"What it’s like to watch someone you love being torn to pieces. Solveig Gold is one of those people."
Writes Bari Weiss, at Common Sense, introducing "What Princeton Did to My Husband/My alma mater is not the school I once loved. But Joshua Katz is exactly the man I knew I married."
ADDED: Gold is now 27, or so I read recently in the NYT, and her essay says she entered Princeton as a student in 2013. So, it seems she met Katz when she was 18 and he was 44. There was a huge age and power difference between them. They began living together in 2019, when she was perhaps 24 and he was 50. She is currently a PhD candidate in Classics, his discipline.
When Gold met Katz: "He was a balding nerd with a belly, and I adored him, but not like that. I adored him because he saw and brought out the best in me as a student and scholar.... Everyone at Princeton adored Joshua, male and female alike."
She continues:
Early on in our courtship in 2018, he confided in me about the worst mistake of his life: a consensual relationship with a Princeton undergraduate in the mid-2000s. He told me about the angst and pain it had caused them both. And he told me that a third party had, after all these years, brought the relationship to the attention of the university and that he would likely be disciplined with a yearlong unpaid suspension. (He was.) He told me I should leave him then and there....
In November 2018, Joshua bought my father a martini and asked for permission to marry me. In March 2019, we found our dream home in Princeton. That December, Joshua proposed....
Go to the link to see more details of the controversy. I'm skipping ahead:
I watched the man I love become a shell of his former self, as he realized that many of his closest friends were not friends at all....
The woman with whom Joshua had the relationship had declined of her own volition to participate in Princeton’s 2018 investigation. Indeed, she had repeatedly by email expressed her dismay that the school would even consider punishing him. In 2021, however, in the wake of both the Daily Princetonian’s McCarthyist reporting and her discovery that Joshua was engaged to marry me (we have this in writing), she demanded that the university investigate Joshua anew. Princeton was all too happy to comply....
I added the boldface. More details of the story omitted.
In the midst of it all, though, we were married: July 17, 2021... Unsurprisingly, the ongoing attacks on my husband have been coupled with attacks on our marriage....
I’ve been told that I was “groomed” because, for instance, we sometimes exchanged emails at 4 a.m. when I was a student (never mind that Joshua answers all his emails at 4 a.m.). The reporter who made so much of this never bothered to ask me for a comment, but I assure you: I’m incapable of being groomed. ...
In 2022, it seems, all sex is to be celebrated—except between older men and younger women. Student-teacher relationships are unwise for all sorts of reasons, and Joshua will be the first to tell you why. But when the same people who think that children can consent to puberty blockers claim that a 21-year-old woman cannot possibly consent to a relationship with her professor, it’s hard to take them seriously....
Oh, come on! It's not all the same "them"! You can't point to one other thing that some people think is good and use it to disqualify everyone who rejects professors having sex with students!
Has Bari Weiss written about teacher/student relationships? There's more going on here that just this "person" who "loves." Presumably, most students who get into relationships with their teachers love them. It's the obligation of the teacher to maintain professionalism.
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I dunno. Mr. Katz was OK with people to his Right getting cancelled and censored. But now they've come for him. Sads.
Weiss and others always try to assure everyone that the current person they're defending wasn't some Goddamn Conservative, he was a REASONABLE. He was ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS. Implicit is that if Katz had been a real Conservative, he would be getting what he deserved.
IOW, its just Trotsky v. Stalin. Sure, the Kulaks deserve to die or go to the Gulag, but when Stalin starts going after "Good Comrades" well, something must be done!
rcocean said...I dunno. Mr. Katz was OK with people to his Right getting cancelled and censored. But now they've come for him. Sads.
Maybe so, but standing up for the Joshua Katz's of the world is still how we dig out from under this mess. And if he emerges a little wiser, so much the better.
Do I detect a hint of cattiness in the professor's remarks
And then there is the chilling message Princeton has sent to Joshua’s colleagues and to academics everywhere: step out of line politically, and we will find a way to bring you down. Show us the man, and we’ll show you the crime.
