Dear Commons Community,

Houston Chronicle

The Houston Chronicle reported yesterday that  the Texas A&M University System is set to acquire one of the highest-performing AI supercomputers for $45 million from World Wide Technologies Inc.  The purchase is expected to triple the university’s supercomputing capacity. It will put the Texas school on the map as the holder of one of the highest-operating AI supercomputers of any university in North America, according to the press release.

“This investment will triple our computing capacity, which will support the A& M System’s growing research initiatives, particularly in areas such as machine learning, generative AI applications, graphics rendering and scientific simulations,” the university’s Chancellor John Sharp said.

Sharp said the university plans to use this supercomputer to contribute to Texas’s economic growth and technological advancements.

The model is the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with DGX H200 systems. It is part of a $45 million agreement with World Wide Technologies Inc., a NVIDIA channel partner.

Other universities have made moves to acquire the world’s top supercomputers with the evolution of AI, including the University of Florida, which spent $24 million on an advanced supercomputer. The University of Chicago also recently opened its exascale supercomputer to researchers.

With AI quickly deepening its hold on society, universities have been calculating how to stay ahead of the curve. Just last year, the University of Texas at San Antonio opened a new college for AI, data science and computing.

While AI could lead to slight decreases in the number of jobs in fields such as sales, there are expected to be increases in employment in software publishing, computing infrastructure providers and more over the next decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Software development is expected to be the 12th fastest growing individual overall in the next decade, the Bureau of Labor reported.

Congratulations to Texas A&M!

Tony

Congresswoman Kim Schrier

Dear Commons Community,

 Late Wednesday, Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) tore into Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for downplaying a child’s death in a measles outbreak in Texas, saying she blames Kennedy for the tragedy because of his long record of spreading disinformation about vaccines.

State health officials confirmed Wednesday that an unvaccinated child in rural West Texas had died amid the outbreak, becoming the first U.S. death from measles since 2015. Measles is highly contagious but preventable with vaccines. Asked later in the same day about the unnamed child’s death during the first Cabinet meeting of President Donald Trump’s new administration, Kennedy said only that measles outbreaks are “not unusual” and that “we have measles outbreaks every year.”

Schrier, who is a pediatrician, said she was stunned by Kennedy’s response.  As reported by The Huffington Post.

“He’s full of, you can put four letters there,” she told HuffPost. “Starts with an ‘S.’”

The fact that a child has died from a vaccine-preventable disease is “devastating,” Schrier said. “And by the way, I do blame him and others like him who, for the past 20 years, have been spreading lies about vaccines, which are safe and effective. And that has been proven time and again. This is settled science.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for

As of Tuesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services has reported 124 cases of measles since late January, the largest outbreak the state has seen in nearly 30 years. The vast majority of these cases are children, and all but five of these cases are in people who are unvaccinated or with an unknown vaccination status.

Measles vaccines were first developed in the 1960s and then combined with vaccines for mumps and rubella in the 1970s. Measles was considered eradicated in the U.S. in 2000. But there have been outbreaks from time to time, and Schrier said it is because of people like Kennedy, who has a high profile and has denigrated vaccines dozens of times.

He has repeatedly promoted the false claim that vaccines cause autism, something he did as recently as 2023 in a Fox News interview. In a podcast interview that same year, Kennedy said, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” In 2021, he urged people to “resist” guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on when children should get vaccinated.

During a 2019 measles epidemic in Samoa that left 80 children dead, Kennedy wrote to the country’s prime minister, falsely claiming the measles vaccine was probably causing the deaths.

“People like him keep telling vulnerable parents that there’s something wrong with vaccines,” Schrier said. “They are preying on these parents, and that has a direct line to the death of this child.”

The Washington state congresswoman also took aim at senators who voted this month to confirm Kennedy to his powerful post atop HHS, despite knowing he spent decades rejecting science and pushing conspiracies about childhood vaccines causing autism. Kennedy was confirmed on a party-line vote, except for one Republican who voted no: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a childhood polio survivor.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is a physician and chairs the Senate’s top health committee, briefly waffled on whether he would support Kennedy’s nomination. He specifically raised concerns about Kennedy’s record of spreading lies about vaccine safety. But in the end, he supported him.

A Cassidy spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about Kennedy downplaying the measles epidemic in Texas.

“Every Republican senator who voted to confirm him as secretary of Health and Human Services knew that this was going to happen,” Schrier said, referring to the child who died from measles.

Scientists are already on edge about the possibility of Kennedy using his position to sow doubts about vaccines. On Wednesday, a panel of scientific experts that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccine policy learned that its upcoming meeting to discuss next year’s flu vaccines had been canceled. No reason was given.

Schrier said measles is “one of the most contagious diseases I have ever dealt with” as a pediatrician. The Texas outbreak is particularly worrisome, she noted, as it has spread into New Mexico and has health officials on high alert in Louisiana ― Cassidy’s home state.

