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| UPenn loses $100 million gift | Login/Join |
| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity  |
Ross Stevens pulls $100m donation I wondered aloud yesterday if the three presidents' utterly tone deaf performance would hurt their institutions' bottom lines in the short run and in the long run. The short run consequences, at least for Penn, aren't uncertain any more. As advancement people (fund raisers) will tell you, the problem of shaking the trees today for funds is that an increasing fraction of the available financial capacity is in the hands of fewer and fewer people. There are seven and eight figure transformative gifts out there, but it's increasingly more difficult to generate the same sums by gathering thousands of five and six figure donors. You really don't want to piss off the potential mega donors. | ||
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Magill resigns. https://6abc.com/penn-presiden...nnsylvania/14158842/
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity |
Yeah, yeah, .... Somebody called that one three days ago ... I wonder if the gift won't be withdrawn now. The chair of the board of trustees also resigned, after writing a very gracious note about Magill. | |||
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity |
How's this for 20/20 hindsight. I think the three presidents committed a big-time own goal with their carefully prepped (by Wilmer/Hale law firm) legalistic answers. Liz Magill would be president today (methinks), if she had taken this tack ... "Yes, Rep. Stefanik, calling for genocide is wrong and cruel and I have condemned it. For the most part, however, it remains protected speech. That's the same protection accorded to your 2020 election denial, which is an outright lie told to the American people. A lie that led quite directly to the insurrection on January 6th that cost people their lives. You now sit in judgment of American higher education for trying our best to balance the vital norm of free speech against the equally vital norm of maintaining an environment where people do not feel afraid because of who they are. Shame on you." | |||
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Minor Deity |
A consequence of acute concerntration of wealth. Not a good thing for soceity when education institutions‘ functionings are subject to the whims of a few mega donors. | |||
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Too long, IMHO. Perfect in an academic setting perhaps, but too long and convoluted for the intended audience.
The answer should have been “yes.” Nothing more. Wrangle the specifics later if you have to.
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity |
No, no, no, no. In an academic setting, people tend to be polite to one another. Well, often it's the strained sort of polite. I think Magill and the other presidents should have adopted a much more confrontational in-her-face stance at certain points in their testimony. | |||
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity |
I have no idea how true/verifiable her claims are, and I am deeply troubled by the fact that our "anointed by God" House Speaker is at her elbow, but if half of what she says is true, an overdue reckoning may be starting at the elites that have worshipped at the altar of identity for lo these many years. It's biting them in the proverbial behind. Jewish student at MIT details institutionally protected anti-semitism and harassment. | |||
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
No argument there. How are such issues handled at other colleges?
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity |
I'm sure it varies tremendously across the complex and heterogeneous landscape of higher education. At our school we do not have official language police scrutinizing every utterance for micro-aggressions. Nor do we routinely have performative protests and aggression toward professors, other students, and outside speakers (though one talk by an ACLU speaker was interrupted a while back). Then again, our students are generally a fairly polite bunch. I think the atmosphere at the very pinnacle of the hierarchy (Ivy+) is a bit more toxic. But the crap taking place on those campuses drips down and tars the rest of us. | |||
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Meanwhile, Wilmer/Hale have some ‘splainen to do. Why did they hire a law firm instead of a PR firm?
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
A writer in WaPo today advocates for a culture of mutual respect on college campuses as a way out of the current mess we're in. This isn't a magic bullet, but it certainly seems like a good way to start, IMO. Here's a gift link (good for 10 views?) https://wapo.st/4aq36pA Here's the regular link: https://www.washingtonpost.com...earing-path-forward/
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity |
Maybe Allen could be the next president of Harvard ...  | |||
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
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