Roman Abramovich Joins Ukrainian Delegation To Help Negotiate For Peace
Update (2100ET): According to The Times, Abramovich’s move to pass control of Chelsea to the club’s charitable foundation has been put on hold,with the trustees taking legal advice on whether it is even possible.
The Times understands that at least one trustee fears that they may have to resign amid concerns around a potential conflict of interest.
The six-strong board of trustees, which includes British Olympic Association chairman Sir Hugh Robertson and anti-discrimination campaigner Piara Powar, held talks with legal advisers on Sunday and will wait for their guidance.
On Monday the Charity Commission confirmed that it has contacted the Chelsea Foundation with a request for more information, while the trustees have yet to agree to an arrangement that would pass the stewardship of the club to them.
As we detailed earlier, while other oligarchs – a loosely defined term to denote an individual who made their fortune during the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse – have publicly tried to distance themselves from the Russian advance in Ukraine, Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich has placed his ownership of the club in a private trust while he moves to engage in the peace talks being held between Moscow and Kyiv.
Abramovich said he had been asked by the government in Ukraine to join the team of negotiators in Belarus, where a handful of Ukrainians are currently engaged in talks with their Russian counterparts. His role was eventually confirmed by another broker in the talks. A representative for the billionaire added that Abramovich had become involved following a request from the Jewish community in Kyiv.
“I can confirm Roman Abramovich was contacted by the Ukrainian side for support in achieving a peaceful resolution, and that he has been trying to help ever since,” a spokeswoman for Abramovich said.
“Considering what is at stake, we would ask for understanding as to why we have not commented on either the situation as such or his involvement.”
The Russian-Israeli billionaire is believed to have flown to Eastern Europe in the weeks leading up to the invasion. Word of Abramovich’s involvement in talks was first reported by Jewish News, which said Kyiv had reached out through Jewish contacts to seek his help.
Abramovich, who is Jewish and has Israeli citizenship, was one of the most powerful businessmen who earned fabulous fortunes after the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union. Forbes has estimated his net worth at $13.3 billion. He purportedly earned a fortune during the post-Soviet collapse during the looting and general insanity.
A commodity trader who thrived in the post-Soviet disorder of the 1990s under then-President Boris Yeltsin, Abramovich acquired stakes in the Sibneft oil company, Rusal aluminium producer and Aeroflot airline were also among the businesses he acquired.
He has repeatedly denied having ties to Putin or the Kremlin, although such claims have persisted in the press.
Although under Putin he did, albeit briefly, serve as the governor of the remote Arctic region of Chukotka in Russia’s Far East.
As for his decision to turn over control of Chelsea to its charitable trust, the board’s trustees must still hold a vote to OK the measures, although its likely to pass. Abramovich also released a terse, 24-word statement on Sunday denouncing the invasion, becoming one of a handful of oligarchs to party with them must have likely been fighter.
There can be something a little distasteful about Western onlookers (myself included) cheering on Ukrainians for a cause that our countries are not willing to join, a stance that risks raising the price of a peace that will be paid only with Ukrainian blood. Nevertheless, it is possible to recognize this, to be inspired by what Zelensky represents, and then to be shamed by his example.
Here is a nation and a leader willing to sacrifice so much for the principle of independence and the right to join the Western world. And yet, much of the West is jaded and cynical, apparently devoid of any such mission, cause, or sense of idealism anymore. What is it that the West believes in now? When you think of the great liberal heroes of our age, Angela Merkel and Barack Obama, say, they are actually deeply pragmatic conservatives, constantly hedging, calculating, and balancing interests with little grand vision or cause to pull their policies together. There is much to be said for this type of governance: As Helmut Schmidt, the former chancellor of West Germany, once quipped, “Whoever has visions should go to the doctor.” Visions led to the Iraq War, for example. Yet conservative pragmatism is also deeply limited, allowing adversaries like Vladimir Putin to take advantage, exploiting caution and shortsighted selfishness….
