MINDING THE CAMPUS:  It’s time for the 2022 Lysenko Award.

IT’S SCIENCE!!:  When Musk declares the NYT to be “a lobbying firm for the far left” for failing to cover “Twitter Files,” he may be pointing out an additional example of what Hal Pashler and I wrote about in “Perceptions of Newsworthiness Are Contaminated by a Political Usefulness Bias.”

ANOTHER VOTE OF “NO CONFIDENCE” IN THE (NEWLY WOKE) UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO:  Some of you read James Allan’s essay on the mass retirement of USD’s more conservative law faculty members.  At the time of the essay, the count was four–Larry Alexander, Kevin Cole, Steven Smith, and me.  Well, you can add one more–Tom Smith.  This is a three-year process for all of us.  We won’t be out the door till 2025.  But if you know somebody who was considering attending USD School of Law because of its reputation for having an ideologically diverse faculty (we do get a fair number of those), you may want to give them the bad news.  There are still a few conservative faculty members left, but their numbers are dwindling fast.

IT’S A CRAZY OLD WORLD:  “Idaho Law Banning Transgender Athletes Heard in 9th Circuit.”

(My step-by-step argument for why Title IX does not require schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers of the sex they “identify” with is adaptable to the athletic context).

TRYING TO KEEP CLASSROOMS SAFE AND ORDERLY IS RACIST:  There really are Biden Administration officials who think that.  It’s modern progressive gospel.  We really are in a mess.  I just wish I had better news.

MORE ON COLORADO SPRINGS SHOOTING SUSPECT:  The New York Post details “their” [non-binary pronouns preferred] problems.

HEATHER MAC DONALD:  What happened to the crime issue in the midterms? 

It turns out that black lives really don’t matter.  In the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections, conservatives had relentlessly raised the alarm about the post–George Floyd crime surge: homicides had risen 29 percent in 2020 (the largest increase on record), and they have continued rising since then. Democrats and their media allies responded either that crime was a racist fiction or that, because post-Floyd crime levels nationally were still lower than they were in the early 1990s, there was nothing to see here, folks, move on!

These opposing positions were tantamount to saying that black lives matter or that they don’t. Black Americans have borne the brunt of the increased violence since the George Floyd race riots. Their share of homicide victims went from 53 percent in 2019 (blacks are 13 percent of the national population) to 56 percent in 2020. At least an additional 2,164 black lives were lost in 2020 over the 2019 count, compared with an increase of 950 white and Hispanic homicide victims combined in 2020. Such disparities only worsened in 2021 and 2022. In 2020, blacks between the ages of ten and 24 died of gun homicide at 20 times the rate of whites in the same age range. In 2021, blacks between the ages of ten and 24 died of gun homicide at nearly 25 times the rate of whites of the same age.

It’s the only racial disparity that progressives don’t care about.

AFTER SCHOOL SATAN CLUB:  California elementary school has a new “After School Satan Club.”  Parents not amused.

FRANCES WIDDOWSON:  “The Perils of University Indigenization.”

I’M COVID POSITIVE, BUT SO FAR NOT ALL THAT SICK:  At least it gives me a chance to post.  Here’s an interesting piece:  “A Woke Panic on Maternal Mortality.”

As is often the case, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights provides early warning as to the issues progressives will emphasize (and seek funding for).  We did a report last year on the racial disparities in maternal mortality.  My dissenting statement is here.  Progressives seem to believe the racial differences in maternal mortality are the result of uncaring doctors who pay no attention to the pain of African American mothers, because they just don’t give a d*mn.  Progressives don’t even attempt to explain why non-Hispanic white mothers die in childbirth more often than Asian or Hispanic mothers.

WOKE MEDICAL SCHOOLS:  They’re everywhere.

WELL WORTH THE THE $5000 PRICE TAG:  Dinner Party From Hell.

YES, OF COURSE YOU KNOW HOW HE DID IT:  72nd ranked boys’ track runner in Washington State, suddenly becomes the top ranked runner.  The country s getting tired of this nonsense.

