Credit…Maddie Fischer

Dear Commons Community,

Craig Foster, a co-founder of the Sea Change Project and an Academy Winner for his documentary “My Octopus Teacher” in 2021, had a guest essay in The New York Times Monday (Earth Day), entitled, “An Octopus Took My Camera, and the Images Changed the Way I See the World.”  He recounts his encounter with an octopus which stole his camera while he was filming creatures off the coast of South Africa.  I found it a fascinating read.  Here is an excerpt.

“I was gifted with a new way of seeing the day I got mugged underwater. I had been filming creatures living in the Great African Sea Forest off the coast of South Africa about a year ago when my camera was grabbed straight out of my hands by a young octopus thief. Wrapping her arms around her bounty, she zoomed backward across the ocean floor.

This was not the first time I’d found myself at the mercy of an eight-armed robber. A couple of years earlier, another curious octopus stole the wedding ring off my wife’s finger, never to be recovered. Octopuses love novel shiny things. Peering into their dens, I’ve found earrings, bracelets, spark plugs, sunglasses and a toy car with a revolving cylinder that the octopus spun round and round with its suckers.

As I wondered how to get my camera back without alarming my young friend, something surprising happened. She turned the camera around and began to film my diving partner and me.

The intriguing images she captured — videos of her own arms draped over the camera lens with our bodies in the background — had a profound effect on me. After many years filming octopuses and hundreds of other animals that call the Sea Forest home, for the first time I was seeing the world — and myself — from her perspective.

We must have looked strange to her in our masks and with our underwater flashlights. But in that moment I remembered that despite all our technology, we are not so different from our animal kin. Every breath of air, every drop of water, every bite of food comes from the living planet we share.

Credit…The octopus, via Craig Foster

Monday is Earth Day, and I am tempted to ask myself how humanity can save our wild planet and undo the devastation we have unleashed upon the natural world. Where I live, in the Cape of Good Hope, I am privileged to be surrounded by nature, but we are grappling with pollution and dwindling numbers of shellfish, fish, raptors and insect species. Worldwide, we are at a tipping point with an estimated 69 percent decline in wildlife populations.”

Great story and message!

Tony

Metamorworks/Shutterstock.com

Dear Commons Community,

For the past year,  I have had the pleasure of editing a special edition of Education Sciences that is now available online at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education/special_issues/T3XIO39D6Z

Entitled, “Is Online Technology the Hope in Uncertain Times for Higher Education?”, it contains ten articles provided by thirty-one experts who offered their research as a basis for considering the question posed in this special edition. From their work, it is clear that colleges and universities are rapidly migrating to online technology in order to support instruction, research, counseling, academic services, and administrative efficiency.  

I thank Education Sciences for giving me the opportunity to edit a volume on such a critical topic. Most important, I thank the authors who contributed their research to this volume. Their work provides valuable insights for all interested in the future of higher education. Their perspectives are based on the study of issues across institutions in different parts of the world.  They have examined a variety of topics including data analytics, student evaluations, generative artificial intelligence, and MOOCs, to name a few, and  employed a wide variety of research methods: quantitative, qualitative, and mixed.  Sample sizes ranged from three case studies to a review of over two million responses collected on a student database.  

It was a pleasure working with this group of scholars and the staff at Education Sciences.

Tony

Anti-Israel demonstrators create encampment on the lawn of Columbia University yesterday. (Courtesy of James Keivom)

Dear Commons Community,

Columbia University canceled all in-person classes today after anti-Israel protesters inundated the campus this weekend, erecting an encampment and resulting in the arrest of over 100 individuals — leaving many students at the school fearing for their safety.

Embattled President Minouche Shafik, who has vowed to crack down on antisemitism, told students in an email that they “need a reset” as the increasing level of conflict has caused safety concerns for many students. And that all classes will be conducted online.  As reported by CNN, the New York Post and other media.

