Month: May 2019

Pound Jumps And Dump After BOE Signals More Than One Hike Needed, But Cuts Inflation Forecasts

There were no surprises in today’s BOE policy decision: the central bank held rates unchanged as expected, in a unanimous decision which gave today’s decision a less hawkish sentiment as some expected one policymaker may break ranks by voting for a hike.

Where there was some surprise was in the bank’s assessment of the monetary policy path and the BOE’s forecast of economic conditions.

Some more highlights from today’s decision, courtesy of RanSquawk:

  • Rates: Projections in the accompanying QIR are based on a path for the Bank rate that rises to around 1% by the end of the forecast horizon. (Lower than Feb assumption of 1.1%). Note, the MPC make reference to recent global developments as a factor behind this.
  • Brexit: The MPC’s projections continue to assume a smooth adjustment to the average range of possible outcomes for the UK’s eventual trading relationship with the EU. The release doesn’t provide any major update on the MPC’s view on the latest extension to the Brexit deadline.
  • Growth: GDP is now expected to have grown by 0.5% in Q1 2019 vs. March view of 0.3%. This increase is largely as a by-product of UK and EU companies stockpiling ahead of Brexit. This boost is expected to be temporary with Q2 growth expected to slow to 0.2%.
  • Inflation: Headline CPI in March of 1.9% was was inline with the Feb QIR and expectations at the Bank immediately prior to the release. Over the coming months, CPI was expected to remain fairly close to the 2% target, picking up slightly in April before easing back to just below target.
  • Investment: The marginally below potential growth in underlying growth is continuing to have a particularly pronounced impact on business investment. Investment is expected to pick-up at the end of the forecast period.
  • Labor: The labor market remains tight, with the unemployment rate expected to fall to 3.5% by the end of the forecast period.
  • Wages: Annual pay growth remains around 3.5% whilst unit labour costs have strengthened to rates that are above historical averages

In summary: on one hand, the central bank upgraded its growth outlook for this year to 1.5% from 1.2% and also raised its predictions for 2020 and 2021, while cutting the forecast for the unemployment rate and maintaining the limited, gradual rate hikes will be needed and noting that inflation may be above target in 2 years at current market rates, which sent cable spiking higher in kneejerk reaction.

However, cable then broadly sold off after the market noticed that the BOE cut its inflation forecasts for 2019, 2020, and kept it unchanged for 2021, while conceding that nobody really knows anything, and that economic indicators may be volatile in coming months.

One possible reason for the post-kneejerk reversal in cable: too much hawkishness had been priced in, as ahead of the meeting, banks including JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc. and Toronto Dominion Bank saw scope for a hawkish signal from the BOE ahead of the meeting. And the signal they got was not hawkish enough.

Separately, in the broader market reaction, gilts edged higher, paring underperformance versus bunds, as money markets now see 28% probability of a BOE hike this year versus 35% before the decision, in what ultimately appears to have been a dovish disappointment.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GVTshd Tyler Durden

Morgan Stanley Fires Financial Advisor Linked To College Admissions Scandal

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, but the latest financial services firm to get caught up in the sprawling college admissions scandal is Morgan Stanley. The firm has fired one of its financial advisors for ‘not cooperating with an internal investigation’ into his relationship with disgraced admissions consultant Rick Singer, whom he introduced to a wealthy Chinese family that – according to the Wall Street Journal – paid a staggering $6.5 million bribe in 2017 to get their child into Stanford.

As we’ve reported, some of the Chinese families embroiled in the admissions scandal, which focuses on Singer, his former employees, and dozens of his customers, who employed him to help their kids cheat on admissions tests, bribe coaches and generally bend college admissions staff to his will.

Wu

Michael Wu

WSJ reported yesterday that Morgan Stanley advisor Michael Wu, based in Pasadena-Calif., introduced Singer to the unnamed Chinese family that paid the largest sum exposed in the scandal. As we’ve pointed out, Chinese families and students actually have a good defense of their participation in the scheme: Given endemic levels of corruption in their home country, most said they simply assumed this was how things worked in the US, and that there was nothing untoward about the scheme.

Unfortunately for Wu, revelations that Singer’s firm had been on a referral list that the bank had provided to its wealth management clients have been deeply embarrassing for MS.

According to the FT, Wu connected the wealthy Chinese family with Singer, with whom he had continued to work after his name was taken off a referral list distributed to the bank’s financial advisors.

In a sign that this might not be the end of the road for Morgan Stanley, a spokesman said “we are co-operating with the authorities.” And MS isn’t alone among Wall Street firms: TPG has stripped a former portfolio manager of potentially millions of dollars worth of shares in some of its funds.

And former PIMCO CEO Douglas Hodge was among the parents charged in the investigation.

Considering that many of these families were introduced to Singer through their advisors, Wu’s might not be the last head to roll before it’s all said and done.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2LhMZmo Tyler Durden

10 Colleges Where You Won’t Have To Walk on Eggshells

In recent years, dangerous trends and ideas about speech have been spilling from academia into the world beyond campus. Walking on eggshells, exercising extreme caution about respecting taboos, reporting colleagues for jokes overheard, and deflecting substantive arguments with ad hominem counterattacks may soon be common features of corporate and community life. College-bound students who want to master those skills can choose from a wide range of America’s top schools.

But perhaps you (and your kids) would prefer a different kind of academic culture: one that exposes students to a variety of views, teaches them skills of critical thinking so they learn to habitually ground claims in evidence, and emboldens them to speak up for what they think is true, good, and beautiful, while being open to arguments from their peers that they just might be wrong. If that’s what you’re seeking, you’ve come to the right place.

At Heterodox Academy, we’ve had a front row seat for the recent trials and tribulations of American higher education. We are an organization of more than 2,500 professors who believe that viewpoint diversity and freedom of inquiry are essential components of a good academic culture. We’ve spoken with dozens of college presidents and administrators about their efforts to broaden students’ minds and promote constructive disagreement. We have found that the great majority of presidents value free speech and open inquiry, but many face obstacles in translating those values into policies and implementing those policies into practices that shape culture.

Below we highlight 10 schools that stand out from the crowd, listed in alphabetical order. These are schools—large and small, public and private—where evidence suggests that students will have better odds of developing the habits of heart and mind necessary to thrive in a world of complexity, nuance, and difference.

Arizona State University

Tempe, Arizona

With an undergraduate enrollment just north of 61,000, students looking to engage with people who think differently than they do will surely find willing others here. ASU counts 24 members of Heterodox Academy among its faculty and administration, tied for the second highest total across the country. Its new School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership recently ran a speaker series on polarization and civil disagreement.

OpenMind, a free interactive platform designed to depolarize communities and foster mutual understanding, has been deployed by five professors in 13 courses on campus since 2017. Data collected by College Pulse show that 67 percent of the 2,575 ASU students surveyed feel that freedom of speech is secure on their campus, and 88 percent agreed that the ASU administration values free speech. Among a subsample of 918 students, 24 percent self-identify as libertarian.

