Lanky's Biden-style Questioning

Confession time. I find the whole Alito thing tremendously boring. (2nd confession, this will be a long post with little point, bail now!) I haven't seen any of the hearings except for 5 minutes of the Daily Show...and I found that boring too. One interesting thing that has come of it is Alito's ties to "Concerned Alumni of Princeton". Various people have purported CAP is a sexist or racism entity, and others have purported it isn't. That's not the part I found interesting.

What's interesting is that Princeton and Yale didn't admit women as undergrads until 1969. That really blew my mind. In deference to Tigerhawk, I'll agree that they are private institutions and as such should be allowed to admit whomever they want, but to me it's unimaginable for any institution that strives to be the best to rule out half of the population. And that's just the first of a dozen reasons I would argue against it. Anyway, 37 years ago Princeton and Yale decided that women were ok after all, hundreds of years after their respective inceptions, and 50 years after women got the right to vote.

Compare that with Cornell, where women were included almost from the get-go. (the school opened in 1867 and women were admitted in 1870) The wikipedia entry on Cornell is pretty interesting. Evidently old man Cornell was a bleeding heart liberal. He wrote "My greatest care now is how to spend this large income to do the greatest good to those who are properly dependent on me, to the poor and to posterity." And thus was born a school with the motto "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." I always hated that motto when I was at Cornell. It has none of the scholarly vim and vigor of lux et vertitas. As a motto it's too long, dry, boring, and in English. And yet, I'm now realizing, that back in Cornell's day that is a pretty radical statement. Fifty years before women had the right to vote, there's Cornell saying they should not only be able to attend, but to find instruction in any study. Regarding the trustees, Cornell's charter stated that "at no time shall a majority thereof be of any one religious sect, or of no religious sect." (Which is curiously discriminatory, but again, private institutions are allowed to choose whomever they want for trustees) Says Cornell "I hope we have laid the foundation of an institution which shall combine practical with liberal education. ... I believe we have made the beginning of an institution which will prove highly beneficial to the poor young men and the poor young women of our country."

How do you suppose Cornell got along with the President of Princeton back then...not too well is my bet. And finally, no talk of Cornell University's origins would be fair without including the sentiments of the academic founder, Andrew White. He had visions for Cornell that stemmed from his complaints with academia "too much reciting by rote and too little real intercourse." (Yeah, admitting women wasn't a hard sell for him.)

I spent four years bored by Cornell's motto, because his vision has become true. People have become equals, there are more academic freedoms, and to a larger extent universities are more accessible to the needy. Imagine if that were your legacy. To be so visionary, that hundreds of years later your ideas are considered routine and what was formerly routine is unimaginable.

So if you've read this rambling prose that jumps from tangent to tangent in a way that would make Joe Biden run dry at the mouth, well God bless your patience (I would have bailed a while ago). And thus concludes my homage to the Alito nonsense. I find the hearings to be long, dry, and boring (though thankfully in English) . I think there is "too much reciting by rote and too little real intercourse." And I hope there is more meaning to these events than I currently ascribe. Since Alito's chances look good, I pray that he has the foresight to look to the future with a quarter of the enlightenment of a certain 19th century luminary. Failing that, I'll settle for "light and truth". Failing that, I'll settle for just "truth". But given the circumstances, we're probably going to get stuck with "Under God's power he flourishes."