LAST NIGHT, THE ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION HELD A FORUM ON THE BARKING MAD, CRT-BASED, ETHNIC STUDIES CURRICULA BEING OFFERED TO THEIR CHILDREN:  Parents concerned about indoctrination flooded the room.  Here’s the written version of the testimony given by my friend and colleague Professor Maimon Schwarzschild at the event.

The level of grassroots activism against CRT is truly impressive–not just in Orange County, but all across the country. There’s still some life in America.

STILL HAVEN’T READ A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education? :  It’s not too late to add it to your summer reading list.  With essays by John Ellis, me, Peter Kirsanow, Heather Mac Donald, Peter Wood, me & Carissa Mulder, Lance Izumi & Rowena Itchon, and Maimon Schwarzschild, it just might be worth your time.

WHEN YOU’VE LOST NPR … : Even NPR is concerned about rising crime now. Of course, the folks there see it as a public relations issue for the Democratic Party rather than a problem to be solved, but whatever.

Three years ago the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report on “Police Use of Force.” I used the opportunity to write a bit about the country’s history of treating black-on-black crime as if it doesn’t matter. It provides useful background now that things have gotten worse.

TODAY AT NOON EASTERN TIME & YOU’RE INVITED:  The Federalist Society has scheduled a book talk with my co-editor Maimon Schwarzschild and me for our anthology–A Dubious Expediency:  How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education.

MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE ERIC HOFFER AGAIN: On this day in 1898 … or maybe it was 1902 … and maybe it wasn’t even this day … maybe it was July 15, the great longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer was born. Maybe I’m just being nostalgic, but it seems to me that The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is still worth a read … maybe now more than ever.

PETER WOOD:  Critical Witchcraft Theory.

THE WASHINGTON POST THINKS 55 RACIALLY INTIMIDATING NOOSES HAVE BEEN HUNG AT CONSTRUCTION SITES IN THE LAST FEW YEARS: I guess it’s possible. But I would bet against it. In this Dissent to the Commission on Civil Rights’ report on hate crimes, I have a footnote that lists quite a few false “noose” alarms (e.g. a fishing knot and a shoelace) as well as several purposeful “noose” hoaxes (remember Jussie Smollett?). The piece also gives a little history behind the Southern Poverty Law Center that you might not know about.

OBAMA’S THIRD TERM?:  Comments are due tomorrow at the Department of Education on the Biden’s Administration’s proposal to return to (or maybe even go beyond) the Obama Administration’s ghastly school discipline policy.  A few years ago, Alison Somin and I wrote, “The Department of Education’s Obama-Era Initiative on Racial Disparities in School Discipline:  Wrong for Students and Teachers, Wrong on the Law.”  It’s still worth reading.

Brace yourself.  The Biden Administration is about to make K-12 schools even worse than they are now.

GOOD FOR THE NAS:  The National Association of Scholars Opposes the ABA’s Woke Standards for Law Schools.

MORE ON THE CATHERINE LHAMON NOMINATION:  Teresa Manning doubts Lhamon can be fair.

GIVEN THAT SHE OPPOSES DUE PROCESS, THE BOARD’S OPPOSITION SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE:  Wall Street Journal editorial board opposes the nomination of Catherine Lhamon to be Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights.

CRITICAL RACE THEORY IN EVANSTON, ILLINOIS:  Quin Hillyer has a two-part series on the anti-CRT lawsuit against the public schools in Evanston (a town I once called home).  Here’s Part I.  And here’s Part II.   Hillyer correctly describes the school system’s CRT practices as “vile.”

DEAR SUPREME COURT: I know you guys are on vacation now, but here is one (among many) reasons you should agree to review and ultimately reverse Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard (the case that deals with Harvard’s policy of discriminating against Asian Americans in admissions). Don’t be nervous. Don’t be shy. Buck up.

ABIGAIL SHRIER:  “Want to Save America?  Don’t Act Like a Conservative.”

