IVC Commencment speaker Chemerinsky attacks Trump in OC Register

Last week, Erwin Chemerinsky penned an opinion piece for the OC Register which will no doubt inspire many letters to the editor. Titled Trump's misguided, dangerous rhetoric, here is an excerpt:

"Donald Trump’s racist attack on the federal judge who is hearing a case involving Trump University reveals a profound misunderstanding of the judicial system. It again shows a stunning lack of understanding of the Constitution.

I have avoided in these pages or elsewhere discussing Trump, or any of the candidates. I confine myself to discussing issues of law, my area of competence. But Trump’s vitriolic rhetoric directed at U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel reveals a great deal about Trump’s views concerning the law and the courts....

...There are no excuses for what Trump said. It is an attack on Judge Curiel solely because of his race. Given chances to offer an explanation or an apology, Trump repeated the same racist comments. It is very frightening to imagine Donald Trump as president."

To read the rest, click here.

A few weeks ago, in his commencement address at IVC, Chemerinksy was more oblique in his criticism:

"I never have seen the degree of meanness from presidential candidates that has been evident this year. I do not mean this as a partisan statement or an attack on the candidates of one party or of any particular candidate. But I never have seen a political campaign with the nastiness of this one. To pick one example, one candidate, in a tweet wrote, naming a particular media figure that she 'is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.'"

Chemerinsky didn't have to identify the candidate.  It was obvious.

Trumps feels up flag. 

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To read the letters to the editor directed to Chemerinsky's piece, click here.

IVC alum wins Stanford's Stegner Fellowship

IVC alumni Jenn Alandy Trahan has been awarded a Stegner fellowship. Stanford University awards five fellowships each year in fiction. A partial list of Stegner fellows includes Raymond Carver, Phillp Levine, Ken Kesey, ZZ Packer, Samantha Chang, Wendell Berry, Tobias Wolff, Robert Pinsky, Vikram Seth, and Scott Turow. In other words, this is a big deal.

Jenn came to IVC after graduating from UCI with a BA in English and spent a couple years in the Creative Writing porgram here before applying to graduate school. She would fit the classic mold of a "returning student" who did not have a transfer plan because she had already completed her undergraduate work.

Read all about it via UCI:

Jenn Alandy Trahan, who received her B.A. in English from UCI in 2006, has been awarded a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford. The fellowship pays for two years within Stanford’s prestigious Creative Writing Program. Trahan was first published in W.W. Norton’s Hint Fiction anthology in 2010. Her short story, “Webb,” was nominated for a Pushcart award by Permafrost at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks in 2013. Trahan went on to receive her MA in English and her MFA in Fiction at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Here's a link to an article Jenn wrote about  her experiences at IVC and the development of her writing: "Take A Hint: Jenn Alandy's Long Walk to Print."


Go Lasers!

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Donald Trump's Soul

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Neil Young, "Campaigner"

I am a lonely visitor.
I came to late to cause a stir,
Though I campaigned all my life
towards that goal.
I hardly slept the night you wept
Our secret's safe and still well kept
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.
Even Richard Nixon has got soul.

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Ten years ago...

John Williams, the unionist's Best Friend 
(Dissent the Blog, Thursday, June 8, 2006)

RELATED:

Faculty Association: the return of the Old Guard (and John Williams)
(Dissent the Blog, Monday, August 13, 2012)

They call it a college

 Here's our new view from our office (A239) at Irvine Valley College:

Pleasant, isn' it?
It's like we're in a prison.

This is a typically Roquemorean solution to a problem--in this case, our recent vulnerability to robbery.
Bars.
The earlier solution? Screw the windows shut--I kid you not--so we can't open 'em anymore.
People really carped about that.

Check out the jerry-built "handle" we're supposed to use "in case of an emergency."
--Like a fire, I suppose.

They've thoughtfully added graphics on the handle,
in case we don't know what "up" means.
Gee, thanks.

The Morning Reading: "No, He's Not Hitler. And Yet..."

from the Sunday New York Times; "No, He's Not Hitler. And Yet..." by Justin E. H. Smith:

....Mr. Trump is seeking to bring about a climate in which equally false claims may go unchallenged, in the name, purportedly, of something much more important than mere empirical fact: making America “great again.” The invocation of the past in this slogan is obviously mythological. No one will ever call on him to cite any dates or figures to back it up....Mr. Trump is banking on the American public’s willingness to revert to such a conception of truth that does not require any basis in fact. And it is here that a bit of von Ranke’s hardheadedness can serve as a corrective. We can worry later about drawing significant lessons from history, about finding meaning for our lives in the past. For now what is crucial is to insist that the past can be known — that Mr. Obama was not born in Kenya, that climate change was not made up by the Chinese and that anyone who pretends the opposite, as part of a larger plan to make America great again, is, as a matter of simple historical fact, an impious fraud and a liar....

To read the rest, click here.
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