I SUSPECT THERE WILL BE LESS DUMB STUDENT (AND FACULTY) POLITICS: ABA Seeks Comments On Proposal To Allow Accreditation Of Fully Online Law Schools.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
January 25, 2024
IF IT WEREN’T FOR FAKE HATE CRIMES, HOW MANY HATE CRIMES WOULD THERE BE? HOAX: ‘Black feminist theory’ PhD student raised $40K on false assault claim, police say.
WE ARE NOT GOVERNED BY THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST: Democrat Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced her proposal for free community college in a bizarre video with “Professor Potato.”
I DUNNO, IN THE PAST THE “PART-TIME” TRACK HAS MEANT WORKING 50 HOURS: Should Law Firms Pay Their Lawyers 20% Less For 20% Less Work?
THE ENEMY WITHIN: Embattled Biden Judicial Nominee Helped Lead Anti-Police Nonprofit.
DOING TO THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WHAT THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DOES TO THE LAW AND CONSTITUTION: Texas’ Latest Border Move Is a Giant Middle Finger to the Biden Admin.
ROGER KIMBALL: Gay Science: On DEI’s dangerous lies.
Curiously, Gay herself touched on the deeper significance of her defenestration in the headline of a bitter, self-justificatory aria she published in The New York Times: “What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me.” Forget the shaky grammar. Gay is right that Harvard’s travails far transcend her fate as president.
She is completely wrong, however, in her explanation of why she was forced to resign. It had nothing to do with “racial animus,” as she said in her letter of resignation. Nor is it part of “a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society.” That faith has unraveled, all right, but not because of “demagogues” attempting to “weaponize” her presidency. Gay says that such efforts begin “with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda.” At stake here, however, were not “education and expertise,” but a failure, a hollowing out, of both, precisely, and ironically, by their subordination to the partisan demands of propaganda.
Again Gay is right that “trusted institutions of all types—from public health agencies to news organizations” have seen their “legitimacy” and “their leaders’ credibility” challenged. But these institutions are not victims of “coordinated attempts” by nefarious “extreme voices.” On the contrary, the crisis of legitimacy is a self-inflicted wound, the natural by-product of the institutional embrace of the ideology of dei, for which values like truth, accuracy, and competence must be systematically subjugated to politics.
Bill Ackman seemed stunned by the real agenda of dei. It is much worse than he thinks. Claudine Gay, as everyone knows though not everyone will admit, is a dei personage. That is, she was hired, groomed, and promoted by Harvard not because of her scholarship, which would hardly qualify for tenure at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. It wasn’t for her fund-raising prowess or her educational vision that she was made president of the most prestigious university in the galaxy. It was because she was a black female whose parents were Haitian immigrants. True, her uncle owns the biggest concrete company on that unfortunate island and she went to school at Exeter. But the fact that Gay grew up in a bubble of wealth and privilege is but a small liability. She may have benefited from the free market. But she did not let that impinge upon her support for the entire smorgasbord of anti-capitalist, woke attitudes about race, gender, race, climate change, race, identity politics, and . . . race.
That’s what they have instead of competence.
January 24, 2024
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN LAW SCHOOL’S DIVERSITY TRAINING PROGRAM DRAWS MORE FIRE: And the legislature is not amused, which should have been predictable. “If they’re threatening ‘continuing efforts,’ and they’re asserting that the DEI practices are ‘cancerous,’ you would think the school would take care to produce high quality, genuinely educational training sessions that would impress the public at large and win support in the larger political debate. Perhaps the cocoon is so isolating that the handout seemed truly wholesome and not cancerous at all.”
It’s been said before, and it’s still true: Social Justice Warriors always lie, and they always double down.
OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Belgium Signs Artemis Accords.
