In an exchange of tweets yesterday, Duncan PR guy Justin Hamilton responded to a reporter's question about a secret anti-Ravitch group within the D.O.E. this way:
EDPressSec Justin HamiltonYou will notice that snarky Hamilton doesn't confirm or deny the group's existance and given current adminstation's black-ops and the recent DOE early-morning raid on the Wright family home in Stockton, his helicoptor crack is inappropriate, to say the least.
File under black helicopter RT @DianeRavitch: Reporter asked if I knew of secret DOE group working to intimidate/silence me.
Thanks to that unnamed reporter, whoever he or she was, for asking the question. I'm sure you won't be the last.
I read that Greene piece last week and didn't understand almost any of it. Good thing he's not coherent.
ReplyDeleteHey @#!*% , Greene quit the Manhattan Institute over a year ago, and Murray was fired from the Manhattan Institute in 1990 over the Bell Curve, so they were never there at the same time.
ReplyDeleteHey Anon. Greene is still called a "Senior Fellow" on the MI web site. Where can we read about his resignation? Why did he leave? Political differences? Doesn't seem like it.
ReplyDeleteNo, he's not listed here: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/scholars.htm
ReplyDeleteAnd Charles Murray hasn't been there in over 20 years.
They published Murray's latest book. Greene still speaks at many of their programs. He is still described as a "senior fellow" on several of MI articles as late as 08.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you guys lie about stuff that is so easily google-able? Charles Murray's latest book was published by Crown Forum, a division of Random House. No connection to Manhattan Institute whatsoever. In fact, Murray never published a book with the Manhattan Institute.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous (if that is indeed your real name") is right about dates of Murray's and Green's departures from MI. But that's a nit-picky defense of reactionary Greene. He didn't leave MI over political or ideological differences. He just took another job with a university-based, right-win school "reform" center." Murray went over to the the even more far-right American Enterprise Institute. But MI still prints his stuff and does interviews with him. See for example, http://www.citiesonahill.org/school_choice/ where MI promoted Greene's book:
ReplyDelete· Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About our Schools –and Why it Isn't So
MI's website also carries: "· Charles Murray discusses his book, 'Real Education' with John Leo Podcast: Interview, Charles Murray, John Leo, February 6, 2009
So whether Murray and Green are officially members of the Institute today, is not the important thing. The point is that both still find common ground at the Manhattan Institute and elsewhere in the right-wing and racist think-tank world.
If that bothers or embarrasses Anon he should get over it.
Even if Murray is racist, you're just trying to smear Greene with guilt by association, and even if Greene were somehow guilty of anything, that is completely irrelevant to his case against Ravitch (which is that she is embarrassing her own side by being so over-the-top . . . rhetoric like "genocidal" and the like).
ReplyDeleteAt the time Murray began to explore the racist notions that led him and partner Hernstein, to write The Bell Curve, he was employed by the Bradley-funded Manhattan Institute. It was the far-right Bradley Foundation, the driving force behind both Murray and the institute, that pushed Murray to ultimately move from MI over to the American Enterprise Institute. Greene began working for MI in 2000 and left a short while ago to move to the Univ. of Arkansas where he has continued to write his pro-voucher, anti-union polemics.
ReplyDeleteIf you read Greene's own vita, published on the Manhattan Institute's website, you will find many, if not most of his papers published by the MI. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cv_greene.htm
ReplyDeleteActually, Jay Greene is in many ways worse than the racist Murray. In this National Review article, Greene calls Murray, "a conservative most renowned for his book Losing Ground, which was a highly influential criticism of the modern welfare state."
ReplyDeleteBut this praise is followed by a break with Murray over NCLB's standardized testing mania. Murray, writes Greene, "joins the chorus of NCLB discontents in arguing that high-stakes testing narrows student learning to include only test-taking skills, and that it discourages teachers whose autonomy is threatened. These are popular mantras of the teacher unions and others opposed to reforming the nation’s public-school system."
Above all else, Greene is a union hater which puts his anti-Ravitch diatribes into some perspective.
From one anonymous writer to another - the Manhattan Institute continues to support Charles Murry despite his efforts to try and prove that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, as published in his 1994 best-seller. For example, in Feburary of this year he was given a substantial promotion for his new book on their website. I should also mention that the infamous John Derbyshire, known for his most recent racially motivated column in the National Review, is also connected to the Manhattan Institute. This information is pretty easy to find on Google. My Point? MI is a very dangerous organization that operates under the pretense of "doing good" but with an ultimate goal of increasing the divide by perpetuating racism. According to online sources, they were even able to swindle their way into the City Of Newark,NJ, the largest African American City in the United States, and were ultimately hired by the City's black Mayor, Cory Booker, to run Newark's prisoner reentry program. How does something like this happen? It's pretty unbelievable...
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