“VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS CONTINUES TO LEAD ON MATERNAL MORTALITY ISSUES”:  That’s the latest press release from the Democratic Party.  They seem to think that the racial disparities in maternal mortality are a top-line issue–one worthy of major legislation–even though maternal mortality itself is very rare.  The Commission on Civil Rights did a recent report on the issue, with several of its members blaming racism for the problem.  Here is my dissent from that report.  If you want more African American mothers to seek medical care early in their pregnancy, telling them that the doctors and nurses are a bunch of racists is a poor strategy. 

IT WAS 80 YEARS AGO TODAY:  “A date which will live in infamy.”  I can tell you exactly where my mother was standing in her farm house in Nobleboro, Maine when the news came over the radio.  I know exactly what my grandfather said, and exactly how my grandmother responded.  It’s Vannah family lore.

JOHN FUND:  A bunch of old folks.

ON THIS DAY IN 1978:  ALMOST 1000 DIE IN THE HORRIFIC JONESTOWN MURDER-SUICIDE:  I blogged about this a year and a half ago on the anniversary of Jim Jones’ birth.  To me, the run-up to the massacre is more interesting than the massacre itself.  The part people forget is his close relationship with so many Democratic politicians.

THE 150^th ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION: On this day in 1871, the NRA received its charter from New York. Soon thereafter, General Ambrose Burnside was elected its first president.

Prior to the then-recent unpleasantness between the states, Burnside had been a firearms manufacturer in Rhode Island. During the war, he became concerned about his soldiers’ lack of marksmanship skills, stating, “Out of ten soldiers who are perfect in drill and the manual of arms, only one knows the purpose of the sights on his gun or can hit the broad side of a barn.” He was thus a natural choice to be president an organization that was primarily concerned with advancing marksmanship.

Fun fact about Burnside: He has rather unusual side burns. In fact, that’s where we get the term “sideburns.” No fooling.

ANY BETS ON WHETHER MERRICK GARLAND WILL INVESTIGATE THIS ONE?:  “A pro-Critical Race Theory parent told attendees at a Texas school board meeting that he has 1,000 soldiers ‘locked and loaded’ for those who ‘dare’ question the need for race-based curricula.”

THEY’RE COMING FOR THE FOUR-YEAR-OLDS NOW:  The University of Texas is “conducting a project to help us better understand how we can support young children learning about anti-Black racial bias.”  UT’s website calls its program “GoKAR! (Kids Against Racism).”

MARTIN CENTER:  Here’s a transcript of the talk I gave at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal in Raleigh last week:  “How Short-Term Thinking on Race Has Caused Long-Term Problems in Higher Education.”

AT THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY’S NATIONAL LAWYERS CONFERENCE:  I’m having a great time at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C with what looks like over a thousand Federalist Society lawyers.  Great discussions … as always.

(For some of you, spending three days with a thousand lawyers, even a thousand conservative lawyers, may sound like purgatory, but … well … these are my peeps.)

Tomorrow, I’ll be doing a book signing for A Dubious Expediency:  How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education.  If you’re here for the conference or you live around here and want to come by, I’ll be up on the Mezzanine level at the Mayflower from 10:30 to 11:15 am.  You can bring your own copy or buy a copy there.

“VOTERS ARE REVOLTING AGAINST WOKE EDUCATION”:  The piece discusses my anthology–A Dubious Expediency:  How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education (which you can still buy at Amazon or wherever you buy swell books written/edited by conservative law professors.)

JOHN FUND:  Ronald Reagan predicted all this.

AFTER THE VIRGINIA ELECTIONS: I’m still a little giddy about Tuesday’s elections (though Glenn is right about not getting cocky).

But here’s something that I can add: Don’t think electing a governor (or even a conservative state legislature) is going to solve the problem of critical race theory being taught at the K-12 level. The Virginia legislature would be spinning its wheels to pass a statute that says “Don’t teach CRT.” It might as well pass a statute that says “Don’t teach stupid stuff.” Nobody agrees on what constitutes CRT. And we are dealing in part with ideologues who don’t want to agree. They want to teach what they want to teach, and they’ll find a way to say that their chosen curriculum isn’t CRT, no matter how CRT is defined.

