On dotty judges, doctors, professors ...

Humph, by Roger B.

There are two compelling reasons for the timely retirement of people in sensitive professions:

1) Institutions like courts, hospitals, and universities need new blood; they need those who have been trained in up-to-date science and technology to be in charge. True, the aged incumbents have experience (and, some would say, wisdom) that younger people may lack. This experience, where it exists, needs to be available to these institutions, but in advisory capacities. It is also a fact that the younger and more competent scientists and scholars receive lower salaries than their less competent seniors. So these seniors constitute not only an intellectual but also a fiscal drain on some of our most crucial institutions.

2) The diminution of human capacities in old age is very common indeed; it seems that by age 75 a majority of people have experienced some substantial drop in their mental acuity. When the very old still occupy positions of great power and influence, the decrepitude of the elders has proven to be a public menace. In response, and rather than rely on questionable tests of continued competence, many institutions have enforced mandatory retirement (but universities have been forbidden to do so by federal legislation). The oldest still-existing government in the world, the Roman Catholic Church, retires its priests at age 70, its bishops at 75, and forbids its Cardinals to vote in papal elections after age 75. The Supreme Court of Canada retires its justices at 75; the Israeli Supreme Court at 70. But there is no mandatory retirement at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The United States Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court is one of the most powerful institutions in the world. Its membership is small but it enjoys tremendous public attention. We know more about its Justices than we know about almost any other group of human beings. And some of these Justices stayed in office until they were old, very old. From my observations in my last paragraph, I expected to find that more than a few of these Justices became mentally decrepit while in office, and this proved to be the case: dozing during arguments, not knowing which side of an issue they supported, sometimes not knowing the difference between appellant and respondent.

The most complete accounting of this Supreme Scandal is now nine years old: Professor David J. Garrow, "Mental Decrepitude on the U.S. Supreme Court: The Historical Case for a 28th Amendment." Writing in 2000, Garrow finds evidence of decrepitude in twenty justices (roughly 20% of all) since the beginning of the republic. (We do not know how many more he would have needed to list had he written today.) In the more modern history of the Court, Garrow lists the following Justices as among those who showed signs of mental decrepitude while sitting on the Court: William Howard Taft, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frank Murphy, Sherman Minton, Charles E. Whittaker, Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, William H. Rehnquist, Lewis F. Powell, William Jr. Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall. (Again: would he have had to add any names from the Court of today ?) Quite reasonably, Garrow supports a constitutional amendment to control the open-ended tenure that obtains now.

The Medical Profession

Once a physician obtains a license to practice, it is extraordinarily difficult to withdraw this privilege from him, no matter what his age. It is not uncommon to see practicing physicians who went to medical school more than half a century ago. How much do they know about modern medicine ? Very few jurisdictions, if any, have procedures for re-examining the holders of medical licenses at regular intervals.

There is a general problem about licensing a person to perform a potentially dangerous act. Driver's licenses, among others, tend to be valid indefinitely, with very few restrictions. The person who performed well at age twenty at a driver's test is, for all intents and purposes, presumed to have his youthful driving abilities intact at age ninety.

If this is a problem in dotty drivers, so much more in dotty doctors. They can do a great deal of harm, but, unlike Supreme Court Justices, their cases do not enjoy great notoriety. In December of 2007 I reported on the famous inter-war German Doctor Ferdinand Sauerbruch whose great prestige among his peers as a young man prevented the German medical establishment from coping with his senility when he continued to practice, and endanger his patients, as an old man. While the aged Justice Thurgood Marshall didn't know who was appellant and who was respondent, the aged Doctor Sauerbruch didn't know, in the operating room, which organ needed surgery. Since then, my family has had a number of sad experiences with dotty doctors, some of which endangered the health and even the life of the patient.

No physician should be allowed to practice (other than, perhaps, in a consultative capacity) at an age at which a substantial number of persons have been found to be impaired in their judgment. The self-policing by the profession, through voluntary referrals, etc., seems to have fallen far short of preventing substantial abuses. I think that the unlimited license to practice should expire at a reasonable age, say seventy, with perhaps some limited privileges allowed after that.

