NORTH CAROLINA’S MARTIN CENTER FOR ACADEMIC RENEWAL TURNS 20. A lot of progress has been made in NC higher ed thanks to their work, including making our state the national leader in campuses lacking speech codes. I’m proud to be on the board (though I can’t take any credit, that goes to the staff!).

FIFTH CIRCUIT TO UNIVERSITY TRUSTEES: YOU HAVE ACTUAL RESPONSIBILITIES. Professor Timothy Jackson wrote to the University of North Texas’ Board of Trustees asking for them to intervene and stop his persecution on bogus racism charges. They ignored him, and the state pled that the Board “had no direct connection with the specific acts of retaliation,” even though they had the power to stop it and failed to do so. Importantly, the Court didn’t buy this–and that’s good news. Maybe trustees who are accountable will finally start holding those below them accountable as well.

CAMPUS BIAS REPORTING AND THE COMPANIES THAT LOVE IT. The Bolsheviks were right–capitalists like Maxient are selling us the rope we’re using to hang ourselves with a social credit system.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SCHOOLS ABANDON MERIT: A review of Heather Mac Donald’s new book, which contains nightmare fuel like this “gem” from a Julliard professor to a black student: “Have you practiced?” The student’s response: “I don’t have to. I’ll always have a job.”

ARE FACULTY REALLY ‘FLEEING THE SOUTH?’ Supposedly due in significant part to “generally conservative political climates in Florida, Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina.” I live in North Carolina. Colleges here aren’t notably conservative, and the governor is a Democrat. From experience at FIRE and in private practice, I can tell you that Texas colleges are frequently very liberal. So color me skeptical.

CAMPUS “ANTI-RACISM” IS A DEGENERATING RESEARCH PROGRAM. Yep. And a lie, too. Race relations are far worse on campuses now than in the late 90s.

DOES TENURE MATTER FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM? Mark McNeilly’s analysis of FIRE’s numbers shows that it does. But it should matter a lot more if it is to be worth the downsides.

AT UVA, A CANCELED STUDENT STRIKES BACK.

DEI IS TURNING EXERCISE SCIENCE INTO ‘HARRISON BERGERON.’ Boy, I can’t wait until we get to the point where doctors and physical therapists don’t tell white people what they need to do to get healthier because that would lead to inequitable outcomes. Imagine the benefits! No seriously, you will have to imagine them because I don’t think a real one exists.

BIG SURPRISE: ED DEPT. PANEL GIVES BAD ADVICE ON DEALING WITH END OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. Affirmative action in admissions is a band-aid to cover the miserable failure of the public education system at all levels, everyone involved knows this, and we all need to quit pretending they don’t.

DUKE GRAD STUDENTS VOTE TO UNIONIZE. I mean, what did management the administration expect? 95% of people on both sides are to the left of Bernie Sanders, and there’s no doubt that every morning the students get another day older and deeper in debt.

ARE ‘GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT’ RULES A GOOD IDEA FOR HIGHER ED? The left uses them mostly to selectively attack for-profit institutions. My experience at FIRE made me very dubious of for-profit higher ed, but if “gainful employment” rules are needed for (say) a for-profit MBA, I don’t see why they shouldn’t also be applied to an MBA from a traditional nonprofit university.

IN NORTH CAROLINA? SEE GOV. SCOTT WALKER AT THE MARTIN CENTER’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY GALA, SEPTEMBER 21. The teachers’ unions and universities still hate him, so you know he’ll be worth hearing from on education reform.

HOW’D THAT WORK OUT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION? Chapel Hill’s DEI Obsession Was Mandated at the Top.

GIVING TEETH TO LAWS AGAINST AFFIRMATIVE ACTION RACIAL DISCRIMINATION. Relying on administrative agencies won’t cut it. It has to be individual liability and private rights of action, at minimum, to be real. Jail time for purposeful violations (not this “implicit” or “structural” baloney) should also be on the table. There is zero justification for letting apparatchiks use skin color to substitute for individual judgment.

MORE ON TRUMP’S REPORT THAT HE WILL BE ARRESTED FOR JANUARY 6 “INCITEMENT.” If the First Amendment protects an antiwar protester saying “We’ll take the f–king street later” while cops cleared out demonstrators, it surely protects Trump’s speech saying “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

CAN PRUDENCE SAVE YOU FROM WOKE SCOLDS ON CAMPUS? It certainly helps. It’s probably necessary. But when your number is up, it’s not enough.

4TH CIRCUIT ALLOWS NC STATE TO PUNISH ANTI-WOKE PROFESSOR ON ‘COLLEGIALITY’ GROUNDS. At least in higher ed, “collegiality” requirements are 100% a scam. Both those I helped at FIRE and my current clients (and the professor here is a client of my firm) regularly tolerate nauseating levels of “uncollegiality” aimed at them. If they complain, their complaints are deemed uncollegial. Courts need to stop falling for this stuff.

A PROGRESSIVE PRESCRIPTION TO FIX HIGHER ED. “To sum up Bunch’s argument, the U.S. should make universal postsecondary education a ‘public good.'”

The K-12 system is universal and it’s not doing so hot–how about we fix that first?

THE DECLINE (AND FALL?) OF COLLEGE. As I believe Glenn has already pointed out, part of the reason affirmative action got shot down is that courts no longer have the confidence that colleges are making sound academic judgments. Schools doing things like eliminating the SAT to obfuscate admissions processes aren’t going to help with this, either.

THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION OPINION IS OUT. From the summary:

Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. At the same time, nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university. Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice. Pp. 39–40.

UPDATE – also from the opinion:

Most troubling of all is what the dissent must make these omissions to defend: a judiciary that picks winners and losers based on the color of their skin. While the dissent would certainly not permit university programs that discriminated against black and Latino applicants, it is perfectly willing to let the programs here continue. In its view, this Court is supposed to tell state actors when they have picked the right races to benefit. Separate but equal is “inherently unequal,” said Brown. 347 U. S., at 495 (emphasis added). It depends, says the dissent.

Ouch. Also: “But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.)”

WHAT IS THE ‘EdD’ AND WHY IS IT A PROBLEM? While I was at FIRE, cases from education schools were hands down the most insane of all our cases, followed closely by social work and nursing. And since I’m a pseudo-“doctor” myself (and basically a knight, too), you are required to submit to my expertise.

OHIO NORTHERN U, WHILE REFUSING TO TELL A PROF WHAT HE’S ACCUSED OF DOING, ASKS CRITICS TO ‘WITHHOLD JUDGMENT.’ I await its petition to the court for mercy in the killing of its parents on the grounds that it is an orphan. (Note: my firm represents Prof. Gerber here. Not the school, thank goodness.)

This country is in the grips of a massive crisis of institutional accountability. From Hunter Biden, the FBI, and Fauci, to colleges that violate the law and school boards that silence parents, those in power believe (with solid evidence) that they will never even have to answer questions. It’s all of our jobs as citizens, not subjects, to make them wrong about this.

‘CLUSTER HIRES’ KEY TO UNC DEI PUSH. If the Supreme Court does ban affirmative action in admissions as many suspect, expect a massive wave of innovation from colleges. Not technologically, but in terms of ways to engage in racial discrimination without being detected.

PROF. ROBERT GEORGE IN THE ATLANTIC: TIME FOR INSTITUTIONAL NEUTRALITY. 50+ years ago, the University of Chicago adopted the “Kalven Report,” aimed at keeping the institution out of political struggles: “The University is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” The amount of trouble potentially avoided by such rules is so immense that the fact that they are not widely adopted is itself a sign of something gone very wrong.