Dear Commons Community,

The journal Science has an editorial this morning reflecting on the recent firing of Maitland Jones Jr. by New York University (NYU).  Here is an excerpt.

“The Jones case has captured the attention of many quarters in higher education and science in the United States. Jones, a celebrated organic chemistry professor at Princeton University, who retired and became a contract professor at NYU, was dismissed after some of his students complained about their grades and the challenging level of the material in a large introductory class on organic chemistry. Even though the students never asked for Jones to be fired, NYU didn’t renew his 1-year contract and sent him on his way. This reaction is illustrative of the problem of intro science, particularly at highly selective colleges: Universities would rather wash their hands of such matters than deal with all of the thorny issues revealed by stories like this. Until they do, many students will leave the courses disappointed and mistrustful of science, just at the time that science needs their support.

Amen!

Tony

Excerpts of Secret Service emails are displayed during a hearing by the House’s Jan. 6 select committee on Oct. 13 in Washington. (Alex Wong)

Dear Commons Committee,

The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 yesterday made its most explicit argument yet that former President Donald Trump was personally responsible for the violent insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol last year.

“The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said during her opening remarks. “None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it.”

Over the course of roughly two and a half hours, Cheney and the other eight members of the select committee each took turns presenting a combination of new and previously disclosed evidence that, they said, offered insight into Trump’s state of mind and motivations as he fought to overturn the results of the 2020 election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Here are some of the key takeaways from yesterday’s hearing courtesy of several news media sources.

New Secret Service records show warnings about violence prior to Jan. 6

Among the new pieces of evidence presented on Thursday were a variety of revelations from the nearly 1 million pages of emails, recordings and other records the committee has obtained from the Secret Service in the months since its last public hearing.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said that while the committee is still reviewing those records, he presented a “sample of the new and relevant evidence,” including intelligence reports and other communications showing that the Secret Service and others within the White House were aware well in advance of Jan. 6, 2021, of the potential for violence specifically directed at the Capitol.

Examples of this evidence that were shown at the hearing included emailed intelligence alerts the Secret Service received as early as Dec. 24, 2020, about posts on pro-Trump internet forums like TheDonald.win and others, in which users discussed “targeting members of Congress” on Jan. 6.

In another particularly alarming report on Dec. 26, the Secret Service field office relayed a tip that had been received by the FBI, in which a source warned of a plan by the violent extremist group the Proud Boys to march armed into D.C. on Jan. 6. The source said the group, who’d detailed their plans on multiple websites including TheDonald.win, believed they would have enough people “to outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped.”

“Their plan is to literally kill people,” the source told the FBI, according to the report shown by the committee. “Please, please take this tip seriously and investigate further.”

Several members of the Proud Boys have since been charged in connection with the violent insurrection, including a number of the group’s leaders who now face charges of seditious conspiracy.

“By the morning of Jan. 6, it was clear that the Secret Service anticipated violence,” Schiff said.

Never-before-seen footage of congressional leaders springing into action on Jan. 6

The committee also showed never-before-seen video footage of both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on Jan. 6, actively working to stop the riot and secure the Capitol complex so that they could resume the vote certification.

“We’ve got to … finish the proceedings or else they will have complete victory,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, is heard saying in one of the clips, as she and others are ushered to a secure location.

Spliced together with footage of rioters smashing through windows, storming the Capitol Rotunda and demanding to know where “she” is, Pelosi — along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, as well as Republican leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip John Thune — is seen calmly making calls to request help from a variety of officials, including acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Vice President Mike Pence.

The bipartisan cooperation shown in this new footage stood in stark contrast not only to the scenes of violence taking place in other parts of the Capitol, but also to the hours of apparent inaction inside the White House during this time while, according to many witnesses, the president was watching the violence play out on TV.

Trump privately admitted that Biden won the election

In previous hearings, the select committee has repeatedly sought to counter Trump’s claims that he believed he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election by presenting a variety of evidence showing that the former president was, in fact, aware that he’d lost to Joe Biden.

But on Thursday the panel also offered new evidence that Trump actually admitted privately that he’d been defeated and that Biden would soon become president, even as he was publicly claiming the exact opposite.

In videotaped testimony to the committee, a number of former Trump administration officials, including Gen. Mark Milley, who has served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump and Biden, former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, all described conversations in which they heard Trump acknowledge that he lost.

As further proof that Trump was privately preparing to depart the Oval Office while publicly fighting to cling to power, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., presented taped testimony from Milley and other officials including Douglas Macgregor, then the senior adviser to the acting secretary of defense, and former national security adviser Keith Kellogg, who said that in the wake of his 2020 election loss, Trump ordered the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia and Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials never followed through on the directive, which Kellogg said “would’ve been catastrophic” and a “tremendous disservice to the nation.”

