Prediction Confirmed: Michael Wilner is the PR Arm of Gann

Remember how everyone gave me a hard time for saying that Michael Wilner was the PR arm of the college? And how I predicted in the comment section that we would get an email from Gann in days?

Here's that email. For real journalism, and not hackery PR, see The Claremont Independent's soon to come out February issue.


January 30, 2009

Dear Members of the Claremont McKenna College Community,

I wrote to you on November 10, 2008, concerning how the continuing upheaval in the world’s financial markets and the weakened state of our economy overall would affect CMC. In that communication, which is attached, I indicated that CMC enters this period in a strong financial position. We also enter this period with a very strong student applicant pool both in quantity and quality, a superb faculty of teacher-scholars across all departments, an outstanding and dedicated administration and staff, and loyal and supportive alumni, parents and friends of the College. We also benefit from the leadership of an outstanding and committed Board of Trustees.

Notwithstanding all of these strengths, the economic crisis has placed significant pressure on CMC’s three primary revenue sources – tuition revenue (net of financial aid), endowment income, and gifts. Since my last communication, we have conducted a deeper analysis of the pressures on these revenues, and we now have a better understanding of the budgetary challenges that lie ahead. I thought that it would be useful, therefore, to provide you with an update on our continuing planning efforts.

First with respect to students, our primary objective is to secure our need-based financial aid program. The Office of Admission and Financial Aid has taken steps now to adjust its current and forecasted budget to secure our need-based aid program. For purposes of the budget forecast, we are also grateful for the new scholarship funds that we have raised in The Campaign for CMC. These new funds are significantly assisting us to meet the future estimated financial needs of CMC students and their families.

Second, with respect to gifts, we continue to raise funds in The Campaign for CMC. The pace at which we are able to raise new gifts has slowed considerably because of the economy. Nevertheless, we have raised $423 million, we still have four more years to go in the Campaign, and we remain positive about meeting the goal to raise $600 million in The Campaign. Our fundraising for current annual gifts has also been negatively impacted by the economy. Current, budgeted gifts received as of December 31, 2008, are 19% lower than the same types of gifts received as of December 31, 2007. Every dollar we do not receive reduces the revenues to support our current budget dollar for dollar. We will be working diligently with our staff and alumni volunteers to try to close the gap during the spring semester. Nationally, many colleges and universities have also seen a decline in their current gifts from a year ago. Going forward, we likely will reduce budgeted current gifts, and hence annual revenue, in our forecast by at least 10% or $600,000 per year.

Third, the single biggest impact from the current economic distress is on our endowment. We estimate that our endowment lost approximately 27% of its value between July 1, 2008, and December 31, 2008. This figure is unaudited and is based on the best information available from both our traditional and alternative investment managers as of the time of this communication. For purposes of our budget forecast, we are assuming that the endowment will decline a total of 30% this fiscal year, will stay flat for the 2009-10 fiscal year, and will increase at a moderate rate thereafter. The operating budget of the College receives approximately 30% of its annual support from the endowment. The formula to determine annual endowment support to the operating budget is designed to smooth out the effects of investment market volatility over time. Although this smoothing formula could lead to annual spending from the endowment that eclipses 7% in the near term, we are facing an $8 million decline in annual budgeted support by fiscal year 2013-14. Consequently, as I indicated in my November 10, 2008, communication, owing to the recent reductions in endowment value, and the significant uncertainty looking forward, we must take steps now to prepare for the expected reduction in operating budget support from the endowment that we will experience during the next several years. These steps include

§ We immediately worked during this past fall semester to reduce the College’s operating budget expenses by $1.5 million, some of which will be reflected as savings in this year’s operating budget and all of which will be reflected in next year’s budget.

§ Employee costs are 56% of our expenditures. Consequently, it is necessary to reduce these costs significantly in order to bring the budget back into balance. In pursuit of these necessary reductions, effective this past fall semester, every open position in the administration and staff is being re-evaluated to determine whether the position will be held open, terminated or filled. To date, eight positions have been surrendered. The Dean of the Faculty, Gregory Hess, also reviewed faculty searches and postponed five of the authorized 15 searches this year in order to reduce the size of the academic portion of the budget. Additional postponements may occur. We will continue our analysis and work in this area.

§ In order further to reduce employee costs, we will not provide salary increases to anyone for the next fiscal year. We are making this decision in an effort to retain as many positions as possible and maintain our fringe benefits. Salary increases for subsequent fiscal years may also be somewhat lower than was planned in our original budget forecasts.

