|
|
|
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
BOAT RACE: 83rd NYC Dinner Tickets on Sale
Monday, February 15, 2016
OXONIAN: John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News
 |
| John Micklethwait |
Mr. Micklethwait was educated at Ampleforth College, an upscale English boarding school, and subsequently at the University of Oxford. He worked for Chase Manhattan Bank before switching to journalism and joining The Economist in 1987. By 2006, he was editing The Economist, famed for lively and collegial discussions at its weekly meetings – discussions that form the basis for some of its distinctive articles. If the World Economic Forum, held each year in Davos, Switzerland, decided to elect a mayor, the highly connected Mr. Micklethwait might be considered.Micklethwait was born August 11, 1962, in London, England. At Oxford he read history at Magdalen College.
The story in The NY Times focused on the issues faced by Bloomberg News' Editor in Chief in covering the principal owner of his news medium, Michael Bloomberg, should Bloomberg decide to be a candidate for the presidency of the United States.
Oxford Birthdays
Friday, February 12, 2016
BIRTH: Feb. 13–Anna Watkins, Cambridge Rower
 |
| Cantab Anna Rose Watkins, MBE, Gold Medalist, Double Sculls, 2012 Olympics |
Her rowing career shows the importance of college-level rowing as a way into the sport for those who didn't participate before the university level.
This is a sport I participated in at Oxford–without no such stellar collegiate record. My post-collegiate rowing was limited to leisure and alumni-fun events but my late friend Peter Darrow rowed seriously long after he took his degree at Oxford.
Watkins went from college rowing at Cambridge to a gold medal in the double sculls in the Olympics (London, 2012). Watkins with Katherine Grainger broke the Olympic record in the semi-final.
At the prior (2008) Olympics she won a bronze in the same sport and won four medals in the World Championships, most recently defending her world title with Katherine Grainger, in Bled, Slovenia in 2011.
Watkins attended Westwood College and read Natural Sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she started rowing in 2001. Watkins rowed with Newnham College Boat Club and was captain of lower boats and then secretary for the club. She represents Leander Club in rowing events. At Cambridge, her college crew were Head of the Cam in 2003 before she moved onto the World Class Start talent identification program run by UK Sport based at Rob Roy Boat Club.
She is currently working for a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Reading. In September 2009 she married Oliver Watkins, a part-time rowing coach, who when they met was working for a Ph.D. in engineering at Cambridge. The couple live in Wokingham, where Oliver works for the McLaren Formula One team as a suspension specialist. Anna has given birth to two boys–William James in 2013 and Richard Dexter in 2015.
In 2010 Watkins with Katherine Grainger had an unbeaten season culminating in their victory at the World Championships in New Zealand. They were named World Rowing Female Crew of the year and also the Sunday Times Women's Sports Team of the year for 2010.
Watkins was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to rowing.
Rowing Awards
Olympic Games
2012 London – Gold, Women's Double Sculls
2008 Beijing – Bronze, Women's Double Sculls
GB Rowing Team Senior Trials
2012 – 2nd, Single Scull
2011 – 1st, Single Scull
World Rowing Championships
2011 Bled – Gold, Double Scull
2010 Lake Karapiro – Gold, Double Scull
2009 Poznań – Silver, Double Scull
2007 Munich – Bronze, Double Scull
2006 Dorney Lake – 4th, Double Scull
2005 Gifu – 5th, Eight World Rowing
Under 23 Championships
2005 – Bronze, Coxless Pair
2004 – Gold, Coulees Four
Other Birthdays (Oxonians Mostly)
Saturday, February 6, 2016
FREE SPEECH: Bullying by the Left (PS: Yale)
 |
| Nat Hentoff archive |
Belief that we have the moral high ground has always been the motivation for suppressing alternative views. But what we may be on is not the high ground but our high horse.
Restricting free speech is unconstitutional in the United States under the First Amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights inherited in a chain that starts with the Magna Carta, whose 800th birthday we celebrated last year. Among Magna Carta’s more important provisions are its requirement that proceedings and prosecutions be according to “the law of the land”–the forerunner of “due process of law”–Article 39 of the Magna Carta–and a ban on the sale or delay of justice. Cromwell's Parliament in 1628 adopted the Petition of Right in response to some of Charles I's actions, condemning unlawful imprisonments and taxation “without common consent of parliament.” The year after William III of Orange was brought in to rule Britain in 1688, Parliament adopted the Bill of Rights, which includes some of the American Amendments such as the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive bail and fines and on cruel and unusual punishment.
There is no law restricting free speech because Congress is forbidden in the First Amendment from passing one:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.It may be more convincing to activists when someone who has long been on their side on the issues makes the free speech case. Here is an appeal from Nat Hentoff and his son Nick a few months ago (November 17, 2015), calling for a cooling off of U.S. campus activists. Nat Hentoff is an authority on the American Constitution's Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment. U.S. laws seem more permissive of free speech than British laws, for example on the boundaries of libel, but the same moral philosophy underlies both.
