Category: Free Speech

Avoiding a Market Test Reduces Efficiency and Innovation in Higher Education

Deirdre McCloskey argues that to flourish we need market-tested innovation. Ivy League universities are increasingly funded through semi-automatic government funding, avoiding a market test, and allowing the growth of administrative bloat, the monopolization of faculties by the ideological left, and the canceling of any surviving voices that are insufficiently politically correct and woke.

(p. A15) A social-media post last month from the Trump administration triggered fainting spells throughout the academy. The National Institutes of Health, which funds biomedical research, announced that it is reducing the amount of money the government pays grant recipients for overhead costs.

. . .

The labor economist Richard Vedder thinks this is exactly the shock to the system that higher education needs. “Of course the universities with heavy research grants are going crazy over this,” he told me. “But if you talk to anyone at a university, you know that those overhead costs are vastly inflated compared with the true marginal cost, or extra cost, to the university doing the research.” He added that many schools collect so much overhead money that they give some of it back to researchers as an incentive to apply for more research grants. “It’s kind of a con game, all based on false assumptions and faulty economics,” Mr. Vedder says. A nonnegotiable uniform rate would be far more efficient.

In a . . . book, “Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education,” Mr. Vedder argues that one of the biggest problems with higher ed today is that colleges aren’t sufficiently disciplined by market forces. The result is too much administrative bloat subsidized by the government. His subtitle is a reference to the free-market economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), who described capitalism as a process of “creative destruction” whereby markets reallocate resources from unproductive to productive uses. “It’s worked pretty well for American business,” Mr. Vedder said. “Why don’t we have it for higher ed?”

One problem, the book explains, is that universities are essentially wards of the state. “Colleges and universities are dominated by people operating outside of the normal profit-oriented private market economy,” Mr. Vedder writes. By his calculations, the productivity of university employees over the past 50 years has declined not only in comparison with the average U.S. worker but also in absolute terms. It took more faculty and staff to educate a college student in 2021 than it did in 1972.

For the full commentary see:

Jason L. Riley. “How Trump Plans to Shake Up Higher Education.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, March 5, 2025): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 4, 2025, and has the title “Trump Plans to Shake Up Higher Education.”)

The Vedder book discussed by Riley is:

Macedo, Stephen, and Frances Lee. In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2025.

McCloskey discusses market-tested innovation in:

McCloskey, Deirdre N. Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital, Transformed the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

During the Pandemic “Experts” Suppressed the Open Continual Inquiry That Is Science

The governmental violation of the basic rights of citizens, especially the right of free speech, is the most painful and lasting legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic. To flourish in the future, it is worth our time to remember what happened and defend those who protected free speech and the pursuit of true science, which is a method of continual inquiry, not a body of fixed beliefs.

(p. C7) “Science,” the great theoretical physicist Richard Feynman wrote, “is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” The incorrigibly curious Feynman knew that skepticism and a willingness to assimilate new evidence propel the scientific endeavor. Yet by 2020, in response to a global pandemic, the dominant part of America’s political and media class had turned the imperative to “follow the science” into an expression of almost religious reverence for the judgment of experts. Many educated and otherwise intelligent Americans, meanwhile, made a single, bespectacled government scientist their idol: “In Fauci We Trust” read their lawn signs and bumper stickers.

Their faith was misplaced. Credentialed experts, especially those in the fields of epidemiology and public health, had tied themselves to badly flawed theories, closed their minds to new evidence and thrown the mantle of “science” over value judgments for which they had no special competence.

“An Abundance of Caution,” by the journalist David Zweig, documents the poor evidentiary basis for the prolonged school closures and attendant follies such as masking requirements and social distancing. Mr. Zweig distinguished himself throughout the pandemic by his willingness to question the assumptions of self-identified “Covid hawks.” When he dug into the epidemiological modeling papers whose projections seemed decisively to rule out the safety of opening schools, he found “a never-ending matryoshka doll” of citations, resting ultimately on an assumption conceded to be “arbitrary” by its initial author.

Mr. Zweig shows how evidence emerged early on—in March 2020—that the virus did not pose a serious threat to children. American public-health professionals remained largely impervious to this fact.

. . .

