FIRST RONALD SULLIVAN AT HARVARD, NOW THIS WOMAN AT COLUMBIA:  “Black Student Activists Demand Columbia Fire Law Lecturer who Prosecuted the ‘Central Park Five.'”

I’M GLAD WE CLEARED THAT UP:  “Not everything is a micro aggression.”

UNREMORSEFUL EVEN AT THE END: On this day in 2001, Timothy McVeigh, the man responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing that killed at least 168 and injured 680, was executed at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute Indiana. He was the first federal prisoner to be executed since 1963.

DEPARTMENT OF UNUSUAL ARGUMENTS:  “Abortion Laws Are ‘Bad for Business’ Nearly 200 CEOs Say.”

Increasingly, CEOs want to be seen as persons of the left.  And to be seen as a lefty, one has to support the left on every single issue.

JOHN FUND:  “Biden’s Abortion Flip-Flop Reveals His Weaknesses.”

THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS “APPLAUDS THE PASSAGE OF THE EQUALITY ACT BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES”: The bill, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in various contexts, is unlikely to pass the Senate. Among other things, it seeks to force bakers with religious objections to gay marriage to bake wedding cakes for a gay couple. That seems needlessly extreme.

An earlier bill (called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act or “ENDA”) was aimed only at employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. I had problems with that one too, but at least its authors seemed to want secure its passage by attracting some Republican votes.

THE FIRST IN A RASH OF WITCH EXECUTIONS: On this day in 1692, Bridget Bishop was executed by hanging in Salem Massachusetts. Cotton Mather wrote, “there was little occasion to prove the witchcraft, it being evident and notorious to all beholders.”

About 200 people, mostly though not exclusively women, were tried for witchcraft during the period of the Salem witch trials. The number of executions was around 20.

In Europe, of course, over a longer period of time, the numbers were much worse, partly because Europe had a much larger population and partly because … well … when bad things happen here, worse things are often going on there.

NON-DIVERSITY AND THE SPELLING BEE:  Congratulations to the winners  of the National Spelling Bee!!!  An eight-way tie!  And, no, I am not in the least troubled that they don’t look like a cross section of America.

TRANSGENDER ATHLETE EASILY WINS NCAA TRACK CHAMPIONSHIP:  Glenn linked to this already, but note that the winner beat second place by more than a second.  The distance of second to third, third to fourth, etc. is always less than a second.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR DOUBLE JEOPARDY: As predicted back in 2009, federal prosecutors love to file federal hate crime charges in high-profile cases even when state authorities are handling the case just fine.  This practice is going to lead to mischief.

FOUNDATIONS BACK APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMS: This is very good news. But it also needs to be kept in mind that apprenticeships work better for some jobs than for others. The key tends to be that employers need to know that they will get a return on their investment in the apprentice’s education. Put differently, they need to know that after they spend their time teaching the apprentice he won’t skip out and work for a competitor (which can offer higher wages because it doesn’t have to finance its own apprenticeship program) before the agreed-upon term is over. In practice, alas, it means that jobs that require licenses are best suited for apprenticeships. I am not a fan of unnecessary licenses; we already have too many. On the other hand, if we want businesses to finance apprenticeship programs, the incentive to complete the apprenticeship in order to get a license helps.

MILLENARIAN THINKING LEADS TO HELL, NOT TO HEAVEN: Every once in a while, people start believing that the end of days is near and that if we don’t all repent immediately that end will be very bad. Almost always they are wrong.

It’s hard not to notice that we’re in a bit of a millenarian moment right now.   That’s true even if climate change is a genuine problem that will need, in one form or another, to be addressed. The way Members of Congress flocked to AOC’s “The world is going to end in 12 years” Green New Deal was truly astonishing. Who would have thought that anyone would jump to support a policy that reads like it was cooked up by a college sophomore on a binge weekend?

And don’t get me started about Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who is leading the children’s crusade against global warming in Europe (and being treated like a sage by European leaders).

If it looks and sounds like millenarianism, it is millenarianism.

Not every society has managed to pull itself back from the brink. Consider the fate of the mid-19th century Xhosa people of Southeastern Africa. Their “prophetess” was Nongqawuse–a teenage girl who was the Greta Thunberg of her day. She led her people to ruin.

One day in April or May of 1856, she went down to the river to do her chores.  When she returned, she said that she had encountered the spirits of several of her ancestors who told her that her people must destroy their crops and kill their cattle.  In return, the sun would rise red on February 18, 1857, and the Xhosa ancestors would sweep the British settlers from the land and bring the Xhosa fresh, healthier cattle.  (Some of their cattle had been suffering from a lung ailment, which may or may not have been brought by the British settlers’ cattle. Millenarianism is often arises in response to a real problem.)

Nongqawuse’s story struck a chord with some.  It started gaining momentum.

Stunningly, Sarhili, the Xhosa chieftain, agreed to do exactly as she urged.  Over the next year, a frenzy occurred in which it is estimated that between 300,000 and 400,000 cattle were killed and crops destroyed.  Historians sometimes call it the “Great Cattle Killing.”