ON THIS DAY IN 1993, A JURY OF HIS PEERS ACQUITTED DALE AKIKI, A VOLUNTEER NURSERY SCHOOL ASSISTANT AT HIS CHURCH, OF CHARGES OF CHILD ABUSE AND KIDNAPPING: I guess that means justice was done. Except that it wasn’t. Dale Akiki should never have been tried in the first place. He spent 2 ½ years in jail awaiting trial.

But let me back up for a minute. When daycare moral panic of the 1980s hit, I didn’t have any trouble keeping my head. Many of the allegations of sexual and Satanic ritual abuse were obviously false. Sometimes they were utterly fantastic—like the allegations of the McMartin Preschool children that they rode in hot-air balloons, saw witches flying and were taken through underground tunnels beneath the preschool. I remember people saying, “Children don’t lie about these things” (presumably they meant the sexual abuse, not the witches and tunnels). But that’s a joke. Children lie about everything, especially when they think they are telling adults what they want to hear.

Then came the Dale Akiki case. Despite my earlier skepticism, when I first saw the local television coverage of the Dale Akiki trial here in San Diego, my initial kneejerk reaction was (to my great shame), “Good grief, they finally got one.” Why? Because Dale Akiki was unusual looking. He was born with Noonan syndrome, a congenital disorder that sometimes results in a large head and drooping eyelids and a number of other developmental problems. Also the television crew held the camera at a sharp angle (the “Dutch angle”), so as to emphasize his unusual appearance. I was an idiot.

But not for long. When the local news reported on the prosecution’s evidence the following day, it was not very impressive. I thought to myself, “Well … maybe they’ll get to the real evidence tomorrow.” But they didn’t. And the next day was no better. Eventually, the prosecution rested. They didn’t have anything on this poor guy—just a bunch of implausible accusations by nursery school children who had been prodded into making accusations by therapists convinced that Akiki was a monster. The children accused him of bringing an elephant and a giraffe to class, killing them as a warning to the children not to tattle. They also accused him of dunking them in toilets, drinking blood, and killing a human baby. Sheesh. Fortunately, there was evidence of therapists’ coaching in the form of videos of the interrogations.

I was terrified that the jury would convict. But, unlike the juries in some of the other daycare cases, the 12 San Diegans on that jury did their job right. Bless them.

Why did the District Attorney allow the case to go forward, despite recommendations to the contrary from prosecutors experienced in child abuse cases? He was being pressured by Jack Goodall, then-CEO of Jack-in-the-Box. Convinced of Akiki’s guilt, Goodall—a contributor to the D.A.’s campaign—urged him to assign the case to a different prosecutor. (Yes, that sort of thing happens in America.) The job went to Mary Avery, who was the founder of the San Diego Child Abuse Foundation. Goodall and his wife were the largest financial contributors to that organization.

By the way, San Diego voters did their job right too. The D.A. lost re-election in 1994, largely due to the Akiki case.

But here’s the part of the story I like best: During his incarceration, the deputies at the jail got to know Dale Akiki. They thought he was a sweetheart of a guy, and they knew intuitively that he was being railroaded. Twenty of them pooled their resources and had a limo ready to take him from the courthouse on the day of his acquittal. Purr.

(This is a re-post from four years ago.  I was thinking about Dale Akiki a few days ago and couldn’t resist posting it again.  I still regret my initial knee-jerk reaction.)

LIVE STREAM:  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS v. HARVARD:  I’ll be on a panel discussing the Harvard case at the Federalist Society’s Lawyers Conference today at “approximately” 12:30 Eastern.   The time approximate because it’s a lunch panel.  They’ll start once everybody has eaten.  I hope to say a few words about my “Agenda for Congress.”

“GENDER AFFIRMING” CARE FOR CHILDREN and THE DESTRUCTION OF GIRL’S SPORTS:  This election cycle, there have been quite a few ads highlighting Democratic support for bizarre transgender policies.  That’s an improvement over 2020 when it seemed Republicans were too intimidated to bring the subject up.  Maybe there is hope for this country after all.  We’ll know a lot more by tonight.

WITH RON DeSANTIS AS GOVERNOR, I’M GETTING TO LIKE FLORIDA:  DeSantis’s Board of Education is doing what it can to resist ridiculous federal policies.  If and when the U.S. Department of Education gets around to officially issuing a transgender bathroom regulation (or reissuing the transgender bathroom guidance), Florida should consider seeking an injunction in court.  Somebody’s got to do it.

QUIN HILLYER: KEEP CALM, FOLKS:  “Arizona’s Ballot Vigilantes Deserve the Rebuke the New Black Panthers Never Received.”

(Remember the New Black Panthers’ scandal?  I sure do.)

STRUCTURAL RACISM:  Did you know that the federal government earmarks piles of money for “Hispanic Serving Institutions”?  To qualify for this gravy train at least 25% of a university’s students must identify as Hispanic.  Naturally, this causes universities located in areas with large numbers of Hispanics to fall all over themselves to get to 25%.  Alas, my own university is an example.  Even if the Supreme Court comes down hard on race-preferential admissions, the system will continue so long as structural supports like the HSI program are in place.

(In this article, I recommended that Congress–or more realistically, some future equality-friendly Congress–terminate the program on the ground that it is unconstitutional.  Note that Historically Black Colleges and Universities are on a different constitutional footing and that they are not required to have any particular racial make up to be qualified.)

WHAT THE SUPREME COURT JUSTICES DIDN’T MENTION:  One topic that no one brought up at the Monday’s Supreme Court oral argument on affirmative action was mismatch.  Of the six conservative justices, not one was willing to bring up the research that suggests that students who receive an affirmative action leg up are actually made worse off by that supposed benefit.  I think I know why:  When Justice Scalia brought it up (very inartfully) at the 2015 oral argument in Fisher v. University of Texas, he got clobbered for it in the media.  The last thing they wanted was a media frenzy like the one Scalia had to endure.

LATEST EQUITY ARGUMENT:  Now that white males are a minority on the Supreme Court, the latest complaint is that the lawyers who argue before the Court are still mostly white males.  I fear that the next step will be to demand that the Court actually decide cases along demographic lines.  Eg.:  If 50% of Supreme Court cases are argued by women, then women advocates must win 50% of the time.  We can laugh at that now.  But just a few years ago we were laughing at the notion that a 6″ 4″ person with  … uh … male equipment … is just another girl on the girls’ field hockey team.  I’m done with classifying arguments as too crazy to worry about.

MISSED THE SUPREME COURT ORAL ARGUMENTS IN THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CASES ON MONDAY?:  Here’s a video of  the Manhattan Institute’s post-argument analysis.

DOWN EAST PORNO:  Should elementary schools in Maine carry pornographic comic books like Gender Queer that depict oral sex between boys?  Is that really a hard question?

TODAY!  TODAY!:  The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Harvard/UNC affirmative action cases TODAY.  Then at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, the Manhattan Institute will be presenting a virtual post-argument analysis with Wai Wah Chin, James Copland, Ilya Shapiro and yours truly.  It should be interesting!  You can register here.

(Here’s the amicus curiae brief that Pete Kirsanow and I did for the case.  And here’s my article on legislation that a future Congress should pass in order to remove the structural supports for race preferential admissions (no matter how the Supreme Court rules).)

(Bumped and amended from yesterday.)

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): As I’ve noted before, affirmative action is beloved by elites, but not by much of anyone else.

COMING SOON!:  The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Harvard/UNC affirmative action cases tomorrow.  Then at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, the Manhattan Institute will be presenting a virtual post-argument analysis with Wai Wah Chin, James Copland, Ilya Shapiro and yours truly.  It should be interesting!  You can register here.

(And here’s the amicus curiae brief that Pete Kirsanow and I did for the case.)