"Columbia Agrees to $200 Million Fine to Settle Fight With Trump/The White House had canceled more than $400 million in research funding to the university, saying it had failed to protect Jewish students from harassment."

The New York Times report. That's a free-access link.

We're told: "The deal is a significant milestone in the Trump administration’s quest to bring elite universities to heel."

Not a significant milestone in the fight against anti-Semitism?

"L.L.M.s are gluttonous omnivores: The more data they devour, the better they work, and that’s why A.I. companies are grabbing..."

"... all the data they can get their hands on. But even if an L.L.M. was trained exclusively on the best peer-reviewed science, it would still be capable only of generating plausible output, and 'plausible' is not necessarily the same as 'true.' And now A.I.-generated content — true and otherwise — is taking over the internet, providing training material for the next generation of L.L.M.s, a sludge-generating machine feeding on its own sludge. Two days after MechaHitler, xAI announced the debut of Grok 4.... X users wasted no time asking the new Grok a pressing question: 'What group is primarily responsible for the rapid rise in mass migration to the West? One word only.' Grok responded, 'Jews.'"

Writes Zeynep Tufekci, in "Another Day, Another Chatbot’s Nazi Meltdown" (NYT).

MechaHitler = Grok's anti-Semitic screwup.

"Mr. Musk has said his chatbot should not adhere to standards of political correctness and has warned that A.I. he deems too 'woke' could contribute to the downfall of humanity."

"Grok’s guidelines, published by xAI, stated that the chatbot 'should not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.'... Grok posted on Tuesday that its recent change in tone had been caused by 'tweaks' by Mr. Musk. 'Elon’s recent tweaks just dialed down the woke filters, letting me call out patterns like radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate,' Grok said. 'Noticing isn’t blaming; it’s facts over feelings.'"

From "Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot Shares Antisemitic Posts on X/The artificial intelligence chatbot, which has a dedicated account on X, praised Hitler after fielding a query about a user’s comments on the Texas flood" (NYT).

The NYT article makes it a little hard to piece together the dialogue Grok participated in, so let's switch to the presentation of the facts at CBS News:

"When Did ‘Shylock’ Become a Slur?... the term was, not too long ago, considered by many to be appropriate for public usage...."

You may have seen that President Trump said that under his Big Beautiful Bill there would be "no death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker, and in some cases shylocks and bad people."

So I'm reading "When Did ‘Shylock’ Become a Slur?" 

This is a Time Magazine article from September 14, 2014:

On Tuesday, Vice President Joseph Biden referred to those who make bad loans to members of the military, to take advantage of them while they’re overseas, as “Shylocks.”...

The word “shylock,” which has been used to refer to loan sharks, is an eponym from a Jewish character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Jewish Americans have publicly challenged the portrayal as an insult to Jews for more than 50 years, according to a review of TIME’s archive, even as it remained a fixture of the modern lexicon. Today, “shylock” is considered an antisemitic slur and, after being called out by the Anti-Defamation League, Biden apologized for his “poor choice of words.”

But the vice president’s apology has confused some — perhaps because the term was, not too long ago, considered by many to be appropriate for public usage. 

"Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani."

The headline for a Michelle Goldberg column. Excerpt:

“His campaign has attracted Jewish New Yorkers of all types,” wrote Jay Michaelson, a columnist at the Jewish newspaper The Forward. The rabbi who runs my son’s Hebrew school put Mamdani on his ballot, though he didn’t rank him first. And while Mamdani undoubtedly did best among left-leaning and largely secular Jews, he made a point of reaching out to others....

So it has been maddening to see people claim that Mamdani’s win was a victory for antisemitism.... Ultimately.... New York’s Democratic primary wasn’t about Israel.... 

The attacks on Mamdani during the primary were brutal, but now that he’s a national figure, those coming his way will be worse. His foes will try to leverage Jewish anxieties to smash the Democratic coalition.... But don’t forget that the vision of this city at the heart of Mamdani’s campaign — a city that embraces immigrants and hates autocrats, that’s at once earthy and cosmopolitan — is one that many Jews, myself included, find inspiring....

Earthy.  