“There have been outbreaks, but this is a big one,” she said. “And [Kennedy] has contributed to it.”

YES!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of well-established vaccines, said Wednesday that his department is tracking an outbreak of measles that has infected more than 100 people and killed a child in Texas. But he played down the consequence of the resurgence — 25 years after the disease was declared to be eliminated in the U.S.  As reported by NBC News.

“We’re following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said during President Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting since being sworn in Jan. 20. “Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country. … So it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”

But the death of an unvaccinated school-age child in West Texas, confirmed by a state health official this week, is the first fatality in the U.S. since 2015.

Kennedy has been scarce at HHS headquarters, has not visited a number of HHS agencies and has not sent all-staff emails to the department’s workforce, according to one department official. Notably, this person said, Kennedy has not done anything to address the measles outbreak.

“It’s almost like he’s still in campaign-mode rather than realizing he’s head of a large agency and workforce,” the HHS official said.

An HHS spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Trump’s decision to tap Kennedy to lead HHS reflected the president’s own tortured relationship with pandemic disease, mass immunization and a political base that has become increasingly critical of vaccines following the health and economic damage wrought by Covid-19.

It also poses a risk to Republican lawmakers in the midterm elections if measles, bird flu, Ebola or another disease rips through the country following Kennedy’s appointment and the Department of Government Efficiency’s cutbacks in foreign and domestic efforts to combat those viruses, according to some GOP strategists.

“If you’re cutting a program, that increases the potential for something to go wrong — you’re going to own it,” said one strategist who has worked on Republican presidential, Senate and House campaigns. “Maybe the measles thing is the canary in the coal mine. … This is a small example of a potential problem. This has real-life consequences, and that’s the part that is politically perilous.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who voted to confirm Kennedy, said the government needs to pay close attention to the public health implications of communicable diseases.

“We should be worried about any outbreak, particularly measles,” Murkowski said.

Billionaire Elon Musk, a temporary Trump White House adviser who is the public face of DOGE, erroneously said Wednesday that public funding for anti-ebola efforts had been turned back on after DOGE cut it off, according to The Washington Post, which reported that the money is still frozen. The DOGE cuts, and Trump executive orders pausing some government operations, complicated the administration’s response to an avian flu outbreak that has spiked egg prices and could endanger people. But Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said this week that her department would commit as much as $1 billion to combating the economic and health effects of the disease.

Many political experts believe Trump’s reactions to Covid-19 hurt him in losing re-election to Joe Biden in 2020. In order to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the Trump administration issued stay-at-home guidelines that contributed to economic losses. Congress and Trump then spent trillions of dollars — later augmented by a massive Biden stimulus law — to prevent an economic collapse. At the same time, Trump launched Operation Warp Speed, a successful effort to push drug companies to develop a vaccine in record time.

But many Trump voters were upset by the federal guidelines and more-stringent state-level commercial shutdowns, and some questioned the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. Trump’s pride in pushing for the vaccine dissolved during his 2024 campaign. His shift was apparently enough for Kennedy, who dropped out of the race and endorsed him. Since taking office, Trump has issued a federal ban on Covid vaccine mandates in schools and ordered the reinstatement of military personnel who were fired for refusing to take the vaccine during the Biden administration.

In other words, Trump has found a position that allows him to oppose vaccine mandates without banning immunizations, a stance that gives him some room to maneuver to each side when necessary. Kennedy, who was confirmed 52-48, with former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., casting the only Republican “no” vote, has long been more critical of vaccines — including the MMR shot.

Kennedy has promoted an unfounded theory that vaccines cause autism, and he blamed measles deaths in Samoa in 2018 on immunizations rather than the disease.

“I think that we need a vaccine that is not a leaky vaccine,” Kennedy told NBC News of the MMR vaccine in February 2024. “The immunity that you get is ephemeral, and it wears off over time.”

He added that the “most frightening part” of the measles shot is that “it does not provide maternal immunity.” Asked whether he would recommend that children get the measles vaccine, he walked away from the interview.

The refusal to endorse the shot puts Kennedy in a small minority of Americans, according to polling in recent years. The vast majority of children in the U.S. receive a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot, and roughly 9 in 10 Americans said in 2023 that they believed the benefits of that vaccine outweigh the risks, according to the Pew Research Center.

“It was irresponsible for the president to put a vaccine skeptic in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said. “The death in Lubbock is tragic, and I hope it will be a wake-up call for Republican leaders who have pushed dangerous conspiracy theories about vaccines and advocated for cuts to medical research and public health.”

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., an obstetrician by trade, told NBC News that he spoke to Kennedy on Thursday morning — but that measles did not come up.

