Category Archives: Judaism & Jews

Ivy League Education: Only Idiots And Elites Need Apply

Affirmative Action, Education, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Judaism & Jews

A graduate of an Ivy League school himself, Barely A Blog contributor Myron Pauli (bio below) decries the idiots and the elites—categories which are by no means mutually exclusive—who rig top tertiary education these days.

Ivy League Education: Only Idiots and Elites Need Apply
By Myron Pauli

Imagine a “thought experiment” where a student has two choices:

CHOICE ONE: Attend Harvard University where famous obnoxious faculty big shots (Nobel Prizewinners and public celebrities) roam the campus and where you will be likely to dorm with children of CEO’s, cabinet officers, and third world dictators, dining out in the Cambridge milieu – and then you receive a diploma after 4 years that says “University of North Dakota,”

OR:

CHOICE TWO: Attend the University of North Dakota with friendly but completely ordinary professors and the 4-H club and ROTC students hanging out in the great cultural milieu of Grand Forks ND – and then you receive a diploma after 4 years that says “Harvard.”
In other words, which is better, the “Harvard education” or the “Harvard credential”? My mother who always said, “It’s not what you know, it’s whom you know” would definitely pick the latter. So would most people. In fact, the Harvard education is probably worth 1% of the value of the Harvard certificate. Such is the nature of the elite “meritocracy” of the United States where Ivy League graduates such as the Obamas are automatically heralded as “geniuses.” Conferring an Ivy League diploma on the local bowling alley attendant elevates that person into a sage of our modern era.

Naturally, affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics distorts the admissions process. While I was at MIT, a white from Brooklyn with one B and A in everything else, including advanced graduate work, was denied admissions to Stanford graduate school, while a black from East Orange NJ with C’s and D’s in lower level MIT courses was accepted. They both stayed at MIT with the former now a distinguished professor in his field, and the latter dropping out of graduate school – having had his time “wasted” by people bending over backwards on his behalf.

There are many other distortions and biases – some of the statistics and anecdotes can be found in the recent article “The Myth of American Meritocracy” in The American Conservative (TAC) which serve to point out the rather arbitrariness of the elite admissions (except for the completely test-related Caltech) of the elite colleges.

Not surprisingly, Asians, as a group, are discriminated against by the Ivy Leagues. They score 140 points above their white competitors and 450 points above their black competitors on the SAT’s (perhaps the Asians are not as good in football!). A more surprising find is that non-Jewish whites, formerly the backbone of the Ivy Leagues, appear to be at a disadvantage under the current admissions process. While they make up 88% of University of North Dakota, these “whities” are only good for 18% at Harvard. Even nerdy Caltech with 39% Asian has 33% non-Jewish whites. But they are currently not politically protected. The article referenced did not go into how many non-Jewish whites, who are neither alumni legacies nor ones with elite “connections,” get into Harvard, but it is likely a very low number.

Ironically, the TAC data indicates that Jews, who used to be discriminated against by the Ivies 90 years ago or so, currently seem to be overrepresented above and beyond their performance. Additionally, there are arguments that Jews have slipped educationally in the last few generations for a variety of reasons: disinterest in academics (why study physics when you can make money doing hedge funds?), and the demographic rise of the non-academic Orthodox Jewish component. Jews who dominated in science competitions 40 years ago seem to have been replaced by Asians. [Could it be that Jews are now fully acculturated to the American progressive educational ethos, where the goal is to ‘follow your dream and have fun’; a goal that almost always precludes hard work? Asian mothers are slower to respond to this fatuity, but it’s happening. I met one the other day.—IM]

Academic performance has been replaced with expert “gaming the system”. Why bother with nerdy grind-work when a well-connected guidance counselor and the correct extras can get you into the palace of Princeton?

If America of 1912 was dominated by a self-anointed “old-boy network” of White Protestant men – the America of 2012 is dominated by a self-anointed “PC network” which may look more diverse but is just as much of a self-chosen network.

The “best and brightest” is not merely a snobby social club, but also includes those who make decisions to get us into wars, deficits, and to take our freedoms away.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

What Do Paris Hilton And A-Jad Have In Common?

Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Freedom of Religion, Homosexuality, Iran, Islam, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Correctness

The following is from the current column, “What Do Paris Hilton And A-Jad Have In Common?”, now on WND:

“Gay Paree” refers to Paris, the capital of France, after which socialite Paris Hilton must have been named—that is, unless her parents are even more provincial (and pretentious) than they appear, and named their ditz of a daughter for the Texas city, northeast of Dallas–Fort Worth.

A-Jad is American English—and the perfect nickname—for Ahmadinejad, first name: Mahmoud. Residence: Iran. Occupation: Iranian president, alleged dictator, and general fall guy for the West.

What do Paris Hilton and A-Jad have in common?

OMG! Don’t tell me that Paris too has disrespected Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—a dissing that has hardened into a handy political tool with which to whip any enemy of the neoconservative political faith.