In standing up to [Putin], Ukraine is articulating a certain idea of itself that is righteous and dignified and heroic: virtues we long ago dismissed as old-fashioned. How tragic it is that Zelensky’s idea has to be attacked for us to be reminded of ours.
There can be something a little distasteful about Western onlookers (myself included) cheering on Ukrainians for a cause that our countries are not willing to join, a stance that risks raising the price of a peace that will be paid only with Ukrainian blood. Nevertheless, it is possible to recognize this, to be inspired by what Zelensky represents, and then to be shamed by his example.
Here is a nation and a leader willing to sacrifice so much for the principle of independence and the right to join the Western world. And yet, much of the West is jaded and cynical, apparently devoid of any such mission, cause, or sense of idealism anymore. What is it that the West believes in now? When you think of the great liberal heroes of our age, Angela Merkel and Barack Obama, say, they are actually deeply pragmatic conservatives, constantly hedging, calculating, and balancing interests with little grand vision or cause to pull their policies together. There is much to be said for this type of governance: As Helmut Schmidt, the former chancellor of West Germany, once quipped, “Whoever has visions should go to the doctor.” Visions led to the Iraq War, for example. Yet conservative pragmatism is also deeply limited, allowing adversaries like Vladimir Putin to take advantage, exploiting caution and shortsighted selfishness….
In standing up to [Putin], Ukraine is articulating a certain idea of itself that is righteous and dignified and heroic: virtues we long ago dismissed as old-fashioned. How tragic it is that Zelensky’s idea has to be attacked for us to be reminded of ours.
The Cincinnati Drug and Poison Information Center reported an uptick in accidental exposures to a possibly toxic substance in at-home COVID-19 test kits, according to a blog post. Meanwhile, the National Poison Control Center issued a warning about the chemical.
“It is important to know that the extraction vial in many rapid antigen kits includes the chemical sodium azide as a preservative agent,” the center said. “The BinaxNow, BD Veritor, Flowflex, and Celltrion DiaTrust COVID-19 rapid antigen kits all contain this chemical.”
Sodium azide is a colorless, odorless powder that testers dip cotton swabs into. The chemical is found in herbicides, pest control agents, and airbags for cars.
“Small doses of sodium azide can lower blood pressure, and larger doses may cause more serious health effects,” an advisory from Health Canada also said. “ProClin is also found in many kits. It contains chemicals that can cause skin and eye irritation, as well as allergic reactions.”
Some hospitals around the United States say they have received a surge in phone calls about exposures to the chemical.
“We started getting our first exposures to these test kits around early November,” said Sheila Goertemoeller, pharmacist and clinical toxicologist for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “It was, really, all ages.”
“Mostly, I’ve been very worried about our young children.”
Accidental exposure is occurring among both children and adults, said Dr. Kelly Johnson-Arbor, with the National Capital Poison Center in Washington, told WNEP over the weekend.
“People might mistake them for eye drops. Children might drop it onto their skin. Adults will sometimes mistakenly put them into their eyes,” she said.
“You don’t want to leave it on the skin because it could potentially cause an allergic reaction or a skin rash.
“If someone drinks the solution, it’s really important to contact poison control right away. The solutions have different ingredients. Some have non-toxic ingredients and others have more dangerous ingredients.”
Officials told WNEP that there’s no need to throw away the test kits, but people should be mindful when using them.
“Use them properly, dispose of them properly, and it won’t cause an issue,” Dr. Jeffrey Jahre, with St. Luke’s University Health Network, told the outlet.
If you suspect you or someone you know has ingested the chemical, officials recommend not to make the person vomit. For eye exposures, rinse the eyes for 15 to 20 minutes with warm water. For skin exposures, rinse the skin well with tap water. Immediately check the Poison Control Center’s online tool for guidance or call poison control at 1-800-222-1222, the website says.