“In Covid’s Wake,” by the Princeton political scientists Frances Lee and Stephen Macedo, mostly remains within the idiom of polite academic prose, but they state with disarming plainness that “elite institutions failed us” by giving in to panic. Ms. Lee and Mr. Macedo marvel at how consensus plans—none of which would have required extended lockdowns—were thrown out before Americans ever began dying, in part because public-health experts were entranced by China’s harsh restrictions. American policymakers had sound advice ready at hand, but most of them took the view that safety outweighed individual liberties, economic activity and quality of life.

Where Mr. Zweig emphasizes incuriosity, Ms. Lee and Mr. Macedo stress the willful suppression of reasonable debate, including the unfortunate tendency to paint critics of lockdowns and mask mandates as racists, quacks and conspiracy theorists. Such conduct was especially evident on the question of Covid-19’s origins, as top scientists vilified anyone suggesting the virus may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. Credulous journalists, academics and other cultural arbiters, the authors remind us, embraced the effective censorship of those who questioned the official line.

. . .

Ms. Lee and Mr. Macedo catalog reams of data to show that, before the availability of vaccines, areas imposing the severest restrictions earned no discernible health benefits.

. . .

(p. C8) In 2024 the U.S. House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic issued a genuinely impressive 500-page report, covering Covid-19’s origins, the fraud in pandemic-response programs and the effectiveness or otherwise of various interventions.

For the full review see:

Philip Wallach. “Failing the Pandemic Test.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, April 19, 2025): C7-C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 18, 2025, and has the title “‘An Abundance of Caution’ and ‘In Covid’s Wake’: Failing the Pandemic Test.”)

The books under review are:

Macedo, Stephen, and Frances Lee. In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2025.

Zweig, David. An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2025.

The over-500-page 2024 report issued by the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and praised above, is:

Pandemic, Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus. “After Action Review of the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward.” U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, D.C., Dec. 4, 2024.

Nicholas Wade Highlighted That Early Email to Fauci Supported Lab-Leak Origin of Covid-19

Distinguished science journalist Nicholas Wade was one of the first and the few to early-on risk being canceled by providing evidence in favor of the lab-leak origin of Covid-19.

(p. A13) They told the world that the Covid-19 virus clearly couldn’t have been manipulated in the laboratory. But what they actually thought at first sight was that it had been.

The letter from five virologists published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, was the single most influential statement in capturing the public narrative about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Here was an authoritative statement from leading experts assuring the public that in terms of the virus’s origin “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

But that’s the exact opposite of what these experts thought after taking their first look at the virus. A large batch of emails exchanged with Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was made available this week to BuzzFeed and the Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act. For the most part the emails concern meeting arrangements or messages from cranks and have been redacted of any meaningful information. But one significant email escaped the censor’s black marker.

On Jan. 31, 2020, shortly after the SARS-CoV-2 genome had been decoded, Kristian Andersen, the five virologists’ leader, emailed Dr. Fauci that there were “unusual features” in the virus. These took up only a small percentage of the genome, so that “one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.”

Mr. Andersen went on to note that he and his team “all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.” It isn’t clear exactly what he meant by this striking phrase. But anything inconsistent with an evolutionary origin has to be man-made.

For the full commentary see:

Nicholas Wade. “Fauci Email Bolsters the Lab-Leak Theory.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, June 5, 2021 [sic]): A13.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 4, 2021 [sic], and has the same title as the print version.)

Director of the N.I.H. Was “Subject to Censorship by the Actions of the Biden Administration”

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I had an invited essay cancelled by the OECD in which I argued for freedom of speech in science, and especially for toleration of a diversity of views during the pandemic. So I have sympathy for the attacks Dr. Bhattacharya suffered during the pandemic and wish him well as the Director of the National Institutes of Health.

(p. B1) Dr. [Jay] Bhattacharya, who has a medical degree and is a professor of medicine but never practiced, burst into the spotlight in October 2020, when he co-wrote an anti-lockdown treatise, the Great Barrington Declaration. It argued for “focused protection” — a strategy to protect the elderly and vulnerable while letting the virus spread among younger, healthier people.

Many scientists countered that walling off at-risk populations from the rest of society was a pipe dream.

The nation’s medical leadership, including Dr. Francis S. Collins, who retired last week, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, denounced the plan. Referring to Dr. Bhattacharya and his co-authors as “fringe epidemiologists,” Dr. Collins wrote in an email that “there needs to be a quick and devastating takedown of its premises.”

