Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden yesterday called for federal regulators to investigate whether oil and gas companies are engaging in “illegal conduct” by profiting from high gas prices that have skyrocketed during the pandemic.

As inflation has soared to a 31-year high, Biden requested the probe in a letter to Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, claiming “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil and gas companies.”

“The bottom line is this: gasoline prices at the pump remain high, even though oil and gas companies’ costs are declining,” Biden said in the letter. “The Federal Trade Commission has authority to consider whether illegal conduct is costing families at the pump. I believe you should do so immediately.”  As reported by several news media.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.41. That is $1.29 more than a year ago, according to the American Automobile Association, and a seven-year high. Although the national average dropped a penny last week, gas prices in California broke a new record Tuesday with an average price tag of $4.687 for a gallon of regular.

Gas prices have risen sharply during the pandemic amid a spike in the price of oil, which is refined into gasoline. The price of U.S. benchmark crude oil has nearly doubled over the last 12 months and was trading in the $79 per barrel range on Wednesday morning.

But Biden noted the price of unfinished gasoline is down more than 5% over last month – trading at 235.4 Wednesday, compared to 248.64 on Oct. 15 – while gas prices have gone up 3% over the same period. He said prices at the pump typically respond to changes in the prices of unrefined gasoline, the primary ingredient in motor gasoline sold at retail gas stations.

“This unexplained large gap between the price of unfinished gasoline and the average price of the pump is well-above the pre-pandemic average,” Biden said, adding that the largest oil and gas companies are generating “significant profits off higher energy prices.”

If the gap between pump prices and refined oil costs were at typical pre-pandemic levels, Americans would be paying 25 cents less per gallon of gas, according to the White House.

Asked whether the agency will open an investigation, FTC spokeswoman Betsy Lordan said, “The FTC is concerned about this issue, and we are looking into it.”

Biden said the two largest oil and gas companies – ExxonMobil and Chevron – are on track to nearly double their net income over 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. He said both companies have announced plans to “engage in billions of dollars of stock buybacks and dividends this year or next.”

“I do not accept hard-working Americans paying more for gas because of anti-competitive or otherwise potentially illegal conduct,” Biden said in the letter. “I therefore ask that the commission further examine what is happening with oil and gas markets, and that you bring all of the commission’s tools to bear if you uncover any wrongdoing.”

Representatives of ExxonMobil and Chevron did not respond to requests for comment.

But the industry’s lobbying association, the American Petroleum Institute, blasted Biden’s move.

Frank Macchiarola, the group’s senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs, called Biden’s push for a probe “a distraction” from the ongoing market shift and “ill-advised government decisions” he claimed are exacerbating the situation.

Macchiarola said the higher gas prices are caused by increasing demand for gasoline outpacing supply as the economy rebounds from the pandemic. “Further impacting the imbalance,” he added, are moves from the Biden administration to restrict access to fossil fuels.

“Rather than launching investigations on markets that are regulated and closely monitored on a daily basis or pleading with OPEC to increase supply,” he said, “we should be encouraging the safe and responsible development of American-made oil and natural gas.”

Biden has seen his approval rating dip in recent months as inflation has increased, even as other facets of the economy, such as the stock market and jobs numbers, improve. It’s a major warning sign for Democrats ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

It would not be the first time that the oil industry put profits over people!

Tony

Joan Wong for The Chronicle

Dear Commons Community,

Roosevelt Montás,a senior lecturer in Columbia University’s Center for American Studies,  has an op-ed in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, “Why the Core Matters for a New Generation.”  His rational is that required core classes bring campuses together and are a boon to the humanities — if done right.    For example on the issue of the dominance of Western culture in core curricula:

““The West” as a category is, of course, itself problematic. For one thing, no large cultural formation has ever developed in isolation, and none can be treated as a separate and self-contained unit. For another, the banners of “Western civilization” and “Western culture” have been used to give cover to imperialist, racist, and colonialist agendas and to justify the subjugation and exploitation of “non-Western” people. But the term is also used to describe something more legitimate: a large and porous cultural configuration around the Mediterranean Sea, with strong Greco-Roman roots, that served as the historical seedbed for the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and much of what is called “modernity.” While the European continent figures prominently, the tradition incorporates defining elements from non-European sources like the Arab world, ancient Egypt and North Africa, and even the East. It is a tradition rife with fissures, where overturning the past is preferred to venerating it. Loose and fractured as this tradition of contest and debate is, key aspects of the modern world emerge from it. The tradition matters not because it is Western, but because of its contribution to human questions of the highest order.”

Montas’ op-ed has several other kernels of insight into the benefits of a core curriculum.  The entire op-ed is below.

Tony

—————————————————————————-

The Chronicle of Higher Education

“Why the Core Matters for a New Generation”

By Roosevelt Montás

November 16, 2021

As an undergraduate at Columbia University 30 years ago, I learned to make sense of the adult world into which I was entering through the university’s core curriculum. I grew up in Cambita Garabitos, a rural town in the Dominican Republic, and then in Queens, N.Y. My father had only a sixth-grade education. The core set me up for a lifetime of intellectual growth.

Years later, when serving as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, I was confronted with the criticisms such programs face. Given the university’s emphasis on the “Western tradition,” I often had to contend with accusations that liberal education was, in fact, indoctrination in Western values. This criticism came from predictable sources, like Chinese government bureaucrats wary of the introduction of American-style liberal education in Chinese universities. I also encountered it from people championing voices and interests that have been historically marginalized in the Western tradition — women and people of color especially.

