Dear Commons Community,

James Davis, President of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), announced earlier this week that PSC members overwhelmingly approved a new contract with the City University of New York.

Below is his statement and summary of key provisions. 

Congratulations to the PSC leadership!

Tony

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PSC Members,

I’m proud to announce that the 30,000 faculty and professional staff represented by PSC will receive long-overdue raises, along with other contractual gains, because an overwhelming 90 percent majority of PSC members voted to ratify the new PSC-CUNY contract.

The agreement between the PSC and CUNY management includes 13.4 percent minimum raises, a $3,000 ratification bonus (prorated for part-time faculty and staff), and additional equity increases in salary for our colleagues in CUNY’s lowest-paid titles, including teaching adjuncts. The raises are retroactive to March 1, 2023.

The timing of payment of the bonus and back pay, and the dates on which our increased rates will appear in paychecks, are still being determined. We believe the payments will be made as soon as practicable in Spring 2025 and will inform members as soon as dates are known, with as much advance notice as possible. The timing is affected by CUNY’s payroll processing and by processing at the City (for Community Colleges) and State (for Senior Colleges) Comptroller’s offices.

After more than 40 bargaining sessions and two years of organizing, members got to decide and 66% percent of eligible voters participated in the three-week ratification, of whom 90% voted yes. The bargaining sessions, open to union members, were observed by more than 900 faculty and staff. Thousands more participated in union-wide meetings, marches, pickets, press events, and protests of the CUNY Board of Trustees. Thirty PSC members were arrested demanding a good contract at an October Trustees hearing. Every significant gain in this contract is the result of PSC members’ solidarity and action. Thank you to all who participated in the campaign and to all who voted.

Other enhancements in the contract include, but are not limited to, investments in the PSC-CUNY Welfare Fund that provides supplemental health benefits, expansion of Paid Parental Leave from 8 to 12 weeks, protections against outsourcing of teaching to AI, new paths to promotion, a major step toward adjunct pay parity, improvements to reclassification and comp time for HEOs, assurance of a raise with promotion or reclassification, and additional support for research and professional development.

Job security for adjunct faculty was a site of significant struggle throughout the negotiations, after management refused to renew the multi-year appointment pilot agreement established in an earlier round of bargaining. But this new contract rebuilds a multi-year appointment pilot agreement for teaching adjuncts that provides two-year appointments with a discretionary third year. We did not win a contractual provision on remote work, but the current Remote Work Agreement remains in effect.

• Click here for a summary of contract highlights, title-specific graphics, frequently asked questions, the full Memorandum of Agreement, and more.

The union’s work is not done! The City and State Budget sessions will soon be underway. Our spring membership campaign is essentially the first phase of the next contract struggle. The gains we did not achieve in this round will become more possible as we increase membership rates and strengthen our union. And finally, we’re excited to begin the work of contract implementation: educating members about improvements to our terms and conditions, ensuring that every new or expanded benefit and every opportunity for professional advancement is fully realized for every member who is eligible, and pushing management to get you the money you are owed as soon as possible.

It has been my great honor to lead the PSC bargaining team in the negotiations. I thank them for their extraordinary service and commend every member who contributed to the success of our contract campaign.

In solidarity,
James Davis, PSC President

Dear Commons Community,

Governor Kathy Hochul announced earlier this week that students ages 25-55 looking to work in in-demand occupations will have free community college at State University of New York and City University of New York schools.

In her 2025 State of the State address, Hochul announced the NYS Opportunity Promise for free college for students at State University of New York (SUNY) and City University of New York (CUNY) schools. It’s for learners who are pursuing associate degrees in high-demand fields like healthcare and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

“Higher education can be the pathway to economic opportunity, and Gov. Hochul has proposed a bold initiative to provide a free community college education to adults ages 25-55 without a college degree who want to pursue a high-demand career in fields like advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, IT (information technology), AI (artificial intelligence), healthcare, and green jobs,” said SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. and the SUNY board of trustees.

“Gov. Hochul’s community college agenda will literally transform lives for hard-working New Yorkers.”