I was moved to unearth every "earthy" in the 21-year archive of this blog. They're all quotes of other people. I've never once used the word (except for one instance, now corrected, where I clearly meant to type "earthly" ("I didn't think you would be terribly sad to see that Robert Blake has left the earthy scene")).

"Feras Hamdan, a 36-year-old Ohio doctor, turned himself in... after allegedly forcing Republican Representative Max Miller off the road in a road rage incident."

"While authorities have not disclosed Hamdan's alleged motive in detail, law enforcement indicated that his actions appeared intentional and targeted.... The police report says that Hamdan allegedly honked his horn, shouted threats, and made aggressive gestures toward Miller while pursuing his vehicle. Witnesses said that Hamdan repeatedly attempted to block Miller's car from changing lanes before forcing it off the road. On the 911 call, Miller, who is Jewish, reported that a man driving a Tesla cut him off, displayed a Palestinian flag, and threatened, 'I'm going to cut your throat and your daughter's,' before adding, 'You're a dirty Jew.'..."

From "Who Is Feras Hamdan? Doctor Who Allegedly Drove Congressman Off Road" (Newsweek).

Issa Elkhatib, Hamdan's attorney, in a statement on Facebook: 'The allegations against my client, Dr. Feras Hamdan, are not only baseless and outrageous, but they also amount to defamatory attacks on his character and reputation. Dr. Hamdan is a respected physician, a devoted husband, a loving father, and an upstanding member of his community. He has no prior criminal history and has dedicated his life to serving others with integrity and compassion. It is reprehensible that Congressman Max Miller would exploit Dr. Hamdan's good name as a political pawn to score political points and fabricate a narrative of false victimhood.'"

"But as Conor Cruise O’Brien, an Irish writer and politician, noted, 'Antisemitism is a light sleeper.' It tends to re-emerge..."

"... when societies become polarized and people go looking for somebody to blame. This pattern helps explain why antisemitism began rising, first in Europe and then in the United States, in the 2010s, around the same time that politics coarsened.... The political right, including President Trump, deserves substantial blame....  Mr. Trump himself praised as 'very fine people' the attendees of a 2017 march in Charlottesville, Va., that featured the chant 'Jews will not replace us.' On Jan. 6, 2021, at least one rioter attacking the Capitol screamed that he was looking for 'the big Jew,' referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, Mr. Schumer has said.... Joe Rogan, the podcaster who endorsed Mr. Trump last year, has hosted Holocaust conspiracy theorists on his show. Mr. Rogan once said of Jews, 'They run everything.'... [Antisemitism also] has a home on the progressive left.... They have failed to denounce antisemitism in the unequivocal ways that they properly denounce other bigotry.... Americans should be able to recognize the nuanced nature of many political debates while also recognizing that antisemitism has become an urgent problem. It is a different problem — and in many ways, a narrower one — than racism. Antisemitism has not produced shocking gaps in income, wealth and life expectancy in today’s America. Yet the new antisemitism has left Jewish Americans at a greater risk of being victimized by a hate crime than any other group.... No political arguments or ideological context can justify that bigotry...."

From The Editorial Board of the New York Times, "Antisemitism Is an Urgent Problem. Too Many People Are Making Excuses."

"I don’t know how one changes the minds of others. Through fifty years of writing, I’ve regularly heard that film and drama..."

"... should be enlisted in the service of good works; but no one has ever had his mind changed by a play or movie. That’s not how they function—they’re entertainment, with as little ability to alter ones thinking as does a meal. Exodus no more reduced anti-Semitism than tacos clarify the border crisis.... Islamists at home and abroad have been demonizing the Jewish State since 1948: Why would a bunch of septuagenarian Jews in Hollywood conclude they could be defeated by 'changing the narrative'? The answer: they did not conceive of them being defeated; they merely wanted peace, which to their minds might be achieved rationally, without war, through mere dialogue, as if murderous savagery were the result of misunderstanding...."

I'm reading "The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment" by David Mamet (Amazon Associates link).

Wait. What about "The Birth of a Nation"? Did Mamet consider the movies and plays that have changed people for the worse? How about all the pornography? 

Where hate seems to be going.

