ET VITAM VENTURI SAECULI. Nick Gillespie on a functioning civil society in the Fertile Crescent. Brian Doherty on the pitfalls of empire, no matter how well-intentioned. No incursion into Syria, reports several Guardian reporters.

THE ACADEMIC ECHO CHAMBER. From Critical Mass comes news of a policy change at the University of California, perhaps a reaction to the wrong kind of praise, certainly to the dismay of No Indoctrination. The official position at the university is that academic procedures (if their university is like mine, these are available but generally opaque and murkily written) are sufficient to cover the abuses formerly covered in the academic freedom statement. Or perhaps it's just truth in packaging. The administrations have been captured by sects and special interests, and the core curriculum (such as it is) designed to make converts.

UPDATE: Academic freedom? Just another bourgeois fetish? asks Number Two Pencil.

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN Human shields become police deputies!

SPEAK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG STICK. Were the hawks right? (Hat tip: InstaPundit.) I don't have the Columbia Political Review's expertise on international affairs, but let me add this impression: a Syrian diplomat was guest on Meet the Press yesterday. I didn't hear the usual Ba'athist posturing, the guy sounded like his supply of Depends was looted in Baghdad and he'd drunk some particularly bad coffee.

ARGUMENTAM AD HOMINEM. How else to describe a characterization of those who oppose the opponents of the liberation of Iraq as C students?

IDIOCY IS A FORM OF INTELLECT. Excellent smackdown of the "rules=oppression" trope (popular in the colleges of deaducation) at Highered Intelligence.

IDENTIFICATION PROBLEM. Final Four run has little or no effect on increase in applications to Marquette University.

THE ACADEMIC ECHO CHAMBER. It appears as if this event has some monetary support from the university administration. The Superintendent encourages the SCSU Scholars to hit up the Social Responsibility folks for some money to hold an "In Our Name" rally (perhaps during Iraq's Constitutional Convention, or loya jirga, or town meeting.)

UPDATE: Fraters Libertas, making fun of academics because it's easy!

THE CASE FOR IMMIGRATION AMNESTY. Dr. Mohammed and his family have earned it. (Via Rachel Lucas.)

CIVIL UNREST. No, not in Baghdad, not in Los Angeles or Seattle, but in politically-correct Minneapolis. Sources inform the Superintendent that similar unrest took place in Durham, New Hampshire. I suppose there is good reason ... Saddam Hussein was still a Tikrit ward-heeler (or was that porn star?) the last time a Division I team (Boston University, if memory serves) repeated as hockey champion. (Wisconsin failed at this opportunity in 1978 and in 1982, which prevented college hockey from coining the ugly "three-peat" when the Badgers won again in 1983.)

UPDATE:"With victory comes a little chaos."

No, this is not Baghdad. The women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children (intake air) are above average. But were more than seven of them arrested? (Via Fraters Libertas, a fan of the Fighting Sioux in the Anybody-But-Minnesota camp. I'm a bit more tolerant. If not Wisconsin, let it be Minnesota or North Dakota, or if none of those, there are cases to be made for St. Cloud State and Wayne State. Muck Fichigan!)

FURTHER UPDATE: Did the artifacts of the Baghdad Historical Museum become assets for the Deposed Ba'athist's Retirement Fund? Left as an exercise.

HAIKU FROM THE FRONT. Well, you can't play License Plate Bingo in a fighter-bomber, can you?

INSTITUTIONS EVOLVE TO REDUCE TRANSACTION COSTS. Stanley Kurtz writes of an Ontario lawsuit in which a lesbian couple and a male sperm donor are seeking a declaration that all three are the parents. Kurtz's fear: "Once multiple parents gain legal status, the way to group marriage is cleared, and marriage itself is effectively replaced by a system of infinitely flexible contracts involving any number (and gender) of adults. That, in turn, would radically undermine the ethos of monogamy, leading to further instability in marriage, and tragedy for our children." The logic problem: if you grant the first sentence, must you deduce the second? Or, must you confront the possibility that legal monogamy is contrary to the Establishment Clause (that's a U.S. problem, but one worth engaging.) I don't have any answers, but expect to see extensive commentary in the law journals.