ASU is also home to BridgeASU, one of the first chapters of BridgeUSA, a student organization that “create[s] an environment where students can come together and share their political views in a place where all views are accepted, but challenged.The goal is for everyone to figure out what they truly believe and to become more understanding of those with differing opinions by challenging and exposing ourselves to an open way of thinking.” BridgeASU hosts events such as a round-robin discussion that drew 175 people interested in hearing fresh perspectives on a range of political topics. The desert air seems hospitable to open inquiry.

Chapman University

Orange, California

Chapman President Daniele Struppa is an outspoken advocate of academic freedom and freedom of speech. In fall 2018, for example, a member of the Chapman faculty invited to class Max Landis, a screenwriter and producer accused of sexual assault. Students objected on moral grounds. In an op-ed piece published in the Chapman student newspaper, Struppa, alongside Dean of Students Jerry Price and Chief Information Officer Helen Norris, defended faculty members’ right to invite to class any speaker who will advance the class goals, writing, “The price of having academic freedom is that sometimes we will have speech we detest, or speakers we despise. We can’t have one without the other.”

Seventeen members of the Chapman faculty, including Struppa, are also members of Heterodox Academy. Many are involved in high-profile efforts, including the Economic Science Institute (which examines the role human institutions play in creating social rules and order and also builds and tests market and management systems) and the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy (which integrates humanities and economics). Chapman was among the first five institutional adopters of the Chicago Principles, which outline an institution’s specific commitments to protecting free speech and free expression.

Claremont McKenna College

Claremont, California

A small, private residential college, Claremont McKenna stands out among liberal arts schools for its administration’s commitment to open inquiry. In April 2017, shortly after protesters blocked others’ access to hear a speaker, both the dean and the president released statements affirming the community’s right to hear views and engage with controversial ideas.

Voter registration research conducted by Mitchell Langbert suggests a 3.7-to-1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans among tenured and tenure-track faculty members, making it a much more ideologically balanced faculty than on most other campuses included in the study. (For the sake of comparison, the overall average across all 51 top liberal arts institutions included in Langbert’s study was 12.7-to-1, with extreme outliers ranging from 120-to-1 to 136-to-1.) Nine members of the CMC faculty, including the academic dean, are members of Heterodox Academy. Students likely will take courses with professors who hold a variety of political views and who value open inquiry. Impressively, this small campus welcomes more than 100 ideologically diverse speakers each year to its Athenaeum, the campus hub of intellectual engagement.

The college’s new Open Academy initiative, which comes with a $20 million price tag and a 10-year commitment, will further enable students to develop the intellectual and social skills needed to express themselves, debate with respect, and listen actively. In addition, supported by a significant grant from the Mellon Foundation, professors from different ideological vantage points co-teach courses, providing students with models for—and practice at—developing a common understanding of critical issues. In fall 2018, Jon Shields, a CMC professor of government, and Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology at Pitzer College, co-taught a class titled “The University Blacklist” in which students read the books of controversial speakers before coming to a position on the scholars’ ideas.

Kansas State University

Manhattan, Kansas

According to College Pulse, 90 percent of the 332 K-State students surveyed agreed with the statement, “In general, my school’s administration values free speech.” Seventy percent felt that freedom of speech is secure on their campus. These are positive indicators of a campus community engaged with ideas and each other, and they suggest that the values espoused in the school’s freedom of expression statement are manifest on campus.

In addition to a reasonably balanced voter registration ratio of 4.9 Democrats to each Republican, seven members of the K-State faculty are members of Heterodox Academy. And among a small sample of 95 students surveyed by College Pulse, 26 percent self-identified as libertarian.

K-State is home to the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy, whose mission is “to build community capacity for informed, engaged, civil deliberation” with a vision for “stronger democracy through enhanced public deliberation.” K-State offers undergraduates the opportunity to earn a Primary Texts Certificate by taking “courses emphasizing original works instead of textbooks,” akin to a minor in Great Books.

Kenyon College

Gambier, Ohio

Situated 45 miles outside Columbus, Kenyon is a small, private liberal arts college with a total undergraduate enrollment of approximately 1,700. By virtue of a 2.7-to-1 Democrat-to-Republican ratio among the faculty, students are essentially guaranteed to learn alongside both liberal and conservative faculty. Kenyon’s freedom of expression statement sets the stage for the Kenyon Listens series, during which community members engage in structured, topical dialogues about issues, including their sense of belonging, ability to speak freely, and experiences with openness and trust.

BridgeKenyon, one of several student groups committed to promoting constructive dialogue, meets weekly to engage diverse political viewpoints, discuss politics on campus, and learn good practices of debate. The Center for the Study of American Democracy promotes the exploration of America’s history, culture, and politics. According to the center’s website, “Kenyon always has prided itself on a dedication to debating the issues of the day, no matter how controversial, through deliberative inquiry and civil, probing conversation. Drawing on this tradition, the Center for the Study of American Democracy seeks open debate toward a subtle understanding of history, timeless questions, and fundamental principles.”

Linn-Benton Community College

Albany, Oregon

Located between Portland and Eugene in a perfectly purple district (in aggregate, voters there do not lean toward either major political party), LBCC is a small community college that has made big strides in creating a campus that welcomes and celebrates viewpoint diversity. In an October 2018 report, President Greg Hamann, reflecting on the college’s new freedom of expression and academic freedom policy, said, “We now need to live individually and collectively in ways that respect and promote these freedoms, and we need to learn how to do so in ways that develop and preserve the culture of inclusion that we seek.”

Students concerned about the absence of deep engagement across political divides created the LBCC Civil Discourse Club, which promotes dialogue that enhances understanding among individuals with diverse viewpoints in an open and respectful manner. The club has just four rules of etiquette: no partisan attacks, no self-promotion, substantiate your claims, no personal attacks. In spring 2018, LBCC deployed Heterodox Academy’s Campus Expression Survey to figure out which groups of students were afraid to engage which topics and why. With results in hand, the school has launched a series of campus conversations and initiatives designed to strengthen an already strong campus expression climate.

Purdue University

Lafayette, Indiana

In May 2015, by an act of its Board of Trustees, Purdue became the first public university to endorse the Chicago Principles, a decision supported by the governing bodies of the undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. New and existing programs and initiatives suggest Purdue’s commitment to open inquiry extends beyond that mere statement. For example, a new political discourse club seeks to counter broader political polarization by engaging in moderated discussions about divisive political topics. The first-year student orientation program features a freedom of expression module that teaches incoming students about the First Amendment, its relevance to Purdue as a public university, and their rights and responsibilities within a community committed to open inquiry.

