Harlan Crow and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (George W. Bush Presidential Center, Getty)

Dear Commons Community,

Bruce Maiman, a longtime radio broadcaster, had a guest essay yesterday entitled, “The Clarence Thomas Scandal Is What’s Wrong With Our Democracy.”  He reviews the ProPublica investigation that Supreme Court Justice Thomas has regularly taken lavish trips with billionaire and Republican donor, Harlan Crow, and has never disclosed them.   He examines  the ethical boundaries for people who have political power and influence and concludes:

“People of influence should avoid even the hint of impropriety in their dealings, especially those with the power to make and interpret laws. Isn’t this what the nation is dealing with now with Donald Trump? Have you ever seen the film “American Gangster”? Or “Serpico”? Those are based on true stories about corrupt cops who took drug money to look the other way. When they got caught, and they did, they went to jail.

Bad enough that Ginni Thomas has been deeply involved in conservative advocacy for many years, disturbingly so given who she’s married to. What Clarence Thomas has been doing for the past 20 years is even more brazen: a Supreme Court justice behaving as if he is above the law. And if it isn’t a question of law, how about a question of public trust?

The Supreme Court has maintained that they it does not have a code of conduct because it doesn’t need one. It’s clear now that the honorables have always needed one. One wonders, too, how many fellow justices looked the other way in the face of clear ethical violations.

I’m not even sure we need a rule to prohibit this sort of thing. Any citizen of even pedestrian knowledge can see this is entirely unacceptable. How can the high court have any credibility now? We can’t even call it a high court anymore, can we?

We want to believe that no one is above the law. Does that also hold for Supreme Court justices? What if it isn’t a law, but a question of ethics? Should we also live by a code that says an ethical violation should result in a punishment similar to illegal behavior?

The possibility always troubles us that public officials in service to the electorate and the nation might fall prey to temptation that can compromise their ethics. It’s one of many things that makes us suspicious about government, that makes us mistrust government. If that is an accurate reading of the electorate, then what do we say about people who violate those ethical standards. And what should we do about them?

The ProPublica investigation has given us yet another reason the Supreme Court enjoys little respect anymore and no longer deserves any. As if we needed another reminder that we are at the mercy of a tiny group of people.”

What’s wrong indeed!

Tony

Reps. Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson

Dear Commons Community,

In an  act of political retaliation, Tennessee Republicans yesterday expelled two Democratic lawmakers from the state Legislature for their role in a protest calling for more gun control in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting in Nashville. A third Democrat was narrowly spared by a one-vote margin.

The split votes drew accusations of racism, with lawmakers ousting Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who are both Black, while Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is white, survived the vote on her expulsion. Republican leadership denied that race was a factor, however.  As reported by The Associated Press

The visitors’ gallery exploded in screams and boos following the final vote. After sitting quietly for hours and hushing anyone who cried out during the proceedings, people broke into chants of “Shame!” and “Fascists!”

Banishment is a move the chamber has used only a handful times since the Civil War. Most state legislatures have the power to expel members, but it is generally reserved as a punishment for lawmakers accused of serious misconduct, not used as a weapon against political opponents.

GOP leaders said yesterday’s actions were necessary to avoid setting a precedent that lawmakers’ disruptions of House proceedings through protest would be tolerated.

Republican Rep. Gino Bulso said the three Democrats had “effectively conducted a mutiny.”

At an evening rally, Jones and Pearson pledged to be back at the Capitol next week advocating for change.

“Rather than pass laws that will address red flags and banning assault weapons and universal background checks, they passed resolutions to expel their colleagues,” Jones said. “And they think that the issue is over. We’ll see you on Monday.”

Jones, Pearson and Johnson joined in protesting last week as hundreds of demonstrators packed the Capitol to call for passage of gun-control measures. As the protesters filled galleries, the three approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn and participated in a chant. The scene unfolded days after the shooting at the Covenant School, a private Christian school where six people were killed, including three children.

Pearson told reporters Thursday that in carrying out the protest, the three had broken “a House rule because we’re fighting for kids who are dying from gun violence and people in our communities who want to see an end to the proliferation of weaponry in our communities.”

Johnson, a retired teacher, said her concern about school shootings was personal, recalling a day in 2008 when students came running toward her out of a cafeteria because a student had just been shot and killed.

“The trauma on those faces, you will never, ever forget,” she said.

Thousands of people flocked to the Capitol to support Jones, Pearson and Johnson on Thursday, cheering and chanting outside the House chamber loudly enough to drown out the proceedings.

The trio held hands as they walked onto the floor and Pearson raised a fist during the Pledge of Allegiance.