China To “Immediately” Replenish Pork Supplies As World Short Commodities
China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), announced Monday to “immediately” increase pork stockpiles around the country after prices fell last week, according to Bloomberg.
NDRC said the country’s staple meat stockpiles are being replenished as an index monitoring pork prices slipped below a critical threshold. The national average of pork prices against grain prices index registered 4.98 to 1 between Feb. 21 and 25, falling below the 5 to 1 ratio. The ratio signals the need for China to increase pork supplies.
Hog prices are back to levels not seen since before the African swine fever ravaged pig herds across the country, right before the virus pandemic.
NDRC will increase pork purchases to provide the hog market with stability. As much as 40,000 tons of frozen pork will be added to state reserves.
“The goal of stockpiling is to stop the market prices from excessive fall, to improve supply-demand balance, and boost prices (of pork) and the confidence of farmers,” Wang Zuli, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told Reuters.
The economic planner will work with authorities to immediately stockpile for state and local reserves. Stockpiling has already begun in the provincial level, including Beijing, Jiangxi, Hubei, and Chongqing.
As early as September 2020, we noted China began panic hoarding commodities. Bloomberg, at the time, called them “mammoth” purchases of crude, strategic materials, and farm goods, and Michael Every of Rabobank said, “This is being done to ensure China can ride out any repeat of this year’s supply disruptions, or deterioration in trade relations with the US, for example.”
More than a year and a half later, China has a greater internal circulation of commodities than the rest of the world.
JPM’s Marko Kolanovic noted last week, “The world is short Commodities. China is not.” The Croatian quant said, “China currently holds an estimated 84% of global copper, 70% of corn, 51% of wheat, 40% of soybeans, 26% of crude oil and 22% of aluminum inventories.”
These massive stockpiles “serve as a hedge to inflation, geopolitical risks, and COVID reopening in what we see as a continued cycle of economic expansion. Although commodity inventories have contracted sharply, China’s share is abundant,” Kolanovic said. He added that only 48 days of consumption remain in global commodity inventories worldwide above ground.
China’s latest move to panic hoard hogs may suggest record high global food inflation is dead ahead as the Russian invasion pushes up soft commodity prices on fears of supply disruptions.
In the middle of President Biden’s Thursday speech laying out sanctions and denouncing Russia for its “brutal” and unprovoked invasion into Ukraine, one line stood out. About halfway through, Biden sternly warned American oil and gas companies not to “exploit this moment to hike their prices to raise profits.”
The harsh words roiled many Republicans who were strongly backing Biden’s sanctions against Russia while pressing him to put a halt to Moscow’s oil exports, which funded 36% of the country’s national budget last year.
Larry Kudlow, who served as Trump’s top economic adviser and is now a Fox Business host, praised Biden’s sanctions announcement but said the president’s lecture to U.S. oil companies made “the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”
“Joe Biden just can’t help himself,” Kudlow added, casting the comments as an effort to pander to environmentalists in the middle of a global crisis.
The U.S. bought 7% of its crude oil from Russia in 2021, and that’s the salient problem here, Biden’s critics say. They insist that Biden should do everything in his power to ramp up energy production at home – from re-opening the Keystone pipeline to increasing drilling permits on federal land – in an effort to rapidly expand U.S. oil and natural gas supplies. The goal, they say, should be to eliminate Americans’ need for Russian oil and natural gas, while simultaneously helping Europe shift to a U.S. supply.
To free-market enthusiasts, the idea is simple and obvious.
“If you carve out energy, that’s Putin’s lifeblood,” Rep. Mike McCaul, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
“We need real sanctions, not just some problems for Putin’s friends,” Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko said in a video posted to Twitter Thursday. “We need an embargo on Russian gas and oil because every barrel of Russian oil and every cubic meter of Russian gas is now full of the blood of Ukrainians.”
In the near-term, the issue is more complicated. Immediately cutting off Russian oil supplies to Europe could do more harm to the West than to Moscow by pushing global oil prices higher than they already are, putting more money in the the coffers of Russian energy oligarchs loyal to Putin.