Instead, lawmakers would be lending real help by passing laws that allow parents reasonably easy access to a school’s curricular material. State freedom of information acts should already make this possible at public schools, but those may need to be beefed up. This summer I helped an organization called FAIR work on model state legislation that would allow parents of private school students that access too. State legislators might want to take a look.

Ultimately, however, the war must be (and is being) fought at the local level. Sensible people need to run for school board and clean up the curriculum. Yes, Instapundit readers, I mean you. Somebody has to do it.

HERE’S A PROGRAM FOR TODAY:  The John Locke Foundation presents “Racial Preferences in Higher Education” at 12:00 noon, Monday, November 1, via Zoom.

A DUBIOUS EXPEDIENCY:  HOW RACE PREFERENCES DAMAGE HIGHER EDUCATION:  Rich Vedder reviews my recently edited anthology.

(By the way, the anthology makes an excellent present for a birthday or anniversary or for Diwali, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, or Christmas!  This will be especially so if all those ships off the coast of Los Angeles that are laden with toys, games, negligees, fruitcakes, and Christmas sweaters are still anchored there in January.).

TRANSPARENCY:  The Commission on Civil Rights has now responded to what appears to be a legitimate FOIA request concerning Catherine Lhamon, its former chair and Biden’s controversial nominee to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.  But it did so only AFTER it was sued for failure to respond and (more significantly) only AFTER Lhamon was confirmed by the Senate in a 50-50 vote in which Vice President Harris had to break the tie.  Oh … and the Commission has evidently produced only 280 of the 3862 responsive records.

THE AUTOMATION OF McJOBS?: I just saw these statistics on Wikipedia: In 2013, McDonald’s had 35,429 locations, a net income of $5,586 million and 440,000 employees. In 2019, it had 38,695 locations (more locations!), a net income of $6025 million (more profit!), and 205,000 employees (less than half as many employees!). (Update:  A reader tells me that much of the decrease comes from McDonald’s selling off company-owned locations.  Still at the location near my mother’s home in Virginia, the advent of “tablets” for ordering soon resulted in a very significant decrease in workers.  It wasn’t subtle.)

THE NINTH CIRCUIT IS NO LONGER RELIABLY PROGRESSIVE: “Ninth Circuit Panel Rejects District Court’s Covid Takeover of Immigration Detention Facilities.”

(When the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights visited immigration detention facilities a few years back, my progressive colleagues were shocked to see that they were not the hell holes they had been led to believe. It was almost funny.)

K.C. JOHNSON:  “The Return of Catherine Lhamon Is Another Biden Betrayal.”  (She was confirmed as head of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights today with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie vote.)

DEAR ATTORNEY GENERAL GARLAND:  The four conservative members of the U.S Commission on Civil Rights (including me) wrote a letter to Garland about his infamous memo:   “We have combed the internet for signs that parents petitioning school boards are anything approaching a national problem. Nearly all of what we have seen so far makes us proud to be Americans: Parents care about the education of their children, and they are not willing to allow them to be indoctrinated into a radical ideology.   It is always possible that a few of these parents have gotten out of hand and made threats that they should not have. If so, law enforcement is entirely appropriate. But is there evidence that local law enforcement is not up to the job? Why is federal intervention needed here and not in the thousands of other unrelated cases of overheated exchanges that occur regularly across the country? Why does this case call for federal intervention? Is it surprising to you that concerned parents across the country view your memorandum as an endorsement of the [National School Boards Association]’s description of their protests as comparable to ‘domestic terrorism’?”

I hope Garland gets thousands of letters.

“WE LIVE SUBMERGED AT THE BOTTOM OF AN OCEAN OF AIR”:  On this day in 1608, Evangelista Torricelli, physicist, mathematician, and inventor of the barometer was born.

