Hamas Brutality Illuminates College Officialdom’s Broken Moral Compass

By Frederick M. Hess AEIdeas October 11, 2023 @ American Enterprise Institute

Editor's Note:  I've not asked nor have I received permission to publish this in full.  But I think this so very well defines the cowardice and corruption in America's universities it needs the widest distribution possible.  If AEI or the author object, I will break this down to a link. RK

In recent years, America’s campus mandarins have been given one opportunity after another to lead by fostering constructive discourse. They have manifestly failed at that task. When disputes or events focused attention on abortion, policing, race, gender, and more, college officials have rushed to issue statements to declare their fealty to the progressive cause (whatever that happens to be).

Rather than acknowledge good-faith disagreement or offer up their institutions as places where we might seek mutual understanding, campus leaders choose to perform for the cheap seats. In doing so, they’ve undermined the ability of their institutions to serve as credible forums. They’ve marginalized scholars and students who don’t embrace these dogmas. But they’ve insisted on speaking up for those “brutalized” by Supreme Court rulings on abortion or free speech for bakers, if only to ensure that all feel safe and welcome on campus.

Well, over the weekend, the Palestinian terror organization Hamas launched a truly brutal assault on Israel, slaughtering parents in front of their kids, raping women and parading them in the streets, kidnapping civilians from their homes—all while live-streaming much of it. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had it just right:

“Our condemnation belongs squarely with terrorists who have brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped hundreds—hundreds of Israelis. There can be no equivocation about that. There are not two sides here.” Indeed, President Biden noted that Hamas’s “stated purpose is the annihilation of the state of Israel and the murder of Jewish people.”

Meanwhile, campus chapters of Palestinian student groups—including at campuses like Ohio State and Harvard University—issued congratulatory statements and insisting that Israelis deserved this (the Harvard statement was co-signed by more than two dozen student groups). Campus officials who’ve been so deeply concerned of late about nuanced microaggressions were here confronted with a vicious case of macroaggression, one that involved campus members cheering a direct threat to Israeli exchange students, any student or faculty member with relations in Israel, and, more generally, Jewish members of the campus community.

And how did college leaders respond? Mostly with silence. Four days after the attack, the Chronicle of Higher Education had found only 14 colleges that had said anything at all. Even the Chronicle, which tends to operate as a cheerleader for American higher education, noted that Hamas’s assault drew a “more-neutral response from significantly fewer colleges” than other, less horrific incidents and that most “responses walked a thin line” and opted for banal encomiums urging “all-around peace.”

The president of George Washington University, Ellen Granberg, offered a typically milquetoast bit of bothsidesism, saying,

“Violence, discrimination or harassment against any member of the Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, Arab or Muslim communities will not be tolerated at GW.”

At Babson College, President Steve Spinelli regretted that, “during a long weekend meant” for “continued reflection on the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging on Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” there’d been some “tragic events,” including “new conflicts in Israel and Palestine” and a “disastrous earthquake in Afghanistan.”

At Harvard University, where President Claudine Gay issued a shaken, tearful rejoinder to the Supreme Court ruling on race-based admissions earlier this summer, Gay this time mustered such a tepid response that she was later compelled to offer a second statement clarifying “that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.”

Johns Hopkins international affairs scholar Yascha Mounk may have said it best, in commenting on his institution remaining silent after issuing a string of statements on previous hot-button issues. “I actually think universities should not be in the business of issuing these kinds of statements,” Mounk wrote. “But since they do issue statements about all kinds of events all of the time, it sends a very clear message if they then happen to fall silent when the victims are Jews.”

Look, campus leaders would do better to just stop issuing declarations which putatively speak for their institution. They should stop dabbling in politics and instead focus on actually doing the work of fostering discussion and understanding. Putting the campus community on one side of fraught debates makes that more difficult.

If campus officials do choose to speak up, and then do so on some issues rather than others, they should hardly be surprised when observers take note. If they weigh in on court rulings, policy decisions, or individual tragedies, their silence on gruesome rampages will be hard to miss. And if they somehow feel okay about approaching abortion, race-conscious policies, and policing as simple morality plays, and only discover complexity in a moment like the present one—well, one can only conclude that their moral compass is broken.

But that, I fear, has become increasingly evident of late.