In addition to free tuition, the state would also pay for books, supplies, and fees; help students transition to careers; and increase funding to apprenticeship providers.

Fields that qualify for the program include:

• Advanced manufacturing
• Artificial intelligence
• Construction
• Cybersecurity
• Engineering
• Green and renewable energy
• Nursing and allied health fields
• Pathways to teaching in shortage areas
• Technology

Hochul also announced a revamp of the cybersecurity field by removing many four-year degree requirements for entry-level and early career positions. She also plans to create a cybersecurity fellows program at SUNY and CUNY to place students in the state government.

The plan now goes to the New York Legislature for approval.

Students who do not qualify for the new initiative may still be eligible for the Excelsior Scholarship for in-state U.S. citizens or NYS Dreamer students from families making $125,000 or less per year. The scholarship covers tuition for SUNY or CUNY institutions and statutory colleges at Cornell University and Alfred University.

Undocumented and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students can qualify for the scholarship by applying for state financial aid.

Hochul has prioritized removing barriers to college for New York students.

In January 2024, Hochul expanded the state’s direct admissions program to guarantee that the top 10% of New York students from 68 participating school districts would be directly admitted to SUNY and CUNY institutions. The program launched in October 2024, with the first cohort entering nine participating SUNY campuses in 2025.

A few months later, she expanded the tuition assistance program, which awarded qualifying full- and part-time students anywhere from $1,000-$5,665, up from a minimum of $500. The initiative impacted almost 50,000 students and is available to New York residents who are U.S. citizens and undocumented and DACA students.

“I’m grateful to Gov. Hochul, whose new proposals, which build on recent investments establishing the CUNY School of Medicine as an independent institution and expanding our Associates of Applied Science College Apprenticeship program, will ensure the nation’s most diverse and largest public urban university remains an engine of upward mobility for all New Yorkers,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez.

Thank you, Governor Hochul!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Business Insider (BI) is reporting that a number of major American corporations are planning staff layoffs this year including companies such as Meta, Microsoft, and BlackRock

These layoffs follow two years of significant job cuts across the tech, media, finance, manufacturing, and retail sectors.

While companies’ reasons for slimming their staff vary, the cost-cutting measures are coming amid a backdrop of technological change. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, some 41% of companies worldwide said they were expecting to reduce their workforces over the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence.

Companies such as Dropbox, Google, and IBM have previously announced job cuts related to AI. Tech jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are meanwhile expected to double by 2030, according to the WEF.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees the company is targeting “low-performers,” BI reported on Jan 14.

Zuckerberg recently announced that he “decided to raise the bar on performance management” and will act quickly to “move out low-performers,” according to an internal memo seen by BI.

In a post on the company’s internal communications platform, he said Meta will make “more extensive performance-based cuts” in this year’s performance review cycle. Impacted US employees will be notified on February 10, he wrote.

The company has laid off more than 21,000 workers since 2022.

BlackRock is also cutting 1% of its workforce or about 200 people of its 21,000-strong workforce, according to Bloomberg.

The reductions are more than offset by some 3,750 workers who were added last year and another 2,000 expected to be added in 2025.

BlackRock’s president, Rob Kapito, and its chief operating officer, Rob Goldstein, said the cuts would help realign the firm’s resources with its strategy, Bloomberg reported.

Bridgewater Inc. cut 7% of its staff this month already in an effort to stay lean, a person familiar with the matter told BI. The layoffs at the world’s largest hedge fund bring its head count back to where it was in 2023, the person said.

The company’s founder, Ray Dalio, said in a 2019 interview that about 30% of new employees were leaving the firm within 18 months.

The Washington Post is cutting 4% of its non-newsroom workforce.

The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post is conducting layoffs in January.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Washington Post is eliminating almost 100 employees in an effort to cut costs, Reuters reported in January.

A spokesperson told the wire service that the changes would occur across multiple areas of the business and indicated that the cuts wouldn’t affect the newsroom.

“The Washington Post is continuing its transformation to meet the needs of the industry, build a more sustainable future and reach audiences where they are,” the spokesperson said, according to Reuters.