“He’s already said that he’s pro-vax,” Marshall said, shifting the blame for skepticism to the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“Fauci did more to create vaccine hesitancy in this country in two years than Bobby Kennedy potentially could have done in a lifetime,” Marshall said, referring to Fauci’s role on Trump’s coronavirus task force and testimony to Congress about the origins of Covid-19 that some Republicans say was knowingly false.

Marshall also pointed a finger at Biden, pinning the outbreak on undocumented immigrants.

“I encourage everyone to get their measles vaccine, their MMR vaccine. I think it’s a great idea,” Marshall said. “But this wouldn’t be happening in Texas right now if it wasn’t for Joe Biden’s open border.”

Trump frequently portrayed Fauci as a villain during the 2024 campaign and, upon taking the presidency, revoked the security detail protecting him.

During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy said that he is broadly in favor of inoculations, but refused to endorse the measles vaccine.

Let hope that Trump does not handle the measles outbreak the way he handled COVID!

Tony

Gene Hackman with wife Betsy Arakawa at the 2003 Golden Globes

Dear Commons Community,

Gene Hackman, the screen actor with memorable roles in The French Connection, Unforgiven, Superman, and a host of other movies, has died. He was 95.

The actor and his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, were found dead at their home in Santa Fe Summit on yesterday, reported the Santa Fe New Mexican, citing County Sheriff Adan Mendoza who confirmed to the outlet that the couple had died, along with their dog.

Mendoza added there was no immediate indication of foul play in the deaths, the outlet added. He also did not provide a cause of death or say when the couple might have died.

For decades, Hackman has been one of my favorite actors.

Below is his obituary courtesy of The New York Times.

May he rest in peace!

Tony

The winner of two Oscars, he was hailed for his nuanced performances in films like “The French Connection,” “Unforgiven” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

By Robert Berkvist

Feb. 27, 2025Updated 4:50 a.m. ET

Gene Hackman, who never fit the mold of a Hollywood movie star, but who became one all the same, playing seemingly ordinary characters with deceptive subtlety, intensity and often charm in some of the most noted films of the 1970s and ’80s, has died, the authorities in New Mexico said on Thursday. He was 95.

Mr. Hackman and his wife were found dead on Wednesday afternoon at a home in Santa Fe., N.M., where they had been living, according to a statement from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff’s deputies found the bodies of Mr. Hackman; his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 64; and a dog, according to the statement, which said that foul play was not suspected.

Mr. Hackman was nominated for five Academy Awards and won two during a 40-year career in which he appeared in films seen and remembered by millions, among them “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The French Connection,” “The Poseidon Adventure,” “Mississippi Burning,” “Unforgiven,” “Superman,” “Hoosiers” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

The familiar characterization of Mr. Hackman was that he was Hollywood’s perfect Everyman. But perhaps that was too easy. His characters — convict, sheriff, Klansman, steelworker, spy, minister, war hero, grieving widower, submarine commander, basketball coach, president — defied pigeonholing, as did his shaded portrayals of them.

Still, he did not deny that he had a regular-Joe image, nor did he mind it. He once joked that he looked like “your everyday mine worker.” And he did seem to have been born middle-aged: slightly balding, with strong but unremarkable features neither plain nor handsome, a tall man (6-foot-2) more likely to melt into a crowd than stand out in one.

It was Mr. Hackman’s gift to be able to peel back the layers from characters who carried the weight of middle age.

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“Because they’ve been around long enough to experience failure and loss, but not long enough to take it easy, Hackman could play them with a distinctive mix of shadow and light,” Jeremy McCarter wrote in an appraisal of Mr. Hackman’s career in Newsweek in 2010, six years after the release of what turned out to be his last film, the comedy “Welcome to Mooseport,” and two years after he confirmed that he did not plan to make any more movies.

“While some actors congratulate themselves for venturing into the moral gray zone,” Mr. McCarter continued, “Hackman has called it home for so long that we’ve ceased to notice. In his performances, as in life, the good guys aren’t always nice guys, and the villains have charm.”

If the critics had one word for Mr. Hackman as a performer, it was “believable.” He seemed to live his roles, they said, not play them.

“There’s no identifiable quality that makes Mr. Hackman stand out,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times in 1988. “He simply makes himself outstandingly vital and real.”

He avoided self-analysis when he talked about acting. “I don’t like to look real deep at what I do with my characters,” he once said. “It is that strange fear that if you look at something too closely, it goes away.”

Mr. Hackman was forever associated with his breakout role, that of the crude, relentless narcotics cop Popeye Doyle — a grim-faced bloodhound in a porkpie hat — in the hit 1971 film “The French Connection.” That performance brought him his first Academy Award, as best actor.

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But that was only one of countless memorable film portraits. He received an Oscar nomination for his work in Alan Parker’s “Mississippi Burning” (1988), in which he played an F.B.I. agent investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers — a “scratchy, rumpled, down-home-talking redneck, who himself has murder in his heart,” as Vincent Canby wrote in The Times.