Dr. Bhattacharya told senators on Wednesday [March 5, 2025] that he had been “subject to censorship by the actions of the Biden administration.” Past N.I.H. officials, he said, “oversaw a culture of cover-up, obfuscation and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differ from theirs.”

For the full story see:

Benjamin Mueller and Sheryl Gay Stolberg. “Guarded Nominee for N.I.H. Faces Sharp Questions on Vaccines and Research Cuts.” The New York Times (Thursday, March 6, 2025): A18.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 5, 2025, and has the title “Guarded N.I.H. Nominee Faces Sharp Questions on Vaccines and Research Cuts.”)

Mark Twain “Dared to State Things That Others Only Thought”

I have read three of Ron Chernow’s massive biographies, the ones on Rockefeller, Washington, and Hamilton. Because they are massive, reading them takes a long time, at least for a slow reader like me. But I learned a lot that is important or useful from them, especially the ones on Rockefeller and Hamilton. Because I am an admirer of both Chernow and Twain, I look forward to also reading Chernow’s biography of Twain.

(p. C7) More than a century after his death, Mark Twain remains one of the most recognizable voices in American literature—the author of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), “Life on the Mississippi” (1883) and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884), the latter among the most consequential novels ever written in English and possibly (if you believe Ernest Hemingway) the source of American literature itself.

. . .

In his biography of the famed satirist, Ron Chernow tracks, with patience and care, Twain’s journey over nearly eight tumultuous decades. Mr. Chernow’s tale is enlivened by blazing quotes from Twain’s prodigious interviews, diaries and letters.  . . .  The quotes tend to burn a hole in the page, and it’s difficult for a biographer to recover. Mr. Chernow, whose lives of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant are revered for their sound scholarship, clear writing and strong narrative drive, weaves Twain’s sizzling remarks almost seamlessly into his own narrative.

We watch as Twain lunges from coast to coast, rolling up and down the Mississippi (as a riverboat pilot in his early days), moving from country to country, writing books and articles, investing large sums in various hair-brained schemes.

. . .

This was, in Twain’s own phrase, the Gilded Age. He admired, even idealized, those who made huge sums of money through their entrepreneurial energy and acumen. He had the same energy, but he didn’t have the right vehicles for speculation nor the business sense to make his investments pay off. As Mr. Chernow observes, Twain could well have enjoyed an easy life of writing and giving lectures, having married a wealthy woman and published several bestsellers. “Instead, he had started a publishing house and financed a typesetter”—the Paige Compositor, which was supposed to replace manual typesetting but failed spectacularly because of engineering flaws—“before he had the expertise or requisite fortune to bring them to completion.” His expenses soon dwarfed his income and he was forced to abandon his Hartford mansion, never to return.

. . .

Twain was “a man who professed to be chronically lazy,” says Mr. Chernow, yet he left behind him a vast portfolio of writings that included 30 books, several thousand magazine articles and some 12,000 letters. “Mark Twain had not only moved people to laughter and tears with his books,” Mr. Chernow writes, “but had challenged them with unorthodox views as he ventured out from his safe cubbyhole as the avuncular humorist. He had dared to state things that others only thought.” It’s because of this bravery, and his peerless gift for expression, that we still value him and will never stop reading his books, which never grow old.

For the full review see:

Jay Parini. “A Most American Writer.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, May 10, 2025): C7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 9, 2025, and has the title “‘Mark Twain’: The Most American Writer.”)

The book under review is:

Chernow, Ron. Mark Twain. New York: The Penguin Press, 2025.

“If She Ever Had a Clever Thought, It Died Alone and Afraid”

I still smile whenever I see a Tesla Cybertruck. Boldly audacious–its mere existence gives me hope for the future. If I could charge its battery as fast as I can fill a tank of gas, I would buy one tomorrow. I still worry that Musk will implode or cave. But right now he looks like a genuine hero, defending free speech by buying Twitter, taking on the deep state by creating DOGE, solving the engineering challenges to make the dream of Mars a reality!

(p. B1) When Jennifer Trebb first pulled into her driveway two years ago with her sleek Tesla Model Y, it was — as she put it — “kind of like a ‘Back to the Future’ moment.”

