The Morning Rant: J.V. Edition

Duke Professor Bars Student Newspaper Staff from Enrolling in Her Course

It is said the "sunlight is the best disinfectant." Clearly not at Duke, where a pompous ass of an economics professor has quite publicly proven her stupidity, parochialism, insularity, and ignorance of the proper function of academia.

“Anyone who is on the staff of The Chronicle is not permitted to take this class,” Hughes’ syllabus for her “Inside Hedge Funds” course reads. Students at the Chronicle, the student newspaper at Duke University, got ahold of the syllabus according to a report that was published on Monday,

“Audio recordings of this class are not permitted and students will be asked to keep the information shared by some of our guest speakers confidential,” the full quote reads. “Anyone who is on the staff of the Chronicle is not permitted to take this class. Please honor this in order that we can continue to get high quality visitors and information.”

Does professor Hughes really believe that some hedge fund manager is going to whisper the secrets of the financial universe to her and her class of undergraduates? Is her knowledge of the topic so profound that it must be zealously guarded from...uh...who is it being guarded from?

When I was 18 and a callow youth I used to be impressed by professors. I was disabused of that notion rather quickly, and in the intervening years nothing has happened to change my opinion of academics; that they are, in the main, arrogant, narcissistic asses whose primary goal is to impress children.

Duke's motto is "Eruditio et Religio,"...Learning and Religion.

Professor Hughes got the "religion" part right...the religion of academia.

So we are to ignore the fact that homicides are on a long-term downtrend in spite of a huge increase in the number of guns owned by Americans? And just send the cops to random homes, break down the doors and confiscate whatever weapons they find? Sounds like a plan.

But let's look at the reality. A small number of gun owners will fight. And that means dead cops and dead gun owners. My guess is that the resulting carnage will result in a huge increase in gun homicides, but that's sort of the plan, isn't it?

posted by CBD at 11:30 AM

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