A Degree of Risk

By Beth Akers Deseret News September 18, 2023

Higher education policy has gone from a niche issue studied by wonks and practitioners to a point of mainstream political concern. I used to wait with bated breath for a national political figure to mention the issue I care so much about, celebrating even a banal reference to maintaining a competitive workforce. I longed for the political engagement that could facilitate changes to our higher education system that are necessary and overdue: making college less risky for students, holding colleges and universities to a higher standard and reining in the out-of-control cost to taxpayers..........

The problem that needs solving is twofold. 

First, going to and paying for college is risky. On average college is a great investment, but sometimes it can leave students worse off financially than when they started...............

Second, we must ensure that colleges are on the hook for delivering economic opportunity. When graduates can’t find jobs that pay well enough to afford the price tag of enrollment, we should stop allowing students to borrow and use grants to attend that school or program of study. We must hold institutions of higher learning accountable for the quality and outcomes of their degrees and certifications. Higher education is one of the greatest vehicles for socioeconomic opportunity our nation has, and we cannot afford to allow it to become derelict in its duty..............So far we've given colleges a pass...........

Lastly, people who can afford to pay their student loans need to pay their student loans. Having a self-pay system of higher education finance means that prospective students are consumers, and when people pay with their own money, they are savvy. They demand that colleges charge a reasonable price. They demand quality. When someone else is paying, they become less interested in the details, and there is less pressure on institutions of higher learning to perform. Discipline from the market can keep value high and prices low, ensuring that public dollars spent on education will go the furthest possible...........To Read More...

 

House Budget Plan Proposes Commonsense Welfare Changes

By Robert Doar | Matt Weidinger AEIdeas September 19, 2023 @ American Enterprise Institute

The House Budget Committee, headed by Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX), today released a draft budget proposal detailing the majority’s spending priorities and proposed changes across a range of government benefits and programs.

Several policies would promote higher levels of work among welfare recipients, which is especially necessary while benefit rolls remain elevated despite plentiful job openings.

According to recent research by our AEI colleague Angela Rachidi, less than one-third of households collecting SNAP benefits in 2019 included a current worker, and just 6 percent of SNAP-collecting households included a full-time worker. Since then, SNAP caseloads and especially benefit levels and program costs have grown considerably, and most current SNAP household heads are working age and not disabled.

Meanwhile, labor force participation rates remain historically low, especially for US natives. For example, the Center for Immigration Studies recently reported that, for US-born men ages 25 to 54 without a bachelor’s degree, labor force participation declined from 89.4 percent in 2000 to just 84.4 percent in April 2023, when the US unemployment rate was 3.4 percent, matching lows last seen in the 1960s. Better connecting current benefit recipients with work will increase their earnings and, coupled with generous tax credits for low-income workers, significantly raise their household incomes. That combination—earnings plus benefits—is the key to reducing poverty and ensuring that our welfare system promotes hope and upward mobility—not a lifetime of dependency.

Here’s how this proposal seeks to achieve all of that.

First, it would strengthen work requirements for recipients of cash welfare, food stamps, and public housing subsidies. That’s a familiar call from conservatives, and for good reason. In the past, work-based reforms of the nation’s cash welfare program successfully helped millions of low-income single parents increase their earnings, reducing their levels of poverty and dependence on welfare checks. But similar policies were either never applied to other programs, or have been regularly waived, and even the work requirements for cash welfare lost their bite over time. The bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act enacted in May adjusted some work requirements for cash welfare and food stamps, but other Republican-proposed reforms were left out. More needs to be done to connect millions of current benefit recipients with work, and that’s what these proposed reforms seek to do.

Other changes assumed in the budget also promote more work over welfare and other benefit receipt. For example, we understand the budget assumes extending the current-law requirement that child tax credit claimants have valid Social Security numbers that authorize them to work in order to claim those work-based benefits. That requirement expires in 2025 and ought to be extended. The Congressional Budget Office in 2022 found that extending this requirement would yield over $24 billion in savings over 10 years. Other assumed changes would strengthen work search requirements for unemployment benefit recipients, close loopholes that inappropriately expand eligibility for food stamps, and narrow benefit eligibility for noncitizens, consistent with longstanding US law.

