What an Ivy Surprise!!!
Columbia University....Up at the top of the Ivy League bastions....and, as an institution, as Liberal as can be.
And, as such, it's pretty easy to guess the attitude toward the military.
Or is it?
I was pleasantly surprised to open the Columbia Magazine, Winter 2013-14 edition, and find the following comments from former Columbia grads in the ''Letters" department. The stimulus was an earlier article by a Columbia grad who had enlisted.
Patriotic Americans will see hopeful signs!
From the Magazine:
1. I can’t recall feeling prouder of being a Columbian in the last five years than when I read Michael Christman’s article on his experience as a Marine in Afghanistan (“Shades of Green,” Fall 2013).
2. ... very few people were willing to put their money where their mouths were.” Thank you, Captain Christman, for voluntarily risking your life and giving up your comfortable living in Washington, DC, during a time of war to protect our freedom and national interest — while we were complaining that there wasn’t enough foam on our Orange Mocha Frappuccinos. You deserve the utmost respect and appreciation from your fellow alumni and every American. God bless you and your men."
3. ... for reminding us all that to those who have chosen to serve in the military past and present, we owe our lives and freedom .
4. .... When I arrived at Harvard in 1957, I was not surprised to learn that some of my classmates were enrolled in the on-campus ROTC program. This program greatly reduced the cost of the four-year education in exchange for four years of military service. The symbiosis between the military and Harvard was unquestioned. When I began my MBA program at Columbia in 1964, the same relationship existed between the University and the military.
5. ... in the late ’60s this relationship was broken, and in protest of the Vietnam War, ROTC was banned from campus. ... Michael Christman asks, “How could it be that so few Ivy graduates shared in our country’s burden?” There are many answers, but surely one is the low regard the Ivies have had for the military. I, and many of my classmates who served, felt that the decision to discontinue ROTC was wrong. The implication was that the universities and their students were somehow special and needed not serve.
I am delighted that this policy has been reversed and now at both Harvard and Columbia ROTC students can be seen attending class proudly in uniform. Our country needs them.
It was heartwarming- and surprising- to find the flame of pride in America still burns in our most prestigious institutions!
And equally surprising was the resentment of some when Columbia tried to shove the Global Warming Scam down their throats!
6. ... article “The Carbon Eaters” (Fall 2013) unfortunately includes the ridiculous statement that “since the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has risen more than 40 percent, sealing in heat and wreaking havoc with our climate.” The second part of this is pure scare propaganda, and completely insupportable. Can we have some editorial quality control here?
7. Judging from your “Global Warnings” College Walk piece in the Fall 2013 issue, Columbia’s just-launched Center on Global Energy Policy might want to rethink its mission statement — specifically, the parts about conducting “balanced” research, rejecting “easy answers,” and building an “intellectual energy community” on the Morningside Heights campus.
Clearly, based on his recent speech, the head of the center has already made up his mind that climate change is the only concern that public officials should consider when it comes to energy policy. The categorical statement that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are “global pollutants” that need to be capped, priced, and taxed betrays Jason Bordoff’s ideological bias, ....
8. The inconvenient truth is that the science behind man-made, carbon-driven climate change is still far from settled. While environmentalists have successfully leveraged the US courts and administrative agencies and the United Nations to push their anti– fossil fuel agenda, there has never been an organized public debate about the merits of the case.
9. Over the past thirty years, the main advocates of this theory have been environmental activists, academics, and career politicians, with much of the “supporting” data kept by an insular scientific community that does not respond well to outside inquiry. Doubtless, all of the “graphs, statistics, and geopolitical data” used by Bordoff in his presentation showed the much-hyped hockey-stick pattern in global carbon emissions in recent decades, while failing to explain why average global temperatures have essentially not moved since the late 1990s.
10 The crisis formerly known as global warming has now been successfully repackaged such that any unusual climatic phenomenon anywhere in the world becomes instant free marketing and further validation, with Superstorm Sandy and November’s Typhoon Haiyan being the latest examples. Now, even a “ninety-eight-degree afternoon in July” in New York City would appear to stand out as a remarkable climate event. The only positive takeaway from your article is that barely thirty people turned out for Bordoff’s lecture, which may indicate that the general public is finally starting to grow tired of hearing about the end of the world on the back of every extreme weather event.
If Columbia published the above, there must have been many more grads with the above perspective.
You betcha'!!!