Nail, head.
tim maguire: what you said. We need to save the payback for the truly bad actors. …I thought it was a very strong letter by Katz’ wife and it should be a constant reproach to the bullies and cowards —at Princeton and so many other places— who are forcing this brutal silencing on everyone.
The impact on families of the persecuted is certainly something that rarely gets attention. That’s what I loved about the movie “A Hidden Life” about the Austrian farmer who was martyred for refusing to sign a loyalty oath to Hitler. The film shows the impact on his family. His children are ostracized from their local church, the other kids and families pushing them away from the first communion procession. His wife and mother get no help harvesting the wheat, which was normally a community activity in their village. People refuse to sell them food. They get spit on. In real life his wife was denied his pension until 1950.
I always wonder about the early Church martyrs’ families. In so many of their stories there are accounts of family members begging them to give up their faith. I wonder if they were persecuted, too, in non fatal ways.
Yes, "the same people who--" is a bogus argument. Though I'm afraid my beloved Rush popularized it. It did seem like it was the "same people" back then, in the 90s.
Nowadays I ask for names.
What's the divorce rate for professor/student marriages vs marriages in general.
There's a man/woman difference that's a lot bigger than the power difference. And what power is that exactly. Officium, potestas, auctoritas, imperium is the classical separation.
'There was a huge age and power difference between them.'
You can make all the rules you want about teachers not having relationships with students. Make everyone who works at the school sign a contract with conditions...that's what happens at most companies.
But if she was 18 then the age difference should not matter.
She is either an adult or a child.
Choose.
Whan Ann retired from being a Professor I felt a little relief (as I think others who follow Ann did) that she was going to escape from what I suspected would eventually be inevitable -- becoming the target of a Madison mob and a concerted effort to get her fired, due to some honest (but non-woke) post she made on here, with jerks camping outside her home and screaming profanities. I'm 100% behind Katz. Seems like a decent fellow. I doubt that if he had it to do all over again he would elect not to start dating Solveig (after she had left Princeton, of course). But Princeton has won - we're discussing his love life instead of his being wrongfully terminated for publicly disagreeing with asinine woke crap.
What I know about Princeton is Admission (2013, Tina Fey, Paul Rudd) and its airport. My boss at work once had me cut out early and fly him to Princeton to pick up his repaired airplane.
My Oberlin is similarly different from the one I attended, namely it's gone insane and unaware, selfwise.
How about a "professionalism bullshit" tag?
The woman scorned. What an old, pathetic tale.
Like the new Mrs. Katz says, all sex is to be celebrated except sex between older men and younger women. That is the literal truth, and says a lot about the society we live in.
"But when the same people who think"
Oh, come on! It's not all the same "them"!
It never is. It's always a bullshit argument.
Her timeline is suspicious:
“I decided to apply for early admission to Princeton after sitting in on Professor Joshua Katz’s seminar in April of 2012. I’m afraid I don’t remember the content of the seminar, but I do remember the way he captivated the classroom—the way his students hung onto his every word and the way he hung onto theirs.”
…
“Because I was one of the seniors chosen to sing “Old Nassau” at Commencement, I was onstage for the ceremony alongside the faculty. As we peeled off to march two by two down the aisle and out the gate, I was serendipitously joined from across the stage by Joshua. We laughed and took a selfie.”
…
Serendipitously.
“In November 2018, Joshua bought my father a martini and asked for permission to marry me. In March 2019, we found our dream home in Princeton. That December, Joshua proposed.”
What December was that? December 2018, a month after he asked her father for permission, or December 2019, a year later? Less serendipitously?
I beg to differ with part of your assessment.Balding nerds do NOT have all the power in a relationship with a young attractive woman. And do we know who pursued who? It does kind of make a difference. I am fortunate in that I found a young attractive woman while I was fairly attractive myself (fresh out of Airborne school, she loved the muscles but her first comment to her sister was "but he doesn't have and HAIR!" (the white sidewalls from Airborne school were still pretty bright). But an old balding nerd being paid sexual attention to by a young coed? He is going to fall hard and fast if he does not have a good woman at home. Now, he may have pursued her and used his position inappropriately....but over a decade after the fact how are we going to know?
