REFORM: Sweeping anti-DEI higher ed reform bill in Ohio inches closer to passage.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Report: Harvard Law editor who assaulted Jewish student said by Stanford to have ‘compassion and humility’.

“PEACE” ACTIVISTS HAVE BEEN GARBAGE PEOPLE FOR A VERY LONG TIME: No, They Aren’t Peace Activists, They Are Antisemites.

WHITE HOUSE REPORT CARD: Biden in minefield of his own making.

NYT: Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds: Voters in battleground states said they trusted Donald J. Trump over President Biden on the economy, foreign policy and immigration, as Mr. Biden’s multiracial base shows signs of fraying.

Discontent pulsates throughout the Times/Siena poll, with a majority of voters saying Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them. The survey also reveals the extent to which the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying. Demographic groups that backed Mr. Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested, as two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction.
Voters under 30 favor Mr. Biden by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Mr. Trump’s edge in rural regions. And while women still favored Mr. Biden, men preferred Mr. Trump by twice as large a margin, reversing the gender advantage that had fueled so many Democratic gains in recent years.

Black voters — long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden — are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.

Even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain. Which means it’s still smarter than some Biden voters.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? What is behind the 40% drop in China’s U.S. Treasury holdings? Market players see Beijing selling American debt to prop up the yuan.

JOEL KOTKIN: Is the West ready for World War 3? Even as geopolitical tensions rise, Western elites are still sabotaging our industries and energy security.

It’s almost as if those “elites” are on the payroll of our enemies.

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: WATCH: George W. Bush, 77, Still Throws Baseball Better Than Obama.

“Bush is 77 years old. That’s not quite as old as Sleepy Joe Biden, but still very old. Nevertheless, he can still throw a baseball better than Barack Obama in his prime. That’s profoundly embarrassing for Obama, who claims to be good at sports. (Fact check: He is not.)”

BUT THEY JUST CAN’T HELP THEMSELVES: Bill Maher Explains Once Again Why Liberals Are Idiots for Siding With Hamas.

OPEN THREAD: Share your deep and compelling insights.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: House bill would fully fund Mars Sample Return, block cooperation on ExoMars.

GOOD: Portugal President to Palestinian Envoy: FAFO. “Maybe this time, the world has really learned a lesson … if only for a moment. A Palestinian envoy apparently attempted to demand action from Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, only to discover a profound lack of sympathy for the side that started the war. This clip between de Sousa and the unnamed envoy has Portugese subtitles, but de Sousa helpfully rebuked the envoy in English, for all to enjoy.”

Takeaway: “I know, I know you blame the Israelis, but this time someone from your side started it. The Palestinian side started it. You can’t blame Israel, you shouldn’t have started it.”

OHIO NORTHERN UNIVERSITY: Power Corrupts but Sunlight Disinfects.

“You don’t look Asian because your eyes are round instead of oval.”

“She’s the most pregnant woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Prospective law students prefer to see young faculty faces rather than old faculty faces.”

“I suppose you think you owe Professor Gerber because he practically wrote your paper.”

“The law school shouldn’t engage in illegal hiring practices.”

While one might expect a storm of consequences for the individual responsible for the first four statements, the story at Ohio Northern University (ONU) unfolds quite differently.

Behind the first four comments is, of all people, the current Dean of ONU’s College of Law, Charles Rose, who, in spite of uttering such statements, received a five-year contract extension.

Professor Scott Gerber, on the other hand, who opposed illegal hiring practices, found himself removed from his classroom by campus security officers on April 14 and was escorted to a meeting with Rose, who handed Gerber a “memorandum initiating his suspension from all faculty duties.”

Make them pay.

IF ONLY THEY RESIGNED FOR TELLING OTHER LIES: NY Times Writer Resigns After Signing Letter Accusing Israel of Genocide.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO MURDER: Former nurse now linked to 17 nursing home deaths. ” A former Pennsylvania nurse who, in May, had been accused of killing two patients with doses of insulin now faces more murder charges and has confessed to trying to kill 19 additional people at several locations, authorities said Thursday. Heather Pressdee, 41, is accused of administering excessive amounts of insulin to patients in her care, some of whom were diabetic and required insulin, and some of whom were not, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office.”

21ST CENTURY EDUCATION: “I’m giving this post my ‘motherhood’ tag because every single person named in the article is female. Presumably, fathers are involved, at least somewhere along the line, but this feels to me like mothering, not fathering.”

The other subtext is the contempt for traditional schooling. Take your kids out of public school for a month? Why not? It’s not like they’ll miss anything important; we learned that during the pandemic. And in fact, the pandemic is repeatedly mentioned as a turning point here. “For some parents, the incompatibility of school schedules with travel desires leads families to drop out of school systems altogether.” I should give this my K-12 Implosion tag.

THE GLOBAL BABY BUST: FEMALE PERSPECTIVES. “Women seem to be driving declines in birth rates globally.”

ABOLISH THE IVY LEAGUE: Double Standards at Princeton: The university’s professors defend free speech for people they like and shout down people they don’t.

BILL CLINTON SMILES: New antibiotic tackles drug-resistant gonorrhea in trial.

SCIENCE: Why runny noses are good for you.

HMM: Some benefits of exercise stem from the immune system, suggests new study.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Space Force awards $2.5 billion in rocket contracts to ULA, SpaceX.

WELL, GOOD: U.S. researchers develop ‘super melanin’ cream that repairs damaged skin.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, CHAIRMAN XI: Foreign investment in China turns negative for first time.

FDI came to minus $11.8 billion, with more withdrawals and downsizing than new investments for factory construction and other purposes. This marked the first negative figure in data going back to 1998.

Foreign investment had remained sluggish after falling sharply in the April-June quarter of 2022, when the Chinese economy was in turmoil from the zero-COVID lockdown in Shanghai.

In a September survey of member companies by the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China, nearly half of respondents said they would not invest in China at all in 2023 or invest less than in 2022.

One-party totalitarian dictatorships are poor investment environments.

THE AMY WAX DOUBLE STANDARD AT PENN: Amy Wax, Liz Magill, and Hypocrisy.

I represent Professor Amy L. Wax, a tenured professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is the target of charges brought by the former dean of the law school; he asked the school to strip her of tenure and fire her for remarks she made in the media and on campus.

Whatever you may have heard or read about the case, the events of the last few weeks concerning a “Palestine Writes Literature Festival” at Penn and the University’s response to it, and the rallies on campus and statements that have been made since, proves one thing: My client is the victim of a glaring double standard which can only be explained by Penn’s naked, left-leaning partisanship. If you are a Jew-hating and Israel-bashing propagandist, you can say anything and invite anyone you want to campus and you are protected by the school’s commitment to academic freedom. However, if you are a white Jewish conservative thinker who openly challenges the notion that “institutional” or “structural racism” explains life for many African Americans today and you assign books and invite speakers who support those views, then you need to go.

Yep, that’s pretty much how they see it at Penn.