President Mitch Daniels speaks frequently and passionately about the importance of free and open inquiry, and hosts speakers such as Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, and Ezra Klein, co-founder of Vox, for conversations about the state of free speech and political discourse. In a message to the Purdue community at the start of the 2017 school year, Daniels and interim provost Jay Akridge wrote, “At Purdue, we protect and promote the right to free and open inquiry in all matters and guarantee all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn. But with this right comes responsibility. As Boilermakers, we must continue to hold ourselves to a higher standard that begins with civility and respect for others.”

St. John’s College

Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico

“Johnnies question everything: their world, each other, and themselves,” states the St. John’s College website. Our research supports this claim. The curriculum consists of more than 200 great books, which the students read and discuss alongside members of the faculty, who are called “tutors” in recognition that their job is to guide students in how to think rather than to profess knowledge, as a professor might do. Close reading, textual analysis, and student questions center small seminar discussions, which never exceed 20 students and usually have two tutors.

Each Friday night, when politically diverse speakers enter the back of the auditorium, the campus community rises to welcome the speaker, ready to engage with respect and rigor. These Friday night lectures, which are faithfully attended by a significant percentage of faculty and students, are always followed by a “question period,” which continues until the last question has been addressed, often hours after the lecture itself has ended, a testament to the seriousness with which the students and faculty engage each other and big ideas.

“Knowing that all questions will be addressed allows our students and faculty to feel that even if they disagree with the speaker, they will have the opportunity to express their own opinions,” says Panayiotis Kanelos, president of St. John’s College in Annapolis. “This is what is often missing when speakers speak on campuses—the feeling that communication will flow in both directions. Knowing that there will be opportunity for exchange and dialogue allows everyone to be more generous in hearing out opinions that differ from their own.” Voter registration data shows a ratio of 2.9 Democrats to each Republican on the college’s faculty, making it one of the most politically balanced in the United States.

University of Chicago

Chicago, Illinois

In 2014, predating the current expression controversies on campus and thus with great foresight, the University of Chicago created its “Statement on Principles of Free Expression” (a.k.a. the Chicago Principles). It provides a framework for thinking about the importance of dissent and the role of the university as a platform for debate. These principles, or substantially similar ones, have since been adopted by 55 schools across the country.

“The University of Chicago,” notes President Robert Zimmer on the school’s website, “is distinctive in many respects, but perhaps in none more so than our singular commitment to rigorous inquiry that demands multiple and often competing perspectives. We have an obligation to see that the greatest variety of perspectives is brought to bear on the issues before us as scholars and citizens.” The college attracts stellar students and faculty by promising that “here, your ideas will be heard, supported, questioned, tested, and honed.” In June 2018, the University of Chicago received Heterodox Academy’s Institutional Excellence Award in recognition of the stellar culture it creates in support of open inquiry.

As University of Chicago cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder observes in Rob Montz’s Silence U video about the university, “You’re entering a rather special place: an institution that’s dedicated to asking deep questions, being willing to challenge received truths. The University of Chicago is off the scale in terms of intellectual intensity.”

University of Richmond

Richmond, Virginia

University of Richmond student Riley Blake shared the following in an op-ed published last fall in the student newspaper: “I’ve never felt threatened or intimidated for voicing my conservative beliefs in the classroom or in The Collegian. I’ve never worried that I’ll hurt my grade by expressing an opinion different from my professors’. In fact, I’ve often felt the opposite was true. Professors and students at UR will go out of their way to hear an opposing view, because they realize it will make them better academics.”

Last fall, as the University of Richmond community considered adopting a free speech resolution, the College Democrats and College Republicans co-authored an op-ed piece for The Collegian in support of the resolution, noting, “In our search for truth, we may stumble over ideas that challenge us or that we reject, but that is no reason to shy away from the search. Rather, it is reason to embolden ourselves and find those few great truths that enhance life. In our search, what is the worst we will find? Truth, and with truth may come a burden that what we find may not fit into our beliefs and ideologies, but that is the life we choose at a university.”

President Ron Crutcher’s principled leadership on these issues has set the tone for the campus. In a summer 2018 article for The Hechinger Report, an education news website that covers inequality and innovation, Crutcher reflected on a Gallup/Knight Foundation survey finding that 61 percent of students nationwide felt the climate on their campus prevented some people from speaking freely. He committed himself and his administration to being “unapologetic champions for the free and open exchange of ideas and for the potential of debate and discussion to transform society.” He continued: “This is the purpose of higher education: to interrogate truths, support arguments with fact and reason, discover new knowledge and create greater understanding. We know that students learn best when they’re challenged to tackle hard questions, and when they’re taught to have these conversations in thoughtful ways. Colleges and universities are uniquely positioned, and have an explicit responsibility, to model substantive disagreement and dialogue that foster change—to give students information they can take into the classroom, living room, workplace and voting booth.”

Crutcher takes an active role in crafting and hosting the Sharp Viewpoint Series, which brings people with varied ideological perspectives to campus to converse with the community about challenging social and political issues.

These are just a few of the colleges actively working to cultivate campus climates that support open inquiry and welcome diverse people with diverse viewpoints. Here are five strategies you can use to assess whether a particular school is doing so as well:

· Visit Heterodox Academy to see how many professors and administrators at the college publicly support the following statement: “I believe that university life requires that people with diverse viewpoints and perspectives encounter each other in an environment where they feel free to speak up and challenge each other. I am concerned that many academic fields and universities currently lack sufficient viewpoint diversity. I support viewpoint diversity, mutual understanding, and constructive disagreement in my academic field, my institution, my department, and my classroom.”

· Visit the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to see if the school gets a “green light” for its speech codes and policies, and to see if it has endorsed the Chicago Principles or a similar statement, such as the excellent one crafted at Colgate University, in support of open inquiry. (Search “Chicago Statement: University and Faculty Body Support” on the FIRE website.) While there, also check whether the leaders of the school have issued any public statements in support of free and open inquiry. Wesleyan University President Michael Roth, for example, has made 20 such statements, a clear signal of strong leadership on these issues. (Search “Leader Statements” on the FIRE website.)

· Search the college’s website for phrases such as “open inquiry,” “freedom of expression,” and “freedom of speech.”In doing so, you may find references to classes, institutes, or policies that will help characterize the institution’s orientation toward these issues. On the website of Bard College, for example, this search highlights the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, “the world’s most expansive home for bold and risky humanities thinking about our political world inspired by the spirit of Hannah Arendt, the leading thinker of politics and active citizenship in the modern era.”

· Poke around the college’s calendar of events for evidence that speakers with diverse perspectives are regularly invited to campus. Pay special attention to signs of a well-conceived speaker series that deliberately puts a range of perspectives into conversation around a challenging topic.

