Ellis Island Circa 1898 Where My Grandparents Entered America!

Dear  Commons Community,

[See note at the end of the posting.]

Last week, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had failed to adequately explain the necessity for a citizenship question on the 2020 census and sent the case back to a lower court.   The Trump administration claimed the query was necessary to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.

President Trump initially said he had instructed government lawyers to look into delaying the census. But yesterday, the administration officially announced there would not be a question about citizenship on the 2020 census.

“We can confirm that the decision has been made to print the 2020 Decennial Census questionnaire without a citizenship question, and that the printer has been instructed to begin the printing process,” Kate Bailey, a Justice Department attorney, wrote to lawyers for the plaintiffs who had challenged the addition of the question.

In response, President Donald Trump stated yesterday

“A very sad time for America when the Supreme Court of the United States won’t allow a question of ‘Is this person a Citizen of the United States?’ to be asked on the census!” He added that he had asked his officials to “do whatever is necessary” to bring the citizenship question to a “successful conclusion” in the future. 

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the U.S. Census Bureau, said he had decided to add the citizenship question in 2018 against the advisement of other bureau officials. The move prompted outcry from immigrant and civil rights groups who argued that adding the question could lead to underreporting among minority and immigrant populations, with potentially harmful consequences.

Ross also said the census forms had gone to the printer without the addition of a citizenship question but noted that he “strongly” disagreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

A small but significant victory for immigrant rights and the electoral process.

Tony

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Note: 

One day after pledging that the 2020 census would not ask respondents about their citizenship (as stated above),  Justice Department officials reversed course on Wednesday and said they were hunting for a way to restore the question on orders from President Trump.

The contentious issue of whether next year’s all-important head count would include a citizenship question appeared to be settled — until the president began vowing on Twitter on Wednesday that the administration was “absolutely moving forward” with plans, despite logistical and legal barriers.

Mr. Trump’s comments prompted a chaotic chain of events, with senior census planners closeted in emergency meetings and Justice Department representatives summoned to a phone conference with a federal judge in Maryland.

Dear Commons Community,

Amid warnings from the Trump administration about Chinese espionage, L. Rafael Reif, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last week wrote an open letter in support of students and scholars of Chinese descent.  

In the letter entitled, Immigration Is a Kind of Oxygen, Reif wrote that he felt compelled to share his “dismay” over the Trump administration’s scrutiny of Chinese and Chinese American researchers and pupils due to heightened concerns about academic espionage.  

“Faculty members, post-docs, research staff and students tell me that, in their dealings with government agencies, they now feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge – because of their Chinese ethnicity alone,” he wrote. “Nothing could be further from – or more corrosive to ­– our community’s collaborative strength and open-hearted ideals. To hear such reports from Chinese and Chinese American colleagues is heartbreaking.”

As reported in The Huffington Post:

“Last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray accused Chinese individuals in academia of “exploiting the very open research and development environment in the U.S.,” calling those from China a “whole-of-society threat” during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

He doubled down on his statements in an interview with NBC News the following month. “To be clear, we do not open investigations based on race, or ethnicity, or national origin,” Wray told the outlet. “But when we open investigations into economic espionage, time and time again, they keep leading back to China.”

FBI officials have reportedly visited at least 10 members of the Association of American Universities, a group of more than 60 research institutions, to advise them to monitor students who have affiliations with certain Chinese institutions and companies.

A spokesperson for MIT told HuffPost that Reif’s open letter was prompted by general rising tensions, rather than any single incident. In it, Reif acknowledged that “small numbers of researchers of Chinese background may indeed have acted in bad faith.” But, he said, “they are the exception.”

The MIT president added that these academics are experiencing “distress,” which is part of a larger message the U.S. is sending the world.

“Such actions and policies have turned the volume all the way up on the message that the U.S. is closing the door – that we no longer seek to be a magnet for the world’s most driven and creative individuals,” he wrote.