She was helping the environment, she said, but driving a Tesla also had cachet. “It was definitely a little bit of a cool moment to have something that was innovative and different,” she said.

But Ms. Trebb recently made a U-turn, joining the ranks of Tesla owners in the United States and overseas — some well known, including the singer Sheryl Crow — who are selling their vehicles because the values and politics of the company’s billionaire chief executive, Elon Musk, are alienating them, they say.

. . .

(p. B6) In the United States, perhaps the most notable rebuke of the car brand was lodged by Ms. Crow, the singer-songwriter, who posted an Instagram video in February [2025] showing her waving goodbye as her electric vehicle was driven away on a flatbed truck.

. . .

In an appearance with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, mocked Ms. Crow’s protest.

“I think she means well, but if she ever had a clever thought, it died alone and afraid,” Mr. Kennedy said.

For the full story see:

Neil Vigdor. “Tesla for Sale: Buyer’s Remorse Sets In For E.V. Owners Who’ve Soured on Musk.” The New York Times (Friday, March 7, 2025): B1 & B6.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated March 5, 2025, and has the title “Tesla for Sale: Buyer’s Remorse Sinks In for Elon Musk’s E.V.-Owning Critics.”)

New York Times Cancels Pamela Paul–the Gutsy, Honest Defender of the Unfairly Canceled

The New York Times always leaned left, but would often present alternative viewpoints. In recent years the bias was strong and strident. But sometimes in the last several months I thought that I saw the dawning of a few more glimmers of fairness. A few of those glimmers came a couple of years ago when I first noticed the commentaries of Pamela Paul. She occasionally told stories that were true but were not politically correct. She occasionally defended those who had been unfairly cancelled. Sometimes I would finish one of her columns and feel hope in my heart for our society and even for The New York Times. (I ran blog entries highlighting Pamela Paul commentaries here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

But today I was catching up on some unread papers and read her “Farewell Column.” I immediately Googled her name and learned that she had been fired, canceled, by The New York Times. What a sad, sorry day. I hope she prospers somewhere else.

I will continue to subscribe to The New York Times for now. I still find enough value in niches as yet unruined by the Times‘s cancel culture: the Tuesday “Science Times” section, sometimes obituaries, sometimes business stories, and sometimes international stories (especially on China).

Here is little of what she wrote in “Farewell”:

(p. A23) I knew my positions, fundamentally liberal but often at odds with what had become illiberal progressive dogma, would ruffle feathers. But as I explained, “I want to write about that vast center/liberal space and to address what people really think and believe but are often too afraid to say.”

. . .

I did not want my positions to be unduly guided by what others might think, be they friends or strangers, office colleagues or online trolls, activist organizations or institutional powers. And the lure of affirmation can be just as potent as the fear of attack.

. . .

. . . the reporting I’m most proud of is when I used my voice to stand up for people whose lives or work had come under attack, whether they were public figures or were dragged into the public eye because they’d dared to speak or act in ways that unjustly elicited professional or social condemnation: A popular novelist ostracized for alleged “cultural appropriation.” A physician assistant who was excoriated on social media for standing up to bullies. A Palestinian writer whose appearance at a prominent book fair was canceled. An early beneficiary of affirmative action who dared to explore its unintended consequences. Vulnerable gay teenagers who described being misled by a politicized medical establishment into dubious gender transition treatments. A public university president who was driven away by a campus besieged with political division. Social work students and faculty members undermined by a school that had betrayed its own principles. A public health expert who risked opprobrium from his peers by calling out his profession on groupthink.

All found themselves at odds with the people or communities that had once supported them, a disorienting place to be, especially in these polarized times.

Pamela Paul’s last commentary for The New York Times is:

Pamela Paul. “My Farewell Column.” The New York Times (Fri., April 4, 2025): A23.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 3, and has the same title as the print version.)

How a Progressive, About to Pretend to Be a Conservative, Dropped the Pretense

How does a person totally change from one viewpoint to a totally different viewpoint? A thought-provoking case study was presented in a full page article in The New York Times.

In 2020 Xaviaer DuRousseau was a black progressive scheduled to appear on “The Circle,” a Netflix reality contest show in which his role was to sometimes attempt to fool the other participants into thinking that he was a conservative. To prepare himself to effectively deceive, he started studying conservative popular media, including the video clips of PragerU and of black social media pundit Candace Owens.