· Visit the campus. Take the admissions tour. Talk with actual students about their experiences and their read on the campus expression climate. Whatever your politics, ask conservative, progressive, and libertarian students if they feel free to speak up in class. We recommend asking the following questions to help characterize the expression climate on campus:

  • Does your student orientation discuss civility, viewpoint diversity, or academic freedom?
  • Does the college have a speaker series featuring people with diverse views?
  • How many speakers have been disrupted by protests in recent years?
  • How often do student groups of differing political orientation host events together?
  • Are the professors open to differing opinions?
  • Are students welcome to share their perspectives in class if most others disagree?

As our list of schools suggests, institutions of any type and size can differentiate themselves by emphasizing open inquiry in their curricular and co-curricular efforts. By welcoming diverse people with diverse views to campus—and, crucially, creating opportunities for the community to learn and practice nuanced, respectful engagement—colleges can both advance their core academic mission and equip graduates to thrive in their post-graduation pursuits.

As part of Heterodox Academy’s effort to highlight and celebrate institutions that are leading the way in advancing open inquiry and viewpoint diversity, we will continue to build this list based on our research and your recommendations. If you would like to put a school on our radar, please email us at HxAcademies@heterodoxacademy.org.

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10 Colleges Where You Won’t Have To Walk on Eggshells

In recent years, dangerous trends and ideas about speech have been spilling from academia into the world beyond campus. Walking on eggshells, exercising extreme caution about respecting taboos, reporting colleagues for jokes overheard, and deflecting substantive arguments with ad hominem counterattacks may soon be common features of corporate and community life. College-bound students who want to master those skills can choose from a wide range of America’s top schools.

But perhaps you (and your kids) would prefer a different kind of academic culture: one that exposes students to a variety of views, teaches them skills of critical thinking so they learn to habitually ground claims in evidence, and emboldens them to speak up for what they think is true, good, and beautiful, while being open to arguments from their peers that they just might be wrong. If that’s what you’re seeking, you’ve come to the right place.

At Heterodox Academy, we’ve had a front row seat for the recent trials and tribulations of American higher education. We are an organization of more than 2,500 professors who believe that viewpoint diversity and freedom of inquiry are essential components of a good academic culture. We’ve spoken with dozens of college presidents and administrators about their efforts to broaden students’ minds and promote constructive disagreement. We have found that the great majority of presidents value free speech and open inquiry, but many face obstacles in translating those values into policies and implementing those policies into practices that shape culture.

Below we highlight 10 schools that stand out from the crowd, listed in alphabetical order. These are schools—large and small, public and private—where evidence suggests that students will have better odds of developing the habits of heart and mind necessary to thrive in a world of complexity, nuance, and difference.

Arizona State University

Tempe, Arizona

With an undergraduate enrollment just north of 61,000, students looking to engage with people who think differently than they do will surely find willing others here. ASU counts 24 members of Heterodox Academy among its faculty and administration, tied for the second highest total across the country. Its new School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership recently ran a speaker series on polarization and civil disagreement.

OpenMind, a free interactive platform designed to depolarize communities and foster mutual understanding, has been deployed by five professors in 13 courses on campus since 2017. Data collected by College Pulse show that 67 percent of the 2,575 ASU students surveyed feel that freedom of speech is secure on their campus, and 88 percent agreed that the ASU administration values free speech. Among a subsample of 918 students, 24 percent self-identify as libertarian.

ASU is also home to BridgeASU, one of the first chapters of BridgeUSA, a student organization that “create[s] an environment where students can come together and share their political views in a place where all views are accepted, but challenged.The goal is for everyone to figure out what they truly believe and to become more understanding of those with differing opinions by challenging and exposing ourselves to an open way of thinking.” BridgeASU hosts events such as a round-robin discussion that drew 175 people interested in hearing fresh perspectives on a range of political topics. The desert air seems hospitable to open inquiry.

Chapman University

Orange, California

Chapman President Daniele Struppa is an outspoken advocate of academic freedom and freedom of speech. In fall 2018, for example, a member of the Chapman faculty invited to class Max Landis, a screenwriter and producer accused of sexual assault. Students objected on moral grounds. In an op-ed piece published in the Chapman student newspaper, Struppa, alongside Dean of Students Jerry Price and Chief Information Officer Helen Norris, defended faculty members’ right to invite to class any speaker who will advance the class goals, writing, “The price of having academic freedom is that sometimes we will have speech we detest, or speakers we despise. We can’t have one without the other.”

Seventeen members of the Chapman faculty, including Struppa, are also members of Heterodox Academy. Many are involved in high-profile efforts, including the Economic Science Institute (which examines the role human institutions play in creating social rules and order and also builds and tests market and management systems) and the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy (which integrates humanities and economics). Chapman was among the first five institutional adopters of the Chicago Principles, which outline an institution’s specific commitments to protecting free speech and free expression.

Claremont McKenna College

Claremont, California

A small, private residential college, Claremont McKenna stands out among liberal arts schools for its administration’s commitment to open inquiry. In April 2017, shortly after protesters blocked others’ access to hear a speaker, both the dean and the president released statements affirming the community’s right to hear views and engage with controversial ideas.

Voter registration research conducted by Mitchell Langbert suggests a 3.7-to-1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans among tenured and tenure-track faculty members, making it a much more ideologically balanced faculty than on most other campuses included in the study. (For the sake of comparison, the overall average across all 51 top liberal arts institutions included in Langbert’s study was 12.7-to-1, with extreme outliers ranging from 120-to-1 to 136-to-1.) Nine members of the CMC faculty, including the academic dean, are members of Heterodox Academy. Students likely will take courses with professors who hold a variety of political views and who value open inquiry. Impressively, this small campus welcomes more than 100 ideologically diverse speakers each year to its Athenaeum, the campus hub of intellectual engagement.

The college’s new Open Academy initiative, which comes with a $20 million price tag and a 10-year commitment, will further enable students to develop the intellectual and social skills needed to express themselves, debate with respect, and listen actively. In addition, supported by a significant grant from the Mellon Foundation, professors from different ideological vantage points co-teach courses, providing students with models for—and practice at—developing a common understanding of critical issues. In fall 2018, Jon Shields, a CMC professor of government, and Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology at Pitzer College, co-taught a class titled “The University Blacklist” in which students read the books of controversial speakers before coming to a position on the scholars’ ideas.

Kansas State University

Manhattan, Kansas

According to College Pulse, 90 percent of the 332 K-State students surveyed agreed with the statement, “In general, my school’s administration values free speech.” Seventy percent felt that freedom of speech is secure on their campus. These are positive indicators of a campus community engaged with ideas and each other, and they suggest that the values espoused in the school’s freedom of expression statement are manifest on campus.

In addition to a reasonably balanced voter registration ratio of 4.9 Democrats to each Republican, seven members of the K-State faculty are members of Heterodox Academy. And among a small sample of 95 students surveyed by College Pulse, 26 percent self-identified as libertarian.