Public shaming on campus: Out of control, Nat and Nick HentoffPostscript on the Yale Halloween Incident
Hostility to the exercise of free speech on American college campuses is nothing new. But what happened at Yale University, the University of Missouri and other colleges over the past two weeks is something new and frightening. The suppression of speech in academia has begun to spiral out of control.
Nicholas Christakis is a professor at Yale who lives with his wife in a student residence hall on campus. An internationally renowned physician and sociologist, Dr. Christakis was surrounded by dozens of angry students who showered him with curses and threats. Dr. Christakis’ offense? He refused to publicly apologize for his wife’s email that defended free speech and urged tolerance of offensive Halloween costumes. [See Postscript below.]
Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), was on the Yale campus to attend a free-speech symposium and witnessed the incident. In the video Lukianoff posted on FIRE’s website, Christakis appears on the verge of being physically assaulted.
“Nicholas addressed the crowd for more than an hour, even after it became clear that nothing short of begging for forgiveness would satisfy them,” Lukianoff wrote in the Washington Post. “I’ve witnessed some intense campus disputes during my 14 years fighting for free speech, but nothing like this.”
The next evening – at a William F. Buckley Jr. Program conference on free speech that had been planned months in advance – Greg Lukianoff’s speech was interrupted by a student who rushed the podium, shouting, before he was dragged out of the building by campus police. Attendees then braved a gauntlet of angry Yale students who cursed and ridiculed them. The Yale Daily News reported that “several attendees were spat on as they left.”
At the University of Missouri, a student photographer freelancing for ESPN was confronted by a mob of angry anti-racism protesters who tried to eject him from the public commons area where they had gathered. After he refused to leave, the students begin a coordinated effort to both psychologically and physically intimidate the reporter into leaving.
The protesters subjected him to intense ridicule, sometimes chanting in unison, as they gradually forced him backwards. They then began to falsely accuse the reporter of the very conduct they themselves were directing against him.
MU’s student body vice president later tried to justify the students’ self-imposed restrictions on the press during an interview on MSNBC. She suggested that the First Amendment “creates a hostile and unsafe learning environment.”
Later that same week, a Christian street preacher, speaking within the campus “free speech circle,” was physically assaulted and had his microphone appropriated by an anti-racism protester.
At Amherst College, a student group called Amherst Uprising issued a list of demands to administrators that included individual public apologies for what they claimed was a hostile environment of ethnocentric racism on campus. The list also included a demand for a written statement from administrators acknowledging that students who distribute leaflets defending free-speech rights are subject to disciplinary action for being “racially insensitive,” and that any students disciplined for such an offense must “attend extensive training for racial and cultural competency.”
At Cornell, a well-meaning white student was forced to issue a public apology after he scheduled his own anti-racism protest without first getting the approval of the Black Student Union. He was accused, in multiple social media posts, of mocking the efforts of the BSU.
One commentator put him on notice that “if you are to be in (sic) ally, you have to acknowledge what you’ve done to hurt us.” Within hours of scheduling the event, the offending student canceled the protest and issued a public apology thanking his critics “for calling me out on my ignorance.”
These are not isolated incidents, but represent the organized adoption of mass public shaming tactics. Mass public shaming – traditionally used by autocratic regimes to silence their critics – is a particularly insidious form of censorship. It is designed to chill future speech by humiliating the speaker. Psychological manipulation and intimidation are used to impose forced speech as a means of social control.
Universities in the United States should not tolerate or appease such public shaming techniques. In his March 20, 2015, New York Times op-ed, “China’s Tradition of Public Shaming Thrives,” author Murong Xuecun writes that “cases of public shaming show us how in the name of some great cause, individual rights, dignity and privacy can all be sacrificed.”
President Obama recently offered some advice to students and faculty who feel that the First Amendment creates a hostile and unsafe learning environment.
“You don’t have to be fearful of somebody spouting bad ideas.” Obama said during an interview last Sunday on ABC News. “Just out-argue them. Beat ’em. Make the case as to why they’re wrong. Win over adherents. That’s how things work in a democracy."
Feb. 7, 2016–I posted the above yesterday. This morning The New York Times has a story on the Yale Halloween incident. It is described as a turning point–since then, public shaming has being redirected at student activists who in the interest of their causes are violating the higher value of free speech. In the new world where alumni are being asked to make up the shortfall in government funding of higher education, they may also have some influence on campus priorities.
Monday, February 1, 2016
OXFORD UNIV PRESS: Feb. 1–OED First Section Out
 |
| OED Second Edition, 20 volumes, 59 million words. |
Considered the most comprehensive and accurate dictionary of the English language, the OEDs first portion of fascicle was published on this day.
Today, the OED is the definitive authority on the meaning, pronunciation and history of more than half a million words, past and present.
Plans for the dictionary began in 1857 when members of London’s Philological Society, who believed there were no up-to-date, error-free English dictionaries available, decided to produce one that would cover all vocabulary from the Anglo-Saxon period (1150 A.D.) to the present. Conceived of as a four-volume, 6,400-page work, it was estimated the project would take 10 years to finish.
In fact, it took more than four times as long until the 125th and final fascicle was published in April 1928 and the full dictionary was complete–at more than 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes–and published under the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.
