#Ben Sasse

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-adults-are-still-in-charge-at-the-university-of-florida-israel-protests-tents-sasse-eca6389b

The Adults Are Still in Charge at the University of Florida

By: Ben Sasse

Published: May 3, 2024

Higher education isn’t daycare. Here are the rules we follow on free speech and public protests.

Gainesville, Fla.

Higher education has for years faced a slow-burning crisis of public trust. Mob rule at some of America’s most prestigious universities in recent weeks has thrown gasoline on the fire. Pro-Hamas agitators have fought police, barricaded themselves in university buildings, shut down classes, forced commencement cancellations, and physically impeded Jewish students from attending lectures.

Parents are rightly furious at the asinine entitlement of these activists and the embarrassing timidity of many college administrators. One parent put it bluntly: “Why the hell should anybody spend their money to send their kid to college?” Employers watching this fiasco are asking the same question.

At the University of Florida, we tell parents and future employers: We’re not perfect, but the adults are still in charge. Our response to threats to build encampments is driven by three basic truths.

First, universities must distinguish between speech and action. Speech is central to education. We’re in the business of discovering knowledge and then passing it, both newly learned and time-tested, to the next generation. To do that, we need to foster an environment of free thought in which ideas can be picked apart and put back together, again and again. The heckler gets no veto. The best arguments deserve the best counterarguments.

To cherish the First Amendment rights of speech and assembly, we draw a hard line at unlawful action. Speech isn’t violence. Silence isn’t violence. Violence is violence. Just as we have an obligation to protect speech, we have an obligation to keep our students safe. Throwing fists, storming buildings, vandalizing property, spitting on cops and hijacking a university aren’t speech.

Second, universities must say what they mean and then do what they say. Empty threats make everything worse. Any parent who has endured a 2-year-old’s tantrum gets this. You can’t say, “Don’t make me come up there” if you aren’t willing to walk up the stairs and enforce the rules. You don’t make a threat until you’ve decided to follow through if necessary. In the same way, universities make things worse with halfhearted appeals to abide by existing policies and then immediately negotiating with 20-year-old toddlers.

Appeasing mobs emboldens agitators elsewhere. Moving classes online is a retreat that penalizes students and rewards protesters. Participating in live-streamed struggle sessions doesn’t promote honest, good-faith discussion. Universities need to be strong defenders of the entire community, including students in the library on the eve of an exam, and stewards of our fundamental educational mission.

Actions have consequences. At the University of Florida, we have repeatedly, patiently explained two things to protesters: We will always defend your rights to free speech and free assembly—but if you cross the line on clearly prohibited activities, you will be thrown off campus and suspended. In Gainesville, that means a three-year prohibition from campus. That’s serious. We said it. We meant it. We enforced it. We wish we didn’t have to, but the students weighed the costs, made their decisions, and will own the consequences as adults. We’re a university, not a daycare. We don’t coddle emotions, we wrestle with ideas.

Third, universities need to recommit themselves to real education. Rather than engage a wide range of ideas with curiosity and intellectual humility, many academic disciplines have capitulated to a dogmatic view of identity politics. Students are taught to divide the world into immutable categories of oppressors and oppressed, and to make sweeping judgements accordingly. With little regard for historical complexity, personal agency or individual dignity, much of what passes for sophisticated thought is quasireligious fanaticism.

The results are now on full display. Students steeped in this dogma chant violent slogans like “by any means necessary.” Any? Paraglider memes have replaced Che Guevara T-shirts. But which paragliders—the savages who raped teenage girls at a concert? “From the river to the sea.” Which river? Which sea?

Young men and women with little grasp of geography or history—even recent events like the Palestinians’ rejection of President Clinton’s offer of a two-state solution—wade into geopolitics with bumper-sticker slogans they don’t understand. For a lonely subset of the anxious generation, these protest camps can become a place to find a rare taste of community. This is their stage to role-play revolution. Posting about your “allergen-free” tent on the quad is a lot easier than doing real work to uplift the downtrodden.

Universities have an obligation to combat this ignorance with rigorous teaching. Life-changing education explores alternatives, teaches the messiness of history, and questions every truth claim. Knowledge depends on healthy self-doubt and a humble willingness to question self-certainties. This is a complicated world because fallen humans are complicated. Universities must prepare their students for the reality beyond campus, where 330 million of their fellow citizens will disagree over important and divisive subjects.

The insurrectionists who storm administration buildings, the antisemites who punch Jews, and the entitled activists who seek attention aren’t persuading anyone. Nor are they appealing to anyone’s better angels. Their tactics are naked threats to the mission of higher education.

Teachers ought to be ushering students into the world of argument and persuasion. Minds are changed by reason, not force. Progress depends on those who do the soulful, patient work of inspiring intellects. Martin Luther King Jr., America’s greatest philosopher, countered the nation’s original sin of racism by sharpening the best arguments across millennia. To win hearts, he offered hope that love could overcome injustice.

King’s approach couldn’t be more different from the abhorrent violence and destruction on display across the country’s campuses. He showed us a way protest can persuade rather than intimidate. We ought to model that for our students. We do that by recommitting to the fundamentals of free speech, consequences and genuine education. Americans get this. We want to believe in the power of education as a way to elevate human dignity. It’s time for universities to do their jobs again.

Mr. Sasse is president of the University of Florida.

==

This is the way.

Never forget that the "speech is violence" people have spent the last few weeks trying to gaslight everyone that their violence is just protected speech.

