Today in History: Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walk on the moon
Today in History:
On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon after reaching its surface in their Apollo 11 lunar module.
Also on this date:
In 1917, America's World War I draft lottery began as Secretary of War Newton Baker, wearing a blindfold, reached into a glass bowl and pulled out a capsule containing the number 258 during a ceremony inside the Senate office building.
In 1944, an attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb failed as the explosion only wounded the Nazi leader.
In 1951, Jordan's King Abdullah I was assassinated in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman who was shot dead on the spot by security.
In 1976, America's Viking 1 robot spacecraft made a successful, first-ever landing on Mars.
In 1977, a flash flood hit Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killing more than 80 people and causing $350 million worth of damage.
In 1990, Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, one of the court's most liberal voices, announced he was stepping down.
In 1993, White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster Jr., 48, was found shot to death in a park near Washington, D.C.; it was ruled a suicide.
In 2006, the Senate voted 98-0 to renew the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act for another quarter-century.
In 2007, President George W. Bush signed an executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects.
In 2012, gunman James Holmes opened fire inside a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight showing of 'The Dark Knight Rises,' killing 12 people and wounding 70 others. (Holmes was later convicted of murder and attempted murder, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)
In 2015, the United States and Cuba restored full diplomatic relations after more than five decades of frosty relations rooted in the Cold War.
Today's Birthdays: Former Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., is 89. Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Oliva is 87. Artist Judy Chicago is 86. Country singer T.G. Sheppard is 81. Singer Kim Carnes is 80. Rock musician Carlos Santana is 78. Author and commentator Thomas Friedman is 72. Rock musician Paul Cook (Sex Pistols) is 69. Actor Frank Whaley is 62. Conservationist and TV personality Terri Irwin is 61. Rock musician Stone Gossard (Pearl Jam) is 59. Actor Josh Holloway (TV: 'Lost') is 56. Singer Vitamin C is 56. Actor Sandra Oh is 54. Hockey Hall of Famer Peter Forsberg is 52. Actor Omar Epps is 52. Basketball Hall of Famer Ray Allen is 50. Hockey Hall of Famer Pavel Datsyuk is 47. Supermodel Gisele Bundchen is 45. Actor Percy Daggs III is 43. Actor John Francis Daley is 40. Dancer-singer-actor Julianne Hough is 37. Former MLB pitcher Stephen Strasburg is 37.
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Chicago Tribune
5 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Jonathan Zimmerman: Why higher education needs diversity in viewpoints
At a court hearing in Boston on Monday, Harvard University charged the Donald Trump administration with violating the university's free speech rights. The White House had threatened to cut Harvard's funding unless the school took action to insure 'viewpoint diversity' in its different departments. You can't have a free university — or a free country — if the government is telling you which viewpoints you need to enhance or suppress, Harvard argued. As one of its lawyers told the court, that's a 'blatant, unrepentant violation of the First Amendment.' He's right, and I hope the court agrees. But I also hope that Harvard — and the rest of higher education — uses this moment to broaden viewpoint diversity, especially in our classrooms. The White House shouldn't force it upon us, which is clearly unconstitutional. Instead, we should widen it ourselves. That's because our first duty is to open students' minds. And that won't happen if we're closing them off to different ways of seeing the world. In a recent study of 27 million college syllabuses collected by the Open Syllabus Project, scholars at Claremont McKenna College showed that professors rarely assign readings that take contrasting perspectives. For example, classes requiring Michelle Alexander's influential book 'The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarcertation in the Age of Colorblindness' — which blames white racism for the war on drugs — almost never assign texts by authors such as Michael Fortner, who claims that African Americans were a key constituency pressing for draconian drug laws. Likewise, professors who assign Palestinian scholar Edward Said's 'Orientalism' — which connects Zionism to Western ideas of cultural superiority — rarely pair it with 'Occidentalism,' by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, who argue that the West is caricatured by intellectuals around the world. The point here isn't that that Alexander and Said are wrong and their critics are right. It's that our students won't learn — or learn well — if