In “Unforgiven” (1992), as a vicious small-town sheriff who crosses six-guns with a bounty hunter played by Clint Eastwood, he was a chilling study in sadistic brutality. That performance brought him his second Oscar, as best supporting actor.

Early Accolades

Early in his career Mr. Hackman worked on television shows like “Route 66” and “Naked City,” in improvisational theater and in Broadway comedies, including Muriel Resnik’s “Any Wednesday,” with Sandy Dennis, and Jean Kerr’s “Poor Richard,” with Alan Bates and Joanna Pettet. His performance in a bit part in a 1964 Warren Beatty movie, “Lilith,” made a lasting impression on Mr. Beatty, who remembered him when he was producing “Bonnie and Clyde” and looking for someone to play Buck Barrow, the explosive brother of the gangster Clyde Barrow (played by Mr. Beatty). Mr. Hackman’s performance in that film, directed by Arthur Penn and released in 1967, brought him his first Oscar nomination.

By the time the director William Friedkin cast him in “The French Connection,” Mr. Hackman had more than a dozen films under his belt and a second supporting-actor Oscar nomination, for “I Never Sang for My Father” (1970), in which he played a widower coping with a demanding parent (played by Melvyn Douglas).

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Not all his roles explored life’s dark side. His knack for comedy, honed on the stage, resurfaced in Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein” (1974), in which he was cast as a blind hermit who unknowingly plays host to the monster, and served him well in later films like “The Birdcage” (1996) and “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001).

By the mid-1970s Mr. Hackman was making movies at such a frantic pace that he became known as the hardest-working actor in Hollywood. In 1972 he appeared in three feature films, most notably “The Poseidon Adventure,” in which he played a minister trying to survive with other frantic passengers aboard a capsized ocean liner. (The other two were “Prime Cut” and “Cisco Pike.”) He repeated that trifecta in 1974 with “Young Frankenstein,” the western “Zandy’s Bride” and “The Conversation,” Francis Ford Coppola’s taut, understated drama about a surveillance expert who becomes involved in trying to prevent a murder.

His work in “The Conversation” was one of a string of critically acclaimed performances in the 1970s; among the others were his brawling ex-con in “Scarecrow” (1973) — which he considered the best performance of his career — and his troubled private eye in “Night Moves” (1975), in which he was reunited with Arthur Penn. But perhaps inevitably, given how many there were, his performances were often routine.

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Mr. Hackman was making lots of money, but he was also wearing himself out. His return appearance as Popeye Doyle in “French Connection II” in 1975 was one of four Hackman films that were released that year. By the end of the decade, he decided he’d had enough for a while.

After playing Lex Luthor, nemesis of the Man of Steel, in “Superman” (1978) — and simultaneously filming his scenes for “Superman II,” released two years later — Mr. Hackman briefly left Hollywood. He did not make another film until “All Night Long,” a comedy co-starring Barbra Streisand, in 1981.

His streak of well-received performances soon resumed: as a high school basketball coach in search of redemption in “Hoosiers” (1986) and a government official who accidentally murders his mistress in “No Way Out” (1987); as a district attorney trying to protect a witness from two hit men in “Narrow Margin” (1990); and, in “The Birdcage,” a remake of the French comedy “La Cage aux Folles,” as a conservative, pompous politician whose daughter’s fiancé turns out to have two gay men, one of them a drag performer, as parents.

No Slowing Down

Even the heart surgery he underwent in 1990 did not slow his pace. In 2001, a year after turning 70, Mr. Hackman was seen in five films: the comedy “The Heartbreakers,” as a tobacco tycoon; “The Heist,” David Mamet’s story of an elaborately planned robbery, as a master thief contemplating retirement; “Behind Enemy Lines,” as a naval chief trying to rescue a pilot shot down over Bosnia; “The Mexican,” a comedy adventure starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, as an imprisoned mob boss; and Wes Anderson’s quirky “The Royal Tenenbaums,” as the absentee father of three prodigiously talented children.

That same year the critic David Edelstein, noting that unlike most actors of comparable stature, Mr. Hackman occupied “a middle ground between character acting and movie stardom,” suggested one key to his success. “Even at their jauntiest,” Mr. Edelstein wrote in The Times, “Mr. Hackman’s performances have volcanic undercurrents. It might be that the secret of his uniqueness is that his comfort zone is such a scary and volatile place.”

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Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, Calif., on Jan. 30, 1930, and grew up in Danville, Ill. His father, also named Eugene, was a pressman for the local newspaper. His mother, the former Anna Lyda Gray, was a waitress.

When young Gene was 13, his father abandoned the family, driving away while his son was out playing in the street. As his father passed by, Mr. Hackman recalled years later, he gave him a wave of the hand.

“I hadn’t realized how much one small gesture can mean,” he once said. “Maybe that’s why I became an actor.”

