"Whether Alito was participating in the boycott matters, moreover, for one of the several reasons it matters why there was an upside-down American flag flying at his house on Jan. 17, 2021...."

"...as The New York Times reported earlier this week, and what he knew about that.... Participating in a boycott is undeniably a political statement. And there are pending cases for which participation in an anti-trans beer boycott could be seen as his having a finger on the scale of justice on the side of the anti-trans advocates supporting — and in some cases, defending — these laws such that recusal could be required...."

Writes Chris Geidner, in "Exclusive: Justice Alito sold Bud Light stock amidst anti-trans boycott effort/Alito did not respond to questions about the sale, but its timing raises fair questions — particularly in light of other recent ethical questions" (Law Dork).

Why would selling the stock reveal an anti-trans bias? If anything, it reflects a belief that the stock will go down because other people are biased. To participate in the boycott would be to decline to continue to buy Bud Light beer. There's no evidence that Alito was a Bud Light consumer. I googled Does Alito drink beer and I found this 2006 article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, "A Tiger on the Court: Sam Alito ’72 at Princeton":

"Some might think that this pervasive progressivism would encourage conservative students to change their views."

"But in fact it has the opposite effect. Graduates of schools like Loyola University Chicago, George Washington University and Mount Holyoke have described how the rampant leftism on their campuses pushed them to the right.... [F]ormative years at elite institutions that have gone woke are convincing right-leaning students and heterodox thinkers that society’s most august institutions — from media outlets to universities — are fundamentally broken and need to be set on a different path. If colleges don’t want to produce a new generation of conservative firebrands, they need to pump the brakes on campus progressivism. Campuses that are more welcoming to conservatives are in universities’ own interest."

 
Writes Adam Hoffman, a senior at Princeton, in "My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right" (NYT).

"The more I push[ed] for policy change, the more resistant the leadership became. It was a highly macro-aggressive environment."

"I couldn’t take the necessary steps that were needed to lay the groundwork for innovative equity work in the department.... It’s been fairly traumatic for me.... It created such a hostile work environment for me that I literally could not return to the office... I was hospitalized because of just how stressful the work environment became and I had little support...." 

Said Jordan “JT” Turner, who resigned from his position as Princeton's first Associate Director of Athletics for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), quoted in "3 Princeton DEI staff members resign, alleging lack of support" (The Daily Princetonian).

"Princeton went coed in Alito’s sophomore year. Alice Kelikian, who became a friend of his, remembered hanging out with him around a microwave oven..."

"... that had just been installed on campus, warming up chocolate-chip cookies while talking about Italy and the philosopher John Rawls. Kelikian, who dated one of Alito’s friends, noted that Alito was always 'very respectful of me,' adding, 'A lot of male classmates were not.' Still, feminism was in the air...."

From "Justice Alito’s Crusade Against a Secular America Isn’t Over/He’s had win after win—including overturning Roe v. Wade—yet seems more and more aggrieved. What drives his anger?" by Margaret Talbot (The New Yorker). This is a very long article, and my excerpts don't represent the overall thesis justifying the article title. I'm just pointing to some things that intrigued me.

In 1973, the year after Alito graduated...

The year I graduated from college. 

"We’ve run plenty of stories about people who have been the target of mobs... What we’ve rarely heard—here or anywhere else—is what it’s like for the person who loves the mob’s target."

"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:

"Princeton University’s board of trustees voted Monday to fire Joshua Katz, a tenured professor in the classics department..."

"... for failing to fully cooperate with a sexual-misconduct investigation that his supporters say is retaliation for his viewpoints.... [Samantha] Harris, Katz’s attorney, said the university’s actions could have a chilling effect on free speech on college campuses. 'The message to other people who might want to speak out is the price is having your personal life turned inside-out looking for information to destroy you,' Harris said. This is 'someone who was previously an award-winning, highly-respected professor, but from the moment he published that article onward he became a relentless target until he was fired.' [Gene A.] Jarrett, the faculty dean, pushed back against the assertion that Katz’s views were the catalyst for the investigation in a November report on the probe, saying 'the current political climate of the university, whether perceived or real, is not germane to the case.'" 