In responding to these criticisms, I made two arguments at once. First, that a liberal education does not need to be, as it is at Columbia, centered on Western classics. And second, that Western texts and debates in fact underpin much of the emerging global culture and that their importance, especially in Western societies, is inescapable. Contemporary notions like human rights, democracy, gender equality, scientific objectivity, the free market, equality before the law, and many others, cannot be adequately accounted for without studying the so-called Western tradition.

At Columbia, the first-year literature requirement acts as a “gateway drug” to the humanities.

“The West” as a category is, of course, itself problematic. For one thing, no large cultural formation has ever developed in isolation, and none can be treated as a separate and self-contained unit. For another, the banners of “Western civilization” and “Western culture” have been used to give cover to imperialist, racist, and colonialist agendas and to justify the subjugation and exploitation of “non-Western” people. But the term is also used to describe something more legitimate: a large and porous cultural configuration around the Mediterranean Sea, with strong Greco-Roman roots, that served as the historical seedbed for the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and much of what is called “modernity.” While the European continent figures prominently, the tradition incorporates defining elements from non-European sources like the Arab world, ancient Egypt and North Africa, and even the East. It is a tradition rife with fissures, where overturning the past is preferred to venerating it. Loose and fractured as this tradition of contest and debate is, key aspects of the modern world emerge from it. The tradition matters not because it is Western, but because of its contribution to human questions of the highest order.

One of the strongest currents in this tradition is textual — a documentary lineage of literary, philosophical, and artistic reflections stretching as far back as Homer and the pre-Socratic philosophers. This documentary tradition is a long and contentious conversation about fundamental aspects of human life. It is, roughly, what the Columbia core curriculum organizes into a program of general education via four required humanities courses (two of them yearlong): literature, ethics and politics, visual art, and music. (The core also includes required writing and science courses.)

Columbia’s required core curriculum, weighted toward the history of Western writing and therefore toward “dead white males,” also invites questions about inclusivity, diversity, and representation. Students never fail to ask these questions, and they are right to ask them: Such queries are integral to, rather than a distraction from, the liberal education that the core delivers. The very existence of a core curriculum puts the question of what is most worthwhile for all students to learn front and center, forcing the faculty and administrators to address it directly among themselves and in an ongoing dialogue with students and the public. A core curriculum requires that an institution think concretely about the meaning of general education and clarify for itself the values that inform its curricular choices. It also requires faculty members to think beyond their discipline and articulate their own specialized concerns within a broad framework of what a generally educated person ought to know.

The often uncomfortable and sometimes perilous task of defending a particular common curriculum is perhaps one of the reasons such programs are so rare. At most institutions, the faculty and administrators have decided that arguments and defenses for a specific required curriculum are not worth the trouble, and have simply replaced required courses with distribution requirements — and sometimes no requirements at all — that allow students and faculty to stay within their chosen intellectual comfort zones. It’s an understandable decision, but one that shirks a basic responsibility of the faculty and which, in the long run, does a disservice to the students, to the institution, and to society.

In my years in the “hot seat,” as it were, I found students, as a rule, to be highly receptive to the logic that organizes the core curriculum once it is presented lucidly, honestly, and nondefensively. The fact that I am myself a person of color was always helpful in these conversations in that it helped some students be more open to what I had to say and more willing to engage in good-faith dialogue.

Every year, I held continuing discussions with student groups and met individually with dozens of students. I would often begin these conversations by explaining my role as head administrator of the program; I did not determine its content nor dictate its shape. No one, in fact, does. The core, especially its content, represents a loose and shifting consensus among the instructors who teach it. It was important for students to understand that the core evolved over decades of debate and experimentation, and that it has never obeyed the vision of any single individual or interest group. I would then explain the logic of the core’s curricular organization. What follows is an overview of that logic. I offer it as a model.

The four humanities courses in the core curriculum are taught in seminars of about 20 students each, so that the entire student body has the experience of examining roughly the same works at the same time in small, discussion-driven classes. While the content of the Columbia core curriculum undergoes regular revision, the program maintains a set of commitments that have guided its evolution for over 100 years. Those commitments fall into three categories: form, content, and revision.

Form

1. Small classes. The current maximum number of students in a core-curriculum class is 22. Small classes are absolutely necessary to develop intimacy between instructor and student and among students themselves.
2. Discussion (rather than lectures). The core instructor does not present him- or herself as an expert but as a facilitator of conversation about issues raised by the text under discussion. It is the active and engaged participation of each member of the group that constitutes a core class. Knowledge is not transmitted from teacher to student but constructed by the group through a shared process of inquiry and reflection.
3. Nondisciplinarity. Core instructors come from all academic disciplines, and while each brings specific disciplinary perspectives, the courses themselves are predisciplinary — that is, they occupy the ground from which the disciplines arise. Their goal is to introduce students not to the academic disciplines but to the intellectual problems that motivate them.
4. Commonality. A frequent quip among Columbia instructors who teach advanced undergraduates is that we know exactly what each student has forgotten. The shared intellectual background of the core opens unique pedagogical possibilities. When I teach the American Revolution in my senior seminar, I know that students have read Locke, as well as Hobbes, Rousseau, Smith, and Marx. When I discuss American slavery, I know that students have grappled with Aristotle’s claims about natural slavery and with W.E.B. Du Bois’s reflections on the Black experience in America. Beyond its intellectual benefits, the common intellectual experience is also a powerful creator of community, equipping students who may come from different backgrounds with a common vocabulary with which to talk across differences. Similarly, the core provides a link among alumni and between alumni and the institution — as our development officers admit, the core is a powerful tool for cultivating alumni relations.