K-State is home to the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy, whose mission is “to build community capacity for informed, engaged, civil deliberation” with a vision for “stronger democracy through enhanced public deliberation.” K-State offers undergraduates the opportunity to earn a Primary Texts Certificate by taking “courses emphasizing original works instead of textbooks,” akin to a minor in Great Books.

Kenyon College

Gambier, Ohio

Situated 45 miles outside Columbus, Kenyon is a small, private liberal arts college with a total undergraduate enrollment of approximately 1,700. By virtue of a 2.7-to-1 Democrat-to-Republican ratio among the faculty, students are essentially guaranteed to learn alongside both liberal and conservative faculty. Kenyon’s freedom of expression statement sets the stage for the Kenyon Listens series, during which community members engage in structured, topical dialogues about issues, including their sense of belonging, ability to speak freely, and experiences with openness and trust.

BridgeKenyon, one of several student groups committed to promoting constructive dialogue, meets weekly to engage diverse political viewpoints, discuss politics on campus, and learn good practices of debate. The Center for the Study of American Democracy promotes the exploration of America’s history, culture, and politics. According to the center’s website, “Kenyon always has prided itself on a dedication to debating the issues of the day, no matter how controversial, through deliberative inquiry and civil, probing conversation. Drawing on this tradition, the Center for the Study of American Democracy seeks open debate toward a subtle understanding of history, timeless questions, and fundamental principles.”

Linn-Benton Community College

Albany, Oregon

Located between Portland and Eugene in a perfectly purple district (in aggregate, voters there do not lean toward either major political party), LBCC is a small community college that has made big strides in creating a campus that welcomes and celebrates viewpoint diversity. In an October 2018 report, President Greg Hamann, reflecting on the college’s new freedom of expression and academic freedom policy, said, “We now need to live individually and collectively in ways that respect and promote these freedoms, and we need to learn how to do so in ways that develop and preserve the culture of inclusion that we seek.”

Students concerned about the absence of deep engagement across political divides created the LBCC Civil Discourse Club, which promotes dialogue that enhances understanding among individuals with diverse viewpoints in an open and respectful manner. The club has just four rules of etiquette: no partisan attacks, no self-promotion, substantiate your claims, no personal attacks. In spring 2018, LBCC deployed Heterodox Academy’s Campus Expression Survey to figure out which groups of students were afraid to engage which topics and why. With results in hand, the school has launched a series of campus conversations and initiatives designed to strengthen an already strong campus expression climate.

Purdue University

Lafayette, Indiana

In May 2015, by an act of its Board of Trustees, Purdue became the first public university to endorse the Chicago Principles, a decision supported by the governing bodies of the undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. New and existing programs and initiatives suggest Purdue’s commitment to open inquiry extends beyond that mere statement. For example, a new political discourse club seeks to counter broader political polarization by engaging in moderated discussions about divisive political topics. The first-year student orientation program features a freedom of expression module that teaches incoming students about the First Amendment, its relevance to Purdue as a public university, and their rights and responsibilities within a community committed to open inquiry.

President Mitch Daniels speaks frequently and passionately about the importance of free and open inquiry, and hosts speakers such as Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, and Ezra Klein, co-founder of Vox, for conversations about the state of free speech and political discourse. In a message to the Purdue community at the start of the 2017 school year, Daniels and interim provost Jay Akridge wrote, “At Purdue, we protect and promote the right to free and open inquiry in all matters and guarantee all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn. But with this right comes responsibility. As Boilermakers, we must continue to hold ourselves to a higher standard that begins with civility and respect for others.”

St. John’s College

Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico

“Johnnies question everything: their world, each other, and themselves,” states the St. John’s College website. Our research supports this claim. The curriculum consists of more than 200 great books, which the students read and discuss alongside members of the faculty, who are called “tutors” in recognition that their job is to guide students in how to think rather than to profess knowledge, as a professor might do. Close reading, textual analysis, and student questions center small seminar discussions, which never exceed 20 students and usually have two tutors.

Each Friday night, when politically diverse speakers enter the back of the auditorium, the campus community rises to welcome the speaker, ready to engage with respect and rigor. These Friday night lectures, which are faithfully attended by a significant percentage of faculty and students, are always followed by a “question period,” which continues until the last question has been addressed, often hours after the lecture itself has ended, a testament to the seriousness with which the students and faculty engage each other and big ideas.

“Knowing that all questions will be addressed allows our students and faculty to feel that even if they disagree with the speaker, they will have the opportunity to express their own opinions,” says Panayiotis Kanelos, president of St. John’s College in Annapolis. “This is what is often missing when speakers speak on campuses—the feeling that communication will flow in both directions. Knowing that there will be opportunity for exchange and dialogue allows everyone to be more generous in hearing out opinions that differ from their own.” Voter registration data shows a ratio of 2.9 Democrats to each Republican on the college’s faculty, making it one of the most politically balanced in the United States.

University of Chicago

Chicago, Illinois

In 2014, predating the current expression controversies on campus and thus with great foresight, the University of Chicago created its “Statement on Principles of Free Expression” (a.k.a. the Chicago Principles). It provides a framework for thinking about the importance of dissent and the role of the university as a platform for debate. These principles, or substantially similar ones, have since been adopted by 55 schools across the country.

“The University of Chicago,” notes President Robert Zimmer on the school’s website, “is distinctive in many respects, but perhaps in none more so than our singular commitment to rigorous inquiry that demands multiple and often competing perspectives. We have an obligation to see that the greatest variety of perspectives is brought to bear on the issues before us as scholars and citizens.” The college attracts stellar students and faculty by promising that “here, your ideas will be heard, supported, questioned, tested, and honed.” In June 2018, the University of Chicago received Heterodox Academy’s Institutional Excellence Award in recognition of the stellar culture it creates in support of open inquiry.

As University of Chicago cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder observes in Rob Montz’s Silence U video about the university, “You’re entering a rather special place: an institution that’s dedicated to asking deep questions, being willing to challenge received truths. The University of Chicago is off the scale in terms of intellectual intensity.”

University of Richmond

Richmond, Virginia

University of Richmond student Riley Blake shared the following in an op-ed published last fall in the student newspaper: “I’ve never felt threatened or intimidated for voicing my conservative beliefs in the classroom or in The Collegian. I’ve never worried that I’ll hurt my grade by expressing an opinion different from my professors’. In fact, I’ve often felt the opposite was true. Professors and students at UR will go out of their way to hear an opposing view, because they realize it will make them better academics.”

Last fall, as the University of Richmond community considered adopting a free speech resolution, the College Democrats and College Republicans co-authored an op-ed piece for The Collegian in support of the resolution, noting, “In our search for truth, we may stumble over ideas that challenge us or that we reject, but that is no reason to shy away from the search. Rather, it is reason to embolden ourselves and find those few great truths that enhance life. In our search, what is the worst we will find? Truth, and with truth may come a burden that what we find may not fit into our beliefs and ideologies, but that is the life we choose at a university.”

