“I have given my two weeks notice,” after four years hosting the call-in show, Beaudry said in a telephone interview Sunday evening. Though he said there was still some chance he would decide against running, he described himself as “super-strongly considering it, and doing all the things necessary” to prepare.

That included, he said, laying the groundwork for raising money and hiring staff for a campaign to defeat Rep. Peter Welch, the heavily favored Democrat who will seek a third term in November.

First, Beaudry would have to win a primary against Keith Stern of Springfield, but even Stern’s campaign manager conceded that Beaudry might be the favorite.

“Because Paul is well known he’s going to have some financial support we don’t have,” said Andrew Glover, “and unfortunately money wins the election.”

To counter Beaudry’s name-recognition and financial advantage, Glover said, the Stern campaign would argue that Beaudry is too “ultra-conservative” to have any chance against Welch.

“Keith can get the swing voters, Glover said. “Paul can’t.”

Beaudry, who is 47 and lives in Swanton would almost certainly be the most conservative Republican statewide candidate in years. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t win the primary. In Vermont, as elsewhere in the Northeast, moderates have drifted away from the Republican fold, some affiliating with the Democrats, others redefining themselves as independents. As a result, a larger proportion of the GOP primary electorate is well to the right of center.

Beaudry said he would run as a “staunch conservative” to balance Vermont’s “bunch of liberals down there” who only want to “spend and spend and spend.”

Beaudry has been a firm supporter of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. He has also devoted several programs to attacking the proposed Wild and Scenic designation of parts of the Missisquoi and all of the Trout River, calling it a “big government land grab.”

The radio program will apparently go on with another host. Beaudry said the owners of True North Radio, whom he would not identify, were already working with a potential substitute for him on the program. Ken Squier, the President and CEO of WDEV, who said he heard of Beaudry’s plans just the other day, also said the program would continue Like some other shows on WDEV, the station itself does not produce True North Radio, but simply sells it air time.

NEXT, A BIT OF PEDANTRY: On Vermont Public Radio’s Vermont Edition last week, Ken Page, the executive director the Vermont Principals’ Association, had some incisive comments about the school and school financing situation.

He also said – not once, not twice, but thrice – that there were “less students” in Vermont public schools these days.

Okay, we all know what he meant: there aren’t as many students as there were a few years ago. But it’s reasonable to expect a senior educator say what he means in proper English. Otherwise, why expect the kids to use proper English?

There are fewer students than there used to be.

That’s not hard, is it?

And it isn’t just pedantry, either. There are no doubt several reasons why English-speaking men and women have made contributions disproportionate to their numbers in science and literature. But surely one of them is the language itself. Its vast and ever-expanding vocabulary gives English-speakers the power to express themselves with more precision and nuance than perhaps any other language.

Maintaining the distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’ is important because maintaining distinctions keeps one in the habit of…maintaining distinctions. And that’s key to precision and nuance.

FINALLY, AN UPDATE: For those who may not have noticed, Gov. Jim Douglas did what the News Guy predicted he would do (see Broken Date, March 26)  and did not veto the bill moving the date of this year’s primary from September 14 to August 24.

No, he didn’t sign the bill http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2010/bills/Passed/S-117.pdf (S. 117), either. He just announced last week that he would let it become law without his signature. That way he gets to express his displeasure with the new law without doing anything to stop it.

Doing anything to stop a bill that had overwhelming support of the Democratic majorities in both houses might have upset “the general collegiality of the (Legislative) session so far,” the Governor said.

He  didn’t say, but probably knew, that refusing to move the date could put the state out of compliance with federal law, risking a voting rights suit from the U.S. Department of Justice and other messy complications.

He did repeat his earlier contention that turnout would probably be lower in August, and that it was not “in the best interest of our representative democracy to have a summer primary.”

He’s right, even if September 14 is still in the summer, scientifically speaking; the autumnal equinox doesn’t occur until September 22 at 11:09 PM. But socially speaking summer ends on Labor Day, September 6 this year. Before then, lots of people are still away on vacation, and even though absentee voting isn’t that complicated, the turnout for an August primary is likely to be dismal.

So why was there no discussion about moving future primaries (too late for this year) to the spring? A majority of states have their primaries before mid-June, when the summer gets under way. Another six states vote earlier in August, and three other states – Alaska, Arizona, and Florida – will be voting the same day as Vermont. The old argument against spring primaries was that they made the election campaigns too long. But these days the campaigns are long anyway.  May or early June is a convenient time for the voting public and would give the winning candidates enough time to organize their general election campaigns.

As has been noted here before, sometimes very smart people act in ways that are…oh, for now let’s just say that are not very smart.

As has also been noted here before, some of these very smart people are senior officials at the University of Vermont.

Their very-smartness is proven not simply by their advanced degrees, fancy titles, high salaries and sumptuous offices, but also by their obvious success as senior officials at UVM. The university is bigger than it was a few years ago. Its larger student body has higher SAT scores. Its larger faculty earns more money. The entire institution has a higher reputation in academia nationwide. These officials must be very smart people, indeed.

So why do they want to suppress freedom of speech on campus?

Well, that’s a stupid question. All people in power want to suppress free speech in their realms to avoid being criticized, ridiculed, and opposed. This instinct applies to governments, corporations, foundations, universities, churches, and the Kiwanis Club. So let’s re-phrase the question.

Considering that this particular attempt to suppress free speech on campus is possibly illegal, probably unconstitutional, certainly confrontational, and therefore doomed to fail, why did the very smart senior officials at UVM decide to make themselves appear to be not simply would-be tyrants but bungling tyrants?

In fairness, the University has not circulated a document entitled “Proposed Policy to Suppress Free Speech on Campus.” Furthermore, the document that was circulated by UVM’s Provost and the General Counsel’s office – the “Interim Policy on Solicitation,” has not been vetted by a lawyer for either the News Guy nor the UVM faculty. It is conceivable, then, that the policy does not attempt to suppress free speech on campus, but only seems so to attempt.