There has been talk about the erotic elent in education going back to Socrates and Plato. I'd like to know the rest of the story, though. She's young and in love and says that it was impossible to groom her. Will she still feel the same way 20 years later?
as a classicist with honors from one of the "minor ivies"(Senator Cruz'
endearing term), and as one whose error in judgment was in seeking redemption for an extra-marital affair by contrition, it astounds me that a gaggle of begowned snits should bypass forgiveness to surge into lynching. On the other hand, Professor Katz might be seen as a recidivist with a pattern of invading the children's playground for playmates. Yet again, the narrative presents an affront to the time-honored prohibition against double jeopardy. The whole crowd needs a
visit to the woodshed and, in modern pedagogy, a "time out" to consider their respective ownership of this sad story.
"Everyone at Princeton adored Joshua, male and female alike."
Well, I know people had their favorite teachers, and some are stars on campus. But this nonetheless sounds a little off.
"Oh, come on! It's not all the same "them"! You can't point to one other thing that some people think is good and use it to disqualify everyone who rejects professors having sex with students!"
Well, she is not just "pointing to one other thing that some people think is good," or trying to "disqualify" people from rejecting professor sex with students, she is saying that if consent is the proper basis for allowing minors to change gender, then it should also allow adult women to engage in a relationship with a professor. Which is a much less fraught action, taken by a more responsible person, assumed to be able to give consent and exercise agency in every other aspect of her life.
I myself think prof-student sex is generally a bad idea (and the writer herself calls it "unwise"), but it is not clear that by current prog standards, relying on "consent" and autonomy, a blanket prohibition is justified, including for relationships where the prof has no direct authority over the student.
rcocean said...I dunno. Mr. Katz was OK with people to his Right getting cancelled and censored. But now they've come for him. Sads
I ask this sincerely, since I don't really have the time to wade through all of this -- what is the evidence that Katz was "OK with people to his Right getting cancelled and censored"?
What are we going to do with all these young women who are attracted to men who are older or wiser or richer or powerful? The problem is compounded by the fact that many older, richer, etc men are attracted to pretty young women who are attracted to them. Perhaps some form of conversion therapy? Maybe if more children are read fairy tales by drag queens some of these problems could be snuffed out in childhood.
Dear accusers/journalists, when is a women too old to be groomed?
Question 2, should women younger than the answer to the first question not be allowed to date anyone without governmental permission?
The N-word. Cancel culture. Political congruence ("=") is a liberal and progressive construct.
Presumably, most students who get into relationships with their teachers love them. It's the obligation of the teacher to maintain professionalism.
Take a knee, beg, good girl... #MeToo #HerToo
Self-moderation is a moral virtue discouraged in ethical societies.
Apparently not EVERYONE at Princeton "adored" Joshua.
Hello? what about all the Grad students who weren't Professor Katz's girlfriend? She's now in the "Magic Circle" and is on her way to being a Professor in the classics - just like Katz. Well, how convivient for her.
I don't care if she was "Groomed". I do care that she got good grades, special privilages, and got put on the promotion track because she was a professor's main squeeze.
Academia is so rife with corruption and favoritism, I suppose this isn't even worth mentioning. Frankly, I think the whole liberal arts in College should be abolished, but evidently Americans just like paying taxes (directly or indirectly) for Professors who do nothing worthwile while pulling huge salaries.
It may not be ALL the same “them,” but I’d be willing to bet that there’s significant overlap in the Venn diagram.
OK, I had to do an image search.
Gold is really cute.
Mazel tov to Katz.
You learn something surprising here every day: rhhardin graduated from Oberlin, the oldest coeducational college or university in the U.S. Something in the coeducation didn’t take.
I'm not sure how to draw sensible lines between professors and students who genuinely fall in love, but fall in love they do.
I had a crush on a classmate back in prehistory--an unsuccessful one, partly because she fell in love with my all-time favorite professor. They married and raised a family, a big family.
I'm happy for them. I guess some people wouldn't be.
BTW, I'm not interested in "proving" my assertions regarding Katz. People need to start putting out their own views, and taking their own shot. Stop with the "I"m skeptical about your comment". I mean who cares?