WaPo reports.

Here's my earlier post on this case.

The top-rated comment at the new article is: "I work at a university and it is a pretty clear policy and clearly understood that engaging in a relationship with a student will get you fired no matter what your politics or rank."

Okay, but then it had better be the case that every single one of these having-sex-with-students professors has been fired. No mercy. Zero tolerance. Yet, Katz's case itself shows that's not the policy, because the University looked into this very relationship in 2018: "He was suspended without pay for a year for violating school policy banning sexual relationships between faculty and students, and placed on three years’ probation."

"In July 2020, as social justice protests roiled the nation, Joshua Katz, a Princeton classics professor, wrote... that some faculty proposals to combat racism at Princeton would foment 'civil war on campus'..."

"... and denounced a student group, the Black Justice League, as 'a small local terrorist organization' because of its tactics in pushing for institutional changes. The remarks [were]... reviled by some... and lionized by others.... And they sent up a flare that led to scrutiny of other aspects of his life, including his conduct with female students. In the latest fallout from that debate, Princeton’s president has recommended dismissing Dr. Katz... for what a university report says was his failure to be totally forthcoming about a sexual relationship with a student 15 years ago.... Princeton already knew about her. The university had started an investigation after it learned of the relationship in late 2017, about ten years after it happened, and Dr. Katz confessed to a consensual affair. He was quietly suspended without pay for a year.... The woman in the sexual relationship did not cooperate with the original Princeton investigation. But after [a student newspaper report on Dr. Katz], she filed a formal complaint that led the administration to open a new investigation, which it said was looking at new issues rather than revisiting old violations.... Dr. Katz’s wife, Solveig Gold, said he had lost many friends over the controversy.... Ms. Gold, 27, who is finishing her Ph.D. in classics at the University of Cambridge, graduated from Princeton in 2017. She said that she had been his student, but that there was no romantic relationship between them at the time. They married in July 2021."

From "After Campus Uproar, Princeton Proposes to Fire Tenured Professor/Joshua Katz says he was targeted because of his criticism of a campus protest group. A university report says the concerns are related to his inappropriate conduct with a female student" (NYT).

Obviously, it is terribly wrong to fire him for his writings, and it seems that the sexual material is being used as a cover. Sexual harassment is an important matter, but that's all the more reason not to use it dishonestly. There may be some new information about the 15-year-old case, but the matter was dealt with at the time. Would the University going back to other old cases and fire tenured professors? The answer can't be — only when it hates what they are writing.

"The faculty letter gives the impression that many Princeton professors believe their institution is rife with anti-Black racism and that the university must risk abandoning long-standing core values..."

"... to be anti-racist. But most signatories who responded to my queries hold neither of those beliefs.... Outside observers should be sophisticated enough to understand that universities are socially and politically complex communities where faculty members don’t always say what they mean, especially when asked to sign on to a group letter with hundreds of their colleagues in a moment of national crisis. 'Much as I’m averse to aspects of any letters signed by more than one person—chiefly that they represent a form of mostly benign and well-intentioned thuggery—I’m convinced we live in a moment where we have to be seen as being part of a solution to what is clearly a problem,' [humanities professor and poet Paul] Muldoon told me... in his thoughtful email. 'That means that, as in the case of the Princeton letter, some ideas may need to be overstated to be stated at all.' ... I am concerned that some faculty members are unwilling to publicly criticize a demand that they scoff at privately. Can they really be counted on to protect academic freedom in a faculty vote? And I wish more faculty members would say whatever they actually think with clarity and precision, rather than indulging in hyperbole that does more to muddy and polarize than to clarify."

Writes Conor Friedersdorf in "The Princeton Faculty’s Anti-Free-Speech Demands/Some of the signers of a controversial open letter don’t stand behind its most alarming demand" (The Atlantic).

