Tag: Harvard University

The Story:  Scientists at Harvard say that they have discovered a state of matter they call a "quantum spin liquid," and that it could be...

The Story: Three graduate students recently filed a lawsuit against Harvard University alleging that it has enabled the harassing behavior of an important anthropology professor....

The Story: Edward O. Wilson, one of the most important biologists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, died last week at age 92....

Unless the country’s economic management evolved, there was a risk of stagnation, Overholt said, describing the thesis in his new book China’s Crisis of Success. Second, the whole economy finds itself over-leveraged. And as powerful interest groups pushed on policy, so politics was also transformed. To overcome such problems, a country needed both an economic plan and a political plan, Overholt said. The plan would subject state-owned enterprises to market-based reforms, but this “steps on the toes of every power group in China”, he said. The optimistic result: Economic reform is successful and the country then turns to fixing the politics. But interest groups had become stronger, richer and increased the political problem, he said. Economic reform does not happen. Interest groups took control of the government protected themselves against both domestic and foreign competition, leading to a long period of economic stagnation. If they’re not successful with economic reform, they’ll have a bigger political problem”.

It was the week identity politics ate itself. It was the week we learned that US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is between 1/1,024th and 1/64th Native American Indian. It was also the week that Harvard University — universally acknowledged as a bastion of American liberalism — was taken to court for discriminating against Asian-American applicants. Similar calculations were being made by Ivy League admissions offices as they sought ways to increase the diversity of their traditionally very white student bodies. Since the mid-1990s, Unz pointed out, Asians had consistently accounted for around 16 percent of Harvard enrollments. Now the advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions, which opposes affirmative action, is suing Harvard for discriminating against Asian applicants. Ninety-nine percent of “progressive activists” believe that “many white people today don’t recognize the real advantages they have.” But 82 percent of “devoted conservatives” reject this, maintaining that “nowadays white people do not have any real advantages over others.” It’s the same polarized story for the whole suite of identity politics issues: immigration, sexual harassment, Islamophobia, feminism. Eighty percent of all Americans, and an even higher proportion of the exhausted majority, believe that political correctness has gone too far. Only 30 percent of progressive activists agree. Only 40 percent of progressive activists agree.

CNN's Michael Smerconish explains how a lawsuit charging that Harvard limits the amount of qualified Asian-American it admits could bring change to the entire system. #CNN #News

He said that the Trump administration's rollback of vehicle emissions rules and the Clean Power Plan would not affect public health protections. They're still in effect. Air pollution controls, not climate considerations, accounted for most of the economic and health benefits of the Clean Power Plan, Obama's rule on power plants. In a peer-reviewed paper to be published in the journal Energy Policy, he and other researchers concluded that the proposed policy by the Department of Energy would cause 27,000 premature deaths over 25 years. Here are a few of the possible rollbacks by the Trump administration. By contrast, the agency projected that the Clean Power Plan could prevent 1,500 and 3,600 premature deaths per year in that time. The Trump EPA has defended its action on the Clean Power Plan by arguing that the rule is focused only on greenhouse gases, and that other pollutants, such as fine particle pollution, are addressed in other regulations. The Obama administration counted the co-benefits of reducing air particle pollution, such as estimated benefits of between $37 billion and $90 billion for the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. Still, when EPA officials make estimates about preventing premature deaths with a regulation, it's not as political as some might think. The Obama administration proposed rules that would have resulted in significant reductions in fine particle pollution.

The following are items of political interest from the past week: The campaign of Republican Ron DeSantis is going after Democrat Andrew Gillum over comments made by his running mate nearly two decades ago. Some voters this week got text messages that noted inflammatory comments made by lieutenant governor nominee Chris King back in 1999. King came in fifth in the election won by Gillum. The Gillum campaign sharply criticized the text messages as a "smear tactic" by the DeSantis campaign. It only took a few days for the Ring campaign to launch a rival website called JimmyPatronis.info that bashed some of Patronis campaign donors for their past legal run-ins. Patronis got a ticket while driving the SUV because he had an accident while traveling to his political consultant's office to pick up thank-you cards. Hillary Clinton may have lost Florida in the 2016 presidential election, but she's coming back to the state to help campaign for Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Gillum's campaign announced that Clinton will join Gillum on Oct. 23 in South Florida. Clinton made several visits to the Sunshine State ahead of the 2016 election, but the Democratic nominee lost the state to President Donald Trump by nearly 113,000 votes.

There is a history of political consultants leaving Washington after a tour of duty and heading west, to try their hand at California politics or even Hollywood screenwriting. Mr. Shrum and Mr. Murphy, who both live in Los Angeles, are joining forces to create the Center for the Political Future at the Dornsife College at the University of Southern California, where Mr. Shrum teaches. “Mike and I are doing this together because we are both concerned about the state of our politics,” Mr. Shrum said. “Without words having meaning, you can’t have politics that works,” he said. California Online Image (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) [The New York Times] • Over the last 10 years, Donny Baarns has broadcast more than 1,000 minor league baseball games. He got a shot in the big leagues with the Oakland A’s. [The Wall Street Journal] • In California, our editorial board writes, facts and science still matter. And Finally ... As tens of millions of baby boomers live longer, their children will have to shoulder the burden of caring for them. Safi Alia Shabaik is one of those children.

The Department of Justice is siding with a group of Asian-American students who are suing Harvard University for discrimination. The group is claiming that Harvard's admissions process violates the Supreme Court's affirmative action rulings. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc About:…