Baying for the blood of Iran, the warbots are now bouncing off the walls. Why? Because the UN—whose moral and intellectual heft is on par with Hillary Clinton’s and that of Hollywood’s Idiocracy—invited A-Jad to speak on a day sacred to 13.4 million (count this writer among them) of the world’s population.

One tenet of the Jacobin orthodoxy concerns Iranian nuclear installations. These must be hit, and now. The neoconservative faction is unperturbed by the fact that Iran has been crippled economically. Consider, for example, its SWIFT eviction from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Consequently—and since Barack Obama’s reign of terror abroad began—the Iranian currency had lost 65 percent of its value.

But no. American men and matériel should be allowed to reach all corners of the world, so move in for the kill we must.

Mon ami’ Mahmoud is not. But neither does this (Jewish) writer imagine that the seven billion (minus 13.4 million) people of the planet are obliged to respect Yom Kippur. Such an impossible standard would damn many a Jew to eternal punishment.

Back to the original question. The insufferably pompous Piers Morgan would have no problem answering it. Both Paris and A-Jad have been caught in flagrante delicto. …

Read on. The complete column, “What Do Paris Hilton And A-Jad Have In Common?”, is now on WND.COM.

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UPDATE IV: “Jesus, No Radical”? (Jesus’ Jewishness)

Ancient History, Christianity, Classical Liberalism, Hebrew Testament, Islam, Judaism & Jews, Justice

“Jesus was no political radical or rebel. He was God” is how the ever-provocative Jack Kerwick introduces his latest Belief.Net blog to Facebook Friends.

Maestro, pray tell, why are the two categories of the title—“G-d” vs. “political radical”—mutually exclusive?

One might have theological reasons for designating “G-d” and “political radical” as mutually exclusive, but reason is reason. It has to work a priori, surely?

Jews (at least those who think) think of Jesus as a preacher in the great tradition of the classical Hebrew prophets, whose genius, courage and yes, radicalism is hard to match—they were forever telling the stiff-necked people where to get off in no uncertain terms.

UPDATE I: “Yiddishkeit.” In reply to the thread on Facebook: Jesus was indeed a Jew (or a Hebrew), with everything that being a Hebrew would imply. A lot of people describe Jewish traits negatively. But you can be sure that Jesus was not without a dose of “Yiddishkeit,” as my blond, blue-eyed, Jewish mother would call it.

UPDATE II: Meathead: One should never place Russell Kirk in the company in which you placed him. For one, Kirk was against the wars Buckley embraced as a matter of principle. As I read Kirk, he was a classical liberal of enormous talent.

UPDATE III (June 14): The “because” is unfairly placed in yours sentence below, Jack Kerwick.

As for Ilana’s contention that Jesus was a “radical” because, like the prophets of old, He told “the stiff necked people where to get off in no uncertain terms,” how does that make Jesus, or anyone, a radical?

Here is what I wrote in the post above:

In punctuation, the sentence indicates that the last clause is but an example of the “genius, courage and yes, radicalism” of the prophets, and hardly exhaustive.

In meaning, how does the last clause, which you rightly seem to disparage as inexhaustible, qualify the words “genius, courage and yes, radicalism”?

It doesn’t. Yours is a somewhat unfair read of the sentence.

As for conflating, as you do Jack, the views of Jews on Christ with those of Muslims: That, in my view, is a grave error.

Statism Second Nature to Newt

Business, Elections, Free Markets, Gender, Judaism & Jews, Pop-Culture, The State, Welfare

Rudderless and clueless: That’s Newt Gingrich. First he got fired up over the fact of firing in the private sector, attacking “Mitt Romney for what are the prerogatives of private property and the fiduciary duty of a CEO managing private property to fire workers when necessary.”

Now Newt is raging against Romney’s decision, taken in 2003, to veto “a $600,000 expenditure while he was Massachusetts governor that would have paid for kosher meals for seniors in nursing homes on Medicaid, the New York Post reported last week.”

In Gingrich we have someone who professes to champion limited, constitutional government. At the same time, he attacks his opponent because of that opponent’s failure to approve a welfare program. Newt’s attacks, moreover, are almost intuitive and without second thought.

This tells you how foreign the idea of limited government is to Newt Gingrich.

Statism is second nature to Newt.

Other than that, Gingrich happens to be a particularly smug gas bag.

While Romney should not be upbraided for refusing to fleece taxpayers for a special constituency, Romney’s background is replete with similar unkosher statist instincts. For example, “a decision Romney made in 2005 that said all hospitals in the state were required to provide the Plan B birth control pill under Medicaid. At the time, Romney said the decision was made based on legal advice from a state attorney, according to Globe coverage of the issue.”

Although, the above does sound like a legal decision, driven perhaps by fears of courts challenges and law-suits.

It’s possible that Mitt was mortified at the likely possibility that Massachusetts women would “spontaneously” “contract” Tourettes and other twitches should the state deign to deprive them of their God-given right to contraceptives.