Microsoft is planning job cuts soon, and the company is taking a harder look at underperforming employees as part of the reductions, according to two people familiar with the plans.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed cuts but declined to share details on the number of employees being let go.

“At Microsoft we focus on high performance talent,” the spokesperson said. “We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action.”

The digital-financial-services company Ally is laying off roughly 500 of its 11,000 employees, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.

“As we continue to right-size our company, we made the difficult decision to selectively reduce our workforce in some areas, while continuing to hire in our other areas of our business,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also said the company was offering severance, out-placement support, and the opportunity to apply for openings at Ally.

Ally Financial Inc. made a similar level of cuts in October 2023, the Charlotte Observer reported.

Tough times at these companies even while the overall national  employment level is very high.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Archaeologists working near Luxor announced a bevy of new finds they believe could “reconstruct history” thanks to the wealth of artifacts they discovered in a mixture of rock-cut tombs, burial shafts, and even part of a temple. Some have been around for as many as 3,600 years.

The Zahi Hawass Foundation for Antiquities & Heritage announced the finds near Luxor along the causeway of Queen Hatshepsut’s funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile River. The foundation, led by Hawass, said in a statement provided to the Associated Press, that it had been working with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities at the site since September 2022.

Along with the discoveries of the tombs and burial sites comes a mix of artifacts that experts believe could reveal the practices of life near Luxor around 1500 B.C. Artifacts inside the tombs included bronze coins (some dating to between 367-283 B.C. thanks to the image of Alexander the Great on them), funerary masks covering mummies, winged scarabs, funerary beads and amulets, and even children’s toys formed from clay. While looting certainly stripped some of the more precious pieces from the tombs over the past centuries, the archaeologists also found pottery tables used to offer bread, wine, and meat and archer’s bows that could link the tomb’s owners to the Egyptian military.

Inside pieces of Queen Hatshepsut’s Valley Temple, Hawass said the rock-cut tombs come from the Middle Kingdom from 1938 to 1630 B.C. and there are burial shafts from the 17^th dynasty dating from 1580 to 1550 B.C. The shafts still contained wooden coffins, and the remains of a young child were discovered in one.

Specific tombs include one for Djehuti-Mes, the overseer of Queen Teti Sheri’s palace. While Mes’ tomb was largely emptied of artifacts, a funerary monument with engravings date the tomb to the ninth year of King Ahmose I, roughly 1550 to 1525 B.C.

To add another wrinkle to the find, the team uncovered part of the Assassif Ptolemaic Necropolis, which featured tombs constructed of mud brick built over the remains of Queen Hatshepsut’s temple. A large section of the necropolis was previously discovered, but not documented.

In November 2024, a team of Egyptian and American archaeologists announced the finding of 11 sealed burials in a Middle Kingdom tomb near Luxor, close to the latest site. Inside that tomb, the 11 graves contained skeletons of men, women, and children. The sealed chamber was a tomb used for families over several generations through the 12^th and the beginning of the 13^th dynasties in Egypt. The unique pieces of jewelry found link the remains to multiple high-status families from the time period.

Elaine and I had the pleasure of visiting Luxor  including Queen Hatshepsut’s temple in 2010.  It is a magnificent place to see and learn.  With this discovery, it will be more so!  The photos above and below are taken from my collection.

Tony

Courtesy of NBC News

Dear Commons Community,

Against the wishes of Donald Trump, the Justice Department delivered part of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election to Congress yesterday. 

The report was originally intended to include information about Smith’s prosecution of Trump for his alleged illegal retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. But because the case is still active against two of Trump’s co-defendants, Attorney General Merrick Garland agreed to keep those details under wraps for now. That case is likely to unravel entirely once Trump takes office, so it is highly unlikely that the public will ever see that information.  As reported by various news media. The 137-page document was first obtained by The New York Times.

Smith explicitly says he believes the department had enough evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction were Trump to stand trial.

“The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind,” the document reads. “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”

Trump was indicted in August 2023 on four felony charges connected to Jan. 6: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. The latter charge was for intimidating voters as well as state and election officials.

