Red Mosquito

stip wrote:Our school is a small diverse commuter college and there's none of this stuff either. These are trend stories. Finding a handful of scattered incidents and turning it into something huge.

Dscans wrote:Do we have a thread about microaggression and everything that is happening on college campuses now? I read an interesting interview with Jonathan Haidt the other day. He co-wrote a column for The Atlantic called "The Coddling of the American Mind" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... nd/399356/

In the interview he talks about the lack of political diversity in higher education but then goes into the Yale protests. He sprinkles in some overblown Nazi and Mao references but makes some good points otherwise. I'll highlight some of the text.
http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02 ... han-haidt/

JONATHAN HAIDT: And these were not requests. This was not a discussion. This was framed as an ultimatum given to the president – and they gave him I think six days to respond, or else. And I am just so horrified that the president of Yale, Peter Salovey, responded by the deadline. And when he responded, he did not say, on the one hand, the protesters have good points; on the other hand, we also need to guarantee free speech; and, by the way, it’s not appropriate to scream obscenities at professors.

JOHN LEO: Or the threat to one professor: “We know where you live”?

JONATHAN HAIDT: I didn’t even know about that. The president was supposed to be the grown-up in the room. He was supposed to show some wisdom, some balance, and some strength. And so we’ve seen, basically what can really only be called Maoist moral bullying – am we saw it very clearly at Claremont McKenna. The video is really chilling–the students surrounding this nice woman who was trying to help them, and reducing her to tears.

...

JOHN LEO: Well, but there’s always a possibility of truth and accuracy. I mean, why is the professoriate so…

JONATHAN HAIDT: Spineless? Nowadays, a mob can coalesce out of nowhere. And so we’re more afraid of our students than we are of our peers. It is still possible for professors to say what they think over lunch; in private conversations they can talk. But the list of things we can say in the classroom is growing shorter and shorter.

JOHN LEO: This sounds like the Good Germans.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Yes. Exactly. It is. It’s really scary that values other than truth have become sacred. And what I keep trying to say – this comes right out of my book The Righteous Mind – is that you can’t have two sacred values. Because what do you do when they conflict? And in the academy now, if truth conflicts with social justice, truth gets thrown under the bus.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Oh, yes. After the talk, I was contacted by a few social psychologists who were interested in the topic. None of them is actually conservative. We looked into a bunch of the reasons. And the biggest single reason is probably self-selection. We know that liberals and conservatives have slightly different personalities on average. We know that people with a left-leaning brain are attracted to the arts, to foreign travel, to variety and diversity. So we acknowledge that if there was no discrimination at all, the field would still lean left. And that’s perfectly fine with us. We don’t give a damn about exact proportional representation. What we care about is institutionalized disconfirmation – that is, when someone says something, other people should be out there saying, “Is that really true? Let me try to disprove it.” That is now much less likely to happen if the thing said is politically pleasing to the left.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Oh, yes. After the talk, I was contacted by a few social psychologists who were interested in the topic. None of them is actually conservative. We looked into a bunch of the reasons. And the biggest single reason is probably self-selection. We know that liberals and conservatives have slightly different personalities on average. We know that people with a left-leaning brain are attracted to the arts, to foreign travel, to variety and diversity. So we acknowledge that if there was no discrimination at all, the field would still lean left. And that’s perfectly fine with us. We don’t give a damn about exact proportional representation. What we care about is institutionalized disconfirmation – that is, when someone says something, other people should be out there saying, “Is that really true? Let me try to disprove it.” That is now much less likely to happen if the thing said is politically pleasing to the left.

This isn't the 1st time i read about there being a difference between the brains of liberal leaning and conservative leaning person. But if he accepts this as fact, isn't the whole idea of the need of more diversity in the field completely useless? If it's accepted that there is a correlation between political leaning and academic/professional field choice, how can you make an argument that the issue behind the lack of diversity is attributable to hostility towards the group who is less likely to pick the field in the 1st place.

Dscans wrote: I think it's more of a viscous cycle type of thing, type of thing. If conservative professors in the social sciences are the minority, they are more likely to feel like outcasts and leave the field and the dwindling numbers and "hostility" will discourage would-be conservative professors who might then choose a different field. So the already small numbers will only get smaller.

