I understand how an op-ed columnist can try that rhetorical subterfuge, but an editor should have insisted on acknowledgment.
— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) January 5, 2024
January 6, 2024
It is still possible to astonish.
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Life itself, gender itself, sex itself... the three precedents of diversity.
My exchange with TCW right before the post Ann blogged. I am Sherri Iowa. 81 likes. He blocked me. Snowflake.
Thomas Chatterton Williams
@thomaschattwill
You don’t actually have to commit yourself to an ideological team. You can actually remain more aloof and try to judge things case by case. You don’t have defend some people’s transgressions and not others. You can un-align yourself.
7:38 AM · Jan 5, 2024
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Thomas Chatterton Williams
@thomaschattwill
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*to defend
Sherri Iowa
@SherriIowa
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22h
I don’t trust people with three word names.
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If merit can't be defined then why choose any person over any other for any task? Would the columnist choose me, an IT professional, over a neurosurgeon to perform brain surgery on them? Or would they say that that is not what merit means? To which I would reply, then you can define it? Would you rather have a neurosurgeon that had performed 10 successful surgeries or one that had 10 patients die under their knife?
The left seems to be under the illusion that they can subvert institutions and appoint people without qualifications other than conforming to the lefts' ideology, and that people will continue to respect and defer to those institutions. But in the real world major corporations are eliminating the requirement to have a college degree. The value of a college degree is rapidly decreasing. In fact, in the not to distant future people might start to consider not revealing that they have one.
“An earlier version of this article misstated the size of Harvard’s endowment. It is $50 billion, not $500 million. The article also misspelled the surname of a journalist. He is Aaron Sibarium, not Sibirium.”
Tessie claims that merit can’t be defined. For Harvard admission, it can be. SAT score, class rank, GPA and athletic or arts achievement. There’s no disputing a 100 yard dash time or a 1400 SAT score.
To ride on Dave Begley's coattails,
Getting into the Navel Academy requires merit. When I visited there the tour leader stated that they get 10 applications for every available slot and even the history majors have to take advanced math courses. And while there the plebes are ranked according to merit.
Two guys from my 1975 class were admitted to Harvard. For our freshman year, the school posted all of our grades and averages on a computer printout (then quite new) for the entire school to see. These two were at the very top. They both came from rich Omaha families, but the guy who was number one certainly didn’t.
I’m still friends with one of them. I adapted his book to my screenplay, “Frankenstein, Part II.” Brilliant novel and screenplay.
You can buy the book through the Althouse AMZN portal.
Merit is a highly nuanced word. Its use should only be employed by trained professionals with a background and rigorous training in DEI analytics. To vastly oversimplify, merit depends upon the context.
The article said...
"An earlier version of this article misstated the size of Harvard’s endowment. It is $50 billion, not $500 million. The article also misspelled the surname of a journalist. He is Aaron Sibarium, not Sibirium."
Dave Begley responsed...
"Tessie claims that merit can’t be defined..."
Nicely done.
I am willing to listen to a story that Harvard is not about merit because they cannot define it. Shsss, nobody tell them where they could get a copy of the definition. Let’s see if they can do their own original work this time.
NYT, the paper of record for decivilization. The Claudine Gay Affair highlights the hypocrisy of the progressives, I mean the forces for decivilization. They hate honesty, hard work, promptness and the other values that made Western Civilization the preeminent civilization of the world. Until the progressive started infiltrating all aspects of society. These decivilizers are nothing but parasites, living off and polluting Western Civilization.
Bring back the Western Civilization courses and flush all the "studies" courses. And, flush 90% of the academic administrators, including the DEI parasites. Give the instructors power to keep order in their classrooms, by any means necessary. This goes for all levels of education, K-12 and college.
I see where Ackman's wife has been accused of plagiarism. She has a PhD from MIT and apparently some of the paragraphs in her dissertation were improperly cited. Here's the important context: She has a PhD from MIT and she looks hot enough to be a trophy wife for a billionaire. You don't often see that confluence of circumstances.