"The Princeton University Board of Trustees voted on Friday to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs."

"It acted because Wilson’s racist opinions and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school whose scholars, students and alumni must stand firmly against racism and for equality and justice.... Wilson... discouraged black applicants from applying to Princeton. While president of the United States, Wilson segregated the previously integrated federal civil service.... Wilson helped to create the university that I love. I do not pretend to know how to evaluate his life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure. I do know, however, that we cannot disregard or ignore racism when deciding whom we hold up to our students as heroes or role models. This is not the only step our university will be taking to confront the realities and legacies of racism, but it is an important one. Our commitment to eliminate racism must be unequivocal, and that is why we removed the name of Princeton’s modern-day founder from its School of Public and International Affairs."

From "I opposed taking Woodrow Wilson’s name off our school. Here’s why I changed my mind" by Christopher Eisgruber, the president of Princeton (in WaPo).

"I usually enjoy Ms. Weiner's contributions to the Times. But this is one of the most blatant 'humble-brags' ever."

"Poor Jennifer: she went to Princeton, published a book (or books?) and writes for the NYT, but she's still learning to feel sufficiently good about herself. Blech!!!"

Top-rated comment at "The Snobs and Me," by Jennifer Weiner.

Despite student protests, the Princeton board of trustees has voted to keep the name Woodrow Wilson on its various buildings and programs.

The NYT reports.

Wilson has been a much-loved figure at Princeton, but in September, the Black Justice League, a student activist group, distributed posters around campus that revealed his views on race, including his comment to an African-American leader that, “Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.”

As president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson reintroduced segregation into the federal work force, admired the Ku Klux Klan and did not believe that black Americans were worthy of full citizenship.

The board also rejected a demand that faculty and staff submit to cultural competency training and that students take a course on the history of a marginalized people. The demand for a place on campus dedicated to black students was, ironically, met.

"After UW-Madison chancellor's email stirred controversy, Regents prepare resolution on free speech."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

The email, sent to students by Rebecca Blank on November 13th included:

"While individuals are always free to express their own beliefs, no one is entitled to express them in ways that diminish others, or that devalues the presence of anyone that is part of our Badger community." 

Full text here. Later, Blank said she'd intended it "as an appeal for civility and respect in how we deal with each other as a community." But it's not just an appeal for civility and respect, because it said "no one is entitled," which means there is no right. Blank seemed to acknowledge a right when she said "individuals are free to express their own beliefs," but she qualified it by denying that there's a right to express those beliefs in the wrong "ways." That seems to draw a line between the ideas you can express and the form you may use to express them, but: 1. Many ideas, even stated in a polite form, diminish and devalue others (or could be deemed to do so), and 2. We actually do have a right to choose not only the substance but the form of expression. (And by the way, the demand for polite, respectful, civil expression can undercut the speech of protesters and has a disparate impact on those who do not come from a cultural and family background where polite speech is the usual form of communication.)
 
The proposed resolution says:

"It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they, or others, find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive... Exploration, deliberation, and debate may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought ... to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed... It is for the members of the university community, not for the institution itself, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress exploration of ideas or expression of speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose.... Although the university greatly values civility... concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as justification for closing off discussion of ideas."

That language tracks the statement the Princeton faculty adopted last April:

"[I]t is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. Although the University greatly values civility, and although all members of the University community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community."

MEANWHILE: Observe that calls for civility can come from different directions and even from both sides of a single dispute, like this: "Yale professor resigns: Can 'civil dialogue' share space with student rage?/A Yale professor resigned after a student uproar over her e-mail about offensive Halloween costumes. While critics have called students coddled and naive, observers say there's more going on than political correctness run amok."

"It used to be routine, too, Chief Justice Roberts said, for presidents to appoint prominent public figures to the court."

