Around New England

UConn Implements Special Rules for Ben Shapiro Talk

Matthew McDonald

Ben Shapiro, a conservative critic of American universities, plans to talk at the University of Connecticut at Storrs on Wednesday night, but only UConn affiliates and a list of pre-set invitees can come, according to UConn officials. The university has implemented new rules for some speakers after an appearance by Lucian Wintrich in late November turned ugly — but an organizer of Shapiro's speaker series notes that the university didn't put in place the same restrictions when Clarence Thomas accuser Anita Hill spoke last week.

Common Core Is Dead, Long Live Common Core
Commentary

Common Core Is Dead, Long Live Common Core

Sandra Stotsky

We live in a remarkable age.  Even when Florence Foster Jenkins sang in a packed Carnegie Hall decades ago, music critics were able to say that she did not have the voice of an authentic opera singer.  Few in the musical world really cared how Jenkins spent her own money. Perhaps if she had offered to give some of her money to the nation's music schools or departments on condition that they teach voice students to sing as she did in the recordings of the arias she had paid record companies to make, music critics would have expressed some concern.

Jenkins did show what someone with a lot of money to spend as she wished and a deep self-confidence in her own ill-formed judgments could do; after all, she did fill up Carnegie Hall.  But no one believed that Jenkins had any musical authority.  Jenkins didn't entice music educators in the country to change the academic programs in their music schools or adopt her views on what high-quality singing sounded like. The quality of singing at the Metropolitan Opera House was untouched. 

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