SCHOOLING THE TEACHERS. The Command Post has a squib about the Bundeswehr studying the Iraqi campaign. Why not? The Wehrmacht used a rudimentary version of AirLand in the Polish, French, and Russian campaigns. They had too many horses to do it correctly (General of paratroops Kurt Student noted the Clydesdale, Frisian, Belgian, and Percheron horses towing artillery from Belgium toward Germany) and the U.S. commanders demonstrated the improved version from 1944 onward. Germany recently became one country. If their troops begin practicing maneuvers with bicycles, should the French and Russians get nervous about their weasel-of-convenience?)

MUGGED BY REALITY. Roger L. Simon is disappointed by the evolution of Michael Kinsley, who Simon recalls as fending off Pat Buchanan but has become another "dithering namby-pamby." For my part, I never cared much for Buchanan's style or his logic, but Kinsley has ALWAYS come off as a sanctimonious dweeb.

OPPORTUNITY COSTS? James Lileks tackles home repairs. Did he really get it fixed as cheaply as he claims he did?

RETRENCHING. Northern Illinois University faces the problem, common these days in the state-tolerated universities, of making do with less. The student newspaper has a few suggestions for saving money, which are offered as a poll. (In case the poll is delinked, the suggestions are to lease some empty dorm space as a prison, to turn off the lights at the athletic fields when they're not in use, to run fewer buses, and to sell advertising space on buildings.) I have a few suggestions of my own, which I will post by week's end.

CREDO. Best to know what the institutions of a constitutional republic are, says Suzanne Fields, to the approval of Joanne Jacobs and Betsy's Page. Indeed so. Some of the veterans of my public policy class are in antitrust this term, and I hope some of them still grasp what I mean by the institutions of a civil society, so conspicuously absent in liberated Iraq.

SHAH MAT. Is an extremely lopsided checkers game a better metaphor? (Via Vodka Pundit.)

BAD METAPHOR. The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews Columbia anthropologist Nicholas DiGenova, who may have done more damage to the university's fundraising efforts than Columbia's football team, which deserves special mention for an extended losing streak primarily against Ivy League teams. I hope the professor's classes are better thought out than his interview. Here is his explanation for the "million Mogadishus" trope: "The U.S. invasion of Somalia was humiliated in an excruciating way by the Somali people. And Mogadishu was the premier symbol of that. What I was really emphasizing in the larger context of my comments was the question of Vietnam and that historical lesson. ... What I was intent to emphasize was that the importance of Vietnam is that it was a defeat for the U.S. war machine and a victory for the cause of human self-determination." There is enough material here to compose a final examination in Contemporary Military History. First, it is difficult to describe the Somali campaign as an "invasion." If memory serves, President Bush (the elder) was mau-maued by weeks of pictures of emaciated children surrounded by flies into doing something to help out. (That he might have done so in order to leave the Clinton administration a mess is not outside the realm of possibility.) The Clinton administration's defence secretary, the late Les Aspin, decided not to send the heavy vehicles to Somalia as it became clear that the situation was not a simple Operation Vittles. The (probably late) Saddam Hussein probably missed that point when he issued tapes of Black Hawk Down as pregame preparation: a technical vehicle has almost no chance against a tank, as numerous 'splodeydopes discovered (who has the olive franchise for Hades these days?) Second, it is even more difficult to describe Vietnam as a "defeat" for the U.S. "war machine." For the sales efforts of the Great Society, guns-and-butter types, yes, but not for the military. Third, it defies parody to describe the North Vietnamese conquest of the South as a victory for the cause of human self-determination, unless the professor is referring to the self-determination of the boat people. Professor Drezner, from whom I found this article, is also unimpressed, and, in a touch of class, he permalinks the night owls who broke the story first.

BAGHDAD BOB: Perhaps overtaken by events, but this is pretty good, and Where Worlds Collide found him making excuses for Virgin Trains (72 reasons your train is late??) before Amtrak could recruit him.