Reif said that the country should be signaling that “the story of American immigration is essential to understanding how the U.S. became, and remains, optimistic, open-minded, innovative and prosperous – a story of never-ending renewal. … As a society, when we offer immigrants the gift of opportunity, we receive in return vital fuel for our shared future.”  

In May, Emory University researchers Li XiaoJiang and Li Shuhua, who are both U.S. citizens, were terminated from their positions. The university said that the married couple “had failed to fully disclose” the extent of their ties to Chinese institutions. XiaoJiang denied the claim, telling ScienceInsider that he had provided the university with the research documents it had requested. 

A 2017 white paper from the Chinese American organization Committee of 100 found that Asians were more likely to be charged with espionage than any other racial group. It also noted that Asians were found innocent at a rate two times higher than those of other races.”

This is a sad state of affairs where our president and his administration disparages one group of individuals, the vast majority of whom make significant contributions to American higher education.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, faculty, employees, students, and alumni expressed shock and fear at the news that Republican Governor Michael J. Dunleavy had slashed the University of Alaska System’s budget by 41 percent.  He did so by vetoing the $130-million state-supported portion of the university’s operating budget. Combined with a $5-million cut already approved by the state’s Legislature, the university has been told to cut $135 million, or 41 percent, from its current state-funding level of $327 million. The cuts apply to the 2019-20 fiscal year that began on July 1^st.

As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“James R. Johnsen, president of the University of Alaska, described the cuts as more than twice as deep as the worst case the system was preparing for. He described the governor’s action as “devastating” in a video address posted Friday on the university’s website.

Johnsen urged listeners to contact their legislators and urge them to override the veto. If the override effort fails, he said, the system’s board “will be forced to declare financial exigency.”

The Legislature will go back into session on July 8 and will have five days to vote to override the veto. That would require approval by three-quarters of the Legislature — a task university administrators concede will be extremely challenging.

Regardless of the vote, the university has already taken several major steps to save money. In addition to freezing hiring and travel, the system will send furlough notices to all staff members statewide, requiring them to take a specified number of days off without pay. Systemwide, Johnsen said, the university will need to cut 1,300 faculty and staff positions.

Last week Johnsen warned, in a local newspaper op-ed, that “the university cannot absorb an additional, substantial reduction in state general funds without abruptly halting numerous student-career pathways midstream, eliminating services, or shutting down community campuses or universities.”

He added that “an extra cut of even $10 million — on top of the $51 million in cuts we’ve already taken — will mean the discontinuation of programs and services with little or no notice, and that in turn will have ripple effects, damaging UA’s ability to generate revenue and causing even greater harm across the state.”

The $327 million the university received from the state for the previous fiscal year represents about 40 percent of its total budget. The rest comes from tuition and fees, research grants and contracts, proceeds from land development, and private grants.

Over the last five years the university’s budget has been slashed by $195 million. Its statewide administration has been reduced by 37 percent over the last several years, Johnsen said.

The governor had proposed deep cuts for the university system in his original budget, in February, saying they were needed to help close a $1.6-billion budget deficit facing the state. During budget negotiations, lawmakers reduced the cut to $5 million, allocating $322 million to the university system.

The cuts announced on Friday, he said, will allow the state to balance its deficit over two years without raising taxes or reducing the amount state residents receive through the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is fueled by oil and gas revenues.

The cuts in the university system represented the largest chunk of the $444 million in total savings freed up by the governor’s line-item vetoes. Other areas that suffered cuts were public safety, health programs, early education, and legal services for low-income residents.

The state, Dunleavy said, “can no longer afford to continue down the path of oversized spending, outsized government, and out-of-line priorities.”

Jahna Lindemuth, a former state attorney general, responded in an opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News that the cuts were “not only irresponsible, they are unconstitutional.”

Daniel M. White, chancellor of the university’s flagship campus, in Fairbanks, said the focus this week will be on urging a veto override.