“I am deeply saddened by what is happening on our campus. Our bonds as a community have been severely tested in ways that will take a great deal of time and effort to reaffirm,” Shafik wrote. 

“Students across an array of communities have conveyed fears for their safety and we have announced additional actions we are taking to address security concerns.”

Those fears, expressed by many Jewish students, were addressed yesterday by Rabbi Elie Buechler, a rabbi associated with Columbia University’s Orthodox Union Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, who urged Columbia and Barnard students to go home — and stay there until conflicts on campus dissipate.

Shafik said tensions across campus have been “exploited and amplified by individuals who are not affiliated with Columbia who have come to campus to pursue their own agendas.”

“I understand that many are experiencing deep moral distress and want Columbia to help alleviate this by taking action. We should be having serious conversations about how Columbia can contribute,” Shafik said.

Shafik acknowledged there will be many opinions on how the university can do this, but noted they could not “have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view.”

The university insists it will not tolerate the protesters camping out in front of its library. 

“We are a caring, mature, thoughtful and engaged community. Let’s remind ourselves of our common values of honoring learning, mutual respect, and kindness that have been the bedrock of Columbia,” Shafik wrote.

“I hope everyone can take a deep breath, show compassion, and work together to rebuild the ties that bind us together.”

The campus — and others around the nation — have been struggling with antisemitic protests since Hamas terrorists pulled off a sneak attack on Israel on Oct. 7, with the Jewish state responding with a counter-offensive  that has killed thousands in the Gaza Strip.

The show of blatant support for Hamas on American college campuses has rattled some students, particularly Jewish students.

Cool heads and firm leadership have to prevail here!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Noah Charney’s The Thefts of the Mona Lisa:  The Complete Story of the World’s Most Famous Artwork.”  Charney is a professor of art history specializing in art crime.  For lovers of the Mona Lisa and Leonardo  da Vinci, Charney’s book will be a fun and quick read.  Charney provides good details on da Vinci, the Mona Lisa, and especially its theft from the Louvre in 1911.  There are intriguing sections on Pablo Picasso and his thefts of artwork from the Louvre especially Cycladic statues that inspired his own paintings. The best parts of the book are surely the descriptions and motives of the thief, Vincenzo Peruugia, an Italian handyman at the Louvre who had easy access to the Mona Lisa.  He testified that he stole the painting to return it to Italy where it belonged believing that Napoleon Bonaparte stole it originally. There might have also been other motives including ransom money that are interesting speculations.  

If you are a da Vinci or Mona Lisa fan, you will enjoy Charney’s book.

Below is an excerpt of a review that appeared in goodreads.  

Tony

—————————————————————————————————————-

If you read one book on the Mona Lisa, let this be it. From the artwork to its theft and role in popular culture, The Thefts of the Mona Lisa provides the complete story, as written by a best-selling, Pulitzer finalist.

Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait, called the Mona Lisa, is without doubt the world’s most famous painting. It achieved its fame not only because it is a remarkable example of Renaissance portraiture, created by an acclaimed artistic and scientific genius, but because of its criminal history. The Mona Lisa (also called La Gioconda or La Joconde) was stolen on 21 August 1911 by an Italian, Vincenzo Peruggia. Peruggia was under the mistaken impression that the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Italy during the Napoleonic era, and he wished to take back for Italy one of his country’s greatest treasures. His successful theft of the painting from the Louvre, the farcical manhunt that followed, and Peruggia’s subsequent trial in Florence were highly publicized, sparking the attention of the international media, and catapulting an already admired painting into stratospheric heights of fame.

This book reveals the art and criminal history of the Mona Lisa. Charney examines the criminal biography of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, with a focus on separating fact from fiction in the story of what is not only the most famous art heist in history, but which is the single most famous theft of all time. In the process he delves into Leonardo’s creation of the Mona Lisa, discusses why it is so famous, and investigates two other events in its history of theft and renown. First, it examines the so-called “affaire des statuettes,” in which Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire were arrested under suspicion of involvement in the theft of the Mona Lisa. Second, there has long been a question as to whether the Nazis stole the Mona Lisa during the Second World War—a question that this book seeks to resolve.