Ketanji Brown Jackson can’t define merit because she’s not a biologist.
Ron Winkleheimer said...
"But in the real world major corporations are eliminating the requirement to have a college degree. The value of a college degree is rapidly decreasing. In fact, in the not to distant future people might start to consider not revealing that they have one."
The scene: The not to distant future.
The place: A bar where two co-workers from the New York Times get together for drinks after work.
The time: After they have had a couple of drinks.
Sarai (sobbing slightly): Tressie, I have done a terrible thing.
Tressie: What-?
Sarai: In-in my defense, I was young and did not know better.
Tressie: You can tell me.
Sarai: I - I - I got a journalism degree from Harvard.
Tressie (consolingly): There, there. That's bad, but not the worst thing. I promise I won't tell anyone.
Sarai (starting to tremble): But that's not all.
Tressie: (blinks questioningly).
Sarai: I *didn't* plagiarize! I actually wrote my own stuff! I could have copied from the best and carried a 4.0. But nooo! I actually wrote my own thoughts and got just a 3.0.
Tressie: (slowly withdraws in horror).
Sarai: With a 4.0, I could have gone to work for Reuters or AP. Instead the best my 3.0 could get me was a job at the Times.
Tressie: I think I need to get you an Uber.
It certainly takes merit to make it as an officer in the USMC. If you are judged by the men’s standards
Dave Begley said...My exchange with TCW right before the post Ann blogged I am Sherri Iowa. 81 likes. He blocked me. Snowflake.
Looking at your post, I would have ignored you, but I can’t blame him for filing you under “life’s too short.”
I was just reading about the Duke of Wellington and his tenure as head of the British Army. He was criticized then and in later times for his handling of it. He felt that officers should come from the landed class and saw nothing wrong with them buying their commissions. He felt that officers of this social strata would not be dependent upon their pay for their livelihood and would be less likely to engage in the kind of opportunism displayed by Napoleon and many of his generals. The British Army was not reformed until a generation or two after Wellington's demise. On the plus side, there were no military coups in Britain such as happened in many of the continental states during Wellington's long career. Their officer class consisted of many men with something to prove and who considered Napoleon an aspirational figure.....Harvard used to chose mostly from the brighter children of the establishment and the haute bourgeois. Back then, Harvard grads weren't especially interested in radically remaking American society.
I agree with her in one respect: the job of president of Harvard has little to do with academic merit (at least as most people would understand the word).
It is a bureaucratic position entirely, one where for the Harvard Board the major qualification is checking the correct DEI boxes. For this, Gay was eminently qualified: "Competitive programs recruit and train cohorts of early-career scholars to prepare them to become provosts and presidents. Beyond that, 'nontraditional' university presidents are highly prized in the modern university. University boards view them as market-friendly and business-savvy." So, merit is indeed involved in her hiring, just not the "merit" any reasonable individual would assume it is.
This, of course, is exactly the problem, and it's noteworthy that the author does not find it necessary to substantively defend this approach. It's just assumed in the pages of the NYT that any correct-thinking individual would agree with this nonsense.
DEI was designed to take merit out of the equation.
Mr. Williams is very funny. We are entering an era of some pretty great black male idiosyncratic writers. Let's enjoy it.
I've had the displeasure of meeting Ms. Cottom and being forced to read her work. She is virulently racist against whites, so virulent she won a Guggenheim. One notes she didn't turn it down, considering the source. Her great dialectical sin, however, is mind-numbing repetition.
Chapel Hill Libraries, where she is tenured, albeit in a field more associated with educating librarians and other teachers, used to have the best academic Southern Research Library.
I wonder what it has now.
Selective definitions now?
This confirms we've reached late-stage postmodernism, where efforts to explain everything per the social construction of reality "divides by zero" and gets ERROR on the output screen. There is no logical way to distinguish between picking and choosing selective truths and old-school monarchs, tyrants, totalitarians, bullies, and fascists. The Woke DEI SJWs and ANTIFA are now openly who they fought and condemned a generation ago. No self awareness, no internal criticism allowed. Treat them as mentally ill and mentally malformed, for they surely are.