The committee voted to subpoena Trump

At the conclusion of Thursday’s hearing, the select committee members voted unanimously to issue a subpoena requesting testimony and documents from Trump himself.

Acknowledging the move as a “serious and extraordinary action,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said, “This is a question about accountability to the American people. He must be accountable. He is required to answer for his actions. He’s required to answer to those police officers who put their lives and bodies on the line to defend our democracy.”

Cheney, who introduced the motion to subpoena Trump, said that more than a year after the panel began its investigation, one of its final remaining tasks was to “seek the testimony, under oath, from Jan. 6’s central player.”

What’s next?

According to NBC News, the panel is planning to issue its subpoena to the former president in the coming days, but the chances that Trump will cooperate are slim, and the subpoena will only remain in effect until the end of the current congressional term.

In the meantime, the committee has said it is continuing to review evidence and plans to produce a comprehensive report on its findings, along with legislative proposals to prevent a future insurrection attempt — though it has not said when, exactly, it expects that report to be released.

Also unclear is whether the committee plans to make any criminal referrals to the Justice Department based on the findings of its probe, though Cheney said Thursday that the committee now has “sufficient information to consider criminal referrals for multiple individuals.”

While leaving the door open for the possibility of such referrals, Cheney added that the committee’s members “recognize that our role is not to make decisions regarding prosecution.”

I watched the entire hearing and thought parts of it especially video of Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress trying to quell the insurrection riveting.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Supreme Court yesterday rejected a request from former President Donald J. Trump to intervene in the litigation over documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate, a stinging rebuke that blocked his effort to get access to classified documents found there by the F.B.I.

The court’s single-sentence order noted no dissents, and the court gave no rationale, saying only that his application to lift a stay issued by a federal appeals court was denied.  As reported by The New York Times.

The Supreme Court’s order — the latest in a string of cases in which it has dealt Mr. Trump a legal setback — means that the special master in the case, and Mr. Trump’s legal team, will not have access to those documents.

The court’s order landed during a hearing of a House committee investigating Mr. Trump’s conduct in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and not long before it voted to subpoena him.

Mr. Trump, who is engulfed in litigation, has had mixed success in the courts but has frequently been infuriated by what he sees as a lack of loyalty or deference to him by the Supreme Court, which has three justices appointed by him.

In January, for instance, the Supreme Court refused his request to block the release of White House records held by the National Archives concerning the Jan. 6 attack, effectively rejecting his claim of executive privilege. The court let stand an appeals court ruling that Mr. Trump’s desire to maintain the confidentiality of presidential communications was outweighed by the need for a full accounting of the attack.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas noted a dissent. It later emerged that his wife, Virginia Thomas, had sent a barrage of text messages to the Trump White House urging efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump’s emergency application in the new case was directed to Justice Thomas, the member of the court who oversees the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, which had ruled against the former president. Justice Thomas referred the application to the full Supreme Court, and there was no indication that he disagreed with the order rejecting Mr. Trump’s request.

Sorry, Donald!

Tony

Alex Jones

Dear Commons Community,

Jurors ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones yesterday to pay nearly $1 billion to Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims’ relatives, who said he turned their loss and trauma into years of torment by promoting the lie that the rampage was a hoax.

The $965 million verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host for spreading the myth that the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.

The verdict came in a defamation lawsuit filed by some of the families of 26 people who were killed in the 2012 shooting, plus an FBI agent who was among the first responders. A Texas jury in August awarded nearly $50 million to the parents of another slain child. As reported by the Associated Press.

Robbie Parker, who lost his 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, said outside the Connecticut court that he was proud that “what we were able to accomplish was just to simply tell the truth.”

“And it shouldn’t be this hard, and it shouldn’t be this scary,” said Parker, who became an early target of conspiracy theorists after he spoke at a news conference the day after the shooting. The jury awarded him the most of any plaintiff: $120 million.

Jones wasn’t at court but reacted on his Infowars show.

As courtroom video showed the jury awards being read out, Jones said that he himself had never mentioned the plaintiffs’ names.

“All made up. Hilarious,” he said. “So this is what a show trial looks like. I mean, this is the left completely out of control.”

Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, portrayed the trial as unfair and pledged to appeal.

“Today is a very, very, very dark day for freedom of speech,” he said outside court.

