Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday morning,  the Big Ten Conference confirmed that it will return to play football this fall. The league is expected to start the season on Oct. 24, which is scheduled to allow for both a conference title game and a potential spot in the College Football Playoff.  As reported by Yahoo Sports.

“Our focus with the Task Force over the last six weeks was to ensure the health and safety of our student-athletes. Our goal has always been to return to competition so all student-athletes can realize their dream of competing in the sports they love,” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said in a conference statement. “We are incredibly grateful for the collaborative work that our Return to Competition Task Force have accomplished to ensure the health, safety and wellness of student-athletes, coaches and administrators.”

The decision has been expected since the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors (COPC) met on Sunday night, as optimism had permeated through the league. But as the days went on and information evaporated, the coaches and administrators around the league were frozen in anticipation.

In typical Big Ten fashion this most muddled of summers, it was simultaneously stunning and not surprising at all when the news leaked out over a hot mic by a Nebraska president Ted Carter.

Sources told Yahoo that multiple programs around the league met with their players in the past few days and outlined a plan on how they’d practice and be ready to play by the October dates being reported in the media. But they cautioned that plan hinged on the votes from the Big Ten COPC. That finally happened, as coaching staffs around the league had two nervous days waiting for smoke signals from the Big Ten office.

Yesterday’s news comes more than a month after the same COPC group voted 11-3 to postpone the fall season. The conference doubled down on that nearly a week later when Warren said the Big Ten COPC was “overwhelmingly in support of postponing fall sports and will not be revisited.”

The Big Ten was the first major conference to make the decision to postpone the fall and now are the first to reverse it. The Pac-12 followed the Big Ten in postponing but has no intention of following the Big Ten back to the field, as the situations in California and Oregon aren’t allowing those teams to practice. As of now, three of the 10 FBS conferences will not play this fall – the MAC, Pac-12 and Mountain West.

The delay from Sunday’s COPC meeting to today’s announcement came from finalizing details, answering last-minute questions and making sure the messaging about the reversal came across better than the initial messaging. When the Big Ten first announced its decision, Warren came under scrutiny for not sharing enough details.

What changed in less than five weeks? A confluence of medical advancements, fan blowback, political pressure and the successful start of the college football season elsewhere – especially in leagues like the ACC – all contributed to the league reversing course. Sources said that the presence of daily rapid testing, which has led to a successful start in the NFL, will be used in the Big Ten and will be a key part of the league’s messaging why it’s moving forward. 

On Sunday’s COPC call, sources told Yahoo Sports that the three different arms of the league’s return to competition task force – medical, scheduling and television – formally presented to all 14 of the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors. The key medical voice has been Ohio State head team physician Dr. Jim Borchers, the medical co-chair of the return to competition task force. The presentation was said to be thorough and laid out a clear narrative as to why the league was more equipped to play than it was on Aug. 11.

“Everyone associated with the Big Ten should be very proud of the groundbreaking steps that are now being taken to better protect the health and safety of the student-athletes and surrounding communities,” Ohio State head physician Dr. Jim Borchers said in a conference statement.

“The data we are going to collect from testing and the cardiac registry will provide major contributions for all 14 Big Ten institutions as they study COVID-19 and attempt to mitigate the spread of the disease among wider communities.”

The league has made the decision to return in steps. The groundwork for Sunday’s meeting was built with an important step on Saturday. Eight of the league’s presidents and chancellors – a group known as the steering committee of the return to competition task force – heard a presentation on the medical advancements since the Big Ten’s initial vote. They agreed to pass it on to the full 14 presidents and chancellors for the vote.

Along with addressing daily rapid testing and ways to mitigate contract tracing, the Big Ten also is expected to unveil new information on myocarditis screening and the league can safely test for myocarditis in the wake of any positive tests.

The question now turns to the ability for schools to get their team prepared to play. Getting physically ready for the season is something that’s weighed heavily on Big Ten coaches. One of the league’s schools – Wisconsin – is on pause because of COVID-19 issues. Another two schools, Maryland and Iowa, just returned from a pause.