President Ron Crutcher’s principled leadership on these issues has set the tone for the campus. In a summer 2018 article for The Hechinger Report, an education news website that covers inequality and innovation, Crutcher reflected on a Gallup/Knight Foundation survey finding that 61 percent of students nationwide felt the climate on their campus prevented some people from speaking freely. He committed himself and his administration to being “unapologetic champions for the free and open exchange of ideas and for the potential of debate and discussion to transform society.” He continued: “This is the purpose of higher education: to interrogate truths, support arguments with fact and reason, discover new knowledge and create greater understanding. We know that students learn best when they’re challenged to tackle hard questions, and when they’re taught to have these conversations in thoughtful ways. Colleges and universities are uniquely positioned, and have an explicit responsibility, to model substantive disagreement and dialogue that foster change—to give students information they can take into the classroom, living room, workplace and voting booth.”

Crutcher takes an active role in crafting and hosting the Sharp Viewpoint Series, which brings people with varied ideological perspectives to campus to converse with the community about challenging social and political issues.

These are just a few of the colleges actively working to cultivate campus climates that support open inquiry and welcome diverse people with diverse viewpoints. Here are five strategies you can use to assess whether a particular school is doing so as well:

· Visit Heterodox Academy to see how many professors and administrators at the college publicly support the following statement: “I believe that university life requires that people with diverse viewpoints and perspectives encounter each other in an environment where they feel free to speak up and challenge each other. I am concerned that many academic fields and universities currently lack sufficient viewpoint diversity. I support viewpoint diversity, mutual understanding, and constructive disagreement in my academic field, my institution, my department, and my classroom.”

· Visit the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to see if the school gets a “green light” for its speech codes and policies, and to see if it has endorsed the Chicago Principles or a similar statement, such as the excellent one crafted at Colgate University, in support of open inquiry. (Search “Chicago Statement: University and Faculty Body Support” on the FIRE website.) While there, also check whether the leaders of the school have issued any public statements in support of free and open inquiry. Wesleyan University President Michael Roth, for example, has made 20 such statements, a clear signal of strong leadership on these issues. (Search “Leader Statements” on the FIRE website.)

· Search the college’s website for phrases such as “open inquiry,” “freedom of expression,” and “freedom of speech.”In doing so, you may find references to classes, institutes, or policies that will help characterize the institution’s orientation toward these issues. On the website of Bard College, for example, this search highlights the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, “the world’s most expansive home for bold and risky humanities thinking about our political world inspired by the spirit of Hannah Arendt, the leading thinker of politics and active citizenship in the modern era.”

· Poke around the college’s calendar of events for evidence that speakers with diverse perspectives are regularly invited to campus. Pay special attention to signs of a well-conceived speaker series that deliberately puts a range of perspectives into conversation around a challenging topic.

· Visit the campus. Take the admissions tour. Talk with actual students about their experiences and their read on the campus expression climate. Whatever your politics, ask conservative, progressive, and libertarian students if they feel free to speak up in class. We recommend asking the following questions to help characterize the expression climate on campus:

  • Does your student orientation discuss civility, viewpoint diversity, or academic freedom?
  • Does the college have a speaker series featuring people with diverse views?
  • How many speakers have been disrupted by protests in recent years?
  • How often do student groups of differing political orientation host events together?
  • Are the professors open to differing opinions?
  • Are students welcome to share their perspectives in class if most others disagree?

As our list of schools suggests, institutions of any type and size can differentiate themselves by emphasizing open inquiry in their curricular and co-curricular efforts. By welcoming diverse people with diverse views to campus—and, crucially, creating opportunities for the community to learn and practice nuanced, respectful engagement—colleges can both advance their core academic mission and equip graduates to thrive in their post-graduation pursuits.

As part of Heterodox Academy’s effort to highlight and celebrate institutions that are leading the way in advancing open inquiry and viewpoint diversity, we will continue to build this list based on our research and your recommendations. If you would like to put a school on our radar, please email us at HxAcademies@heterodoxacademy.org.

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Dark Days In Hong Kong

Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

  • The continued defiance of Hong Kong’s people in the face of Chinese repression is inspiring resistance in Taiwan.

  • “In the early 1980s the ‘one country, two systems’ concept was created for Taiwan, not for Hong Kong,” said Ma Ying-jeou to Al Jazeera when he was Taiwan’s president in September 2014. “But Taiwan has sent a clear message that we do not accept the concept.”

  • Xi Jinping, the current Chinese ruler, once held the Hong Kong portfolio in the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee. He certainly knows that one of the signs of Chinese regime failure is trouble on the periphery, and he is determined that the open defiance in Hong Kong does not spread to other areas far from the center of Chinese power. Xi has no effective response to Hong Kong, however.

A court in Hong Kong on Sunday sentenced eight of nine democracy activists for their role in the massive “Occupy Central” protests in 2014. The prosecution was seen, both in Hong Kong and elsewhere, as a sign of Beijing tightening its control over the city. Pictured: Democracy protesters hold umbrellas to support the arrested activists of the “Occupy Central” movement, on December 3, 2014 in Hong Kong. (Photo by Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images)

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Hong Kong on Sunday to protest planned changes to the city’s extradition law. Many believe new rules facilitating the sending of suspects to China would effectively allow Beijing to grab people at will and thereby completely control the city. “You will be screwed,” said a marcher, a law clerk, to Reuters.

The turnout was high — organizers said 130,000 people took part — in part because the demonstration followed the sentencing of democracy activists for their role in the massive “Occupy Central” protests in 2014. On Wednesday, a lower court handed out prison terms of between eight to 16 months to four of the “Umbrella Nine.” Three others received suspended sentences. One person was given 200 hours of community service.

The eight individuals — the sentencing of a ninth person was postponed for medical reasons — were convicted of public nuisance offenses in a closely watched proceeding on April 9. The prosecution of the 9 figures was seen, both in Hong Kong and elsewhere, as a sign of Beijing tightening its control over the city.

“It’s indeed one of the darkest days in Hong Kong history,” Tak Ho Fong, host of “Peking Hotel” on Hong Kong-based digital radio station D100, told the Gatestone Institute in e-mail comments.

Dark indeed. Nobody strangles democracies like communists, and no communists are more relentless in this regard than Chinese ones. Beijing, with methodical ruthlessness, is trying to bring Hong Kong to heel, and this is a hint of weakness at the center of Chinese politics and governance. China’s communists, whether or not they succeed in Hong Kong, will undermine their efforts to win over Taiwan.

Hong Kong, once a British colony, was “handed back” to China on July 1, 1997 pursuant to the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984. In the Joint Declaration, a treaty with Britain, Beijing promised to afford Hong Kong a “high degree of autonomy” for 50 years. Hong Kong since July 1997 has been designated a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China and governed under the “one country, two systems” formula. Pursuant to this formula, Hong Kong governs itself, except it does not maintain diplomatic relations and does not provide for external defense.