§ We are currently evaluating all operations of the College to determine how we can achieve further cost savings, while maintaining the quality and effectiveness of the College’s accomplishment of its educational mission.

§ We will dedicate the Biszantz Family Tennis Center this Saturday, January 31. Work on the Kravis Center began during the semester break, and we continue the work to complete the East Campus Land Purchase. No other significant facilities projects will be started until economic stability returns, and we have brought our budget and forecast back into a state of financial equilibrium.

These approaches all reduce current or future expenditures. It will be difficult, however, to main the quality of CMC and return to financial equilibrium by only reducing spending. Accordingly, we are also evaluating ways to increase our revenues.

We will continue to work with the Board of Trustees ad hoc Financial Planning Committee in monitoring the current environment and in developing financial models and forecasts that will guide our future planning. I will also be consulting with the faculty-elected Administration Committee over the next few weeks to discuss with them budget reductions and policy adjustments under consideration while still safeguarding the core values and strategic objectives of CMC. Our Board of Trustees meets in March, and I will have more to communicate about our financial planning after the Board meeting.

We have started to take action now to address our challenging financial issues. Having had the time to look more closely at the size of our challenge, I am convinced that we can successfully work through these issues thoughtfully and carefully in our budgeting and forecasting.

Our sister institutions in American higher education are all confronting similar challenges. Every day I read new communications from presidents of institutions to their communities with similar messages about their financial stress. We are also sharing and communicating information about these issues across higher education to see what we can learn from one another.

While the challenges we face are exceptional, we will make every effort to address them while maintaining the level of excellence that defines CMC. The demand for a CMC education has never been higher, and we will continue to meet the justifiably high expectations of our students and parents. We will also pursue a path that respects and honors the value of all the contributions of those who work here. Our alumni who care deeply about their alma mater can be assured that CMC will move forward in a way that protects the past and moves the institution strategically forward.

In closing, I want to thank everyone in the CMC community for their splendid efforts and for your help in the months ahead.

Sincerely,

Pamela B. Gann

Chuck DeVore in Wall Street Journal; My Recommendations for Waging a Viral Campaign

Tweet, Tweet! CMC Alum Chuck DeVore Takes On Sacramento, Twittering All the While

This is really cool! Chuck DeVore in the Wall Street Journal! Here's the mention in full.

Few have internalized that message more than a little-known California assemblyman named Chuck DeVore.

The 46-year-old former aerospace-company executive has already begun contesting the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Barbara Boxer, who faces re-election in 2010, by putting much of his daily routine online.

A Multitasker

He regularly updates his Facebook status on his BlackBerry, which automatically appears on his Twitter account, as well as on the site devoted to getting Republicans on Twitter, called topconservativesontwitter.org. (His 924 followers rank him 389th on that site.)

Mr. DeVore says his campaign, with little funding and facing a well-known incumbent, depends on steadily building word of mouth. He says he has modeled his campaign on that of President Barack Obama, who is often referred to as the first "Internet president."

"Chuck is using his nuclear-powered lawn mower while his faithful dog supervises," he posted Sunday afternoon, referring to the electricity in his neighborhood coming from a nearby nuclear power station. Mr. DeVore supports the use of nuclear energy.

But the constant posting has led to more than idle chatter. His commentary on everything from greenhouse-gas emissions to laws banning cellphone use in cars have led to national television appearances on shows including "Dr. Phil" and "Nova."

He couldn't afford to pay for similar publicity through traditional radio or TV advertising, he says, particularly over such a long campaign.

Raising a Few Bucks

He believes he's the first politician to raise money on Twitter, estimating he received more than $1,600 in 24 hours in early December, with an average donation of close to $20. Much of that effort was led by his first hire, Justin Hart, a former blogger for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. [Charles's note: I followed Justin's work over at MyManMitt. I'm a fan.]

"We don't expect to raise big dollars from this, but we do get street cred and a base to build on," says Mr. Hart, 37, who joined Mr. DeVore after several other tech strategists turned him down.

Mr. DeVore has written an online movie review for a conservative Hollywood Web site to gain name recognition in that traditionally liberal town. He called Tom Cruise's "Valkyrie" a film with "soul and dignity." He first developed his online promotional skills earlier this decade in marketing a novel he co-wrote, called "China Attacks," about an invasion of Taiwan.