Content

1. Core texts. That is, works of major cultural significance — a designation that is, of course, always open to debate and revision.
2. A chronological presentation. Each course begins in antiquity and moves toward the present, drawing connections among texts and paying attention to the evolution of ideas and debates. This approach, as noted, means that elite white men dominate the syllabus, reflecting the social conditions of intellectual production for much of Western history. But this deficiency is an occasion to examine both the mechanisms by which that status quo has been maintained and the ways in which it has always been challenged.
3. Western focus. In important ways, the core is a genealogy of the present. As such, it focuses on the lineage of thought and debate that has most directly shaped the Western world.

Revision

Lastly, the core is committed to continuing revision. In the case of the two yearlong humanities courses, the list of works read by all students is revised every three years, with a facultywide vote determining the set of works to be included in any given cycle. A syllabus revision is typically spearheaded by a small committee of faculty representing a broad range of disciplines and expertise. This committee will invite all faculty who teach in the core to propose changes in the syllabus. On the basis of the feedback gathered and of its members’ own experience teaching in the core, the committee will draft a new syllabus. This draft syllabus is then subjected to scrutiny by the entire faculty teaching in the core, in various town-hall-style meetings. From this process, a final proposed new syllabus emerges. The faculty then votes on whether to adopt this new syllabus or keep the old.

I have traveled extensively in the U.S. and abroad to talk to faculty, students, and administrations involved in liberal-arts programs. And almost everywhere I go, people are surprised by the Columbia model. I often hear, almost reflexively, that Columbia’s model is impractical and could not be carried out anywhere else. This easy dismissal comes in various flavors: That such programs are too expensive; that no professors would want to teach them; that students won’t want to take them; that college students in any but the most elite colleges lack the intellectual preparation to benefit from such programs. None of these objections stands up to scrutiny.

I readily grant that the Columbia program cannot be easily replicated in a wholesale way. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for a program in general education. But the broad set of principles and practices that guide the Columbia model can and should be widely adopted.

As a rule, graduate schools do not train generalists but specialists, and the academic profession rewards specialized “cutting edge” research far more than in does commitment to undergraduate teaching. Even at Columbia, where the core curriculum is inextricably tied to the identity of the undergraduate college, the structure of professional incentives in the academy pulls tenured and tenure-track faculty away from general education. Yet it’s beginning to dawn on many humanities departments that their institutional future depends on the vitality of general education and the capacity of its faculty to make meaningful intellectual contact with students who will not major in the humanities. Paradoxically, intellectually transformative general education is the best way to attract majors to the liberal arts. As a colleague once pointed out, at Columbia the first-year literature requirement acts as a “gateway drug” to the humanities.

Recent programs that have taken inspiration from Columbia’s core curriculum include Ursinus College’s common intellectual experience, the university core curriculum at Seton Hall University, the core curriculum at Sacred Heart University, and the Columbia common core at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York. A full assortment of core-oriented programs can be found under the umbrella of the Association for Core Texts and Courses, whose annual conference attracts hundreds of faculty and administrators.

One noteworthy experiment in core-text liberal education was begun at Purdue University’s College of Liberal Arts in 2017. The cornerstone integrated liberal-arts program is built around a two-semester sequence for first-year students in which they read, in chronological order, “transformative texts” from antiquity to the present. The program has revitalized the humanities at Purdue, attracting large numbers of STEM students, as well as faculty from across the humanities and social sciences. Students can go on to earn a certificate in liberal arts by following the first-year sequence, which fulfills part of the college’s general-education requirement, with thematically arranged courses that extend humanistic thinking into fields like engineering, technology, and the health sciences.

Inspired by the success of the cornerstone program at Purdue, in late 2020 the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Teagle Foundation started a multiyear project to “reinvigorate the role of the humanities in general education” through “shared experiences with transformative texts.” Much about the future of the humanities will depend on whether institutions remain committed to liberal education for all students and find innovative ways to keep it at the center of undergraduate education, even as more and more students seek preprofessional and job-oriented degrees.

One of the dangers facing American higher education — and American civic culture in general — is a return to a time when liberal education was the exclusive province of a social elite. In the radical disruptions that have begun and will continue to reshape higher education, the most prestigious liberal-arts colleges are likely to survive, if not unscathed, at least not fundamentally transformed. Many well-to-do families from the U.S. and abroad will continue to seek — and pay for — a traditional liberal-arts experience for their children. But liberal education threatens to retreat to these bastions of privilege, with technical, vocational, and professional education, much of it online, for everyone else.

Liberal education threatens to retreat to bastions of privilege, with technical, vocational, and professional education, much of it online, for everyone else.

And yet liberal education should be the common education for all — not instead of a more practical education but as its prerequisite. We need nurses, computer scientists, accountants, engineers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and professionals of every kind, to be liberally educated. And we should not expect economically anxious families to forgo what seems to them the most stable or lucrative careers and instead study only the liberal arts. We — by which I mean college faculty and administrators — should eliminate the opportunity costs of liberal education by embedding it in every undergraduate degree. In turn, putting serious liberal-arts programs at the center of the undergraduate curriculum will not only inspire more students to major in the liberal arts but will reinvigorate the professoriate and reverse the precipitous decline in faculty jobs in the humanities.

The years ahead will be tumultuous for American colleges. In the face of debilitating structural problems, public disinvestment, popular skepticism, and an unsustainable business model, higher education will see a fundamental restructuring in the decade ahead. Many institutions will not recover from the financial punishment the pandemic has inflicted; others will adapt in a way that makes them unrecognizable.