Offered a chance to defend himself before the vote, Jones said the GOP responded to the shooting with a different kind of attack.

“We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” he said.

Jones vowed that even if expelled, he would continue pressing for action on guns.

“I’ll be out there with the people every week, demanding that you act,” he said.

Bulso accused Jones of acting with “disrespect” and showing “no remorse.”

“He does not even recognize that what he did was wrong,” Bulso said. “So not to expel him would simply invite him and his colleagues to engage in mutiny on the House floor.”

The two expelled lawmakers may not be gone for long. County commissions in their districts get to pick replacements to serve until a special election can be scheduled and they could opt to choose Jones and Pearson. The two also would be eligible to run in those races.

Under the Tennessee Constitution, lawmakers cannot be expelled for the same offense twice.

During discussion, Republican Rep. Sabi Kumar advised Jones to be more collegial and less focused on race.

“You have a lot to offer, but offer it in a vein where people are accepting of your ideas,” Kumar said.

Jones said he did not intend to assimilate in order to be accepted. “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to make a change for my community,” he replied.

Fielding questions from lawmakers, Johnson reminded them that she did not raise her voice nor did she use the bullhorn — as did the other two, both of whom are new lawmakers and among the youngest members in the chamber.

But Johnson also suggested race was likely a factor on why Jones and Pearson were ousted but not her, telling reporters it “might have to do with the color of our skin.”

That notion was echoed by state Sen. London Lamar, a Democrat representing Memphis.

Lawmakers “expelled the two black men and kept the white woman,” Lamar, a Black woman, said via Twitter. “The racism that is on display today! Wow!”

However, House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican who voted to expel all three, denied that race was at play and said Johnson’s arguments might have swayed other members.

“Our members literally didn’t look at the ethnicity of the members up for expulsion,” Majority Leader William Lamberth added. He alleged Jones and Pearson were trying to incite a riot last week, while Johnson was more subdued.

In Washington, President Joe Biden also was critical of the expulsions, calling them “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.”

“Rather than debating the merits of the issue (of gun control), these Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence, and expel duly-elected representatives of the people of Tennessee,” Biden said in a statement.

Before the expulsion votes, House members debated more than 20 bills, including a school safety proposal requiring public and private schools to submit building safety plans to the state. The bill did not address gun control, sparking criticism from some Democrats that it only addresses a symptom and not the cause of school shootings.

Past expulsion votes have taken place under distinctly different circumstances.

In 2019, lawmakers faced pressure to expel former Republican Rep. David Byrd over accusations of sexual misconduct dating to when he was a high school basketball coach three decades earlier. Republicans declined to take action, pointing out that he was reelected as the allegations surfaced. Byrd retired last year.

Last year, the state Senate expelled Democrat Katrina Robinson after she was convicted of using about $3,400 in federal grant money on wedding expenses instead of her nursing school.

Before that, state lawmakers last ousted a House member in 2016 when the chamber voted 70-2 to remove Republican Rep. Jeremy Durham over allegations of improper sexual contact with at least 22 women during his four years in office.

Disgraceful situation!

Tony

Jane LaTour in 2002. As a woman in the labor force, she encountered sex discrimination, harassment and “large and small daily indignities.” Credit…via Russell Smith

Dear Commons Community,

Jane LaTour, a union activist and writer who chronicled the lives of women in traditionally male labor unions, documenting their battles with both their employers and their unions, died on Monday in the Bronx. She was 76.

Her husband, Russell Smith, said her death, in hospice care at Calvary Hospital, was caused by lung cancer that had spread to other organs.  As described in her obituary as published in The New York Times.

Working as unions were declining in strength, Ms. LaTour often criticized labor leaders, whom she accused of not representing the needs of their rank and file. She was the author of the 2008 book “Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City,” and her writing won several journalism awards.

She also taught, managed labor history archives, helped create maps of labor history sites in New York City and State, and ran a nonprofit program supporting democratic reforms within unions.

“She’s really an institution,” Priscilla Murolo, a labor historian, said in an interview. “Everyone around the New York labor movement knew Jane LaTour. And outside the movement she really was invisible.”

Ms. LaTour got her start in labor unions when she left college in her first year to earn money. She worked as a spot welder, drill press operator and warehouse worker, among other jobs, an experience she later compared to that of “a visiting anthropologist trying to understand the strange folkways of the people I encountered.”

What she encountered, often, was sexual discrimination and harassment, the “large and small daily indignities” that drove her to union activism and ultimately back to Rutgers University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history there in 1971, graduating with highest honors, and a master’s in labor studies in 1977.