Original letters can be found here:
Letters Winter 2013-14 | Columbia Magazine
Columbia University....Up at the top of the Ivy League bastions....and, as an institution, as Liberal as can be.
And, as such, it's pretty easy to guess the attitude toward the military.
Or is it?
I was pleasantly surprised to open the Columbia Magazine, Winter 2013-14 edition, and find the following comments from former Columbia grads in the ''Letters" department. The stimulus was an earlier article by a Columbia grad who had enlisted.
Patriotic Americans will see hopeful signs!
From the Magazine:
1. I can’t recall feeling prouder of being a Columbian in the last five years than when I read Michael Christman’s article on his experience as a Marine in Afghanistan (“Shades of Green,” Fall 2013).
2. ... very few people were willing to put their money where their mouths were.” Thank you, Captain Christman, for voluntarily risking your life and giving up your comfortable living in Washington, DC, during a time of war to protect our freedom and national interest — while we were complaining that there wasn’t enough foam on our Orange Mocha Frappuccinos. You deserve the utmost respect and appreciation from your fellow alumni and every American. God bless you and your men."
3. ... for reminding us all that to those who have chosen to serve in the military past and present, we owe our lives and freedom .
4. .... When I arrived at Harvard in 1957, I was not surprised to learn that some of my classmates were enrolled in the on-campus ROTC program. This program greatly reduced the cost of the four-year education in exchange for four years of military service. The symbiosis between the military and Harvard was unquestioned. When I began my MBA program at Columbia in 1964, the same relationship existed between the University and the military.
5. ... in the late ’60s this relationship was broken, and in protest of the Vietnam War, ROTC was banned from campus. ... Michael Christman asks, “How could it be that so few Ivy graduates shared in our country’s burden?” There are many answers, but surely one is the low regard the Ivies have had for the military. I, and many of my classmates who served, felt that the decision to discontinue ROTC was wrong. The implication was that the universities and their students were somehow special and needed not serve.
I am delighted that this policy has been reversed and now at both Harvard and Columbia ROTC students can be seen attending class proudly in uniform. Our country needs them.
It was heartwarming- and surprising- to find the flame of pride in America still burns in our most prestigious institutions!
And equally surprising was the resentment of some when Columbia tried to shove the Global Warming Scam down their throats!
6. ... article “The Carbon Eaters” (Fall 2013) unfortunately includes the ridiculous statement that “since the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has risen more than 40 percent, sealing in heat and wreaking havoc with our climate.” The second part of this is pure scare propaganda, and completely insupportable. Can we have some editorial quality control here?
7. Judging from your “Global Warnings” College Walk piece in the Fall 2013 issue, Columbia’s just-launched Center on Global Energy Policy might want to rethink its mission statement — specifically, the parts about conducting “balanced” research, rejecting “easy answers,” and building an “intellectual energy community” on the Morningside Heights campus.
Clearly, based on his recent speech, the head of the center has already made up his mind that climate change is the only concern that public officials should consider when it comes to energy policy. The categorical statement that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are “global pollutants” that need to be capped, priced, and taxed betrays Jason Bordoff’s ideological bias, ....
8. The inconvenient truth is that the science behind man-made, carbon-driven climate change is still far from settled. While environmentalists have successfully leveraged the US courts and administrative agencies and the United Nations to push their anti– fossil fuel agenda, there has never been an organized public debate about the merits of the case.
9. Over the past thirty years, the main advocates of this theory have been environmental activists, academics, and career politicians, with much of the “supporting” data kept by an insular scientific community that does not respond well to outside inquiry. Doubtless, all of the “graphs, statistics, and geopolitical data” used by Bordoff in his presentation showed the much-hyped hockey-stick pattern in global carbon emissions in recent decades, while failing to explain why average global temperatures have essentially not moved since the late 1990s.
10 The crisis formerly known as global warming has now been successfully repackaged such that any unusual climatic phenomenon anywhere in the world becomes instant free marketing and further validation, with Superstorm Sandy and November’s Typhoon Haiyan being the latest examples. Now, even a “ninety-eight-degree afternoon in July” in New York City would appear to stand out as a remarkable climate event. The only positive takeaway from your article is that barely thirty people turned out for Bordoff’s lecture, which may indicate that the general public is finally starting to grow tired of hearing about the end of the world on the back of every extreme weather event.
If Columbia published the above, there must have been many more grads with the above perspective.
You betcha'!!!
Original letters can be found here:
Letters Winter 2013-14 | Columbia Magazine
Last edited:
