Reuters reports:

Harvard President Claudine Gay said she would resign from her position on Tuesday, ending a six-month tenure marred by allegations of plagiarism and backlash over her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus.

Gay had come under pressure to resign from Harvard’s Jewish community and some members of Congress over her comments at the Dec. 5 congressional hearing, while also facing several allegations of plagiarism for her academic work in recent months. …

Gay, former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth testified before a U.S. House of Representatives committee on Dec. 5 about a rise in antisemitism on college campuses following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October.

The trio declined to give a definitive “yes” or “no” answer to a question by U.S. Republican Representative Elise Stefanik as to whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment, saying they had to balance it against free-speech protections.

Some questions are simple yes or no answers, but answering if it is acceptable to call for the genocide of Jews, is one that does have a simple answer.

But this is not why Gay was forced to resign. It was the expose by a right wing journalist that her career has been brimming with plagiarism. At last count 50 separate instances had been identified, including (amusingly) even her thanks on her doctorate.

When Chris Hipkins became Minister of Education in 2017 his first three steps were:

• Snuggle up to the Ministry. This has ultimately led to the number of Ministry employees going from 2700 to 4200.
• Cancel things. In his case Partnership Schools and National Standards.
• Appoint a committee. In his case led by Bali Haque who had a solid reputation in NZ schooling.

When Erica Stanford became Minister of Education in 2023 her first three steps were:

• Appoint an Education Ministry Deputy Secretary (Ellen MacGregor-Reid) to her office on the basis of a recommendation of the Secretary for Education Iona Holsted (the $600k Woman). This effectively eliminated the ability for Stanford to go to the Public Services Commissioner and declare a lack of confidence in the Ministry leadership – something they deeply deserve. In the most paternalistic communication I have ever received Michael Johnston of the NZ Initiative contacted me after my critique of the MacGregor-Reid decision and told me that Erica Stanford was “devastated” by what I had written. Stanford could not stand up for herself? She needed a knight in shining armour? Clearly a conflict of interest here as Johnston was about to appointed as the chair of the newly formed Ministry Advisory Group (see next point) and had been significantly critical of Jan Tinetti without ever caring if she was “devastated”.

• Cancel things. In this case cell-phones. While this appears to be a brilliant BUMPER STICKER tactic there was so much more to think through. Do you ban “smart watches too”? Do you ban apple products in each class-room that all have texting options? Are they banned completely from bringing to and from school or just the classroom? What about the dyslexic and spectrum kids who use their phones to take photos of notes that they can review later with more time? Who will collect and re-issue the phones each day? Are you allowed to confiscate them? If they have to remain in bags how much expense goes on ensuring theft is not occurring? What if a kid is beaten up on public transport or lost without being able to contact a parent? How many micro-aggressions will be created around schools by teachers confronting kids on their phones in their breaks? How many arguments will happen at home and how many more kids will simply stay away from school as they lose one more privilege? I don’t think Luxon has any idea on education.

• Appoint a committee. In this case a Ministry advisory group, which – to the delight of the unions and political left – is effectively headed by the Right-Wing think-tank the NZ Initiative (through Michael Johnston – someone with much less sector experience than Bali Haque). Along with the Ellen Macgregor-Reid appointment – this shows a complete lack of situational awareness of the education sector. Has Michael Johnston resigned from his NZ Initiative role to accept this one and avoid accurate accusations of political bias?

There are so many more things that could and should have been done.

1. We are four weeks aways from a new school year … apart from kids drifting back to school … what is being done to get full-attendance rates above 50%?

2. Our outcomes for school leavers are appalling. Where are the goals for our high-schools in 2024?

3. Where are our strategies for teacher quality? What are we doing to re-engage parents and help
them understand the morass of the qualifications system?

These are the solutions I believe are imperative and urgent: https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2023/12/more_evidence_of_our_education_woes_plus_the_solutions.html

I would add immediately giving the new St Stephen’s school Designated Character status.

It is easy to label Hipkins (as Stanford did on the AM Show) as the worst Minister of Education ever. However, if you start just the same way he did, you are on 0/3 so far. When National was last elected and had nine years in office their supporters failed to hold them to account for anything but incrementalism. Tolley and Parata achieved nothing of lasting significance as Ministers of Education. They were barely better than Hipkins/Tinetti. Supporters of National must demand so much more from the new regime and allow them no complacency. Astute commentators such as Cameron Bagrie and Matthew Hooten have designated the Education portfolio as the most significant for the future of NZ.