There was a huge age and power difference between them.
Ignoring the power held by women over a middle aged man.
Ignoring my body, my choice.
Would there be an outrage if it were two lesbians (there is precedent to say, "No".
---Indeed, she had repeatedly by email expressed her dismay that the school would even consider punishing him. In 2021, however, in the wake of both the Daily Princetonian’s McCarthyist reporting and her discovery that Joshua was engaged to marry me (we have this in writing), she demanded that the university investigate Joshua anew. Princeton was all too happy to comply....
Feminism at work. Equal rights. Althouse must love it.
The women gets to exercise those rights whenever she pleases. Aha, now she pleases. Curse that blackhearted man who loved me! He gets fired.
Remind me why women have the right to vote. This is how law and policy should be made on the national level? By vengeful nincompoops?
There was a huge age and power difference between them.
A few people keyed into this sentence and it's worth noting--once upon a time, doctors married nurses and executives married their secretaries. Now doctors marry other doctors and executives marry other executives. The old system encouraged mixing between social groups, minimized concentration of wealth and status, and society was better for it. The new system does the opposite--it creates bubbles and encourages inequality. It separates the classes and entrenches a new aristocracy and we are worse for it.
So there was a huge age and power difference between them? I've explained why that is something to be celebrated; someone else will have to explain why it's a problem.
People should STFU about campus sex. Consenting adults and all that?
The power differential argument is, as Tim observes, usually a self-serving feminist (or jealous betamale) rationalization for the desire to control other and usually better people.
And be assured this sort of thing happens all the time in the groves of academe, always has, and always will, life-hating scolds be damned.
This one is highly publicized mostly because it's Princeton.
rcocean:
It's a good thing you're "not interested in proving your assertions regarding Katz", or rather it's a pathetic thing, because some of them are provably false.
She wasn't a grad student when she was his student: she's a grad student now at Cambridge University, which isn't even on the same continent, and he can't give her "good grades" or "special privilages" (learn to spell), or put her "on the promotion track". (The fact that she's going to school on a different continent is strong evidence that this is in fact a "marriage of true minds", not just a horny old bald guy lusting after a much younger body.)
She can't be "a Professor in the classics - just like Katz", because (a) he's not one at the moment - he was fired, remember? - and (b) any wife of his will be automatically blacklisted by 99% of Classics departments along with him, no matter how qualified she is when she finishes at Cambridge. (I've heard that the University of Dallas is planning to hire him, but that's one of the 3-5 colleges in the U.S. conservative enough to even think of hiring someone who dissed the BLM movement, and is a long step down from Princeton. Maybe she can be an adjunct there.)
By the way, quite a few classicists on Twitter are claiming that he's a third-rate scholar (simply false) and that no one should ever quote anything he wrote again. Apparently we're all supposed to pretend that he was not the first one to argue X or Y or Z and pretend that someone else did instead, which is grossly unprofessional and deeply dishonest.
Will she still feel the same way 20 years later?
Quite possibly, but a big age difference can be a problem anyway. One of the saddest things I've seen was a couple where the man was becoming senile. He was a wonderful gentleman of the true, old fashioned sort, and I could easily see why his younger wife had married him. But she looked so sad watching him while he was talking to me. He was in that repeating himself stage of decline.
"I dunno. Mr. Katz was OK with people to his Right getting cancelled and censored."
Do you know that to be true? Can you document that statement?
Well, how about this; when you accept a job, you agree to follow the rules. If you break the rules, you may get away with it, or you may not. If you get caught, you may lose the job. It happens. Alternatively, when you realize that you don't want to live with those rules, you can quit the job. I've done it more than once. But I don't take jobs all that seriously. You work, and they pay you.
So, the issue here is really that we don't believe a man should have to choose between being married to the much younger woman he claims to love, and being a FULL FUCKING PROFESSOR at Goddamn-it-all-to-Hell PRINCETON fucking UNIVERSITY!!! With maybe a subtext of would she still have wanted to marry the loveable old bastard if he worked for some little literary magazine somewhere.
Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn.