The EU relies on Russia for a whopping 35% of its natural gas. Prices have been climbing amid the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, putting additional strain on a fuel-price crisis that began last year. On Thursday, the day of the invasion, national gas prices spiked 51% in Europe, and crude oil hit a seven-year high of $105 a barrel.
Cutting off the Russian oil supply also won’t have the immediate impact many expect. Even though Europe is responsible for buying more than 70% of Russia’s natural gas sales and an EU embargo would hit Russia hard eventually, it’s unlikely to deter Putin’s designs on Ukraine. Moscow can absorb such a blow on the front end. In the last few years, Russia has built up all-time high foreign exchange reserves of $630 billion.
For these reasons, the Biden administration and the European Union carefully crafted an energy exemption to last week’s sanctions against Russia to allow for the U.S. and Europe to continue purchasing Russian oil and gas and to avoid any “disruption” to their current flow.
“We’ve carved out energy payments on a time-bound basis to allow for an orderly transition,” away from sanctioned Russian entities, Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh told reporters late Thursday.
Richard Nephew, a sanctions expert with Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said a global embargo against Russia “isn’t a clean win for anyone.”
“The bigger issue is a gross market one,” he tells RealClearPolitics in an email. “The Russians put out a lot of oil. They’re in the top three oil production/exporting list every year. Even if we maxed out our production, we’re not in a position to substitute for Russia in a global market.”
Over time, however, Nephew said the U.S. and Europe could certainly start drawing down their use of Russian energy “allowing for other producers to step up or finding alternative means of providing energy.”
That’s one of the painful lessons Europe and the Baltics need to take from this Russian invasion, according to Stephen Yates, a senior fellow at the America First Institute who served as a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.
“It’s very, very clear that the lecture that was delivered very bluntly to Europe by President Trump did not sink in … the fact that Europe has not invested enough in its own self-defense and did not wean itself sufficiently from dependence on Russia left it with limited options,” he told RCP in an interview last week.
Nothing crystalizes geopolitical threats like the invasion of a neighboring country, and Europe was forced to wake up to a new reality. After pursuing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project for years, Germany abruptly froze certification of the project last week. EU officials on March 2 plan to announce a new strategy to reduce dependence on Russian energy as quickly as possible, with a target to reduce fossil fuel use by 40% by 2030.
The U.S. also must change course to stop importing Russian energy as well. Doing so will take time and commitment, according to Michael O’Hanlon, the director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution.
“We need a plan to go after existing oil and gas exports, upon which Russia depends for 60% of its total export earnings,” he wrote in an USA Today op-ed. “Our goal, stated or unstated, should be to drive the Russian economy into recession for the rest of Putin’s presidency if need be – unless he promptly agrees to be peaceful and take his forces home.”
Achieving the energy decoupling won’t come overnight, O’Hanlon notes, but he’s clear about the steps.
Increase oil and gas production in North America and elsewhere.
Build more liquid natural gas terminals in western Europe.
Empower relevant gas authorities in Europe to pay higher prices for non-Russian gas.
And, where possible, accelerate transitions to greener energy sources.
It’s no easy pivot for Biden, who shut down the Keystone Pipeline on his first day as president and committed to ending U.S. dependence on fossil fuels early in his campaign, at a presidential debate in none other than the fuel-reliant motor city of Detroit. Biden also would inevitably have to withstand an outcry from his liberal base to abandon their green agenda.
Yates predicts that the president likely won’t make any dramatic changes to his climate policies unless he loses big in the November midterms, signaling the need for a drastic shift in priorities. “When it comes to energy independence, I fear we are stuck in that slower lane,” he said.
Destabilizing world events, however, have a way of furiously shifting domestic priorities. Although White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week that sanctioning Russia’s energy sector could “actually benefit President Putin and pad his pockets given high oil and gas prices,” she was quick to note, “it’s not off the table.”