Throughout her work, her husband said, “she had two lines of pursuit.”

“One was equality for women: Women should be allowed to become plumbers and electricians and firefighters,” he said. “And unions must become democratic. The survival of organized labor was at stake unless labor managed to clean its house.”

For this work, he added, “she got a lot of pushback from people who said, ‘Don’t criticize unions, they have enough trouble, we have to support our leadership.’ She said no.”

Jane Ellen Latour (she capitalized the T in her surname after she started writing professionally) was born on May 3, 1946, in Burlington, Vt., the third of five children of Irene (Fisher) Latour, a former model, and Ransom Latour, who sold insurance and managed jewelry stores.

She was a bookish child who fell asleep most nights reading under the covers, her sister Mary Butler said. Ms. LaTour said her Roman Catholic upbringing had led her to believe that reform — whether in workplaces or within unions — had to come from the least powerful.

She had a son, Richard, in 1966, whom she put up for adoption. She married Jim Kowalski, a college student, the next year. The marriage ended in divorce after a few years. She later developed a bond with her son.

In October 1991, Ms. LaTour struck up a conversation on an uptown Manhattan A train with Russell Smith, a union tour guide and shop steward. He suggested they go out for coffee. “She said, ‘Let’s go for a beer,’” Mr. Smith said. They moved in together in Upper Manhattan two years later and married in December 2012.

“We lived a life glued to news services and media,” Mr. Smith said. “We didn’t own a car or have property. We were more people of books and ideas.”

Her work involved both telling women’s stories and helping to improve their working conditions. A stint as an organizer for New York City’s District 65 of the United Automobile Workers of America, a famously left-leaning union, left her disillusioned with the way higher-ups in the union treated the rank and file.

“Rather than everyone being on the same team,” she said, “the members would often be fighting against the union.” She was fired after three years, because, she said, “I favored workers over the union.”

So she focused on reforming unions from the outside, and on telling the stories of their members. She worked for the Association for Union Democracy, a nonprofit reform group, where she ran the Women’s Project; for the New York Labor History Association; and as an archivist for the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University. For the last 20 years, she worked as a journalist for Public Employee Press, the official publication of District Council 37 of AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees).

“Jane saw in the stories of these tradeswomen a universal story and a chance to show people that these women in the trades — Black, brown, white, gay, straight — were feminists,” said Brenda Berkman, who successfully sued the New York Fire Department to get it to scrap a physical test that excluded her and other women. (Her story was told in Ms. LaTour’s “Sisters in the Brotherhoods.”)

“They might not think of themselves as feminists,” Ms. Berkman added, “they might not even know how to define their feminism, but they were saying a lot of the same things that the feminist movement had been saying since the 1960s.”

For Veronica Session, a carpenter profiled in Ms. LaTour’s book, the attention gave her validation at a time when tradeswomen were not very visible.

“It gave a voice to our stories and our plight,” Ms. Session said. “It meant that all your strife was not for naught, that it meant something. It gave me energy to keep on, knowing that somehow this would matter to people. And also, that someone might see themself in me.”

Ms. LaTour’s last days in hospice drew a vigil by the kind of women she had commemorated: pioneering firefighters, ironworkers, carpenters, plumbers and union dissidents. She remained optimistic that unions have a future, her husband said — if they reform.

In addition to Mr. Smith, Ms. LaTour, who lived in the Inwood section of Manhattan, is survived by her son, Richard Heber; her sisters, Mary Butler and Susie Morin; and three grandchildren.

Her second book, provisionally titled “Rebels With a Cause: An Oral History of the Fight for Democracy in New York City Unions,” is scheduled for publication next year.

May she rest in peace!

Tony

NOTE:  I posted on this in January 2023 but accidentally deleted it.  Here is the original posting.

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading Powers and Thrones:  A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones.Jones is a bestselling author (Crusades, The Templars, The War of the Roses)  and a Fellow in the Royal Historical Society.  This book at 630 pages is a broad review of the thousand years between the fall of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century and the 1500s when the Protestant Reformation gave rise to deep changes in the cultural and social fabric of the Western World.  His last section (Part IV- Revolution (1347-1527) is riveting history.  In his closing paragraph, he likens 1500s Europe to our contemporary world  and “its changing  global climate, pandemic diseases, technological progress, a revolution in communication and publishing, mass migrations, and a reformation in cultural values.”  

In sum, a  thoughtful read and I recommend it to anybody interested in this period.

Below is a review published in The New York Times.