The jury awarded various sums to the victims’ relatives, who testified that they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones’ show. Strangers showed up at the families’ homes to record them. People hurled abusive comments on social media.

Mark Barden testified that conspiracy theorists urinated on the grave of his 7-year-old son, Daniel, and threatened to dig up the coffin; Barden and his wife were together awarded about $86 million. Now-retired FBI Agent William Aldenberg, awarded $90 million, described the horror he saw at the school as he responded alongside other law enforcement, and his outrage at seeing online claims that he was an actor.

Erica Lafferty, the daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, testified that people mailed rape threats to her house.

“I wish that after today, I can just be a daughter grieving my mother and stop worrying about the conspiracy theorists,” Lafferty said outside court. But she predicted that Jones’ “hate, lies and conspiracy theories will follow both me and my family through the rest of our days.”

To plaintiff William Sherlach, the verdict “shows that the internet is not the wild, wild West, and that your actions have consequences.”

He had testified about seeing online posts that falsely posited that the shooting was a hoax; that his slain wife, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, never existed; that he was part of a financial cabal and somehow involved with the school shooter’s father; and more. He told jurors the shooting deniers’ vitriol made him worry for his family’s safety.

“Going forward — because, unfortunately, there will be other horrific events like this — people like Alex Jones will have to rethink what they say,” Sherlach said.

Testifying during the trial, Jones acknowledged he had been wrong about Sandy Hook. The shooting was real, he said. But in the courtroom and on his show, he was defiant.

He called the proceedings a “kangaroo court,” mocked the judge, called the plaintiffs’ lawyer an ambulance chaser and labeled the case an affront to free speech rights. He claimed it was a conspiracy by Democrats and the media to silence him and put him out of business.

“I’ve already said ‘I’m sorry’ hundreds of times, and I’m done saying I’m sorry,” he told jurors.

Twenty children and six adults died in the shooting on Dec. 14, 2012; relatives of five children and three educators sued in Connecticut. The trial was held at a courthouse in Waterbury, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Newtown, where the attack took place.

The lawsuit accused Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, of using the mass killing to build his audience and make millions of dollars. Experts testified that Jones’ audience swelled, as did his revenue from product sales, when he made Sandy Hook a topic on the show.

In both the Texas and Connecticut lawsuits, judges found the company liable for damages by default after Jones failed to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence, including failing to turn over records that might have showed whether Infowars had profited from knowingly spreading misinformation about mass killings.

Because he was already found liable, Jones was barred from mentioning free speech rights and other topics during his testimony.

Jones now faces a third trial, in Texas, in a lawsuit filed by the parents of another child killed in the shooting.

It is unclear how much of the verdicts Jones can afford to pay. During the trial in Texas, he testified he couldn’t afford any judgment over $2 million, and his lawyers plan to appeal and try to reduce the damages there. Free Speech Systems has filed for bankruptcy protection.

But an economist testified in the Texas proceeding that Jones and his company were worth as much as $270 million.

A lawyer for the families in the Connecticut case, Josh Koskoff, said that “if this verdict shuts down Alex Jones, good.”

“He’s been walking in the shadow of death to try to profit on the backs of people who have just been devastated,” Koskoff said. “That is not a business model that should be sustainable in the United States.”

It took a while and nothing can bring back the victims but hopefully this is a bit of relief for the Sandy Hook families!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The crown of the Statue of Liberty opened yesterday (see video below)  to visitors for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Eager sightseers are now allowed to climb the 162 steps from the statue’s base to her crown.

The crown has been closed since 2020 when the pandemic shuttered many iconic New York City attractions.

The observation deck of the Statue of Liberty reopened to 50% capacity in July of last year.

Tony

President Biden on Tuesday for the first time addressed his son’s exposure to possible criminal charges for allegedly lying on a gun-purchase application, but he said he was proud of Hunter Biden for confronting his struggles with drug addiction https://t.co/NscXr1yMlf pic.twitter.com/nnkefrnIVg

— CNN (@CNN) October 12, 2022

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article this morning reporting that the number of U.S. visas issued to Chinese students for the new academic year plunged from pre-pandemic levels, an alarming development for American colleges that have come to rely on tuition dollars from a booming Chinese market.

Still, the total number of new student visas awarded for the fall of 2022 was up, thanks to surging demand from India, according to a Chronicle analysis of visa data collected by the U.S. Department of State.

More than 84,000 student, or F-1, visas were issued to Indian students during the critical months of May to August, the period that accounts for the bulk of student-visa issuances. That’s almost 45 percent more visas for Indian students than the same four months last year and a staggering 148 percent more than during that span of 2019.