A campaign consultant of Mrs. Boxer says the three-term Democratic senator also uses a variety of online tools and has collected more than 300,000 email addresses of supporters. Some well-known Republicans could soon enter the race, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard Co. boss. But Mr. DeVore thinks his online approach gives him a chance.

"There are still a fair number of Republicans that haven't thought about using these things yet," says Mr. DeVore. "I say to them, 'Look, it won't make a bad candidate good, but you need to start doing this.'"

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To the naysayers who dismiss Facebook, Tweeter, and others, I have but one thing to say to you: You stupid Luddites, get with it! Michael Palmer, who ran new media operations for the McCain campaign, shows me why I have recently been embarrassed to be a Republican. Does it not seem oxymoronic to have someone "run" new media operations? How top down!

Here's what Palmer says.

"If there's someone out there who votes for the candidate who Twitters more, then we need to take away his voter-registration card," says Michael Palmer, who headed the new media operations for the McCain-Palin campaign.

"Our soccer moms might pay their bills online, but they probably won't spend six hours a day on Facebook," says Mr. Palmer, 28.

No, but the next generation of soccer moms just might. And if Mr. Palmer were worth his salt, he would know that some of the fastest growth in Facebook has come from middle aged people. So how do you win my generation? First rule of politics: Never write off votes.

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The next part of my blog post will serve as an open letter to would be U.S. Senator DeVore. I haven't much money to give him, but I can promise that I'll spend my share of tears, blood, and sweat to see he gets elected. Part of that will be me giving him free advice. While I think he's done a good job managing Twitter and Facebook, he's got a ways to go before he takes down Barbara Boxer.

If you haven't friended DeVore yet, get to it!

• Google news alerts. Simply create a Google news alert for your opponent. These daily emails reminders will let you know all the things that are being said about your opponent. You can assign a staffer or campaign worker to identify what bloggers are talking about vis a vis your opponent and tailor your message accordingly. The old approach of letting your issues talk for you will only get you so far. At a certain point, you need to know the issues that Californians are blogging and talking about. You may learn something you didn't know about your opponent.
  

• A YouTube contest. DeVore should take part of his campaign chest to set up a contest or series of contests on California issues. By offering $5,000 or so for a video, he'll gin up the college students, video bloggers, et al. of America to make the perfect ad attacking Boxer building up Chuck DeVore. This is the part where you let the internet do its thing. Let the Ron Paul internet crowd into your campaign and you'll have both money and respect. If the videos are very good, it's likely that the Mainstream Media might pick up on it and give it more legs than it would have on the internet.
  

• Bloggingheads.tv. If DeVore wants to make it big, he'll have to practice speaking in front of a web camera. Rather than static Twitter messages asking for money, it's certainly harder to say no to a web cam plea. One of the more popular places for him to talk about his candidacy and his ideas would be on Bloggingheads.tv. I recommend a Diavlog with Will Wilkinson of Cato. Remember, these videos are then serialized on the New York Times's website.
  

• Gmail.com address. I've been lucky enough to get emails from Assemblyman DeVore who still has an email address with aol.com. My advice to DeVore is ditch aol.com and ditch it fast. Anyone under 30 uses gmail. You date yourself and don't seem as techy with aol.com.

• Any new website that is built for DeVore needs to include blog syndication. By having a part of the website that allows you to see what other bloggers are saying about Chuck, you can build a community of Chuck DeVore fans. The DeVore website would serve as a hub rather than a place with deadlinks. Few people read through blogrolls, but people do notice changing parts of websites. Downsides: You'll have to be careful of the "lol cats" taking over and may need to hire a staffer to make sure things don't get too out of hand.

Claremont Conservative Breaks 115,000 Visitors!

Here's a quick update for our very loyal readers and friends on all that transpired last semester with the website.

• For those of you who haven't heard, we're also a finalist for a $10,000 award from America's Future Foundation, just as we were last year. We could also place second or third. My dad asked me earlier about the odds that we might win. I laughed and said three in ten -- if we're lucky. Still, I think we do a fair job of meeting all of the contests criteria.
  

• Early last semester I spoke on Pajamas Media with Ben Judge CMC '09. There I represented the Claremont Conservative fairly well, despite having misbuttoned myself! (Live and learn, friends, live and learn.)
  

• We've also merged with The Claremont Independent. Later last semester I was named editor of The Claremont Independent. I have big plans for the Claremont Independent, in addition to some great stories lined up. It goes without saying that our staff has been magnificent in every respect. The prior editor of the Independent, Ilan Wurman CMC '10, has been a great contributor to this blog and we look forward to working with him in the future. Now that the merger is official, though, expect to see more posts but different people.
  

