THERE’S WAY TOO MUCH MONEY FLOWING INTO HIGHER EDUCATION: Northwestern employs 1 administrator for every 2 undergrads: analysis.

GOOD: Oklahoma bans DEI requirements at public colleges and universities, requires cuts to ‘non-critical personnel’: Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt announced the mandate Wednesday, citing a need to spend more money on preparing young Oklahomans for the workforce, and less on ‘six-figure salaries to DEI staff.’

THEY FEEL SAFE BECAUSE SO MUCH OF OUR GOVERNMENT, MEDIA, AND ACADEMIA ARE ON THEIR PAYROLL: US and allies should warn China over Hong Kong kidnap threats. “Alongside his claim that communist China is a democracy, one of Xi Jinping’s more absurd assertions is that Beijing never interferes in the internal affairs of other nations. This is a patent falsity evinced by China’s expansive intellectual property theft, territorial imperialism, and election interference. Another example of China’s interference in the affairs of other nations is its claimed right to apply extraterritorial justice against political activists living abroad. On Thursday, the Beijing-directed Hong Kong police force issued arrest warrants for five more people living in the United States and the United Kingdom. They are accused of breaching China’s national security law for Hong Kong, which restricts criticism of the Communist Party and efforts to advocate democracy.”

#JOURNALISM: “That’s a NYT headline that makes me think if a comparable group were making memes for Biden, the headline would celebrate them as feisty and smart and really getting under Trump’s skin. . . . I thought this article was going to revile the speech, but it turned much more aggressive, with a very disturbing legal threat.”

They’ve given up persuasion now, in favor of intimidation.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Applications for Early Harvard Admissions Dip.

I suspect that this is only the beginning. Of course, Harvard won’t actually go broke, but I believe that its long-term decline starts here.

Totally unrelated: “Harvard forces a Jewish student group to hide its menorah each night after its lighting over fears of vandalism that ‘won’t look good’ for the Ivy League school, the rabbi of Harvard Chabad said.”

WELL, THAT’S HISTORIC, ALL RIGHT: ‘Historic’ Biden Judicial Nominee Sits on Board of Group Founded by Cop-Killing Domestic Terrorist.

President Joe Biden’s latest judicial nominee, whom the White House is hailing as “historic” due to his Muslim faith, serves on the advisory board of a left-wing group with extensive ties to convicted cop killers, the Washington Free Beacon has found.

Adeel Abdullah Mangi, whom Biden tapped to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, is an advisory board member of Alliance of Families for Justice. The organization, which works to end “mass incarceration,” was formed in 2016 with Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin as a founding director. Boudin pleaded guilty to the murder of two police officers and a security guard during an armored truck robbery in 1981. The FBI named Weather Underground a domestic terrorist organization following a string of bombings and robberies in the 1970s and ‘80s.

The Alliance of Families for Justice, where Mangi has served since 2019, organized an event in 2021 to urge the release of six Black Panther and Black Liberation Army members serving life in prison for murdering police officers. The Alliance referred to the cop killers—including Black Panther members Mumia Abu-Jamal, H. Rap Brown, and others—as “freedom fighters” and claimed they were illegally targeted by the FBI.

Mangi’s affiliation with the radical group could spell trouble for his nomination, which Senate Democrats cheered as a “historic” “milestone” during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. Mangi, who works in private practice, would be the first Muslim to serve on the federal appeals court.

His position on the Alliance of Families for Justice board could also present a conflict of interest, which was not discussed at Wednesday’s hearing. The Third Circuit has heard appeals brought by Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. The court overturned Abu-Jamal’s death sentence in 2011.

The Alliance of Families for Justice is not the only radical group on Mangi’s resume. He served until this year on the advisory board for Rutgers Law School’s Center for Race, Security, and Rights, an anti-Israel organization that supports boycotts against Israel and recently blamed Israel’s “settler colonialism” for provoking Hamas terrorists’ Oct. 7 attack. The Center hosted an event on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 that featured Sami al-Arian, a former professor convicted of raising money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

Personnel is policy.

JOHN LUCAS: The Self-Described “Subversive” Dance Group the Bidens Invited to the White House.

I was prompted by a comment from one of my subscribers to do a little research into Dorrance Dance, the dance company featured in the White House performance. What I found was a surprise, although perhaps it should not have been.

I learned that the Dorrance Dance is not just another entertainment group that happens to specialize in tap dancing. Rather, it is an ultra-radical political organization that designs and intends its performances to be “subversive.” The company’s statements and recommendations on its website provide the context that explains what it means when it says that its dancing is meant to be “subversive.” I summarize this below.

Shocker.

HOW “EQUITY” WORKS: Gotcher Equity Right Here: ChiTown Mayor to Ensure EVERY Student a Loser.

HMM: Matthew Perry Died of ‘Acute Effects of Ketamine,’ Autopsy Says.

OPEN THREAD: Be here now.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China launches mystery reusable spaceplane for third time.

WALL OF WATER: Gigantic Wave in Pacific Ocean Was Most Extreme ‘Rogue Wave’ on Record. “Such an exceptional event is thought to occur only once every 1,300 years. And unless the buoy had been taken for a ride, we might never have known it even happened. For centuries, rogue waves were considered nothing but nautical folklore. It wasn’t until 1995 that myth became fact. On the first day of the new year, a nearly 26-meter-high wave (85 feet) suddenly struck an oil-drilling platform roughly 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the coast of Norway. At the time, the so-called Draupner wave defied all previous models scientists had put together.”

Note that by “most extreme” they’re referring to height relative to the other waves going on, not absolute height. That difference is what constitutes its rogueness.