In this time of fundamental change, perhaps our greatest need is for clarity and conviction about the values and purposes of higher education. American colleges have maintained the ideal of liberal learning through previous periods of upheaval. As with every crisis, our current ordeal also presents a set of opportunities. The pandemic has exposed the depth of social inequality in America and may give our generation the necessary spur to address it. Making liberal education available and accessible to all students is the most important contribution that higher education can make to this effort.

Dear Commons Community,

If you have been following the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, you might have noticed that there are eighteen jurors, that is because Wisconsin courts regularly seat more jurors than necessary before extras are randomly struck at the end of trials to get down to 12 for actual deliberations.   

In a bit of courtroom theater, Rittenhouse was directed Tuesday to blindly pick (see video above) the seven women and five men who will decide whether he is criminally responsible for killing two men during protests last year over the police shooting Jacob Blake, a Black man in Kenosha.

Eighteen prospective jurors sat through two weeks of testimony and arguments before Rittenhouse was told to pick six numbers out of a tumbler. The six numbers corresponded to jurors who were then stricken from the panel, resulting in the 12 who were sent into deliberations.  As reported by NBC News.

John P. Gross, the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Public Defender Project, said he has seen only judges do the picking, but he didn’t object to Rittenhouse’s having the heavy hand of selection.

“It’s completely random, and whoever is picking is picking,” Gross said. “It was an interesting piece of theater having the judge inviting the defendant to make the draw.”

Ion Meyn, who also teaches law at UW-Madison, said he was jarred by the judge’s having Rittenhouse handle the lottery. It has always been the courtroom clerk who does the draw in his experience, he said.

“I know it’s a random selection, but I have some concerns about it,” Meyn said. “To me, from the optics side, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t think it was a good idea.”

Michael D. Cicchini, who practices criminal law in Kenosha, said he has always seen judges or bailiffs doing the selection. But he had no issue with Rittenhouse’s conducting Tuesday’s drawing.

“It’s not very consequential. It’s all blind,” Cicchini said. “I don’t see anything off about it. I mean, it is the defendant’s trial.”

And Michael O’Hear, who teaches criminal law at Marquette University, said he isn’t worried about who owns the five fingers selecting juror numbers.

“As long as the process is random, whose hand goes into that hopper, it doesn’t matter,” O’Hear said. “Maybe optically it looks unbalanced, but that’s getting into minutiae.”

Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder has been at center stage of the trial since the start for a number of rulings and attention-grabbing courtroom outbursts.

Does having Rittenhouse make the draw “have any legal significance? No,” Gross said. “For this case, with this judge, is it a fitting final note? Yes.”

Those following this trial now anxiously await the jury’s verdict.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Clark State College has begun offering courses to create more licensed drone operators, given the use of drones by so many industries from emergency services to real estate agents, videographers, agriculture and construction.  I also suspect that there is growing interest in all aspects of drone development and deployment especially in the STEM fields. As reported by the Springfield News-Sun.

“The continued rise of drone technology has transformed the Dayton region into the leading area for development, testing and flights of innovative UAS technology. In partnership with the Dayton Development Coalition, Ohio Air National Guard, AFRL, regional colleges and universities, and private industries, Ohio has become a destination of choice for UAS researchers, developers, manufacturers, suppliers, trainers and educators,” according to the Dayton Development Coalition.

Shannon Joyce Neal, a spokesperson for the Dayton Development Coalition, said drones are an exciting field right now.“This is a sector the state and region have been working to support for close to a decade, with a long list of partners working together to bring investment and jobs into the region,” she said. “Over the years we have shared the region’s assets and resources at trade shows like AUVSI Xponential and worked with the Air Force and the state of Ohio to develop SkyVision.”

Adam Parrillo, assistant dean of the school of business and applied technologies and GIS/Geospatial program coordinator at Clark State College, said “there is an increasing interest in the field as federal, state and local governments support the use of drones, and as drone costs decrease while the technology gets better.”

Parrillo said the college wants to be “on the front edge of connecting our community with this industry demand” and is now offering a second drone license course through their Workforce and Business Solutions. They offered its first two-day course in March and had five people participate.

“Now that we have a generation of individuals that have had drones for recreational purposes, they are looking for opportunities like this or don’t know about opportunities like this,” Parrillo said. “Part of what we do as a community college is inform our area about these real opportunities for professional and personal growth.”

The Drone Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) License Prep Course for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Operations, Planning, and Piloting will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Nov. 13 and 14, according to a release from the college.

“Being licensed for commercial drone use is increasingly popular and useful in a variety of fields,” said Gerritt Smith, director of Clark State Workforce and Business Solutions. “Emergency service agencies, real estate agents, photographers and videographers, agriculture, construction and many more industries can utilize drone flying and imaging to enhance their businesses and services.”

Elaine Bryant, Executive Vice President of Aerospace and Defense at the development coalition, said drones have become increasingly common in our daily lives.

“While uses like package delivery and video are well known, drones are excellent, and increasingly common, for reducing risk in everything from infrastructure maintenance to disaster aid. In places where it’s difficult for humans to venture, drones can often be their eyes, ears and more. Licensed operators are essential to ensure public safety during these flights,” she said.

Clark State initially offered the course, Parrillo said, because drones are useful tools for collecting many different types of data from mapping to photography, and even real-time surveillance.

