This just in:
According to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Education, an increasing number of American parents are choosing to have their children raised at school rather than at home.
Deputy Education Secretary Anthony W. Miller said that many parents who school-home find U.S. households to be frightening, overwhelming environments for their children, and feel that they are just not conducive to producing well-rounded members of society.
Thousands of mothers and fathers polled in the study also believe that those running American homes cannot be trusted to keep their kids safe.
"Every year more parents are finding that their homes are not equipped to instill the right values in their children," Miller said. "When it comes to important life skills such as proper nutrition, safe sex, and even basic socialization, a growing number of mothers and fathers think it's better to rely on educators to guide and nurture their kids."
"And really, who can blame them?" Miller continued. "American homes have let down our nation's youth time and again in almost every imaginable respect." . . .
Get the full story here, at The Onion. Of course, like many of the funniest things in The Onion, this piece entertains because it has some truth (or "truthiness") to it. (Too) many parents are comfortable letting government-run schools raise their children, and (too) many people with power and influence believe that it is important for such schools to play a competitive (that is, versus the parents) role in raising children.
No doubt as a result of this Duke fan's complaining, "the Duke University Women's Center has issued a letter of apology after it denied the campus pro-life student group space for an event on motherhood. The center abruptly canceled a Duke Students for Life event on the day of the meeting because it was engaging in pro-life activities elsewhere on campus." (More here.)
Here we go, Devils, here we go! (Clap, clap).
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
My friend Prof. Mark Kende (Drake) has an interesting post, over at the "Comparative Constitutions" blog, "Quebec and Religion":
Legislation has been introduced in Quebec to ban women from covering their faces when seeking or providing provincial services. This would effectively prevent Muslim women needing such services from wearing the niquab, a veil that covers the face. Supporters argue this promotes gender equality and more open interactions between the province’s citizens. Even national liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff (a former Harvard professor) has indicated his general support. Opponents argue this would take away the choice of these women and infringes on their religious freedom. Newspaper articles regarding the issue suggest widespread support in Quebec. There have been several situations already where government related entities in Quebec have refused to provide services. Ironically, one of them involved a woman who was denied the chance to take a French language course. Thus, some supporters have argued the bill would simply clarify existing practices. Whatever one’s position, this proposal seems at odds with a Canadian constitutional theme that the nation takes a "mosaic" approach to diversity, unlike the U.S. "melting pot."
On another Quebec religion topic, I recently learned, from a student and from other sources, that some profanity in Quebec uses Catholic terminology in a derogatory way. This is certainly different from the U.S where most profanity has a connection to sexuality. The veil and the profanity issue both suggest some general skepticism about religion in Quebec, to say the least.
On Friday, April 9, Columbia's School of Law is hosting a daylong, legal symposium, "Looking Back, Looking Forward: Pro-Life Strategy and Jurisprudence for the 21st Century." More information is available
here. Our own Amy Uelmen, among many others, will be presenting.
This should be good: Catholic University's "Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture" is hosting, on April 8 and 9, a symposium on Philip Hamburger's Law and Judicial Duty.
In his recent book, Law and Judicial Duty, Philip Hamburger traces the early history of what is today called "judicial review." Working from previously unexplored historical evidence, he shows that common law judges had the authority to hold governmental acts unconstitutional, not because of a special power over constitutional law, but only pursuant to a distinctive requirement of the judicial office that generally obligated them to follow "the law of the land." Judges honored their offices precisely by adhering to the "Law." While judges could strike down purported laws as unconstitutional, they did so always bound by a duty as strictly limiting themselves as any other. By reviving an understanding of these common law ideals, Law and Judicial Duty calls into question the modern assumptions that judicial review is a power within a scheme of conflicting powers, or a power, in any sense, to make law. It places in view a very different paradigm of law and judging. The book also sheds new light on a host of misunderstood problems, including intent, manifest contradiction, the status of foreign and international law, the cases and controversies requirement, and the authority of judicial precedent.
This symposium gathers leading scholars in the areas of the history of law and politics, constitutional law, and jurisprudence to take up the challenge posed by Philip Hamburger in his provocative work. From their various disciplinary perspectives, participants enter into in a dialogue with Hamburger over the meaning of the history of the common law, the nature of adjudication, and the true significance of judicial review as we experience it in our constitutional system today.
Alright, sure . . . Duke is the greatest college basketball program, and Coach K. is the best coach in college basketball. No room for (what my friend Michael Perry would call) "reasonable" disagreement there. But . . . sometimes Duke University (or parts of it) makes such an (institutional) idiot of itself. Volokh has the report.:
Duke University’s Women’s Center has canceled an event about motherhood because the sponsor was engaging in pro-life expression elsewhere on campus. A Women’s Center representative told Duke Students for Life (DSFL) that “we have a problem” and an ideological “conflict” with the event, which was supposedly canceled to protect Duke women from encountering the event during the group’s “traumatizing” pro-life “Week for Life.” ...
As part of a “Week for Life” series of events held at Duke over March 15–19, DSFL had reserved a Women’s Center space for a “Discussion with a Duke Mother” on March 18. A Duke student and mother was to speak about motherhood and the challenges of being in both roles. But the day before the event, the reservation was abruptly canceled in a voicemail to the group.
Meeting with the group on March 18, Duke Women’s Center Gender Violence Prevention Specialist Martin Liccardo said that because the event was associated with the Week for Life and DSFL, the event could not be held at the Women’s Center.
Liccardo told the group that the prospect of holding a pro-life event in the Women’s Center during Week for Life was too upsetting for some students: “We had a very strong reaction from students in general who use our space who said this was something that was upsetting and not OK. So based on that, we said, OK, we are going to respond to this and stop the program.” .. .