Later in the week, Psaki tried to put a green spin on the possibility of weaning the U.S. off foreign oil, even if the initial attempt inevitably would require more U.S. commitments to increase domestic oil and gas production to meet the shifting European demand.
She said the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes the case for reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil “even stronger,” arguing that Biden supports “diversifying the range and means of energy production everywhere around the world.”
Just how quickly and sharply Biden is willing to shift gears on U.S. fossil fuel production will play a crucial role in whether the West shows Russia and the world that it has learned its lesson, whether it continues to play into Putin’s hands or hits him where it really hurts – the energy sector.
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ White House/national political correspondent.
House Abandons Mask Mandate Just In Time For Biden’s State Of The Union
The House of Representatives is finally lifting its own mask mandate just in time for President Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.
Capitol Physician Brian Monahan announced the news in a letter to lawmakers returning to Washington this week: “Individuals may choose to mask at any time, but it is no longer a requirement,” he wrote.
Monahan added that the rate of positive COVID tests at the Capitol had fallen to 2.7% during the last two weeks, below the current rate for the DC-Metropolitan area (which is 4.7%).
Unfortunately for those who will be attending tonight’s event, Monahan said other “coronavirus risk reduction measures” would still be in place for the address, “with the exception that, KN95 or N95 mask wear is no longer required and mask wear is now an individual choice option.”
So far, more than 35 states have abandoned their individual mask mandates, although some cities still have them in place. According to the new CDC guidelines, some 30% of the US falls under the “high risk” category, meaning mask wearing is still recommended. The thing is, many conservative states also passed laws banning mask requirements.
The House had been following a mask mandate of its own making since July which was in line with guidance from the CDC. The Senate never adopted a mask mandate.
Back in early 2020, when COVID-19 was spreading around the globe and public health professionals were struggling to make sense of the virus, the Russians, like the Chinese, were conducting information operations blaming America for the outbreak. The Russian Federation went so far as to suggest that the Richard Lugar National Center for Disease Control and Public Health in Tbilisi, Georgia, was producing biological weapons and could be responsible for releasing deadly agents, i.e., COVID-19, into former Soviet states.
At the time, I was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). My Office and our colleagues at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency answered these Russian lies with facts. The Georgian and U.S. governments and public health professionals pushed back on these false and dangerous stories. The truth is that these labs are part of the Department of Defense Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program which works with international partners to mitigate WMD-related threats to the U.S. homeland, U.S. forces abroad, and U.S. partners and allies. We do this in over 30 countries worldwide because these labs improve the respective countries’ ability to detect, diagnose, and report the spread of especially dangerous pathogens.
But this is what President Putin does – make irresponsible accusations and conduct disinformation campaigns. For years now, Putin’s government has falsely claimed that the CTR labs, specifically the Lugar Center, manufacture biological agents for the United States military. This is not true.
In response to the COVID-19 mistruths, officials at the Lugar Center invited the Russian government to visit the facility. Russia demanded that if they visited, no other international governments or organizations be present. That counteroffer was refused since the Georgians knew it would enable Russia to proliferate obscene amounts of disinformation after an unsupervised visit. It would be an opportunity for Putin to manipulate the Georgian government and any gullible international press.
COVID-19 origin facts aside, Russian government officials reiterated this propaganda in May 2021, stating that “deadly microorganisms” could be released from U.S. sponsored facilities in the region. Then again, earlier this month, through state-owned media, Russia claimed Tbilisi could use the Lugar Center’s research of infectious diseases for bioterrorism in the region.
In a joint Russia-Chinese statement following a February 4, 2022, meeting between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russia claims the U.S. supported labs in Ukraine contain deadly bioweapons saying: “The sides emphasize that domestic and foreign bioweapons activities by the United States and its allies raise serious concerns and questions for the international community regarding their compliance with the BWC [Biological Weapons Convention].”
