Cancelled Classes: Harvard’s Far-Left Ideological Courses Take a Hit

I contend that the more courses that are heavily ideological and biased in advocating a particular ideology that a university has, the higher the chances that a university will eventually suffer from a lack of educational legitimacy and perhaps even have to close down for want of students. Even great American universities such as Harvard and Yale are not immune. Their huge endowments could even function as organizational slack enabling a particular ideological bent to percolate throughout the universities for a long time with impunity due to the sheer amount of money in the universities respective invested wealth. When I was a student at Yale, I worked part-time at the Development Office calling alumni to give to the already-wealthy university. I had no idea at the time that being rich could actually harm a university, or allow for educational decadence with impunity. At Harvard in 2024, there was some indication that the students’ freedom in selecting some of their courses was serving a good purpose in putting biased-ideological courses out of business for lack of sufficient enrollment. The student marketplace could substitute for compromised university administration in its educational oversight function. Adam Smith would be proud.

The full essay is at "Cancelled Classes at Harvard." 

On the American Media’s Hyperbole in Politics

If America can be said to have violent cultures, relatively speaking and especially in countries such as Honduras but also in some U.S. states such as Illinois (e.g., Rockford and south Chicago), the media may simply be reflecting the wider culture in writing of political debates by using words like fight and battle in place of argue and debate. One effect is to exacerbate the problem, culturally speaking. Another effect is to garner more attention, which in turn translates into more revenue from selling advertisements. To the media, the latter counts whereas the former does not; the media can blame the “heated rhetoric” of candidates for office and elected officeholders for an uptick in political violence rather than assume some of the responsibility. I submit that journalists are even more at fault when they magnify the significance of a political event to the point of being mistaken, widely missing the actual mark. The lack of any follow-through in the field wherein one media outlet holds another accountable is also a problem, especially when all of the major outlets are on the proverbial bandwagon.

The full essay is at "The American Media's Hyperbole in Politics."

Hungary’s Delusion of Sovereignty

On October 3, 2024, The European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, filed a legal complaint against the E.U. state of Hungary with the E.U.’s judicial branch—the high court of which being the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The Commission had won a case against the state and recently subtracted the amount of fine issued by the court from the federal money set to go to the state because the Hungarian government was refusing to recognize the verdict. Like Britain before it had seceded from the Union, Hungary was operating under the incorrect premise that it still enjoyed full sovereignty even though every state delegates some of its governmental sovereignty to the Union in becoming a state thereof. In the case of Hungary, the state law at issue in 2024 had in its very name the fundamental problem out of which the state’s disputes with the E.U. were emanating.

The full essay is at "Hungary's Delusion of Soveriegnty."

On God’s Holiness and Mystery in Judaism

In The Natural History of Religion, David Hume claims that the human mind has difficulty holding on to the pure (i.e., unencumbered) idea of divine simplicity, and thus tends to apply familiar (i.e., human) attributes or qualities onto that idea (i.e., anthropomorphism), as if hanging ornaments on a naked Christmas tree. Eclipsed or compromised, or even lost entirely, is the quality of God being wholly other, and thus being qualitatively different than us and anything in our world. The Christian theologian Dionysius grasped this idea in his claim that God goes beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and sensibility (i.e., human emotions). The Biblical claim in the Book of Job that God is angry with Job’s “friends” for making statements about God’s ways without knowing them can be analyzed with an eye towards both viewing anger as only going so far with respect to God and being critical of the “friends’” presumption in assuming that God’s ways are within the limits of human cognition (i.e., theories). Rather than go to a negative theology wherein God is thought to be ineffable, I want to stress the value of recognizing both distance and mystery as being indispensable with respect to our relation to God lest we reduce God to our various masks of eternity.

The full essay is at "Holiness and  Mystery of God in Judaism."

Hinduism and Judaism on Deities and Transcendence

A basic tenet of the Advaita (non-dualist) Hindu philosophy of Shankara holds, “If saguna points to brahman’s immanence, nirguna points to brahman’s transcendence. . . . superiority should not be accorded to the nirguna mode of discourse.”[1] Being a non-dualist, Shankara held that brahman is one, since reality or existence is unitary, and thus brahman as existence and reality of all is indivisible ontologically. Applying David Hume’s separability thesis from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the distinction between nirguna and saguna can be understood as one made only by human reason, which does not mean that nirguna and saguna are separate entities. In short, we make the distinction; it does not belong to brahman itself. Lest it be thought that nirguna brahman has no analogue in Western philosophy of religion, we need only bring in Spinoza, whose nirguna-like God is so different from the saguna-comparable Abrahamic personal deity that both Judaism and Christianity banished his texts; Judaism excommunicated him. The tremendous qualitative difference between saguna and nirguna brahman can be useful to anyone trying to understand why Judaism excommunicated Spinoza, which is not my task here. Rather, taking nirguna brahman as reality or existence of everything, which, like Spinoza’s notion of God, itself has awareness, I want to stress both how much this differs in kind (i.e., qualitatively) from both Hindu deities and the Abrahamic deity, and the more fundamental point that brahman is One. In spite of the qualitative difference, keeping the Hindu concept of nirguna brahman in mind while thinking about the personal deities that are consistent with saguna brahman is useful.