A REVIEW OF ROGER SIMON’S AMERICAN REFUGEES FROM BRUCE BAWER: Those Who Move to a Different State: Roger Simon’s savvy book on the ongoing blue-state exodus. “I never thought of myself as a refugee by nature. But I was wrong, I guess. I did leave. And Roger did, too. And the book that resulted, American Refugees, is in equal parts delightful and distressing. Delightful, because Roger is by nature immune to pretense and abounding in humor, even when discussing topics that at first glance don’t seem particularly rib-tickling. He’s done a lot of hard thinking about his move to Nashville and has a lot to say about it, but he wears his learning lightly and doesn’t pose as an expert in anything whatsoever; on the contrary, his book is framed as a tale of a naif’s exploration and discovery — the story of a man who’s in his seventies but still unsure about a lot of things, still intensely curious, still eager to learn about and adapt to (and, in his own modest way, to try to push for small positive changes in) a new culture, and still ready to make new friends and play an active social and political role on what, until very recently, was, to him, utterly alien terrain. And he’s a man, may I add, who before he moved to Music City thought it was close enough to Knoxville that he’d be able to jump in his car and be having lunch with his UT law professor friend Glenn (‘Instapundit’) Reynolds a half hour or so later. Alas, no.”
A surprisingly common misconception. But heck, you can hardly get from Hollywood to Santa Monica in 30 minutes at lunchtime . . .
NOT BACKING DOWN: Governor Abbott Issues Statement On Texas’ Constitutional Right To Self-Defense.
UPDATE: A couple of friends email on this. One says to pay attention, because this confrontation is likely more important than the election or the various wars. Probably true. Another notes that Biden has landed in a bigger legitimacy crisis than anything Trump experienced, and that it’s entirely self-inflicted. Yep.
As for Abbott’s constitutional arguments, well, this is uncharted territory but they seem sound.
Meanwhile, Democratic firebrands are doubling down:
Holy sh*t.
Dems in Congress are calling on Biden to seize control of the TX National Guard.
This could get spicy very quickly. pic.twitter.com/0OlIVCZCRH
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 24, 2024
What will Biden do if Abbott says no, arguing that the federal government, having defaulted on its basic constitutional obligations, has forfeited its rights here? He’d better know. Note that Abbott is already getting support from other governors.
ANOTHER UPDATE:
Holy sh*t.
Dems in Congress are calling on Biden to seize control of the TX National Guard.
This could get spicy very quickly. pic.twitter.com/0OlIVCZCRH
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 24, 2024
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Maersk ships in US Navy convoy forced to retreat under Houthi missile attack. “The US arm of AP Moller-Maersk is suspending voyages through the Red Sea after two of its container ships came under missile attack while being escorted by the US Navy. The 6,200-teu Maersk Detroit and 2,474-teu Maersk Chesapeake (both built 2008) turned around in the Red Sea and were escorted back to the Gulf of Aden, said the company. . . . US Central Command, which coordinates the country’s military operations in the region, said three anti-ship ballistic missiles were fired toward the Maersk Detroit. One missile hit the sea, while the warship USS Gravely shot down two others. The two ships were carrying cargo and aid for the US government and were given protection by the navy for the passage through the Bab El-Mandeb strait, said subsidiary Maersk Line Ltd, for which the US military is a major customer on its US-flag ships.”
Why do the Houthis still exist?
UPDATE: Biden’s Fake Houthi Offensive Aims to Maintain Treacherous Pro-Iran Policy.
FRUITS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Anti-Jewish Riot in Italy. “Nothing says peace and love like ‘urban guerilla war.’ But then again, if you are out there demonstrating your support for genocidal terrorists, your definition of peace and justice might differ from the average person’s. . . . I hope more details come out about just who the demonstrators are. Are they mostly Italians? That would be surprising since antisemitism wasn’t even much of a force even during World War II, when Italians were reluctant to fulfill German requests to deport Jews despite their formal alliance. . . . However, Italy has been flooded with immigrants over the past decade, and it would surprise me not at all to find that the mob was filled with recent Middle Eastern immigrants.”
Me either.
BRING BACK HOUSE CALLS: Older adults spend 3 weeks each year receiving health care outside of the home.
ACTUALLY, THEY’RE THE SAME EFFECTS ECLIPSES ALWAYS HAVE: Total solar eclipse will have surprising effects on animals, weather. I enjoyed our 2017 total eclipse, though.
And I recommend David Baron’s classic eclipse book.
SELF-DEFENSE: Options for Non-Combatants.
MICROBIOME NEWS: Microbiome in semen may have role in fertility.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: When some adolescent girls internalize rejection, it really is in their head.