Meaning the folks who composed it brought trouble down upon themselves unnecessarily. Still not smart.

But not likely, either. Laymen though they may be, the News Guy and the professors can read. And if the words on the page are not designed to give University officials the power to decide what may or may not be espoused, opposed, posted, organized for (or against) or debated, they’re a mighty good imitation thereof.

To be sure, colleges should have policies restricting commercial solicitation. Students ought not be bothered in dormitory rooms, study halls or library stacks by peddlers of software, soap, or sandwiches. But this policy statement is not limited to commercial solicitation. It also covers “Noncommercial solicitation,” which “includes, without limitation, petition drives, public opinion polling, membership drives for recognized groups and organizations, preaching, proselytizing, political organizing, political canvassing, and political campaigning.”

For such activity, the policy says, “prior approval” of the University administration is required. As Alan Gilbert of the Vermont American Civil Liberties Union pointed out, “prior approval is prior restraint,” which is Constitutionally questionable.

Not that the university shouldn’t impose some reasonable restrictions on where political activity could take place; the petition-gatherer need not pursue students into their dorm rooms or laboratories. But on all campuses certain areas are recognized as public forums. At UVM, these would include the big bulletin board outside the Bailey-Howe Library and the Green between the library and the buildings fronting Main Street, including the massive new Dudley Davis Center.

But the solicitation policy asserts that “Because of its fragility and its designation as a historic landmark, the University Green’s availability for solicitation is limited.”

Come on! This doesn’t meet the laugh test. As pointed out by David Shiman, the education professor who heads United Academics, UVM’s faculty union, “the University Green has historically been the agora for campus and community,” the place where debate, demonstration, and, yes, even confrontation, have taken place. It is the obvious site for them to take place. Requiring individuals or organizations to get “prior approval” before expressing themselves on the Green would constitute a blatant inhibition of free expression.

(Full disclosure: The News Guy, very part-time adjunct faculty at UVM, is a member of the union).

To give the credit which is due (which is minimal) the solicitation policy does promise a version of “viewpoint neutrality,” saying, “(i)n those instances in which the University, through the official and deliberate action of authorized officials, chooses to open a designated forum for public expression, the University will not discriminate on the basis of the viewpoint of those engaging in expression allowed within that forum. Defamation, obscenity, and other forms of unlawful speech are prohibited in all instances.”

Oh, now UVM hot-shots proclaim themselves arbiters of which speech is and is not “lawful.”

And no “defamation”? The heart of debate is defamation. All authority should be defamed, starting with presidents (of the United States and the University) and extending to almost everyone else, including the writer of this post.

Besides, as Shiman points out, the “neutrality” pledge is belied by another clause stating that the “approval of solicitation activities will generally be subject to applicable time, place, manner, and subject matter provisions unless, in the considered judgment of the responsible administrative official, the proposed activities are unlawful or are likely to be disruptive, to cause undue interruption of the essential operations of the University, or to infringe significantly upon the rights of University community members or members of the public lawfully using campus grounds or facilities, such as rights of privacy, personal security, or reasonably unimpeded ingress and egress.”

“These grounds for denial,” Shiman wrote to the Administration, “are so vague that the clause about neutrality becomes meaningless. The University…asserts that they may deny permission whenever they want. This is unprecedented for any university, other than perhaps a tightly controlled religious institution.”

Not unreasonably, Shiman wondered whether one of the administration’s goals was to stifle union organizing efforts. Labor organizations are not official university-recognized entities, and under the proposed rules their on-campus activities might have to “be sponsored by authorized University officials…”

or University-recognized student groups or organizations,” which, he noted, could “have a particularly chilling effect for union drives.”

Interim Provost Jane Knodell said it was not her office, but the General Counsel’s office which was in charge of the solicitation policy, and referred the News Guy to Deputy General Counsel Tom Mercurio. Mercurio did not return a phone call, nor did UVM spokesman Enrique Corredera. They might not have had time. Or they might not have wanted to try to defend the indefensible.

OK, it’s an “interim policy.” Perhaps before making it final, the very smart people of UVM will remember that universities are and ought to be places of vigorous, spirited, even if sophomoric (after all, some of the participants are actual sophomores) debate. The folks who run universities should encourage such activity, not stifle it.

Otherwise, they aren’t even slightly smart.

.

Mt. Mansfield. photo by Jared C. Benedict

Today’s opus will be presented as three un-related chapters, each with its own title, as follows:

1—Vermont the Healthy?

Among Vermont’s other distinctions, it seems to be Number One in health-consciousness.

In the latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, Vermont scored 69.1 on the “healthy behavior index score,” higher than it did last year and 1.3 clicks ahead of second-place Hawaii.

This does not prove that Vermonters are healthier than anyone else. In fact it doesn’t prove anything; it’s survey research, which provides indications, not incontrovertible fact.

The indications are that Vermonters take care of themselves better than other Americans. They are less likely to smoke, more likely to exercise, most likely to eat lots of fruits and vegetables.

That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that being best in America does not necessarily men being very good. Overall, the survey found that the “nation as a whole (is) dropping substantively on the Healthy Behavior Sub-Index, from 63.7 in 2008 to 62.6 in the first half of 2009.” In fact, “Mississippi, whose score ranks among the bottom 10, is the only state to record a statistically significant increase in its healthy behavior score.”

So there’s little justification here for Vermonters getting a swelled head about their (relatively) good habits. To begin with, there doesn’t seem to be all that much specifically “Vermontish” in these results. Almost all the states in the Northeast scored reasonably well, as did the Rocky Mountain states and the West Coast (except Washington State and Nevada.). To some extent, then, being health-conscious is a regional habit.