As the Budget Committee considers these incremental changes, they should also review more comprehensive changes proposed in American Renewal: A Conservative Plan to Strengthen the Social Contract and Save the Country’s Finances. That AEI publication, edited by Rachidi and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, was released last fall. A chapter in that volume authored by Rachidi, Scott Winship, and one of us (Matt Weidinger), titled “A Safety Net for the Future: Overcoming the Root Causes of Poverty,” suggested a series of changes to promote more work and stronger families, backstopped by reforms to the financing of welfare programs. Those changes would reduce current financial incentives for state governments to prioritize bigger caseloads and instead financially reward states for realizing smaller caseloads and a larger number of recipients working. Other proposals in the volume focus on reforms to health care and disability benefits, as well as the tax code. These should be of interest to the Budget Committee, too, as it continues its important work.

Increasing upward mobility means helping more of our neighbors make the transition off the benefit rolls and into work. The Budget Committee is doing the right thing to seek more upward mobility and is off to a good start. But even if the changes in today’s proposal are enacted, there will still be much more left to do.

Learn more: Putting This Year’s Poverty Numbers in Context | Two Sentences Will Strengthen SNAP’s Support for Work | Work Is Essential to the American Dream | Labor Department Report Finds Pandemic Unemployment Program Had a Staggering 36 Percent Improper Payment Rate

 

Your Business in China May Be Uninsurable

August 7, 2023 | Elisabeth Braw @ American Enterprise Institute

Western companies are losing their enthusiasm about doing business with China. The American Chamber of Commerce in China reported in March that only 45% of surveyed companies called China a top-three investment priority, the lowest figure in the report’s 25-year history. A new survey from the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China finds that multinationals are shifting investments and Asia headquarters out of the country.

The trend is likely to accelerate, as companies struggle to find insurance against the political risks of doing business in China. “We’re witnessing a sharp contraction in underwriter appetite,” a political-risk executive at a global insurance broker said. “Companies that have multiyear coverage can continue to utilize it, but companies that need new policies are struggling. A couple of private-market underwriters are willing to sell, but many have burdensome criteria lists and will only offer to companies in sectors they assess as very benign.”

Political-risk coverage, which insures companies against politically motivated calamities ranging from expropriation to war, is the lifeblood of the globalized economy. The demand for such policies declined during globalization’s most harmonious years, but in an unstable world, companies are deciding they need it again. Last year 68% of major corporations bought political-risk insurance, up from 25% in 2019, according to a report by WTW, an insurance broker.

Underwriters stopped writing new policies in Russia months ago, and in China they appear spooked by events ranging from raids on Western consulting firms to threats against Taiwan. Two years ago, after Chinese state media declared videogames “spiritual opium,” shares in the Chinese entertainment giant Tencent swiftly plunged by more than 10%. Not even food and apparel companies, which have been considered relatively safe from political risks, can now be certain they’ll get such coverage.

Underwriters’ exposure in China, and the wide range of political risks that could materialize there, add to their nervousness. Of the 60 or so insurers that offer political-risk insurance, only four or five are still offering it for China, the insurance executive noted. Policies still being offered likely wouldn’t exceed $50 million coverage, down from around $2 billion a few years ago. Most large companies with operations in China have assets far above $50 million.

The German government, too, is shifting its China strategy. In the past few months, it has reduced its investment guarantees for German companies’ Chinese operations by more than $5 billion, and Economics Minister Robert Habeck has said he wants to guarantee more German investments elsewhere.

That’s a radical change from past years, which have mostly seen the likes of Iran and Venezuela cause political-risk headaches for businesses. Some companies planning to keep their Chinese operations going may already have political-risk insurance that lasts for another few years. Others may try to self-insure, though that means taking on risks that even insurers consider too large. The rest face having to leave the country. Even large companies eager to stay may be affected. Shareholders of Mercedes-Benz, whose CEO recently declared China the company’s “home away from home” in an interview on Chinese state television, should hope the company has reviewed its insurance.

Insurance allows globalization to thrive, but some potential globalization injuries are becoming too serious to cover. Companies and insurers, not only governments, have to decide which countries are friendly and stable enough to do business.

Ms. Braw is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an adviser to Gallos Technologies.