As for the Associate Minister of Education, David Seymour, the initial method from National is a HUGE opportunity for him to go big and bring about the radical changes our NZ students and families so desperately need.

Alwyn Poole

[email protected]
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
www.alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

I blogged previously on the two month investigation by the NY Times, with over 150 interviews, documenting horrific sexual crimes. Within minutes on social media people were absolutely denying it, and claiming it must all be fabricated. Schwimmer is right to call out all the groups that normally staunchly call for believing victims, yet have remained silent.

Below are Stuff’s 10 predictions for 2024, along with my comments on them. They normally do 20:

1. An Opposition leader will resign. After the election, each leader kept their positions – despite the change of Government. As the new order settles in, someone – be that Chris Hipkins, Marama Davidson or James Shaw – will resign. DPF: Agree, and I predicted Shaw will be the one that goes.
2. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will hit the sky, leading diplomatic and trade delegations to India, the US, and Pacific islands. DPF: Inconsequential but probably right.
3. The Government will re-engage with the World Health Organisation’s regulation updates, which New Zealand had been closely aligned with. For reasons unexplained, Luxon agreed to “reserve against” these soon-to-be-refreshed public health protocols in NZ First’s coalition agreement. Such reservations will be short-lived, given outright rejection of these updates would attract international and local ridicule. DPF: We will make reservations but they will be nothing big.
4. Leaning into life on the Opposition benches, Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick will become increasingly outspoken in the House. The Speaker will kick out Auckland Central’s MP at least once in 2024. DPF: Probably as she chants her normal pro-genocide slogan against Israel.
5. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will make another so-called “gaffe” in the House, following on from previous hits such as “how big is his hole” and declaring the “size of the sausage” matters. DPF: I hope so.
6. Following the January 20 hui with the Kīngitanga, sizeable protests will arrive at Parliament and at Waitangi as Parliament resumes and as Christopher Luxon heads north for his first Waitangi Day as prime minister. DPF: There will be protests almost non-stop for the next three years as the activists don’t like the policies the governing parties won election on.
7. The Government will deliver tax cuts in July, but the scale of those cuts will not be as large as was promised at the election. National will point to its coalition deal with NZ First, kyboshing the foreign buyers’ tax, and Labour’s so-called “fiscal cliffs” for the more modest tax relief. DPF: Disagree. I think they will be the same quantum.
8. House price growth will exceed the 5.3% forecast by the Treasury in December, growing by at least 7.5% in the year to June 2024. DPF: Good prediction and more likely than not.
9. When the Green Party holds its AGM and the co-leadership positions fall vacant, there will be a serious challenge or call from members for a new co-leader to take the (shared) reins. DPF: It will be Chloe to replace James and then at a later AGM Tamatha to replace Marama.
10. Local Government Minister Simeon Brown will appoint commissioners to take over the management of a city or regional council, which will fall into disarray due to failing infrastructure and economic mismanagement. DPF: So many worthy candidates!

The ABC headline:

The anal beads cheating is interesting because that was the allegation against 19 years old Hans Neimann when he beat Magnus Carlsen. The theory there is that someone at home with a chess computer feeds in the moves and signals through remote controlled vibrations what piece should be moved.

But this story has an even more sophisticated allegation:

The association was also forced to address rumours circulating online that Yan had cheated during the competition by using anal beads equipped with wireless transmitters to send and receive signals.

Yan allegedly clenched and unclenched rhythmically to communicate information about the chess board via code to a computer, which then sent back instructions on what moves to make in the form of vibrations, according to reports circulating on the Chinese social site Weibo.

It would be one thing to receive messages via anal beads, but truly impressive if one could actually send code via the anal beads through clenching and unclenching!

Here’s my 20 predictions for 2024, which I’ll score at the end of the year. I got 16/20 right for 2023.

1. The three parties of Government will outpoll the three parties of opposition in at least 90% of public polls in 2024
2. The 2024 Budget will project a surplus by 2027
3. The new Public Service Commissioner will not be a current public servant
4. Donald Trump will win the GOP nomination for President
5. At least three Labour List MPs will resign in 2024
6. Chloe Swarbrick will replace James Shaw as Greens co-leader
7. There will be at least one by-election in 2024
8. The Spinoff buys Stuff
9. Donald Trump is convicted on at least one charge and sentenced to jail time
10. A City Mayor resigns in 2024
11. Floating mortgage rates are below 7% by the end of 2024
12. Economic growth in 2024 will be higher than in 2023
13. The minimum wage will be increased by 50 cents
14. Joe Biden is confirmed as the Democratic nominee for President
15. Chris Hipkins will remain Leader of the Labour Party
16. The Russia-Ukraine war will end
17. The UK Labour Party forms a majority Government
18. A Te Pati Maori MP will be named by the Speaker
19. Donald Trump will be re-elected President in November
20. Two Ministers will take maternity leave

Radio NZ reports:

Former Governor-General Sir Michael Hardie Boys has died aged 92.