Lying about his age, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1946 and served in China and then in Hawaii and Japan, at one point working as a disc jockey for his unit’s radio station. After his discharge he studied journalism at the University of Illinois for six months and then went to New York to learn about television production.

He worked at local stations around the country before deciding to study acting, first in New York and then at the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where Dustin Hoffman was a fellow student. They struck up a lasting friendship, though they did not appear in a film together until 2003, when they were both in “Runaway Jury,” a courtroom drama based on a John Grisham novel.

Back in New York, Mr. Hackman met and married Faye Maltese, a bank secretary, and began the classic actor’s struggle to survive. “I drove a truck, jerked sodas, sold shoes,” he told an interviewer.

A Broadway Hit

Eventually he found theater work, first in summer stock and then Off Broadway. In “Any Wednesday” — his third Broadway play, but the first to last more than a few days — he played a young man from Ohio who goes to New York and falls in love with a tycoon’s mistress. The critics applauded, the play was a hit, and Mr. Hackman never had to sell another pair of shoes.

Mr. Hackman’s first marriage ended in divorce in 1986, after several trial separations. In 1991 he married Ms. Arakawa, a classical pianist, and they settled in Santa Fe. He is survived by his children from his first marriage.

Mr. Hackman returned to the stage in 1992, opposite Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfuss in Mike Nichols’s production of “Death and the Maiden,” Ariel Dorfman’s play about a Latin American woman (Ms. Close) who succeeds in trapping the man (Mr. Hackman) she believes had raped and tortured her as a political prisoner years earlier. It was his first appearance on Broadway in 25 years; it was also his last.

In his later years Mr. Hackman devoted much of his time to painting and sculpture at his adobe home in Santa Fe. He also became a published author. He collaborated with his friend Daniel Lenihan, an underwater archaeologist, on three historical novels, and later wrote “Payback at Morning Peak” (2011), a western, and “Pursuit” (2013), a thriller.

He never formally retired from acting, but he told an interviewer in 2008 that he had given it up because he did not want to “keep pressing” and risk “going out on a real sour note.” Three years later, when an interviewer for GQ magazine told him, “You’ve got to do one more movie,” he said, “If I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people.”

In that same interview, Mr. Hackman was asked to sum up his life in a single phrase. He replied:

“‘He tried.’ I think that’d be fairly accurate.”

Robert Berkvist, a former New York Times arts editor, died in 2023. Yan Zhuang and Alex Marshall contributed reporting.

Photo courtesy of ABC News.

Dear Commons Community,

New York Governor, Kathy Hochul ordered the City University of New York (CUNY) to immediately remove a job posting advertising a Palestinian studies professor role at Hunter College.   As reported by The Guardian, ABC News and other media.

In the job listing, Hunter College wrote that the institution is seeking “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality”.

It added that Hunter College is open to a “diverse theoretical and methodical approaches” to teaching the class.

A spokesperson for Hochul told the New York Post: “Governor Hochul has directed CUNY to immediately remove this job posting and conduct a thorough review of the position to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom/”

Félix V Matos Rodríguez, the CUNY chancellor, and William C Thompson Jr, chair of the board of trustees, shared a joint statement regarding the removal of the job listing: “We find this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate and strongly agree with Governor Hochul’s direction to remove this posting, which we have ensured Hunter College has since done.”

The job posting, which also said it was part of a Palestinian studies “cluster hire” for two positions, has since been taken down from CUNY’s website.

CUNY’s faculty and staff union condemned the move in a letter to Hochul and Rodríguez. “We strongly object to your removal of a job posting for a Palestinian Studies faculty position as a violation of academic freedom at Hunter College,” the Professional Staff Congress wrote. “We oppose antisemitism and all forms of hate, but this move is counterproductive. It is an overreach of authority to rule an entire area of academic study out of bounds.”

Palestine studies has grown as an academic discipline in response to the campus protests that rocked the US after 7 October attacks and Israel’s ensuing bombardment of Gaza.

But the CUNY listing sparked immediate and intense backlash from Jewish groups and pro-Israel activists. Several critics, including watchdog groups, argued that the language describing the position “promotes antisemitism”.

StopAntisemitism, a pro-Israel group, described the listing as part of a “antisemitic blood libel” at CUNY in a post on X.

CUNY was a focal point for the pro-Palestinian protests that roiled campuses last year during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, resulting in dozens of arrests and prompting pushback from both the university administration and the state. The Nation reported earlier this month that CUNY is investigating members of its student government for their participation in protests and for promoting boycotts of Israel.

In September of last year, Jonathan Lippman, a former state judge, submitted a report to governor Hochul “noting an alarming number of unacceptable antisemitic incidents targeting members of the CUNY community” and arguing for an overhaul in how the university deals with antisemitism allegations.

