Educators From The United States

"[J]ust as I am not writing for those who feel confident that canons of appropriate constitutional construction may be convincingly derived from some neutral source, so I am also not writing for those who have convinced themselves that "anything goes" as long as it helps end what they see as injustice; that constitutional law is only a legitimating mask for what those in power can get away with; or that it is only a tame language in which those that would otherwise foment violent revolution can couch their demands in forms the regime might accept without losing face."

"The models... (I) separated and divided powers; (II) implied limitations of government; (III) settled expectations; (IV) governmental regularity (V) preferred rights; (VI) equal protection; and (VII) structural justice."

"[T]he Constitution is an historically discontinuous composition... the product... of a series of not altogether coherent compromises; it mirrors no single vision or philosophy but reflects instead a set of sometimes reinforcing and sometimes conflicting ideals and notions."

"[T]hese models are not... mutually exclusive... discourse in any given period can... draw on... more than one model. ...Their main function is . ...[T]he models ...grow out of immersion in judicial decisions and lawyers' arguments ...[T]hey should be ...familiar themes ..."

"I... organize the constitutional principles, rules, and theories... in terms of the seven basic models that... have represented the major alternatives for constitutional argument and decision in American law from the early 1800s to the present."

"Given its remarkable activism in constraining the President vis-à-vis Congress and the courts and in limiting Congress vis-à-vis the States, the current Supreme Court cannot be understood as pursuing a modest institutional role. ...I prefer postulates honestly expressed to analyses whose underlying assumptions are obscured by the jargon of neutral principles and the language of "objective" legal description."

"The question whether individuals may insist on being heard by rulemakers, for whom they already (directly or indirectly) voted, has bedeviled administrative law since the turn of the century."

"[A]ttempts to treat constitutional doctrine neutrally elide important questions and obscure available answers."

"[T]hat speech... was political genius but jurisprudential danger, because he created an impression that Robert Bork really liked the idea of coat-hanger abortions, that he liked the idea of racial separation of neighborhoods, whereas the fact is that Bork’s philosophy might have led to many of those consequences, but to demonize him the way my friend Ted Kennedy did I thought was going to work politically, but something that people would come to regret later. And, of course, I think that’s what happened, because it rallied a lot of academics and scholars and moderates to Bork’s side, thinking that he had been improperly caricatured..."

"That all lawful power derives from the people and must be held in check to preserve their freedom is the oldest and central tenet of American constitutionalism. ...[I]t was believed that personal freedom could be secured more effectively by decentralization than by express command."

"[T]he conventional ways even of stating the choices between greater freedom or equality, on the one hand, and greater governmental power, on the other... and particularly the conventional emphasis on "balancing interests"... are remarkably unilluminating as well as misleadingly ahistorical."

"When was the last time anybody made a billion of anything safely and reliably? Never. Plants go offline, crap breaks, you can't find a part. There's a ton of things that can go wrong just on manufacturing (a billion COVID-19 vaccines)."

"I do not like slavery. There are very few you can find to resist it more strongly. If that makes me an Abolitionist, I cannot help it. But let me say to my northern Democratic friends, who are Jeffersonian Democrats, who make that their boast on every stump from Maine to Chicago, that no boast could be more glorious, for no one, in my judgment, be more glorious has ever breathed the breath of life, even among that great galaxy of worthies of revolutionary memory. I have always admired him. I have endeavored to imitate him; and now, if I have Abolitionism about me more than is due, I have come very honestly by it, for he taught me. He told me all about it, as he has told those Jefferson Democrats and Abolition men so often."

"It was believed by many at the time that some of the [moderate] Republican Senators that voted for acquittal [of Andrew Johnson] did so chiefly on account of their antipathy to the man who would succeed to the presidency in the event of the conviction of the [sitting] president. This man was Senator Benjamin Wade, of Ohio, President pro tempore of the Senate who as the law then stood, would have succeeded to the presidency in the event of a vacancy in the office from any cause. Senator Wade was an able man … He was a strong party man. He had no patience with those who claimed to be [Radical] Republicans and yet refused to abide by the decision of the majority of the party organization [as did Grimes, Johnson, Lincoln, Pratt, and Trumbull] … the sort of active and aggressive man that would be likely to make for himself enemies of men in his own organization who were afraid of his great power and influence, and jealous of him as a political rival. That some of his senatorial Republican associates should feel that the best service they could render their country would be to do all in their power to prevent such a man from being elevated to the Presidency … for while they knew he was an able man, they also knew that, according to his convictions of party duty and party obligations, he firmly believed he who served his party best served his country best…that he would have given the country an able administration is concurrent opinion of those who knew him best."

