Dear Commons Community,

Amid a backlash from several CIA officials, Harvard University announced early this morning that it will rescind its invitation for Chelsea Manning to be a visiting fellow during its upcoming academic year. As reported by The Huffington Post:

“In a blog post, Douglas Elmendorf, dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School, called Manning’s fellowship designation a “mistake.” Manning had been invited to spend a day at the Kennedy School under the mantle of visiting fellow, a title that he said was used to “describe some people who spend more than a few hours at the school.”

“We did not intend to honor her in any way or to endorse any of her words or deeds, as we do not honor or endorse any fellow,” Elmendorf said. “However, I now think that designating Chelsea Manning as a Visiting Fellow was a mistake, for which I accept responsibility.”

The university’s decision to withdraw the fellowship invitation followed a day of public pressure. CIA Director Mike Pompeo called Manning an “American traitor,” and said he would withdraw from an appearance at the Kennedy School’s John F. Kennedy, Jr. Forum. Former CIA Chief Michael Morell also resigned his role as a senior fellow at Harvard over the Manning invite.

“You have traded a respected individual who served his country with dignity for one who served it with disgrace and who violated the warrior ethos she promised to uphold when she voluntarily chose to join the United States Army,” Pompeo wrote.

Manning, 29, served seven years in prison for sharing classified information with WikiLeaks, the largest breach of such intel in U.S. history. The remainder of her 35-year sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama in January and she was released in May.

Harvard originally announced the news of Manning’s fellowship on Wednesday, touting her as the Kennedy School’s “first transgender Fellow.”

The university offered an apology to Manning, and still plans to invite her to spend the day at the school, Elmendorf said.

“I apologize to her and to the many concerned people from whom I have heard today for not recognizing upfront the full implications of our original invitation,” Elmendorf stated. “This decision now is not intended as a compromise between competing interest groups but as the correct way for the Kennedy School to emphasize its longstanding approach to visiting speakers while recognizing that the title of Visiting Fellow implies a certain recognition.”

A sticky-wicket for Harvard.  Below is former Acting CIA Director Morrell’s letter and justification.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) say they and President Donald Trump have “agreed” to pass legislation to protect the nation’s 800,000 Dreamers from deportation. According to Pelosi and Schumer, who dined with Trump last night, the proposal would not include a physical wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.  As reported in the New York Times:

“The Democrats, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, said in a joint statement that they had a “very productive” dinner meeting with the president at the White House that focused on the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. “We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides,” they said.

In its own statement, the White House was far more muted, mentioning DACA as merely one of several issues that were discussed, including tax reform and infrastructure. It called the meeting, which came a week after the president struck a stunning spending-and-debt deal with the Democratic leaders, “a positive step toward the president’s strong commitment to bipartisan solutions.”

But the bipartisan comity appeared to have its limits. In a tweet, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, disputed the Democrats’ characterization of Mr. Trump’s stance on the border wall. “While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to,” she wrote.

Mr. Schumer’s communications director, Matt House, fired back on Twitter: “The President made clear he would continue pushing the wall, just not as part of this agreement.”

While Democratic leaders sought to frame the Wednesday dinner as a victory for their priorities, Republican votes will be needed for any immigration overhaul. Hard-liners in Congress were flummoxed by word of a potential deal on DACA, one that could push some of Mr. Trump’s electoral base away from him.

Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, wrote on Twitter that if the reports were true, “Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.” The website Breitbart, run by Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, had the headline “Amnesty Don.”

Some Republicans were more receptive. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a frequent critic of the president, said on Twitter: “Kudos to @POTUS for pursuing agreement that will protect #Dreamers from deportation.” The young immigrants are often referred to as Dreamers.”

This is the another big plus for bi-partisanship.  Kudos to Trump, Pelosi, and Schumer!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

When Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island in New York City opened its doors for the first time this semester, faculty, students and visitors were treated to various works of art designed to stir imagination and innovation.  The New York Times has an article today featuring the artwork at Cornell Tech carefully commissioned to help students and faculty to immerse and to think.  Here is an excerpt from the article.

“Since the first crop of engineering graduate students arrived last month at the brand-new Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, many have been busy decoding the diagrams in Matthew Ritchie’s dynamic mural rising up four stories in the atrium of the Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Center, the main academic building.