Dscans wrote:What causes the lack of diversity isn't as important as the fact that it exists and creates a monoculture, which becomes a disservice to the whole field. At a college I used to work at, my friend was an English professor who ran the writing concentration. He once lamented that since he pretty much was the only professor for the writing courses, taught most of the rhetoric courses, and was the faculty advisor to the campus literary magazine, students who majored in the writing concentration were basically getting a degree in him. He said the best thing for the program would be to hire another English professor who disagreed with everything he said.

A major police corruption case rocking Colombia is heating up as the head of the national police force is set to face an inquiry over his alleged involvement in the creation of a male prostitution ring serving lawmakers, while a government official implicated in the sex scandal resigned on Tuesday.

Police Director General Rodolfo Palomino, previously accused of asking police officers for sex, will now be investigated for accusations of illicit enrichment and illegal spying, Colombian Investigator General Alejandro Ordonez announced on Tuesday.

Palomino denies accusations of propositioning officers for sex and has further rejected allegations of involvement in the prostitution network, which has been referred to unofficially as “The Fellowship of the Ring.”

Green Habit wrote:The Idaho Legislature pisses me off so much when they pull shit like this. So many of these guys would complain hard if the feds took control like this away from the states, but show pure hypocrisy when it comes to local government. Gah.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/poli ... 55021.html

BurtReynolds wrote:Anybody follow that iPhone thing?

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mca ... ign=buffer

Dscans wrote:Do we have a thread about microaggression and everything that is happening on college campuses now?

Italy confirms higher cancer, death rates from mob dumping

An Italian parliament-mandated health survey has confirmed higher-than-normal incidents of death and cancer among residents in and around Naples, thanks to decades of toxic waste dumping by the local Camorra mob.

The report by the National Institute of Health said it was "critical" to address the rates of babies in the provinces of Naples and Caserta who are being hospitalized in the first year of life for "excessive" instances of tumors, especially brain tumors.

The report, which updated an initial one in 2014, blamed the higher-than-expected rates on "ascertained or suspected exposure to a combination of environmental contaminants that can be emitted or released from illegal dump hazardous waste sites or the uncontrolled burning of both urban and hazardous waste."

Residents have long complained about adverse health effects from the dumping, which has poisoned the underground wells that irrigate the farmland which provides vegetables for much of Italy's center and south. Over the years, police have sequestered dozens of fields because their irrigation wells contained high levels of lead, arsenic and the industrial solvent tetrachloride.

Authorities say the contamination is due to the Camorra's multibillion-dollar racket in disposing of toxic waste, mainly from industries in Italy's wealthy north that ask no questions about where the garbage goes as long as it's taken off their hands—for a fraction of the cost of legal disposal. In recent years, Camorra turncoats have revealed how the racket works, directing police to specific sites where toxic garbage was dumped.

In 2014, parliament passed a law mandating the National Institute of Health, a public institution under the Health Ministry, to report on the rates of death, hospitalization and cancer in the 55 municipalities in the so-called "Land of Fires."

The new report, released Dec. 30 report with little fanfare, confirmed what residents have long known, the Rev. Maurizio Patriciello, a priest in the area, wrote Saturday in Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference which has long advocated on behalf of the area's residents.

"Can we claim victory? Absolutely not," he wrote. "In this shameful, sad and painful story, we have lost everything. The government above all."

Why I Left the Right: How Studying Religion Made Me a Liberal

It was January 20, 2001, and I was at George W. Bush’s inaugural ball. I had spent months campaigning for him, and it had not been easy. After the Florida electoral debacle complete with “hanging chads,” Katherine Harris (and her fifteen minutes of shame), and ultimately the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision, I was finally enjoying the fruits of my labor as I celebrated the new president that I worked to get elected.

My role in the campaign wasn’t glamorous, but I was a twenty-year-old political science, religious studies double major who saw this election as the beginning of my work for the Right. I had recently appeared on MTV’s reality show, Road Rules, where I represented the worldview of conservative evangelicals in all its virginal, Christian glory in a very public way (complete with an episode detailing my “downward spiral” that amounted to me swearing once and stealing a pair of bowling shoes). Now I wanted to turn my moment in the spotlight into something meaningful.