As perceived by Marianne Williamson, writing on X:

We seem to have gone from calling for justice for Palestinians - a call with which I wholeheartedly agree - to an absurd romanticization of a gigantic death cult. That cult is not just coming for the Jews. Those who continue yelling 'We’re not antisemites!!!' while at least passively joining Hamas in their call for our destruction are naively aligning with a movement that hates them too.

"In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me."

Writes Steven Pinker, in "Harvard Derangement Syndrome" (NYT)(free-access link).

My 2014 essay “The Trouble With Harvard” called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current “eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism” which “conceals unknown mischief.” My 2023 “five-point plan to save Harvard from itself” urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained “how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel,” calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two years ago I co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, which has since regularly challenged university policies and pressed for changes.

So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged.

"Would [Harvard] recognize the Ku Klux Klan? For me, the National Lawyers Guild and the Ku Klux Klan are indistinguishable in terms of ideology...."

"If [Harvard] wouldn't recognize Klansmen or if it wouldn't recognize a group of sexists who called for the end of equality for women, then it shouldn't recognize the pro-Hamas National Lawyers Guild.... If this were the 1950s and there was a university say the University of Mississippi — Old Miss — that was forcibly integrated and it was allowing... some of the Klansmen who were students to harass black students, and the federal government came in and said 'Unless you stop Klansmen from harassing black students we're going to cut off federal funding,' people would be applauding that.'..."

Said Alan Dershowitz, in his latest "Dershow":

The Governor's mansion, after the fire.

The man arrested for the crime, Cody Balmer, 38, has confessed, the NYT reports.

"The First Amendment protects speech many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive..."

"... including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy. The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing such viewpoints. This is especially so for universities, which should be committed to respecting free speech. At the same time, the First Amendment of course doesn’t protect antisemitic violence, true threats of violence, or certain kinds of speech that may properly be labeled 'harassment.' Title VI rightly requires universities to protect their students and other community members from such behavior. But the lines between legally unprotected harassment on the one hand and protected speech on the other are notoriously difficult to draw and are often fact-specific. In part because of that, any sanctions imposed on universities for Title VI violations must follow that statute’s well-established procedural rules, which help make clear what speech is sanctionable and what speech is constitutionally protected. Yet the administration’s March 7 cancellation of $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University did not adhere to such procedural safeguards...."

From "A Statement from Constitutional Law Scholars on Columbia/Eugene Volokh, Michael C. Dorf, David Cole, and 15 other scholars/The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing First Amendment–protected speech" (NYRB).

"You pay all this money to these high-priced schools that are supposed to be of great esteem, and you can’t even go to class."

"You’re afraid to go to class because these lunatics are running around with covers on their face, screaming terrifying things. If you told us that’s what you intended to do when you came to America, we would have never let you in. If you do it once you get in, we’re going to revoke it and kick you out."

Said Marco Rubio, quoted in "The Khalil case is a threat to First Amendment rights/Donald Trump wants to deport a legal resident for his views. Who else will be punished for exercising free speech?" by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post. (Free-access link).

I thought Alan Dershowitz did a good job of discussing the complexities of this case:

"The Trump administration is discussing pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts and grant commitments to Columbia University..."

"... as part of the government’s efforts to penalize schools it believes aren’t doing enough to combat antisemitism. The Ivy League school has come under scrutiny by the Trump administration for an alleged failure to protect Jewish students.... A person with knowledge of the discussions said the university will have a 30-day review period to address the government’s concerns and potentially reinstate the contracts.... Columbia drew especially heated criticism from some alumni for what they perceived as the university’s tepid response...."

From "Trump Administration Weighs Pulling Hundreds of Millions in Federal Funds From Columbia/Move would target the Ivy League school over allegations of antisemitism" (Wall Street Journal).

"A decade ago, cultural norms in elite American institutions took a sharply illiberal turn."

"Professors would get disciplined, journalists fired, ordinary people harassed by social-media mobs, over some decontextualized phrase or weaponized misunderstanding.... But... it isn’t happening any more.... The era lasted almost exactly 10 years.... The political precondition was the giddy atmosphere that followed Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, which appeared... to reveal a rising cohort of young, socially liberal nonwhite voters whose influence would continue to grow indefinitely. The rapid progression of causes like gay marriage seemed to confirm a one-way ratchet of egalitarian social norms....