How quickly those schools could be ready to play has been a looming issue, especially with the league attempting to return to participate in the College Football Playoff. Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said that Wisconsin should be ready to play, even if they don’t start practicing again until Sept. 24 as scheduled.

“[Coach Paul Chryst] and I are on the same page on this,” Alvarez told Yahoo Sports on Saturday night. “We can have our guys ready. We could have a team ready in three weeks. We feel comfortable with that.”

The fact the Big Ten got to the point where they discussed returning is remarkable. After Warren made the decision Aug. 11 and communicated the reasoning poorly immediately after, there was silence for more than a week from the Big Ten offices. Warren then said eight days later the decision wouldn’t be revisited.

Around that time, pressure began building on all sides – players, parents, coaches, athletic directors, fans, television partners and politicians. Many thought the Big Ten rushed to make a decision, especially after building a nimble schedule that would allow them to push games back and even cancel entire weeks to accommodate the COVID-19-related disruptions that appeared inherent to the season. 

A month later – and a lot of waiting – the Big Ten is back on track to play.

Let’s hope that the all involved stay safe in the Big Ten!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Scientific American will make its first endorsement in a presidential election by endorsing Joe Biden for president.

The science and research publication is publishing the endorsement in a two-page statement in its upcoming October issue.

“Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history,” the editors wrote. “This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly.”

As would be expected of a science-focused publication, the editors rested their argument on facts and evidence, concluding that Trump’s rejection of facts and evidence “has badly damaged the U.S. and its people.”

In everything from Trump’s “dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic” to his attacks on “environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges,” Trump’s refusal to make fact-based, data-driven decisions has pushed the U.S. far off course, they argued.

The editorial board highlighted Trump’s pandemic response as a particularly deleterious example of Trump making the health and economic fallout worse ― not better. 

The statement noted that, among other failures, the president lied about the severity of the disease, leading many to believe it’s “like the flu,” when in fact he knew it was far more lethal and easily spread; he advocated for less COVID-19 testing when more would have been helpful; he failed to develop a national strategy to procure and allocate PPE, despite having been warned about COVID-19 many times in January and February; and his opposition to masks continues to defy all logic.

As the editors wrote:

If almost everyone in the U.S. wore masks in public, it could save about 66,000 lives by the beginning of December, according to projections from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Such a strategy would hurt no one. It would close no business. It would cost next to nothing. But Trump and his vice president flouted local mask rules, making it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances.

“His administration has been even worse for science than we feared,” Scientific American Editor-in-Chief Laura Helmuth told HuffPost in an email. “We couldn’t include all of our objections to his record in two print pages.”

Helmuth stressed that the endorsement isn’t partisan; neither major political party was even mentioned in the explanation. Biden, however, is “the clear choice when you compare the candidates on science, health, the environment and other research-related concerns.”

Congratulations to the editorial board at Scientific American.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Norman Ohler’s, The Bohemians:  The Lovers Who Led Germany’s Resistance Against the Nazis.  It is the story of a husband and wife who organize a resistance movement in Berlin in the 1930s and continue it through 1942.  Harro Schulze-Boysen and his wife Libertas came from well-regarded German families, and held administrative  positions in the Luftwaffe and the German Ministry of Propaganda respectively.  They lead a network of anti-fascist fighters in Germany’s bohemian underworld of artists, writers, and philosophers.  They pass military information onto the Soviets, distribute anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi leaflets, and write essays exposing the horrors of the Third Reich.

Theirs is essentially a suicide mission because the Gestapo is unrelenting in rooting out dissidents. In 1942, Harro, Libertas and the members of their entire operation are arrested, tried and executed.  They are hanged,  their bodies dismembered and then cremated with no return of ashes to families.  Just before they are to executed, they are allowed to write letters to their loved ones.  Harro concludes his letter to his parents:

“..now I reach my hand out to you both and place here a single tear as a seal and pledge of my love.”  

It is a riveting but sad tale that Ohler has written.  I highly recommend it.