And by the way, are we still pretending BLM is a thing? Haven't they been outed as a five-star, brass-bound grift? I mean, I would much rather have that Cullors whore pissing away the money she got from all those woke billionaires buying mansions than doing what she claimed she was going to do. But is anyone still pretending that she is anything other than one more cheap black hustler on the make? Are we supposed to go on cancelling people on her behalf, after she's been shown to be a stone rip-off? I guess it worked for Sharpton and Jackson. Hustlers gonna hustle. Chumps gonna chump.
When you're a popular professor some coeds will just let you grab them by the curriculum, and nobody will raise a fuss as long as you have the right politics.
I urge Princeton alumni to withhold annual contributions. I stopped giving to MIT and if they ever ask why, I will tell them I’ll start giving again when the President of MIT makes a public apology to Prof. Dorian Abbot for canceling him from the prize lecture he had been invited to give. And that offense against reason and sanity pales in comparison to Princeton’s in this case.
Teaching Classics at Princeton sounds like a great gig. Not quite money for nothing and chicks for free, but still . . . if only ida knowed.
A former colleague of mine (got tenure, took the first better job elsewhere, as the best of them did, alas) is now at Princeton. It has a fine library collection and all the trimmings, but I see some of the faculty on the telly and am seldom favorably impressed.
Their sex lives are their business, until they start frightening the horses.
As I said when to my friend when I heard that Ken Starr was squeezing a young intern for information about her relationship with President Bill Clinton, no one involved is going to come out of this looking good. Clinton (POTUS) was in a wildly unequal power relationship with the young but not inexperienced Monica. But then Clinton's hero was JFK, so, there you go.
Katz probably is a great prof, but who at Princeton cares about that? He made trouble. He embarrassed Eisgruber. All that virtue-signaling by the faculty--compromised! How can they celebrate Mrs. Obama, an alumna in whom they take great pride, with Katz hanging around the Ancient Greek stacks in the library? He flunked the Princeton Social Contract. What will they say to Prof. Krugman? Katz called a local ra-ra black students' pressure organization a terrorist group. How can Princetonians proclaim their superiority with that guy around? And the meshuga guy married a very young former student after having shtupped another girl and been suspended for it. That former girlfriend had to do something. Katz might shtup again!
Well, no one looks good here. And we, who remember our college days with advantages, recall all the jokes about the attractive co-eds who sat in the front row with that extra blouse button unbuttoned. That was sure to get a rise out of someone.
Well, Abelard met a sterner fate. Maybe Katz can write a modern "History of My Calamities."
It's sad to say, but I don't have enough regard for my alma mater and employer to ever give them a dime. Not even to the library, where I worked.
After seeing from the inside just how low and incompetent most academic administrators are, and how inflated their pay and perks (leave aside egos), my policy is to take, only. I use the library and pool privileges that cost me nothing. I even get free general parking, which will be great for the evening chamber music concerts when the new music complex opens.
A 21-year-old is an adult.
I'm against this idea that people aren't allowed to meet spouses in professional settings.
"You can't point to one other thing that some people think is good and use it to disqualify everyone who rejects professors having sex with students!"
In this case I am fully on her side. I do not buy all the "power imbalance" stuff. People who are both of the age of consent can give consent. I doubt any two people on earth are fully equal in terms of "power," whatever the hell that even means. It's none of my business in any case. But more importantly, this entire disgrace has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue of professors having sex with students. It has to do with the fact that Katz soundly and yet perfectly respectfully stood up to a bunch of BML-style thugs who issued a monumentally totalitarian list of threats and demands, and Princeton cowered before them.
I am an attorney. I am prohibited from dating clients, and I could potentially lose my law license if I were to do so. It's not much of a hardship.
If we were talking about a relationship between a professor and a student from the 1970's or 1980's, it would seem different to me, but I was a business major in college in the mid 1990's - post Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings. It was drilled into us that romantic relationships were for outside of the work setting.
Don't date students. It's a pretty easy rule to follow.
"I beg to differ with part of your assessment.Balding nerds do NOT have all the power in a relationship with a young attractive woman. And do we know who pursued who? It does kind of make a difference."