we expose them to just one or the other. And they certainly won't learn if our universities fail to protect faculty members who dissent from the conventional wisdom. That sends the message that there's one way to think, which is the enemy of real education in all times and places. Between 2000 and 2022, universities sanctioned nearly 1,080 professors for speech that is 'protected by the First Amendment,' according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. And since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, 40 professors have been investigated by universities for pro-Palestinian speech, and nine have been fired. That's our own fault. As Harvard told the court on Monday, the government shouldn't be telling us which professors to hire and fire based on its perception of their viewpoints. But nor should universities judge people according to their politics. All that should matter is the quality of their research and teaching. Alas, we haven't always adhered to that principle. At Harvard, for example, the prominent biologist Carole Hooven became a campus pariah in 2021 after she told Fox News that gender could take any number of forms, but there were just two biological sexes: male and female. The director of her department's diversity and inclusion task force denounced Hooven's 'transphobic and harmful' comments. Graduate students refused to serve as teaching assistants for her popular course about hormones. And nobody atop Harvard's administration spoke up for Hooven, who suffered severe mental health challenges and eventually resigned. The issue came up in the fateful 2023 congressional testimony of Harvard President Claudine Gay, who was asked why 'a call for violence against Jews' is 'protected speech' but saying that 'sex is biological' isn't. Gay, who stepped down a few weeks later, replied that Harvard supports 'constructive dialogue, even on the most complex and divisive issues.' Please. The meaning of sex is a hugely complex and divisive issue, but the university didn't support Hooven's efforts to dialogue constructively about it. Instead, it hung her out to dry. If you're the kind of professor who is outraged by the dismissal of pro-Palestinian scholars, you need to speak up for people like Hooven. Otherwise, you don't really believe in free speech; you just want freedom for the speech you like. And you're also echoing the Trump administration, which doesn't want real dialogue either. In a social media post following Monday's court hearing, the president called Harvard 'anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-America.' He has a right to his opinion, of course. But he has no right — none — to impose it on anyone else. As Harvard argued in its court filing, the First Amendment doesn't allow the government to 'advance its own vision of ideological balance.' Nor should it penalize us for expressing views that the president doesn't share. But we owe it to our students to advance viewpoint diversity on our own, no matter what the court rules. Anything less will imitate Trump, all in the guise of resisting him.
The Hill
5 minutes ago
- The Hill
Democrats pressure Schumer, Senate to hold line on GOP spending bills
House Democrats are cranking up the pressure on their Senate colleagues to hold the line against any Republican spending bills, warning that support for partisan legislation would prove more harmful than a potential shutdown — and trigger an outcry from the party's already deflated base. House Democrats were virtually united against a GOP spending package in March, only to see Senate Democrats — most notably Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — help Republicans advance it into law. The episode infuriated Democrats in and out of Congress, eroded trust between the chambers and raised some questions about Schumer's future at the top of the party. Yet with another spending battle brewing for September — and Republicans already eyeing steep federal cuts anathema across the aisle — House Democrats are holding out hope that this time will be different. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is already warning that a Republican-only spending package is 'dead on arrival.' And even those lawmakers most critical of Schumer's strategy in March are predicting the chambers will be united when the battle heats up ahead of the Oct. 1 shutdown deadline. 'Leader Jeffries putting that strong line down is something I support, and something I think that our whole party will rally around,' said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who had scorched Schumer's handling of the earlier debate. Democrats are pointing to two reasons why they think the current spending fight might play out differently from the one in March, when Schumer joined nine other Senate Democrats to advance the Republican spending bill. First, the recent GOP efforts to claw back funds already approved by Congress has united House and Senate Democrats, who are accusing Republicans of violating bipartisan deals negotiated in good faith. Those so-called rescissions have diminished the Democrats' trust in President Trump and Republicans to honor spending agreements, even when both parties are on board, while giving Democrats plenty of ammunition to justify their opposition to GOP-only bills. Russell Vought, Trump's budget director, has fueled those arguments by recently advising Republicans to abandon bipartisanship in setting federal spending. 