Gaza / Israel and the appearance of actual Nazi flags at the anti-Israel protests may well have been the breaking point. Watch the frightened moderate left run away from the hard left and...perhaps into an alliance with Musk and Trump?
Stalin's purges resulted in competent people being replaced by incompetent but ideologically reliable people. This resulted in an entirely predictable death spiral across Soviet society, necessitating continuous replacement of the previous round of incompetents. This proceeded until, in Conquest's estimate, they were literally on the verge of burning through the entire population (IIRC, something on the order of 5% of the population was purged, with each round typically resulting in about 6 people implicated by victims of the previous round). Hopefully we'll shitcan DEI long before that point. Hopefully. But the idea that some people have that the likes of Gay can't be purged is wrong. They're just replaced by someone even more incompetent. Merit certainly can be defined: it's obviously one of the many faces of White Supremacy (just like showing up to work for Jodie Foster on time).
Dave Begley said...
My exchange with TCW right before the post Ann blogged. I am Sherri Iowa. 81 likes. He blocked me. Snowflake.
Dave Begley is trans now? Who'd a thunk it!
Well bless his heart. Mr. Williams just realized that Progressives have been using rhetorical subterfuge to rot out major institutions.
“My exchange with TCW right before the post Ann blogged. I am Sherri Iowa. 81 likes. He blocked me. Snowflake.”
‘Dave Begley is trans now? Who'd a thunk it!’
I’m getting a “Dressed to Kill” vibe here.
"This is an astonishing piece that argues "merit, itself, cannot be defined," yet it does not mention the word plagiarism even one time......I understand how an op-ed columnist can try that rhetorical subterfuge, but an editor should have insisted on acknowledgment...."
Unless...... 'what?', Mr. Williams - unless, 'what?'? Unless acknowledgment points to the need for an explanation?
The Progressive Left successfully avoids debate and confrontation with the protective cover of journals like this one, because these would be two ways that force them to explain themselves. Their arguments are weak; they cannot. This is an example of how they prevail: a specious avoidance of the dangerous words like plagiarism and merit. Cheap tricks.
Justin Addison: He was an MIT PhD.
Jed Clampitt: Quit worrying about what your Pa done!
Leftists try to destroy what they are not capable of understanding.
Reason is target #1.
That's postmodernism for you.
I don’t trust people with three word names.
I'm hip! Look at Lee Harvey Oswald or John Wayne Gacy!
Actually, when your name is as bland as "Thomas Williams", you can't begrudge a guy for throwing in a "Chatterton" once in awhile...
Can you define merit?
I am not a biologist.
Miss Plagiarism is still getting 900,000 a year at Harvard as a faculty member for life.
Saying "merit cannot be defined" is like saying standards cannot be defined. But they can. And are in many industries, in many businesses, in many households. There are two places where standards are notably not used or even more, steps are taken to assiduously avoid using black and white standards.
1) Government. Even though our Constitution lists very specific standards for the Federal Government, it has long been ignored, and the Leviathan just keeps on growing.
2) Education. Rather than have something specific to hold people accountable to, this industry offers a lifetime position (tenure) in which, those holding the power can approve or not approve you, based on whatever moving criteria they decide on to keep things homogenous in thought. I guess that might be called a 'standard' except that it's ever-changing. And once those people are handed the magic tenure package, they are absolved of pretty much anything. Until and unless their actual work or behavior is brought to light and even then it will be ignored unless the pressure continues, the embarrassment grows, and the donor dollars fall off precipitously. I guess, in some circles that might be considered a standard.
A friend sent me a meme which may fit the discussion.
"In one hundred years we've gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college." - Joseph Sobran
"an editor should have insisted"
LOL. Funny guy. Hey, C-W, this is the NYT, and this, by the looks of it, is a black woman contributor.
The issues are not the issues. The revolution is. The struggle continues, as my comrades and I used to say in the old days.
