie and Trump proved to be butchers of a more indiscriminate and self-serving sort, and both demonstrated that there’s a short leap from headstrong to hardheaded and from defiant to delusional. Bold nonconformity can be the self-indulgent egotist’s drag.”

Bruni concludes:

“Trump and Christie somehow decided that you have to govern by middle finger if you want to avoid governing by pinkie finger. But there’s a digit in between: a middle ground. It’s where real leadership and true effectiveness lie.

Christie’s disrepute and dashed ambitions confirm as much. So does the ongoing insult of Trump’s presidency. They show that if you embrace a politician who talks too frequently and proudly about not caring what anyone thinks, you’ll wind up in the clutch of a politician whose last refuge is not caring what anyone thinks. That’s a dangerous place to be.”

A dangerous place indeed and one that we may be living in for seven more years.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a featured article on how college libraries are struggling to retool themselves in the 21^st Century to the Internet and its easily-accessible treasure trove of information.  In addition to spending less on print materials and more on electronic resources, libraries increasingly are providing spaces for students to collaborate on research projects and for providing tutoring services especially as related to information literacy.  

The article refers to a survey published in April by Ithaka S+R, a research-and-consulting service, which found that library directors feel less valued by senior academic leadership and less involved with decisions on their campuses. Only one-fifth of respondents said their institution’s budget demonstrated a recognition of the library’s value. And while librarians reported being deeply committed to student success, they struggled to articulate what exactly their contributions are.

The article also provides several examples of what college librarians are doing to make changes to their facilities.  For instance, the article describes how the DePaul University library “will  soon feature a ‘Maker Hub’ on the second floor, stocked with 3-D printers and a 3-D scanner, which, the library’s website notes, can scan people. Booths with audio and video equipment, as well as a green screen, will line the walls outside. A classroom and office space will be added for a group on campus focused on faculty development and interdisciplinary academic work.”

The Internet surely has impacted on much of what we do in education.  Like many other instructional and student services, libraries will have to adjust accordingly.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A New York Times article this morning reported that “At a White House gathering of tech titans last week, Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, delivered a blunt message to President Trump on how public schools could better serve the nation’s needs. To help solve a “huge deficit in the skills that we need today,” Mr. Cook said, the government should do its part to make sure students learn computer programming.

“Coding,” Mr. Cook told the president, “should be a requirement in every public school.”

The Apple chief’s education mandate was just the latest tech company push for coding courses in schools. But even without Mr. Trump’s support, Silicon Valley is already advancing that agenda — thanks largely to the marketing prowess of Code.org, an industry-backed nonprofit group.”

The article goes on to question the motives of the tech company executives as one to make sure they have a ready supply of computer scientists  especially since they have become heavily reliant on foreign engineers.    

I would be cautious about requiring coding in every public school, however, I do think it has a place in our K-12 curriculum.  Just as our colleges over the past forty years have made computer science more available to students either in the form of majors, minors, or integrated into other disciplines, computer science or coding has educational value.  In addition to preparation for our increasingly high-tech world, computer coding at the K-12 level can be designed as a valuable critical thinking and problem-solving activity. It involves logic, organization, and persistence to achieve success in writing a program while adding to an understanding of how a computer functions.  These are desirable skills that schools need to do a better job of developing in young people.

In sum, I think more exposure to computer coding is desirable, however, it does not have to be a requirement in every school.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

If you are looking for a movie this summer, you might try Beatriz at Dinner starring Salma Hayek and John Lithgow.  Hayek stars as an alternative medicine healer who because of a car problem attends a dinner party where John Lithgow, the ultimate capitalist and land developer, is a guest.  It is impossible not to see Lithgow as a Donald Trump-type, boorish character who sees every deal as a winner take all, no-holds barred contest.  Here is an excerpt from The Hollywood Reporter review that captures the essence of the movie.

“Salma Hayek offers a performance rich in stillness, tenderness and dignity in Beatriz at Dinner, a laudably well-intentioned but way too on-the-nose comedy-drama. Director Miguel Arteta and screenwriter Mike White collaborated recently on TV’s Enlightened, but this is their first feature together since they made the scrappy Sundance favorites The Good Girl (2002) and Chuck & Buck(2000) back in the day…

Beatriz (Hayek), a middle-aged divorcee from Mexico living in Los Angeles, works as a masseuse/healer at a clinic for cancer patients and sees private clients on the side. A nurturing soul who seems haunted by some kind of terrible loss in her past, she’s so protective of her pets she keeps her goat in a pen in her own bedroom at night to protect it from a possibly murderous, goat-hating neighbor.