As he worked through the arguments he planned to make as a faux conservative on “The Circle,” he gradually realized that he was more and more agreeing with them, and eventually could no longer honestly be a “faux” conservative. So DuRousseau dropped the “faux” and resigned from the Netflix show.

Now Xaviaer DuRousseau is a full-fledged conservative, himself making popular videos for PragerU.

A surprising story in a surprising venue.

The full-page article in The New York Times is:

Kellen Browning and Mark Abramson. “How a Black Progressive Became a Conservative Star.” The New York Times (Thurs., April 10, 2025): A12.

(Note: the online version of the article was updated April 3, 2025, and has the title “How a Black Progressive Transformed Into a Conservative Star.”)

Hamas Seeks “Genocidal” International Jihad

Israel is a tiny democracy, and a hotbed of innovative entrepreneurship. See Gilder’s The Israel Test and Senor and Singer’s Start-up Nation.

I wish I had posted this entry a year ago–maybe ‘better late than never’. Tiny Israel just wants to be left alone to flourish and innovate; Hamas wants to destroy Israel.

(p. A11) Unfortunately, the tendency of sophisticated observers is to play down what terrorists say they believe. In a phone interview from Washington, Steve Stalinsky, Memri’s executive director, points out that in all the coverage of the war, “we have heard almost nothing about the Hamas ideology. Yeah, sure, sometimes you hear about the Hamas Covenant”—the group’s charter, which spells out its genocidal intentions—“but that’s it, and no one even prints it.”

Memri prints it, and publishes video compilations of Hamas leaders stating their movement’s goal: to build an Islamic caliphate stretching from Palestine across the region and the world. That sounds more like international jihad than Palestinian nationalism.

Headquartered in Washington, Memri monitors and translates TV broadcasts, newspapers, sermons, social-media posts, textbooks and official statements in Arabic, Farsi and several other languages. The work may be drudgery, but it yields a steady stream of articles and viral video clips that condemn the region’s tyrants, terrorists and two-faced intellectuals with their own words.

Memri also documents Gazans’ indoctrination from childhood into a religious ideology that puts them on a war footing. “Their textbooks are our life,” Mr. Carmon says, “but no one paid attention.” Instead, Israeli leaders were convinced that Qatari money and past beatings would deter Hamas.

Mr. Carmon directs me to a recent article in which he writes, “Any Arab who hears American officials say that Qatar is America’s ally would burst into laughter—those clueless Americans, who don’t even know that Qatar is spitting in their face with wild anti-U.S. incitement 24/7 . . . because they only watch the deceptive Al-Jazeera TV in English.” On the Arabic-language channel, he says, Qatari-owned Al Jazeera “is the megaphone of Hamas like it was the megaphone of al Qaeda. Every speech, every statement—everything is aired several times until everybody gets it.”

The article faults the Biden administration for “pleading with Qatar” instead of threatening it: “Just one comment by the U.S. administration that it is considering relocating Al Udeid Air Base from Qatar (without which Qatar will cease to exist within a week) to the UAE will set the Qataris running to bring all the American hostages back home.” Instead, while hostage negotiations stall, the U.S. has quietly agreed to extend its presence at the Qatari base for another decade, according to a Jan. 2 CNN report. Mr. Carmon seems mystified by U.S. weakness. “Since when do experienced American officials conduct negotiations without power pressure on the side?”

. . .

One of Memri’s earliest successes came with Yasser Arafat. By 2002 the Palestinian terrorist leader was used to being feted as a statesman. In a “60 Minutes” interview, however, Arafat was flummoxed when Mike Wallace quoted Memri’s translations of his Arabic speeches: “ ‘Millions of holy warriors are on their way to Jerusalem. Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!’ . . . What does that mean?”

For the full interview see:

Elliot Kaufman, interviewer. “The Weekend Interview; When Terrorists Talk, They Listen.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Jan. 13, 2024): A11.

(Note: ellipsis between paragraphs, added; ellipsis internal to paragraph, in original.)

(Note: the online version of the interview has the date January 12, 2024 [sic], and has the same title as the print version.)