In a couple of months, the U.S. Department of State will release its annual WMD nonproliferation compliance report. This year’s report is unlikely to differ from the findings in recent iterations, including last year’s report. Namely, regarding chemical weapons, “the United States certifies that Russia is in non-compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)” and with respect to biological weapons, the “United States assesses that Russia maintains an offensive BW program and is in violation of its obligations under Articles I and II of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).” What’s more, the Russian Federation’s blatant disregard for international law and associated norms concerning its nuclear program speaks for itself. While the use of nuclear weapons would have the most devastating and world-altering impact, it is an unlikely course of action at this time.
However, it is Putin’s potential use of chemical and biological weapons that we should more fully appreciate. As we know, in 2018, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were attacked with a previously unknown chemical agent, Novichok, in Salisbury, England. Then, in 2020, yet another unlawful attack via Novichok chemical agent occurred against Putin’s political rival, Alexei Navalny. Both attacks were violations of the CWC and reprehensible acts by a government. Additionally, and possibly the most egregious actions by the Russian Federation were those promulgated by the Syrian regime and likely known and condoned by Putin that resulted in asphyxiation, disfigurement, and even death of hundreds of innocent children, women, and men.
We should learn from the deaths of innocent people and view these previous attacks as test cases. We do not need to query whether they would use them. They have, and they will again. In the Salisbury attack, the world reacted quickly in condemning the action once the forensics were complete; however, the formal penalties or sanctions exacted by the world’s powers were rather ineffectual. A mere two and a half years later, Putin ordered another attack on a political rival. While the world recognized the signs of yet another attack, the reaction did little to adjust Putin’s use calculus by way of sanctions and diplomatic actions. With Syria, the world has not held Assad to account and has done absolutely nothing to punish the Russian Federation for their support and complicity.
So, with Ukraine, we have a country Putin believes should rightly exist within Russia’s sphere of influence if not absolute control. A country with western fealty and NATO ambitions, he wants control and appears willing to garner it at the cost of war. We have already seen Russian officials and state supported media implicate CTR supported labs in Ukraine in any future biological warfare incidents. Recently, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken informed the world that Russia might execute a false flag chemical weapons attack in advance of a Ukraine invasion. While illegal and potentially very deadly, we shouldn’t think he would stop there.
Throughout this Russian buildup, the Administration has chosen to selectively release intelligence through its own information operations. While many question the righteousness of doing so, it is the President’s prerogative. One nugget recently released is the existence of a Russian “kill list” of Ukrainians following military occupation. If true, these could be prime targets for WMD in the form of biological and chemical weapons.
At this stage, all we can do is speculate based on historical knowledge, known capabilities, and the mindset of a malevolent, authoritarian leader. But the events in Salisbury and Syria, the disinformation operations related to legitimate threat reduction laboratories in former Soviet states, and the assessments provided in the State Department’s annual assessment of WMD programs tell us that Mr. Putin has means, motive, and opportunity. Let’s hope and pray he does not use these horrific weapons, but we shouldn’t be surprised when he does.
* * *
David F. Lasseter is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction. He is the Founding Partner at Horizons Global Solutions as well as a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute.
Etsy To Slap Sellers With 30% Transaction Fee Hike (Again)
Online marketplace Etsy appears to be screwing over its sellers (again) following a record-breaking fourth-quarter earnings report. The crafts-focused online marketplace announced raising seller transaction fees to 6.5% from 5%.
The 30% hike is expected to go into effect on April 11. The transaction fee is the percentage of the total order amount Etsy charges when a seller makes a sale and is the second time the company has raised seller fees. The last time was in 2018 when it went from 3.5% to 5%.
The added expense to sellers comes as Etsy announced fourth-quarter revenue of $717.1 million, up 16.2% year-over-year, which the company attributes to a strong Christmas shopping season.
“We have demonstrated our ability to make improvements that directly translate into more sales for our sellers, as evidenced by record sales per seller in 2021,” Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said in the earnings report. “Our new transaction fee will enable us to invest in key areas like marketing and support to further extend our strong momentum.”