MORE SUPPLY-CHAIN DISRUPTIONS COMING RIGHT UP: Houthi Shooty Re-Routey: Maersk Telling All Its Ships to Avoid the Red Sea.

Governments used to deal with this sort of disruption by hanging pirates.

OUT: RACISM. IN: FACISM. To counter effect of facial biases in legal system, researchers suggest new training. “Researchers at Columbia University are recommending a new form of training to eliminate facial biases that could lead to more severe punishments for defendants with ‘untrustworthy’ features. Certain facial features, such as downturned lips and a heavy brow, can make someone seem untrustworthy, even though these do not have an effect on the person’s character. But according to a new study from Columbia researchers, legal defendants who appear untrustworthy are more likely to be sentenced to death rather than life in prison. This was true even in cases in which participants were conscious of their bias.”

RACISM IN AMERICA TODAY:

Here’s the same mayor claiming it was just an innocent mistake to not invite White people, you know, cause it happens to all of us from time to time. https://t.co/Egeiq2lQ0s

— Liberacrat Media™️ (@Liberacrat_) December 15, 2023

IT’S HARD WHEN NOBODY TRUSTS YOU: CDC warns of ‘urgent need’ to increase vaccinations for COVID-19, other respiratory illnesses.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU: Mandatory Anti-Drunk-Driving Tech Is Coming, and GM’s Ready: New passenger vehicles will soon be required to have some kind of impaired driving detection onboard.

FIRST LOOK: Rossi Survival Rifle: A lightweight, versatile rifle which shoots both .45 Colt cartridges and .410 shells.

WELL, HARVARD: “Harvard forces a Jewish student group to hide its menorah each night after its lighting over fears of vandalism that ‘won’t look good’ for the Ivy League school, the rabbi of Harvard Chabad said.” (Bumped).

MATT TAIBBI: Orf vs. the Memory Hole: “Extreme MAGA Republicans:” When the president goes to a campaign fundraiser, stock lines ensue. Plus, the “Vermin Switcheroo.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Claudine Gay problem goes way beyond Harvard: Do you really think that people like Claudine Gay are found only at Ivy League universities? We should all be so lucky.

SHOCKER: Oprah Winfrey confirms she added weight-loss medication to regimen.

FLASHBACK: “The NGOs and foundations deserve much, much closer scrutiny than they’re getting, both in terms of their activities, and in terms of where the money goes. And that’s even before you get to basic questions of accounting, oversight, and general honesty in advertising.”

DANIEL HENNINGER: University Presidents Flunk Out.

It may be no coincidence that colleges are abandoning SATs at the same time three university presidents were flunking questions in public about genocide. After receiving Fs for insisting that the answer to any direct question is “It depends on the context,” University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill lost her job and Harvard’s board of governors retained Claudine Gay with a limp vote of confidence—“she is the right leader to help our community heal.” Uh-huh.

This may be the moment to bring back vocabulary tests.

Question: What six-syllable word describes the three university presidents who testified before Congress?

Answer: Pusillanimity.

Next: Name as many synonyms as you can for “pusillanimity.”

Answer, by way of the Merriam-Webster dictionary (remember those?): Cowardice, cravenness, gutlessness, spinelessness and—my favorite—poltroonery.

In those plain words is written the history of academia’s plummet the past 50 years from respectability to antisemitic riots.

First came the speech codes. No, those came second. What began the long downhill roll in the 1970s was grade inflation. Students whose work deserved a C demanded an A or B. Professors who resisted this threat to standards gave up.

That was an early inkling that traditional college norms could be pushed around and politicized. Speech codes emerged at many schools, not least Harvard, arguing that certain words were—another new vocabulary addition—“hurtful.”

After establishing that words alone could bring reprimand by the university, the speech coders expanded the prohibitions to include something new called microaggressions, or inadvertent slights. Microaggressions had a fraternal twin, trigger warnings, which required profs to warn students that a text or even a thought might distress them.

It sounds like a joke now, but we know it was no joke. This was the moment when the adults in the room—presumably the universities’ presidents—should have intervened to protect free speech and inquiry from being diminished. They did not. Virtually without exception, they were pusillanimous. Fellow ostriches included hundreds of spineless boards of trustees.

Here we bring back to this space an important figure in the universities’ decline: Herbert Marcuse (1896-1979). Though Marcuse isn’t a household name, any purportedly serious university intellectual—say, Ms. Magill of Penn or Harvard’s Ms. Gay—knows about his contribution to governance at their institutions.

Marcuse, a left-wing philosopher who taught at Columbia and Harvard, proposed zero tolerance for conservative ideas. “Liberating tolerance,” Marcuse wrote in 1965, “would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.” No one needs a doctorate in anything to understand that. He wasn’t done: “Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed.”

I can’t conceive a more concise description of cancel culture, which we got.

University presidents should have recognized—or acknowledged—that cancel culture was another sign their schools were off the rails.

They wanted off the rails.

I SEE NOTHING INACCURATE IN THIS HEADLINE: Scummy Privileged Leftist Highway Protestors Hate Us. “Fewer people are lower than a leftist protester who disrupts the lives of regular people just to make a gesture that accomplishes nothing. They behave like scummy privileged children as they make themselves more important than people with real responsibilities. And I truly mean this when I say privileged because they clearly don’t know what it’s like to have your job reprimand you for being five minutes late or driving an hour to a job that barely pays you enough money to take care of your bills. The thousands of people they interrupted on the highway in Los Angeles suffer the repercussions of being unable to make it to their destination on time. How many parents were late picking up their children? How many had their jobs on the line as they sat in man-made traffic?”

Nothing is as important as them having an opportunity to feel significant, and morally superior, when deep down they know they’re anything but.