And probably an educational habit. More than 35 percent of adult Vermonters graduated from college, more than in all but five other states. College graduates tend to be more health conscious, not to mention more affluent. Not only do they know that they ought to go to the gym, they can afford the membership.

On the other hand, Vermont is the most rural of the states in the top ten, and there is ample evidence (such as this 2005 study in Pennsylvania) that rural residents don’t have the healthiest habits. They are more likely to smoke, less likely to exercise, and they gobble up lots of fried foods.

Meaning that perhaps it is the residents of Chittenden County and a few others outposts who take good care of themselves. But the survey didn’t get down to the county or town level.

The Gallup survey says it provides “a daily measure of people’s well-being…based on the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health as not only the absence of infirmity and disease but also a state of physical, mental and social well-being.”

Whereupon we segue, as the TV folks would say, into……

CHAPTER TWO: VERMONT THE GOOD?

One way lots of Vermonters stay healthy is by doing stuff outdoors. That’s not in the Gallup survey, but we know from many sources that people in this state are more likely than most other Americans to hike and camp out, to paddle a kayak or canoe, to work in their gardens or in the woods.

Now comes evidence that all this activity not only helps make a person healthier. It can him or her a better person – kinder, more generous, less selfish. Contact with nature, says a new study “brings individuals closer to others, whereas human-made environments orient goals toward more selfish or self-interested ends.”

A bit of skepticism is in order here. Psychology lacks the precision of physics. Studies such as this one – conducted by psychologists Netta Weinstein, Andrew K. Przybylski, and Richard M. Ryan – sometimes conclude with the conclusions the studiers wanted to find before they started.

But these folks have credentials – Weinstein is a clinical psychologist at the University of Rochester – and their findings sufficiently intrigued the editors at the interesting, lively, new Miller-McCune Magazine that they wrote about them in an article called “Immersion in Nature Makes us Nicer.”

Why would it? Writer Tom Jacobs reports that “Weinstein and her colleagues suggest the answer lies in an enhanced sense of personal autonomy. ‘Nature affords individuals the chance to follow their interests and reduces pressures, fears, introjects and social expectations,’ they write.

Introjects? A term the meaning of which seems to be in dispute but is related to making too big a deal of oneself.

If both un-confirmable and un-refutable, the notion does seem to make some sense. Not there aren’t some very nice couch potatoes and a few avid white-water paddlers who are real stinkos, but connecting with the natural world (and this includes spending time with your house plants)would seem to reduce stress, encourage a contemplative outlook, and keep one on an even keel (except, literally, in that kayak in white-water).

And speaking of even keels, we segue to….

CHAPTER THREE: ET TU JACOBE?

Did everybody note that even Gov. Jim Douglas would not come right out and say what he (almost surely) knows is true: that this business about “death panels” in the proposed health care legislation is some combination of dishonesty and insanity?

Asked about it at his press conference last week, the Governor, as reported by Terri Hallenbeck of the Burlington Free Press in the paper’s Vermont Buzz blog, would only note that the argument was “an example of the kind of rhetoric that’s distracting us from fundamental reform.”

“But he did not come out and denounce the death-panel debate nor would he say he felt confident the proposed legislation didn’t include death panels,” Hallenbeck wrote. “He said that like most members of Congress he had not read every word of the legislation.”

No condemnation here of Douglas, who was doing what he had to do. Oh, it would have been admirable for him to have said (in somewhat more diplomatic language), “this stuff is crazy.”

But that would have been dangerous, and what is interesting is why it would have been dangerous.

In the latest polling on the subjects (NBC News/Wall Street Journal), 45 percent of the respondents said they thought the health care proposals before Congress “Will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly.”

Those proposals will allow no such thing.

Checking the polls’ “internals, “ it’s reasonable to conclude that the percentage in Vermont is smaller, probably closer to a third, roughly the percentage of Vermonters who voted for John McCain last year.

In other words, that third is Douglas’s base. A politician can not afford to tell his base that they are (not to put too fine a point on it and using the term in its colloquial rather than its clinical context) out of their minds.

Or, more gently, that they have allowed themselves to believe outright lies.

But maybe “allowed is less accurate than “affirmatively chosen” to believe outright lies, which leads to the question of why so many people would so choose.

A complicated question, perhaps pursued another time. Meanwhile ponder what it means that a sane and responsible governor fears to suggest that some of his constituents are acting in a manner neither sane nor responsible.

What with the tendency these days to assume that everyone’s judgments reflect his or her prejudices, today’s post must start with a personal note, if not a personal confession.

The information and analysis found below might lead the casual observer to suppose that the News Guy is hostile – or at least indifferent – to the game of baseball.

True, precisely as true as that Popeye dislikes spinach and Bugs Bunny abhors carrots.

In fact, the News Guy has now and then reflected that had he taken but one tenth of the time he has spent over the decades going to, watching, reading about, or talking about baseball games (and, even earlier, playing in them, not all that impressively), and used that time in productive effort, he might today be a very rich man indeed (or confined to a penitentiary, depending on which path of productive effort he had chosen).

Having established that, let’s turn to the subject of the Vermont Lake Monsters of the Class A New York-Penn League They want us to build them a ball park. If we don’t, they’ll go away.

OK, neither team owner Ray Pecor nor General manager C.J. Knudsen has made that threat in so many words. In fact, both have said they might be satisfied with substantial renovation of their present home grounds, Centennial Field, the 101-year-old stadium owned by the University of Vermont.

But Pecor told the Burlington Free Press that bringing the old ball park up to new standards might cost as much as $20 million, and “if you are going to spend that much, you might a well build a new park with all the amenities, without cement seats and (with) the ability to park near the park and not take a shuttle.”

Most Lake Monsters fans now have to park near UVM’s Gutterson Field House and be shuttled to Centennial Field.