What Would Winston Churchill Do? Hackery Abounds

Author's Note: This blog post has two purposes
1) to explain my views on torture and
2) to demolish the arguments set forth tonight by Andrew Sullivan with respect to torture and Churchill.

And just so we're clear, here's a shout out to you, Bryce, who asked me to write it.

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I was disheartened to hear something Andrew Sullivan said tonight on the subject of torture. Sullivan, who referred to OLC counsel, John Yoo, as a "legal hack" in all but name, might actually read either Yoo's books or law review articles, rather than disparaging him. If he had, he would have seen that the argument he made tonight about a president needing Congress to declare war is a practice that has been virtually ignored throughout the entire 20th century. (Indeed the last president to ask Congress for a declaration of war was F.D.R.)

Before I dive into the question of torture, it's important to give you some sense I should say that I take a page out of my high school mentor's notebook when it comes to matters of torture. For two summers and through a year, I worked as a paid research assistant with Alan Dershowitz. (He hired me after I was randomly selected to debate him in high school.) It was Dershowitz who first resuscitated the idea of a "torture warrant". Here's his position on torture, which, I wholeheartedly support.

My basic point, though, is we should never under any circumstances allow low-level people to administer torture. If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.

As a normative matter, I oppose torture, but I'm not so ignorant as some to believe that it doesn't work. When opponents of torture make this argument, I need only demonstrate one instance of a "ticking time bomb" terrorist to make my point stick. I could provide half a dozen or so terrorists, but without coloring it, I think I'll just take this example of a twelve year old boy who was killed by a kidnapper. The full details from Mark Bowden are here. At the time, Bowden was working on an article about interrogation.

And, as it happened, while I was working on this story, there was an article in The New York Times about a crime in Germany where a kidnapper had taken a 12-year old boy, and had buried him alive. He went to collect the ransom, and was caught. He was in custody, and refused to tell the police where he had buried the child. The police chief in this case threatened the kidnapper with torture, and he promptly told him where he buried the boy.

No, having studied this matter for quite awhile, I wish it were easy to say that "torture doesn't work". On the contrary, torture is rather efficient at getting information, which in a war with no definable front line, is much better than a war in which uniforms fight one another. In state to state combat, there's an incentive for both parties to follow things like Geneva and in state to state combat there's little likelihood that soldiers on the ground know that much beyond the orders they must carry out.

Understandably, this is not the case when we pick up would be terrorists who have the knowledge and the contacts that we could follow back to the base. We're waging war on a network and as such, battlefield victories won't matter nearly as much as the destruction of key individuals in that network. In such a war, information is everything. When you torture someone and they tell you something, you can go and verify that statement. If the person lied, then you can resume torturing. Now if you were to disrupt that network, you would score a tremendous victory because everytime that network had to promote members, there would be a burn through rate. Think if you were to compare it with the internet. You certainly wouldn't target this blog to shut down the internet. You'd target Facebook, Google, or YouTube. You'd go after the big targets in the hopes of disrupting the networks.

Returning to the topic of torture, it has a rich history. Sullivan likes to make recourse to history, especially Nazi history, in arguing that the United States should stop torturing suspected terrorists for actionable intelligence. Here's an argument he elsewhere and made tonight about how the Germans "tortured" and how we, Americans, are following in their wake. The title of the article says what Sullivan suggested tonight: "Bush's torturers follow where the Nazis led."

So is “enhanced interrogation” torture? One way to answer this question is to examine history. The phrase has a lineage. Verschärfte Verneh-mung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the “third degree”. It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.

The United States prosecuted it as a war crime in Norway in 1948. The victims were not in uniform – they were part of the Norwegian insurgency against the German occupation – and the Nazis argued, just as Cheney has done, that this put them outside base-line protections (subsequently formalised by the Geneva conventions).

Ilan directed me to Godwin's Law, which states that the longer a conversation goes, the likelihood that Nazism goes to one. By invoking Hitler, Sullivan hoped to make the moral claim that torture is bad without demonstrating evidence. Sullivan than turned to someone he said inspired him on the torture debate, Winston Churchill, who despite the equivalent of a 9/11 virtually every day during the Blitz, refused

1) to detain a citizen indefinitely and
2) that no Nazi was ever tortured by the British.

Neither statement is true.