"During the Civil War, one of the nation's leading abolitionists was Republican Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, who would later serve as vice president during President Grant's second term. In December 1861, Mr. Wilson introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District. The measure met with parliamentary obstacles from the adamantly pro-slavery Democratic Party, whom Republicans in those days referred to as the 'Slave-ocrats'. Most Democrats in Congress having resigned in order to join the Confederate rebellion, Wilson's measure sailed through the Senate. The abolitionist senator responsible for outmaneuvering Democrat opposition was Ben Wade, the Ohio Republican who six years later would have assumed the presidency had the bitterly racist Democratic President, Andrew Johnson, been convicted during his impeachment trial. In the House of Representatives, Democrats delayed passage with a series of stalling tactics. Finally, the majority leader, Thaddeus Stevens, bulldozed over Democrat opposition by calling the House into a committee of the whole. He stopped all other business in the House until Democrats relented and allowed a vote on the bill. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, is best known for his 'forty acres and a mule' proposal. Overall, 99 percent of Republicans in Congress voted to free the slaves in the District of Columbia, and 83 percent of Democrats voted to keep them in chains."

"Do I dislike sexual minorities? Enjoy hurting their feelings? Want to return us to our Puritanical past? If not, why have I repeatedly offended so many in these groups? My answers are “no”, “no”, “no”, and “because I try to do good science”."

"It's shocking. It's horrible. The United States really has done remarkably badly compared to other countries (in dealing with COVID-19 pandemic). I mean, remarkably badly."

"Once you've learned about autogynephilic and homosexual transsexuals and seen several of each, distinguishing them is easy."

"The current popular literature about transsexualism is noteworthy for its ignorance of the distinction between autogynephilic and homosexual transsexuals."

"The two types of transsexuals who begin life as males are called homosexual and autogynephilic ... homosexual transsexuals are extremely feminine gay men, and autogynephilic transsexuals are men erotically obsessed with the image of themselves as women."

"In order for a feminine boy to become transsexual, something extra must happen. What is the something extra?"

"Autogynephilic transsexuals are not "women in men's bodies" (Anne Lawrence, a physician and sex researcher who is herself a postoperative transsexual, has called them "men trapped in men's bodies")."

"The fact is that we don't know enough about hormonal effects on the human brain to have a very specific theory of how Danny's brain could have developed in a feminine direction while his body developed masculine. If Danny's body also showed signs of feminine development, this would support nature theory, but the lack of anatomical femininity does not disprove it. There has been essentially no research on boys like Danny that is directly biological. Short of dissecting the brain of a feminine boy and comparing it with normal boys' and girls' brains, it is unclear what we would even look for. However, the best conceivable direct test of nurture theory has been tried, and it failed. Amanda became Jason again."

"Nobody ever gave Danny Ryan a dress before he asked for one, and he was punished much more than rewarded for his gender nonconformity. If he grows up to be a gay man, as I expect he will, it will be despite the most obvious influences in his social environment, not because of them. In the short term, Danny will receive no more encouragement from others to become gay than he did to wear dresses. Behavior that emerges with no encouragement, and despite opposition, is the sine qua non of innateness. Boys like Danny are poster children for biological influences on gender and sexuality, and this is true whether or not we measure a single biological marker."

"The bad trend is that scientists and laypeople both think that there is something more impressive about biological markers—a trait that one can measure with a ruler or a blood test or complicated electronic equipment (I'm serious, there is no better definition of “biological marker”)—than there is about psychological or behavioral markers. This is a mistake."

"...femininity in boys and homosexuality in men are probably caused by incomplete masculinization of the brain during sexual differentiation."