Trump spent months filing motions to dismiss the election subversion case, invoking everything from vindictive prosecution to total immunity, but was eventually scheduled to go to trial in March 2024. He eventually raised the question of whether presidents were entitled to immunity from prosecution to the Supreme Court, leaving the case in a lurch for weeks until justices ruled, 6-3, that presidents are immune from prosecution for “official” acts and entitled to “presumptive immunity” for unofficial acts.

Smith revised and narrowed the original indictment to reflect the Supreme Court’s interpretation of immunity rules. His revised indictment would have forced Trump to defend certain conduct, including his speech from the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6 and his calls pressuring election officials to “find” votes for him, as “official” activity instead of campaign activity.

But Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in November sealed the case’s fate: It was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be brought again at a later date. Since Justice Department guidance recommends that sitting presidents cannot be sentenced, however, Smith backed off.

Read the Special Counsel Report here.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Teaching with artificial intelligence is at the focus of an Arizona online charter school slated to open in the fall, with teachers taking on the role of guides and mentors rather than content experts.

Unbound Academy was approved by the Arizona state school board last month, with enrollments beginning in January. The school’s model, which will prioritize AI in its delivery of core academics, is part of a continuing evolution of using AI technology in classrooms.

But as the technology becomes more prevalent, so too does the conflict of determining how schools can use it to enhance offerings and downsize workloads, without risking replacing teachers. The nation’s two largest teachers’ unions have already begun to grapple with AI’s growing involvement in the nation’s classrooms, issuing guidance and guardrails around its use. Here is an excerpt from an article that appeared this morning in Education Week.

“In this case, humans are still an important part of the equation, according to the founders of the school. Still, it marks a movement toward embracing AI as a collaborator—something schools are more readily doing now, said Marcelo Worsley, an associate professor of computer science and learning sciences at Northwestern University’s school of education and social policy.

“I think COVID kind of pushed us more into that space as more students were getting connected to one-to-one technology experiences, and people were looking for the resources and tools that students could use—especially when they don’t have continuous access to an instructor, or when they’re not always certain that they’re going to be in person in a classroom setting,” Worsley said.

‘You cannot get rid of the human in the classroom’

Unbound Academy aims to enroll roughly 200 students in its first year, and will serve students in grades 4 to 8 initially. School leadership told the school board in December they hoped to expand to kindergarten through 3rd grade eventually.

The program is affiliated with private schools in Texas and Florida, but this will be the founders’ first foray into public schools.

The school will prioritize AI in its content delivery model, with students working at their own pace through math, reading, and science for the first two hours of their day.

AI, the founders say, will adapt to address what students are excelling in—ratcheting up the instruction to match the student’s knowledge and skills to keep things challenging—while tempering other lessons if a student isn’t grasping material. The goal is for fine-tuned personalization: One 5th grade student could be reading at an 8th grade level, while starting math at a 3rd grade level.

The school’s charter school application to the state school board says the “AI rigorously analyzes comprehensive student data—response accuracy, engagement duration, and emotional feedback via webcam—to ensure lessons are appropriately challenging.”

The curriculum will utilize third party providers—such as online curriculums like IXL or Math Academy, among others—along with their own apps, including the AI tutor, which monitors how students are learning, and how they’re struggling.

Meanwhile, teachers—known as “guides”—will monitor the students’ progress. Mostly, the guides will serve as motivators and emotional support, said MacKenzie Price, a cofounder of Unbound Academy. She also founded 2 Hour Learning, which focuses on having two hours of academics a day followed by four hours of personal projects, the model Unbound Academy will employ.

“You cannot get rid of the human in the classroom. That is the whole connection,” Price said. “But what we can do is provide a better model. Instead of a teacher having to try to meet 20-plus different students who are all at totally varied levels of understanding where they’re at academically—that is such an impossible hill, in traditional models, to climb—we’re allowing them to really do what they’re able to do really well: connecting with students.”

The guides, who will be “well-compensated” according to the school’s application, will be charged with connecting with students throughout the day, including in a group session in the morning before students begin their coursework.

Price said the teachers will be certified according to Arizona’s requirements, though at the private brick-and-mortar schools employing the same model in Texas, previous teaching experience is not required for the guides, according to NBC’s reporting. The application projects a ratio of one guide to 33 students.