India far outpaced China in newly issued visas. Only about 47,000 F-1 visas went to Chinese students this summer, 40,000 fewer than were issued from May to August 2021, a 45-percent decline (see graph above). 

Despite the precipitous drop in new visas, China remains the largest source of international students on American campuses. About 252,000 Chinese student-visa holders were in the United States in September, according to federal-government data, compared with some 241,000 Indian students.

Most international students are issued a single visa for the duration of their studies. And while elementary- and secondary-school children from abroad also come to the United States on F-1 visas, nine in 10 student-visa holders are college students, so visa data are largely a reflection of college enrollments.

From May through August, the State Department issued nearly new 282,000 F-1 visas at consulates worldwide, a 2-percent increase over the summer of 2021 and 10 percent more than the same period before the Covid-19 pandemic.

The continuing post-Covid rebound among international students over all is a relief for American colleges — no other demographic group experienced as large an enrollment decline during the pandemic.

But the apparent collapse in Chinese-student interest in studying in the United States, whether temporary or permanent, is sure to undercut certainty in future international-enrollment trends.

The drop marks a significant reversal: In the dozen years before the pandemic, enrollments from China soared 450 percent. At their peak, one in three international students on American campuses was from China. One analysis, from the Institute of International Education, estimated that college students from China added $15.9 billion to the American economy during the 2019-20 academic year — and much of it benefited colleges’ bottom lines since most Chinese students pay the full cost of tuition.

But during the pandemic, economic activity generated by the “export” of American educational services to international students fell by almost 28 percent, or nearly $16 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The ability of Chinese students to travel to the United States was severely curtailed by the pandemic, more than that of other international students. The early outbreak of Covid in China led the U.S. government to impose a travel ban on visitors, including student-visa holders, from China in the first months of the pandemic, and it was not lifted until May 2021. As a result, any student coming from China had to first travel to a third country and quarantine. There were few flights between the two countries, and American consulates were closed. During the summer of 2020, only about 500 visas were issued to Chinese students.

Yet there are indications that softening Chinese demand for an American education is not solely driven by the pandemic. For one, Chinese families typically save for years for their children’s education, and many students who go abroad opt out of the national high-school curriculum that prepares them for admission to a Chinese university. As a result, students are locked into their plans to study overseas far in advance. For those students, the pandemic probably disrupted their American education but didn’t derail it altogether — indeed, visa issuances to China last summer rose above pre-pandemic levels, a sign of pent-up demand from students who had deferred admission.

Even before the pandemic, the rapid growth in Chinese enrollments had leveled off, and the number of new international students coming to the United States had been in decline. One big culprit: rising geopolitical tensions between the United States and China. Under the Trump administration, the White House considered a ban on Chinese students, and President Donald J. Trump reportedly called them spies. Public skepticism about enrolling large numbers of Chinese students has also grown. More than half of Americans in a 2021 Pew Research Center survey said they favored restrictions on students from China.

The students may be turning away from the United States to other popular destinations. Chinese applicants to British universities increased by 10 percent over the previous year. And because of the pandemic, some families may want their children to stay closer to home — Hong Kong universities are reporting record enrollments from mainland China.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

After more than two years of historic job losses, America’s colleges and universities find themselves in a welcome position. Following the addition of an estimated 23,500 employees in July, academe’s work force added another 3,400 jobs in August, which restored it to its pre-pandemic size. All told, an estimated 4.7 million workers (see chart above) are employed by American higher ed today, on par with the labor force’s size during the early days of 2020 — before Covid-19 induced furloughs, retirements, and layoffs.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Job recoveries were strong across both of the sectors of American higher education that the Bureau of Labor Statistics observes. Private institutions employed about 11,000 more workers in August 2022 than they did in February 2020, and public institutions were just short of that pre-pandemic watermark by an estimated 700 jobs.

December 2020 represented the darkest month of the pandemic for higher ed in terms of cumulative job losses, with an estimated 473,000 fewer workers employed when compared to eight months earlier — a reduction of nearly 10 percent. Put another way, one out of every 10 employees on the payroll in February 2020 had disappeared from higher ed’s work force by Christmas of 2020.

The net loss in jobs was so large that it erased more than a decade of job gains within the industry, with higher ed’s work force in December 2020 shrinking to the same size it had been at the close of 2008.

But higher ed’s labor force would see dramatic — if fitful — improvement thereafter, with 330,500 workers cumulatively added to the labor force in the first six months of 2021 — enough to reduce the sector’s total job-loss tab by 70 percent. But it would take another 14 months for the sector to clear the remaining 30-percent, 142,500-job deficit. The job losses would eventually be blamed for diminished services and supply-chain woes on many campuses, as well as widespread burnout among remaining employees.