“Drones are increasingly used across industry sectors, including emergency service agencies, real estate, photographers and videographers, agriculture, construction, inspection. To undertake these activities, companies and organizations must have certified remote pilots through the FAA,” he said. “We thought, what about those that don’t have a formal drone background or don’t have the time to enroll in a college program, but may want to use their acquired skills in a more productive way? This could be that door.”

The two-day course will prepare students for the Part 107 License Exam by providing a hands-on opportunity to practice drone flying through simulation and on mini and mid-sized unmanned aerial drones, and students will get a copy of the ASA 2021 Remote Pilot Test Prep guide to prepare for the licensing exam, the release stated.

“While individuals can fly recreationally without, the certification must be obtained to do any commercial (receive financial benefit) activity with a drone,” Parrillo said. “While it is only a 60 question multiple-choice knowledge examination, you must know the regulations for drone activity including the various classifications of airspace, the basics of drone safety, how to read air charts, understand weather conditions, and flight crew management.”

Parrillo said it can be challenging to navigate all of the information and this course can help guide potential pilots.

“Once licensed, the world of drones becomes much more tangible in terms of jobs and even careers. Though the UAS market is still being worked out, there should be real opportunities for those that get into this field earlier than later,” he said. “We hope that this workshop not only assists individuals in the preparation to become remote pilots but also links them into Clark State’s opportunities to get hands-on flight time and practice activities that mirror current commercial activities.”

The course is $375 per participant and Clark State will provide all needed equipment. To register, visit the college’s website under News.

Bryant said Clark State’s location is an ideal location for UAS operator training due to being minutes from the Ohio UAS Center and the Springfield Beckley Airport. She said Sinclair Community College also offers UAS-related courses and certifications, as well as being a national leader in the field.

“Adding another program to this ecosystem strengthens the Dayton Region’s position in the industry and provides additional opportunities for partnerships. With the great work at Sinclair and Clark State, this region is once again leading the revolution in flight, just like the Wright Brothers did more than 100 years ago,” she said.

As for the future of drones, Parrillo said there will be a demand for individuals that have experience in all aspects. He said as the industry develops, there will be increasingly specialization and more automation.

Bryant said drones have the potential to revolutionize transportation.

“The future of flight will come from the convergence of UAS and eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft. The regular use of small, agile aircraft capable of carrying several passengers, with or without a pilot, is within sight. Those aircraft are coming to Springfield, and their pilots will learn how to fly there, too,” she said.

It all makes sense!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

China yesterday hailed a virtual meeting between President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden, saying they had a candid and constructive exchange that sent a strong signal to the world.

The positive description of the meeting came in sharp contrast to heated exchanges between the two nations earlier this year. The talks appeared to mark what both sides hoped would be a turnaround in relations, though major differences remain.

The video conference between the two leaders and their senior aides lasted more than three hours and was their first formal meeting since Biden took office in January. As reported by the Associated Press.

Facing domestic pressures at home, both Biden and Xi seemed determined to lower the temperature in what for both sides is their most significant — and frequently turbulent — relationship on the global stage.

“As I’ve said before, it seems to me our responsibility as leaders of China and the United States is to ensure that the competition between our countries does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended,” Biden told Xi at the start of their virtual meeting Monday. “Just simple, straightforward competition.”

The White House set low expectations for the meeting, and no major announcements or even a joint statement were delivered. Still, White House officials said the two leaders had a substantive exchange.

Xi greeted the U.S. president as his “old friend” and echoed Biden’s cordial tone in his own opening remarks, saying, “China and the United States need to increase communication and cooperation.”

However, Xi held a tough line on Taiwan, which Chinese officials had signaled would be a top issue for them at the talks. Tensions have heightened as the Chinese military has dispatched an increasing number of fighter jets near the self-ruled island, which Beijing considers part of its territory.

Xi blamed the tensions on Taiwan seeking to attain independence through reliance on the U.S. and some on the American side using Taiwan as a way to interefere in China, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

“This is extremely dangerous, it’s playing with fire, and they that play with fire will burn themselves,” Xi was quoted as saying by the agency.

Chinese military forces held exercises last week near Taiwan in response to a visit by a U.S. congressional delegation to the island.

The White House said Biden reiterated the U.S. will abide by the longstanding U.S. “One China” policy, which recognizes Beijing but allows informal relations and defense ties with Taipei. But Biden also made clear the U.S. “strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the White House said.

The relationship has had no shortage of tension since Biden strode into the White House in January and quickly criticized Beijing for human rights abuses against Uyghurs in northwest China, suppression of democratic protests in Hong Kong, military aggression against the self-ruled island of Taiwan and more. Xi’s deputies, meanwhile, have lashed out against the Biden White House for interfering in what they see as internal Chinese matters.

The White House in a statement said that Biden again raised concerns about China’s human rights practices, and made clear that he sought to “protect American workers and industries from the PRC’s unfair trade and economic practices.” The two also spoke about key regional challenges, including North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran.

As U.S.-China tensions have mounted, both leaders also have found themselves under the weight of increased challenges in their own backyards.

Biden, who has watched his poll numbers diminish amid concerns about the lingering coronavirus pandemic, inflation and supply chain problems, was looking to find a measure of equilibrium on the most consequential foreign policy matter he faces.

Xi, meanwhile, is facing a COVID-19 resurgence, rampant energy shortages, and a looming housing crisis that Biden officials worry could cause tremors in the global market.

“Right now, both China and the United States are at critical stages of development, and humanity lives in a global village, and we face multiple challenges together,” Xi said.