Guides will hold one-on-one meetings with students throughout each week. They will be able to see how students are progressing and learning, will assist if there are challenges with the material, and contact families if students aren’t doing coursework.

“Our teachers are looking at the motivation, how kids are learning, if they’re learning effectively and efficiently through the system—but they’re not teaching math,” Price said.

Guides will lead “life skills” workshops in the afternoon, where students learn “practical, real-world experiences,” such as financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, and more, according to the application. If students work together on a specific project such as a simulation of defusing a bomb, Price said, the guides will help teach communication, teamwork, and leadership.

Schools are more readily embracing AI

There has been a decades-long movement toward intelligent tutoring systems, said Worsley, the professor from Northwestern—identifying what students know, don’t know, and if they’ve demonstrated mastery of a topic. The original models relied more on human input, but now technology is more advanced, he said.

Public schools now often incorporate AI-powered resources like IXL or Khan Academy into their instruction, Worsley said.

And for years now, some schools have used online learning programs to fill hard-to-staff vacancies—students learn from the software with oversight from an in-person facilitator. AI could make those models more effective.

Still, teachers and their associations remain wary of AI taking over classroom duties. In the National Education Association’s July 2024 guidance, the teachers’ union emphasized that AI should never replace human interaction. The American Federation of Teachers also highlighted the importance of humans in a June report.

Unbound Academy’s model, of having AI take over instruction with a human touch, is an outlier for now—but it might show up more frequently, Worsley said.

“The reality is that aspects of AI are being built into many of the tools that school districts were using beforehand, or recently adopted, as a result of the pandemic, or just the general explosion and excitement around AI that’s happening right now,” he said.

Teachers get ready – AI is coming!

Tony

Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, had a piece yesterday entitled,  “Five Presidents and a Funeral.”  It reviewed the scene at Jimmy Carter’s funeral with Presidents Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, Biden and Trump looking on as speaker after speaker glorified the virtues of the deceased.  She expanded on:

“The spectacle in Washington this week was extraordinary — a deceased president and a revived president at opposite ends of the moral scale. Here was Carter, the righteous, ascending to heaven, as Donald Trump, the felonious, ascended again to the Oval Office. Carter’s passion for honesty was as ingrained as Trump’s addiction to lying.’

She ended her comments with:

“At a concert for his birthday, Carter was asked by the pianist if he had a request. “Imagine,” he shot back.

The John Lennon classic was sung by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood at the Washington funeral.

The farmer from Plains always wanted to imagine a world where people lived in peace, treating one another with human decency. If only the Emperor of Chaos [Trump] could take a cue from that.

Dowd’s entire essay is below.

Must reading!

Tony

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The New York Times

Maureen Dowd

Five Presidents and a Funeral

Jan. 11, 2025

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington

Jimmy Carter was exactly where he wanted to be at his funeral on Thursday — at a deliberate remove from his fellow presidents. And slightly above them.

When Brian Williams asked Carter in 2010 about a striking Oval Office photo of him with President Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and the Bushes, in which Carter had separated himself, he conceded he felt “superior” to the others because of his stellar post-presidency.

The spectacle in Washington this week was extraordinary — a deceased president and a revived president at opposite ends of the moral scale. Here was Carter, the righteous, ascending to heaven, as Donald Trump, the felonious, ascended again to the Oval Office. Carter’s passion for honesty was as ingrained as Trump’s addiction to lying.

Even as Carter was being praised at his state funeral at the National Cathedral for working tirelessly to eradicate diseases around the globe, Trump was hunting for a disease to pin on immigrants to justify sealing the border.

While the centenarian was heralded for his virtue and monogamous 77-year marriage with Rosalynn, Trump was bracing to be sentenced on his vice — falsifying records to cover up an infidelity with a porn star, conducted while Melania was home taking care of her newborn son.

As Carter was praised for being prescient on climate change, Donald “Drill, Baby, Drill!” Trump maintains his archaic views even as magical neighborhoods across Los Angeles are being incinerated.