DO YOU OWN STOCK IN LOWE’S?:  Do you want to stop Lowe’s from discriminating against small business owners on the basis of race?  Please help the American Civil Rights Project.  Our organization is having success in reminding “woke” corporations that anti-discrimination laws protect all of us, not just some.  But we need actual shareholders to make this work.  If you own Lowe’s stock (or even if you’re just curious), please click.  

WATCH OUT!  HERE COMES PAUL TAYLOR!:  For twenty years, Paul worked as a Republican counsel on Capitol Hill, mostly for the House Committee on the Judiciary, where he specialized in civil rights, civil liberties and constitutional issues.  On a couple of occasions, I had the pleasure of working with him.  Now that he’s off the Hill, he will be speaking his mind on Substack. His first post is a 50-minute video debunking in detail the false narratives promulgated by some of the most popular “critical race theory” books.  It’s been a hit with many of the heroic parents who have been challenging corrupt school boards about the efforts to indoctrinate their children into a radical ideology religion.  (Yes I’m talking about the parents that the National School Boards Association compared to domestic terrorists.)  You can sign up there for his Substack if you feel so inclined, including for the free version.  Paul also has a series of essays on the same topic.

PUTTING POLITICS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE:  The APSA cancels the Claremont Institute.

JUSTICE GORSUCH AND THE TRANSGENDER BATHROOM ISSUE: The transgender bathroom issue has made it into the (conservative) news again—this time in a case involving an alleged sexual assault in at a Loudoun County school.

I don’t understand why so many people assume Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) requires schools to allow transgender girls (anatomical boys who “identify as female”) to use the girls’ toilets, locker rooms, and showers. Whether you’re a fan of Justice Gorsuch’s reasoning or not, Bostock doesn’t go that far. Indeed, the opinion denies that it is intended to apply in that context.

I would go further: Bostock’s logic actually strengthens the case for school discretion in dealing with the transgender bathroom, locker room, and shower situations.  Its logic suggests that individual school districts should have the option of dealing with the issue as they see fit.

The Bostock opinion is hyper-textual.  Its logic goes something like this:

• The plaintiff—a man who revealed that he was going to wear skirts and make-up and use mannerisms that are generally thought of as feminine—was fired from his job at the defendant’s funeral home.
• A woman who wears skirts and make-up and who uses mannerisms that are generally thought of as feminine would not have been fired from that job.
• That’s sex discrimination! A man and a woman behaving in the same way were treated differently.
• Because Title VII bans sex discrimination (and no exception to that ban applies here), this is a violation of Title VII.

Note that Justice Gorsuch did not subscribe to the notion that transgender women are women or that transgender men are men. Indeed, if he had done so, it would have ruined the plaintiff’s case. Title VII does not outlaw discrimination between different kinds of women or between different kinds of men. To win a case, the plaintiff needs to be able to show that a male is being treated differently from a female. In Gorsuch’s view, that’s the key to liability.

Note also that Gorsuch’s logic would presumably also apply to a male who isn’t transgender, but who just wants to wear a skirt and makeup (or to the more common situation of a woman who isn’t transgender and who wants to wear pants and not wear makeup). It’s all about treating males and females differently.

Title IX applies to federally funded schools and covers not just employees but also students. Like Title VII, it bans sex discrimination. It also authorizes the President to promulgate regulations that allow for separate living facilities. President Gerald Ford did so. The regulation explicitly authorizes the separation of toilets, locker rooms, and showers by sex.

So let’s try the Bostock hyper-textual logic in this context:

(more…)

WOKE UNIVERSITIES CAN’T BE TOO CAREFUL ABOUT WHOM THEY HIRE: New job postings at the University of San Diego reflect the university’s plunge into wokeness. Just to get an interview for a job as a philosophy professor, a communications studies professor, or an architecture professor, you must submit “a diversity statement in which you address A) your values with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion; B) your experience working with minoritized populations and/or on issues that disproportionately affect diverse populations, and C) your plans related to diversity and inclusion in your teaching and research.”

Similar requirements have popped up at other colleges and universities. USD used to be a little better than the average school at avoiding such nonsense. But that was then, and this is now.