This is not lobby decoration tacked on as an afterthought. From the early design stages, Thom Mayne, the founder of Morphosis Architects, and his team integrated the mural and four other immersive installations in the cafe and unexpected “discovery rooms” throughout the new building: an art program engineered to provoke creative thinking. “The entire building is designed to spur imagination and innovation and sometimes unintentional interactions,” said Patricia Harris, chief executive of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

More than 1 percent of the building’s overall budget of $130 million (funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the city) was invested in new artworks by Mr. Ritchie, Michael Riedel, Matthew Day Jackson and Alison Elizabeth Taylor, as well as in the restoration and relocation of a historic 50-foot-long mural by Ilya Bolotowsky. This canvas had hung in the Coler-Goldwater Memorial Hospital razed to make way for the Cornell Tech campus.

Cornell University and Technion — Israel Institute of Technology formed the partnership of Cornell Tech in 2011 and won New York City’s competition to develop an applied-sciences campus. As part of the deal, in which the city provided funding and land, Cornell Tech agreed to preserve three large-scale paintings in the derelict W.P.A.-era hospital. An Albert Swinden mural has been installed in the new Bridge building adjacent to the Bloomberg Center, and a Joseph Rugolo work will find a home in the next construction phase.

The Bolotowsky canvas — an abstract composition of geometric shapes in a soothing palette of blues, pinks and beiges — had wrapped around a circular room in the hospital and required Mr. Mayne to accommodate a similar space in his floor plan. “This helped us think about how we could have other hidden rooms as an element of surprise,” Ms. Harris explained.

These enigmatic spaces include Mr. Jackson’s “Ordinary Objects of Extraordinary Beauty,” a continuation of his series called “Study Collections.” The small trapezoidal meeting room is lined with shelves displaying natural and found objects — like bones, ceramics and branches — as specimens. “The things these students will dream up are at the cutting edge of the application of new science,” Mr. Jackson said. “I wanted to present a room where they could sit and think about the material resources available on earth and what they’ll do with them.”

The students will be unplugged while they’re contemplating. Andrew Winters, senior director for capital projects at Cornell Tech, said there are no outlets or wiring for electronic devices in the room, to encourage people to sit and talk. Part of the art program is to help students, faculty and researchers “get away from what they’re doing day to day,” Mr. Winters said. “Facebook and Pixar offices have secret rooms for people to go do yoga or sleep. We tried to elevate that a little bit.”

The architects at Cornell Tech have thought deeply about how to use art to stir minds!

BRAVO!

Tony

https://youtu.be/6kKg6dMq17g

Dear Commons Community,

Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon said President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey may have been the biggest mistake in “modern political history.”

Bannon’s comment came in a segment from Bannon’s Sunday “60 Minutes” interview with Charlie Rose that did not make the cut on air.

In the interview, Rose said he had heard Bannon describe Comey’s ouster in May as “the biggest mistake in political history.”

“That probably would be too bombastic, even for me,” Bannon said.

“But maybe modern political history.”

Trump admitted that he fired Comey in part to help clear “the cloud” hanging over his presidency from the federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s purported Russia ties.

As Bannon sees it, Trump should have realized that the FBI as an institution would continue its work no matter who ran it.

Bannon also noted that, if Comey didn’t go, Special Counsel Robert Mueller — who Trump cannot personally fire — would have never taken over the probe.

Coming from Bannon as someone close to Trump, this is a most interesting comment.

Tony

Dear Commons Community

Spelman College’s President Mary Schmidt Campbell sent out a statement to students last week announcing that starting in 2018, transgender students will be accepted for admission.  The statement read in part:

“Spelman College, a Historically Black College whose mission is to serve high-achieving black women, will consider for admission women students including students who consistently live and self-identify as women, regardless of their gender assignment at birth. Spelman does not admit male students, including students who self-identify and live consistently as men, regardless of gender assignment at birth. If a woman is admitted and transitions to male while a student at Spelman, the college will permit that student to continue to matriculate at and graduate from Spelman…

…In adopting this admissions policy, Spelman continues its fervent belief in the power of the Spelman Sisterhood,” her letter states. “Students who choose Spelman come to our campus prepared to participate in a women’s college that is academically and intellectually rigorous, and affirms its core mission as the education and development of high-achieving Black women.”