At the spacious if somewhat soulless Newport Beach mansion owned by Cathy (Connie Britton) and building mogul Grant (David Warshofsky), Beatriz gives Cathy a massage and gets an update on Cathy’s newly college-bound daughter Tara, whom Beatriz cared for when the girl had cancer in her teens. Relations between the two women are genuinely warm and friendly, so when Beatriz’s car won’t start, Cathy insists on inviting Beatriz to join them for the dinner party they’re holding that evening while she waits for a mechanic friend to show up.

Grant has serious misgivings about bringing Beatriz to the table since one of the guests is power client Douglas Strutt (John Lithgow), a famously opinionated, unabashedly capitalist hotel and golf-course magnate whose resemblance to Donald Trump is surely not accidental. That said, Lithgow’s bragging, boorish captain of industry, who asks Beatriz if she entered the country legally, boasts about having shot a rhinoceros on safari in Africa and couldn’t give a damn if his ventures poison the environment and ruin lives, still comes across as more savvy and likable than the newly sworn-in POTUS.

Occupying the other spots at the table are Strutt’s much younger third wife (Amy Landecker from Transparent), dressed in exactly the right shade of garish aqua and too much mascara, and Grant’s junior colleague Alex (Jay Duplass, also from Transparent) and his elegant wife (Chloe Sevigny), the last two obsequious social climbers dressed in matching shades of beige that also match the mansion’s walls.

Inevitably, Strutt at first mistakes Beatriz for a maid and asks her to refill his drink, and from there the social awkwardness just keeps getting worse as the evening wears on, the hunting stories are trotted out and an increasingly drunk Beatriz cannot contain her disgust at Strutt’s vileness. It’s to White’s and Arteta’s credit, however, that they don’t make their title protagonist an eco-warrior secular saint, although Cathy does keep trying to canonize her in conversation. Damaged, humorless and clearly a few goji berries short of the full smoothie, Beatriz is troubled, and putting her in the same room with Strutt is as smart as playing with sparklers at a broken gas pump. And yet the final act feels like a cop-out, resolved with a magical-realist sleight of hand that cheats the viewer of a proper resolution while pushing the characters to the limits of credibility.

Given the dinner-party premise, the film is expectedly heavy on talk, but Arteta avoids monologue monotony by cutting away frequently to his ensemble’s faces in repose as they listen to the others. Each and every one masterfully deploys a full arsenal of subtle moues, grimaces and side-eye glances to hint at private feelings that may or may not be in accord with the consensus around the table. Britton’s eye twitches and fluttering gestures of horror as her party starts to go wrong are a thing of beauty to behold, as are Landecker’s embarrassed eye rolls and Sevigny’s and Duplass’ impish smirks.  Even John Early as the simpering caterer seems to be snickering inwardly as the evening implodes.

However, as written, these super-elite 0.00001 percenters are straw figures ready to be burnt at the stake of White’s and Arteta’s righteous indignation. Even if one agrees with the disgust they feel at this privileged, entitled class’ complacency and complicity, a little more subtlety and a more nuanced approach to the dynamics of this culture clash would have made the film that little bit more effective.”

If you are not in the mood for the typical action-thriller type summer fare, you might find Beatriz … interesting and fun.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd takes it again to Donald Trump in her New York Times column this morning.  She describes him as an equal opportunity cruel character when it comes to insulting women or men.  This past week, Trump attacked Mika Brzezinski, after she criticized him on her Morning Joe cable-TV show.  Dowd contends Trump does not just go after women but uses insults as a way to demean those he sees as opponents.  Here is an excerpt:

“I have no doubt that he would attack a man’s appearance in the same breathtakingly below-the-belt way if he felt humiliated by that man and had the ammunition

In his vile tweet about Mika Brzezinski, he called her crazy. He often tweets that women journalists — including me — are crazy. Yet in that same tweet about Mika, he called Joe Scarborough “psycho.” And he told the Russians in May that James Comey was “a nut job.”

Some, including Scarborough, think Trump goes after women harder. Certainly, it resonates more with women because of Trump’s history of sexist remarks, his taped boasting about assaulting women and his habit of rating women’s looks on a 1-to-10 scale. (He did once tell me, though, that he considered women “tougher” and that he related to them better.)

There is also the historical context: It is a more sensitive matter for women because for centuries, they relied on their looks for economic security, and they continue to be judged more on physical traits and clothing choices.

But as some women anchoring cable shows call for the women in the Trump administration to rise up in protest, I say: Let’s not narrow it to sexism.

It’s even more troubling than that. It’s cruelty on a Grand Guignol scale, both in Trump’s heartless tweets and in his mindless salesmanship of the Republicans’ heartless budget. When Trump called the House health care bill mean, he knows whereof he speaks. He’s the King of Mean. Pathetically, Trump mistakes cruelty for strength.

