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.

LANCE IZUMI:  “Woke Math Returns to California.”

THIS IS REALLY OUTRAGEOUS:  “UNC Journalism School Downgraded to Provisional Accreditation in the Wake of DEI Concerns.”  This is punishment for the L’affaire Nikole Hannah-Jones.

You won’t go too far wrong if your conceptualize accrediting agencies as cartel enforcers.  Specifically, they enforce DEI norms.  The treatment of George Mason University Law School on admissions policy several years back is still astonishing to me.   A strong case can be made for legislative action to stop accreditors from insisting on race-preferential admissions.  But it will require a different Congress and President from what we have now.

FILING TODAY:  Pete Kirsanow are I are filing our Amicus Curiae Brief in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard today.  It is an expanded version of the brief we filed last year at the cert stage.  The most significant addition is a discussion of the Hispanic Serving Institution program.  Did you know that a university whose student body is at least 25% Hispanic can be entitled to large federal subsidies?  If you’re thinking this could cause colleges and universities to engage in ever-larger preferences for Hispanic students in order to get its share of the federal honeypot, you’re obviously right.  This is a big deal at the U.S. Department of Education and also at the National Science Foundation.  There’s a lot of federal money out there.

JOHN FUND:  “Chicago’s Decline Accelerates as Boeing Abandons It.”  (Full Confession:  It makes me ill just thinking about Chicago’s troubles.  I can’t help loving that city.)

MOSTLY NOT-SO-PEACEFUL:  A group claiming to be part of Antifa has set fire to the office of a pro-life group in Madison, Wisconsin.

WHOOPS!  I MISSED THIS WHEN IT CAME OUT LAST WEEK:  Inclusive Exclusion.

LEE LIBERMAN OTIS:  In Memoriam Orrin Hatch.  Among his many good works, Hatch was an early champion of the Federalist Society.

HA!:  Nina Totenberg says the “leading theory” on the Supreme Court leak is that a conservative clerk did it.

MEANWHILE AT PRINCETON:  “A faculty committee won its appeal against the appalling treatment of a classics professor by DEI administrators, but President Christopher Eisgruber has so far remained loyal to the commissars.”

JEFF JACOBY:  Banned in Boston.