Spelman College, founded in 1881, isn’t the only all-female college opening its doors to transgender students. This year, Wellesley will admit transgender students for the first time. Smith College began to accept transgender students in 2015, as did Bryn Mawr, Barnard, and Mills College, and Mount Holyoke is open to transgender admissions as well.   Spelman will become the second exclusively for women Historically Black College and University to admit transgender students. Bennett College was the first to do so in January 2017.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

People around the country the past few days were keeping a watch on Hurricane Irma as it approached Florida.  Its path of devastation moving steadily west in the Caribbean.  Multiple maps and other graphics have been inundating the news media especially television.  A few clicks to the left or the right  could mean a major difference as to where Irma might land.  The National Weather Service has come out with a clear graphic of the path of the storm and it appears that the west coast of Florida will bear the brunt of the hurricane.  Up until yesterday, it appeared that Miami was in the eye of the storm.  While all of Florida will be impacted, it now appears western areas like the Keys, Tampa and Naples will see the worst.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the people of Florida!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading Senator Jeff Flake’’s Conscience of a Conservative that was published earlier this year.  It is a thin volume by the Republican from Arizona that borrows from Barry Goldwater’s book of the same title published in 1960.  Flake readily admits that he was always a big Goldwater fan and credits his own conservative views to him.  This becomes the basis for his strong disagreement and distaste for the way Donald Trump is handling the presidency.

Flake makes the case that Trump is not conservative or really a Republican.  His stances on free trade and globalization for instance are anathema to core, free-market conservative values. 

Flake also takes strong issue with Trump, the president.  He characterizes him as volatile and a destabilizer who is more television reality star than statesman. Without a doubt, he clearly sees Trump as a danger to our country, its values, and to conservatism.

Although not a great insight, I did enjoy reading Flake’s book this week as we saw Trump strike a major legislative deal with the Democrats.  It exemplified Flake’s assertions that Trump is not a Republican.  However, I am a bit dismayed that while Flake has written this book in part because he is fighting a major election challenge for his Senate seat, he has also consistently voted for all the agenda items that Trump has been pushing the Senate to move on.  So he disagrees with Trump and sees him as a danger to the country but still supports him as a party loyalist.  A bit of hypocrisy here.  

In sum, I give it a B-Minus!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Wednesday, in a rare show of bipartisanship, President Trump struck a deal with Democratic congressional leaders to increase the debt limit and finance the government until mid-December.  The Republican-led Senate yesterday approved legislation to raise the debt limit and keep the government funded until December while providing $15 billion in disaster aid.  The Senate approved the measure 80 to 17.  All of the senators voting no were Republicans.   The agreement averts a fiscal showdown later this month without the bloody, partisan battle that many had anticipated by combining a debt ceiling increase and stopgap spending measure with relief aid to Texas and other areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey.  As reported by the New York Times:

“In embracing the three-month deal, Mr. Trump accepted a Democratic proposal that had been rejected earlier in the day by Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. Mr. Trump’s snap decision at a White House meeting caught Republican leaders off guard and reflected friction between the president and his party. After weeks of criticizing Republican leaders for failing to pass legislation, Mr. Trump signaled that he was willing to cross party lines to score some much-desired legislative victories

By the time President Trump woke up on yesterday morning, he was feeling upbeat. And as he watched television news reports about his fiscal agreement with Democrats, he felt like telling someone.

He picked up the phone and called the two Democratic congressional leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California. “The press has been incredible,” he gushed to Ms. Pelosi, according to someone briefed on their call. He was equally effusive with Mr. Schumer, boasting that even Fox News was positive.

A few hours later, Mr. Trump went on TV himself, vowing to turn a one-time spending-and-debt deal brokered out of expediency into a more enduring bipartisan alliance that could transform his presidency. He signaled openness to a Democratic proposal to eliminate the perennial showdowns over the debt ceiling, and he repeated his desire to cut a deal to protect younger illegal immigrants from deportation.

But even as Republicans fumed at being sidelined, many in Washington were skeptical that the moment of comity would last. Although Mr. Trump has at times preached bipartisanship, he has never made it a central part of his governing strategy. While he may have been feeling energized on Thursday by the collaboration, he is a politician driven by the latest expression of approval, given to abrupt shifts in approach and tone. He is a man of the moment, and the moment often does not last.