Tony

————————————

The New York Times

By Kevin Stroud

Nov. 9, 2021

POWERS AND THRONES
A New History of the Middle Ages

By Dan Jones

Those who write about medieval history often develop a keen awareness that the narrative is best told when it is made relatable to the modern reader. A skillful historian of the Middle Ages must find a way to compress the nebulous historical record into a concise and compelling story line that is both relevant and approachable. It’s a daunting endeavor. Fortunately, Dan Jones is up to the task.

In his latest book, “Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages,” Jones recounts the key events and personalities that defined the millennium extending from the fall of the western Roman Empire to the dawn of the modern era. Jones is no stranger to this period. His previous books were popular histories that explored, among other subjects, Plantagenet England, the War of the Roses and the Crusades. But now his scope has expanded to include the entirety of the Middle Ages.

In “Powers and Thrones,” Jones presents a procession of kings, clerics, conquerors and artists, producing a lively history that often reads like a novel. But he enriches his narrative by carefully balancing the flow of personalities with historical anecdotes and era-defining events.

In order to anchor the diffuse story of the Middle Ages, Jones focuses on the medieval building blocks that have reached into our modern age like a museum curator shaping and forming an exhibit for a wide audience. He reduces his seemingly unending collection of stories, anecdotes, potential digressions and alluring tangents to their essentials, highlighting the common threads that run through history.

And so Rome is not merely an ancient and imposing military power; it is the source of Roman law, the modern Romance languages and the Christian faith that would come to dominate European society. The Germanic invasions of the crumbling empire are not merely the work of a barbarous horde; they are the process by which much of the political framework of western Europe is established. The Muslim conquest of the Arab world is not merely a counterweight to the spread of Christianity in Europe; it is the source of many of the religious fractures that plague both the East and West to this day. And the arrival of the Vikings does more than portend the plunder of monasteries and royal coffers; it provides the first European link to North America and shapes the future Anglo-French relationship through the creation of Normandy. Jones has a lot of ground to cover, but he has managed to touch every major topic. As each piece of the puzzle is placed into position, the modern world gradually comes into view.

Even his footnotes are designed to connect the story line to the contemporary world. Parallels are drawn between the role of regional identity in Charlemagne’s empire and the political divorce of Brexit. The extraterritorial reach and power of early monasteries are compared to the transnational scope of Amazon and Facebook. The story of the brilliant scholar Peter Abelard is presented as an early example of university “cancel culture.” These are notes meant to engage the reader and carry the major themes of the book forward.

While essentially chronological, “Powers and Thrones” is organized around a number of major themes that shaped and defined the era. Jones treats each as a distinct topic, examining its background and placing it within a larger context. As a result, the narrative sometimes skips around. For example, a discussion of knighthood spans nearly eight centuries, from the foundations of the institution to Henry VIII’s love of jousting. For those who prefer their history to adhere to a strict timeline, this topic-based approach can occasionally be frustrating. But it permits Jones to explore the issues that defined the Middle Ages and demonstrate how each development was a step in the evolution of Europe. It’s an approach that allows the reader to connect all the dots.

“Powers and Thrones” also reminds us why modern scholars cringe at any reference to the term “Dark Ages.” The idea that the early Middle Ages were an era of barbarism and ignorance is refuted by Jones’s vast array of evidence to the contrary. He illustrates the sophisticated culture of the Germanic tribes that produced the Carolingian Empire, the enduring legacy of the Roman Empire in Byzantium and the scholarly contributions of Muslim writers throughout the Mediterranean basin.

To be sure, “Powers and Thrones” is not without its limitations. The book retraces a lot of familiar ground covered by other scholars, and the reader should not expect a deep dive into the period’s military, linguistic, literary or legal history. But, in the end, “Powers and Thrones” does what a general history of the Middle Ages should do. It provides the reader with a framework for understanding a complicated subject, and it tells the story of an essential era of world history with skill and style.

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading Lynne Olson’s Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples From Destruction.  Olson is a bestselling author (Madame Fourcade’s Secret War, Last Hope Island, and Citizens of London)  and an historian.  This book is a biography of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, a French archaeologist who goes to great lengths to preserve ancient treasures.    Olson traces Desroches-Noblecourt professional rise in the male dominated archaeology field to become one of its  major contributors. Olson  includes riveting chapters on Desroches-Noblecourt’s clandestine activities  to preserve the Lourve’s collection during the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II.  The coverage of the preservation of Abu Simbel and Philae (two places I had the pleasure of visiting ten years ago) from the construction of the Aswan Dam is inspiring.

A great read and I recommend it to anybody interested in Egypt and its ancient legacy.

Below is a review published in The New York Times.