Carter was a genuinely pious man. I saw his joy teaching Sunday school in Plains. “Two Corinthians” Trump treats faith, as he does everything, as a transaction, a ploy to get him where he wants to be.

President Biden shaded Trump by talking in his eulogy about the homespun Carter’s “character, character, character.” But after hiding his own aging difficulties, Biden is an imperfect messenger on that subject.

The tableau in the first three rows of the nave was mesmerizing, a sweet and sulfurous brew of historic grudges, grievances and battle scars, along with some flashes of the unique kinship that comes from being in the most powerful club in the world.

Trump may be buoyed by his win, but in this exclusive club, he was largely narcissist non grata. Karen Pence, not over the little matter of Trump shrugging off acolytes’ threats to hang her husband at the Capitol, iced Trump in the pews. Others appeared to, as well. Hillary, Bill, Kamala, Doug, Joe. And Jill (who was also in Tension City with her seatmate Kamala). Mike Pence turned the other cheek and shook Trump’s hand.

W. has clearly not changed his opinion of Trump since he famously said, after watching his American Carnage Inaugural speech, “That was some weird shit.” He ignored Trump, who has blamed the younger Bush president for not stopping 9/11 and for the invasion of Iraq, which Trump said “may have been the worst decision” in White House history. But W. shook hands with Al Gore, probably still grateful that, unlike Trump with Biden, Gore conceded their whisker-thin election. And W. briskly tapped Obama’s stomach, as though they were old D.K.E. brothers meeting again.

Michelle Obama, sick of the whole political scene, didn’t show. Trump, eager to hang with the cool kids, cozied up to Barack. The president-elect regards W., Gore, Hillary, Kamala, Pence, Biden and Carter as losers, but Obama won twice and transcended his party with a personality cult, as Trump did.

For her part, Melania, looking like a Valentino pilgrim, seemed immersed in a world of her own, probably trying to figure out the fastest route out of D.C.

It would seem as if the man who sold the presidential yacht, eschewed “Hail to the Chief” as too pompous and washed Ziploc bags to reuse could not have much in common with the flashy King of Gilt.

But Carter and Trump both tended toward the excessive, vain in their own ways; Carter was excessively virtuous, irritating Americans when he was in office with his parsimonious, micromanaging ways and blunt, demoralizing truth-telling. Who wants to be ushered into a miasma of malaise? Trump wallows in the artifice Carter disdained, hawking Bibles and perfume. He goes over the top demeaning people, often veering into searing cruelty.

They both prided themselves on being outsiders and breaking norms, and they both were suffused with grievances.

When I went to Plains to interview Carter in 2017, on the occasion of his 93rd birthday, his resentments were on display. He felt ignored and mistreated by his Democratic successors (just as they got annoyed when he did foreign-policy freelancing and tossed virtue-signaling darts at them). Carter confessed he didn’t even have Obama’s email. He said his best relationship with a successor was with George H.W. Bush. He was most bitter that his wife had been left out of a mental health forum for first ladies held by Michelle Obama, though that had been Rosalynn’s special project.

Even though he was renowned for not playing the game of politics, Carter expertly played the game when I interviewed him at his modest home, as he wore a big “JC” belt buckle and showed off the furniture he had built. He was ahead of the curve in saluting Trump, which Republicans and tech executives have now done en masse, even defending him on his hypocritical relationship with evangelicals — perhaps in a bid to get Trump to send him to North Korea on a diplomatic mission.

At a concert for his birthday, he was asked by the pianist if he had a request. “Imagine,” he shot back.

The John Lennon classic was sung by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood at the Washington funeral.

The farmer from Plains always wanted to imagine a world where people lived in peace, treating one another with human decency. If only the Emperor of Chaos could take a cue from that.

Dear Commons Community,

State Farm Insurance  is facing a rising tide of new scrutiny amid wildfires ripping through whole communities in Los Angeles. The insurer ended coverage for thousands of homes in the Pacific Palisades months before the disaster ruthlessly claimed swaths of homes, schools, houses of worship, and at least 10 lives.