There are also reasons to doubt whether Democrats would sustain a partnership with Mr. Trump beyond the deal they have cut to keep the government open for three months and paying its debts. The centrifugal forces of partisanship tug from the left as well as the right, and the liberal base has put pressure on Democratic lawmakers not to meet in the middle a president it loathes.

For one day, though, the two sides sought to put months of acrimony behind them. “I think we will have a different relationship than we’ve been watching over the last number of years. I hope so,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think that’s a great thing for our country. And I think that’s what the people of the United States want to see. They want to see some dialogue. They want to see coming together to an extent.”

Democrats expressed a blend of optimism and caution. “We’ll see,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. “I think it would be much better for the country and much better for Donald Trump if he was much more in the middle and bipartisan rather than siding with the hard right. I think he got a taste of it yesterday. We’ll see if it continues. I hope it does.”

Congratulations to Trump, Schumer, Pelosi, and all the Republican senators who voted for this legislation.  This is the way our government is suppose to work!

Tony

Dear Commons Community.

This past Tuesday was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 1.  Lawrence M. Krauss, the director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, had an op-ed piece in the New York Times reflecting on its journey and that of its companion probe, Voyager II, and pondering  just how far humanity has traveled in just a few decades.  Here is an excerpt:

“In 2012, Voyager 1 left the sheltered cocoon we call the heliosphere, a bubble in space in which the pressure from the sun’s wind of particles and its magnetic field overcome the outside pressure from the rarefied gas that permeates the rest of our galaxy. It became the first object built by humans to depart our solar system, to wander through dark interstellar space. (Voyager 2, on a different trajectory, remains within the heliosphere.)

One way or another, humanity’s future is in the cosmos. Perhaps spacecraft will one day manage to carry humans to the stars, or at least robots with instructions on how to create humans.

Or, humanity may never expand beyond Earth. In two billion years, the sun’s brightness will increase by 15 percent, making our home similar to Venus today. A runaway greenhouse effect will produce surface temperatures in excess of 700 degrees Fahrenheit. Following that, in five billion years, the sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel and its outer surface will expand as it becomes a red giant, eventually encompassing Earth within its outer layers.

As this happens, our atmosphere will be blown out into the cosmos, and the atoms that now make up our bodies may be dispersed into the interstellar medium, perhaps to seed some future planet around some star that has yet to be born.

For humans, these two futures are wildly divergent. But for our atoms, they are largely the same. Many will end up among the stars, whether they travel outward into the cosmos in spacecraft or are propelled by a massive atmospheric shock wave.

All the while, our two Voyager spacecraft are likely to continue their lonely journeys among the stars. Humanity may perish, but somewhere in our galaxy will be evidence that we once existed.

The Voyagers carry with them a much-heralded snapshot in time. The famous and romantic Golden Record, developed by Carl Sagan and his colleagues, with music and images from the world as it was in 1977, might be discovered one day by distant aliens who find the crafts wandering in their vicinity of the galaxy.

…Think of how much our understanding of the universe has changed since 1977. We now know that all the visible stars and galaxies and everything we could then see with our telescopes are actually merely 1 percent of what is actually there. The known universe in 1977 was but the visible part of a cosmic iceberg, the bulk of which is made up of material having no resemblance to the matter that makes us up. Even more inexplicable is the fact that 70 percent of the total energy of the cosmos resides mysteriously in empty space, which is causing the expansion of our universe to speed up, not slow down.

Even in our own solar system, we expected the moons of Jupiter and Saturn were merely dead lumps of rock or frozen snowballs, whereas we now understand that several have warm oceans underneath a coating of ice — ideal potential breeding grounds for what may be independent forms of life.

We also had no direct evidence that any planets existed around other stars. We have now discovered thousands of them, some of which may be habitable, including one around our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri. And we know that our solar system is by no means typical.

We have discovered massive black holes at the center of many galaxies and have observed the convulsions of space as black holes collide and merge. On smaller scales, we have unraveled the nature of three of the four fundamental forces of the universe and discovered the Higgs particle, validating our picture of the origin of mass in the cosmos.

…Where will humanity be in another 40 years, as these spacecraft continue their travels, though still closer to their home star than any other? Will we continue our own voyage of discovery? Will we meet the global challenges we face or succumb to them? The future for the Voyager spacecraft may already be written. Our own future remains in our hands.”

Thank you Dr. Krauss for reminding us of some big questions!

Tony