The U.S. president was joined in the Roosevelt Room for the video call by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a handful of aides. Xi, for his part, was accompanied in the East Hall of the Great Hall of the People by communist party director Ding Xuexiang and a number of advisers.

The high-level diplomacy had a touch of pandemic Zoom meeting informality as the two leaders waved to each other once they saw one another on the screen, with Xi telling Biden, “It’s the first time for us to meet virtually, although it’s not as good as a face-to-face meeting.”

Biden would have preferred to meet Xi in person, but the Chinese leader has not left his country since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The White House floated the idea of a virtual meeting as the next best thing to allow for the two leaders to have a candid conversation about a wide range of strains in the relationship.

With Beijing set to host the Winter Olympics in February and Xi expected to be approved by Communist Party leaders to serve as party leader next year and then a third term as president in 2023 — unprecedented in recent Chinese history — the Chinese leader may be looking to stabilize the relationship in the near term.

Both leaders gave nods to their history with the other. Biden noted that the two have spent an “awful … lot of time” speaking to each other over the years, and have never walked away “wondering what the other man is thinking.”

But the public warmth — Xi referred to Biden as his “old friend” when the then-vice president visited China in 2013, while Biden spoke of their “friendship” — has cooled now that both men are heads of state. Biden bristled in June when asked by a reporter if he would press his old friend to cooperate with a World Health Organization investigation into the coronavirus origins.

Xi, however, seemed interested in publicly reviving the warmth of the earlier days of their relationship, saying, “I am very happy to see my old friend.”

Despite the tensions, there have been moments of progress in the U.S.-China relationship over the past months.

Last week, the two countries pledged at U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, to increase their cooperation and speed up action to rein in climate-damaging emissions.

The White House has said it views cooperation on climate change as something in China’s interest, something the two nations should cooperate on despite differences on other aspects of the relationship.

“None of this is a favor to either of our countries — what we do for one another — but it’s just responsible world leadership,” Biden told Xi. “You’re a major world leader, and so is the United States.”

I hope the feelings between the two leaders lasts.  It would be great for the world order!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In a new book, Betrayal, by ABC journalist Jonathon Karl quotes Corey Lewandowski as saying that Donald Trump knew he lost but raised suspicions about the 2020 election to protect his ego. As reported by The Huffington Post and Business Insider.

Donald Trump knew that Joe Biden won the 2020 election but lied about it so he wouldn’t look like a loser, onetime Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl in a call Karl recounts in his upcoming book, according to Business Insider.

Trump knew the race was over as soon as the major networks projected his loss, Lewandowski told Karl in a phone call just days after the presidential election, reports Business Insider, which obtained a pre-release copy of Karl’s book,  Betrayal.  The book comes out today.

But according to Karl, Lewandowski said that Trump wanted to raise suspicions about the results so he could say he “didn’t lose.”

“He knows it is over,” Lewandowski reportedly told Karl. “He just wants to create enough doubt about Biden’s victory so that when he leaves he can say he didn’t lose and that it was stolen from him.”

Lewandowski was Trump’s campaign manager until June 2016 but remained a Trump adviser.

Many Republicans distanced themselves from Lewandowski in September 2021 after he was accused of sexual harassment. The Daily Beast reported last month that he has been quietly blacklisted at several Trump properties and clubs, as well as at MAGA events.

Lewandowski could not immediately be reached for comment.

This sounds like  the substance-challenged Trump who is all about image.

Tony

Ernie, a muppet from the popular children’s series “Sesame Street,” appears with new character Ji-Young, the first Asian American muppet, (AP Photo/Noreen Nasir)

Dear Commons Community,

Sesame Street will be debuting Ji-Young, their newest muppet resident on Thanksgiving Day. 

At only 7 years old, Ji-Young is making history as the first Asian American muppet in the “Sesame Street” canon. She is Korean American and has two passions: rocking out on her electric guitar and skateboarding. The children’s TV program, which first aired 52 years ago this month, gave The Associated Press a first look at its adorable new occupant.

Ji-Young will formally be introduced in “See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special.” Simu Liu, Padma Lakshmi and Naomi Osaka are among the celebrities appearing in the special, which will drop Thanksgiving Day on HBO Max, “Sesame Street” social media platforms and on local PBS stations.

Some of Ji-Young’s personality comes from her puppeteer. Kathleen Kim, 41 and Korean American, got into puppetry in her 30s. In 2014, she was accepted into a “Sesame Street” workshop. That evolved into a mentorship and becoming part of the team the following year. Being a puppeteer on a show Kim watched growing up was a dream come true. But helping shape an original muppet is a whole other feat.

“I feel like I have a lot of weight that maybe I’m putting on myself to teach these lessons and to be this representative that I did not have as a kid,” Kim said. But fellow puppeteer Leslie Carrara-Rudolph — who performs Abby Cadabby — reminded her, “It’s not about us … It’s about this message.”

Ji-Young’s existence is the culmination of a lot of discussions after the events of 2020 — George Floyd’s death and anti-Asian hate incidents. Like a lot of companies, “Sesame Street” reflected on how it could “meet the moment,” said Kay Wilson Stallings, executive vice-president of Creative and Production for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind “Sesame Street.”

Sesame Workshop established two task forces — one to look at its content and another to look at its own diversity. What developed was Coming Together, a multi-year initiative addressing how to talk to children about race, ethnicity and culture.

One result was 8-year-old Tamir. While not the show’s first Black muppet, he was one of the first used to talk about subjects like racism.

“When we knew we were going to be doing this work that was going to focus on the Asian and Pacific Islanders experience, we of course knew we needed to create an Asian muppet as well,” Stallings said.