The Universities

Dotty professors are less conspicuous in the harm they do than their fellow-dotties behind the wheel, on the bench, or in the operating room. But even consider the not-dotty over-70's, do we really need so many elderly gentlemen teaching the students of today from a perspective, largely, of their own graduate studies in the 1950's ?

Some six years ago history professor Henry Huttenbach of City College in New York was seventy-three years old, and he explained for the Chronicle of Higher Education why he does not at all feel like retiring:

As long as one has something vital to contribute -- half a century of classroom experience, decades of research still filled with unexpressed ideas in as yet unwritten articles and books -- why stop? Why abandon the satisfaction of the daily give-and-takes with students and colleagues? For golf? For Florida? For full-time grandchildren-sitting?

And frankly, he also says, the money is better if you don't retire. He does not mention any need for new blood in the academy. Nor does he mention any new facts, or insights, or techniques that the graduate schools of today may have to offer to younger scholars that were not available in his graduate training. Nor the fact that, with his full professor's salary, his college could hire more of these younger people. But, by all means, read what he himself has to say by clicking here.

Where is the burden of proof ?

The argument against mandatory retirement is often phrased roughly as follows: If a person attains a certain chronological age, say sixty-five or seventy, or whatever, that fact alone does not prove that he is no longer competent to perform in his profession. He or she should be allowed to continue unless he is proven incompetent.

My argument is the opposite. Given the fact that society has a strong interest in competent judges, doctors, professors, etc., and given the fact that a substantial number among the aged suffer from at least some degree of mental diminution, the burden of proof should be on the elderly individual to prove his continuing capacity. If the eighty-year old physician can pass the equivalent of his specialty board once again, and can prove his mental competence, by all means, be my guest, keep practicing. But for all the others, for all those elderly doctors and judges and professors, etc., unwilling or unable to pass the tests that their younger colleagues need to pass, I say, please, it's time to move over, to make room for the young, to protect the patients and the litigants and the students.

Khalidi: At it Once Again

www.daylife.com

Khalidi's new book, "Sowing Crisis," once again uses propaganda instead of history, and, worse, trickery in the guise of documentation. All this, at least, according to a review in the New York Times Book Review, dated March 15. Click here to read the review.

Even in retraction, the NY Times shows bad faith

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times
Portfolio.com

It is now seventy-six years ago to the day that Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany. And the New York Times, as if to mark the event, has been caught red-handed in publishing outright falsehoods against Israel. Now the paper offers a vaguely worded "Editor's Note" in which it says that, well, maybe we were wrong, maybe we were right, but since the "original source has not been found," the alleged quotation from an Israeli general "should not have appeared."

As readers of this blog know (see postings below), the offensive material appeared on January 8 in an Op-Ed piece by Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. Today's "Editor's Note" does not mention Khalidi, who, after all, was the one who made the original false allegation against the Israeli general. Let me try to guess why the NYT is so solicitous about the professor's reputation: so as to run more Op-Ed pieces by him in the future ?

This Editor's Note is completely disingenuous from beginning to end. It says that an "original source has not been found" when, in fact, there is a publicly available original source for General Moshe Ya'alon's views, and that these views are the very opposite of what Khalidi and the NY Times claimed them to be. (See my posting below). I nominate the Times, and Khalidi, for the Anti-Pulitzer Prize for Disreputable Journalism.

CAMERA has published a useful history of the Khalidi hoax.

See also Michelle Sieff's informative account of this whole affair.

Professor Rashid Khalidi Had Access to What General Yaalon Really Said

Further on Professor Khalidi's piece in the New York Times (see my previous posting).

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has shown just how Professor Khalidi obtained his (false) quotation from General Moshe Yaalon. It would seem from this that Professor Khalidi had access to what General Yaalon really said, but chose, apparently deliberately, to turn the General's words into their very opposite. Here is part of CAMERA's article (click here for the whole piece):

Perhaps most egregious is Khalidi's conclusion of his column with a fabricated quote. He writes:

"Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: 'The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.'"

Khalidi uses the same fabricated quote in his book Resurrecting Empire, citing in the footnote an interview with Ari Shavit in Haaretz Magazine, August 30, 2002, as quoted in Arnaud de Borchegrave, "Road Map or Road Rage?" Washington Times, May 28, 2003.