Dear Commons Community,

House Speaker Mike Johnson had a great day on all the Sunday talk shows with almost everyone praising him for his leadership in getting the Ukraine and other aid bills passed. He also received kudos from his fellow Congressmen, both Republicans and Democrats.  Here is a sample courtesy of ABC News.

Speaker Mike Johnson earned praise from both a top Republican and a progressive Democrat on Sunday for allowing votes on a $95 billion foreign aid package, suggesting he’ll be able to hold onto his job if conservative hard-liners make good on their threat to force a vote to remove him as the leader of the House.

“I am so proud of the speaker, Mike Johnson. He went through a transformation,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said on ABC News’ “This Week.” “At the end of the day, a profile in courage is putting the nation above yourself — and that’s what he did. He said, ‘At the end of the day, I’m going to be on the right side of history, irrespective of my job,’ and I think that was what I admired so much.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, agreed.

“I disagree with Speaker Johnson on many issues, and I’ve been very critical of him,” Khanna told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in a separate interview. “But he did the right thing here and he deserves to keep his job ’til the end of his term.”

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Johnson’s loudest critics within their party, has proposed but not yet acted on a motion to vacate the speakership over his support for the foreign aid bills — in particular $60.8 billion in aid to help Ukraine.

“Would you and fellow Democrats that will protect him at this moment — ask for anything in return?” Karl pressed.

“I’ll leave the negotiations to Speaker (sic) [Hakeem] Jeffries, but I don’t think everything in politics needs to be transactional,” Khanna said. “I think here you have Speaker Johnson, who not only put this up for a vote but he also separated the bills, which I thought was courageous. He let people vote their conscience on Taiwan, on the offensive aid to Israel, on Ukraine. And I give him credit for that.”

The House votes on Saturday — advancing the four foreign aid bills for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific allies — marked a dramatic reversal for Republican leaders like Johnson, who for months have said additional funds to Ukraine must be tied to a tightening of U.S. border and immigration laws.

But efforts to broker compromise on that point failed to win over enough conservatives. A high-profile agreement in the Senate to overhaul border policy was quickly rejected by Johnson and others as insufficient after opposition from former President Donald Trump.

And then, earlier this month, Johnson announced his support for individual votes on additional aid, including to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion as well as to Israel, currently at war with Hamas.

“To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” Johnson said last week, invoking his own son, who is going to the Naval Academy.

On “This Week,” McCaul was pressed by Karl over Johnson’s changing views — and the lengthy delay involved in the legislative process, to ultimately end up with Congress backing a similar amount of aid as the White House first proposed last year.

McCaul said that Johnson initially supported the position of hard-line Republicans but recognized that with the government divided, another path had to be chosen.

“He tried to do what the, you know, say the Freedom Caucus wanted him to do. It wasn’t going to work in the Senate or the White House,” McCaul said. “At the end of the day, we were running out of time. Ukraine’s getting ready to fall.”

Johnson’s classified briefings and hearing from Republican leaders on the issue like House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner had influenced his thinking, McCaul said.

McCaul also suggested that, essentially, Johnson, once a little-known legislator, had to learn on the job after being thrust into the speakership in the fall amid a chaotic power struggle within the GOP’s House conference.

“He became the man that went from a district in Louisiana to the speaker of the United States to also someone who had to look at the entire world and had to carry the burden of that and make the right decision,” McCaul said.

Well-stated!

Tony

House Leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Mike Johnson

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. House or Representatives approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies in a rare Saturday session as Democrats and Republicans banded together after months of hard-right resistance over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s invasion.

With an overwhelming vote, the $61 billion in aid for Ukraine passed in a matter of minutes, a strong showing as American lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of U.S. support to the war-torn ally. Many Democrats cheered on the House floor and waved blue-and-yellow flags of Ukraine.