'My hope is that, due to what has happened — especially with the Republicans using rescissions to essentially renege on deals that were made before … the Senate sees that and says, 'They're not operating in good faith,'' said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.). Others pointed to Trump's record of shifting funds — or simply refusing to spend money on the programs Congress intended — as reason for Senate Democrats to reject any spending bills that lack bipartisan buy-in — or guardrails that would ensure funds go where they're directed. 'Right now, we have a president that's operating outside of the bounds of the law and the Constitution — a president that doesn't give a damn about checks and balances, doesn't give a damn what you actually pass, he's going to do whatever he wants,' said Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.). 'So why are you going to help the Republicans pass something that's going to be devastating? And then he's going to take it a step further?' Secondly, in light of the outcry that followed Schumer's actions in March, many Democrats suggested he simply couldn't survive another round of internal attacks. 'I had a phone call last night about this issue. [The caller said], 'Well, Schumer is probably going to fold.' And I said, 'No, no, he's not going to,'' said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). 'His future might hinge on this, but I also think that it will be the most obvious thing for him to do,' he continued. 'I think he realized that our base is not going to tolerate us just rolling over and rolling over.' Schumer, in recent days, has taken long strides to reassure fellow Democrats that he's ready for a fight. In floor speeches and press conferences, the Senate's top Democrat has warned Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) that partisan spending bills, to include rescissions, have threatened to destroy a decades-old tradition of bipartisan appropriations. Schumer is also going out of his way to align himself with House Democrats on the issue. 'We're in agreement. We all want to pursue a bipartisan, bicameral appropriations process,' Schumer told reporters after a meeting with Jeffries. 'That's how it's always been done successfully, and we believe that should happen.' His words haven't been overlooked by House Democrats, who are cheering Schumer's warning shots delivered so far ahead of the shutdown deadline. Their focus on the Senate is practical: The filibuster is the single most powerful tool available to the minority Democrats, and only the Senate has access to it. 'He seems to be setting forth, well in advance of the deadline, what his bottom lines are,' said Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.). 'I appreciate what he's saying that they have a slightly different role in that they can actually stop this. At the same token, they can actually stop this, and insist on a more bipartisan approach.' In March, Schumer made the calculation that allowing the government to shut down — and risk having Democrats be blamed — would prove more harmful than enduring the inevitable friendly fire from liberals that would come from supporting the GOP package. This time around, some Democrats say he has much more cover. 'I have confidence in Sen. Schumer, because I think that was then and this is now. And now, I think, it is clear that we — on both sides [of the Capitol] — should stick to our core values and vote no,' said Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.). 'I understand his concern back then,' he added. 'But I think public opinion, and of course reality, shows that the American people are willing to understand a shutdown, because they also understand that the details of many of these spending bills are horrific, and that it would impact their personal lives.' Jeffries, for his part, is vowing that House Democrats will be united against partisan GOP spending bills. And he's predicting that, this time, Democratic senators will be allies in that fight. 'A partisan spending bill is dead on arrival in terms of securing significant Democratic support or any Democratic support in the House,' he said, 'and I believe that that is the case in the Senate, as well.' Most Democrats seem to agree, but there are also signs that the distrust created in March is still lingering ahead of the next shutdown battle. 'This is politics, so you can only trust people as far as you can throw 'em. And especially senators,' Gomez said. 'Call me crazy, but I don't like cutting deals with somebody that continues to be punching me in the face and then says that they're doing me a favor,' he added. 'And that's what Donald Trump does to the Senate Democrats every time they capitulate on that kind of … legislation.'