But, in fact, Ya'alon said no such thing in the Shavit interview. On the contrary. He said that Palestinian Arabs must understand that terrorism would not make Israelis into a defeated people. Khalidi, in other words, reverses the meaning of Ya'alon's words with a fabricated quote.

Below is Shavit's question and Ya'alon's answer:

Shavit: "Do you have a definition of victory? Is it clear to you what Israel's goal in this war is?"

Ya'alon: "I defined it from the beginning of the confrontation: the very deep internalization by the Palestinians that terrorism and violence will not defeat us, will not make us fold. If that deep internalization does not exist at the end of the confrontation, we will have a strategic problem with an existential threat to Israel. If that [lesson] is not burned into the Palestinian and Arab consciousness, there will be no end to their demands of us."

Ya'alon repeated in the same interview:

"The facts that are being determined in this confrontation — in terms of what will be burned into the Palestinian consciousness — are fateful. If we end the confrontation in a way that makes it clear to every Palestinian that terrorism does not lead to agreements, that will improve our strategic position."

The story of how Khalidi first came to use this alleged Yaalon quotation, in his book "Resurrecting Empire," is described in more detail by Alex Safian in his contribution to the pamphlet "Israel's Jewish Defamers," Boston, CAMERA, 2008, pp. 42-44. For all those of us who had regard for Khalidi over the years, these disclosures of his sleight of hand will be profoundly disquieting.

Professor Rashid Khalidi and the Method of Indiscriminate Quotation

Professor Rashid Khalidi
photo by Bryn Mawr Now

Professor Rashid Khalidi is a Middle Eastern expert at Columbia University. At various times of his life he has also been active in various Palestinian causes. His scholarly writings, not always uncontroversial, have earned him an international reputation. Whatever his political commitments, he has always maintained cordial relations with people of other persuasions. His friendly relations with Barack Obama, when both lived in Chicago, have become a matter of public notice. He has an enviable reputation for civility in personal and professional relations; in a recent interview, Professor Khalidi remarked that he has about a thousand Jewish friends.

On January 7, however, he published an op-ed piece in the New York Times that has caused consternation to at least some of his well-wishers. Not only does Khalidi here do what scholarly practice forbids -- use indiscriminate quotation as a method of proof -- but he also, as we shall see, claims a quotation is genuine when, in fact, it most likely is a forgery.

Khalidi's piece is entitled "What You Don't Know About Gaza," and suggests that Hamas had no part in causing any difficulty in the Gaza situation. Israel's Gaza operation, according to Khalidi, has no justification at all that he can detect:

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

So the war, according to Khalidi, "isn't really about rockets" but rather, exclusively, about the malice and the evil intentions of Israelis. This strong assertion, it would seem, needs strong evidence.

But what does he offer ? Nothing but a single quotation which, he says, stems from an Israeli general, some seven years ago. He does not tell us how he obtained the text of this alleged statement, nor does he give any information about the circumstances under which it is said to have been made. Nor did he seem to have searched for statements by other influential Israelis that may be relevant. ( Nor does he address himself to the question of a possible relevance of statements by Hamas leaders, who routinely threaten all Jews with death; but that is another matter.) In other words, he did not do what a scholar must do under the circumstances, viz. determine, assuming the statement is genuine, whether it represents Israeli policy today, as he claims it does. I am afraid that Professor Khalidi, to the dismay of those in academia who wish him well, has here abandoned the method of the scholar to embrace the method of the propagandist: the notorious Method of Indiscriminate Quotation (MIQ).

MIQ is bad, and routinely earns graduate students failing marks. The reason that MIQ is so disreputable is that literally anthing can be proven with it: the world is flat, the moon is made of green cheese. But quite often, when lucky, practitioners of MIQ can get away with it in the non-scholarly public because, on its face, the method looks so persuasive. Often its practitioners are even praised by their friends as great researchers, "scrupulously," as it is sometimes said, "documenting" all kinds of outrageous assertions. Unfortunately, people often do not ask whether quotations are presented with adequate context.

