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.

THIS WAS SURE TO HAPPEN:  Keystone XL Pipeline Developer Seeks $15 Billion in Damages from US.

HISTORY!:  On this day in 1937, Hormel Foods first marketed SPAM.  Since then, billions and billions of cans have been sold.   There’s even a Spam Museum.

Among those who have had a good word to say about Spam are Margaret Thatcher, who called it a “wartime delicacy” and Nikita Khrushchev, who wrote, “Without Spam we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.”

WHEN YOU’VE LOST THE TROTSKYISTS:  I must have missed it when it happened, but a year ago the Trotskyist Fourth International declared the New York Times’ 1619 Project to be a load of hooey. The following is from the World Socialist Web Site:

To the extent that there is a method to the 1619 Project, it is pragmatic in the most vulgar sense of the word. The writers rummage carelessly through the past, cherry-picking incidents to concoct a narrative that conforms to their preconceived racialist viewpoint. They explain historical events in terms of what the authors claim, often incorrectly, to have been the immediate motives of the actors….

The Times justifies its racial approach by claiming that slavery and the experience of African Americans are subjects long neglected by historians. In fact, the slave system—its origins, changing economic role in pre- and post-revolutionary North America, and its social, political and cultural significance over a period spanning several centuries—has been the subject of voluminous research. The essays that introduce the 1619 Project evince no familiarity with the massive body of work produced by generations of historians.

So if Trotskyists are willing to say out loud that the 1619 Project was ill-informed drivel, who is left to view it as scholarly?  The University of North Carolina for one.

LIFE IN LOS ANGELES:  If trans women are women, they’re at least a bit more violent than most of the women I know.

I MAY HAVE TO LIVE IN CALIFORNIA, BUT AT LEAST I’M NOT IN SAN FRANCISCO:  San Francisco Target, Walgreens Stores to Close Early Due to Rampant Theft.

I DOUBT MELANIA IS LOSING SLEEP OVER THIS, BUT …: Why Did Vogue Call Jill Biden a “Goddess in Stilettos”?  Even the Jerusalem Post feels obliged to ask that question.

REVIEW BY WILFRED REILLY:  “One ‘Maverick’ Documents Another–Jason Riley’s Biography of Thomas Sowell.” So one maverick documents another documenting yet another.  Sowell should now write about Reilly thus making the circle complete.

JOE MANCHIN’S COMPROMISE BILL:  Still not great, says John Fund.

WE’RE FIGHTING BACK!:  Concerned shareholders take action against Coke’s racist demands.  (It’s possible that I’m biased, since I am chairman of the board, but I believe the American Civil Rights Project, which is representing the shareholders against Coke, is a great new organization.)

NEW HOLIDAY SLOWS THE FEDERAL LEVIATHAN FOR ONE DAY: Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed and Biden signed into law a bill declaring Juneteenth to be a federal holiday.  Since Juneteenth (June 19) falls on a Saturday, that means today (the very next day after the bill became law) will be the work holiday.  A meeting of the Commission on Civil Rights, which had been planned for a long time and noticed in the Federal Register, had to be called off.  I assume similar activities have been called off throughout the federal bureaucracy.  It’s interesting that even our nation’s leaders are unconvinced that what the federal government does is important.

A DUBIOUS EXPEDIENCY: HOW RACE PREFERENCES DAMAGE HIGHER EDUCATION: Don’t forget my new book, which is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble (though for reasons I can’t explain it cost more at Barnes and Noble).

The book contains eight essays. The authors are John Ellis, me, my Commission colleague Peter Kirsanow, Heather Mac Donald, Peter Wood, me & Carissa Mulder, Lance Izumi & Rowena Itchon, and my co-editor and USD colleague Maimon Schwarzschild.  If you haven’t done so already, please take a look.

STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS V. HARVARD:  Supreme Court stalls.  By asking the Department of Justice for its views, it succeeds in putting off a decision on whether to take the case.

COMRADE ROCKSTAR: Dean Reed may be the biggest rock star that you’ve never heard of.  An American from Colorado, Reed was a huge star in the Communist Bloc, but not in his native land. “Comrade Rockstar” is just one of the nicknames that have been conferred upon him over the years.

His failure to make it in America was not for lack of trying. Born to a Goldwater-supporting family, he left for Hollywood in the late 1950s, where he got a contract with Capitol Records. Alas, his records never took off in this country.

For some reason, however, his music was especially popular in Latin America. He therefore moved down there in the early 1960s (during which he began his political lurch leftward). From there, he went on to Europe, finally winding up in the early 1970s in East Germany, where they absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it, loved him and his music. Communist bloc teens swooned.  To them, he was “the Red Elvis.”

Reed always professed to love America, and the lyrics to his songs sometimes reflected this, but he seemed to spend as much time denouncing the United States as he spent singing, songwriting, and acting in movies.  Of course, denouncing the United States is pretty common among rock musicians.  But Reed’s wholesome style (by the standards of the time) made him different.  Here, for example, he sings “Bye Bye Love” with Phil Everly.  No wonder the Communist Bloc authorities encouraged his rise to stardom, while condemning what they viewed as degenerate forms of music.

Reed died on this day in 1986 at the age of 47.  Six weeks earlier, he had appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes — one of the rare occasions on which his by then fading fame was acknowledged in the Western media. During that interview, he defended the building of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and compared Reagan to Stalin.

Although officially recorded as an accident, Reed’s death was almost certainly a suicide. His body was found in knee-deep water in Zeuthener Lake a few miles outside Berlin.  His wrists were slashed, and he had taken an overdose of sleeping pills.  A suicide note was later found.  “Wholesome” musical style or not, he was an all-too-obvious troubled soul.

GRASSROOTS AMERICA:  Voters reject “woke” education in Rapid City, South Dakota.

I THINK I KNOW THE ANSWER: Are Activists Protecting Asians from Hate–Or Protecting Their Narrative of White Supremacy from Criticism?