Not to me. The professor has an obligation and deals with many many students. If the professor is morally weak and can't handle sexual offers (or offers of bribes), then he's not in the right job.
It's not fair to the other students and it's not fair to the institution that is paying him.
'Quite possibly, but a big age difference can be a problem anyway. One of the saddest things I've seen was a couple where the man was becoming senile. He was a wonderful gentleman of the true, old fashioned sort, and I could easily see why his younger wife had married him. But she looked so sad watching him while he was talking to me. He was in that repeating himself stage of decline.'
You know the Bidens? Cool!
"It's not fair to the other students and it's not fair to the institution that is paying him."
That assumes the professor has influence over the student and can discriminate in favor of her/him. Since that does not apply to many possible prof/student relationships, it does not justify a general rule.
If "being unfair to the other students" is the main concern, universities should be much more vigilant about the many ways particular faculty can favor particular students.
I knew a woman who married a much older man. They met as student and professor. They had a happy marriage and life together. When he was dying, she said to me, "I knew I signed up for this in a May to September romance." I am not inclined to condemn May to September romances, even when they start in a professional setting. A woman and a man can gain in such a relationship, and everyone makes choices based on love and self-interest.
"Solveig Gold, a classics major pursuing a certificate in humanistic studies, is one of two Princeton seniors selected as co-winners of the 2017 Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, the University’s highest general distinction awarded to an undergraduate. An alumnus of the yearlong, team-taught Humanities Sequence, she has previously won a Charles A. Steele Prize, a Harland Prize and received a Stanley J. Seeger Summer Fellowship to study in Greece."
Impressive. Quite a catch.
All other things being equal, Bari Weiss is not a friend to conservatives. She has let go of a lot of the tenets of leftism, but she still sees herself as being on a side, and she doesn't believe most conservatives, especially ones who proudly voted for Donald Trump, are on her side.
Conservatives may appreciate her, but they should do it from afar. Embracing her is a mistake.
It is strangely gratifying to know that the lives of even the most privileged people can sometimes resemble a bad soap opera.
Many of us recall that Althouse was very clear about the advantages sought by the "Me too" girls and boys who for professional reasons gave their oppressors what they wanted. She said then, what about the young people who held out and never got the part because they did? They were victims, too. And those who fell on the casting couch were not completely innocent if they got the part they wanted.
I'd say Althouse is very consistent in her position here that there are victims unseen in these situations.
Three cheers for professionalism by professors--and all men and women in power positions.
The condemnation of the relationship depends heavily on stereotypes-- both of the older man, of younger women, of professors, and of students.
P.S. I'm one degree of separation from Johnny Depp ("Sep from Depp") and Heard is loco.
Women are going to have to make a decision, collectively: Are they grown-up creatures, with their own agency, or are they forever children, irresponsible for their own actions?
This kind of thing is a two-way street; the sweet young thing seeking older male attention is quite often as much or more at fault than the male in the equation, yet nobody holds her responsible for what she does. Ever. Bill Clinton is rightly excoriated; Monica Lewinsky? The unwitting "innocent victim" is what she's cast as in most accountings.
I don't think I've ever seen an older woman held to the same standards as an older male, when she's dallying with younger men. Nobody gets outraged; it's all "Good for her... Stella's getting her groove back..."
The thing that's going to be the actual cause for women in general going back into cultural purdah is this reflexive refusal to assess responsibility fairly. Both parties know that a relationship between student and teacher is improper, but the only one held accountable is the "powerful male", who like as not, is essentially in thrall to his own sex drive.
If women want to be regarded a helpless and childlike, by all means... Keep this crap up. Eventually, the contradictions will catch up, and you'll be treated as childlike and helpless in all aspects of life. You can't be all grown up and have agency over your life in just one or two aspects; you're either a fully-actuated adult, or you're not.
Personally, I don't think that sexual relationships between teachers and students are a good idea. At. All. But, the double standard where we say that the "40-something male" half of the couple is the only one we're going to hold responsible and punish? WTF? She knew as well as he did that it was wrong; why is she being allowed to walk away, presumably after having gotten what she wanted in terms of validation and advantage? Neither party is innocent, in my opinion.