Unlike most English dictionaries, which only list present-day common meanings, the OED provides a detailed chronological history for every word and phrase, citing quotations from a wide range of sources, including classic literature and cookbooks. The OED is famous for its lengthy cross-references and etymologies. The verb “set” merits the OED’s longest entry, at approximately 60,000 words and detailing over 430 uses.
No sooner was the OED finished than editors began updating it. A supplement, containing new entries and revisions, was published in 1933 and the original dictionary was reprinted in 12 volumes and officially renamed the Oxford English Dictionary.
Between 1972 and 1986, an updated 4-volume supplement was published, with new terms from the continually evolving English language plus more words and phrases from North America, Australia, the Caribbean, New Zealand, South Africa and South Asia.
In 1984, Oxford University Press embarked on a five-year, multi-million-dollar project to create an electronic version of the dictionary. The effort required 120 people just to type the pages from the print edition and 50 proofreaders to check their work. In 1992, a CD-ROM version of the dictionary was released, making it much easier to search and retrieve information.
Today, the dictionary’s second edition is available online to subscribers and is updated quarterly with more than 1,000 new entries and revisions. At a whopping 20 volumes weighing over 137 pounds, it would reportedly take one person 120 years to type all 59 million words in the OED.
Saturday, January 30, 2016
RHODES: Oriel to Keep Statue
 |
| The Colossus of Rhodes (Punch) |
Oriel's listening period on the subject of Cecil Rhodes seems to be over. I speculate it might have something to do with Oxford's new vice chancellor, Louise Richardson.
She has the moral authority to take a strong position about colonial repression, coming as she does from Ireland, which arguably suffered as much under Oliver Cromwell–with unarguably fewer benefits–as South Africa did under Rhodes. She said the discussion was
a distraction from the much bigger issues. What’s positive about this whole "Rhodes Must Fall" movement is that it’s drawing attention to our history. We need to confront our history.The Empire-wistful Telegraph has been covering the subject intensively. It argues that the Provost has been dithering over making a decision, while alumni donors have been withdrawing their support for the college.
Meanwhile, what about the plaque?
Friday, January 8, 2016
BIRTH: Christopher Morley 125 This Year
 |
| Christopher Morley (1890-1957) |
He was also a founding member of New York City's venerable private meeting place for writers, The Coffee House, still conveniently located across the street from the Harvard Club. A sampling of his famous quotes is here.
Born in Bryn Mawr, Pa. on May 5, 1890, and raised there and in Baltimore, Md. until he went to college, he returned from a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford in 1913 to a literary life in the United States that began as an editor at Doubleday, Page & Co.
He was a compulsive member of many off-beat clubs that he helped create, like The Three Hours for Lunch Club and the Baker Street Irregulars, a Sherlock Holmes literary club which like The Coffee House continues today.
His father, Frank Morley, was a mathematics professor at Haverford College. His mother, Lilian Janet Bird, was a violinist and poetry lover.
In 1906 Christopher entered Haverford College, where he began writing for and editing The Haverfordian. He provided scripts for and acted in the college's drama program. He played on the cricket and soccer teams and graduated in 1910 as valedictorian.
He then went to New College, Oxford, for three years on a Rhodes scholarship, studying "modern" history (the modern era at Oxford in the 1960s meant up to the creation of the United States and the Revolution in France; possibly in 1910 it ended even earlier). In Oxford a volume of his poems, The Eighth Sin (1912), was published.
In 1913 Morley moved to New York City, beginning his literary career at Doubleday as publicist and publisher's reader. He got his start as an editor for Ladies' Home Journal (1917-18), then as a newspaper reporter and newspaper columnist in Philadelphia for the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. Morley's first novel, Parnassus on Wheels, appeared in 1917. The protagonist, traveling bookseller Roger Mifflin, appeared again in his second novel, The Haunted Bookshop in 1919.
On June 14, 1914, he married Helen Booth Fairchild, with whom he would have four children. They first lived in Hempstead, and then in Queens Village. They then moved to Philadelphia, Pa.
In 1920 they moved back to New York, to a house they called "Green Escape", in Roslyn Estates, N.Y. He then began writing "The Bowling Green" column for the New York Evening Post.
He was one of the founders and a longtime contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. He wrote the introduction to the standard omnibus editions of The Complete Sherlock Holmes and The Complete Works of Shakespeare in 1936. That year, he was appointed to revise and enlarge Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (11th ed., 1937; 12th ed., 1948). He was one of the first judges for the Book of the Month Club, until the early 1950s. Morley is probably best known for his 1939 novel Kitty Foyle, which became an Academy Award-winning movie. Another well-known work is Thunder on the Left (1925). In 1928-1930, Morley co-produced theater productions in Hoboken, N.J., which he had "deemed the last seacoast in Bohemia".
In 1951 Morley suffered a series of strokes, which greatly reduced his literary output. He died on March 28, 1957, and was buried in the Roslyn Cemetery in Nassau County, N.Y. After his death, two New York newspapers published his last message to his friends:
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.In 1961, a 98-acre park was named in his honor on Searingtown Road in Nassau County. This park preserves his studio built in 1936, the "Knothole", along with its furnishings.
Other Oxford Birthdays
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)