COLD SPRING SHOPS.

People forget that Milwaukee was poised to be a global super-city at the turn of the 20th century. Milwaukee City Hall was the tallest secular building in the world, and the city had growth and population density that rivaled New York, London and Paris.

It didn’t pan out – seems like it never does for Milwaukee. People forgot about the city that “Feeds and Supplies the World.” Factories closed. Racial discrimination reared its ugly head. The rust belt decay took hold. Affluent folks fled to the suburbs and took their wealth with them, and Milwaukee became a scapegoat for the rest of the state to look down upon.

Hyperspecialized savants lose their perspective, asserts John Naughton. "If our supersmart tech leaders knew a bit more about history or philosophy we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now." His focus is on the alacrity with which people were able to exploit social media algorithms for their own purposes, that is to say, on the continued manifestation of the Law of Unintended Consequences. And why were these savants caught flat-footed? Perhaps because Unintended Consequences were not in their course of study.

The University’s expressed commitments to academic freedom and the culture of rationalism have not been abandoned, but they are too often considered secondary or irrelevant when confronted by new administrative dictates and social movement activism related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Many of UC’s DEI policies have proven to be valuable means to guarantee access and to improve equality of opportunity and are compatible with the intellectual mission of the University; others, we will argue, represent threats to a climate supportive of academic freedom and the University’s intellectual mission. These policies have also served as a shield and support for more direct and far-reaching attacks on the foundations of the University’s intellectual mission by radical critics who are convinced of its complicity in racial injustice and other societal sins.

In 2018, the University began to experiment with the use of diversity statements as the initial screening device in faculty searches, and to require faculty members on search committees to ignore the institutions from which candidates received their doctorates. Excellent scholars from less prestigious institutions, so the University argued, were being ignored because of the bias in favor of prestigious pedigrees. In a presentation prepared by the UC Davis vice provost for academic affairs search committee members were instructed to review a candidate’s “Contributions to Diversity” statement before any other part of an application, and that candidates who do not “look outstanding with regard to their contributions to diversity” would not advance for further consideration in the hiring process. Reiterating this message, the vice chancellor explained at a conference that “in these searches, it is the candidate’s diversity statement that is considered first; only those who submit persuasive and inspiring statements can advance for complete consideration.” The vice chancellor emphasized that this change is a “game changer” (Ortner, 2020).

Unlike First Amendment guarantees, academic freedom does not give free rein to uninformed opinions. It supports only speech based on professional expertise, and, as such, it is the lynchpin around which professors’ freedom of inquiry revolves. The policy of winnowing applicant pools based on diversity statements poses an obvious threat to the climate for academic freedom because of the implicit and explicit expectation that faculty must express a specific view regarding DEI. It is highly plausible that candidates will be (and arguably already have been) discriminated against not only because they do not subscribe to a particular set of political beliefs (as indicated by the UC scoring rubric criteria for “excellent” versus “poor” scores), but also because they do not fit a specific demographic profile (as suggested by the drastically different gender and racial-ethnic compositions of the finalists as compared with the initial pool of candidates in UC Berkeley’s search).

It is possible that today’s attacks on the culture of rationalism will follow a similar pattern. Yet several features of the current situation suggest the possibility of a different trajectory. The difference between the two eras is due in part to the permeation of power-centered epistemological assumptions deeply into the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The engagé philosophers of the 1960s and 1970s – figures such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, and later Judith Butler – argued that truth was not discovered through the canons of rational discourse but was instead a feature of the hegemony of the powerful. These views were adapted and focused on race relations by critical race theorists such as Derrick Bell, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado. By recognizing power as a determining force, the new epistemologies were inclined to see the university’s pretensions to rational discourse as a mere sideshow or, worse, as imbued with assumptions of the powers of the age.

The new epistemologies achieved a prominent position by the end of the 1980s. In 1989, for example, the heads of six nationally prominent humanities centers wrote, “As the most powerful modern philosophies and theories have been demonstrating, claims of disinterest, objectivity, and universality are not to be trusted” (ACLS 1989, 56). Claims to objectivity, they argued, were usually no more than disguised forms of power seeking. Since that time, the critique of the culture of rationalism has never ceased to be a prevalent position in the humanities and the more interpretive branches of the social sciences.

Whenever laws, social conventions, or prejudice prevent a subordinate racial group access to valued resources or, alternatively, subject that group to unjust treatment, we can say that systemic racism exists. The existence of a racial disparity suggests, as the courts have affirmed (U.S. Supreme Court 2015), that systemic racism may be the reason. If blacks are channeled as a result of racism into the lowest levels of the class structure, they will not, for example, have the funds to attend college except in rare instances. They will therefore have little prospect of studying any fields that can provide a middle- or upper-middle class income, even if they have or could develop an aptitude for and interest in these fields. In this case a distributional disparity is related to racism, and it would not be stretching matters to describe it as an outcome of systemic racism because there have been institutional mechanisms at work to create this result.

But those who are concerned about the over-reach of the concept will point out that racial disparities alone do not prove racism. If universities, for example, provide a sizable number of places to blacks and blacks have an equal chance of studying a wide range of fields, are encouraged to do so, and are provided support to do so successfully, then any disparities that continue to exist cannot be easily described as resulting from systemic racism, at least not systemic racism in the university. Yet in the eyes of movement supporters, those who do not attribute every disparity to systemic issues are willfully obtuse. What’s more, the expanded referential scope of the term “systemic racism” is typically attached to demands that the system be thoroughly dismantled and transformed along the lines advocated by movement supporters. If structural racism is the problem, then it follows that structures must be thoroughly transformed, well beyond the DEI policies currently in effect. If no one raises objections to the advocacy of structural transformation for fear of being accused of supporting racism, the movement’s diagnostic and prognostic language is left to fill the void.