But on February 18, 1857, the sun rose as usual.  It was not red.  And the Xhosa ancestors did not show.  But the Xhosa people had destroyed their livelihood.  In the resulting famine, the population of the area dropped from 105,000 to less than 27,000.  Cannibalism was reported.  Following Nongqawuse’s advice was a calamity of staggering proportions for the Xhosa people.

Like Nongqawuse, climate millenarians tell us that the sun will soon rise red over the land.  Well, maybe.  But already the models that gung-ho climateers have relied upon have been proven wrong.  The intense period of warming that Al Gore predicted would arrive soon never came to pass.  Yet we are repeatedly told that it’s still coming.  In the meantime we are urged put the brakes on our use of energy–the very thing that makes the modern world possible–to avoid antagonizing the spirits of our ancestors … I mean in order to avoid climate disaster.

There are two more parallels to the Great Cattle Killing that are worth pointing out.  First, Nongqawuse’s urgings did not come out of nowhere.  Some of the cattle were indeed sick. The problem is that her proposed course of action was utterly disproportionate to the problem, just as the Green New Deal and other “the end is near” proposals are disproportionate given the state of our knowledge about climate.  Second, some historians believe that the Great Cattle Killing was in part motivated by class animosity.  The Xhosa people had been losing ground to white settlers for years, and some members of the tribe blamed their more prosperous members.  Cattle were a status symbols, and initially at least, the burden of their destruction seemed to be something that would fall disproportionately upon elites. The cattle were, in effect, the big carbon footprint of their time.

We don’t need Sarhilis in Congress.  For the record, I should point out that he perished in the famine.

(This is a re-working of an essay I wrote 10 years ago. The evidence of a coming climate apocalypse decreased during that decade, while millenarian fervor increased.)

POWERLINE:  “Asians as Beneficiaries of White Privilege.”

THIS WEEK IN MY PERSONAL HISTORY: Three years ago this week I received a lot more death threats than usual.

You wouldn’t think that it’s dangerous to assert that Title IX, which was passed in 1972, does not purport to require schools to take any particular approach to the issue of transgender bathroom assignment. But I guess it is. Here is my legal brief on the topic. As you’ll see, it really is a legal argument.  There really is such a thing as law, and it doesn’t automatically say what Progressives want it to say.

In fairness, I should point out that I got a lot more messages from supporters than from opponents. It’s just that the opponents’ messages were a bit more attention grabbing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY:  To Dashiell Hammett, born this day in 1894.

IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE: Harvard’s dismissal of Roland Sullivan et ux. still bothers me [clarification:  they were dismissed as “faculty deans” at Winthrop, not from Harvard altogether]. There have been a lot of craven actions to satisfy crybullies lately, but the l’affaire Sullivan may be the worst.

I can’t help thinking about the Twilight Zone episode, It’s a Good Life. In it, the adults will do anything to please Anthony, a child with god-like powers to read minds and to punish wrongthink by turning people into unpleasant objects. Once someone is so punished, the other adults beg Anthony to banish him “to the cornfield” to spare themselves the horror of being reminded of his fate. The difference—and it’s an important one—is that at least Anthony really was powerful. Harvard crybullies are only powerful because others respond to their demands.

Here’s a heavily edited version of the episode. Here’s the jack-in-the-box scene, and here’s a radio version.

EVEN CNN IS STARTING TO FIGURE OUT THE MODERN WORLD:  “How an internet mob falsely painted a Chipotle employee as racist.”

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OPENS: On this day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia. It had been scheduled to start on May 14^th, but on the appointed day, there was no quorum.  Nor was there a quorum on May 15th, 16th, 17th or for many days thereafter.  Some began to wonder whether the convention would be a failure (as a similar meeting in Annapolis, Maryland had been the year before).

But they were worrying unnecessarily.  Their colleagues were on their way, delayed in transit.  Soon delegations from every state except Rhode Island had arrived.  In the meantime the early arrivers (like James Madison, who was so eager that he had arrived on May 4) could cool their heels at the Indian Queen Tavern.

GIRLS WILL BE BOYS:  All the girls I grew up with were tomboys.  It didn’t last.  I wonder how we would be treated today.

MORE ON THE END OF MAY:  June 7 is just around the corner.

HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES GRADUATE PROPORTIONATELY MORE MINORITY STEM MAJORS THAN MAINSTREAM UNIVERSITIES: That’s why the National Science Foundation and other STEM funders are generous with them. (And here, of course, is why they do so well in STEM.)

ISN’T THAT LOVELY?:  British universities can force old professors to retire in order to boost diversity, tribunal ruling suggests.

BABYLON BEE:  “Demanding to Know Why He Allowed President Trump to Get Elected, Dems Subpoena God.”

WHY ARE THE MEDIA IGNORING CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION?:  We all know why, don’t we?

THE FATHER OF MODERN TAXONOMY: Carl Linnaeus was born in Sweden on this day in 1707.