The Professor and the Madman

The film, The Professor and the Madman (2019), is based on the true story of James Murray, the editor of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the 19^th century, and William Minor, who contributed over 10,000 entries. Minor, who suffered from schizophrenia, was at the time a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum for having killed Jack Merrett under the recurrent delusion of being chased. In the film, this narrative serves as the basis to explore whether even people who think they are unredeemable can nevertheless be redeemed, and thus freed, from their own guilt.

The full essay is at "The Professor and the Madman."

Yale Police Arrest 47 Students: A Symptom

A university is not an inner city, and thus should not be policed as such, as if students were even potentially hostile gang members in need of constant surveillance. On April 22, 2024, I was not a bit surprised in reading that Yale, which I had hitherto described as a private police-state on steroids, ordered its own private police to arrest 47 students that morning on charges of criminal trespassing on campus for having brought and set up tents days earlier. Even though temporary housing goes beyond political protest per se and the students could have returned day after day to Beinecke Plaza to protest—venting off stream that could be justified by the U.S. Government’s continued financial, military, and political enabling of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza—that Yale’s administration put the plaza under police guard after employees had removed the tents is indicative of a police-state mentality that is not conducive to academic pursuits. Furthermore, arresting students for criminal trespassing rather than simply removing the tents demonstrates an inner-city policing mentality that is out of place on a prestigious university's campus.

The full essay is at "Yale Police Arrest 47 students."