HOW COLLEGE ADMISSIONS ACTUALLY WORKS. Prove him wrong! (Protip: You can’t.)

THE CASE AGAINST COLLEGE ADMISSIONS SELECTIVITY. I did not expect this to make such a good case. I am not sure if I remain unpersuaded because it’s unpersuasive or just because I am insufficiently open-minded on the issue.

As a counterpoint, Mark Bauerlein (one of the new trustees at the New College of Florida) makes the case for selectivity, but of the traditional kind, not what colleges practice now.

I’LL START BELIEVING IT’S A CRISIS WHEN THEY START ACTING LIKE IT’S A CRISIS. If Biden did indeed order the Nord Stream pipelines blown up, that means he chose to cause greenhouse emissions equivalent to burning 5 billion gallons of gasoline. But by all means, ban my SUV.

HOW MUCH MUST COURTS BLIND THEMSELVES TO ANTI-MALE DISCRIMINATION IN TITLE IX HEARINGS? In a Seventh Circuit amicus brief, FIRE and I argue that it’s way less than the district court judge in Doe v. Loyola University Chicago thought.

APP STATE’S MAGICAL VANISHING DEI COMMITTEE. Nothing to hide here, no sir. It’s all on the up-and-up.

CHINA CLAIMS BALLOON OVER U.S. IS… A WEATHER BALLOON. When Chinese soldiers jump out and start probing Midwestern farmers, I assume that will only further confirm the claim.

We deserve a better class of cover-up.

SOCIAL JUSTICE RESTRICTIONS ON RESEARCH HARM ALL OF US. Implemented to prevent another Tuskeegee Experiment, they now restrict things like outcomes that might “stigmatize,” even if helpful. But at least they prevent widespread and dangerous medical experimentation on people…. right?

SCHOOLS SHOULD THINK TWICE BEFORE PUNISHING FACULTY FOR THEIR SPEECH. Though it’s increasingly important that they stop being able to stick taxpayers with the bill for their expensive virtue-signaling (at Auburn, to the tune of $645,837).

“BREAKING: SECRET POPE BENEDICT BOOK IS PUBLISHED BLASTING PROGRESSIVE POPE FRANCIS, REVEALS US CATHOLIC SEMINARIES ARE HAVENS OF ‘GAY CLUBS.'” Whoa.

JAMIE LEE CURTIS REMOVES TWEET SHOWING OFF WEIRDO NAKED KID ART. You don’t need a pizza-related map to know that we need a total and complete shutdown of the elite fascination with creepy sexualized art (often involving kids) until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

WILL AI AND CHATGPT CHANGE HIGHER ED FOR THE BETTER? Maybe not in the way you think.

‘APPLE HAS BEGUN SCANNING YOUR LOCAL IMAGE FILES WITHOUT CONSENT.’ I hope this guy’s mistaken, because I am close to 100% certain that the “child porn” for which claim they are scanning includes pictures like this…

…selected by people like this:

BOYS AND MEN NEED BETTER EDUCATIONAL POLICIES. 

TITLE IX ABUSE IS BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS! And I do mean boys. And men. Also it never really stopped, but the Trump/DeVos regs did slow it down.

GARLAND APPOINTS SPECIAL COUNSEL TO INVESTIGATE BIDEN CLASSIFIED DOCS. Welp, that’s what happens when you showboat to get bad orange man.

With both Biden and Trump, this almost certainly has way more to do with the government being addicted to secrecy and classifying everything in sight than it does with “muh nuclear codes!!”

RIPPED OFF BY THE THOUGHT POLICE. The Twitter Files show how censorship’s supporters got snookered.

OBJECTIVITY MUST BE DEFEATED. UNC is still “waiving” standardized testing until 2025. Because COVID. Must be the SR-71-X-AE-A10.5 strain I have been hearing about.

HOW’S THAT CENSORSHIP WORKING OUT FOR YOU, BRAZIL? Glenn Greenwald on about the Brazilian supreme court’s authoritarianism over speech, with 10 members of its Congress banned from social media by order of the court. Meanwhile, Brazilians made January 8 of this year a real version of what everyone pretends January 6, 2021, was in D.C. It’s almost like people think a government that silences its opponents lacks legitimacy!