Pecor’s cost estimate for Centennial Field renovation could be high. Both Tom Torti, the president of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, and C.J. Knudsen, the team’s general manager, said the old ball park might be spruced up for more like $10 million to $12 million.

“Technically I think it could, and could be functional,” Knudsen said. “We need to undergo some renovations. When we first came here in 1994, Centennial was functional. Since then, other teams (in the league) have had major renovations or brand new ball parks funded by a city, county, state or sports commission. These facilities are beautiful ball parks, great for fans and great for players. They have plenty of parking, comfortable seats, facilities for the disabled. ”

It’s easy to see why the Lake Monsters want better facilities. Centennial Field is the oldest ball park in the minor leagues. A report by Major League Baseball found that the lighting was inadequate for professional baseball. Upgrading the lighting system probably wouldn’t be all that expensive, but Knudsen also said, “we do not have enough lockers in our locker room. We don’t have press facilities or anything like that.”

There’s where the multi-million dollar price tag comes in.

It’s also easy to understand why business leaders like Torti think a new ball park would be good for Burlington’s economy. If nothing else, it would make their jobs easier.

“Having a minor league baseball team gives Burlington one more of those little things that helps us look like we play big for a small player,” Torti said. “When people are thinking of relocating here we can show them that for seven dollars you can go see baseball.”

It may only be Class A (unlike the picture above, Wrigley Field, in the big time), but it’s professional baseball, and some of the players will make it to the major leagues. Ken Griffey, Jr. once played in Burlington. Besides, the games are fun, even on concrete bleacher seats (stadium cushions are inexpensive and easy to carry).

No wonder, then, that according to that Free Press story, almost everyone is for doing something to keep the Lake Monsters in Burlington – the business leaders, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Mayor Bob Kiss. Who would be against it?

How about the taxpayers. And maybe owners of businesses other than baseball clubs.

Go back and carefully parse what General Manager Knudsen said. All those other new and/or improved stadiums were “funded by a city, county state or sports commission.” That’s you, folks, if you pay taxes, and among economists who have studied the matter, using public money to build stadiums for privately owned sports teams is, at the very least, a debatable use of scarce public resources.

“If your objective is to create jobs there are better ways to spend money,” said Raymond Sauer, an economics professor at Clemson University in South Carolina,, and the founder of the “Sports Economics” web site. “Invest in infrastructure that brings in people who want to open up businesses that employ people year-round. A stadium sits empty most of the time, and when it’s filled, it mostly employs ushers and hamburger flippers.”

Nor is it at all certain, economists say, that having a sports team in town boosts the economy.

“Despite what many people believe, professional sports venues typically do not spur large-scale economic activity,” wrote Dennis Coates, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in an article for the American Enterprise Institute magazine..

Instead, economists argue, public financing of sports arenas and stadiums redistributes economic activity, often to the detriment of the very people whose taxes go up to subsidize the stadium.

“It really is fundamental that people only have so much money to spend on entertainment,” Sauer said. So if a fancy new ball park brings more people to Burlington to watch the Lake Monsters, the ball club’s gain is likely to be another business’s loss.

That would be especially true if the state put up some of the money. It could only do that by raising taxes or cutting services statewide. But if a new Burlington ball park attracts fans from, say, Montpelier or Stowe, that’s money they won’t spend in restaurants or movie theatres in Montpelier or Stowe (or at the Montpelier games of the Vermont Mountaineers of the New England Collegiate Baseball League). Business owners in those cities are not likely to be happy about being taxed to subsidize their competitors.

It might be possible to finance a new or upgraded stadium from the Burlington area alone. But the same problem might arise. One idea, according to both Torti and Knudsen, is for a multi-purpose facility for sports, concerts, business meetings, perhaps conventions, right on the waterfront.

The usual financing scheme for such a facility would include raising the rooms taxes for local hotels that presumably benefit from the presence of the ball club.  But there’s already a conference center nearby – the Sheraton, right near the University and just across the city line in South Burlington. It won’t want to charge its customers an extra tax to pay off the bonds that built a new facility designed to compete with it.

More problems. UVM has dropped varsity baseball, meaning there is one less potential user of a new stadium. Centennial Field is right next to a residential area where homeowners probably don’t want to deal with regular crowds of concert-goers whose ticket purchases would help pay for renovations. Many, if not most people in Burlington probably don’t want a big new structure right along the lake, especially if it’s surrounded by a big parking lot.

This doesn’t mean that some way can’t be found to keep the Lake Monsters in Burlington without asking state or city taxpayers to foot the bill. Some variant of that local rooms and meals tax plan might prove politically sellable and economically defensible.

Dennis Coates has his doubts.

“Consider the common practice of funding stadium and arena subsidies with new taxes on hotel occupancy and rental cars,” he wrote. “One argument for such taxes at the local level is that they are paid by outside visitors, many of whom may be in town to see the sporting events. But the taxes would also be paid by traveling businessmen and conventioneers. When comparing cities to host an upcoming meeting, businesses and professional associations may select between otherwise comparable cities based on which one has the lower hotel and rental car taxes. In other words, the new taxes used to subsidize the stadium construction may ultimately reduce visits to the city by non-sports-related travelers.”

The Lake Monsters, six-and-six before last night’s game against the Hudson Valley Renegades, and tied with the Lowell Spinners for second place in their division, host the Renegades tomorrow on the Fourth of July (and a Grand and Glorious one to you all).

Go one out to the game. Let’s root-root-root for the Home Team, and if they should leave it’s a shame. That doesn’t mean it’s the taxpayer’s job to keep them here.

.

And suppose he isn’t any of those things. Suppose he just studies, writes about, and (apparently) admires some racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazis while pursuing his own scholarly interest in “the status of European heritage, or white Americans, including the way they are educated.”  Should he be allowed on the UVM faculty?