The controversies at CUNY are playing into broader debates about when anti-Zionism crosses over to antisemitism. “The Lippman report is a serious attack on the movement for Palestine,” one CUNY doctoral student wrote when it came out. “Throughout this year, Jewish people, including organizations like [Jewish Voice for Peace], have played a central role in pointing out that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and speaking out against the genocide. Yet, this report repeats this false equivalence.”

In my fifty plus years at CUNY, I don’t ever recall a governor ordering the removal of a faculty job posting.

Tony

Courtesy of 97.3 KKRC

Dear Commons Community,

A study published in the journal BMC Microbiome found a link between eating citrus and depression risk, suggesting that you may be able to lower your risk of developing depression by doing something as simple as adding oranges into your daily diet.

It’s important to stress that there are a lot of factors that go into depression, and it wouldn’t be fair to suggest that just eating an orange will dramatically alter your mental health status. But, if you want to learn more about things you can do to lower your risk of depression, these findings are definitely worth paying attention to.

Research has made it clear that your gut and brain like to talk to each other, and even influence the health of the other. Yes, what you eat (and the bacteria that creates in your gut) can have a big impact on how you think and feel. And new research even suggests that that connection could extend to your mental health as well.

Here’s what the researchers found, plus what a dietitian and psychologist want you to keep in mind when interpreting the study’s results.  As reported by Women’s Health.

What did the study find?

The study analyzed data from nearly 32,500 women who participated in the Nurses’ Health Study 2, a longitudinal study that tracked women to learn more about chronic disease risk factors. Researchers also looked at data from more than 300 men. They then used that information, along with fecal (i.e. poop) samples to learn more about the participants’ gut microbiomes.

The researchers found that when people had a daily serving of citrus, it lowered their risk of developing depression by about 20 percent. This was unique to citrus—meaning, data didn’t establish the same link with other fruits or vegetables.

When researchers drilled down even more, they found that the bacteria Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (F. prausnitzii), which is found in the gut microbiome of people who eat citrus fruits, was more abundant in people who weren’t depressed.

“These data underscore the role of diet in the prevention of depression, and offer a plausible explanation for how the intestinal microbiome modulates the influence of citrus on mental health,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

How does gut bacteria influence your mental health?

The bacteria in your gut, a.k.a. your gut microbiome, play a “crucial role” in your mental health by influencing the production of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers that help cells “talk” to each other), bodily inflammation, and the integrity of your gut barrier, says Scott Keatley, RD, co-owner of Keatley Medical Nutrition Therapy.

“Certain gut bacteria, like F. prausnitzii, contribute to the gut-brain axis, a bi-directional communication system between the gut and the brain,” Keatley says. This particular bacteria is especially important because it can help to reduce inflammation, he explains.

“Since chronic inflammation has been linked to depression, increasing F. prausnitzii in the gut [by way of consuming citrus] may help regulate mood by reducing inflammatory markers,” Keatley says.

Still, while the gut-brain relationship is firmly established, the way this pathway actually functions on a cellular level is still being explored. “We don’t fully understand the pathways between gut health and depression,” says Thea Gallagher, PsyD, a clinical associate professor at NYU Langone Health and cohost of the Mind in View podcast. “But we do know there’s something there.”

How many oranges do you have to eat to see benefits?

This particular study found that eating one medium orange a day could help lower your risk of depression. But the researchers also lumped all citrus together. So, if you’re a grapefruit fan, you can feel good knowing that you’re also doing your mental health a solid by having a daily serving.

Why is citrus so special?

There are a few things about citrus that seem to give it extra oomph when it comes to improving mental health.

“The real game-changer in citrus is its high concentration of flavonoids, such as naringenin and formononetin,” Keatley says.

These flavonoids help support the growth of the essential bacteria F. prausnitzii, and also may regulate processes in the gut that help increase the availability of our “feel-good” neurotransmitters, serotonin and dopamine, in the body, he says.

But keep in mind that the study’s findings don’t actually prove that consuming citrus influences your mental health—they just establish a link.

The study also only looks at one aspect of citrus’ impact on the gut, and specifically, the bacterial link, points out Gail Saltz, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at the NY Presbyterian Hospital Weill-Cornell School of Medicine.

“Citrus may impact the gut biome, but it also has other features, such as high vitamin C, which could figure into this story,” she says.

Are there other foods that can lower depression risk?

Possibly. Research has found a link between eating a lot of ultra-processed foods and a higher risk of depression, which suggests that eating whole, unprocessed foods may be better for your mental and physical health, Gallagher says.

Gallagher adds that focusing on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and foods that don’t have a lot of ingredients is the “safe route” when it comes to eating for mental health. But she also suggests focusing on an 80/20 style of eating, where you try to eat healthy 80 percent of the time and are more lenient with what you eat for the other 20 percent of the time.

Keatley also suggests consuming fermented foods like yogurt, kimchi, and kefir, which have probiotics that can help regulate neurotransmitter levels in the brain, along with nut and seeds, which provide omega-3 fatty acids that reduce inflammation and enhance gut-brain communication.

