SCHOOL DISCIPLINE:  The Chicago Tribune is concerned that African American students are disciplined at higher rates than other students.  But in making racial comparisons of this kind, you have to compare misbehavior rates, not population sizes.  If African Americans students misbehave in school at higher rates than other students (and self-reported data indicates that they do), higher rates of discipline are to be expected.   We need to be careful that we don’t make classrooms chaotic by holding back on discipline.  That’s not doing students a favor.

PRONOUN POLICE GO AFTER MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS:  I got called the “Hairy It” (a play on my surname) in elementary school even though “it” was not my pronoun of choice.  That was before Title IX, so I wasn’t able to turn it into a federal case.  Instead, I had to come up with similar epithets for my rowdy playmates … which, upon reflection, was kind of fun.

CORPORATE WOKEISM:  Dropbox advertises that it intends to violate Title VII.

JOHN McGINNIS:  “Lawyers for Radical Change.“

JEFF JACOBY:  “Who’s Afraid of Liberal Media Bias?”  (I’m not half as confident as he is that liberal media bias has been overcome.)

ON THIS DAY IN 1940:  Two brothers named McDonald–Richard and Maurice–opened the first McDonald’s restaurant in San Bernardino, California.  Ray Kroc, then a milkshake mixer salesman, became involved in 1954 and purchased the company in 1961 for $2.7 million.

I WAS THERE IN DALLAS FOR THIS:  Justice Thomas talks about the leak … and much more.

THE LAST SALEM WITCH TRIAL:  On this date in 1878 (yes, that’s 1878, not 1678), the last witch trial opened in Salem, Massachusetts.  Sort of.

UPDATED VERSION NOW AVAILABLE:  If you haven’t had a chance to read A Dubious Expediency–my 2015 essay on the problem with mismatch on campuses–the updated version (2021) is now available electronically.

(Or you can buy it here in a book that also contains essays by Heather Mac Donald, Peter Kirsanow, Peter Wood, Maimon Schwarzschild and others.  The book is named for the essay.)

R.I.P.  JOHN LEO:   He was a lovely man and always willing to do battle with political correctness.  He will be missed.

ON MY WAY TO THE OLD PARKLAND CONFERENCE IN DALLAS:  This should be good.

PARENTS DEMAND MORE COPS AT TEMPLE UNIVERSITY:  No surprise there.

CHARLES LIPSON:  “Today’s ‘Diversity’ Oaths Resemble 1950s ‘Loyalty’ Oaths.”  Yes, of course, they do.  Lipson writes about George Anastaplo, who refused such an oath in the 1950s and paid a price for it.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT:  On this day in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act into law.  Under it, farmers could be paid subsides for not cultivating their land.  The Supreme Court found part of the scheme unconstitutional in 1936, but the Act was cleaned up and repromulgated in 1938 with most of the same features.

My Uncle Paul was an expert in pineapple cultivation and spent his professional career in Hawaii, the Philippines, and Kenya putting that knowledge to good use, before retiring to his native Maine (which is not exactly pineapple country).  When I practiced law in Washington, he used to tease me that I needed to get him a sweet deal with the Department of Agriculture under which he would agree not to grow pineapples in Maine in return for a nifty bundle of cash.  We laughed.  But, upon reflection, I can’t state with certainty that he would not have been entitled to it.

“DON’T WEIGH ME” CARDS:  Is it just me or are these cards unusually silly?  I can understand people being sensitive about their weight, but it’s important to alert both doctor and patient of any unexplained weight fluctuations.  (Even if some patients don’t want to be weighed in their doctor’s office, do they really need a card to announce it?  Why not just say so?)  Evidently, these cards are becoming popular enough for major clinics to … uh … “weigh in” against them.

COUNT ‘EM:  SIX KINDS OF PROBLEMS:  Andrew Gillen has counted up the many problems with student loan forgiveness in a report for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.  How many kinds of problems does he find?  He finds “logical and rhetorical problems,” “educational problems,” “economic problems,” “moral problems,” “political problems,” and “legal problems.”  Minding the Campus has kindly excerpted Gillen’s arguments for all six varieties.

OH CANADA!:  Frances Widdowson discusses “Exclusionary Inclusion” as practiced north of the border.

THE CROWN OF THE CONTINENT:  On this day in 1910, Congress established Glacier National Park.  (Go visit, but watch out for the 1000 or so grizzly bears there.)

NOT ALL LOCKDOWN SKEPTICS ARE ON THE RIGHT:  “The Vindication of the Great Barrington Three.“

IF YOU’RE COMING TO MY CAMPUS, DON’T FORGET YOUR SH** KICKERS; YOU’RE GOING TO NEED THEM:  “Can We ‘Long March’ Back Through the Institutions?“

THANK YOU, DOCTOR!:  “Doctor founds nonprofit to combat “woke ideology” in medical schools.”

WHAT IF THE STUDENT IS ONLY “BLACK IDENTIFYING”?:  Degree program exclusively for “Black, male identifying” students launched at Chicago-area college.

BUT EVERYTHING HAS A DISPARATE IMPACT ON SOME PROTECTED GROUP:  A New Jersey lawyer argues that an employer who rejects a job applicant on the ground that she is a prostitute is violating of Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination, since such a policy would have a disparate impact on women..

For background on disparate impact liability and why it doesn’t make a lick of sense, read this article—Title VII Disparate Impact Liability Makes Almost Everything Presumptively Illegal.

BACK WHEN WORLD’S FAIRS WERE HONKIN’ BIG DEALS:  On this day in 1876, the Centennial International Exhibition—celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—opened in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.  President Ulysses Grant, accompanied by Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II, gave the opening address.  Thirty-seven countries and 14,420 businesses participated.

Among the many amazing new inventions one could view was Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone.  Upon being shown how it works, Dom Pedro is said to have exclaimed, “My God, it talks!”

Steam power was king in 1876, so a rock drill, grinding machines, screw-making machines, and a whole host of other steam-powered wonders were on display.  But so were recently introduced consumer products like Hires Root Beer, Heinz ketchup, and a funny yellow fruit that comes in a bunch from Central America.  And popcorn!

Don’t underestimate how important international expositions like this one were to the dissemination of knowledge about technology and the arts.  In a day before the various 20^th and 21^st century methods of mass communication we’ve come to know, these events mattered a lot.  Almost 10 million people attended the Centennial International Exhibition in 1876.  The most recent census (1870) had put the American population at only 39 million.

Just as important, the event was an opportunity for the United States, having just recently shaken off its war weariness, to shine on the international stage.  The government of the people, by the people, for the people had not perished from the earth.  And her highly inventive and entrepreneurial citizens were prospering and optimistic about their future.

AMICI:  If you’d like to view all the friend-of-the-court briefs filed in support of Students For Fair Admissions in the Harvard/UNC case, here they are.