Professor Griffin

The questions arise because of an excellent piece of reporting by Daniel Barlow in the Sunday, June 14, Barre-Montpelier Times Argus about Robert S. Griffin, who has been teaching education courses at the university since 1974, and who at the very least maintains close professional contacts with white supremacists, anti-Semites, and maybe even neo-Nazis.

The answer to the questions is: Yes.

Griffin is tenured faculty, meaning the university has confirmed his academic credentials and his competence as a teacher.  That means he can only be fired for cause-not showing up for class (or at least not showing up sober),  failing to grade papers, abusing students, inciting violence, or the like.

Not for whatever belief or opinion he expresses. That’s the whole purpose of tenure-to protect academics from being dismissed for their views, however unpopular, bizarre, offensive, outrageous, or even disgusting those views may be.

Come to think of it, that’s one of the purposes of a university or college to begin with – to serve as a forum for ideas and opinions, however….(see list above).

Since, as far as we know, there has never been a formal complaint by a student that Griffin has committed any of the above-named offenses, his job is and ought to be safe.

But wait a minute! Suppose he tries – whether openly or surreptitiously – to convert his impressionable young students to his (seemingly) revolting way of thinking? Shouldn’t that be grounds for dismissal?

Nope. Not unless he does so with threats, intimidation, or by giving low grades to students who voice their disagreement. Again, there seems to be no record of students officially suggesting he has behaved in this way. There is one unofficial suggestion. On the ‘ratemyprofessors.com‘ web site, one student complained, “If you don’t agree with his thoughts, you get a bad grade.”

But as almost any faculty member will attest, it’s the students who don’t like a professor who are more likely to contribute to these sites. This student apparently got a bad grade, and may have been seeking revenge. At any rate, that one complaint hardly qualifies as sufficient evidence even to start a disciplinary proceeding, much less to take any action.

Final objection. Suppose a non-white student had to take one of his classes but felt intimidated. Wouldn’t some disciplinary action, if not dismissal, be in order.

Not unless Griffin took some overt action to intimidate. In a free society, there is no guarantee against feeling intimidated, any more than there is a guarantee against being insulted.

So Griffin gets to keep his job, despite complaints from some letter-to-the-editor writers and at least one web site.  (UVM was lucky that the story came out during summer vacation; five will get you ten that had it appeared in October, there would have been at least one small “Griffin Must Go” rally on campus).

But job security is the simplest question this case provokes, and therefore the least interesting. Start, for instance, with the question of just what kind of guy Griffin really is. Here matters grow more complex.

The case against him – the case for him being a real bigot – is compelling if just short of conclusive. Barlow lays it out in detail. To state just one of the more obvious examples, among the links on Griffin’s web site, robertsgriffin.com, is one to the Vanguard News Network, whose slogan is “No Jews. Just Right.”

Nor does Griffin always help his own case. Writing two years ago in Vermont Commons (the journal of the Vermont secessionist movement, the racist associations of which were discussed in an earlier post, Secessionist Delusions, February 12), Griffin said, “I think it is fair to say that the victors in the competition to insert their perspective into school programs have been the egalitarians, collectivists, multiculturalists, feminists, gays, environmentalists, internationalists, secularists, and Holocaust promoters.”

Holocaust promoters? That’s pretty strong evidence that he is a Holocaust denier, the ultimate combination of bigotry and willful ignorance.

But then take a look at his web site, where he links, admiringly, to a quote by Philip Roth, the novelist whose Jewishness is central to his fiction.

In fact, the Robert Griffin of the web site seems to be less a raging bigot than an interesting guy.

“My writings have been vehicles for an investigation of the whole of American society and culture and the way we conduct our individual lives,” he writes. ”That has involved me in considerations related to history, philosophy, race, religion, the arts, the mass media, parenting, the process of growing up, gender, education, sports, and personal health and fulfillment.

As to his racial views, “while I have written often about race this last decade, I do not consider myself to be a racial writer… I write whatever is there to be written, and if it is about race, so be it, but I don’t consider myself linked to that subject.”

Though he responded neither to Barlow nor to the News Guy, Griffin did email the Inside Higher Ed web site, denying that he was a racist and insisting that “even the most cursory review of my writings would show that I deplore violence.”

Inside Higher Ed also reached UVM education professor David Shiman, the head of the faculty union at the university, who is Jewish. Shiman  said that in the 35 years he has known his colleague he has “never seen from him an anti-Semitic remark, never heard him make a racist remark.”

Shiman said he once assigned Griffin’s 2001 article “Rearing Honorable White Children” in some of his multicultural education classes, and invited Griffin to answer students’ questions.

“I think the students need to hear diverse perspectives, need to challenge themselves and be exposed to views that cause them to reflect on the views they think they hold — and maybe get stronger holding them, but at least challenge themselves,” Shiman said.

All this apparent civility though, can not completely offset the rest of Griffin’s profile. He is the author of what Barlow called “a fawning biography” of  William Pierce, the author of the white supremacist novel  ”The Turner Diaries,” which helped inspire Timothy McVeigh to blow up the federal office building in Oklahoma City.

“I found Pierce to be a person of remarkable capability, decency, integrity, courage, and dedication,” Griffin writes on his Web site.” And the Vanguard News Network is not the only white supremacist web site to which he links.

Perhaps the most interesting way to look at l’affaire Griffin is to take him at his word that he is not a bigot, but only someone who teaches and and advocates white culture. On the face of it, that should be no more objectionable than teaching and advocating black or Latino culture, which has attained a modicum of respect in academia.

But no less objectionable either. It isn’t that there aren’t racial and ethnic subcultures worthy of study. Black and Hispanic, obviously, but also Appalachian, Italian-American, French-Canadian, rural New England.

In the final analysis, though, culture is neither racial nor ethnic. If it were, then, for instance, Sarah Chang, whose biological ancestry is Korean, could not so brilliantly play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, a work steeped in the German musical tradition (if, for that matter, Mendelssohn, who didn’t have a drop of Teutonic blood in his veins, could have composed a concerto). Culture is a product of  intellect and consciousness, internal qualities indifferent to the color of the outer layer.