"In 1941, the year Hughes left the court, Chief Justice Roberts said, 'you had two senators on the court, a representative, three former attorneys general.' The court that decided Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision banning segregation in public schools, included Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former governor of California; Hugo L. Black, a former United States senator; William O. Douglas, who had been chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Robert H. Jackson, who had been the attorney general. By contrast, Chief Justice Roberts said, until Justice Elena Kagan arrived in 2010, “every single member of the court had been a court of appeals judge.' He did not comment Friday on the significance of the narrowing of the career paths, but in 2009 he said the development was a positive one, resulting in decisions with 'a more legal perspective and less of a policy perspective.'"

From respectful coverage, by the NYT's Adam Liptak, of a talk by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. at NYU School of Law. Roberts's subject was Charles Evans Hughes, who before becoming Chief Justice "had been governor of New York, an associate justice of the court, the Republican nominee for president (losing narrowly to Woodrow Wilson), secretary of state and a Wall Street lawyer who argued more than 50 cases in the court."

Interesting to see the somewhat random appearance of the name Woodrow Wilson. The old president has become a big issue of late. In this very edition of the NYT, Woodrow Wilson comes up in 2 headlines:

"Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist — even by the standards of his time."

Vox explains, supporting the Princeton students who are protesting the use of Wilson's name on various programs and buildings around the university.

Easily the worst part of Wilson's record as president was his overseeing of the resegregation of multiple agencies of the federal government, which had been surprisingly integrated as a result of Reconstruction decades earlier....

Outright dismissals were also common. Upon taking office, Wilson himself fired 15 out of 17 black supervisors in the federal service and replaced them with white people....

In 1914, a group of black professionals led by newspaper editor and Harvard alumnus Monroe Trotter met with Wilson to protest the segregation. Wilson informed Trotter, "Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen."

Much more at the link.

Did Princeton's president cave to the demands of the Woodrow-Wilson-reviling protesters or did the protesters get played?

John Fund at National Review writes: "It took only 20 protesting students from the Black Justice League just 32 hours to hold a sit-in in his office for Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber to cave to their demands,"

He quotes the article in The Daily Princetonian: 

University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 agreed to the modified demands of student protestors on Thursday evening.... The final list addressed all three initial demands of the protestors, which included cultural competency training for faculty and staff and a diversity distribution requirement, a special space for black students, and the removal of the name of Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, from the Wilson School and Wilson College. According to the agreement, Eisgruber will write to chair of the University Board of Trustees Katie Hall ’80 to initiate conversations on removing Wilson’s name from campus buildings. He will also write to Head of Wilson College Eduardo Cadava to request that he consider removing Wilson’s mural from Wilcox dining hall.

Whoa! The protesters (I'm spelling the word right) got played. Just 2 days ago, The Daily Princetonian had this:

Asanni York ’17, one of the organizers of the protest, explained the group would not leave until Eisgruber signed the document listing the demands.

“We are tired of talking to people. It’s conversation, conversation, conversation. We try and protest; we meet with the administration every other week,” York said. “We’re done talking. We’re going to be here until he signs this paper. We’re going to be here until things are met.”

You didn't want more conversation. He had to sign the paper, but the paper he signed was about how there would be more conversation. It’s conversation, conversation, conversation. Conversation all the way down at Princeton. Well played, Eisgruber!

"Black tape was found covering the faces of black Harvard Law School professors on framed photographs outside a lecture hall on Thursday..."

"... a day after students there held a rally in solidarity with other campuses protesting racism across the country...."

I hope they have surveillance cameras to identify the malefactors. Who benefits?

Meanwhile, at Princeton:

Students staged a protest Wednesday inside the office of Princeton University's president, demanding the school remove the name of former school president and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from programs and buildings over what they said was his racist legacy....

Wilson was president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910 and served as New Jersey's governor from 1911 to 1913, when he entered the White House. The Democrat was a leading progressive but supported segregation, including appointing Cabinet members who segregated federal departments....

"Having to walk by buildings that (have Wilson's name), having to walk by his mural, having to live in residential colleges that didn't want our presence on campus, that's marginalizing," said Asanni York, a black junior who is majoring in public policy. "People are hurt by that. All this matters because, at the end of the day, black people's feelings matter just as much as any other people's feelings matter."