Now, if you want to be really scared, consider that it’s quite possible that Trump will run under these conditions in 2024, with the connivance of (if probably not at the order of) the federal government.

MORE EVIDENCE THAT ON CAMPUS, SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS. It’s creepy and corrosive to watch campuses repeatedly turn a blind eye to expression that is anti-Semitic or anti-white while instituting totalitarian crackdowns on those who say the same or even milder things about groups that are politically en vogue. I don’t believe America can survive with speech policing generally, but I know it can’t survive by making groups of people second-class citizens.

IN WHICH I AM BALDER THAN DR. PHIL. Dr. Phil’s show yesterday was called “You Can’t Post That” and featured FIRE First Amendment plaintiff Kim Diei, who was nearly expelled for a tweet, with me in a supporting role. (They didn’t post her part online, so you get me instead. Sorry!) It was fun to do the show at Paramount in Hollywood–I was told it was the same sound stage as The Wizard of Oz.

‘THE MOST ACCURATE MOVIE ABOUT CAMPUS LIFE THAT I CAN REMEMBER.’ So said the late Roger Ebert about Wonder Boys, based on Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon’s book of the same name. Back then, it took some mighty serious offenses to fire a tenured professor like main character Grady Tripp. (Now it just takes an insufficiently woke tweet, yet somehow we’re not better off.) If you haven’t read or seen it, it might be worth checking out.

ALTERNATIVES TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN HIGHER ED. With any luck, this will soon become a pressing concern. Also makes an interesting point: while the U.S. population has increased by around 50% since the 1970s, the number of “prestigious” schools, and the number of students they admit, has barely budged. This lends a lot of credence to the idea that, despite their protests, they’re selling prestigious credentials, not education.

NEW YEAR’S REFORMS FOR HIGHER ED: Sadly (as a former Cameron Crazie), I think we probably do need to end big-time college sports. Not just because it’s obviously just a minor league for the pros now, but because colleges use sports “homerism” to distract from the vile things they actually promote and mandate for the vast majority of students.

Update: I corrected my embarassing substitution of the word “prose” for “pros.” Is anyone else having this weird thing as they get older where they substitute homophones while writing? Or am I just losing my mind?

OK, I’VE HAD JUST ABOUT A-FRICKIN-NOUGH. The New York Times gives us “The Signal App and the Danger of Privacy at All Costs.” Every single paragraph in this is a boot stamping on a human face, forever. I know it’s behind a paywall, but if you can read it, you should, because this is the voice of the establishment.

The ethical universe, according to Signal, is simple: The privacy of individuals must be respected above all else, come what may. If terrorists or child abusers or other criminals use the app, or one like it, to coordinate activities or share child sexual abuse imagery behind impenetrable closed doors, that’s a shame — but privacy is all that matters.

One should always worry when a person or an organization places one value above all. The moral fabric of our world is complex. It’s nuanced. Sensitivity to moral nuance is difficult, but unwavering support of one principle to rule them all is morally dangerous.

The way Signal wields the word “surveillance” reflects its coarsegrained understanding of morality. To the company, surveillance covers everything from a server holding encrypted data that no one looks at to a law enforcement agent reading data after obtaining a warrant to East Germany randomly tapping citizens’ phones. One cannot think carefully about the value of privacy — including its relative importance to other values in particular contexts — with such a broad brush.

What’s more, the company’s proposition that if anyone has access to data, then many unauthorized people probably will have access to that data is false. This response reflects a lack of faith in good governance, which is essential to any well-functioning organization or community seeking to keep its members and society at large safe from bad actors.

If you’re not either laughing your ass off or cocking your shotgun after reading that last part, you are probably reading the wrong blog.

ON FIRE FOR FREE SPEECH: Glenn has always been so generous in recommending FIRE (my former employer) as an end-of-year gift for those looking to give. DonorsTrust (a donor-advised fund, also very good folks) highlights FIRE’s work today on its Giving Ventures podcast.