A New York Times Book Review is below.

Tony

New York Times

The Bohemians:
The Lovers Who Led Germany’s Resistance Against the Nazis
By Norman Ohler

Children of Holocaust survivors grow up in the war’s shadow. Unwittingly, we remain shackled to an inheritance that reverberates through generations. Yet the trauma is not limited to those close to victims. The families of the perpetrators, of those who resisted and of those who failed to act must all cope with the past.

With his opening scene, Norman Ohler masterfully establishes his trustworthiness as narrator, which is crucial as we travel with him back to the 1930s and then on through the war.

The German writer Norman Ohler begins “The Bohemians: The Lovers Who Led Germany’s Resistance Against the Nazis” with a powerful scene from his own life that perfectly encapsulates the guilt, grief, anger and remorse that have haunted so many of us. As a 12-year-old, Ohler asks his beloved grandfather, his “Pa,” about his role in the war. Then an engineer, now a frail old man, he describes seeing SS guards, a freight train and then a child’s hand through a crack in the train car’s boards. But the grandfather does nothing. “I was scared of the SS,” he helplessly explains. Young Ohler is stunned, and in that moment of “stillness you could hear,” he cannot contain his hatred for his Pa.

Best known in Germany as a novelist, Ohler is also the author of “Blitzed,” a controversial 2017 best seller about rampant drug use in the Third Reich. With the opening scene of “The Bohemians,” another work of nonfiction, he masterfully establishes his trustworthiness as a narrator, which is crucial as we travel with him back to the 1930s and then on through the war. He weaves a detailed and meticulously researched tale about a pair of young German resisters that reads like a thriller but is supported by 20 pages of footnotes. “I find it particularly important in this case, where the truth has been distorted many times,” he writes, “not to add another legend but to report as accurately as possible, combining my skills as a storyteller with the responsibility of the historian.”

The story he reconstructs is that of Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen, drawing on letters, articles, diaries and interviews to acquaint us with the couple in all their complexity — engaging, bold and flawed. Harro, originally a student activist, underground writer and publisher, and eventually an employee of the German Air Ministry, is the pair’s intellectual driving force. He is ambitious and stoic, an idealist. Libertas is more whimsical, and also initially a Nazi Party member. She dreams of being a poet and is working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer when she first encounters Harro. Her decision to resist seems to be based more on circumstance than principle, but she is deeply resourceful and loyal. We feel the couple’s triumphs intimately and, as the net tightens around them, their sorrows.

Young, passionate and liberal, they defy the regime with their unconventional lifestyle — including an open marriage and love of wild gatherings bringing together people of diverse backgrounds and political leanings. And, more dangerously, they pass on information about Nazi atrocities to enemies of the Reich, support Jews, produce pamphlets and establish links with Soviet intelligence. At a time when, as Ohler puts it, “propaganda and suppression increasingly dominate daily life” and “culture is being destroyed,” they cut remarkable figures.

For decades, Ohler writes, historians were reluctant to carry out a “genuine investigation” of the couple’s anti-Nazi circle. It was widely believed that German resistance spread little beyond the White Rose and the Stauffenberg plot. For political reasons, both East and West Germany subsequently sought to erase from history details of the brave resistance work of Libertas and Harro and their group. Family and friends were silenced, and in both East and West Libertas and Harro were posthumously lionized as Soviet spies. The reality was more subtle and fraught. Theirs is a tragic tale of defiance, espionage, love and betrayal.

Ohler employs the present tense throughout, imbuing his account with a sense of urgency and reminding us that the past in many ways remains our present. His only deviation into the past tense is in the foreword, where he discloses his grandfather’s agonized recollection — a failure to act for which the resistance narrative of “The Bohemians” serves as a kind of atonement.

"You're witnessing a homicidal President convening purposefully a homicidal assembly to help him get reelected," says journalist Carl Bernstein of Pres. Trump's indoor rallies.