Tony

————————————

The New York Times Review of Books

The Woman Who Gave Indiana Jones a Run for His Money

In “Empress of the Nile,” Lynne Olson tells the story of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the archaeologist who broke into a notoriously misogynistic men’s club: Egyptology.

By Joshua Hammer

Published Feb. 28, 2023 Updated March 3, 2023

EMPRESS OF THE NILE: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples From Destruction, by Lynne Olson

Egyptian archaeology has never been regarded as an equal-opportunity profession. Charismatic males have dominated the field since its inception, from Giovanni Belzoni, a onetime circus strongman who located the hidden entrance to the second Pyramid at Giza in 1818, to Howard Carter, the Briton who shot to global fame after uncovering Tutankhamen’s tomb. Then there’s Zahi Hawass, the self-styled Indiana Jones who ruled over Egypt’s antiquities for years. Driven out by allegations of corruption during the Arab Spring, Hawass resurrected himself, Osiris-style, under the current dictatorship.

Lynne Olson’s “Empress of the Nile” tells the story of the most accomplished woman ever to break into that men’s club. The author of a number of books about World War II, Olson was researching the Musée de l’Homme resistance movement when she came across references to Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, a curator at the Louvre who led a secret life in the anti-Nazi underground. Desroches-Noblecourt went on to become a field archaeologist with a knack for finding intact tombs, and a master bureaucratic infighter who played a key role in rescuing Egypt’s endangered antiquities from destruction by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Along the way, Olson relates in this fast-paced, highly entertaining book, Desroches-Noblecourt survived a Gestapo interrogation, faced angry crowds during the 1956 Suez crisis and sparred with everyone from Gamal Nasser to Charles de Gaulle.

Desroches-Noblecourt (she added the second name after her 1942 marriage) became infatuated with Egypt as a small girl after her grandfather took her to admire the great obelisk of Rameses II. Liberal-minded intellectuals, her parents enrolled her in a progressive girls’ public school, then encouraged her to study for a degree in Egyptology at the prestigious École du Louvre.

There she fell under the tutelage of Étienne Drioton, a priest who later served as the director of the French-run Egyptian Antiquities Service in Cairo. Drioton arranged the first of his student’s many field trips to dig sites along the Nile. In camps infested with cobras and scorpions, she mastered Arabic, developed a rapport with the local workers and won the attention of powerful mentors. At Edfu, she made the first of several remarkable discoveries: the untouched 4,200-year-old tomb of Lady Sechséchet, the wife of a chief government minister who was revered as a “living god.” As she gazed on a sarcophagus, surrounded by delicate objects of gold, alabaster, copper and calcite, Desroches-Noblecourt recalled, “the euphoria I felt was indescribable.” She also endured the mistreatment of a chauvinistic French archaeologist, Alexandre Varille, who bullied her at a dig they worked on together, then stole credit for her notes and photos.

Olson’s narrative gathers steam in the tense days before the Nazis invaded Poland. Along with the Louvre’s debonair director, Jacques Jaujard, Desroches-Noblecourt evacuated thousands of pieces, including the “Mona Lisa” and the museum’s entire Egyptian collection, to a remote chateau. A year later, she organized a second removal through Nazi-occupied territory, on roads clogged with refugees, to the free French zone near the Spanish border. All the while, as Olson relates with brio, she was sneaking messages out of Paris for the Musée de l’Homme resistance network. The Gestapo soon broke up the movement and executed its leaders; Desroches-Noblecourt fell under Nazi suspicion, but she escaped unharmed.

The highlight of Olson’s book is her thrilling account of the rescue of the giant statues of Rameses II and the Abu Simbel temples from inundation by the Aswan High Dam. After Nasser announced his intention to build the dam — the centerpiece of a huge 1950s modernization drive — Desroches-Noblecourt, then the chief of a UNESCO mission to Egypt, embarked on what she called a “David and Goliath” effort to move the colossi out of harm’s way. Turning on the charm and twisting arms, she got Nasser’s government to embrace the project and enlisted the support of UNESCO’s leaders, the Kennedy administration and the French government. Desroches-Noblecourt held her own against powerful skeptics. In her first meeting with Charles de Gaulle, the French president rebuked her for her unilateral pledge of French government support for the plan. “And you — did you demand the authority of Pétain’s government on June 18, 1940?” she shot back. “Then Charles de Gaulle did something exceedingly rare for him: He laughed,” Olson writes. The funding was approved.