[little-catholic-diva]

Several student groups, including the UF Communists and the UF Young Democratic Socialists of America, organized the protest. These people are pathetic

[meandmybigmouth]

[thebookewyrme]

The New York Times on Sasse

I got a photo credit in the New York Times Magazine. Here's some thoughts on the article around it, mostly on Ben Sasse, Florida politics, and higher education, specifically UF.

So, in exciting news, I can now add “photo credit in the New York Times“ to my list of accomplishments! And what a great photo to be known for too! These great posters went up around campus this past spring when Sasse was still hiding from campus, never even coming into his office in Tigert Hall most days. The article talks a little about the poster, but it’s mostly about the conflict between…

[storynstory]

Ben Sasse President of The University of Florida

According to two people familiar with the Nebraska Republican’s plans, Ben Sasse is likely to accept a job as president of the University of Florida and resign his Senate seat in the near future.....Read More

[aaronjhill]

Good! His moralizing makes me sick.

[rjzimmerman]

This post has nothing to do with the environment or climate change or any other progressive issue. Ben Sasse is a republican. OK, fine, so what. Well, he’s one of those rare republicans who are decent humans, and who don’t thrive on hate. I may have disagreed with him on policy issues, but I always listened to him. There aren’t many I can stand listening to these days.....Adam Kinzinger from Illinois, Liz Cheney from Wyoming, Larry Hogan (Governor of Maryland), Charlie Baker (Governor of Massachusetts) are among the few. We don’t have enough of those, which is why we have so many bad people in political leadership in the republican party and why we are in deep shit trouble.

Another reason I liked him. He did normal things, publicly and didn’t hide behind suits all the time:

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/while-ukraine-burns/

While Ukraine Burns...

To read the news is to wonder if the world has gone mad. Autocracy is on the rise, while democracies seem to be stumbling. To be honest, some democracies no longer look like democracies. India and Turkey come to mind.  Russia holds elections, but no one would describe Vladimir Putin as a leader of the free world. Some writers argue Democracy carries within it the seeds of self-destruction.  The reasons are several but critical to a thriving democracy is an open debate and an exchange of ideas that make compromise possible.  Tyrants dare not allow diverse opinions.  They prefer to live in a bubble where information is limited and guaranteed to parrot the leader’s opinions. A recent article in Foreign Policy looks at Putin’s bubble to learn how it reflects his state of mind. The world may speculate on the dictator’s progress in his war with Ukraine, but the man behaves as if he is winning. Is he delusional, or has the west misunderstood his reason for starting the struggle? Could it be that winning or losing isn’t the end game but that prolonged destruction is?  Could Putin’s war with Ukraine be a proxy fight with NATO, one where he drains the Alliance of its s resources, and its patience, creating fractures within it? If the latter is his game, he may be winning. The war with Ukraine has lasted barely 100 days and already cracks are appearing in the western alliance, particularly among countries like Turkey and Hungary which are democracies in name only. President Joe Biden, though firm in his support for Ukraine, has softened his language as he speaks about the conflict.  France wants to avoid humiliating Putin.  Former Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, minces no word.  He advises Ukraine to cede some territory to Russia.  Little wonder remarks like these undermine Ukraine’s trust in the west and allow Putin to sleep better.  If the United States weren’t a divided country, Biden might have a freer hand to play in the conduct of this war. Unfortunately, a sizeable section of the country has lost faith in democracy and prefers a strongman form of government akin to that in Russia.  It is frankly astonishing how closely today’s GOP resembles in mentality the Communist party of my youth, right down to Donald Trump’s brownnosing to Moscow. The insurrection Donald Trump fomented to remain in power failed but several would-be tyrants seem ready to try again. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis comes to mind. As governor, he’s made several assaults on democracy. He’s attempted to limit free speech; ban discussion on race; attacked a free press; interfered with school curriculum; attempted to control social media; meddled with the election system, and threatened the Special Olympics over Covid-19 mask mandates. Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska is so confused by the positions some members of his party have taken, that he’s labeled them a collection of weirdos.  That judgment feels right to me but there is another actor in the room capable of havoc. Climate Change! In Climate Change and Human Behavior, authors Craig A. Anderson and Andreas Miles-Novelo discuss how the environment affects mental health and human behavior.  High temperatures, for example, force the brain to divert some resources to cool the body. That shift reduces its capacity to manage emotions, control impulses, and process information. That shift results in increased hostility. Others have noted the same phenomena and pointed out that hotter regions in the US and around the world have higher rates of violent crime, even when controlling for poverty and age distribution.   Prolonged stress of any kind works against the welfare of society.  We know poverty, economic, and housing instability create violent neighborhoods. Now we can add climate change to the list. Our fate may not lie in our stars but our weather. A peaceful world, a democratic world depends upon how we treat the planet and how it responds.  While Ukraine burns, so does the earth.  The link between the two may be more direct than we realized.  

[lootsofathousandsworld]

so instead working on my latest comic I cant help to do a reel between B.E.N and Flint after saw one scene that wont leave me alone X'D

so hopefully i'll get this done soon i need to get my back and knee rested lol.

[parttimesarah]

[sinvulkt]

Batman detective comic vol.2

[cc-kote]

I've gotten some real fuckin sweet comments on my fics lately and it's rly helped get me back on track w cleaning up my rough drafts and I'm so super excited abt it. I spent all day bangin out the next chapter for The Unforgivable and holy shit man, I fucking love writing for Hux's snooty ass. He's so fuckin silly and snarky and coming up with dialogue for him has me grinning from ear to ear every time, I'm so happy to be working on this story again.

[kristsune]

To the surprise of literally no one, Malcom Aria is an instant favorite of mine. So I decided to make a little introduction to Mr. Aria from the first few episodes to .... create a picture of what he is like. I hope others enjoy him as much as I do.