The Hill
5 minutes ago
- The Hill
Columbia settlement concerns mount as McMahon declares ‘template' for other schools
Columbia University's settlement with the Trump administration is making waves across higher education as the White House indicates it wants the agreement to be a roadmap for other colleges. Advocates are angry at Columbia's cooperation while President Trump's supporters cheer what they consider much needed reforms after the school agreed to pay a $220 million fine and change multiple policies in exchange for all federal investigations into it to be dropped and a restoration of funding. Among other agreed-to reforms, the Manhattan Ivy League institution said it would end programs that 'promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotes, diversity targets or similar efforts' and report foreign students who are expelled to the federal government. Both Columbia and the Trump administration framed the deal as a win, with the university insisting it kept its academic independence in the process. But others in the higher education sphere label it a 'watershed' moment, especially as Columbia agreed to have an independent monitor determine if it is staying in compliance with the deal. 'The Columbia settlement is a disaster for higher education. I think it's fair to say that never in the history of this country has the federal government had more control over an independent institution of higher education than this agreement creates. It's a disaster. It's an act of cowardice by the leadership of Columbia and bullying and weaponization of antisemitism for nefarious purposes by the Trump administration,' said Todd Wolfson, national president of American Association of University Professors. Columbia decided not to fight back when the Trump administration came after the institution and took away over $400 million in funding, instead negotiating for months and refusing to take the federal government to court, even after a judge said the university would have standing to do so. The spotlight on Columbia came after its students led the charge in pro-Palestinian encampments that swept the country in response to Israel's war in Gaza. Republicans including several key Trump allies chastised Columbia for a poor response to the destruction on campus. Columbia sought to change that reputation as it went through multiple presidents since the encampments and has cracked down harder on unsanctioned protests, expelling 70 students who engaged in a pro-Palestinian protest in Butler Library during finals this May. While the deal says Columbia admits to no wrongdoing and drops all current federal investigations, it does not prohibit future inquiries from the Trump administration. 'One of the major concerns is that while there's an agreement that's been signed that the attacks on Columbia and other institutions of higher education won't stop there, because there'll always be some other issue that they're out of compliance with, and in the effort to promote a specific ideological agenda, we will all be losers,' said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. But the larger, more immediate concern is how this will affect other higher education institutions as the Trump administration has already signaled it expects other schools to follow suit. The administration has opened investigations into dozens of other colleges and took away funding from big names including Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Virginia saw its president resign after behind-the-scenes pressure from Trump's team. And other schools such as the University of Michigan have shut down their diversity, equity and inclusion offices before any actions could be taken against them. 'The decision certainly marks a watershed moment for American higher education that represents the upending of a decades-long partnership between the government and higher education in which colleges and universities nevertheless retained academic freedom, institutional autonomy and shared governance that have been deemed essential to the public purposes of higher education,' Pasquerella said. Trump wrote after the Columbia announcement that movement against other universities that 'have wrongly spent federal money' are 'upcoming,' and Education Secretary Linda McMahon told NewsNation, the sister network of The Hill, she wants the Columbia agreement to be a blueprint for other schools. 'It was a comprehensive agreement that we were able to reach with Columbia, and it is our hope that this is going to be a template for other universities around the country,' McMahon said. The deal notably gives other institution an insight into what the Trump administration may desire if they are the next target. While some objectives may be out of reach at other universities, such as the record-breaking $220 million payout, college leaders could decide to take other measures to avoid the administration's wrath. 'I could see several institutions looking through this and saying, 'OK, these are the types of policies that the administration wants colleges to engage in. Let's do a review and see if we're going to proactively change how we are handling admissions or faculty and staff hiring or reviews of certain programs, these are the buckets that they know are going to be under scrutiny,'' said Katharine Meyer, a fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. Columbia's deal will also put more pressure on Harvard, which has taken the opposite approach and filed two separate lawsuits against Trump's punitive actions, one on its own funding freeze and another over its ability to enroll international students. Harvard is now seen as the last defense for those who believe higher education should fight Trump's crackdown on universities. While many have been encouraged by Harvard's public rebuttals, others lack confidence the nation's oldest and richest university will stay in the fight. 'I know that Harvard is in advanced negotiations with the Trump administration, and I'm among those fearful that they won't hold the line, but my message to Harvard is that they must hold the line. This is about more than Columbia and Harvard. It's about the future of higher education. And frankly, as higher ed goes so goes democracy,' Wolfson said.