But in this case, Professor Khalidi is not so lucky. It turns out that the quotation on which he has so carelessly relied is most likely wholly specious. We now know, thanks to the excellent detective work of Jason Maoz, that Generally Yaalon apparently never said what Khalidi claims he said. (Please read the whole article by Maoz; just click on his name above.)

Remember, this is what Khalidi claims Yaalon said:

The Palstinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.

Here, according to Maoz, is what Yaalon actually said

I defined it from the beginning of the confrontation: the very deep internalization by the Palestinians that terrorism and violence will not defeat us, will not make us fold. If that deep internalization does not exist at the end of the confrontation, we will have a strategic problem with an existential threat to Israel. If that [lesson] is not burned into the Palestinian and Arab consciousness, there will be no end to their demands of us….

What Yaalon wants Palestinians to understand, deeply, is that Palestinian violence will not defeat Israel. Professor Khalidi turns that into something completely different, viz. a desire by Yaalon to have Palestinians see themselves as defeated. As Maoz shows, other anti-Israel propagandists, before Khalidi, have twisted Yaalon's words in the same way, and it appears that the distortion is being handed around from one to the other. Perhaps Khalidi sincerely believed in the accuracy of what he was quoting, but that certainly does not explain away his irresponsibility of passing on this deception without checking the sources.

Professors are human, professors sometimes enter the political fray, and yes, professors sometimes discard all scholarly probity when they allow themselves to be propagandists. These are facts, but not facts that can make us happy. I do worry about that campus up on Morningside Heights and other such places (which, by the way, use up a great deal of public money in the form of grants and tax privileges); I worry about what is happening to the ethos of scholarly responsibility.

Machers -- The Jewish Oligarchy

The Madoff story has put the Jewish community in the news in the most prominent possible way. But not in ways that its members would have wanted. It seems that some, many, of the most prominent Jewish machers -- movers and shakers -- have left the community vulnerable at the hands of a stupendous Ponzi scheme. The man accused of guilt in the Ponzi scheme is Bernard Madoff. One of the men accused of facilitating the scheme -- without being criminally responsible himself -- is J. Ezra Merkin. Both have been known as big machers among the Jews of the land. (A front-page article by Diana Henriques in the New York Times of December 20 tells the story in great detail.)

[Here is a personal aside. I have had a bit of a mole-view of the Merkin family since my mother had been a baby nurse (domestic servant) in the Merkin and allied families some fifty years ago.]

Who are these machers, these movers and shakers, and what is their role ?

In a word, the machers constitute the oligarchy that has by and large run the Jewish community. The idea that nominally democratic institutions are actually run by oligarchies was most forcefully argued by the 19th century German-Italian thinker Robert Michels, especially in a classic description translated in English under the title Political Parties.

Michels speaks of an "iron law of oligarchy," a view that has led later social scientists, notably Seymour Martin Lipset, to refine the concept and specifyy limits to the phenomenon. And indeed, macherdom was defeated in those institutions that, throughout, maintained a high degree of self-criticism and due diligence. The UJA-Federation of New York, with some others, stands out as a bastion of good sense.

Wikipedia describes the oligarchy concept as traditionally formulated:

Oligarchy (Greek Ὀλιγαρχία, Oligarkhía) is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society distinguished by royalty, wealth, family, military powers or occult spiritual hegemony. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words for "few" (ὀλίγος olígos) and "rule" (ἀρχή arkhē). Such states are often controlled by politically powerful families whose children were heavily conditioned and mentored to be heirs of the power of the oligarchy. This type of power by its very nature may not be exercised openly; the oligarchs preferring to remain "the power behind the throne", exerting control through economic means. Oligarchies have been tyrannical throughout history, being completely reliant on public servitude to exist. Although Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy, oligarchy is not always a rule by wealth, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged group.

President Joel (Yeshiva University) presents an honorary degree to Trustee J. Ezra Merkin as Ludwig Bravmann, vice chairman, Board of Trustees, looks on. November 26, 2003

J. Ezra Merkin & friends, charity function, June 16, 2008

Mr. Bernard Madoff

In the American Jewish community, as far as I can tell, the machers play a diffuse, inconsistent, but often dominating role.