The 71-year-old president’s pathological inability to let go of slights; his strongman reflex to be the aggressor and bite back like a cornered animal, without regard for societal norms; his lack of self-awareness about the power he commands and the proportionality of his responses; his grotesque hunger for flattery and taste for Tony Soprano tactics; his Pravda partnership with David Pecker, the head honcho at The National Enquirer, which has been giving Trump the Il Duce treatment while sliming his political opponents, the “Morning Joe” anchors and Megyn Kelly — these are all matters that should alarm men and women equally.

Trump has moved his shallow kiddie wading pool of gossip and ridicule from Trump Tower to the White House, where it is so outlandishly out of place that it often feels like we have a Page Six reporter as our president.

Trump is isolated in the White House, out of his milieu, unable to shape the story, forced to interact with people he doesn’t own. Even the staffers folding  his clothes aren’t on his payroll.

Before he got to D.C., Trump was used to media that could be bought, sold and bartered with. He is not built for this hostile environment and it shows in his deteriorating psychological state.

Even though he’s in the safest space of all, he’s not in a safe space.”

He is not in a safe place and neither are the rest of us!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Catherine Merridale’s  book, Lenin on the Train (Metropolitan Books, 2017).  The book retraces Vladmir Lenin’s train journey with a small group of colleagues from Zurich, Switzerland to Petrograd (St. Petersburg), Russia in the spring of 1917.  When the train arrived in Petrograd, Lenin gave an impassioned speech before the waiting throng and it was the moment that many historians consider the point at which “the Russian Revolution became Soviet.”

Meridale’s account is well-researched and includes many interesting tidbits of history of which I was not fully aware.  For example, Lenin’s train trip was made possible by a well-financed operation by German agents hoping to disrupt the Russian government during World War I.   In April 2017, more than 900,000 thousand Russians marched in Petrograd to honor the 1,382 heroes or martyrs killed during the revolution. The well- recognized painting above completed by M.G. Sokolov includes Josef Stalin right behind Lenin.  However, Stalin was not on the train and was added as “an act of self-preservation” by the artist. If you are interested in reading this volume, below is an excerpt from the New York Times Book Review.

“To explain the significance of Lenin’s return a month after the czar’s abdication, Merridale reconstructs a familiar story: how the war sapped confidence in the monarchy; how the provisional government had to share power with the radical Soviet of Workers’ Deputies; and how Lenin, learning about the autocracy’s collapse from his place of exile in Zurich, was so bent on returning that he accepted the assistance of Germany to travel more than 2,000 miles over eight days in a sealed railway car through Germany, Sweden and Finland before finally reaching Petrograd in April.  Lenin’s sojourn in Zurich remains the stuff of popular imagination; both Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (in a book called, simply, “Lenin in Zurich”) and Tom Stoppard (in his play “Travesties”) depicted Lenin in Zurich plotting revolution.

Merridale’s account benefits from her thorough research, particularly concerning the circumstances surrounding Lenin’s return; the train’s route, which has confused earlier historians; and the intentions of the Germans, whose armies faced Russian forces on the Eastern front. Lenin had always opposed the war, giving Kaiser Wilhelm II’s regime hope that his return would have the effect of “disabling the Russian colossus” by undermining the provisional government’s resolve to remain loyal to its British and French allies and not seek a separate peace. But Lenin understood he was compromising his credibility by cooperating with the hated German enemy. Lenin, moreover, had accepted the kaiser’s money — “German gold” — to help finance Bolshevik propaganda and amplify his strident appeals against the provisional government and anyone, Bolshevik or otherwise, who thought of cooperating with it. If his enemies were to confirm his reliance on the kaiser’s assistance, he would face arrest for treason and the collapse of the Bolsheviks’ aim to seize power. But Lenin, unable to travel by boat because of Britain’s refusal to help leftist exiles like him, believed he had no alternative except to work with Berlin. (After Trotsky set off by boat from New York at the end of March, British officials arrested him in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and held him for a month with German prisoners of war. Trotsky gained his release only after vehement protests in Russia; he reached Petrograd a month after Lenin.)

The cover of “Lenin on the Train” portends the trouble to follow. In a notorious Soviet-era painting, Lenin is shown descending from the train to greet an exuberant crowd of admirers at Petrograd’s Finland Station. Behind him looms the image of a smiling Stalin, as if that future tyrant had been aboard as well — “a visual fairy tale,” in Merridale’s words, to reinforce Stalin’s claim that he had always been Lenin’s principal lieutenant. In fact, Stalin had faced internal exile in Siberia before reaching Petrograd in March. Lenin was greeted by hundreds of followers, among them prominent Bolsheviks like Lev Kamenev and Fedor Raskolnikov, while others, most notably Grigory Zinoviev and Grigory Sokolnikov, accompanied him on the train. Stalin later had them killed.”

I am not an historian so I found this book a good read that added a bit more to my understanding of the intricacies of the Russian Revolution.

Tony