Most UC scientists and engineers hope to diversify their ranks to better reflect a changing population and campus student body, but their work continues to run, by and large, along the tracks prescribed by the culture of rationalism and traditional standards of merit such as the quality of the journals in which they publish and their citation counts. And even within the faculties of arts, humanities, and social sciences, a range of outlooks persist.

If the culture of rationalism is not upheld and the purpose of academic freedom becomes lost in the University’s preoccupation with its ideological commitments, we suspect that the University’s ability to generate knowledge will diminish over time. Important research questions that may undermine the arguments of anti-racist activists will not be asked for fear of social and/or professional repercussions. Ultimately, there may be few faculty members who are even interested in research questions that do not align with the university’s DEI and social justice agenda, for committees will have successfully prevented such individuals from entering the academy.

The traditional peer review process demands enormous amounts of time while providing only hit-or-miss and superficial appraisals of research quality. The result is a proliferation of scholarship of widely varying quality and much duplication of effort. This regime benefits scholars individually by thickening their curriculum vitae.

We may forget, however, that citation and publication numbers are not supposed to be ends in themselves but, rather, just proxies for adding useful and accurate information to society’s store of knowledge. Society might be better served by fewer scholarly journals publishing fewer articles that have been much more widely and thoroughly vetted.

The warning signs were present going into the All-Star break, with the Crew losing two of three (both in extra innings) in Miami and five straight at Pittsburgh, to be overhauled by the Chicago Cubs. Brewer fans and pundits, though, aren't in the habit of expecting victory. The spin, as stirred up by the commentators, was, "Had anyone told us at the beginning of the season that the team would be two games behind the Cubs and holding the first wild card, we'd have taken it."

No, we have to talk about how the team went from three games ahead of the Cubs with the best record in the National League to holding the second wild card today.

A year ago, at the All-Star break, the Brewers were leading the division, with the Cubs a few wins shy of .500, and the Brewers regressed to the mean, as did the Cubs, and the conversation this time of year was, you guessed it, "Had anyone told us at the beginning of the season that the team would be playing .500 baseball, and in the middle of the wild card mix, we'd have taken it."

Yes, the Brewers were in the first or second year of a rebuild, and they might have overachieved at the beginning of the season, but, again, we have to talk about how the team went from leading the division at the All-Star break to out of the playoff at the end of the season.

The task in the meantime, then, is to light whatever little candles of culture you can in the face of an encroaching dark and keep them lit by any means necessary, conventionally political or otherwise. Then marry, have children, and add fuel to the fires till they become conflagrations big enough to burn away the chaff. The twilight that is falling now will only make it easier to see the other points of light, to find your companions in the long war’s fight.

Better, I think, to acknowledge that we’re all good and we’re all flawed. The work of ethics is to move toward getting better in the ways we treat each other. Sometimes that means charity; sometimes it means structural change; sometimes it means just extending patience and forgiveness as somebody else makes the mistakes of growth. That’s a conscious choice that needs to be made over and over again. It requires listening to people who see things differently, in recognition that everyone has some truth to share. It requires avoiding the cheap thrills of condemnation in favor of the slow work of education. It embraces second chances, rather than taking initial failures as signs of irredeemable fallenness. We’re all flawed, and we’re all capable of more. All who want to do better should be welcome.

I hope you, my dear readers, are preparing to grill or barbecue something extraordinary for your family and friends tomorrow. Do not let this anti-American journalist fool you into thinking what you’re doing is bad or wrong. He is just confused and possibly afraid of grilling. As long as man has existed, man has been afraid of fire. For some, it is a fear that disrupts both logic and good taste. It is a pity to see.

Whether Independence Day or just a random Thursday, grilling is good. It offers a chance to connect with friends and discuss stuff. It allows us to celebrate the environment in our own way. It can serve as family time for those of us with lots of daughters. Most important, grilled foods are the most delicious foods. There’s a reason that grilling is associated with special occasions.

So, get out there, fire up your grill, maybe knock some of the house seasoning blend off the grates, throw down some meats, and make Independence Day great again. For while things are bleak, this is still America and in America, we go big or go home. Barro has made his choice, but you don’t have to choose the same.

Bruno was an adult male black bear from Wisconsin, and a handsome one at that.

But none of that made him unusual in a state with about 30,000 bears.

His wanderlust is what really set him apart.

In late spring and early summer of 2020 he left the Badger State and swam the Mississippi River into Iowa.

He stuck out in the greening farm fields and open spaces and became a novelty. It's there he was given his name.

Last June more than 100 people gathered to watch and photograph Bruno in Scott County, Iowa, according to the Des Moines Register. Police issued warnings about "loving the bear to death."

Bruno made it out of Iowa and back into Wisconsin before heading south into Illinois and Missouri.

Last Fourth of July weekend he drew a crowd estimated at 400 people in a maze of highways outside St. Louis. But since that posed risks for Bruno and his audience, officials with the Missouri Department of Conservation tranquilized the bear and relocated him to the northeastern corner of the Ozark Mountains.

Bruno then continued his trek south into Arkansas and eventually Louisiana.

As so often happens with large land animals that make long movements out of their home range, this one ended with Bruno being struck by a vehicle.

The bear, which had two broken legs, was euthanized Tuesday by staff with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

It's estimated Bruno traveled 800 miles, a very long way for any animal, especially a black bear.

Politicians in a democratic society should not manipulate public school curricula to advance partisan or ideological aims. In higher education, under principles of academic freedom that have been widely endorsed, professors are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject. Educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning.