UNIVERSITIES MAKING BIG PAYOUTS OVER COVID CLOSURES: COVID class-action splurge continues: GWU university near White House pays $5M for shutting down class.

Class-action lawyers may have frowned when Cornell University agreed to pay just $3 million last fall to settle a lawsuit seeking tuition refunds from its shutdown of classroom instruction early in the COVID-19 pandemic – a far cry from Ivy League peer Columbia’s $12.5 million payout for the same actions two years earlier.

They are likely grinning now that a comparably sized but less prestigious private university, blocks from the White House, has agreed to pay much more than Cornell, raising the prospect of more big payouts for class counsel well into 2024.

They were warned.

Cheering for the litigation and resulting settlement: one of GWU’s most vocal and feisty law professors, John Banzhaf, who pioneered public interest lawsuits against Big Tobacco and has needled the administration on free speech and students’ rights for years.

Banzhaf took a victory lap Thursday after GWU alerted eligible students, noting he publicly encouraged Revolutionaries and students nationwide to sue for refunds from COVID dorm evictions and warned colleges resuming “Zoom U” amid the Omicron variant surge they were legally vulnerable.

He also promoted and celebrated early rulings against universities, such as a Florida federal court’s rejection of Barry University’s argument that in-person and online education were functionally the same, which laid the groundwork for a $2.4 million settlement in fall 2021.

Longterm, though, universities may be better off losing these than having courts rule that their in-class product is no better than Zoom classes. . . .

IOWA: Nikki Haley Managed to Insult All of Iowa’s GOP Voters With 1 Weird Trick.

MEDIA MATTERS HAS ALWAYS JUST BEEN A SELF-HERDING MECHANISM FOR LEFTY JOURNALISTS: Democratic Megadonors Bankroll Media Matters, Leaked Donor List Shows.

AT AMAZON, Shop the Winter Sales. #CommissionEarned

WHICH OFFICE DO I GO TO, TO GET MY WORDS BACK? Attorney for Carol Swain Sends Letter to Harvard Corporation Demanding Answers for Plagiarism by Disgraced President.

The Tennessee Star obtained the letter written by an attorney representing Dr. Carol M. Swain, sent on Wednesday to the Harvard Corporation, including Interim President Alan Garber and Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker, demanding answers about what Swain claims is plagiarism of her work by outgoing President Claudine Gay.

The letter revealed Swain requires answers about what Harvard considers “duplicative language,” which is what the university has acknowledged Gay committed in several of her academic works.

Writer and activist Christopher Rufo in December raised allegations that the former Harvard president plagiarized material from Swain’s work for her 1997 Ph.D. thesis. Swain is a former political science professor at Vanderbilt and a graduate of both the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Yale University.

Swain expects Harvard explain the difference between “duplicative language” and “verbatim copying” without attribution, whether the institution requires quotation marks to be used for “the identical replication of another author’s language,” and when it is appropriate to retroactively edit an academic text to include quotation marks around another author’s language.

In the letter, the lawyers wrote that Swain also demands Harvard declare whether Gay’s dissertation, which Swain alleges included material plagiarized from her book Black Faces, Black Interests, meets the Harvard University Guidelines for PhD Dissertation from 1997.

“How many instances of duplicative language in a scholarly work would constitute plagiarism?” The attorneys queried, “Would five instances of duplicative language constitute plagiarism? Would 50?”

Swain also asked through her attorney for Harvard to clarify whether “the discovery of plagiarism in a dissertation after a Harvard degree has been awarded” would “impact the status or validity of the degree conferred?”

Swain’s questions have been largely ignored by the mainstream media, which doesn’t seem much interested in intellectual theft from a black woman.

BUT IT’S BEEN VERY LUCRATIVE FOR HIM! Ibram Kendi’s Simplistic View of Equity, Race and Success Overlooks a Lot.

2024 IS GOING TO BE A LONG YEAR: Biden Drops First Campaign Ad, and It’s As Dishonest and Embarrassing As You’d Expect.

I CHECKED. DIDN’T COME OUT APRIL FIRST:  ‘Giant’ predator worms more than half a billion years old discovered in North Greenland.

Giant is relative. They’re as giant as Bidennomics is yugely successful. But anyway….

MIKE STOPA: Can ChatGPT Reason?

WHY IS HE PERMITTED TO FOUL OUR SACRED SITES?   Biden Will Detail How Trump is Supposedly a ‘Threat to Our Democracy’ at Valley Forge on Jan. 6.

FIGHTING EUGENICISTS IS ALWAYS THE GOOD FIGHT:  Review: The Strange Case of Dr. Couney by Dawn Raffel.

QUICK, COUNTER-SUE FOR INTERFERING WITH THE BUS COMPANIES ABILITY TO DO BUSINESS:  Eric Adams Suing Bus Companies Bringing Migrants From Texas to NYC.

This farce would be hilarious if it weren’t taking place in my own country, but say, in another planet.

WE CAN HOPE:  Can the Democrats offend enough people to make even their aggressive election tampering impossible?

IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER WHERE WE CAME FROM:  January 2, 1777. The Second Battle of Trenton and George Washington at the Top of His Game.

THE NERVE!!! WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS, THE PRESIDENT OF HARVARD?  Texas Republican Mayra Flores accused of passing off stolen food pics as her own cooking.

BUT THEY’RE REALLY BUSY PURSUING THE 15K* WHITE SUPREMACISTS IN THE COUNTRY:  FBI ‘Aware’ of Hoax Bomb Threats at Various State Capitols.

You can’t expect them to be everywhere, now!

*14k of which are various types of Fed.

OVER RELIANCE ON EXPERTS SEEMS THE MORE LIKELY CAUSE:  Could AI cause human extinction? Experts reveal how likely that really is.

A REMINDER THIS MAN LIES WITH EVERY WORD HE SAYS, INCLUDING A AND THE:  Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas Blames Climate Change for US Border Failure.

IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE CONTEXT OF ‘PROMPT’:   Outgoing Harvard president Claudine Gay accused of ‘lying’ about ‘promptly requesting corrections’ to plagiarized works.

IT’S TIME TO TURN THE TABLES:

SHOT:  Vivek Ramaswamey Demolishes Woke Fake “Journalist” Who Demands Not Only That He Condemn “White Supremacy,” But Do So Using the Exact Catechism She Dictates to Him.

CHASER:  The ratio will keep you warm on a long winter night.

EVERYONE SHOULD:  Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo Calls For a Halt in the Use of COVID-19 mRNA Shots.

FOR A CHANGE THE LOOTERS ACTUALLY TOOK FOOD INSTEAD OF HIGH-END ELECTRONICS & JEWELRY:  Mob of over 100 looters smashes car through Compton bakery, trashes store after street takeover.

But still destructive looters.

OUR DESPICABLE POLITICIANS:  Your Tax Dollars Helped Hamas Hide Their October 7 Planning From Israel’s Intelligence Services.

YOU’VE GOT TO UNDERSTAND THIS IN THE PROPER INTERSECTIONAL CONTEXT:

SHOT:  Freed Israeli hostage says she endured ‘psychological warfare’ during 50 days of Hamas captivity.

CHASER:  Nova music festival survivor describes his panic during barefoot 15-mile escape from Hamas.

CLAUDINE GAY WOULDN’T KNOW THE TRUTH IF IT BIT HER:  A Gay Fisking.