The full essay is at "Hinduism and Judaism on Deities."

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1. Anantanand Rambachan, The Advaita Worldview: God, World, and Humanity (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), p. 90.

On International Multilateralism: A Harsh Verdict on the UN by a Former Undersecretary

Speaking at Harvard in late September, 2024, Noeleen Heyzer, a former undersecretary and later a special envoy of the UN, related the need for multilateral governance internationally to the need for the UN to evolve. The UN Charter created a system in which both large and small nations would be held accountable to international law in a rule-based order. This would protect the weak from the strong, but the Security Council had long been dominated by the veto-wielding  powerful countries, so the UN has been unable to end wars. The UN had become, according to Heyzer, “severely weakened.” “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must," she explained. Peaceful coexistence that rectifies power imbalances was at the time decimated in Ukraine and Gaza. National vetoes in the Security Council were inflicting much damage in this regard. The implications for the UN, she admitted to me after her talk, are not at all good even concerning whether the international organization can  even reform itself sufficiently to rise above being an abject failure.

The full essay is at "International Multilateralism: The United Nations."

The €35 Billion E.U. Loan to Ukraine: One E.U. State as a Destabilizer

On September 20, 2024, it was announced that the E.U. would “raise a €35 billion loan to support the Ukrainian economy and military.”[1] At a press conference next to Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy, the E.U.’s president said, “Russia keeps targeting your civilian energy infrastructure in a blatant and vicious way to try to plunge your country in the dark.”[2] So the loan stood to impact the Ukrainian people directly and significantly. It would be a shame if the principle of unanimity in the European Council would stand in the way of the Ukrainian people being warm during the upcoming winter. This is a very tangible way for people to grasp just how real the costs are of state governments having vetoes over a significant number of E.U. competencies (i.e., enumerated powers). “The European Union is here to help you in this challenge to keep the lights on, to keep your people warm as winter is just around the corner, and to keep your economy going as you fight for survival,” Von der Leyen said at the news conference.[3] Hungary’s Viktor Orbán stood in the way, however, to securing the collateral for a long enough period to render the loan (an any from the U.S. based on the collateral) secure. 

The full essay is at "E.U. Loan to Ukraine."

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “EU to Raise €35 Billion Loan for Ukraine Using Russia’s Frozen Assets, Von der Leyen Says,” Euronews.com, September 20, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Religious Transcendence

I contend that the core of religion is its quality of transcendence beyond the limits of human thought, perception, and emotion. This is not to say that nothing may be said of the divine, but that the stuff of our realm does not exhaust the mystery. We can’t have God utterly figured out, for it would be impious of creatures of finite knowledge to presume such knowledge that would fill up the dark hole of absolute mystery. I turn to the Christian theologian, Karl Rahner, and to the Hindu Rigveda to support this point, which is valid, I submit, for anything that is (or can be counted as) a religion.

The full essay is at "Religious Transcendence." 

Nature Credits in the E.U.

One of benefits of the market mechanism, by which, for example, economic goods are bought and sold, is that self-interest is relied on; people don’t have to be told to buy or sell a product because it can be in their self-interest to do so if the price is right. As an alternative to regulatory standards, a government can create units of pollution-allowance that businesses can purchase so to be lawfully able to pollute in so far as a purchased unit allows. In the E.U.’s emissions trading system, “operators of power plants and factories have to buy tradeable allowances to cover every tonne of carbon dioxide they emit.”[1] Business could buy and sell allowances so as to cover the amount of pollution that is anticipated. In this way, the market mechanism efficiently allocates pollution in line both with the interests of the companies and the public interest—the latter being made concrete in the decision on how much pollution per allowance and how many allowance units to create. Crucially, the company private interests are put within the purview of the public interest; the tail is not directing the dog. In political economies in which political-campaign contributions by businesses are high, especially if unlimited, the tail can indeed wag the dog, such that the public interest is determined by private interests. This is one reason why the Citizens United (2010) U.S. Supreme Court case is so significant. It allows corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns and directly on advertisements—both being beneficial to elected officials in positions to curry favor through legislation and regulations favorable to business (or labor). The informal exchanges of political donations and legislation or regulation comprise a market of sorts. So, the market mechanism, which is created or at least regulated by government, can serve for good or ill, from the standpoint of the public interest.  Using the mechanism, such as the E.U. president proposed in 2024, on behalf of ecosystems, is for good rather than ill, and thus using, in effect, the self-interest of farmers could be better than relying on regulatory requirements that farmers expend some money and effort to beef up their local ecosystems.

The full essay is at "Nature Credits in the E.U."

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1. Robert Hodgson, “Von der Leyen Moots ‘Nature Credits’ Market to Avert Ecosystem Collapse,” Euronews.com, September 13, 2024.