No one has to be English to appreciate Shakespeare, Dutch to understand Rembrandt, or African-American to dig Charlie Parker. From a university’s perspective, the problem with Robert Griffin is not that his beliefs are abhorrent, but that they are ignorant.

Pete Seeger

Liberals and conservatives both held tax day demonstrations in Montpelier yesterday, leaving observers to wonder which of them was more ineffectual.

At first, glance, the liberals would seem to have “won” this negative distinction hands down. Their demonstration was smaller. Only about 35 or so members and supporters of Save Our State showed up at the State Street tax office at 10 am to display their “SOS-EZ” forms indicating they were willing to pay more taxes to stave off deep cuts to social programs.

The conservatives drew 200 to 250 to the front lawn of the Capitol at noon,  and  though it wasn’t clear how many were supporters and how many were just curious, that was still a surprisingly good turnout for a conservative cause in a liberal town.

Mere crowd comparison, though,  might be misleading. The SOSers were organized via a short, low-budget, email and telephone effort which aimed at attracting only enough demonstrators to fill a small space (and look crowded on television).

The conservative event was part of a nationwide anti-tax “tea party” demonstration organized with contributions from several large corporations, promotion by talk radio stations and the active support of Fox News Network, which dropped whatever pretense remained of its “we report, you decide” slogan to beat the drums for the event.

Small in numbers, the liberals knew enough to be concise and focused. They had one message – a small tax increase is better than big budget cuts. They sent the message and they were gone within half an hour.

The conservatives, on the other hand, went on for almost two hours, with speakers (some in Montpelier, some remote from other “Tea Party” sites) opining about  immigration, Social Security, foreign policy, and “the abusive monetary policy of the Federal Reserve,” not otherwise explained. They did keep coming back to the tax issue, but they seemed a bit confused about what was going on. One speaker after another associated President Barack Obama with higher taxes. He just got Congress to cut taxes

Confusion also seemed to reign when it came to political assessment, with one speaker after another insisting that their anti-government, anti-tax, anti-Obama outlook was the opinion of what several of them called “the silent majority.” All the polls, though, show that not only is Obama popular, but so are his economic policies. Even taxes don’t seem to be held in all that much distaste. The latest Gallup Poll indicated that “48% of Americans (said) the amount of federal income taxes they pay is ‘about right,’ with 46% saying ‘too high’ — one of the most positive assessments Gallup has measured since 1956,” in the words of Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.

And when T. J. Michaels, the talk show host of  Barre radio station WSNO, shouted “shame on” Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, it sounded as though Michaels was convinced all three office-holders were out of touch with Vermonters and ripe for defeat.

They are, of course, about as close to unbeatable as office-holders can be.

It wasn’t that no one made sense at the protest. One supporter held aloft a sign reading, “The trouble with socialism is eventually you run out of other peoples money.”

Quite possibly true, though perhaps no truer than that one trouble with capitalism is that you never run out of other people’s money, at least not if you’re a big bank.

Still, the lack of focus and of political reality raises again the possibility that conservatives are just no good at demonstrations. They’re good at political fund-raising, strategizing, marketing and (until lately) winning. Not that long ago, they were also tolerably good at governing. But they’ve never seemed comfortable demonstrating. Fringe leftists are comfortable demonstrating, even when they’re making fools of themselves. Fringe right-wingers are not, though this discomfort does not appear to be caused by any greater awareness that they are making fools of themselves.

As with protest demonstrations, so it is with protest songs — the left is good at them; the right is not. Pete Seeger has made his political blunders (naiveté about Joe Stalin was not a minor error) but, by gum, he can play the banjo, sing, and get folks to sing along with him. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Arlo Guthrie have talent, or perhaps genius. So does Bruce Springsteen.

But you should have heard that music playing at the Montpelier event yesterday. No, scratch that; be grateful you missed it. At least as heard on You-Tube, the quasi-official nationwide “Tea Party” theme by Lloyd Marcus wasn’t much better.

Only Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee,” and “Fightin’ Side of Me” rank as great conservative protest music. But they were a long time ago, and their conservatism was more cultural than political. If Haggard was a political conservative then, he isn’t any more. He endorse Hillary Clinton, and then Obama, last year.

The real problem with the Montpelier “Tea Party” though was not the music; it was the words, and their near-total lack of political coherence. Simply consider that speaker after speaker warned of “inflation.”

During the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression? The very day the government announced that inflation had declined by more than at any time in 54 years? Deflation is the threat. Right now, worrying about inflation is not real.

It isn’t that there’s no argument to be made against Obama’s policies. There are always arguments to be made against policy. But arguments not grounded in reality are not arguments; they are performances. Both of yesterday’s demonstrations were performances, of course; that’s what demonstrations are. But only one of them contained an argument. Anyone can disagree with that argument, but that’s because anyone can comprehend it. The performance in front of the Statehouse was incomprehensible.

In general, this is not a healthy situation. Without coherent opposition, a party and a political faction don’t have to think. Intellectual ossification then looms. No one should doubt that this can happen to the Democrats and to liberalism. It happened before, circa 1967. Recovery took awhile.

Vermonters are somewhat insulated from this danger because the only conservative here with any political influence, Gov. Douglas, is not of the “Tea Party” mentality. He says only nice things about the President, does not succumb to conspiracy theories, and understands that government is necessary.

He does, it is true, want to cut taxes, or at least not raise them.

So he says, anyway. Whether his policies would actually turn out that way requires more examination

WHAT WITH THE (PLANNED) ABSENCE OF A POST FRIDAY, SOME READERS CONCLUDED THAT THE NEWS GUY WAS OFF ON A TOOT.