Sir Michael was the Governor-General from 1996 to 2001.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon paid tribute to him on social media in announcing the death.

“His distinguished life of service to New Zealand was one of dedication and reliability,” Luxon wrote.

Michael was a family friend. He was in the same class as my father for five years at Wellington College, so they have been friends for over 75 years. It was a quite exceptional class of a dozen pupils, as around half of them became university professors, and the rest reached the top of various professions.

He became a lawyer, and like his father became a High Court Judge, and then a Court of Appeal Judge (our highest domestic court at the time). He was appointed Governor-General in 1996, and laid down principles for determining how he would determine who could become Prime Minister under MMP. These principles have been used by all subsequent Governor-Generals.

An extremely dedicated servant of New Zealand. Farewell and rest well.

A post by PaulL, irregular contributor.

I listened to a great podcast by Russ Roberts interviewing Haviv Rettig Gur on the history of the formation of Israel, and why those who cast this as a decolonisation battle are wrong. In particular, he explains why the attacks by Hamas (and the general approach of terrorism to defeat an occupying power) won’t work with Israel.

The podcast is excellent(link here) , and well worth listening to (despite being an hour forty long). I think Gur makes some insightful points that put interesting colour on the current situation.

I’ll summarise some of it, as I know not everyone will listen, but I do recommend listening if you can, it’s very detailed and brings forward things I simply didn’t know from history.

The full list of 2024 New Years Honours is here. The titular honours are:

DNZM

To be Dames Companion of the said Order: 

Mrs Sarai-Paea Bareman, of Zurich, Switzerland. For services to football governance.

Ms Pania Tyson-Nathan, MNZM, JP, of Porirua. For services to Māori and business.

KNZM

To be Knights Companion of the said Order: 

Dr Scott Duncan Macfarlane, of Auckland. For services to health.

The Right Honourable Trevor Colin Mallard, of Dublin, Ireland. For services as a Member of Parliament and as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Mr Ian Barry Mune, OBE, of Kumeu. For services to film, television and theatre.

Every Speaker of the House since WWII who served at least a full term has received a titular honour, or equivalent. The last one who did not was Bill Barnard who was Speaker from 1936 to 1943.

The NY Times has spent two months investigating allegations of rape by Hamas attackers inside Israel. Now it goes without saying the NY Times is not a conservative newspaper. In fact they even give Hamas an op-ed. So when the NYT says they have verified what happened, all but the most loathsome should accept the reality.

And what is the reality. Well here’s a summary:

• interviews with more than 150 witnesses, medical personnel, first responders, soldiers, rape counselors, and government officials along with the scanning of video footage, photographs and GPS data from cell phones.
• partially charred remains of a woman whose face is burned beyond recognition, and who is naked from the waist down, legs spread, her black dress hiked up.
• identified at least seven locations across southern Israel where women and girls were apparently sexually abused or mutilated and those the paper interviewed described finding the bodies of more than 30 women in and around the Supernova rave site and in two nearby kibbutzim in a similar state as Abdush’s — “legs spread, clothes torn off, signs of abuse in their genital areas.”
• Photographs viewed by The Times included ones of a woman in a besieged kibbutz who was found with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.
• Footage viewed by the newspaper showed two dead Israeli soldiers at an overrun military base apparently shot directly in their vaginas.
• A paramedic from a commando unit told the newspaper he had found the bodies of two teenage girls, sisters aged 13 and 16, in a room in Kibbutz Be’eri with their clothes ripped. One was lying on her side with “bruises by her groin’ and the other “was sprawled on the floor face down, he said, pajama pants pulled to her knees, bottom exposed, semen smeared on her back.”
• came upon the body of a young woman lying on her stomach, unclothed from the waist down, legs spread, and who appeared to have been sliced open in her vaginal area, “as if someone tore her apart.”
• Similar scenes were discovered in at least six different houses in the Be’eri and Kfar Aza Kibbutzim, where at least 24 bodies of women and girls were found either stripped, tied up with zip ties or mutilated — sometimes all three
• The witness said she saw at least five women raped in front of her while she tried to hide.
• “They all gather around her… She’s standing up. They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.” “Then one of them raises a knife,” he said, “and they just slaughtered her.”
• Shoam Gueta, a friend of Cohen’s who was hiding with him, told the newspaper that he saw that the men were “talking, giggling and shouting,” and then one of them stabbed the victim repeatedly, “literally butchering her.”
• At least 10 bodies of female soldiers from a Gaza observation post were found with signs of sexual violence
• One victim was hiding in the brush on October 7 when she saw one terrorist rape and stab a female captive in the back every time she flinched while another cut off her breast. “One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” she recalled.
• Another witness described watching five men take turns raping a young, naked woman “They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words,” he remembered.
• One paramedic said that he found two teenage sisters,  13 and 16-years-old, with there pants and underwear pulled down and ripped with semen on them.
• Other first responders said they found women naked with hands tied behind their back or with the vaginas “sliced open.”