During the campaign, I attended Young Republican meetings, drove Bush’s trusted advisors, Andrew Card and Karen Hughes, in the motorcade when they came to town, and now I was working the inaugural ball as the celebrity handler for special guest, Drew Carey. During the evening, he admitted that he wasn’t actually a Republican, but a libertarian. “Good enough,” I thought to myself, “As long as he isn’t one of ‘those liberals.’” I believed my involvement in the campaign was just the beginning of my efforts to promote the conservative movement and perhaps my own career as well.

Growing up immersed in the evangelical community, I was so familiar with the Christian rhetoric and worldview that it never occurred to me that they might be getting it all wrong. During the late eighties and throughout the nineties, evangelicalism hit its stride communicating and promoting a very specific message that amounted to a chorus of sound bites about “family values,” militarism, and the pro-life movement. The group’s unified theological positioning inspired the mobilization of American evangelical voters, and influenced countless election results.

As I stood there in my purple satin, floor-length gown and then-in-style white eye shadow watching the new President dance with his First Lady, I was inspired by what I thought was a going to be a move toward increased personal responsibility, a shift from the distracting Clinton/Lewinsky circus, and a return to the philosophy of the patron saint of right-wing politics, Ronald Reagan. What I didn’t realize was that I soon would become one of “those liberals,” and that the very thing that inspired my conservatism, would now be the thing that caused it to topple: my faith.

I was more than just your garden variety Christian; I attended church several times a week, sought guidance from my pastor in private meetings, and after my reality TV stardom, spoke to church youth groups about how to stay “pure” in this “sinful” world. As I began studying religion at the University of Pittsburgh, people in the church warned me about what could happen under the influence of the liberal intelligentsia. The bias of “godless liberals” teaching at universities was reason enough to avoid traditional education. I believed them when they said academia skewed to the left, but surely a faith as strong as mine could stand up to academic scrutiny.

What happened, however, wasn’t an abandonment of my faith, but a shift in my understanding of Scripture. While I had always read the Bible and knew large portions of it by memory, I had relied on the expertise of my religious mentors (some of whom were simply laypeople teaching Sunday School or Christian education classes) to help guide me through its interpretation. The more I read the text through unfiltered eyes and the more I learned about scholarly investigation, the less sense their point of view made. Their old Jesus looked nothing like my new Jesus.

I could no longer reconcile Jesus’s calls for non-judgment, loving your enemies, and taking up your cross with many of the Religious Right’s positions on social services, women’s rights, and the LGBT community. Even though I felt alone in my theological shift, I was not. A recent Pew Research Center poll puts the evangelical retention rate at 65%, and while we don’t know to what extent education plays in the decision of a believer to leave a tradition, I suspect the fears of many of my religious peers regarding secular education were not unfounded. It isn’t just general education that can shift beliefs; indeed a recent study by Baylor University researcher Aaron Franzen found that increased reading of the Bible correlated with greater passion for social justice — a trait typically associated with liberalism.

Having my worldview fall apart like a house of cards was unnerving, but it only increased my desire for knowledge about the theology of my youth. I continued to study religion, and I received my PhD in Religious Studies two years ago. Now I no longer identify as an evangelical, but I study them for a living.

Only after my doctrinal evolution did I realize I no longer aligned with the political conservatism for which I once literally campaigned. Jesus was a champion of the poor, the weak, the meek, and downtrodden. He encouraged his followers to “sell their possessions” and give them to the poor. He hung out with hookers and crooks. The lifestyle of Jesus didn’t look anything like the politics of the Right.

My transition to the left didn’t happen overnight, and sometimes I felt like a deserter. The man whom I worked to get elected no longer represented my politics or my piety. As I continue to observe the curious twists and turns of evangelicals, particularly during this election year, I remain fascinated by the ways they reconcile their theology with their policy. Evangelicals do not represent a monolith, but they traditionally align with conservative politics. Much has been made of Donald Trump’s evangelical supporters due to his personal life reflecting anything but the “family values” they espouse, but Christians often choose the policy over the person. From Ronald Reagan’s divorce to Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, evangelical Christians give passes to those whose rhetoric is most in line with their philosophy and who they believe can win the election, even if that person’s biography isn’t in line with their religious doctrine.

My journey from Young Republican to less young Democrat did not come from a crisis of faith, it came from finding inspiration in the life of Jesus. Once I removed the dogmatic lens that had informed my biblical interpretations I found a figure that defended a prostitute and ate with the poor. The life of Jesus simply didn’t reflect the agenda of the political right, so now neither could I.