Olson wrests high drama from small moments, such as Desroches-Noblecourt’s scramble to find a Roman-letter typewriter in Cairo in order to meet a crucial deadline, and huge ones. In meticulous detail, she lays out the effort, carried out by hundreds, to extricate the great temple from the cliff into which it had been built three millenniums ago. Workers cut the sandstone colossi into pieces, lifted the fragments high above the floodwaters and reassembled them.

“Empress of the Nile”’s momentum falters after the Abu Simbel rescue. Desroches-Noblecourt oversaw digs, organized overseas tours of the mummy of Rameses II and the treasures of King Tutankhamen, and wrote popular books about ancient Egypt, but none of her achievements could match the drama of her early years. Some later chapters take on an episodic feeling without adding much insight to Desroches-Noblecourt’s formidable personality. Olson meanders into an account of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ growing role as a cultural preservationist and the Metropolitan Museum’s successful effort in 1967 to acquire Egypt’s Temple of Dendur.

Desroches-Noblecourt died in 2011 at 97. Though she left a rich legacy as a fund-raiser, logistician, diplomat and scholar, she considered herself primarily an archaeologist. She was “galloping like a gazelle over the sands of the Egyptian deserts at an age when others had long since put on their slippers,” one colleague wrote. Her last fieldwork in Egypt, carried out at 70, was a survey of the Valley of the Queens, the burial ground of the wives and daughters of the Pharaohs — a fitting final expedition for a figure who never let Egyptology’s gender gap stand in her way.

Joshua Hammer is the author of “The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu” and “The Falcon Thief.” His next book, about the race to decipher the world’s oldest writing, will be published in 2024.

(Image credit: Photo by Levart_Photographer on Unsplash)

Dear Commons Community,

Erik Ofgang, a technology writer, had a piece yesterday in Tech & Learning entitled, “4 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Prepare for Class.”  It was forwarded to me by one of my graduate students, Rachel Carvajal.

The main theme of the article is that ChatGPT can be good at being a teaching assistant and helping educators prepare for class. Here is an excerpt:

“Using ChatGPT to prepare for class is easier than I expected. 

I recently had the free GPT-3.5 version of ChatGPT create several lesson plans, quizzes, exercises, and a syllabus around journalism topics I teach, and was impressed by the quality and speed by which content was generated. 

I wouldn’t personally use ChatGPT for these purposes in my own classes due to a variety of reasons, including lack of clarity on whether this would violate institutional rules at the colleges at which I teach, my personal concerns about potential plagiarism in AI-generated text, and my preference for human-generated content overall. 

That said, it’s easy to see how the free version of ChatGPT, and other similar tools such as Google Bard and the GPT-4-powered subscription version of ChatGPT, could be helpful to teachers, especially new educators.”

Ofgang describes in some detail four ways to use ChatGPT as follows.

1. Using ChatGPT to Prepare for Class: Generating Lesson Plans
2. Using ChatGPT to Create Quizzes 
3. Using ChatGPT to Write Homework Assignments
4. Writing Syllabi

This semester twelve graduate students (all teacher educators) in one of my courses opted to use ChatGPT to assist in doing a class assignment to write an essay related to education research.  I asked all of them to comment at the end of the essay what they thought of the experience and whether they would use it in their own classes.  All except one commented that they would use it in their own teaching.

ChatGPT is here!

Tony

Yusef Salaam (2019) and Donald Trump (1989). (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Vince Bucci/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images, AP, Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

Yusef Salaam, one of the five men exonerated in the Central Park Five case, tool out a full-page ad (see below) in The New York Times against former President Donald Trump, more than 30 years after Trump called for the teens’ execution in a series of ads.

Leading with a bold headline, “Bring back justice & fairness. Build a brighter future for Harlem!,” Salaam, who is running to represent central Harlem on the New York City Council, tweeted his response Tuesday to Trump’s historic indictment on 34 counts and arraignment.

“After several decades and an unfortunate and disastrous presidency, we all know who exactly Donald J. Trump is — a man who seeks to deny justice and fairness for others, while claiming only innocence for himself.”

Trump, the first former president in history to face criminal charges, pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records at an appearance in Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s team of prosecutors upgraded what would typically be classed as misdemeanors to Class E felonies, on the grounds that the documents were intended to hide state and federal election law crimes, and possibly to evade state tax law.

On April 30, 1989, Trump, then a brash and influential real estate mogul, took out a reported $85,000 worth of ads in four New York newspapers with the headline: “Bring back the death penalty, bring back our police!” regarding the case of the Central Park Five — Kevin Richardson, 14, Raymond Santana, 14, Antron McCray, 15, Korey Wise, 16, and Salaam, 15 — who had been wrongfully accused of raping and assaulting a white female jogger in New York City’s Central Park.

