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It’s not that often that I agree with Howie Carr, but in his column of Sunday, July 2, I must say that he’s nearly right on target. (“Happy Independence Day From the Deadbeats”). But I use the qualifier “nearly” because he picks on those who are unable to pay the huge amounts that they borrowed via government-backed loans in order to meet the enormous costs of higher education today. In my view, and according to my experience, the main reason for the stratospheric price-tag (now hovering around $80,000 per year for the so-called “elite” private colleges) is the bloated bureaucracies found on just about every campus. Every dean has a deputy dean or two. Every deputy dean has an assistant deputy dean or three. Every deputy dean has his or her assistants, and so on. It is reliably estimated that here are currently more bureaucrats in American higher education than there are teachers.
And so the solution to the student debt problem, at least going forward, is to fire 98% of the bureaucrats. They will not be missed, for they perform no useful service. This was my position when I made an effort to run earlier this year as a petition candidate for the Harvard Board of Overseers, but I was unable to get enough alumni signatures to get on the ballot because the bureaucrats have in recent years upped the number of signatures needed from a few hundred to a few thousand. This occurred, to nobody’s surprise, when a few years ago I did get on the ballot and nearly won a seat.
Harvey Silverglate
Cambridge
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling striking down race-based admissions at colleges and universities, President Biden, his fellow Democrats and their coat holders in the liberal media immediately began attacking the Court and even individual justices. But such broadsides haven’t always been condoned. No.
We would do well to remember that it wasn’t that long ago when those on the left and in the liberal media routinely condemned Donald Trump for his “attacks” on the judiciary and judges and justices. We were told breathlessly and manically that such attacks were “dangerous” and “corrosive to one of our most cherished democratic institutions,” and had the capacity to undermine faith in the rule of law. We were even told that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric threatened the safety of judicial members and placed lives at risk. Left-leaning think tanks and policy institutes such as The Brennan Center for Justice took it upon themselves to issue public statements castigating Trump. The message was clear – attacking the judiciary was verboten, and Democrats would take a principled stand in defense of it.
Yet today, Mr. Trump’s loudest critics are now overtly engaging in the very behavior they once condemned. This latest display of shameless hypocrisy from the left serves as conclusive proof that what statesman Adlai Stevenson said many years ago is as true today as it was back then: “It is often easier to fight for a principle than to live up to it.” Indeed.
Michael J. DiStefano
Jamestown, RI
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