On the first, Churchill's government did detain people indefinitely. These included both British and foreign nationals. On the first point, I quote from Churchill and the Jews by Martin Gilbert, p. 176-177,

"From the outbreak of the war in September 1939, tens of thousands of 'enemy aliens' had been arrested and interned in Britain. Some were German Nazis then resident in Britain, some were German anti-Nazi refugees, and others were German citizens who happened to be in Britain when war broke out, including many German and Austrian Jews, among them Churchill's pre-war supporter Eugen Spier."

In August 1940, he authorized "the liberation 'of considerable numbers' of the internees," but importantly not all. On August 24, 1939, Britain's Parliament passed the Emergency Powers Act, which included provisions for detaining both British nationals (Defence Regulation 18B). The first wave of detainees were German or Austrian naturalized British subjects, but as time wore on it was used to detain writers or politicians.

One person that was detained was none other than the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, who was detained along with his wife for essentially being sympathetic to Hitler and Nazism. Mr. Mosley was a British MP before he was detained!

On the second point, there's considerable evidence that Britain actually did torture Nazis for actionable intelligence, much as we seek to do today to those savages who present an existential threat.

Long after the war had ended, Britain ran two secret prisons to torture Nazis. One of these prisons, dubbed the "London Cage" was located in one of London's nicest neighbors, but between July 1940 and September 1948 served as the country's secret prison.

Here's how the Guardian describes the treatment of some of its inhabitants.

Official documents discovered last month at the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, show that the London Cage was a secret torture centre where German prisoners who had been concealed from the Red Cross were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with execution or with unnecessary surgery.

Mind you that much of the torture occurred after the war had ended. Unfortunately, there was another secret prison. According to the Guardian,

As horrific as conditions were at the London Cage, Bad Nenndorf was far worse. Last week, Foreign Office files which have remained closed for almost 60 years were opened after a request by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act. These papers, and others declassified earlier, lay bare the appalling suffering of many of the 372 men and 44 women who passed through the centre during the 22 months it operated before its closure in July 1947.

Just who were these people?

Initially, most of the detainees were Nazi party members or former members of the SS, rounded up in an attempt to thwart any Nazi insurgency. A significant number, however, were industrialists, tobacco importers, oil company bosses or forestry owners who had flourished under Hitler.

By late 1946, the papers show, an increasing number were suspected Soviet agents. Some were NKVD officers - Russians, Czechs and Hungarians - but many were simply German leftists. Others were Germans living in the Russian zone who had crossed the line, offered to spy on the Russians, and were tortured to establish whether they were genuine defectors.

And were some of the people there who shouldn't have been? Absolutely.

Many of Bad Nenndorf's inmates were there for no reason at all. One, a former diplomat, remained locked up because he had "learned too much about our interrogation methods". Another arrived after a clerical error, and was incarcerated for eight months. As Inspector Hayward reported: "There are a number against whom no offence has been alleged, and the only authority for their detention would appear to be that they are citizens of a country still nominally at war with us."

Now to be fair, Churchill was no longer PM at the time of Bad Nenndorf. (He had been defeated in July 27 of '45, and Bad Nenndorf was created in August 1, 1945, but it seems fair to suggest he or his government knew about such places.) I'll spare you the gory details, but I recommend you read the two articles here and here.

None of this should come as any surprise to us. That the British government detained enemies and killed detainees -- many of whom were Nazis -- is certainly true. It would follow then that they are not a credible example for our modern age.

Naturally, we know that Churchill himself recognized that people fighting without uniform could be shot and that the niceties of war did not apply to such persons. Churchill, students of history will know, was captured by the Boers during the Boer war. In My Early Life, Churchill admitted that as he had been fighting the Boers who had captured him and thought it very likely that he would be executed for fighting in a "half uniform." (He was a correspondent, as well as a participant in the conflict.)

He writes in the Eland edition, p. 254. [The emphasis is mine.]

My gloomy reflections took a sharper and a darker turn when I found myself picked out from the other captive officers and ordered to stand by myself apart. I had enough military law to know that a civilian in a half uniform who has taken an active and prominent part in a fight, even if he has not fired a shot himself, is liable to be shot at once by drumhead courtmartial.

Obviously the Boers did not execute Churchill, yet that that was a possibility in his mind suggests that the argument laid forth by Sullivan and his allies is a weak one.

For those who are interested, I would direct you to CMC alum, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore's remarks on Churchill and the war on terror at this blog. The comments started my thinking and I am grateful to Mr. DeVore for directing my thoughts.