“I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them,” Trump wrote in the ad.

After they spent years in prison, the convictions of the now “Exonerated Five” were eventually vacated in 2002, following DNA evidence and a confession from a man named Matias Reyes, which affirmed that they had been wrongfully convicted of various crimes.

Salaam’s ad follows a one-word statement, “Karma,” issued by his campaign last Thursday when news broke of Trump’s indictment. In Tuesday’s response, Salaam reflected on living with trauma due to “systemic oppression imposed by the injustice system.”

“Being wrongfully convicted as a teenager was an experience that changed my life drastically,” he wrote in the ad. “But the problem our community faced when my name was splashed across the newspaper a generation ago — inadequate housing, underfunded schools, public safety concerns, and a lack of good jobs — became worse during Trump’s time in office.

“Here is my message to you, Mr Trump: In response to the multiple federal and state criminal investigations that you are facing, you responded by warning of ‘potential death and destruction,’ and by posting a photograph of yourself with a baseball bat, next to a photo of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg,” the ad continued.

“These actions, just like your actions leading up to the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, are an attack on our safety. Thirty-four years ago, your full-page ad stated, in all caps: CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS. You were wrong then and you are wrong now.”

Salaam extended some grace to Trump at the end of his ad, writing that he hopes the former president gets what the Exonerated Five did not receive, a “presumption of innocence” and a fair trial. He added a rider in case the former president is found guilty.

“And if the charges are proven and you are found guilty,” he wrote, “I hope that you endure whatever penalties are imposed with the same strength and dignity that the Exonerated Five showed as we served our punishment for a crime we did not commit.”

What goes around – comes around!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Brandon Johnson, a union organizer and former teacher, was elected as Chicago’s next mayor yesterday in a major victory for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing as the heavily blue-leaning city grapples with high crime and financial challenges.

Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, won a close race over former Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas, who was backed by the police union. Johnson, 47, will succeed Lori Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first openly gay person to be the city’s mayor.

Lightfoot became the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose her reelection bid when she finished third in a crowded February contest.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Johnson’s victory in the nation’s third-largest city topped a remarkable trajectory for a candidate who was little known when he entered the race last year. He climbed to the top of the field with organizing and financial help from the politically influential Chicago Teachers Union and high-profile endorsements from progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sanders appeared at a rally for Johnson in the final days of the race.

Taking the stage Tuesday night for his victory speech, a jubilant Johnson thanked his supporters for helping usher in “a new chapter in the history of our city.” He promised that under his administration, the city would look out for everyone, regardless of how much money they have, whom they love or where they come from.

“Tonight is the beginning of a Chicago that truly invests in all of its people,” Johnson said.

Johnson, who is Black, recalled growing up in a poor family, teaching at a school in Cabrini Green, a notorious former public housing complex, and shielding his own young kids from gunfire in their West Side neighborhood.

He referenced civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Jesse Jackson and called his victory a continuation of their legacies. He also noted that he was speaking on the anniversary of King’s assassination.

“Today the dream is alive,” Johnson said, “and so today we celebrate the revival and the resurrection of the city of Chicago.”

It was a momentous win for progressive organizations such as the teachers union, with Johnson winning the highest office of any active teachers union member in recent history, leaders say. For both progressives and the party’s more moderate wing, the Chicago race was seen as a test of organizing power and messaging.

Johnson’s win also comes as groups such as Our Revolution, a powerful progressive advocacy organization, push to win more offices in local and state office, including in upcoming mayoral elections in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

Vallas, speaking to his own supporters last night, said that he had called Johnson and that he expected him to be the next mayor. Some in the crowd seemed to jeer the news, but Vallas urged them to put aside differences and support the next mayor in “the daunting work ahead.”

“This campaign that I ran to bring the city together would not be a campaign that fulfills my ambitions if this election is going to divide us,” Vallas said.

He added that he had offered Johnson his full support in the transition.

The contest surfaced longstanding tensions among Democrats, with Johnson and his supporters blasting Vallas — who was endorsed by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s second-ranking Democrat — as too conservative and a Republican in disguise.

Johnson and Vallas were the top two vote-getters in the all-Democrat but officially nonpartisan February race, which moved to the runoff because no candidate received over 50%. Both candidates have deep roots in the Democratic Party, though with vastly different backgrounds and views.

After teaching middle and high school, Johnson helped mobilize teachers, including during a historic 2012 strike through which the Chicago Teachers Union increased its organizing muscle and influence in city politics. That has included fighting for non-classroom issues, such as housing and mental health care.