 

China’s Revolution in Family Structure: A Huge Demographic Blind Spot with Surprises Ahead

By Nicholas Eberstadt | Ashton Verdery @ American Enterprise Institute February 27, 2023

Key Points

• This report maps out recent and prospective trends in China’s family structure and kinship network patterns and assesses the social, economic, and political implications of these changes. We believe this is the first such study ever undertaken for a major national population.
• The report maps out changing family patterns through demographic modeling techniques, which simulate trends in family formation based on existing demographic data.
• Because statistics on family networks are not collected in China (or almost anywhere else), this area represents a blind spot for policymakers—a potentially fateful one, as shown in this report.

Read the PDF.

Executive Summary

Researchers and decision makers in Beijing and the West pay close attention to many major Chinese population trends, including its pronounced sub-replacement fertility, its shrinking manpower totals, and its rapid population aging. Yet one momentous demographic trend in China has as yet attracted almost no interest: the transformation of the country’s family structure.

The reason for this oversight is obvious. Beijing, like other modern governments, simply does not collect information on family structure or kinship networks—so the regime does not think about the issue and its implications.

In this report, we model simulations of China’s past and prospective patterns and trends in kinship networks. We then use the results from these simulations to analyze, assess, and speculate about their implications for China’s social, economic, and political future. We believe this is the first study to think through the far-reaching implications of the results of demographic and kinship network modeling for a national population of a major economy and great power.

Our simulations show that the Chinese family is about to undergo a radical and historically unprecedented transition, as extended kinship networks atrophy across the nation and close blood relatives disappear altogether for many. This fraying of the extended family and atomization of the nuclear family come at an almost exquisitely inopportune moment in China: Social needs are soaring alongside the rising tally of elderly dependents and the shrinking ranks of those on whom the elderly can rely—two social indicators poised for inescapable collision in the years immediately ahead. Indeed, the withering of the Chinese family as we now know it will make for new and unfamiliar challenges at every stage in the life cycle, for both Chinese people and the Chinese state.

Our simulations revealed several key findings.

• An unexpected finding: In terms of sheer quantity, Chinese networks of blood kin were never before nearly as thick as at the start of the 21st century. Due to dramatic improvements in survival, men and women in their 30s today (2020) have on average five times as many living cousins as in 1960. China’s “kin explosion” may be an important, heretofore unobserved, factor helping explain the Chinese economy’s remarkable performance since Mao Zedong’s death.
• But that kin explosion has reached its zenith, and China is now on the cusp of a severe, unavoidable, and unrelenting “kin crash,” driven by its prolonged and increasingly steep sub-replacement fertility patterns. The implosion of consanguineous family networks, in our models, means that China’s rising generations will likely have fewer living relatives than ever before in Chinese history: A “kin famine” looms.
• Population simulations also project a radical inversion within the nuclear family, with living parents and in-laws outnumbering children for middle-aged Chinese men and women. Further, due to the surfeit of baby boys under the notorious One-Child Policy (1980–2015) and declining cohort sizes, growing numbers of men in the decades ahead will enter old age without spouses or children—the traditional sources of support for the elderly.
• China’s coming revolution in family structure stands to overturn fundamental social arrangements taken for granted today. The focus of the family in China will necessarily be redirected from the rearing of the young to the care of the old. The reliability and durability of familial bonds of duty will be an increasingly crucial question—perhaps even a matter of life and death for many, including frail and impecunious elders in the Chinese hinterlands.
• Notwithstanding the looming macroeconomic implications of old-age dependency burdens, the most consequential economic impact of China’s coming revolution in family may actually concern the micro-foundations of the national economy. Since earliest recorded history, China’s guanxi networks have helped get business done by reducing uncertainty and transaction costs. Just as proliferation of blood relatives likely proved a powerful stimulant for growth during the era of China’s phenomenal upswing, the drastic coming plunge in living biological kin in China between now and 2050 may prove an economic depressant.
• The coming revolution in Chinese family structure promises to have political reverberations as well. If the waning of the family requires China to build a huge social welfare state over the coming generation, as we surmise it will, then Beijing would have that much less wherewithal at its disposal for influencing events abroad through economic diplomacy and defense policy.
• Further, our simulations indicate that by 2050, close to half of China’s overall pool of male military-age manpower will be made up of only children. Any encounter by China’s security forces involving significant loss of life will almost unavoidably presage lineage extinction for many Chinese families. Autocracies are typically tolerant of casualties—but this may not at all be the case in the only-child China of today and the coming decades.