He's called his supporters to be "sacrificial lambs," adds Bernstein. "It's astonishing." pic.twitter.com/63NQnpKkgS

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) September 15, 2020

Dear Commons Community,

Carl Bernstein slammed “homicidal” President Donald Trump for turning his own supporters into “sacrificial lambs” who could die in the service of his reelection campaign.

Bernstein’s damning assessment comes after Trump held an indoor campaign rally with a largely mask-free audience in Nevada on Sunday, breaking all guidelines for holding events amid the coronavirus pandemic.

He told CNN’s Anderson Cooper (see video above):  

“We are witnessing a homicidal president convening ― purposefully ― a homicidal assembly to help him get reelected as president of the United States instead of protecting the health and welfare of the people of the United States including his own supporters whose lives he is willing to sacrifice.”

Then Bernstein called out Trump for hypocrisy.  

“Here is this president who has staked part of his presidency on the right to life, particularly of the unborn,” the former Watergate reporter said. “And every day he has sacrificed the lives of thousands of Americans because he is unwilling to deal honestly, forthrightly, meaningfully with the greatest domestic crisis in our postwar history in this country.”

And he accused Trump of “the most grievous felony committed by any president in our history, probably.”

Woodward was the only one who referred to Trump as homicidal. Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, said on Sunday that President Trump‘s indoor rally in Nevada is “negligent homicide.”

“What else could you call an act that because of its negligence results in the death of others?” he said. “If you have a mass gathering now in the United States in a place like Nevada or just about any other place with hundreds of thousands of people, people will get infected and some of those people will die.”

Trump for the photo-op of rallying his supporters has indeed subjected them to illness and maybe death!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Authorities over the weekend said that wildfires have killed at least 33 people from California to Washington state.

The flames up and down the West Coast have destroyed neighborhoods, leaving nothing but charred rubble and burned-out cars, forced tens of thousands to flee and cast a shroud of smoke that has given Seattle, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, some of the worst air quality in the world.  As reported by local news stations (see video above).

The smoke filled the air with an acrid metallic smell like pennies and spread to nearby states. While making it difficult to breathe, it helped firefighters by blocking the sun and turning the weather cooler as they tried to get a handle on the blazes, which were slowing in some places.

But warnings of low moisture and strong winds that could fan the flames added urgency to the battle. The so-called red flag warnings stretched from hard-hit southern Oregon to Northern California and extended through Monday evening.

Authorities last week reported as many as 50 people could be missing after a wildfire in the Ashland area. But the Jackson County sheriff’s office said late Saturday that four people had died in the blaze and that the number of missing was down to one.

At least 10 people have been killed in the past week throughout Oregon. Officials have said more people are missing from other fires, and the number of fatalities is likely to rise, though they have not said how high the toll could go as they search. In California, 22 people have died, and one in Washington state. Thousands of homes and other buildings have burned.

Barbara Rose Bettison, 25, left her farm among the trees and fields of Eagle Creek, outside Portland, when a sheriff’s deputy knocked on her door Tuesday. They drove away on a road that became an ominous dividing line, with blue skies on one side and the other filled with black and brown smoke.

She took shelter at an Elks Lodge near Portland, where evacuees wrapped themselves in blankets and set up tents out back.

“It’s terrifying. We’ve never had any form of natural disaster,” she said.

Bettison, a UPS driver, was able to get out with her chickens, rabbits and cats. She hasn’t been back, but neighbors said it is so smoky they can’t see their hands in front of their faces.

“I’m hoping there has not been too much damage because it would break my heart,” she said.

Farther south in the town of Talent, Dave Monroe came to his burned home, partially hoping he’d find his three cats.

“We thought we’d get out of this summer with no fires,” he said. “There is something going on, that’s for sure, man. Every summer we’re burning up.”

Numerous studies in recent years have linked bigger wildfires in the U.S. to global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

The Democratic governors of all three states say the fires are a consequence of climate change, taking aim at President Donald Trump ahead of his visit Monday to California for a fire briefing.