Legumes, fatty fish, and leafy green vegetables may also help, per Keatley. “Together, these foods create a diet that supports gut health, reduces systemic inflammation, and enhances neurotransmitter balance, all of which contribute to lowering the risk of depression,” he says.

How does this effect compare to antidepressant medications?

Well, this study specifically looked at preventing depression. Antidepressants are usually used to treat depression, Gallagher points out. So, it’s not clear, based on these findings, how eating oranges when you already have depression may impact your symptoms or treatment.

But this is important: “Don’t go off your medications and start eating oranges,” Gallagher says. Saltz agrees. “I would not advise anyone based on this study to in any way consider oranges a treatment for clinical major depression,” she says.

Still, Gallagher calls the findings “exciting” for mental health. “This is something that you could easily implement in your diet and probably should regardless,” she says. “It’s accessible, and that’s always a good thing.”

I just finished eating my morning orange!

Tony

Courtesy of Newsweek.

Dear Commons Community,

The United Nations is no great moral arbiter of anything, but at least the United States has tried over the years to have that group of nations recognize the truth about bad actors. That wasn’t the case yesterday, as the U.S. voted with Russia against a General Assembly resolution calling out Russia for its invasion of Ukraine three years ago.  As reported and commented upon in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

What a regrettable moment. The resolution, sponsored by Ukraine and European nations, wasn’t even all that strong. It merely noted “with concern that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation” has had “devastating and long-lasting consequences” and called for “an early cessation of hostilities.”

Apparently even this was too much of a rebuke to Vladimir Putin for President Trump to tolerate as he seeks to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. The U.S. had supported these resolutions since the war began but is now voting with the world’s rogues rather than with its allies. The U.S. tried to pressure Ukraine to withdraw its resolution in favor of an American draft that didn’t cite Russia as the aggressor in the war. Kyiv understandably refused.

The resolution has no practical importance, though it does underscore Mr. Trump’s turn toward Russia in the conflict. Perhaps he thinks that telling the truth about Russia will cause Mr. Putin to walk away from the Ukraine negotiations. Ronald Reagan, who also sought peace and achieved it, never shrank from telling the truth about the Soviet Union. The truth was an essential weapon in defeating what Reagan called an “evil empire.”

Meanwhile, at the White House yesterday, Mr. Trump and Emmanuel Macron discussed the Ukraine talks. The French President went out of his way to praise Mr. Trump’s peace effort and said Europe will be willing to deploy peace-keeping troops to Ukraine after a deal is struck. Mr. Macron also made clear such a deal would have to be backed by U.S. guarantees to be credible. He’s certainly right given that a cease-fire would give Russia a chance to rearm for another invasion if the U.S. abandons Europe.

Mr. Trump didn’t say if the U.S. would provide such guarantees. It’s hard to be optimistic if he won’t tell the truth about which country started the war.

Lady Liberty wants to hang her head in shame!

Tony

Rupert Murdoch and Children (from top) Prudence, Elizabeth, Lachlan, and James.  Courtesy of The New York Times.

Dear Commons Community,

If you are interested in what is happening with the control of Rupert Murdoch’s  media empire including Fox News, The New York Times had a featured article in it Magazine Section on Sunday.  At thirteen pages, it is a long read but well worth it to understand the intrigue (maybe nastiness) that is going on among Rupert and his family namely children Lachlan, James, Prudence, and Elizabeth.  The focus is a family trust that leaves all of Rupert’s holdings to  four of his children.  However, there is grave concern for Rupert and Lachlan, who currently controls the family’s media business.  Should Rupert pass on (he is 93 years old), the four children would have equal control.  The article painstakingly (it reviews 3,000 pages of court documents) explains why the trust cannot be changed unless “it benefits the heirs.”  The issue is that Rupert and Lachlan suspect that the three other children will take the family-media empire in another direction editorially and end its right-wing bent. There is a lot of judicial maneuvering but right now the trust remains intact leaving Rupert and Lachlan scurrying to change it.

I found it illuminating and rooting for James, Prudence, and Elizabeth.

Tony

Courtesy of El Mundo.

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd had a send-up of Trump in her Times column yesterday comparing him to Roman emperors and particularly to the maniacal Caligula.  Entitled, “Fail Caesar,”  here is an excerpt:

“His megalomania has mushroomed. His derisive behavior toward Zelensky — how can a modestly talented reality show veteran mock Zelensky as “a modestly successful comedian”? — shows Trump can’t abide anyone saying he is doing anything wrong.

When The Associated Press refused to go along with his diktat to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, the news organization was barred from covering some events with the president in the Oval Office and on Air Force One.

The A.P. sued Friday afternoon. “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” it said, adding, “Allowing such government control and retaliation to stand is a threat to every American’s freedom.”