Sherri Iowa is my nom de guerre.
But the Nebraska Dems figured it out. My writing style is unique. The Dems have a secret online forum where they talk about me. So some Dems blocked me in advance. Nebraska Dems hate me with a passion.
And, yes, the Dems have made the trans charge as if it is a bad thing. Hypocrites.
The really funny thing is that a trans woman from CA has moved back to Nebraska to run against the state Senator who stopped child mutilation.
"In one hundred years we've gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college." - Joseph Sobran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk1ZGQc74bA
"merit, itself, cannot be defined"
I think I found the problem.
Sherri Iowa goes away this weekend.
"...but an editor should have insisted on acknowledgment."
Because what, integrity? Bwahahaha!
Beauty cannot be defined. That is why they have stopped building beautiful buildings.
Seems like a lot of words to say '...cos she's black'.
"Joseph McCarthy could only have wished for the networked media power that today’s reactionary power seekers possess. The speed, scale and amplification of the power to capture an aspect of routine workaday life and cast it as nefarious activity are staggering. What has happened at Harvard is not just a blueprint for taking over higher education; it is a strategy for taking over our information environment."
Really? She believes (or at least argues) that it's the right that is in control of the academy and the dissemination of information today?
Good semi-fisking by Charles Cooke at NRO.
The airplane staying in the air proves merit, in the design, the construction and the operation. The crashed airplane proves the lack of merit. Why DEI has no place in aviation.
The idea that the leader of a university does not need to be a top academic is the same as saying that a general should not have commanded men in battle with good results as a junior officer but was an administrator in the last war. The MBA’s can run anything rule leads to companies like GM or US Steel that were soulless piles of inertia.
Institutions must be led from the top by the best examples of excellence in the field demonstrated by starting at the bottom and being the best at each stage of your life as you work up, from student, to prof, to dean, to chancellor, to president. Sure you need good administrators, but did Edison report to a general manager? Should the POTUS be the best of the GSA accountants?
Not to put down admin and management, but your org should be led by the one best respected for long term contact with the core business.
She was lacking merit, that's the point.
She was a quota hire and a not-too-bright one at that.
The top comments on the article are surprisingly and encouragingly negative and carry thousands of recommendations.
Racists. Or perhaps even Times subscribers were embarrassed by the debacle.
Hahaha. I am not astonished. I am not even mildly surprised. What is astonishing is when they actually publish something approaching the truth.
It isn't really necessary to define "merit" to be entirely certain that Claudine Gay is without the least vestige of that quality. She might as well have a big zero tattooed on her forehead. The kind the programmers use, that has a slash through it, so no one will mistake it for a capital "O".
I have read that the Soviet revolutionaries quite deliberately chose their apparatchiks from the ranks of the completely incompetent. They selected people who would never have risen on the strength of their own abilities, and placed them in positions of wealth and power. Those persons could never doubt for a moment that they owed everything they had to the Party.
I stand w Isreal. Leftists, Mullahs, Hamas-Palistinian terrorists can suck it said...
"Miss Plagiarism is still getting 900,000 a year at Harvard as a faculty member for life."
But, but, but she *has* been severely punished. The door to her office no longer has a little plaque that says "President".
Jupiter said...
"It isn't really necessary to define 'merit' to be entirely certain that Claudine Gay is without the least vestige of that quality. She might as well have a big zero tattooed on her forehead. The kind the programmers use, that has a slash through it, so no one will mistake it for a capital 'O'.
I have read that the Soviet revolutionaries quite deliberately chose their apparatchiks from the ranks of the completely incompetent. They selected people who would never have risen on the strength of their own abilities, and placed them in positions of wealth and power. Those persons could never doubt for a moment that they owed everything they had to the Party."
Too bad comments can't be pinned like tweets on X. This one deserves to be pinned at the top.
Rocco,
Your little dialogue was pretty good, but I hope you won't take it as any kind of disfavor if I say it also made me wish we could have Laslo's take on this matter.
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