“It is maddening right now that when we have this cosmic challenge to our communities, with the entire West Coast of the United States on fire, to have a president to deny that these are not just wildfires, these are climate fires,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

At a rally in Nevada, Trump blamed inadequate forest management, which White House adviser Peter Navarro echoed on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying that for many years in California, “particularly because of budget cutbacks, there was no inclination to manage our forests.”

Firefighter Steve McAdoo has run from one blaze to another in Oregon for six days, seeing buildings burn and trees light up like candles.

“We lost track of time because you can’t see the sun and you’ve been up for so many days,” he said. “Forty-eight to 72 hours nonstop, you feel like you’re in a dream.”

As he and his team battled the blazes, McAdoo worried about his wife and daughter at home just miles away. They evacuated safely, but at times he could communicate with them only in one-word text messages: “busy.”

My daughter, Dawn Marie, who lives further north of the fires in Poulsbo, Washington, says that for days there has been a continuous spell of smoke and a haze in the air dimming or blocking out the sun.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday morning during an interview (see video above), CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed President Trump’s adviser Peter Navarro on Trump’s admitting to journalist Bob Woodward that he knew, weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death, that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” and that he repeatedly downplayed it publicly. Navarro did everything he could to avoid answering the question and went on a long-winded history of events in January and February.  Tapper finally ends the interview telling Navarro that he is not answering the question and states: “the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population and more than twenty percent of coronavirus deaths.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

We are a few weeks into the Fall 2020 semester at most colleges and CNN is reporting that there have been more than 40,000 cases of COVID-19 diagnosed among students, staff and faculty nationwide. That number is likely to go higher in the coming weeks as colleges struggle to establish effective safe environments for their students. As reported by CNN.

“Many outbreaks have cropped up after gatherings at fraternities and sororities: One cluster of COVID-19 cases was traced back to a fraternity party held at the University of New Hampshire. More than 100 people attended the Aug. 29 party and few wore masks.

At Indiana University Bloomington, 30 sorority and fraternity houses have been ordered to quarantine following what campus officials have described as an “alarming increase” in COVID-19 cases within the houses.

School officials told Greek houses to suspend all in-person activities until at least Sept. 14.

“IU’s team of public health experts is extremely concerned that Greek houses are seeing uncontrolled spread of COVID-19,” the university said in a statement. “This poses a significant risk to the nearly 2,600 students currently living in Greek or other communal housing organizations, as well as to the other 42,000 IU Bloomington students, the campus’s 12,000 faculty and staff, and the surrounding community.”

Meanwhile, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has told all undergraduate students they must restrict their movements for the next two weeks, to try to reverse a rise in COVID-19 cases. The university also directed nine campus fraternities and sororities with off-campus live-in houses to quarantine for at least 14 days.

“We’ve reached the point where we need to quickly flatten the curve of infection, or we will lose the opportunity to have campus open to students this semester, which we know many students truly want,” Chancellor Rebecca Blank said in a statement.

Some of the highest number of cases are at Miami University, University of South Carolina, Ohio State University and East Carolina University, all of which have over 1,000 confirmed cases. The University of Missouri has 862 confirmed cases, while Missouri State University has 791.

Even what is left of the college football season is on shaky ground: A number of teams have postponed their openers this weekend because of the pandemic, the Washington Post reported. Some of these games may not be made up, or won’t be made up until December at the earliest. And other postponements cannot be ruled out as colleges continue to deal with spikes in coronavirus cases.”

I feel fortunate that here at the City University of New York, the decision was made to conduct our classes online.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times’, Nicholas Kristof, asks is his column this morning: “What if Trump Fought the Virus as Hard as He Fought for His Wall?”  It is great question and Kristof concludes that many thousands of American lives would have been saved.  Here is an excerpt:

“What would America be like today if President Trump had acted decisively in January to tackle the coronavirus, as soon as he was briefed on the danger?

One opportunity for decisive action came Jan. 28, when his national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, told Trump that the coronavirus “will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.” Trump absorbed the warning, telling Bob Woodward days later how deadly and contagious the virus could be, according to Woodward’s new book, “Rage.”