This is an intra-liberal dispute. Hating Woodrow Wilson used be a conservative thing. Here's a Slate article from 2011: "Hating Woodrow Wilson/The new and confused attacks on progressivism."

Over at the NYT, published today at 12:47 PM ET but quickly banished from the front page, there's "One Slogan, Many Methods: Black Lives Matter Enters Politics," which I'd noticed earlier was getting slammed in the comments. Here's the highest-rated comment (highest rated by NYT readers):

"Princeton Eating Club Ousts 2 Officers Over Emails Ridiculing Women."

The NYT reports.

The first email, dated Oct. 12, showed a woman engaged in a sex act with a man in one of the public spaces of the club, Tiger Inn.  It was sent out by Adam Krop, the club’s vice president, to all the names on a club-wide mailing list, and it was accompanied by a crude joke and a reference to the woman as an “Asian chick.”

Later that night Andrew Hoffenberg, the treasurer, sent an email to the same list regarding a lecture by the Princeton alumna whose lawsuit forced eating clubs to admit women. “Ever wonder who we have to thank (blame) for gender equality,” the email began. “Looking for someone to blame for the influx of girls? Come tomorrow and help boo Sally Frank.”

NYT columnist Frank Bruni, 49, is teaching a college class and the students don't get his allusions.

They didn't know the Jane Fonda movies "They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?" and "Barbarella." They hadn't heard of Vanessa Redgrave or Greta Garbo.

Or at least they looked like they didn't. Should we trust Bruni's interpretation of the blank expression on their face? Did it mean "I don't know what you are referring to?" or "Boring!"

The school is Princeton, Bruni reveals in paragraph 4, which means, of course, the students aren't dumb. They're just fractured, lacking shared experience, which Bruno concedes might be good:

No single, potentially alienating cultural dogma holds sway. 

Oh? Young people may not know the grand old actresses that swan about forever in the mind of Frank Bruni....



... but I think the young people are actually quite aware of the sway of a single, potentially alienating cultural dogma.

Cue inevitable discussion of Brendan Eich and Bill Maher's talk of the "Gay Mafia."

"NO BID CONTRACT: Michelle O's Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare site..."

Headline today at Drudge, linking here.

The link goes to The Daily Caller, where we learn that Toni Townes-Whitley is a senior vice president at CGI Federal and also graduated from Princeton in the same year as Michelle Obama. Given that over 1,000 highly able persons graduate from Princeton in any given year, it's not that amazing that you'd find a Michelle Obama co-grad somewhere at the executive level of a large corporation, so this story seems a bit dumb, unless...

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni....

... unless your point is that black people are in a cabal.

Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998.

Jeez, the writing in The Daily Caller is bad! So Townes-Whitley decided to return to work as an African-American woman? What was she before? A white man?

Look, I'm concerned about corruption and the appearance of corruption, but this is a low-quality effort at investigative journalism. And yet think of the traffic that story is getting with the Drudge link. The rewards are there for those who are hot to get them. Fine. You like that story? Then don't whimper about lefties' expressions of contempt for right-wing media.

"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke."

Sang Bob Dylan in "All Along the Watchtower," which I'm quoting because today's theme on the blog is tragedy and comedy and because I'm reading this NYT piece by Bill Wyman (not that Bill Wyman) about how it's conceivable — not that conceivable — that Bob Dylan could win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mr. Dylan’s work remains utterly lacking in conventionality, moral sleight of hand, pop pabulum or sops to his audience. His lyricism is exquisite; his concerns and subjects are demonstrably timeless; and few poets of any era have seen their work bear more influence.

Just this morning — a propos of what I won't say — we were talking about examples of individuals who gain an audience and then see their self-expression reflected in how that audience understands them, and they reject their own expression because they don't like how it looks. Who has done that? I thought first of Dave Chappelle, and Meade thought of the Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson. I came up with another name that doesn't really fit the category — Saint Paul — and Meade said Bob Dylan.