Now, consumers and watchdogs have their eyes trained on the State Farm’s next move, putting CEO Jon Farney in an unenviable hot seat. Farney took the helm in June after former CEO Michael Tipsord retired. Farney was not yet CEO when the insurer decided to no longer accept homeowners’ applications in California or end coverage for thousands of homes, but he is a 30-year veteran of the company and has served in multiple executive roles. As reported by Fortune and Bloomberg News.  

Terry McNeil, an insurance expert and president and CEO of T.D. McNeil Insurance Services, said State Farm will likely try to do right by its customers but it is already strained in the state. The increase in claims being filed—along with the fact that the company relies less than other carriers on reinsurance, which is basically insurance for insurance—puts the company at risk.

“I think the effect on State Farm is going to be catastrophic. I think it’s going to, if anything, increase the speed at which they pull out of California,” McNeil said.

However, the insurer, which underwrites a fifth of California’s homeowners market, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, would face significant regulatory hurdles and potential legal challenges if it exits the California market. Still, State Farm has been scaling back its business in the state over the past few years. In 2023, State Farm raised rates by an average of 20% for existing customers and said it would no longer accept new homeowners’ insurance applications in California. And in March, the insurance company said it would end coverage for 72,000 homes and apartments in the state, 1,600 of which were in the Pacific Palisades where one of the largest fires is still uncontained.

In both decisions, State Farm cited its exposure to catastrophe as its rationale, and a spokesperson for the insurer added in a statement: “The market conditions that led State Farm General to make difficult but necessary business decisions over the last couple of years have been developing for years.”

In California, insurance companies have to get state approval for rate hikes through what can be a lengthy regulatory process. Last year, the company sought increases of 30% for its homeowners line, on top of the 20% it was approved for in December 2023.

For now, the company and its executives are facing the brunt of people’s criticism in the wake of the wildfires. Even celebrities such as actor and comedian Rob Schneider took to social media website X to call out the company specifically.

A terrible situation all around!

Tony

Mark Zuckerberg.  Courtesy of Le Monde and The Associated Press.

Dear Commons Community,

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg is celebrating “masculine energy” in corporate culture amid news that his company is making several policy and program changes, including trashing multiple initiatives around diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.  As reported by The Huffington Post and other media.

“A lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered,” the tech billionaire told podcaster Joe Rogan in an extensive interview released Friday.

“The kind of masculine energy I think is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it.”

He later continued, “I do think that if you’re a woman going into a company, it probably feels like it’s too masculine, it’s like there isn’t enough of the kind of the energy that you may naturally have,” saying that this could lead to the perception that things are “biased against you.”

“That’s not good, either, because you want women to be able to succeed and have companies that can unlock all the value from having great people,” regardless of “background or gender,” he said, but added that “these things can always go a little far.”

Zuckerberg’s comments come as Silicon Valley billionaires try to curry favor with GOP President-elect Donald Trump, a staunch critic of DEI initiatives, ahead of his inauguration in just over a week.

Major DEI programs at Meta — which oversees Facebook and Instagram — were dropped immediately Friday, according to an internal memo saying that the term “DEI” had become “charged,” partially due to it being “understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.”

The memo, first reported by Axios, arrived after Meta announced that it was abandoning its fact-checking program, as fact-checkers were “too politically biased.”

The DEI turnaround follows recent changes to the company’s content moderation policies, which now allow for women to be called “household objects” and for a transgender or nonbinary person to be called “it.”

Meta isn’t alone in winding down diversity initiatives, as McDonald’s, Ford Motor Co. and Walmart have made similar moves in recent months.

Zuckerberg told Rogan that he now feels a “much greater command” over what Meta’s policies should be, and dismissed the idea that the changes are “purely political” due to their proximity to last year’s elections.

The tech billionaire — whose company donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund after Zuckerberg met with him in late November — caught up with the president-elect at his Florida estate Friday, according to Semafor.

Zuckerberg’s discussion with Rogan, a UFC color commentator and Trump supporter, comes just days after the tech billionaire named Dana White, the MMA organization’s CEO and a pal to the president-elect, to Meta’s board of directors.

Zuckerberg kneels very well!

Tony