Gilder’s book mentioned above is:

Gilder, George. The Israel Test. Minneapolis, MN: Richard Vigilante Books, 2009.

Senor and Singer’s book mentioned above is:

Senor, Dan, and Saul Singer. Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. revised pb edition ed. New York: Twelve, 2011.

When Levi Strauss Forced Jennifer Sey to Resign for Speaking the Truth on Covid

Knowledge in general, and science in particular, advance through a process of questioning, evidence gathering, and debate. So it remains ironically outrageous that during the Covid pandemic much of the academic, government, and corporate establishment censored or even cancelled those who expressed then-heterodox views. Considerable evidence has since accumulated that Jennifer Sey’s skepticism of Covid school closures was highly justified.

(p. B4) A top Levi Strauss & Co. executive has left the apparel giant, citing clashes with colleagues, including Chief Executive Chip Bergh, over her public views regarding Covid-19 restrictions in schools.

Jennifer Sey, who led the Levi’s brand as president since 2020, said she resigned Sunday after more than 20 years at the company. Ms. Sey, 52 years old, has tweeted frequently and did media interviews to discuss her opposition to school closures through the pandemic.

In an essay posted online Monday [Feb. 14, 2022], Ms. Sey wrote that she was “condemned for speaking out” and that Levi Strauss executives urged her to limit these public statements. She wrote that in a recent meeting with Mr. Bergh, he told her that it was untenable for her to stay.

In a statement Monday [Feb. 14, 2022], Levi Strauss confirmed Ms. Sey had resigned and said it had initiated a search for a new Levi brand president. It appointed another executive, Seth Ellison, to temporarily fill the role.

For the full story, see:

Jacob Gallagher. “Levi Strauss Executive Quits Over Covid Views.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022 [sic]): B4.

(Note: bracketed dates added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 14, 2022 [sic], and has the title “Levi’s Executive Resigns, Citing Her Public Views on Covid-19 Curbs.”)

Dow Chemical CEO Oreffice Candidly Called Environmentalists “Professional Merchants of Doom”

I have the impression that few C.E.O.s today display the open candor that Ralph Nader admired in Paul Oreffice. Is that because cancel culture has been efficient at weeding out any rising executives who might be tempted to be candid? Or do I have a mistaken impression due to the press not reporting as often on the candid comments still being made by some C.E.O.s?

[I was happy to see that Oreffice had learned public speaking in a Toastmasters Club. I heard a lot about Toastmasters as a child–my father was very active in Toastmasters and was eventually elected President of the whole international self-help organization.]

(p. C6) In a 1977 speech at Central Michigan University, Jane Fonda accused Dow Chemical of exposing workers to dangerous substances and not paying its fair share of taxes. Paul Oreffice, who was then president of Dow’s U.S. operations, sent a letter to the university denouncing Fonda as “an avowed communist sympathizer” who was spreading “venom against free enterprise.”

He also cut off Dow’s donations to the university.

. . .

Addressing a business conference in 1979, Oreffice described environmentalists as “professional merchants of doom” and enemies who were destroying free enterprise, according to a Washington Post report.

. . .

Ralph Nader, the consumer-protection crusader, often was at odds with Oreffice but saw merit in his candor. “He is comparatively open to interviews, to questions from audiences, to debates,” Nader wrote in “The Big Boys,” a 1986 book written with William Taylor. “Despite his position as chief executive of a major corporation embroiled in ongoing controversies, he chooses not to hide behind company spokesmen and other bureaucratic shields.”

. . .

Oreffice resisted organization charts because he believed they “put people in boxes.”

. . .

. . ., Oreffice . . . learned public speaking at a Toastmasters club, . . .

As a CEO, he reduced costs and bureaucracy through attrition rather than mass layoffs. “How can you expect allegiance from your employees when you don’t show them any yourself?” he wrote in his memoir.

For the full obituary see:

James R. Hagerty. “An Outspoken Former CEO Of Dow Chemical.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, February 1, 2025): C6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date January 29, 2025, and has the title “Paul Oreffice, Outspoken Former CEO of Dow Chemical, Dies at 97.” Where the wording is different between the two versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Oreffice’s memoir mentioned above is:

Oreffice, Paul. Only in America: From Immigrant to CEO. Macon, GA: Stroud & Hall Publishers, 2006.