These newer muppets — their personalities and their looks — were remarkably constructed in a matter of a months. The process normally takes at least a couple of years. There are outside experts and a cross-section of employees known as the “culture trust” who weigh in on every aspect of a new muppet, Stallings said.

For Kim, it was crucial that Ji-Young not be “generically pan-Asian.”

“Because that’s something that all Asian Americans have experienced. They kind of want to lump us into this monolithic ‘Asian,’” Kim said. “So it was very important that she was specifically Korean American, not just like, generically Korean, but she was born here.”

One thing Ji-Young will help teach children is how to be a good “upstander.” “Sesame Street” first used the term on its “The Power of We” TV special last year, which featured Tamir.

“Being an upstander means you point out things that are wrong or something that someone does or says that is based on their negative attitude towards the person because of the color of their skin or the language they speak or where they’re from,” Stallings said. “We want our audience to understand they can be upstanders.”

In “See Us Coming Together,” Sesame Street is preparing for Neighbor Day where everyone shares food, music or dance from their culture. Ji-Young becomes upset after a kid, off screen, tells her “to go back home,” an insult commonly flung at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. But she feels empowered after Sesame Street’s other Asian American residents, guest stars and friends like Elmo assure her that she belongs as much as anyone else.

The fact that Ji-Young was created to counter anti-Asian sentiment makes her more special to Kim in some ways.

“I remember like the Atlanta shootings and how terrifying that was for me,” Kim said. “My one hope, obviously, is to actually help teach what racism is, help teach kids to be able to recognize it and then speak out against it. But then my other hope for Ji-Young is that she just normalizes seeing different kinds of looking kids on TV.”

Vanessa Leung, co-executive director of Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, is excited about Ji-Young. The organization was not involved in Ji-Young’s creation but previously consulted on anti-racism content for Sesame Workshop. It matters when Asian American families, especially with many of them being immigrant families, can see themselves reflected in an institution like “Sesame Street,” Leung said.

“It sparks curiosity and early understanding of the diversity of our community, the beauty in the diversity of our community,” Leung said.

Ji-Young will be heavily present throughout the show’s 53rd season next year, Stallings reassured. She also won’t just be utilized for content related to racial justice. She will pop up in various digital programs, live-action and animated.

As the new kid on the street, Ji-Young is looking forward to showing her friends and neighbors aspects of Korean culture such as the food. She loves cooking dishes like tteokbokki (chewy rice cakes) with her halmoni (grandmother). And she already has one “Sesame Street” friend who wants a sample.

“I would love to try it,” said Ernie, who joined Ji-Young’s interview. “You know, I’ve tried bulgogi. I really like bulgogi. I’m gonna guess that maybe old buddy Bert has not tried Korean food.”

Having already made several famous friends on “Sesame Street,” is there anyone Ji-Young still really wants to meet?

“The Linda Lindas because they’re so cool,” Ji-Young said, referring to the teenage punk rock band. “And they rock out and they’re cool girls and most of them are Asian. They’re my heroes. If we can get the Linda Lindas on ‘Sesame Street,’ I would show them around.”

Welcome Ji-Young!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michelle Goldberg had a column over the weekend, entitled, A Frenzy of Book Burning, which reviewed the lengths that individuals are going in our schools and libraries to limit free speech especially that which refers to marginalized people.  Her conclusion:

“This spreading moral panic demonstrates, yet again, why the left needs the First Amendment, even if the veneration of free speech has fallen out of fashion among some progressives. Absent a societal commitment to free expression, the question of who can speak becomes purely a question of power, and in much of this country, power belongs to the right.

“What we’re seeing is really this idea that marginalized communities, marginalized groups, don’t have a place in public school libraries, or public libraries, and that libraries should be institutions that only serve the needs of a certain group of people in the community,” said Caldwell-Stone. The fight about who controls school libraries is a microcosm of the fight about who controls America, and the right is on the offense.”

Her full column is below!

Read it!

Tony

———————————————

The New York Times

A Frenzy of Book Banning

Nov. 12, 2021

By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Virginia’s Spotsylvania County School Board this week voted unanimously to have books with “sexually explicit” material removed from school library shelves. For two members of the school board, this didn’t go far enough; they wanted to see the books incinerated. “I’m sure we’ve got hundreds of people out there that would like to see those books before we burn them,” said one of the members, Kirk Twigg. “Just so we can identify, within our community, that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

This was just one example of an aggressive new censoriousness tearing through America, as the campaign against critical race theory expands into a broader push to purge school libraries of books that affront conservative sensibilities regarding race and gender. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told me that during her 20 years with the organization, “there’s always been a steady hum of censorship, and the reasons have shifted over time. But I’ve never seen the number of challenges we’ve seen this year.”

In Texas and South Carolina, Republican governors have called for action on “obscene” content in school libraries. Public schools in Virginia Beach have pulled books including Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” out of their libraries pending the results of a challenge by conservative school board members. Schools in North Kansas City, Mo., have done the same with books including the acclaimed memoir “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a book of essays about growing up gay and Black by George M. Johnson. In Flagler County, Fla., a member of the school board filed a criminal report over the presence of “All Boys Aren’t Blue” in her district’s school libraries, claiming it violated state obscenity laws.

With the rush to ban critical race theory, conservatives already gave up posturing as defenders of free speech. Still, this sudden mania for book banning is striking. It’s part of a broader attack on public schools, one that draws on anger over critical race theory, mask mandates and sometimes even QAnon-inflected fears about pedophile conspiracies.

