Archive for 2024
January 25, 2024
ROGER KIMBALL: Gay Science: On DEI’s dangerous lies.
Curiously, Gay herself touched on the deeper significance of her defenestration in the headline of a bitter, self-justificatory aria she published in The New York Times: “What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me.” Forget the shaky grammar. Gay is right that Harvard’s travails far transcend her fate as president.
She is completely wrong, however, in her explanation of why she was forced to resign. It had nothing to do with “racial animus,” as she said in her letter of resignation. Nor is it part of “a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society.” That faith has unraveled, all right, but not because of “demagogues” attempting to “weaponize” her presidency. Gay says that such efforts begin “with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda.” At stake here, however, were not “education and expertise,” but a failure, a hollowing out, of both, precisely, and ironically, by their subordination to the partisan demands of propaganda.
Again Gay is right that “trusted institutions of all types—from public health agencies to news organizations” have seen their “legitimacy” and “their leaders’ credibility” challenged. But these institutions are not victims of “coordinated attempts” by nefarious “extreme voices.” On the contrary, the crisis of legitimacy is a self-inflicted wound, the natural by-product of the institutional embrace of the ideology of dei, for which values like truth, accuracy, and competence must be systematically subjugated to politics.
Bill Ackman seemed stunned by the real agenda of dei. It is much worse than he thinks. Claudine Gay, as everyone knows though not everyone will admit, is a dei personage. That is, she was hired, groomed, and promoted by Harvard not because of her scholarship, which would hardly qualify for tenure at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. It wasn’t for her fund-raising prowess or her educational vision that she was made president of the most prestigious university in the galaxy. It was because she was a black female whose parents were Haitian immigrants. True, her uncle owns the biggest concrete company on that unfortunate island and she went to school at Exeter. But the fact that Gay grew up in a bubble of wealth and privilege is but a small liability. She may have benefited from the free market. But she did not let that impinge upon her support for the entire smorgasbord of anti-capitalist, woke attitudes about race, gender, race, climate change, race, identity politics, and . . . race.
That’s what they have instead of competence.
ON ACCOUNT OF NOT LIVING IN THROUGH-THE-MIRROR LAND: Republicans Ignore “Climate Crisis” During Deep Freeze “Fueled by Global Heating”.
WELL, OF COURSE HE DID: Trudeau Government Used Faked Intelligence To Illegally Frame Protesting Truckers As Violent Extremists.
Commies gotta commie.
Coof, January 6, coff. Pardon me, something is stuck in my throat.
RACHEL MADCOW HAS NEVER SEEN A DICTATOR SHE DIDN’T ADORE, BUT THEY HAVE TO HAVE GONE TO THE RIGHT COLLEGES, AND WEAR THE RIGHT CLOTHES: Rachel Maddow Suggests Trump Voters Support Him Because They Want a Dictator.
And being Marxist is the minimum price of admission, of course.
IF WISHES WERE HORSES, ALL BEGGARS WOULD BE MOUNTED, AND PUTIN WOULD INVADE ALASKA WITH COUNTLESS CAVALRY UNITS: Is Russian President Putin Really Planning to Take Back Alaska?
PROTECTING US FROM ‘MISINFORMATION’: Google News searches ranked AI-generated ripoffs above real articles — including a Post exclusive.
IN MY LATEST SUBSTACK POST, I dig into some of the data which may explain why the last ten years have been particularly bad for free speech. This graph which shows the lack of viewpoint diversity in higher ed (virtually or actually non-existent in several departments) helps explain how we got here:
THEY CALL IT A CLOCK BUT IT’S JUST ANOTHER PROPAGANDA TOOL WITH A HIDDEN ALGORITHM: Doomsday Clock has been reset, reveals how close humanity is to destruction: ‘Global catastrophe’.
Bah.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I have some thoughts on the “Doomsday Clock” here.
AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS: Embrace the Chaos.
I AWAIT HAMAS SUPPORTERS’ LIBEL SUIT: Hamas terrorists dressing female hostages up as ‘dolls,’ rescued Israeli claims: ‘Could do what they wanted’.
BY THEIR FRUITS SHALL YE KNOW THEM: Hamas hostage posters defaced at Harvard with sick Jeffrey Epstein, 9/11 conspiracy theories.
AS GOVERNMENT SOCIAL PROGRAMS HAVE SHOWN, THERE’S LOTS OF MONEY TO BE MADE ‘ASSISTING’: Assisted dying: Lessons from Canada and Australia.
CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK ISN’T CLOSE ENOUGH: ‘Nearly right’ is wrong.
DON’T CHALLENGE THE NARRATIVE, THE NARRATIVE HAS FRIENDS: Hounding of a lawyer who dared to challenge the vaccine.
DID YOU CELEBRATE FRANCIS BACON’S BIRTHDAY ON THE 22nd? The Birth of a New Science.
January 24, 2024
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN LAW SCHOOL’S DIVERSITY TRAINING PROGRAM DRAWS MORE FIRE: And the legislature is not amused, which should have been predictable. “If they’re threatening ‘continuing efforts,’ and they’re asserting that the DEI practices are ‘cancerous,’ you would think the school would take care to produce high quality, genuinely educational training sessions that would impress the public at large and win support in the larger political debate. Perhaps the cocoon is so isolating that the handout seemed truly wholesome and not cancerous at all.”
It’s been said before, and it’s still true: Social Justice Warriors always lie, and they always double down.
WORRYINGLY THE YOUNGER PROFESSORS ARE EVEN WORSE ON FREE SPEECH: In my latest post for my Eternally Radical Idea Substack, I respond to some assertions in a otherwise mostly positive review of ‘Canceling’ for NY Review of Books. This graph shows the sharp divide between younger and older faculty cohorts when it comes to respect for free speech norms:
OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.
TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: The Michelle Obama Factor.
UPDATE: Report: Barack Obama Is Telling Joe Biden to Quit the 2024 Race.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Belgium Signs Artemis Accords.