I watched similar dynamics taking place in the military, all the time. Rare was the "innocent little girl" who just didn't know any better, taken advantage of by the big, bad man. Usually, it was some sexually sophisticated little slut using her wiles to get over on the situation, trading her sexuality for advantage. The males, in nearly all cases, were idiots.
>>My Oberlin is similarly different from the one I attended, namely it's gone insane and unaware, selfwise.
Ditto for my Harvard (undergrad and law school). I gave them a fair amount of money over the years because I got a decent financial package and wouldn't likely have had the money if I hadn't attended. I have cut them off completely for the last couple of years, even without considering that they have more than enough money already. The insanity is overwhelming. We're having a small undergrad mini-reunion next week; twill be interesting to see how it works out.
I did not give H nearly as much as I have given and continue to give to my Jesuit high school, both for similar reasons and because they do good for low-income students who can do the work (which is where my money goes), including black students who aren't Catholic but want a good education. Without getting into the details, I would similarly never be where I am today financially but for certain opportunities I got from the school. Today I attended my first geezer fest there, after taking the train from Boston to Chicago last night. Apparently they stop doing individual reunions after the 50th (ours was last fall) and just cart in all the geezers once a year. I went because they gave a lifetime achievement award to a guy a year ahead of me that I used to hang out with, who also came up to Boston from New Jersey for the two big birthday parties I did for my 30th and 50th birthdays (I will be curling up in a ball in the corner for my 70th in a year and a half or so).
Hopefully I will get out of Chicago alive after this weekend. Will be going to see The Seagull at Steppenwolf tomorrow afternoon and Six downtown on Sunday afternoon. Having lunch with one of my classmates from the said Jesuit high school on Monday. The diciest part may be if I work up the energy to go to a piano bar tomorrow night (well, I guess, tonight), meaning I'll be getting back to my hotel in the West Loop, probably by el, around 11 or 12. Never bothered me to ride the el at night before, but things have gotten a lot scarier in Chicago recently.
--gpm
---If "being unfair to the other students" is the main concern, universities should be much more vigilant about the many ways particular faculty can favor particular students. [Sebastian]
Universities are such bastions of privilege and cash flow that the old-fashioned virtues, like vigilance and discipline and fairness, have disintegrated under the plushness. Princeton's administration sounds arbitrary, capricious, petty and vindictive all at once in this situation. The case sounds almost like a spiteful dictate by a Roman emperor. There had been ethics and standards that governed decisions in quality educational institutions, and frequently they did not require much if any spelling out in a handbook -- the basic features were understood.
But elements that require a little stiffening of the spine, a little attention to character -- as educational institutions once understood to be an important part of their mission -- tend to yield to easy money, big-business-style operating dictates, and certain ideologies. On top of that, and partly from the same forces, all our institutions have disintegrated, from the ACLU to the FBI. So who ya gonna call?
This is the world that "liberal" Baby Boomers created. They approved of and pursued certain points of social engineering -- let's boost women, so discriminated against; let's boost African-Americans, so discriminated against; let's discourage capitalism and venture enterprise (unless our R&D faculty can generate royalty income) since those are the engines of oppression and discrimination and they're yucky, aren't they? Whether the assumptions were accurate, biased, or wildly wrong, the problem is unavoidable. If you favor this group or that; if you disfavor others; fairness and the vigilance to maintain it are not possible.
And so this episode is yet another illustration of that rot -- a high-handed application of power from those apparently with neither ethics nor character to their account. I hear Howard's standard critique of comments from the older complaining about this new day, but it seems to be a statement of fact that many of our society's institutions have deteriorated badly. The only solution I can imagine that could reverse this situation is a general hardship. It is hardly a condition to desire, but it does come around at particular moments in any society's history. Only challenges that call upon -- that demand -- the better angels of human nature to arise and overcome the hardships could possibly repair the damage that our illiberal "liberals" have succeeded in inflicting on the nation. Not quite one of the Greatest Generations, but fate and circumstances make their own rules. They (we) will die out and renewal will get its opportunity, I believe.
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