Beijing this month proved it could put activists in jail — prison sentences of other Occupy Central activists were earlier overturned — and in response to the Wednesday sentences human rights organizations issued warnings. “The long sentences send a chilling warning to all that there will be serious consequences for advocating for democracy,” noted Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch.

Relief was nonetheless evident when Judge Johnny Chan Jong-herng of the West Kowloon Court handed down his decision. The activists could have received seven-year prison terms stemming from the 79-day “Umbrella” demonstration, so named because protestors used umbrellas to shield themselves from tear gas. Many of the extradition marchers on Sunday carried umbrellas, not only to block out the sun.

A total of 1.2 million people participated in the 2014 demonstration — peak numbers exceeded 100,000 at times — to stand against Beijing severely restricting the field of candidates for the office of chief executive, the successor post for the colonial governor. As a result of Beijing effectively dishonoring promises of universal suffrage, none of the chief executives — Carrie Lam, the current one, is the fourth since the handover — has been considered legitimate except by supporters of Beijing.

The perceived lack of legitimacy has made the chief executives ineffective. Beijing has responded by infringing on the self-rule it had promised. For one thing, it has rejected, despite the clear wording of the agreement with Britain, the notion that there are any restrictions on its power over Hong Kong like its promise of autonomy for the city.

“The Sino-British Joint Declaration, as a historical document, no longer has any realistic meaning,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang in June 2017. “It also does not have any binding power on how the Chinese central government administers Hong Kong.”

Moreover, China, from behind the scenes, has infringed on Hong Kong’s autonomy by, for instance, arranging the removal of legislators, disqualifying candidates, even outlawing a political party.

Moreover, Beijing, represented in the city by its “Liaison Office,” is now pushing for a law to punish disrespecting the “March of the Volunteers,” the Chinese national anthem.

Beijing’s heavy-handed tactics have not been particularly effective, however. The more it has clamped down, the less popular it has become.

Polls on self-identification carry a chilling message for Beijing. Less than four percent of Hong Kong’s young self-identify as “Chinese” or “broadly Chinese.” That’s down from around 30 percent in 1997. The widely followed Hong Kong University poll shows that fewer people in Hong Kong are proud of their new Chinese nationality than at the handover — 38 percent versus 46.4 percent — and that younger age cohorts are less proud than the population as a whole.

Senior Chinese leaders, by overreaching, have managed to create both an independence movement in Hong Kong and a campaign to return the city to British rule. For now, Hong Kong people express this latter sentiment by, among other things, carrying colonial-era flags and sporting Union Jack-adorned clothing. All this suggests increased activism in Hong Kong.

The continued defiance of Hong Kong’s people in the face of Chinese repression is inspiring resistance in Taiwan. Beijing maintains that the self-governing island is part of the People’s Republic and, going back to the era of Deng Xiaoping, has proposed to rule it under the same “one country, two systems” approach. Yet as Chinese leaders smother Hong Kong, 1C2S, as the plan is known, becomes even less attractive to Taiwan.

“Today’s Hong Kong, tomorrow’s Taiwan” has become the rallying cry of young Taiwanese. The 1C2S idea has united most of Taiwan, including the pro-China elements there, in the belief that becoming part of the People’s Republic would be a nightmare. “In the early 1980s the ‘one country, two systems’ concept was created for Taiwan, not for Hong Kong,” said Ma Ying-jeou to Al Jazeera when he was Taiwan’s president in September 2014. “But Taiwan has sent a clear message that we do not accept the concept.”

Xi Jinping, the current Chinese ruler, once held the Hong Kong portfolio in the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee. He certainly knows that one of the signs of Chinese regime failure is trouble on the periphery, and he is determined that the open defiance in Hong Kong does not spread to other areas far from the center of Chinese power.

Xi has no effective response to Hong Kong, however, and the growing rejection of China there must be of great concern, especially since harsh rule has already lost hearts and minds in China’s west, in both Tibet and what the Chinese call the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Traditional inhabitants of Xinjiang, the Muslim Uighurs, say their land is a separate country, East Turkestan.

“We do not give up,” Chu Yiu-ming, one of the Umbrella Nine, declared from the defendant’s dock on April 9. Chinese dynasties unravel at the edges, and Beijing looks desperate to keep the increasingly resistant Hong Kong, at China’s southern edge, from drifting too far from its control.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2ZPE9iN Tyler Durden

Lockheed Exec Blasts Germany’s “Retrograde Step” Of Refusing F-35 Jet

American defense contractor giant Lockheed Martin has blasted Germany over its refusal to buy its F-35 stealth fighters, in the latest row over the future of NATO defense readiness. 

In early February it was confirmed that Germany snubbed Lockheed’s cutting edge and expensive joint strike fighter, knocking the American stealth fighter of out of a tender worth billions of euros, as Germany’s military considers how to replace its aging Tornado warplanes, for which Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet and Airbus’ NATO Eurofighter Typhoon remain prime alternate contenders.

Image source: Reuters

Lockheed Martin’s vice president for Europe, Jonathan Hoyle, told FT that knocking the F-35 out of contention will only hold Germany back in terms of ability to keep pace with NATO readiness. 

Hoyle described a resulting situation in Europe where “Germany’s position going forward” has been questioned, citing personal conversations with diplomats. These conversations revealed deep “disappointment” with the further criticism that “Germany, which has the biggest defense budget, has just taken this retrograde step and isn’t going to be there”.

“So when we go off and collaborate together operationally, if you are flying stealth, fifth-generation jets, you don’t want a fourth-generation jet in the middle of your operations because everyone can see that”, he told FT. The Lockheed executive still touted Europe as a “key area of growth,” however, especially Poland, which has recently vowed to increase its defense spending. 

Multiple reports since the German Defense Ministry’s decision earlier this year have described it as a major setback for Lockheed: 

The decision was seen as a big setback for Lockheed, the top US arms maker, which had hoped to add to recent F-35 sales to other European countries, including Belgium.

Its European vice-president Jonathan Hoyle said Berlin’s failure to opt for the F-35 had raised concerns among allies and prompted the question: “What does it mean for NATO?”

A final decision will be made pending delivery of detailed information from from Boeing and Airbus about their respective aircraft, which must be able to carry and deliver US nuclear weapons in accord with Germany’s NATO obligations, and which further must be certified by Washington to carry the nukes.

This presents a number of potential fault lines that could crack open wide the US-German relationship, and with implications for broader NATO defense, especially related to German Air Force ability to carry American nuclear warheads.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GVwoAs Tyler Durden

Weeping For Notre Dame… & European Civilization

Authored by Guillaume Durocher via The Unz Review,

The recent fire which destroyed much of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris has led to a great outpouring of emotion. Social media were also ablaze and the government was quickly able to raise a €1 billion in donation pledges to rebuild the iconic monument. Some people I know were quite affected by the sight, being practically reduced to tears. Others were less moved. Quite a few people have been indignant about the money raised: Why not spend such sums on poverty or the environment rather than a mere pile of stone? One person even joked that the edifice should be razed to the ground to make way for something new.