Yet the president then misled the public by downplaying the virus, comparing it to the flu and saying that it would “go away.” He resisted masks, sidelined experts, held large rallies, denounced lockdowns and failed to get tests and protective equipment ready — and here we are, with Americans constituting 4 percent of the world’s population and 22 percent of Covid-19 deaths.

There’s plenty of blame to be directed as well at local officials, nursing home managers and ordinary citizens — but Trump set the national agenda.

Suppose Trump in January — or even in February — had warned the public of the dangers, had ensured that accurate tests were widely distributed (Sierra Leone had tests available before the United States) and had built up a robust system of contact tracing (Congo has better contact tracing than the United States).

Suppose he had ramped up production of masks and empowered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to lead the pandemic response, instead of marginalizing its experts.

Suppose he had tried as relentlessly to battle the virus as he has to build his wall?

If testing and contact tracing had been done right, then we would have known where hot spots were and large-scale lockdowns and layoffs might have been unnecessary.

The United States would still have made mistakes. We focused too much on ventilators and not enough on other things that might have been more useful, like face masks, blood thinners and high-flow nasal cannulas. Because of mask shortages, health messaging about their importance was bungled. Governors and mayors dithered, and nursing homes weren’t adequately protected.

But many of our peer countries did better than we did not because they got everything right but because they got some things right — and then learned from mistakes.”

Trump will have difficulty deflecting his lack of leadership and outright incompetence as a result of the Woodward story.  If I was in Biden’s campaign, I would keep harping on the fact that Americans constitute 4 percent of the world’s population and 22 percent of Covid-19 deaths.   It is projected that more than 400,000 Americans will die from coronavirus by the end of the year.  This number is higher than the American casualties in all the wars the United States has fought since World War II – Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway described President Donald Trump’s involvement in the push to start the Big Ten football season as “cheap politics.”

Speaking to NJ Advance Media, Holloway said Trump’s involvement in the Big Ten’s situation will not impact his decision on when Big Ten sports should resume. Trump spoke last week with Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren in a 20-minute conversation both sides described as productive.

The president has tweeted several times about his desire for the Big Ten season to begin and several governors who could be standing in the way. During a campaign stop Thursday in Michigan, Trump told reporters, “We want to see Big Ten football. We hope it’s coming back. The players are missing a big opportunity. They have some of the best college players in the country.”

Holloway, who took over as Rutgers’ president in July after serving as provost at Northwestern, said he isn’t enamored with Trump’s involvement.

“I mean, it’s just cheap politics,” he told NJ Advance Media. “I want that person to be paying attention to matters of national security and national importance. This does not rise to that level — not for a half-second. And even if it was a president that I was completely in love with that was doing this, I’d still think it would be cheap politics.”

Big Ten presidents and chancellors voted Aug. 11 to postpone the fall sports season, including football, because of concerns around the coronavirus pandemic. Holloway was among the 11 presidents and chancellors who elected to postpone, and told NJ Advance Media that his position won’t change until the COVID-19 situation improves, including in Big Ten states such as Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska.

“If I’m wrong because I was erring on the side of safety, I don’t have a problem with that,” said Holloway, who played football at Stanford, where he was teammates with Cory Booker, now a U.S. senator representing New Jersey. “I don’t think I’m wrong, though. I just don’t think it. And if I had to put money down, we’re going to see some radical changes within a month — no later than October. I’m really worried about what we’re heading toward, on just college campuses in general, not just sports. It’s deeply concerning.”

State political leaders from six states with Big Ten schools wrote to Warren and league presidents and chancellors this week, asking them to reverse the postponement. The Big Ten responded that it is working “to identify opportunities to resume competition as soon as it is safe to do so.”

The Big Ten’s return to competition task force has been working on improved testing and other medical benchmarks that, if reached, could kick off the football season. Ohio State coach Ryan Day and others are pushing a return as early as mid-October. According to Big Ten bylaws, at least nine of the 14 presidents and chancellors would need to vote to approve the resumption of competition. A vote could take place early next week, sources said.

Stay the course, President Halloway!

Tony