Mark Steyn write a tribute to Mike Adams, an apparent recent suicide after being driven from his teaching job at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington by the Woke leftist mob.
At the time of his death Mike Adams was a professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington – although not a very popular one with the administration. You will generally see him described in the media as “Controversial Professor Mike Adams”, as if it’s the subject he teaches: Mike Adams, Head of the Department of Controversy. It wasn’t always so. A two-time “Faculty Member of the Year” winner at the turn of the century, Adams grew more “controversial” as the university got more “woke”. He got a book deal with Regnery (publishers of America Alone), and was quoted favorably by Rush:
What American university wants a prof who’s published by Regnery and getting raves on the Rush Limbaugh show? The Deputy Assistant Under-Deans of Diversity all frosted him out, and Adams spent seven years in a lawsuit with UNCW – which he won, but it’s still seven years of your life you’ll never get back. …
It was all scheduled to come to an end on Friday with Adams’ painfully negotiated departure and a $504,702.76 settlement. Half-a-mil sounds a lot, but it was to be paid out over five years, if the university stuck to it, and it’s not really a lot, is it, for the obliteration of any trace of your presence at the school to which you devoted your entire teaching career.
On Thursday a neighbor called 911 because Mike Adams’ car hadn’t been moved for several days and there was no answer on the telephone. Inside police found the body of a 55-year-old man with, in cop lingo, a “gsw” – gunshot wound. …
He “seemed like” a happy warrior, but who knows? It’s a miserable, unrelenting, stressful life, as the friends fall away and the colleagues, who were socially distant years before Covid, turn openly hostile. There are teachers who agree with Mike Adams at UNCW and other universities – not a lot, but some – and there are others who don’t agree but retain a certain queasiness about the tightening bounds of acceptable opinion …and they all keep their heads down. So the burthen borne by a man with his head up, such as Adams, is a lonely one, and it can drag you down and the compensations (an invitation to discuss your latest TownHall column on the radio or cable news) are very fleeting.
The American academy is bonkers and has reared monsters. …
Pushing back can be initially exhilarating – and then just awfully wearing and soul-crushing: “I’m with you one hundred per cent, of course. But please don’t mention I said so…” “Oh, we had a lovely time at the Smiths’. Surprised not to see you there…” It is possible, I suppose, that Mike Adams was the victim of a homicide rather than the ultimate self-cancelation: Certainly there are plenty on Twitter and Facebook who would like to kill him, or at least cheer on any chap who would. …
And yet, if the facts are as they appear, a tireless and apparently “happy warrior” – exhausted by a decade of litigation, threats, boycotts, ostracization and more – found himself sitting alone – and all he heard in the deafening silence of the “silent majority” was his own isolation and despair. A terrible end for a brave man. Rest in peace.
Vanderleun quotes and links a slice-of-life-today saga from Reddit.
My (22M) vegan girlfriend (21F) wants me to get rid of my cat : However, after a lot of talking and planning, my GF sat me down and dropped a bombshell on me. She said that with this next phase of the relationship, she did not see a future with me unless I was willing to give away Mittens. She said that she believed owning a cat is unconscionable for vegans, because they hunt mice and eat meat, and because the very act of owning a pet is a violation of vegan principles… [Reddit upvotes for this announcement, 27,000]
My (22M) vegan girlfriend (21F) wants me to get rid of my cat. UPDATE : So, we broke up, obviously. I would never, ever give up my cat Mittens. Many users said that this situation was about control, not veganism, and looking back, I do see a pattern of control on my GFs part. I was blind to it I guess. [Reddit Upvotes for this decision, 75,000]
David Henderson observes that when the pressure is on, not many have the courage to resist the mob.
At Cornell University Law School, a number of people are trying to bully the Dean into firing law professor William Jacobson over 2 of his criticisms of Black Lives Matter. (Disclosure: I read Professor Jacobson’s posts at least once a week because I find them informative.) The Dean, to his credit, defended Jacobson’s academic freedom, but to his discredit, made a nasty attack on Jacobson’s posts, managing to badly misstate the posts in the process. It’s interesting how easy it is to win an argument when you badly misstate what the person you’re arguing against says. Dean Eduardo M. Peñalver will not soon be winning any ideological Turing test awards.
Professor Jacobson appears to have received little public support from his colleagues. He writes:
None of the 21 signatories [of a public letter denouncing him], some of whom I’d worked closely with for over a decade and who I considered friends, had the common decency to approach me with any concerns. Instead they ran to the Cornell Sun while virtue signaling to students behind the scenes that this was a denunciation of me. Such is the political environment we live in now at CLS.