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS: Griggs v. Duke Power Co., one of the least defensible opinions in the Supreme Court’s history, is now 50 years old. If you want to understand just how wrong an opinion can be (and how hard Congress tried to write a statute that couldn’t be misinterpreted), read Title VII Disparate Impact Liability Makes Almost Everything Presumptively Illegal.

TODAY!! AND YOU’RE INVITED!!: The National Association of Scholars is hosting a Zoom event on my new anthology—A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education—at 2:00 Eastern/1:00 Central/12:00 Mountain/11:00 Pacific. My co-editor Maimon Schwarzschild and I will discuss the book with essayist Peter Wood.

TAMING THE SERPENT … AND THE BUBONIC PLAGUE … AND TUBERCULOSIS: On this day in 1863, Albert Calmette—one of the history’s most prolific medical researchers—was born in Nice, France.

In 1891, Calmette established a branch of the Pasteur Institute in (then) French Indochina. There he studied cobra venom and other poisons. Back in France, he developed the first successful snake antivenom using serum derived from the blood of immunized horses.

Still a young man, Calmette went on to work with the Swiss-French physician Alexandre Yersin in developing a vaccine for the bubonic plague.  He traveled to Portugal to help study and fight an outbreak there in 1899.

His greatest contribution to medical science was his work on tuberculosis. The vaccine he helped develop—the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin or BCG vaccine—is not perfect (nothing ever is). But it is still used in many countries where tuberculosis is a serious threat and has saved many lives.   Weirdly, there is evidence that it helps prevent COVID 19 too.

I’m told that few things in the former French Indochina—now Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos—have retained French names. But there is still a Calmette Hospital in Phnom Penh and a Calmette Street in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City. Pasteur and Yersin have streets there too.  Long may it be so.

HERE COMES THE NEXT BIG THING: Law professors want “ecocide” made an offense on par with genocide.  “Ecocide” would be defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

VIRGIL, QUICK COME SEE:  Christopher Caldwell on Robert E. Lee.

A DUBIOUS EXPEDIENCY: HOW RACE PREFERENCES DAMAGE HIGHER EDUCATION:  Here’s my interview with First Things’ Mark Bauerlein.

MINDING THE CAMPUS:  Kenin Spivak reviews A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. (with special emphasis on Pete Kirsanow’s essay on campus separatism entitled “Segregation Now”).

AP CALLS NYC DEM MAYORAL PRIMARY FOR ERIC ADAMS:  I hope Democratic leaders across the country are listening.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Heh.

Also, apparently it’s okay to say “Stop The Steal” again, now that lefties are doing it.

Typical Democrats — privileged white lefty woman trying to cancel the election of a hard-working black man.

ANOTHER UPDATE (ALSO FROM GLENN): “I’m so glad that happened. It would have been very hard for people to accept a different outcome. Who could trust what happened inside a computer that shuffled and recounted votes for weeks if it didn’t match in the original, simple version of the count?”

Plus, from the comments: “That woman has the look of a Cyberdyne Systems UltraKaren 9000™ on a search and destroy mission in Bed, Bath & Beyond.”

And: “She is li’l Hillary.”

I AM SISYPHUS: Biden Administration officials are apparently still going around claiming that (1) students of all races misbehave at exactly the same rates, but that somehow (2) black students wind up getting disciplined more because school teachers are a bunch of anti-black racists. How does the Democratic Party gets away with calling one of its most loyal constituencies racist?  I hereby refute the argument about misbehavior rates one more time.

TEACHERS’ UNION BACKS CRITICAL RACE THEORY:  I guess this is progress.  Before, they were denying that CRT was being taught.

WE ARE SO OUTRAGEOUSLY LUCKY:  It is not that many generations ago that Americans had to use corn cobs, leaves, wood shavings, snow or other ghastly things, instead of modern toilet paper, to take care of business.  Toilet paper is said to have originated in China, perhaps as late as the sixth century, but … well .. it wasn’t exactly the stuff we know today.  Here in America, Joseph Gayetty is credited with creating the first commercial toilet paper in 1857.  Still, it wasn’t until the 1930s (in the lifetime of my parents) that  “splinter free” toilet paper came available.  Cogitate on that the next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Finally, the seeds of the toilet paper museum.