NOT SO (AT LEAST NOT THIS TIME). MONDAY’S POST IS RIGHT BELOW THIS ONE.

Up in the Northeast Kingdom town of Barton,  some nice folks and the public library have been showing free movies at the library every Friday afternoon.

Good movies, some of them, including last Friday’s, the Marx Brothers classic 1935 comedy, A Night At The Opera.

As they do every week, library volunteers posted eight-and-a-half -by 11-inch flyers around town early in the week. By Wednesday, they had been defaced.

Well, maybe just altered. On the left side of the flyer someone had written, “Boycott film.” Then, under a line, “Good Friday. Go the church + pray.”

The librarian, Toni Eubanks, took down the altered flyers and put up new ones. But by Friday morning, the boycotter had struck again.

The boycott fizzled. A goodly crowd saw the movie, and no doubt enjoyed it. Especially, one suspects, when Harpo walked down the spiral staircase. Or maybe the line about the sanity clause.

As to the boycotter, he (proceeding here on the assumption it was a guy) will suffer no consequences. It isn’t that no one knows who it is. The word around town is that the young women who operate the cash registers at the C&C Supermarket across the street from the library have a pretty good idea.

(Believe it. They know all the town dirt. If one of them could write, and – who knows? – perhaps one can, she could become the Grace Metalious of the Twenty-first Century.).

Besides, the would-be boycott leader did no harm. Oh, he violated the “mind your own business” rule,  and seemed not to understand pluralism. It would apparently surprise him to learn that not every believing Christian goes to church on Good Friday, that not everyone is a Christian, or a believer.  Or that the library is the right place for all those folks to come together and the wrong place to bother others about going to church.

But this was a polite protest. The boycotter did not cover over the flyer, from which anyone could still learn what was playing, where, and when. He wrote his message with a fine-tipped ball point pen over on the side.  Had he not used the harsh word, “boycott,” he might almost have been trying to start a conversation.

That’s another reason he will, and should, suffer no consequences. Possibly, he violated some anti-defacing law. But he was saying something, which counts for quite a bit in this country. He wanted to make a point. He could have made it in a more appropriate venue, but that’s just a matter of taste, which by definition is subjective.

So there’s a free speech component here. Okay, it’s a trivial free speech component of a trivial matter. But here (for those of you wondering whether there was a point to all this) is what’s interesting: this is a good example of a situation in which expression — while protected, permitted, and Constitutionally guaranteed – is a bad idea.

Such situations are not rare. They come along quite frequently. Vermonters and other Americans keep asserting themselves. When challenged as to taste and appropriateness, they respond by asserting their right to assert. They have that right. But perhaps they are too assertive.

Understand that this assessment comes from a free speech absolutist, who believes that Americans have the right to advocate overthrowing the government, by force and violence if necessary. Of even if not necessary, just because it might be fun.

(To clarify, the judgment here is that violence is almost never fun, and that the preferred instrument for government over-throw is regularly scheduled elections. But that’s just the judgment here. Those with conflicting judgments must be allowed to state them, distasteful though they may be).

We have had, in recent Vermont history, another example of assertive and arguably obnoxious speech that was Constitutionally protected. In this case, the speakers are known. They are Boots Wardinski of Newbury and Michael Colby of Worcester, who on June 5, 2006, interrupted the commencement ceremony at St. Johnsbury Academy.

The object of their protest was the commencement speaker , John Negroponte, then the United States Director of National Intelligence (and the father of one of the graduates)

Shortly after Negroponte began speaking, Colby stood up and shouted, “In the name of democracy I object to this man speaking. He has blood on his hands from his work in Central America and Iraq. He shouldn’t be at the podium, he should be in jail. He is a war criminal.”

Colby was escorted out of the auditorium by police and Academy security staff.

“Now it’s my turn,” said Negroponte But Wardinski, a veteran political provocateur (and occasional losing candidate) in Vermont, stood up and said,  ”No! It’s my turn! When the headmaster introduced Negroponte, he forgot to tell about all the people tortured, killed and raped… You should be ashamed to stay in here and listen to this man.”

He, too, was escorted out of the hall. Both men had tickets to the invitation-only event. Both left peacefully. Both were convicted of recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience or annoyance. The interruptions, the Vermont Supreme Court noted, ” lasted no more than thirty seconds (and) Negroponte delivered his speech in its entirety.”

Last month,  the State Supreme Court unanimously threw out the convictions. “The State must-but cannot-prove that defendants’ speech caused a substantial disruption of a lawful assembly,” the court ruled.  Making a bit of a commotion may be impolite. It may even technically violate a statute. But like the Barton movie boycotter, Colby and Wardinksi had something to say.

“If we use the disorderly conduct statute to punish defendants by not requiring that the disturbance be substantial,” said the Court, ” we would be punishing them for speech in violation of the First Amendment.”

The defendants, then, properly asserted their rights. But that does not establish either their taste or their wisdom, both of which, like those of the Barton boycotter, are questionable.

No, the two cases are not identical. Colby and Wardinski did what they did right out in public, taking their chances. They were braver.

But aside from the lack of courtesy (which is subjective, and at any rate was minor), they may have shared with the guy in Barton a lack of political smarts. All three protesters probably weakened their own case.

If the average Bartonian (full disclosure: I am one of them) had any reaction at all to the message on the movie flyers, it was probably, “Oh, another religious fanatic,” a sentiment quite possibly shared by folks who went to church on Good Friday. In St. Johnsbury, the graduates, their loved ones, and citizens reading about the event the next day were more likely to scorn Colby and Wardinski for their rudeness than to pay attention to their message, which wasn’t much more substantive than “Boycott film..Go to  church.” If there was a case to be made against Negroponte (and there was), they didn’t make it.

