The Smithian

May 15th, 2013

We’ve kind of enlisted the help of the gangs…If your goal is not gang eradication, which none of us knows how to do, but instead violence reduction, and you enlist the gangs as aids, then you begin to change the physics of the neighborhood…We’re doing it with the cooperation of the gangs because they’re so powerful—they control some of the neighborhoods. We get them into classes and training, and we say, if you help us stop the violence, we’re not going to hold your past against you. Everyone agrees we should keep the kids safe… [bloodshed wasn’t just the result of gang identification and drug disputes, but also personal grudges and simply] the power of the barrel of a gun…If you don’t give them a way to exert power legitimately, they’ll do it another way.

Connie Rice, Los Angeles civil rights attorney

In 2003 police brass asked Rice to help them formulate a new strategy for coping with LA’s…gang violence. The effort resulted in the Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development, an initiative housed in the LA mayor’s office that includes recreational programs at night in city parks, intervention with preteen youth in neighborhoods with high gang membership, and appeals to former and current gang leaders to stop retaliatory violence. There’s…an experiment underway to offer…children of gang members a…college education if the kids stay out of gangs.

May 15th, 2013

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May 4th, 2013

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Mary Ann Vecchio [is]…the girl in the haunting photo—crying, kneeling over the student’s body. That was Kent State University, May 4, 1970, a few days after Richard Nixon, who’d campaigned for president on an implicit promise to end the war, widened it by invading Cambodia…At Kent State, where two days earlier the ROTC building was burned down, National Guardsmen fired into a crowd and killed four unarmed students, the closest of whom was nearly a football field away

more.

Mary Ann Vecchio [is]…the girl in the haunting photo—crying, kneeling over the student’s body. That was Kent State University, May 4, 1970, a few days after Richard Nixon, who’d campaigned for president on an implicit promise to end the war, widened it by invading Cambodia…At Kent State, where two days earlier the ROTC building was burned down, National Guardsmen fired into a crowd and killed four unarmed students, the closest of whom was nearly a football field away

more.

April 12th, 2013

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In conjunction with other conservative groups attacking the “liberal” judiciary and the press, they continued to shore up the movement’s populist credentials by identifying an elite to which conservatives could stand opposed — a task that grew in importance as populist elements within the Republican Party gained even more prominence. They continued to provide a vocabulary for conservative college students (and their parents) to express frustration with their higher education experiences. And they helped to call into question the credibility of academic knowledge, which made the growing number of conservative intellectuals in think tanks working on topics like taxes or energy policy or financial deregulation seem more reliable and trustworthy by comparison.

more, from an excerpt, here.

In conjunction with other conservative groups attacking the “liberal” judiciary and the press, they continued to shore up the movement’s populist credentials by identifying an elite to which conservatives could stand opposed — a task that grew in importance as populist elements within the Republican Party gained even more prominence. They continued to provide a vocabulary for conservative college students (and their parents) to express frustration with their higher education experiences. And they helped to call into question the credibility of academic knowledge, which made the growing number of conservative intellectuals in think tanks working on topics like taxes or energy policy or financial deregulation seem more reliable and trustworthy by comparison.

more, from an excerpt, here.

April 3rd, 2013

thesmithian

'“HBCUs are part of the African-American community. We want to be engaged in all parts of the African-American community. So it’s important for us to do outreach to HBCUs,” says Raffi Williams, the RNC deputy press secretary and the outreach coordinator to African-Americans. “We’re still in the planning process, obviously, figuring out what the best strategy is moving forward.”'

April 2nd, 2013

thesmithian

‘…kids now have to have fake epiphanies about the suffering of other, less privileged people instead of just having fake epiphanies about themselves…’

…This proves that they are really caring human beings who want to do more for the world than just make money so that they, too will, in their time, be able to get their children into Harvard. This entire thing is absurd. I understand why kids engage in this ridiculous arms race. What I don’t understand is why admissions officers, who have presumably met some teenagers…actually reward it. Why not give kids a bonus for showing up to a routine job during high school, like real people, instead of for having wealthy parents who can help you tap their affluent social network for charitable donations? Why have we conflated “excellence” with affluence, driven parents, and a relentless will to conform on the part of the kids? Unfortunately, the admissions system seems to be primarily geared towards fake sincerity and ersatz enrichment.

more.

March 4th, 2013

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tragic.

February 17th, 2013

thesmithian

'Young people from families of modest means face a Catch-22: without a college education, they are condemned to a life of poor prospects; with a college education, they may be condemned to a lifetime of living at the brink. And increasingly even a college degree isn’t enough; one needs either a graduate degree or a series of (often unpaid) internships. Those at the top have the connections and social capital to get those opportunities. Those in the middle and bottom don’t. The point is that no one makes it on his or her own. And those at the top get more help from their families than do those lower down on the ladder.'

February 9th, 2013

thesmithian

Why do you need semesters? Why do you need 10,000 different courses [at different universities] on calculus each autumn?

Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard

January 29th, 2013

thesmithian

‘There is a long and appalling history in this country of the rest of us having to act like bigots…because of the South…’

…It has existed in legislation—the GI Bill had to be written in such a way that it wouldn’t benefit blacks too much, or the legislators of the South said they would kill it. Before that, much of the New Deal legislation had to be written in the same way. It’s existed in sports, with college bowl games down South that wouldn’t take Northern teams that had dirty negroes. It’s existed in rock and roll, when integrated road shows couldn’t go down there. It existed on television in the 1960s, when Ed Sullivan had to very careful about how much black and white entertainers could mix on his show because sponsors and affiliates from a certain region of the country would howl..we are past the point in this country now where one’s views on homosexuality can be called a “matter of conscience.” No. Being against equality here isn’t a matter of conscience anymore than having been against racial equality in 1955 was. It is just bigotry plain and simple. Enough.

more from Michael Tomasky, at TDB.

December 3rd, 2012

thesmithian

We hear over and over…that colleges and universities cannot find qualified, college-ready black men to come to their institutions…But it seems that they can find them when they want the black men to generate revenue for them.

Shaun R. Harper, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education

October 30th, 2012

thesmithian

'...What lies behind these widening gaps? A big reason, particularly in the bottom half, is education, or rather the lack of it. Just as the information-technology revolution demanded more skilled workers, the continuous improvement in Americans’ education stalled. High-school graduation rates stopped climbing in the 1970s, for the first time since 1890. College completion rates also slowed. Many Americans were failing to match the new technologies with better skills.'

October 24th, 2012

thesmithian

'...Colleges and universities are supposed to be bastions of unbridled inquiry and expression, but they probably do as much to repress free speech as any other institution in young people’s lives.'

June 20th, 2012

thesmithian

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In return for the gear, travel, and exposure, Nike gets a near-monopoly on young, hip, talented, and influential high school basketball stars as de facto pitchmen. These nouveau celebrities have been thrust into the national sports consciousness as interest in college basketball recruiting rises with each year.

more.

In return for the gear, travel, and exposure, Nike gets a near-monopoly on young, hip, talented, and influential high school basketball stars as de facto pitchmen. These nouveau celebrities have been thrust into the national sports consciousness as interest in college basketball recruiting rises with each year.

more.