Hungary and Texas: Busing Immigrants

Two years after the government of Texas in the U.S. began transferring migrants to other states and to Washington D.C., the government of Hungary announced that it too would bus migrants, but rather than transporting them to other states, the destination would be Brussels exclusively. Although the respective political strategies differ, the two policies both represent the same pressure point in federal systems. The cost of united action at the federal level on public policy is that the states are not as free as otherwise to manifest their respective ideological and cultural views in public policy at the state level. That federal policy or law is often a compromise between the preferences of the states means that political pressure exists not only between states, but between a given state and federal law. This is inherent to federalism because it provides benefits from united action and some ability of states to enact legislation reflecting their respective distinct dominant ideology. Enabling both is one of federalism’s best features, yet it comes with a cost in terms of political tension that is endemic rather than merely episodic. Simply put, no system of government is without drawbacks or downsides. The trick is perhaps in how to manage them so they don’t get so out of control that the federal system itself collapses. In 2024, Viktor Orbán, governor of the E.U. state of Hungary, was testing the limits much more than was Greg Abbott, governor of the U.S. state of Texas, even as Orbán was using Abbott’s playbook.

The full essay is at "Hungary and Texas."

Pope Francis on Families and the Environment

On a trip to Indonesia in early September, 2024, Pope Francis signed a declaration on religious harmony and environmental protection at the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta with the mosque’s grand imam. The Pope said that our species was facing a “serious crisis” bought about by war and the destruction of the environment.[1] Of war, the tremendous destruction of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and Gaza that had been taking place was doubtless on the cleric’s mind. Of the environment, climate change was undoubtedly on his mind. In addition to volcanoes and wild fires, human emissions of carbon into the atmosphere were poised to push the global temperature increase above the critical threshold of 2.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial level. What connects the two problems at the root—the source of the two problems—went unmentioned. In fact, the Pope made a statement that, if acted upon, stood to exacerbate the underlying problem: the exponential explosion of growth of the human  population in the twentieth century.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis on Families and the Environment."

1. Joel Guinto, “Pope and Top Indonesian Imam Make Joint Call for Peace,” BBC.com, September 5, 2024.

On the Reach of the International Criminal Court

Deeply hindered by the lack of enforcement mechanisms, international law can too easily be evaded or violated outright by government officials of countries who easily sense the ability to act so with impunity. Was the president of Mongolia such an official, and thus to be considered as blameworthy, when he did not have Russia’s President Putin arrested as soon as he touched down on Mongolian soil and sent to the International Criminal Court in 2024 for war crimes committed in Ukraine, including forcibly taking Ukrainian children to Russia? Is Mongolia’s acquiescence just another case of the implacable impotence of international law?

The full essay is at "On the Reach of the International Criminal Court."

Religion in Film: Resisting the Formulaic

Historically, meaning in the history of cinema, perhaps too much effort or attention initially went into fidelity to doctrine, especially in Christianity. Heavily stylistic, unrealistic epics could be said to merely illustrate doctrines. Then as filmmakers began to think in an open-ended way concerning how to depict the transcendent both visually and ideationally (i.e., as an idea), the dominance of the earlier control-orientation slipped away to be replaced by innovative ways of understanding how the transcendent may relate to the realm of our daily mundane existence in the world. The extraordinary potential of filmmaking to tap into the human imagination without necessarily providing definitive answerers could be seen. I submit that this historical trajectory is a positive development. This does not mean that heterodox belief has or should win out; in fact, religious practitioners, including the clergy, can help filmmakers to depict the transcendent and its relationship to our existence in novel ways that do not seem so formulaic as to be easily brushed aside as less than credible. Old wine can indeed go into new jugs, and even new wine may be tasted without the world collapsing as a result.

The full essay is at "Religion in Film."

Beyond Climate Change: Starbucks Awash in Cash

While it may be tempting to go after companies for hypocrisy on corporate social responsibility, even deeper criticism may be closer to the bottom line, financially. Even though social media castigated Starbucks for its impact on carbon emissions in agreeing to fly its Southern Californian CEO Brian Niccol to Seattle on a company plane each week, I submit that the amount of spending entailed raises questions about cost-containment and even cast some doubt on whether the company’s price increases in 2024 were wholly justified, and thus even on whether the industry was competitive or an oligarchy.

The full essay is at "Beyond Climate Change: Starbucks Awash in Cash."

Resolved: Flanders and Wallonia as E.U. States

On August 22, 2024, Bart De Wever of the New Flemish Alliance group in Belgium resigned as his efforts to form a government had stalled. His group had won the most votes in the E.U. state’s most recent election back in June, at which time King Philippe appointed De Wever to find consensus among five groups on policies such as taxation on capital gains. Belgium’s longest period without an elected government is an incredible 592 days, which was set after the previous record of 541 days that had been set after the 2010 elections.[1] With two culturally-different regions, Belgium has been difficult to govern. Being a state in a union could conceivably help Belgium in this regard.

The full essay is at "Flanders and Wallonia."

1. Angela Skujins, “Belgian Government Talks at a Standstill after Resignation of Key Negotiator,” Euronews, August 23, 2024.