“What I’ve started to call more and more frequently the war on books, it’s getting wrapped up in all kinds of anti-school activities,” said Richard Price, an associate professor of political science at Weber State University who runs the blog Adventures in Censorship.

It’s important to acknowledge that some amount of parental shock at envelope-pushing young adult literature is understandable. As in the days when the Christian right tried to rid libraries of Judy Blume, books whose frankness about taboo subjects intrigue teenagers can horrify their elders.

One frequently targeted book is the 2019 graphic memoir “Gender Queer.” Its author, Maia Kobabe, wrote an illustrated column about the uproar over the book in The Washington Post, with a thought bubble saying, “Why are they mad about the book? Because I said nonbinary and trans people exist?” Perhaps, but I’d guess that some parents are also mad about the images of fellatio. It’s easy to imagine “Gender Queer” being a great comfort to a confused and lonely 16-year-old, but it’s just as easy to see why conservatives would find it outrageous.

The transgressive nature of some recent young adult literature, however, isn’t enough to explain the current nationwide campaign to cleanse libraries of works seen as unwholesome. For one thing, at most schools, parents can already block their own kids’ access to books they object to. And many of the works the right is now up in arms about have been out for years. The Texas lawmaker Matt Krause recently sent school districts a list of around 850 books that he wants information on. Among the titles to be investigated are William Styron’s “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and Jeffrey Eugenides’s “Middlesex.”

Ashley Hope Pérez’s award-winning “Out of Darkness,” about a romance between a Mexican American girl and a Black boy set against Texas’ 1937 New London school explosion, came out in 2015. Until this year Pérez, a former high school English teacher who is now an assistant professor at Ohio State University, hadn’t heard of any controversy around it. But now her book is regularly denounced by school culture warriors. The group No Left Turn in Education, which was founded last year to fight critical race theory in schools, has it on a list of books that are “indoctrinating kids to a dangerous ideology.”

In September, a Texas anti-mask activist named Kara Bell read a passage from “Out of Darkness” at a school board meeting. The scene she chose was one in which a gang of racist white students sexually demean the Mexican heroine.

Bell quoted the characters making a slang reference to anal sex, words that left her appalled. “I do not want my children to learn about anal sex in middle school!” she cried. “I’ve never had anal sex! I don’t want to have anal sex! I don’t want my kids having anal sex!”

Video of Bell went viral, and Pérez was deluged with furious and sometimes violent messages, often accusing her of promoting pedophilia. Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at PEN America, told me he was accused of being a pedophile simply for defending the presence of “Out of Darkness” in school libraries. “There’s definitely some kind of QAnon element taking place here,” he said. After all, the paranoid belief that liberalism is a front for pedophile cabals is a staple of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

This spreading moral panic demonstrates, yet again, why the left needs the First Amendment, even if the veneration of free speech has fallen out fashion among some progressives. Absent a societal commitment to free expression, the question of who can speak becomes purely a question of power, and in much of this country, power belongs to the right.

“What we’re seeing is really this idea that marginalized communities, marginalized groups, don’t have a place in public school libraries, or public libraries, and that libraries should be institutions that only serve the needs of a certain group of people in the community,” said Caldwell-Stone. The fight about who controls school libraries is a microcosm of the fight about who controls America, and the right is on the offense.

Dear Commons Community,

During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump was burdened with lawsuits that accused him and his Trump University of defrauding students who had paid thousands of dollars to learn the supposed secrets of Trump’s financial success. Though the Trump U controversy raised questions about Trump’s fitness for office, he managed to score two legal victories in the case as it proceeded. He won a postponement in the trial until after Election Day, and he managed to seal the video of a six-hour deposition he gave in the case. That meant voters would not see news reports of Trump on the stand in a federal civil fraud case or be able to watch this footage of Trump being questioned concerning allegations of fraud. But Mother Jones obtained the full video of Trump’s deposition, and though the written transcript of the session was released in June 2016, the video version includes several exchanges that likely would not have played well for Trump had they become public when he was chasing votes.

Trump sat for this deposition in Trump Tower on December 10, 2015. The video above shows nine clips of him sidestepping questions from  the lawyer for the plaintiffs, Jason Forge, over various issues, including false statements made by Trump University employees, and Trump’s own memory. Trump at one point griped, “It’s the most ridiculous lawsuit I’ve ever seen.” He claimed not to remember having boasted that he possessed one of the best memories in the world and repeatedly said he could not recall matters related to the case. He downplayed false and misleading statements presented by Trump University instructors as merely “hyperbole,” refusing to label them “false.” He even disavowed a passage from one of his own books in which he had assailed educational institutions for committing “fraud.” Had the video deposition been released during the campaign, it may have yielded ammo for anti-Trump ads. At the start of the deposition, Trump’s attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, said he and Trump did not want the transcript “getting into the hands of the media.” Regarding the video, they succeeded. 

Trump eventually settled this case for $25 million.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Alyssa Farah, Mike Pence’s former press secretary and Donald Trump’s former communications director, says she believes Mike Pence will run against Donald Trump in the next primary election.  In a CNN interview last night (see video above), Ms. Farah gave her insights on a number of Trump White House issues during the latter part of his presidency including the 2020 election, the January 6th insurrection and possible challenges to Trump for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.  In addition to Pence, she mentioned Mike Pompeo and Florida’s Ron DeSantis as possible candidates.  She added that a “coronation of Donald Trump as a candidate would be the worst thing for the party and for the country.”

The entire interview was quite interesting. Her comments about the 2024 election come at about the 8:50 mark.

Tony