BIG COMPANIES SUDDENLY DECIDE THAT MOTHER’S DAY EMAILS ARE TRIGGERING. More at this Twitter link; just keep scrolling. Is this new this year? If so, who’s behind this? And while I am all for being sensitive to women (and men) who have lost children, where do I go to get this level of solicitousness?

::Extra Cynical Mode Activated:: Are we sure these companies didn’t just stumble on this as some kind of really effective market segmentation? Like, maybe people who opt-out using these emails are much more likely to buy things at an Independence Day sale?

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL. I think virtually all speech should be protected on campus, but it is utterly impossible to imagine that a non-black professor in 2023 could say “Blacks are so f–ing racist” on Twitter, or even be accused of telling a student in class “It’s not your fault you were born in Africa,” and end up with a university defending them and posting something like this. Colleges should do this (if it’s true), but they won’t. Insult the right groups, though, like white people (in virtually all cases), Jews (in this case) or Asians (in some cases, depending on whether the school is in Stop Asian Hate vs. Stop Asian Admissions mode), and boy do you ever get some serious due process. This unequal treatment is wrong, it’s corrosive, it’s not equal justice, and people are noticing it more and more.

LET’S GO BRANDON! At one Michigan school district, students weren’t allowed to wear Let’s Go Brandon gear to school–but gay pride stuff was OK. Now FIRE is suing to protect all students’ First Amendment rights, in its first-ever K-12 lawsuit.

BOOK OUT MAY 16: ‘BRUTAL MINDS: THE DARK WORLD OF LEFT-WING BRAINWASHING IN OUR UNIVERSITIES.’  If only this were an exaggeration.

QUESTION ASKED: IS TRACKING HIGHER ED DATA BY RACE ACTUALLY HELPFUL? One of the most harmful things is how selectively it’s tracked. Anyone working with those accused of Title IX offenses will tell you that minority students appear to be wildly overrepresented among the questionably accused. I’ll give you one guess about what racial stats the Department of Education doesn’t make schools track.

FANCY PROPUBLICA PROPAGANDA STORY: CLARENCE THOMAS GOES ON LUXURY VACATIONS WITH BILLIONAIRE. Sorry, but if it’s not to an island owned by a pedophile who gets suicided in prison and whose client list is shrouded in secrecy surpassed only by the Las Vegas mass shooting footage and Obama’s college transcript, I refuse to care. After all, ProPublica doesn’t.

ARE MICROCREDENTIALS A FAD OR CAN THEY REVOLUTIONIZE HIGHER ED? I think it could be the latter. Imagine a world where instead of having to hire someone who has been through 4 years of indoctrination, you can hire someone with the needed knowledge and skills. Could be a game changer.

TWITTER ALGORITHM INCLUDES “GOVERNMENT REQUESTED.” Man, I can just feel the freedom. Bonus question: which governments?

APPALACHIAN STATE PAYING GRAD STUDENTS DIFFERENTLY BASED ON RACE. The message here seems to be that the only thing the South did wrong in Jim Crow was picking the wrong victims. Pretty sure that’s not what I learned…

I ASSUMED THIS WAS FAKE, BUT IT’S NOT. Super-professional highlighting mine.

TRUMP INDICTED. What could go wrong?

GEORGETOWN PROF: THE CHICAGO STATEMENT NEEDS AN ENFORCEMENT MECHANISM. Prof. Hasnas makes an interesting point. While I worry that a campus authority dedicated to enforcing free speech policies could be co-opted, I also wonder if that would really be worse or different (on most campuses) than the current arrangement.

TWITTER BANS FEDERALIST CEO SEAN DAVIS FOR REPORTING ON ‘TRANS DAY OF VENGEANCE.’ Apparently Elon Musk didn’t fire enough people.

N.C. GOV JOINS OTHER STATES IN ALLOWING EXPERIENCE TO SUBSTITUTE FOR COLLEGE DEGREES. As the article points out, this is probably in the name of “equity,” but anything that reduces higher ed’s role as sole gatekeeper of “white-collar” jobs is a plus in my book.

UNC-CHAPEL HILL TRUSTEES RECOMMEND CREATING SCHOOL OF CIVIC LIFE TO FIGHT POLITICAL POLARIZATION; ACADEMIC LEFT NOT HAPPY. Suddenly, a “strange new respect” for academic governance. But if the trustees can’t even ask that the university start up a new program, what can they do?

A PROF PUNCHES BACK (LEGALLY) AT U. OF CENTRAL FLORIDA. “In the name of a crusade ‘to be actively anti-racist,’ as [President] Alexander Cartwright announced on June 2, 2020, the University of Central Florida (UCF) harassed and retaliated against Professor Charles Negy because he dared to publicly express viewpoints out of step with the prevailing campus orthodoxy on anti-racism…” They ruined Negy’s life–he had to sell his house and move back in with his mother to take care of his disabled brother. These people are actively anti-human. Their claims of compassion are lies.

(As disclosure, this suit was filed by my Allen Harris colleague Samantha Harris, who I worked with at FIRE for more than 15 years.)

THE SLOW RETURN OF ROTC TO THE IVIES. Booting ROTC off was a disgrace, but I have to wonder if more Ivy League grads in the military will help or hurt our ability to win wars at this point.

WHEN ARE YOU EVER GONNA USE THIS? OFTEN. A defense of liberal education you can use to bolster this inevitable argument with your kids. (I still think they should replace high school calculus with statistics, at least for the 90% of us who aren’t total nerds will never understand it, though.)

ILLEGAL ALIENS KILL BALD EAGLE TO EAT AND MAKE ORNAMENTS OF ITS FEET, FEDS DO NOTHING. Are we 100% sure Trump did not hire these guys to give him the best “I told you so” story ever? (Secondary punchline: More jobs Americans won’t do!)