I cannot offer a tightly delineated definition. Take the level of synagogue leadership. The concept of macher overlaps, but is not identical, with elected officer and board member. Not every macher has a formal role; not every formal leader is a macher. But as I have observed it in at least some synagogues, you cannot hold an elected post without the behind-the-scenes nod from a consensus of the machers. A macher tends to be rich, well-connected, and very influential. Influence, of course, is the stock in trade of macherdom.

Macher-led synagogues and other organziations have formal elections, but these elections are essentially sham because there is no more than one candidate per post. (I have heard of a venerable Orthodox synagogue in Manhattan, however, in which there is a lively democratic tradition with real, i.e. contested, elections.)

Literally tranlated, a macher is one who does things, who makes things happen. The membership of macher-run groups often could not imagine how things could happen without these machers. The machers tend to be thought of as despots, perhaps, but benevolent despots. The groups keep running, at least that seems to be the impression, largely because of the work and ceaseless energy of the machers.

Machers are thought to be very wise. During the planning for a synagogue renovation, it was the judgement and wisdom of the machers that prevailed, even though expert-backed contrary views were offered. Disagreement with machers -- especially on problems where expert advice might suggest that the machers are actually beyond their depth -- is scorned. As I see it, this is one of the greatest dangers to Jewish public life: an unwarranted faith in the wisdom and benevolence of the machers. Macherdom tends to prevent the one activity that saved some individuals and institutions in the current Madoff affair, due diligence.

How do you become a macher ? What are the qualifications ? These questions await careful treatment by scholars. But there are two institutions that seem to foster and develop macherdom. One is the honorary degree bestowed by prestigious institutions, the other -- more important because much more pervasive -- is the "award dinner" at which groups promote the idea that prestige can be fostered and created artificially. Awards are bestowed for apparent financial prowess, for handing over money to institutions, and for, well, being a macher.

No doubt there are many recipients of such "honors" whose merit can be objectively verified. A scientist or scholar who has made verifiable contributions to his field, or an artist or writer whose work can be independently assessed, may well have at least some of the merit that is attributed to him. But as for the merit of all those other honorees and awardees at award dinners and award dinner-dances, well, that merit partakes more than a little of the great investment returns offered by Mr. Bernard Madoff. It is widely talked about, very widely praised and admired, but it is not verifiable. It does not withstand due diligence.

It is often said that a synagogue, say, relies on such award dinner-dances to raise the funds that it needs. There are three problems with this proposition. 1) It has not been empirically tested -- nobody has tried alternate, more ethical methods. 2) Whatever the financial value of such activity, there is a terrible moral price that is paid, viz. claiming merit where no such merit can truthfully be claimed. 3) At least in the current environment, it has been shown that there was no financial gain to the institutions in this counterfeit traffic in honor.

Finally, I wish to offer two thoughts on how to strengthen Jewish communal activity:

1) Due diligence. When the combined wisdom of the machers in your congregation, say, urges a path of action, resist. Ask for outside expert advice. Independent expert advice is the antithesis of macherdom. Insist on it. Be a trouble maker. You won't earn an award at a dinner dance, but that, as I see it, is an added benefit.

2) Do not in any way approve of or participate in the bestowal of honorary degrees. Ever. Those who have the merit to deserve such degrees probably have earned, real degrees.

3) Do not, ever, attend an award dinner-dance. Do not praise the big machers in display ads. Do not be part of the macher claque. Ever.

Sidwell Does So Help Public School Kids

In my "Modest Proposal for the Sidwell Friends School" (see my blog of November 22), I wrote, among other things

At least some of Sidwell's resources could be made available to all students in the District. Perhaps there could be classes in art appreciation, or college-entrance preparation, or music, or whatever, free of charge to all children. Perhaps the STO funds could be used for these services.

I have now had the chance to talk with Mr. Ellis Turner, the Associate Head of the School, and learned that Sidwell has a number of specific programs to help children in Washington's public schools. For example, Sidwell has a relationship with the (public) Brightwood Elementary School to help in a "lap reading" program. On the high school level, it has a relationship with the (public) Duke Ellington School, which, among other things, provides scholarships for math students. And these are only two examples of programs in which Sidwell cooperates with public schools.

Bravo Sidwell !