Sellers on Etsy’s community blog weren’t happy with the company’s decision to increase fees. Many sellers said Etsy’s ongoing squeeze on them could be the last straw, as one person called for a platform strike. Here’s what they had to say:
“Etsy has become so expensive that my shop pays more than I make and the average buyer can’t afford to shop here. I have been on this site struggling away since 2009 and it has got to the point where I will save money withdrawing my shop. I wrote a long letter explaining my issues and never even got a response. I think I am going to retire,” one seller said.
Another seller said: “Even my little shop really should bump up prices because of the fee change. I’m afraid Etsy may be planning to keep bumping their prices up regularly now, so I’ll just have to risk some buyers deciding it’s not worth it. My work has to be worth it to me for the price.”
Some sellers are even calling for a “platform-wide strike” to protest increased seller fees.
Etsy is a business, and like any business today, costs are soaring because of the inflationary environment. The end result will be consumers who use the online platform will likely see prices increases come April as sellers pass them along. There’s going to be a breaking point of just how much inflation households can handle as consumer confidence slipped to 5-month lows last week as inflation bites.
Schulz is active speaker and writer for public audiences on issues associated with the Lutheran Church, with which Concordia University Wisconsin is affiliated. Earlier this month, he published an online article, “Woke Dysphoria at Concordia,” critical of the rise of “wokeism” in American society, in the Lutheran Church, and at Concordia University Wisconsin and criticized in particular how the presidential search was conducted at the university. In apparent response to that public criticism of the university, Schulz was suspended and barred from entering the campus as the university contemplated the future of his employment there.
This controversy is all too familiar. Professor writes something for a public audience that is critical of university administrators, and university administrators respond by retaliating against the professor. From a traditional academic freedom perspective, this sort of thing is a cut-and-dried violation of the professor’s academic freedom under the American Association of University Professors standards. This sort of retaliation against “extramural speech” would also be a First Amendment problem for a public university.
The situation here is unusual, however, in that Concordia University Wisconsin is an explicitly religious institution. As such, it has not adopted traditional academic freedom protections and imposes some unusual restrictions on faculty speech. Even so, Concordia does have an academic freedom policy, and the university’s action in this case goes well beyond the bounds of what the university has reserved to itself when it comes to professorial speech.
Schulz is not challenging accepted Lutheran doctrine or subverting the mission of the university as a Christian institution. He is criticizing the policy decisions of the university administration and whether the administration’s actions should be regarded as consistent with Lutheran commitments properly understood. For the university to punish and suppress speech of that sort would be to dramatically limit professorial speech and call into question whether Concordia is capable of operating as a recognizable institution of higher education.
From the letter:
If robust criticism of university governance and policies is understood in itself to be a hindrance to the mission of the university or that participating in an ongoing public debate over the social commitments of the Lutheran church and Lutheran educational institutions is inconsistent with responsibilities of members of the faculty, then the university will have dramatically departed from ordinary understandings of the duties and responsibilities of professors in American universities, including American universities dedicated to a Christian mission. Of course, Professor Schulz has a responsibility not to “advocate a position contrary to that of the Synod,” but here he is participating in a public debate on what the implications of the Synod’s positions might be for the university. If faculty at the university must refrain from speaking in public about the future of the university and the fidelity of the university’s activities to the positions of the Synod, then the university’s commitment to the faculty to value their individuality and to engage in intellectual inquiry will be an empty promise.
Speech on such controversial social and political topics can sometimes be heated and disruptive, but universities should be places where scholars can in good faith engage in a robust debate over the principles and commitments of the community. If university leaders are willing to sanction faculty members for such speech, particularly when such speech involves criticisms of university administration, then free intellectual inquiry will be stifled rather than encouraged and the university will not be able to perform its charge of supplying “the higher education services needed to accomplish the mission of the church.”