Yet, Notre-Dame resonates. Partly, no doubt, for shallow reasons: Paris is the most-visited city in the world and Notre-Dame is one of the City of Light’s most-visited attractions. As such, millions of frequent-fliers, however godless or anti-Christian they might otherwise be, feel some emotional connection to this great cathedral.

And yet, I think there is something more. Notre-Dame is simply and objectively a national and earthly masterpiece: the intricately semi-controlled chaos of the the Gothic, the delicacy of “stone made into lace” (in the words of Jean-Yves Le Gallou), those gloriously Christian and European luminous flowers of stained glass, so suggestive of the transcendent . . . all this expresses, more viscerally and better than any book, the best that the French soul has had to offer to the world. Notre-Dame is a collective work of art, meticulously built up and maintained from generation to generation.

In much the same way, a nation is a collective work of art, each generation having a responsibility to protect and pass on this inheritance, and add their piece to the edifice. The Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, a perceptive observer of national character if there ever was one, once said: “France is Notre-Dame Cathedral reflected in the Seine . . . a cathedral which spurns the sky.” We will have occasion to meditate on the meaning of these words.

Notre-Dame has a significance going beyond France however. Given France’s remarkable contribution to humanity’s cultural heritage, it is not too surprising that the art historian Kenneth Clarke chose Notre-Dame for the opening of his classic 1969 BBC documentary series Civilisation.

“What is civilization? ,” Clarke rhetorically asks. “I don’t know. I can’t define it in abstract terms yet. But I think I can recognize it when I see it . . .” He then turns to Notre-Dame, adding: “. . . and I’m looking at it now.”

Notre-Dame burning then is a symbol, a shocking reminder, of the impermanence not merely of old monuments, but of nations and civilizations. Growing up, I had the firm feeling that France was a living, vigorous, and timeless nation, and I was often moved reading the old Gaullist rhetoric of the need to fight for la France éternelle. When I saw those great monuments of brick and stone found in all major European cities, I had a feeling of solidity, of an immovable heritage, of a stable world. But all this is an illusion. Nothing is eternal, least of all nations and civilizations, although we may present things otherwise to reassure our selves. That is also why Notre-Dame burning was such a shock: there is the most graphic reminder that France is mortal and indeed Western civilization itself is mortal. This is not a new observation of of course, as the philosopher Paul Valéry said in 1919: “We civilizations now know that we are mortal.”

I must then admit that I was not particularly moved by Notre-Dame burning. I’ve already made my peace with impermanence. I already know that the rot that is consuming France will in all likelihood kill this fair nation within my lifetime. My heart has already been broken. I have already wept for this. Who can claim, in all sincerity, that in a mere hundred years a nation will still exist on this soil – let alone a nation worthy of the name “France”?

And I have wept and raged at my countrymen and my fellows who would persecutethose wish to prevent this. How then may I cry for Notre-Dame? This is the despair of all identitarians, most often a silent despair. And I’ve not done much to express my concern, besides a few scribblings and conversations. But others have. You may be crying for Notre-Dame, but others have wept long before you, at the prospect of our nation, indeed our entire European civilization, sleepwalking into nothingness. It is not a coincidence if Dominique Venner, a great historian and European patriot, took his own life in Notre-Dame Cathedral, the spiritual heart of France, in May 2013, in one final effort to awaken the French people. But how many listened then? That was then. We have today, and tomorrow.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2ZR1kt1 Tyler Durden

UK Donors Abandon Conservatives In Favor Of Brexit Party, ‘Right To Vote’

As rank-and-file Tory members conspire to finally oust Theresa May from No. 10, the party is facing a donor rebellion that will restrict its ability to campaign during the upcoming EU Parliamentary vote, and also leave it in a difficult position if the opposition succeeds in its push for a general election.

Donors from the business community, who in the past have been a significant source of financing for the Tories, are abandoning the party and instead donating to either campaigns for a second Brexit referendum, or Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party (which is leading the Tories in the EU Parliament elections polls) or Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign, according to Business Insider.

May

The shortage of funds has reportedly left the Tories with just £1.5 million ($2 million) in the bank.

The situation has grown so dire that the CEO of the party, Mick Davis, has reportedly been forced to dip into his own pockets to cover some of the costs of the upcoming EU Parliamentary vote. He has reportedly told MPs that supporters have refused to donate because of the infighting over Brexit, which has threatened to tear the party apart.

“There’s a lot of money sloshing around, but most of it isn’t going to the Conservatives,” said one source who spoke with BI. “The conservative party is struggling because people don’t think they’re delivering on their promises,” another said.

The support for another referendum comes as Labour has reportedly re-committed to supporting a second referendum if they can’t secure a general election.

“Donors have identified other vehicles for their particular cause. If you’re a hedge fund manager who’s a keen Brexiteer, you will donate to Boris’s campaign. If you’re a business which backs a second referendum, you will donate to Right to Vote.”

The new Tory-backed referendum campaign, “Right to Vote”, has poured money into polling showing overwhelming support for another referendum. It has also been running ads in local media. It had reportedly spent £40,000 ($45,000) during its first month.

Right to Vote CEO Mark Holdsworth said the public is tired of being told “half-truths” by politicians who have so far failed to deliver on the promise of the Brexit referendum.

“Right to Vote was formed in January this year by a group of centre, centre-right parliamentarians looking to set out a clear way forward for the country.”

“Then as now, the public is sick and tired of politicians on all sides telling them half-truths – and in some cases, blatant untruths – about Brexit, and we have campaigned for the last three months to seek a final say in the Brexit process.”

“This has involved an on-going campaign across TV, radio, newspapers, online and social media, together with regional campaigning on the ground.”

“Since we formed, our group is now cross-party, after Heidi Allen, Sarah Wollaston and Anna Soubry famously quit the Conservative party to join Change UK – but what unites them all is their, and our, desire to offer the public a final say on Brexit.”

One donor who recently defected from the conservatives said that while he’s ‘still a conservative;’ he doesn’t want to donate now because the party’s pro-hard-Brexit stance is ‘anti-business’, he said.

One donor to the campaign, City Pub Group chairman Clive Watson, which operates 44 sites across England and Wales, told Business Insider that he has donated £35,000 in a personal capacity, having previously donated £25,000 to the Conservative party through his business.

“I am still a Conservative party member, but I wouldn’t donate at the moment because I think their European stance is anti-business,” he told Business Insider.

“Brexit is the unknown. It could seriously dislocate supplies to the hospitality industry. Why would I donate to a party that is facilitating that situation?”

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VaU3pg Tyler Durden