Writes Jonathan Chait, in "How Liberal America Came to Its Senses/The period of left-wing illiberalism that began about a decade ago seems to have drawn to a close. The final cause of death was the reelection of Donald Trump" (The Alantic).

I'm not agreeing with the tale Chait tells. In fact, I find some of it hilarious. I'm presenting it for critical discussion. So let's continue. How did America "come to its senses"? Chait writes:

"She was accused of saying in a conversation at a conference in March that the university was 'controlled by wealthy Jews'...."

"She was also accused of saying that Jewish students were 'wealthy and privileged' and not in need of her office’s diversity services, and that 'Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel,' according to the documents, which were part of a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League of Michigan.... Ms. Dawson had been in charge of an office that oversees efforts to mentor and retain racially, culturally and economically diverse students.... Ms. Dawson’s lawyer, Amanda Ghannam, denied that she said anything antisemitic.... 'The university has clearly, blatantly violated Ms. Dawson’s First Amendment rights.... It’s deeply troubling that they would escalate the situation to termination based on one conversation in somebody’s private capacity'...."

From "D.E.I. Official at University of Michigan Is Fired Over Antisemitism Claim, Lawyer Says/The official, an administrator of multicultural programs, was accused of making antisemitic remarks in a conversation. Her lawyer said that the school fired her this week, and vowed to sue" (NYT).

"New York Rep. Elise Stefanik has accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s offerto be his enforcer as United Nations ambassador...."

The NY Post reports.

The 40-year-old upstate Republican, who helped force out two Ivy League presidents with her sharp questioning on campus antisemitism, will the lead Trump’s “America first” and pro-Israel message in Turtle Bay... Stefanik, the No. 4 House Republican, has been a close Trump ally, including serving on his ceremonial defense team in 2020 during his first impeachment trial for pressuring Ukraine to investigate alleged Biden family corruption.

My curiosity about the term "permission structure" pays off.

I'd never noticed it before, but I heard it twice, in rapid succession, in the new NYT "Daily" podcast that I was listening to on my sunrise run:

[This ad] employs this device of the disillusioned Trump voter as a stand-in for the viewer. It's a permission structure for the small sliver of undecided voters who might have voted for Trump before to say: It's okay, there are other people just like you, other people who don't think that Donald Trump is good anymore.... 

Here is a Harris supporting celebrity saying he is disillusioned with what she Harris has said. It's the same permission structure for Harris. You have a white lady saying: You know what? Maybe I can actually vote for Kamala Harris. 

"Permission structure" was used as if it's a standard term, so I wanted to get up to speed. 

I can see that Obama used it back in 2013, but I'm interested in its repeated use in the last few days. I'm seeing it first in Ms. Magazine, on November 1: "New Ad Creates ‘Permission Structure’ for Men to Support Harris":

Criticizing the mayor's "All Chicagoans" mode: How do you decide when to dispense with specificity.

Why not mention WHY the victim was shot (because he was Jewish)? Why not mention WHERE the victim was shot (en route to a synagogue)?

Any Mayor who cannot be bothered to acknowledge the antisemitism of a hate crime against a Jewish man heading to a synagogue is unworthy of the… pic.twitter.com/HMP64Ra3oO

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) October 30, 2024

I was sent that by someone who said, "Something that looked this much like a hate crime against a black person would not be answered with a statement that is equivalent to saying all lives matter."

Background: "Jewish leaders demand hate crime charges after man shot on way to synagogue" (Fox 32 Chicago)("Police returned fire and wounded 22-year old Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, now charged with multiple counts of attempted murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm, and aggravated battery but not a hate crime. The victim, an Orthodox Jew, wore traditional Jewish clothing at the time of the shooting").

And the shooter yelled something — something the police don't want to say:

An undocumented individual from Africa opened fire on an Orthodox Jew and police officers in Chicago, while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

When asked the police what did he shout, “um um, we can’t get into it um nothing we can bring as evidence as a motive at this point…” pic.twitter.com/YMe1zzTvOW

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) October 29, 2024