Prior to the declaration of the Covid-19 pandemic, America’s colleges and universities had never shed so many employees at such an incredible rate, according to estimates spanning 60-plus years and prepared by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Higher ed’s return to pre-pandemic employment levels lagged slightly behind a similar restoration in the wider economy. After adding 528,000 workers in July, the nation’s collective payrolls fully restored the number of jobs lost during the pandemic.

Though estimates of the number of workers employed by colleges and universities are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, these data do not include information on other classes of workers, such as those employed by companies that contract with academic institutions to prepare food and clean facilities and who may have lost their jobs because of scaled-back business with academic institutions.

Our colleges and universities welcome this good news!

Tony

Art Laboe

Dear Commons Community,

Art Laboe, the pioneering disc jockey credited with coining the phrase “oldies but goodies”  died last Friday at the age of 97.

Laboe died after catching pneumonia, said Joanna Morones, a spokesperson for Laboe’s production company, Dart Entertainment.

Laboe’s last show was produced last week and broadcast Sunday night.

As reported by the Associated Press.

Laboe is credited with coining the “oldies, but goodies” phrase. In 1957, he started Original Sound Record, Inc. and in 1958, released the compilation album “Oldies But Goodies: Vol. 1,” which stayed on the Billboard’s Top 100 chart for 183 weeks.

Laboe is also credited with helping end segregation in Southern California by organizing live DJ shows at drive-in eateries that attracted whites, Blacks and Latinos who danced to rock-n-roll and shocked an older generation still listening to Frank Sinatra and Big Band music.

He later developed a strong following among Mexican Americans for hosting the syndicated “The Art Laboe Connection Show.” His baritone voice invited listeners to call in dedications and request a 1950s-era rock-n-roll love ballad or a rhythm and blues tune from Alicia Keys.

His radio shows gave the families of incarcerated loved ones, in particular, a platform to speak to their relatives by dedicating songs and sending heartfelt messages and updates. California and Arizona inmates would send in their own dedications and ask Laboe for updates from family.

It’s a role Laboe said he felt honored to play.

“I don’t judge,” Laboe said in a 2018 interview with The Associated Press at his Palm Springs studio. “I like people.”

He often told a story about a woman who came by the studio so her toddler could tell her father, who was serving time for a violent crime, “Daddy, I love you.”

“It was the first time he had heard his baby’s voice,” Laboe said. “And this tough, hard-nosed guy burst into tears.”

Anthony Macias, a University of California, Riverside ethnic studies professor, said the music Laboe played went with the dedications enhancing the messages. For example, songs like Little Anthony & the Imperials’ “I’m on the Outside (Looking In)” and War’s “Don’t Let No One Get You Down” spoke of perseverance and desire to be accepted.

Born Arthur Egnoian in Salt Lake City to an Armenian-American family, Laboe grew up during the Great Depression in a Mormon household run by a single mom. His sister sent him his first radio when he was 8 years old. The voices and stories that came from it enveloped him.

“And I haven’t let go since,” Laboe said.

He moved to California, attended Stanford University and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Eventually, he landed a job as a radio announcer at KSAN in San Francisco and adopted the name Art Laboe after a boss suggested he take the last name of a secretary to sound more American.

When the United States entered World War II, Laboe served in the Navy. He later returned to Southern California area, but a radio station owner told the aspiring radio announcer he should work on becoming a “radio personality” instead. As a DJ for KXLA in Los Angeles, Laboe bought station time and hosted live overnight music shows from drive-ins where he’d meet underground rockabilly and R&B musicians. “I got my own built-in research,” Laboe said.

Laboe soon became one of the first DJs to play R&B and rock-n-roll in California. Teen listeners soon identified Laboe’s voice with the fledgling rock-n-roll scene. By 1956, Laboe had an afternoon show and became the city’s top radio program. Cars jammed Sunset Boulevard where Laboe broadcast his show and advertisers jumped to get a piece of the action.

When Elvis Presley came to Hollywood, Laboe was one of the few to get an interview with the new rockabilly star.

The scene that Laboe helped cultivate in California became of the nation’s most diverse. Places such as the El Monte’s American Legion Stadium played much of the music Laboe aired on his radio show, giving birth to a new youth subculture.

Laboe maintained a strong following throughout the years and transformed into a promoter of aging rock-n-roll acts who never faded from Mexican-American fans of oldies. A permanent display of Laboe’s contributions resides in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland.

May he rest in peace!

Tony