I’m not surprised. The reason has to do with an “aha†moment I had in the summer of 1979. I was leaving the University of Rochester’s Graduate School of Management even before my tenure clock was up. I had become friends with W. Allen Wallis, the Chancellor of the university, and he invited me to lunch in the nicer section (the part that served booze) of the faculty club, housed in the Frederick Douglass building. Early in the lunch, I realized that this wasn’t just a warm good-bye, although it was that too, but also an exit interview. So I ordered a whisky sour and loosened my tongue.
Allen wanted to know what I thought of the management school. I said that it had a lot going for it. The Dean, William H. Meckling, was great and there were a lot of strong faculty, especially in finance. But, I said, it could be so much better, even with existing faculty if there were a more open discussion and not so much kowtowing to Michael Jensen, the most prominent member of the faculty. Everyone had figured out that Michael was Bill’s buddy and so the majority were hesitant to challenge him in workshops or faculty discussions about policy issues. I said that I was one of the few willing to do this. (I didn’t name Richard Thaler, who was also one of the few, because he had left and it looked as if he wasn’t returning.)
Then I said, “My view is that in a faculty of 40 people, you should have 40 independent minds.â€
Allen started laughing and I felt hurt. “Why are you laughing at me?†I asked.
He answered, “My view is that if in a faculty of 40 people you have 2 or 3 independent minds, you’re doing well.â€
A tourmaline and diamond flower brooch, by JAR. Designed as two green and pink tourmaline poppy flowerhead and bud, linked by a green tourmaline scrolling stem centering upon a pear-shaped diamond. Sold for CHF 1,179,000 on 14 May 2012 at Christie’s in Geneva.
Christie’s monthly magazine has a feature on a jeweler you and I can start patronizing for gifts for the little woman just as soon as we sell off our 50,000-acre cattle ranches.
Nice stuff, though.
Joel Arthur Rosenthal produces only around 70 imaginative, meticulously crafted pieces a year, making them highly sought-after by movie stars, tastemakers and collectors the world over
There’s no shop sign or window display at 7 Place Vendôme — nothing that hints at the brilliance within beyond three discreet letters, JAR. Yet for jewellery collectors, this is a place of pilgrimage: the store of the acclaimed contemporary jewellery designer, Joel Arthur Rosenthal.
Born in New York City in 1943, Rosenthal graduated in art history and philosophy at Harvard before moving to Paris. There, he opened a needlepoint shop, where his experiments with unusual colours of yarn attracted the custom of designers for Hermès and Valentino. After working with Bulgari in New York, he returned to Paris, opening his own jewellery store with his partner, Pierre Jeannet, in 1977.
Diamond and coloured diamond Trellis rarrings, JAR. Estimate $150,000-200,000. Offered in Magnificent Jewels on 29 July 2020 at Christie’s in New York
Diamond and coloured diamond ‘Trellis’ rarrings, JAR. Estimate: $150,000-200,000. Offered in Magnificent Jewels on 29 July 2020 at Christie’s in New York
JAR, as he is generally known, is celebrated for his creativity and his craftsmanship. He pairs unusual gemstones with non-traditional materials and has a daring way with colour and proportion. The quality of his work recalls the jewellery of the 18th and 19th centuries. In 2013, he was the first living ‘artist of gems’ to be honoured with a retrospective at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
JAR only produces some 70 pieces a year. His ability to create jewels of unusual dynamism and architectural depth has made him a favourite with style icons, tastemakers and collectors the world over.
We can all remember the joy felt upon receiving that first envelope with a paycheck inside. Our own money that we earned ourselves, in a real job, just like an adult. All ours!
We’ve gleefully counted up the hours and multiplied them by our wages, and it comes to, from a kid’s point of view, a tidy sum. Then, we open the envelope and look at the check. Omigod! it’s so much less than we were expecting! And then, we realize, they are going to take just as much next week, and the week after, and the week after that.
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Last night, on “Yellowstone,” the nefarious developer offered noble old-time rancher John Dutton $500,000,000.00 ($10,000 per acre) for his ranch.
Wow! we viewers thought, $500 mil, that’s all the money anybody would ever need, all the money any family would ever need for generations. First, we buy something like Llangolen or Carter Hall in Virginia, then a suitable large house in Paris, another in London, a castle in Ireland, and so on.
But, wait, think of the taxes! after the Feds and the State and the County all take their bites out of it, it would be a long way short of 500… (Of course, nobody probably really owns 50,000 acres in the pretty part of Montana, and nobody is going to pay $10,000 an acre in a 50,000 land deal that is not part of Manhattan. But, still…)