"When they leave prison, men who had been heterosexual before entering usually return to a strictly heterosexual lifestyle. Their prison encounters did not indicate that their sexual preference had changed. The men were simply doing the best they could, given constraints. It would be important to know what these men were thinking when they were having their penises sucked by other men, for example. Were they thinking of the men sucking their penises, or were they imagining their girlfriends at home? The former possibility would indicate more flexibility of true sexual preference than the latter."

"“Social constructionism” (or “social constructivism”) is a term that might be familiar to anyone who has taken a humanities course at an American or European university since 1990, but it might otherwise sound odd. It is difficult to explain social constructionism in a way that satisfies social constructionists. They think this is because they are profound and people like me simplistic. I think it is because they aren't very clear, and to the extent they are clear, they are incorrect."

"Homosexuality might be the most striking unresolved paradox of human evolution."

"When most people hear “environment,” they automatically think of the social environment, such as how children are raised or what kind of interpersonal experiences they have. But to a geneticist “environment” means anything not encoded in DNA, and this includes biological factors as well as social factors: diet, germs, and random biological events might also affect development. For example, when one identical twin is born with a major brain defect such as anencephaly (lack of a cerebral cortex, or outer brain) or microcephaly (a very small cortex), the other twin is usually normal. Only environment can cause identical twins to differ, but the environmental problem in this case is biological."

"Another environmental hypothesis that has received some enthusiasm on the political right is the idea that gay people seduce and recruit. I have never understood how this is plausible. A boy with no interest in homosexual activity wouldn't find it pleasant even if he agreed to it. How is this supposed to turn him gay?"

"It seems that a greater awareness is arising among Catholics, clerical and lay, of the need for the eternal spirit of chivalry. One cannot know if the Knightly organisations of today, ancient or modern, will weather the storm. But certainly their proliferation is a good sign that the yearning for the virtue of honour, loyalty, prowess, courtesy, and all the rest — married to a strong and practical Catholicity — is once again stalking the ruins of Christendom, here and abroad. We shall all need it if the evils of our time are to be resisted."

"The contention that homosexual orientation (as distinct from homosexual behavior) is a recent and local phenomenon is not supported by the evidence. Men who look awfully similar to the men I’ve been talking about in previous chapters seem to have existed through the ages and in vastly different cultures. Social constructionists’ refusal or inability to see this suggests that they are trying to keep their eyes closed."

"Our attempts at rebuilding Christendom must be intimately linked with performing the Spiritual and Corporal works of Mercy. It may be that what we do in the temporal sphere might indeed lay the foundations for some future outward revival of Christendom – though what form that shall take is doubtless as impossible for us to imagine as the work of Justinian and Charlemagne was for Ss. Ambrose and Augustine, for all that that duo’s efforts were essential to both Imperial revivals. But whether or not that happens, may our spiritual endeavours alongside the other result in our becoming permanent subjects of that celestial realm of which any earthly expression of Christendom, however grand, is only a poor shadow and reflexion."

"To me, cases like that really scream out, ‘Hey, it’s not out there. It’s in here.’ There’s no indication that this mother is prone to raise very feminine boys because his twin is not that way."

"Conscience protections are important for all of us. We enjoy the freedom to differ in opinion from one another. But, whatever view you may hold on this, or any other issue, I think we can all agree the government should not make our choices for us."

"When you let students work at their own pace -- we see it over and over again -- you see students who took a little bit extra time on one concept or the other, but once they get through that concept, they just race ahead. And so the same kids that you thought were slow six weeks ago, you now would think are gifted. And we're seeing it over and over again. It makes you really wonder how much all of the labels maybe a lot of us have benefited from were really just due to a coincidence of time."

"Learn math the way you'd learn anything, like riding a bicycle. Stay on that bicycle. Fall off that bicycle. Do it as long as necessary, until you have mastery. The traditional model, it penalizes you for experimentation and failure, but it does not expect mastery. We encourage you to experiment. We encourage you to fail. But we do expect mastery."

"Normally death don't really bother me, I'm from southside Stockton. I’m all too familiar with how some family reunions only ever take place on graveyard grass, and a hole can be a safe haven for a soul in this mortal game of hide and go seek. But, there is something so different about Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, and the countless others."