None of the perpetrators of these rapes and murders will be held accountable by Hamas. To the contrary they are feted as heroes. Those who call for Israel not to respond to the atrocities of 7 October, are implicitly trivialising what happened to those women.

A good start to a ceasefire would be Hamas handing over the rapists to stand trial.

MSN reports:

The New York Times is facing backlash after publishing an op-ed written by the Hamas-backed mayor of Gaza City describing the state of the Gaza Strip amid the war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group that broke out in early October. 

The news outlet published the op-ed on Sunday, written by Yahya Sarraj, mayor of Gaza, of which Hamas has been the de facto governing body for more than a decade. The essay laments the actions of the Israeli military, particularly after its invasion of the Gaza Strip on Oct. 27 in retaliation to the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7.

I don’t actually have a problem with the NY Times allowing Hamas an op-ed. But their double standards are hilarious as they sacked their opinion editor because he allowed an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to be used against rioters.

Radio NZ reports:

Two months on from Labour’s election-night shellacking, leader Chris Hipkins still cannot pinpoint what the party could have done differently during the campaign to win.

Long may this lack of insight continue.

The months before voting day were dominated by a “vibe for change”, he said. “I’m not sure that there’s a lot that we could have done to shift that.”

The question they should ask is why was there such a strong mood for change, despite only being in their second term? Why did the country direction go negative for the first time since 2008?

Stuff reports:

At a November Hutt City Council meeting, Mayor Campbell Barry asked if there was anything that could be done about the stink before thousands of young people descended on Hutt Park for the Juicy Festmusic festival on January 5. The event is set to be headlined by T-Pain and Ashanti.

Residents could “stop pooing”, strategic advisor Bruce Hodgins told councillors.

I would have thought that the impact on local residents should be of paramount concern.

“Sometimes I’ve felt close to vomiting. You can’t escape when it’s in your home. It gets hot, but you can’t open a window.”

She said children at local schools were having trouble concentrating.

“Finally, it’s summer and the kids can get outside, but when they do, everyone is gagging.”

Jaysen Eveleigh of Auto Despatch previously​ said the stench had become a health and safety issue.

“It smells like a portaloo after a three-day festival. I have staff who won’t eat lunch in our building.”

A pity perhaps the plant isn’t by the town hall. I suspect it would be remedied in days.

It was revealed in November that Greater Wellington Regional Council had issued $7250 in fines in the last three years as a result of the plant breaching resource consent conditions with the stench. …

Kylie Hood said the fines hadn’t seemed to stop the problem and an independent voice was needed.

“They just continually breach their consent and there are no consequences, except for the fines which are picked up by the ratepayers.”

Fines only real work as an incentive when you have to pay the fine yourself, rather than have ratepayers do it.

Stuff reports:

Te Papa has announced it is reviewing a controversial exhibition, part of which was damaged by protesters last week.

The Signs of a Nation Te Tiriti o Waitangi exhibition has been at the museum since opening day in 1998. It has been changed a number of times but this would be the first full review of it, Te Papa said in a statement.

Te Papa co-leaders Tumu Whakarae/chief executive Courtney Johnston and Kaihautū/Māori co-leader Dr Arapata Hakiwai said today that the museum’s Te Tiriti o Waitangi display would be “renewed”.

Great to know that if you object to an exhibit at Te Papa, the way to get it changed is to vandalise it.