Also on Friday, at a meeting with governors in the White House, Trump stopped abruptly to chide Gov. Janet Mills of Maine for resisting his executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.

“You better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” the president warned the Democratic governor.

“See you in court,” she shot back.

Of course, Trump needed the last word. Of course, it had to be nasty. “Enjoy your life after governor,” he said, “because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

AND

“I’ve been reading a book called “How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders,” written by Suetonius and translated by Josiah Osgood. Osgood writes of Caligula’s “propensity to give in to every whim and the relish he took in putting down others with cruel remarks.”

As Suetonius noted about Caligula, “To the Senate he showed no more mercy or respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined.”

Sound familiar?”

The entire column is below.

Tony

——————————————————–

The New York Times

Opinion

Maureen Dowd

Fail, Caesar!

Feb. 22, 2025

“Remember, I can do whatever I want to whomever I want.”

It sounds like President Trump, to the world. But it was Caligula, to his grandmother.

At least America’s Emperor of Chaos has not made his horse a consul. Yet.

A horse might be better than some of the sketchy characters surrounding Trump.

After pillaging and gutting the U.S. government, the Western alliance and our relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump is thinking of himself as a king and cogitating on a third term. He basks in the magniloquent rhetoric of acolytes genuflecting to an instrument of divine providence.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, a group calling itself the “Third Term Project” erected a sign depicting Trump as Caesar. A wag on X wondered if they knew what happened to Caesar.

America was forged in the blood and fire of rejecting tyranny; its institutions were meticulously formed around the principle that we would never be ruled by a king.

Yet Trump delights in reposting memes of himself as a king and as Napoleon, with a line attributed to the emperor: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”

After tangling for years with a legal system he claimed was out to get him, Trump is jonesing to be above the law. (The Supreme Court slapped him back Friday, at least temporarily, for firing a government watchdog.)

His dictatorial impulses were clear when he refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and egged on a mob to disrupt the certification of the election, even if it meant that his own vice president might be hanged. And now he has added imperialistic impulses, musing about taking over the Panama Canal, Greenland, Canada, Gaza, D.C., and mineral rights in Ukraine.

His megalomania has mushroomed. His derisive behavior toward Zelensky — how can a modestly talented reality show veteran mock Zelensky as “a modestly successful comedian”? — shows Trump can’t abide anyone saying he is doing anything wrong.

When The Associated Press refused to go along with his diktat to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, the news organization was barred from covering some events with the president in the Oval Office and on Air Force One.

The A.P. sued Friday afternoon. “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” it said, adding, “Allowing such government control and retaliation to stand is a threat to every American’s freedom.”

Also on Friday, at a meeting with governors in the White House, Trump stopped abruptly to chide Gov. Janet Mills of Maine for resisting his executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.

“You better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” the president warned the Democratic governor.

“See you in court,” she shot back.

Of course, Trump needed the last word. Of course, it had to be nasty. “Enjoy your life after governor,” he said, “because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

As Shawn McCreesh wrote in The Times, nobody had seen such a moment since Trump came back to the Oval: “Somebody defied President Trump. Right to his face.”

I’ve been reading a book called “How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders,” written by Suetonius and translated by Josiah Osgood. Osgood writes of Caligula’s “propensity to give in to every whim and the relish he took in putting down others with cruel remarks.”

As Suetonius noted about Caligula, “To the Senate he showed no more mercy or respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined.”

Sound familiar?

Some Republican lawmakers spoke up about Trump, JD Vance and Pete Hegseth caving to Russia — going against a long history of Republicans treating Russia as the “Evil Empire” — or at least with a healthy skepticism. When George W. Bush, as president, said he could look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and see his soul, John McCain warned that Putin was a “thug” and a “killer,” noting that when he looked in Putin’s eyes, he saw “a K, a G and a B.” But those who spoke up against Trump did not seem ready to do much about it. They’re still cowering before him. As Politico reported, Trump allies moved quickly to stifle dissent with the party’s defense hawks: “Vice President JD Vance and several administration officials who are close to Donald Trump Jr. have been central to the effort to sideline those with traditional conservative foreign policy views.”

After Trump ranted that Ukraine had “started” the war and that Zelensky was a “dictator,” the normally doting New York Post felt the need to put Putin on the front page with the headline: “President Trump: This Is a Dictator.”

The most vivid image of the week was an elated Elon Musk waving a chain saw at CPAC. That glee in the face of pain may come back to haunt Trump. As The Washington Post reported, many lawmakers got an earful from angry constituents about layoffs, freezes and jagged cuts, a hollowing out of government with no sense of logic or heart or safety.

Many who had hoped to tune out Trump this time realize they don’t have that luxury. It’s far more dangerous now. There are frightening moments when our 236-year-old institutions don’t look up to the challenge. With flaccid Democrats and craven Republicans, King Donald can pretty much do whatever he wants to whomever he wants.