…

“This is a budget cut that’s unprecedented in our history,” White said in an interview on

Cathy Sandeen, chancellor of the University of Alaska at Anchorage, said in an interview that while administrators would be meeting with advisers and supporters to push for a legislative override, they would also meet among themselves to talk about program eliminations.

They will start by gathering data on enrollment, revenue generated, work-force need, and other factors. Alaska faces a huge demand for health-care workers, for instance, so that would factor into any program-elimination talks, she said.

Many faculty members’ contracts don’t begin until mid-August, so any action would have to wait until they return, Sandeen said. In the meantime, she plans to spend this week communicating with faculty, staff, and students who will be affected by any cuts.

“I want to reassure people as much as possible and express my empathy for what might happen,” Sandeen said. “I have to give hope but be realistic at the same time.”

The program-elimination process “will be like pruning a tree,” she said. “Some branches will go away, and some will remain strong.”

Those to be eliminated must have a viable teach-out option — something that’s not only required for accreditation but also “morally” the right thing to do, Sandeen said. Students might continue their studies in a reduced department, they could transfer to another college, or they could finish through an online program offered by such institutions as Arizona State University and Western Governors University, she said.

Scott Downing, president of the Faculty Senate at Anchorage, said the cuts would be devastating, in both the short and the long term. “We’re talking about potentially 1,300 faculty and staff cuts” systemwide, said Downing, who is also an associate professor of English at the University of Alaska. “This will affect the university for years to come.”

It appears the Governor Dunleavy is borrowing a page from former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump made history yesterday by taking 20 steps into North Korea to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He has received praise and criticism for being the first president to step inside North Korea. 

Pope Francis saluted Trump and Kim and  hoped the “significant gesture” would be a stepping stone to the resolution of conflicts in the Korean peninsula and worldwide.

“In the last few hours we saw in Korea a good example of the ‘culture of encounter,’” the pope said, referring to one of his central teachings about the need to reach across physical and political boundaries to build friendships with others. 

“I salute the protagonists, with a prayer that such a significant gesture will be a further step on the road to peace, not only on that peninsula, but for the good of the entire world,” Francis continued, according to Reuters.

On the other hand, for 2020 Democratic hopefuls, the event was nothing more than a “photo op” that hurt America more than it helped and elevated the image of a dictator.  For example:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said Trump shouldn’t be “squandering American influence on photo ops and exchanging love letters with a ruthless dictator,” in a tweet.

“Instead, we should be dealing with North Korea through principled diplomacy that promotes US security, defends our allies, and upholds human rights,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote.

A spokesman for former Vice President Joe Biden told CNN in a statement, “President Trump’s coddling of dictators at the expense of American national security and interests is one of the most dangerous ways he’s diminishing us on the world stage and subverting our values as a nation.”  Andrew Bates said in the statement Trump “fawned over Kim Jong -un — to whom he’s made numerous concessions for negligible gain — joked with Vladimir Putin about our election security and ‘getting rid’ of journalists, and even expressed sympathy for Turkey buying Russian missiles.”

Julián Castro said Trump “haphazardly” meeting with Kim raises the dictator’s profile and is “strengthening him across the world,” while giving the US “nothing.”

“That is a problem,” Castro told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on “State of the Union” on Sunday.

“It’s all show, it’s all symbolism, it’s not substance,” the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development said, adding Trump “keeps telling us one thing, but the reality is another.”

Castro said he supports diplomatic conversations, but said Trump “seems bent on approaching this very erratically, very haphazardly” and pointed to how the meeting was put together “at the last minute.”

Castro added Sunday: “I’m not quite sure why this President is so bent on elevating the profile of a dictator like Kim Jong Un when Kim Jong Un has not lived up to his promise from the first summit.”

I agree most with Castro’s position that we should support “diplomatic conversations” but Trump does not seem to have a plan and instead is approaching this serious matter haphazardly.

Tony