Aid to Israel and the other allies also won approval by healthy margins, as did a measure to clamp down on the popular platform TikTok, with unique coalitions forming to push the separate bills forward. The whole package will go to the Senate, which could pass it as soon as Tuesday. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.  As reported by The Associated Press. 

“We did our work here, and I think history will judge it well,” said a weary Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who risked his own job to marshal the package to passage.

Biden spoke separately with Johnson and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries to thank them for “putting our national security first” by advancing the legislation, the White House said.

“I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law and we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs,” the president said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said he was “grateful” to both parties in the House and “personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

“Thank you, America!” he said.

The scene in Congress was a striking display of action after months of dysfunction and stalemate fueled by Republicans, who hold the majority but are deeply split over foreign aid, particularly for Ukraine. Johnson relied on Democrats to ensure the military and humanitarian funding — the first major package for Ukraine since December 2022 — won approval.

The morning opened with a somber and serious debate and an unusual sense of purpose as Republican and Democratic leaders united to urge quick approval, saying that would ensure the United States supported its allies and remained a leader on the world stage. The House’s visitor galleries were crowded with onlookers.

“The eyes of the world are upon us, and history will judge what we do here and now,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee

Passage through the House cleared away the biggest hurdle to Biden’s funding request, first made in October as Ukraine’s military supplies began to run low.

The GOP-controlled House struggled for months over what to do, first demanding that any assistance for Ukraine be tied to policy changes at the U.S.-Mexico border, only to immediately reject a bipartisan Senate offer along those very lines.

Reaching an endgame has been an excruciating lift for Johnson that has tested both his resolve and his support among Republicans, with a small but growing number now openly urging his removal from the speaker’s office. Yet congressional leaders cast the votes as a turning point in history — an urgent sacrifice as U.S. allies are beleaguered by wars and threats from continental Europe to the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.

“Sometimes when you are living history, as we are today, you don’t understand the significance of the actions of the votes that we make on this House floor, of the effect that it will have down the road,” said New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “This is a historic moment.”

Opponents, particularly the hard-right Republicans from Johnson’s majority, argued that the U.S. should focus on the home front, addressing domestic border security and the nation’s rising debt load, and they warned against spending more money, which largely flows to American defense manufacturers, to produce weaponry used overseas.

An historic moment indeed.

Thank you House Republicans and Democrats who worked together to pass this legislation.

Tony

Students participate in a march in support of Asna Tabassum, whose graduation speech has been cancelled at USC. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

Amid the decision to cancel this year’s valedictorian speech, the University of Southern California announced it would be eliminating all outside speakers and honorees from its main-stage commencement taking place next month.

In a memo released on Friday, the university said, “To keep the focus on our graduates, we are redesigning the commencement program. Given the highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main-stage commencement program, university leadership has decided it is best to release our outside speakers and honorees from attending this year’s ceremony.”

Scheduled keynote speakers included USC alumnus filmmaker Jon M. Chu, director of “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Wicked.” Sports icon Billie Jean King was also scheduled to speak.

Asna Tabassum, a first-generation South Asian-American Muslim (pictured in the above photo in the upper right-hand corner),  was scheduled to give a commencement speech on May 10. School administrators, however, decided to cancel her speech citing safety concerns.

USC said the decision was based on potential threats regarding the selection of the valedictorian.

“After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement,” provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at USC, Andrew T. Guzman, said in a letter to students on Monday. “While this is disappointing, tradition must give way to safety.”

Tabassum spoke about the situation with ABC News Live’s Phil Lipof on Wednesday.

“The valedictorian honor is ultimately a unifying honor, right? It’s emblematic of USC’s unifying values. And I think I take that to heart.”

“I wanted my speech to be in the genre of a valedictory speech, and so that being said, I wanted to impart a message of hope. I also wanted to impart a message of responsibility,” Tabassum said to Lipof.