Vallas, who finished first in the February contest, was the only white candidate in that nine-person field. A former Chicago budget director, he later led schools in Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Bridgeport, Connecticut. He has run unsuccessfully for office multiple times, including a 2019 bid for Chicago mayor.

Among the biggest disputes between Johnson and Vallas was how to address crime. Like many U.S. cities, Chicago saw violent crime increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, hitting a 25-year high of 797 homicides in 2021, though the number decreased last year and the city has a lower murder rate than others in the Midwest, such as St. Louis.

Vallas, 69, said he would hire hundreds more police officers, while Johnson said he didn’t plan to cut the number of officers, but that the current system of policing isn’t working. Johnson was forced to defend past statements expressing support for “defunding” police — something he insisted he would not do as mayor.

But Johnson argued that instead of investing more in policing and incarceration, the city should focus on mental health treatment, affordable housing for all and jobs for youth. He has proposed a plan he says will raise $800 million by taxing “ultrarich” individuals and businesses, including a per-employee “head tax” on employers and an additional tax on hotel room stays.

That plan is no sure thing, as some members of the City Council and the state Legislature — whose support would be needed — already have expressed opposition.

Congratulations Mayor-Elect Johnson!

Tony

Janet Protasiewicz

Dear Commons Community,

Wisconsin voters yesterday elected Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court, flipping control to a liberal majority ahead of rulings on an abortion ban and other matters that could play a role in the 2024 presidential election.

Protasiewicz defeated conservative candidate Daniel Kelly in what New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice called the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history. More than $42.3 million had been spent as of Monday, according to a WisPolitics.com review, far outstripping the previous record of $15.2 million.   As reported by Reuters.

In a major victory for abortion rights advocates, the result turns a court with a former 4-3 conservative majority to liberal control after 15 years, likely affecting a number of issues that have polarized Americans in other states such as voting rights and partisan control over drawing legislative maps.

But it was abortion that dominated the campaign, with the court expected in the coming months to decide whether to uphold the state’s 1849 abortion ban.

That law took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to eliminate a nationwide right to abortion by reversing Roe v. Wade and granting individual states the authority to ban abortion.

With 75% of the ballots counted, Protasiewicz had 55.4% of the vote to 44.6% for Kelly, a lead of nearly 160,000 votes, according to the Associated Press.

The wide margin in a normally closely contested state suggests Democrats have continued to benefit politically from the Roe decision, which has brought motivated voters to the polls.

Protasiewicz put abortion at the center of her campaign, saying in one advertisement that she supports “a woman’s freedom to make her own decision on abortion.” Kelly, meanwhile, won the endorsement of anti-abortion groups.

“Tonight we celebrate this historic victory that has obviously reignited hope in so many of us,” Protasiewicz told a victory celebration.

Republicans also underperformed expectations last November in the first national elections since the court struck down Roe.

Kelly reluctantly conceded in an address to supporters, calling Protasiewicz an unworthy opponent who ran a “deceitful, dishonorable, despicable campaign.”

But he added, “I respect the decision that the people of Wisconsin have made.”

The election’s outcome also holds major implications for the political future of the battleground state. Just as it did in 2020, the court could issue crucial voting decisions before and after the 2024 presidential election, when Wisconsin is again poised to be a vital swing state.

In addition, the court may revisit the state’s congressional and legislative maps, which Republicans have drawn to maximize their political advantage.

While the election is technically nonpartisan, neither Protasiewicz nor Kelly made much effort to hide their ideological bent. The state Democratic and Republican parties poured resources into their favored campaigns, and outside organizations spent millions of dollars supporting their preferred candidate, including anti- and pro-abortion rights groups.

Democrats asserted a Kelly victory could have endangered democracy itself in Wisconsin, noting that a lawsuit from Republican Donald Trump challenging his presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 came within one vote of succeeding at the court.

Congratulations Ms. Protasiewicz and the voters in Wisconsin!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The news media focused on Donald Trump’s long-awaited indictment in New York yesterday. The Manhattan district attorney’s office unveiled the indictment for the first time charging former President Donald J. Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a low-level felony in New York State. The charges are related to reimbursements to Mr. Trump’s former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, for a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty in court to these charges.

Along with the indictment, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, also released a “statement of facts” document outlining a larger scheme that he said Mr. Trump and others had orchestrated to avoid negative press during the 2016 campaign. That scheme also included hush-money payments to a second woman who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump and to a former Trump doorman who made an unproven claim that Mr. Trump had an out-of-wedlock child, Mr. Bragg said Tuesday.

The New York Times has reviewed and annotated the indictment to clarify the charges. If you are interested in this case, you will find the annotations helpful.

Tony