There’s a flip side to all this. Just as individuals have rights which are not always wise to exercise, government have powers they might be better off not using. Right now some of those powers are under consideration by the Legislature. How much control should the state exert over drivers when it comes to wearing their seat belts or talking on cell phones? Lurking around are questions over whether the state should require motorcyclists or skiers to wear helmets.

The debates over these questions re often ill-informed, with one faction asserting individual rights that don’t exist, the other claiming benefits that might never be realized.

We’ll consider that side of the coin tomorrow.

Ben Stein

Ben Stein will not deliver the commencement address at the University of Vermont this year after all.

Cancel one major league media frenzy, no doubt with attendant protest marches, petitioning, name-calling, and battling blogs.

The hullabaloo had already begun. It almost instantly become global. It seems to have prevailed.

The University did not announce the sudden reversal on Sunday of the announcement made only three days earlier that Stein-actor, writer, one-time presidential speech-writer, and conservative commentator-would be awarded an honorary degree and speak at the University’s 205tth Commencement on May 17.

But according to a widely read scientific web site, UVM President Daniel Mark Fogel wrote Sunday that, “Mr. Stein will be unable to receive the honorary degree here or to serve as Commencement speaker .”

Fogel wrote that in a letter to Richard Dawkins (pictured above),  the well-known evolutionary biologist who was the most prominent of several scientists protesting the choice of Stein, an outspoken advocate of “Intelligent Design,” who has argued that belief in evolution was partly responsible for the Holocaust.

Perhaps Stein had an earlier commitment for May 17 that he had failed to communicate to UVM officials before Thursday’s announcement that he would be the commencement speaker.

The usual drill in these matters, though, is that the inviters and the invitees work out scheduling problems before the press releases are issued, raising the possibility, if not the likelihood, that Fogel saw the fury inspired by the Stein announcement and decided to execute an abrupt, face-saving retreat.

University officials had neither comment nor information Sunday.

The intensity of the scientific community’s reaction is plain from Dawkins’ email to Fogel sent Sunday. Dawkins called the invitation to Stein “lamentable,” described him as a “notoriously mendacious propagandist for creationism,” and warned that UVM’s “reputation is in danger of being besmirched” by a commencement ceremony featuring Stein.

A few hours later, Fogel replied that as a great admirer of Dawkins he was “honored” to see a personal email from him in his inbox ” but very sorry indeed” about its content.

Though the University had “recently learned” that Stein would be unable to come, Fogel said, he assured Dawkins that Stein’s ” remarks would address the global economic crisis and that he would speak from his widely acknowledged area of expertise on the economy.”

That wasn’t quite an assurance that Stein wouldn’t say a word about evolution or about science in general. But it seemed to be heading in that direction.

Either way, Dawkins replied, thanking Fogel for his “extremely gracious letter,” and adding that he could not “disguise my gladness that Ben Stein will not be going to Vermont.”

The account and the quotes above were taken from Dawkins’s web site – RichardDawkins.net – and the Internet is a notoriously un-policed realm on which charlatans can and do put up fraudulent messages. In this case, though, the authenticity of the letters was confirmed (via an old-fashioned telephone interview) by Paul Z Myers, a biology professor at the University of Minnesota at Morris, and the proprietor of a scientific web site called Pharyngula. (“a term coined by William Ballard to describe a particular stage in the development of the vertebrate embryo,” according to the site).

Myers said he is in frequent contact with Dawkins, and vouched for the accuracy of RichardDawkins.net web site, and its account of the Dawkins-Fogel messages.

Pharyngula was one of several scientific web sites that immediately began to attack UVM for asking Stein to make the commencement address. The overwhelming disapproval of the scientific community can hardly seem to be an inviting prospect to an administration that has been striving, with some success, to enhance the scholarly image of the university.

And Dawkins is a powerful force in the scientific community. Since the publication of The Selfish Gene in 1976 he has been among the world’s most highly regarded biologists. He’s also a fierce polemicist and a militant atheist, lately more famous for his 2006 book, The God Delusion.

As admired as Dawkins is among scientists (including many who are not atheists), Stein is scorned as a showman whose views are hostile not merely to science but to rational inquiry in general. Many, including Dawkins and Myers, were especially angry about the movie Expelled, which Stein co-wrote and starred in, a film which claims that those who deny evolution are victims of religious persecution by the scientific community.

Both Dawkins, in his letter to Fogel, and Myers in an interview claimed that Stein got them to appear in the film under false pretenses.

” I am one of several evolutionary biologists who, in good faith, agreed to be interviewed by Stein and his team, on the basis of what turned out to be flagrant lies as to the true purpose of the film,” Dawkins wrote.” In my case, Stein and his team then went on deliberately to distort my words.”

Myers said he was told the film was “to be a serious movie about  the conflict between science and religion , something I would happily participate in.  What it turned out to be instead is move that accuses science of killing, and of responsibility for the Holocaust.”

The university’s own faculty was upset about Thursday’s announcement, but didn’t really get time to organize a response.

“I’m unhappy but I don’t want to say anything now,” said one science professor, asking not to be identified. “This is something the Faculty Senate should consider.”

Another professor said there should be no effort to censor Stein, who spoke at UVM without incident last April. But inviting Stein to deliver the commencement address effectively meant that the University was “honoring” him, the professor said, which he called quite different from permitting him to air his views.

Many economists would dispute Fogel about Stein’s “acknowledged…expertise on the economy,” Stein writes on economic and business matters for many journals, including the New York Times. He majored in economics at Cornell but has no advanced degrees in the field. He is a lawyer. But he is no doubt best known for his acting role as the boring, pompous, teacher in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Stein’s economic views are mostly conservative, but in the past few years he has written several columns critical of rising income inequality and the low tax rates paid by upper income earners.

(NOTE: Due to a computer error [Well, OK, the computer operator's error] last Friday’s post did not get posted until Saturday evening. It is now in its chronological spot on the site, just below, for anyone who is interested.)