"The idea found embedded in European thought, particularly in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries that Africans were inferior socially and behaviorally has tainted most of what passes for social science in the West, definitionally and conceptually. Few have been able to escape Alexander Pope's dictum in the Essay on Man (1733) "some are, and must be, greater than the rest" and its implication for European contact and interpretation of that contact with the rest of the world."

"A common expression among African Americans relates the good to the beautiful, "beauty is as beauty does" or "she's beautiful because she's good." The first statement places emphasis on what a person does, that is, how a person "walks" among others in the society. The second statement identifies the beautiful by action. If a person's actions are not good, it does not matter how the person looks physically. Doing good is equivalent to being beautiful."

"I’m just trying to go out there every single day and do my best to bring people animals and adventure. Whenever we can promote conservation and educate people about something that they didn’t know much about before, it means we’re doing our job the right way. And I’m just trying to mold my life moving forward to be as much of a microphone for the voice of animals as I possibly can be."

"The three most important things are: Consistency, quantity and quality. Those three things combine together to make you a really successful YouTube channel."

"One of the reasons that schools don't teach the particularly effectively, is because we don't do a very good job of teaching the history that made it necessary, which is our long history of slavery."

"Technology has the potential to positively transform access to education, and to shape how teachers teach and students learn, but there is still much we don’t know about how that transformation will take shape... Distance education can never fully replace the types of interactions that occur when teachers and learners are together in one physical location. Place-based and residential education will always have an irreplaceable role. But even on our campus, learning in classrooms is being transformed by digital tools. For instance, many Harvard faculty are “flipping” their classrooms by having students watch their lectures online and using traditional lecture time for more interactive learning. That is increasingly the case not just at Harvard, but in classrooms across America."

"My PhD dissertation and first book were about the proslavery argument. You might say I wanted to understand inhumanity—how men and women throughout history have persuaded themselves to defend ideas, practices, societies, governments that we of a different era see as indefensible. I wanted to know how humans can become blind to evil. Perhaps if we could understand their processes of denial and rationalization we might gain insight into our own failures of vision, the shortcomings of our own time. History, in other words, can expand our awareness of ourselves. It releases us from the confines of our own individual lives; it offers us other ways of seeing that cast our assumptions into relief. It reminds us of choices people have made—or not made—and thus illuminates realms of possibility. It shows us that things have been otherwise and reminds us they can be different once again. By documenting contingency and agency, history undermines any acceptance of crippling inevitability. And contingency means opportunity. It means that we can change things and that what we do matters. To my mind this may be history’s most important lesson."

"Tomorrow, we will continue to be called upon to build trust in our actions, our words, and our purposes, to do good in the world. Tomorrow, we will endeavor to be that reliable compass that steers toward truth, towards Veritas. We are always learning, not just how to understand the world, but what to do with our understanding... with your help Harvard can keep learning, keep being, keep doing. It can embrace both change and constancy. It can remain Harvard while still becoming Harvard. Smart, but also wise. Restless, as well as proud. Equal parts bold and thoughtful. At once both old and new. Committed to goodness as well as greatness... The tensions between constancy and change are a good thing, a healthy thing. Any institution that has been committed to shaping the future, and future leaders, for as long as Harvard has, and as long as Harvard will, must embrace and master both. This is our inheritance. It must also be our legacy."

"As you leave UM to take up your work as nurses, engineers, teachers, scholars, scientific researchers, writers, caregivers, remember that you have learned much more here than what was required to qualify for your degrees. Remember the broader responsibilities that the learning and education you have received entail and share that commitment with the world. Remember that facts and truth matter, and must undergird any just and enduring society. Remember the human connections and contrasts that created the context in which learning thrived. And remember the combination of respect and resilience that the natural environment has required of you and let those qualities serve as touchstones in all you do in life. Remember to be Canes even as you leave this place to serve and uplift a wider world. Congratulations and godspeed."

"The story of Virginia compels us to recognize how important it is that we open our eyes and actively resist the assumptions and traditions that would obscure our vision. To imagine we are or can be color-blind is to render ourselves history-blind—to ignore realities that have defined us for good and for ill. The Founders embraced both slavery and freedom. We have inherited the legacy, and the cost, of both... “The past will remain horrible,” James Baldwin wrote, “for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.” And it will poison the present as well."

"I am not the woman president of Harvard. I am the president of Harvard."