Analysts and decision makers in China (and elsewhere) have barely begun to think about the many ramifications of this great disruption for China’s future. Inattention to Chinese family structure is a blind spot—quite possibly a fateful one.

Introduction

Dramatic demographic changes are underway in China, and they bear directly on the country’s economic, social, and geopolitical outlook for the decades ahead.¹ Beijing’s official announcement in January 2023 that deaths slightly exceeded births in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2022² and that total population for the country fell for the first time since the Great Famine of 1959–61 that followed Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward are only the latest reminders that population trends are constantly recasting the trajectory of “China’s rise.”

Researchers and decision makers in Beijing and the West pay close attention to many major Chinese population trends and their implications—among these, pronounced and continuing sub-replacement fertility, shrinking working-age manpower, rapid population aging, and emerging surfeits of marriageable men, partly due to sex-selective abortions. Yet those convey only some of the demographic headwinds facing the world’s largest economy and most populous society. One momentous demographic trend in China has as yet attracted almost no interest: the transformation of the country’s family structure.

Inattention to Chinese family structure is a blind spot—quite possibly a fateful one. The Chinese family is already set to undergo a radical and historically unprecedented transition, as extended kinship networks atrophy across the nation and close blood relatives disappear altogether for many. This fraying of the extended family and atomization of the nuclear family come at an almost exquisitely inopportune moment in China: Social needs are soaring with the rising tally of elderly dependents and shrinking ranks of those on whom elderly can rely—two social indicators poised for collision and rapidly. Indeed, the withering of the Chinese family as we now know it will make for new and unfamiliar challenges at every stage in the life cycle, for people and for the Chinese state. We have barely begun to think about the many ramifications of this great disruption for China’s future.

The impending upheaval in Chinese family structure is by now essentially unstoppable; a new family order is all but inescapable for China’s rising young generations. Because their parents had fewer children and they had fewer siblings, their children will necessarily have few aunts, uncles, and cousins. This upheaval promises to be massive in magnitude, replete with far-reaching reverberations—and is coming surprisingly soon.

Why has such an enormous, and potentially revolutionary, demographic change gone overlooked by China’s formidable cadre of academics, researchers, and advisers—and their overseas counterparts? The answer unfortunately is obvious. Beijing simply does not collect information on family structure or kinship networks—so the regime does not think about the issue and its implications. They plan for fewer people, not fewer nieces.

Such oversight is hardly new, nor is it peculiar to China. Standing governments have never regarded data on family as relevant to statecraft or security. Empires and states have been conducting censuses for thousands of years—the earliest of them in the Mediterranean and China. But in antiquity, these population counts were designed for taxation and military mobilization—thus, the focus on households and head counts.

That ancient design still informs modern statistical authorities everywhere. Although their techniques for surveying populations may be vastly more sophisticated nowadays, and although the sheer volume of demographic data at their disposal may likewise be exponentially greater, modern governments the world over still fail to ask for information about kinship from their citizens and subjects—and thus do not obtain it. Outside those working with the closely guarded population register data in some Scandinavian countries, who must apply clever approaches to enumerate kin, the kinship systems linking whole societies remain unseen.

In this report, we attempt to illuminate this major demographic blind spot in China’s population profile through modeling simulations of China’s past and prospective patterns and trends in kinship networks. We then use the results from these simulations to analyze, assess, and speculate about their implications for the Chinese future, in the social, economic, and even political realms. We believe this is the first study to think through the far-reaching implications of the results of demographic and kinship network modeling for a national population of a major economy and great power. We hope to demonstrate the utility of such explorations and encourage similar studies for the populations of other contemporary societies.

As we will show, the story of China’s revolution in family structure is more complicated than typically thought. Scholars, pundits, and members of the public certainly appreciate that the country’s family experience is changing. China’s notorious fertility-control policies in effect from the 1970s to 2015 are well-known, for instance, and it is not a leap to reason that such policies—and the other demographic reversals discussed above—presage considerable change in family structure. But how such policies and trends fit in the context of China’s shifting family landscape, how much has changed in the past 80 years, and just how much is likely to change again in the next 80 is a largely untold story.

Read the full report.