Cosmic Baseball, Cornell, and the Caymans
Cheers RVA!
Today we’ll likely see a late afternoon shower/storm with a high of 81 and less humidity than yesterday.
the juice:
The Derby is won by a nose (official Derby stat), NASCAR at Kansas too (1/1000 of a second, closest ever)!
the pulp:
Twenty-five arrested at UVA pro-Palestine protests per the AP. See “the dive” for more.
Motions filed to set aside charges against five suspects in Otieno case per Channel 12. Otieno died last year while in the custody of Henrico sheriff’s deputies at Central State Hospital.
“They love their neighborhood, but not what’s going on in the alley.” Northside residents speak out on visible crime in the alleyways from Elizabeth Holmes at Channel 6
the haps:
Colonial Heights baseball team the Tri-City Chili Peppers will play “cosmic” baseball this summer under black lights, with uniforms, balls and bats glowing in the dark. The Colonial Plain League is not affiliated with the mlb, and used to host the viral “Savannah Bananas” that have since left the league to tour the country. While it does seem a bit too gimmicky, I think it’d be fun to watch.
Opening day starts May 23.
the dive:
I was thinking about the recent protests and specifically the demands from protestors that Universities disclose financial ties to Israel, cut ties with Israeli businesses, etc., which led me to dive a bit further into US foreign aid. This article from the Council on Foreign Relations breaks down the history of aid to Israel and how it compares to other nations in the region.
The article also discusses how Israeli Military imports compare to other nations. For example, countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have imported much larger quantities of US arms in the past five years than Israel.
So then I started thinking, how do Arab nations compare to Israel in terms of university funding?
This article from Campus watch, claims top American Ivy League universities including Cornell and Harvard have received over $8 billion in the last 35 years from Arab countries. But then I realized all the articles from a google search of “Arab nations funding American universities” were taking me to right-wing or far-right media. Then I found this website from the Department of Education which (by law) reports College Foreign Gifts.
Today I learned:
I know that VCU signed a contract with the Cayman Islands for 3.7 million on June 21, 2023, and that contract ends in 2026, but I have no idea what it is for. I do remember the Cayman Islands from John Grisham’s book “The Firm.”
The largest transactions with VCU were contracts from Qatar, around 45 million, likely for the VCU Doha campus I surmise. The largest restricted gifts are from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which seem to be student sponsorship money.
It reminds me of Florida’s IMG Sports academy (Alums JJ McCarthy, Gary Sheffield, Armando Bacot, just to name a few) being sold to an Asian private equity fund. What all these interdependencies mean exactly I don’t know, but our schools and universities are certainly way more financially globalized than I’d realized.
the vibe:
Enough politics and international conflict. Let’s embrace less humidity and more humility. Have a great day RVA!
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