USC — which expects a crowd of 65,000 for the commencement festivities on May 10 — said the focus of the ceremony should be “on the tremendous accomplishments of our 19,000-plus graduates, their friends, their families, and the staff and faculty who have been such a critical part of their journeys.”

Interesting decision USC has made to avoid controversy at its commencement!

Tony

The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Photograph: Nora Eckert/Reuters.

Dear Commons Community,

Volkswagen workers at the carmaker’s Chattanooga plant in Tennessee have voted to unionize with the United Auto Workers, a historic victory for the union and the labor movement’s efforts to expand to the southern United States.  As reported by The Guardian.

The vote was the first union election to be held as part of the UAW’s ambitious organizing drive aimed at unionizing 150,000 workers at non-union auto plants around the US.

The win makes the Chattanooga factory the first auto plant in the south to unionize via election since the 1940s.

The union made the call late Friday night after some 2,200 ballots were counted in favor of unionizing. The plant has about 4,300 eligible voters.

The victory is a milestone toward expanding union efforts in the southern US where labor unions have historically faced aggressive opposition and union density has lagged far behind other parts of the US.

Workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama are set to vote on whether to join the UAW in mid-May. Shawn Fain, the UAW president, is also targeting Tesla, whose boss, Elon Musk, has vigorously fought unionization efforts.

Workers at the plant in Chattanooga voted against the union in 2014 and 2019 in closely contested elections. In 2014, the UAW tried to partner with Volkswagen management to push for a works council similar to ones the company has in Germany, where Volkswagen is headquartered. But the plans faced significant backlash from anti-union groups and Bob Corker, the Republican US senator whose staff was in contact with anti-union groups over messaging ahead of the election.

The UAW had been expected to win its latest vote given the firm support of workers beforehand, a quick turnaround from filing for the election to holding it, and a changing culture and landscape that has seen the US labor movement and the surge in the UAW’s popularity after its successful strike against the US’s domestic automakers last year.

Against that background, Republican elected officials had been less eager to come out against the UAW.

“The UAW is sending a strong signal that big change may be coming to places where most thought the labor movement was dead and buried,” said professor Sharon Block, executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.

“In the wake of the settlement of the strikes at the Big Three this fall, the transplant auto companies in the south gave their workers wage increases – the UAW bump – thinking that they could buy off their workers on the cheap. The UAW’s organizing campaign throughout the transplant companies in the south is a bet that workers can’t be bought off so cheaply. The UAW’s message to these workers is: ‘Don’t settle for crumbs.’”

A spokesperson for Volkswagen said in an email ahead of the vote: “We respect our workers’ right to a democratic process and to determine who should represent their interests. We fully support an NLRB vote so every team member has a chance to a secret ballot vote on this important decision.

“Volkswagen is proud of our working environment in Chattanooga that provides some of the best-paying jobs in the area.”

Congratulations to the UAW and to Volkswagen!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Twelve  jurors, along with six alternates, will consider evidence in a first-ever trial to determine whether a former U.S. president is guilty of breaking the law. Prosecutors intend to call at least 20 witnesses, according to Trump defense lawyer Susan Necheles. Trump may testify on his own behalf, in a risky move that would open him up to cross-examination.

The jury consists of seven men and five women, mostly employed in white-collar professions: two corporate lawyers, a software engineer, a speech therapist and an English teacher. Most are not native New Yorkers, hailing from across the United States and countries like Ireland and Lebanon. The alternates, who will also hear the case, are held in reserve in case one of the jurors has to leave due to illness or some other cause.

Trump is accused of covering up a $130,000 payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she says they had a decade earlier.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and denies any such encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in three other criminal cases as well, but this is the only one certain to go to trial ahead of the Nov. 5 election, when the Republican politician aims to again take on Democratic President Joe Biden.

A conviction would not bar Trump from office.

I tend not to cover trials on this blog but this is major news especially here in New York where the trial is taking place.

Tony