AWAKENING A SLEEPING GIANT – ALUMNI. From today’s Wall Street Journal, probably paywalled (but very important), a story about alumni organizing to take their campuses back from the censors.

Two years ago Cornell University asked a California real-estate developer and longtime donor for a seven-figure contribution.

Carl Neuss didn’t write the check immediately, saying he was worried about what he saw as liberal indoctrination on campus and declining tolerance toward competing viewpoints.

To allay Mr. Neuss’s concerns, the development office introduced him to some politically moderate professors, he said. The attempt backfired. The professors, he said, told him they felt humiliated by the diversity training they were required to attend and perpetually afraid they would say something factual—but impolitic.

Cornell has 1,695 faculty members and this was its best foot forward on free speech to an important donor. That speaks volumes. Later in the story:

In 2018, alumni at Washington and Lee University in Virginia launched an organization called the Generals Redoubt after they felt the school began disassociating itself from President George Washington—who endowed the school, and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, a former school president. Both men owned slaves. …

Washington and Lee President Will Dudley said the debate has placed universities unfairly in the crossfire.

“We’re living in an environment where people on both sides, right and left, are engaged in a culture war and they want to use universities,” he said. “I don’t find that beneficial to our mission and I’m not interested in being a participant in it.”

Universities have been waging a one-way culture war on free speech, due process, and other fundamental rights (along with many other things) for decades. They don’t get to pretend they’re not part of it when the other side finally starts firing back.

And if you’re an alumnus who wants to join the movement, please, take a moment to join FIRE’s (nascent) Alumni Network or reach out to the good folks at the Alumni Free Speech Alliance so we can put you in touch with like-minded folks from your own alma mater. 20 groups are out there already, and there is interest from many more.

CIVILITY CODES SURE ARE CONVENIENT FOR THOSE WITH POWER: Duke’s student government has approved its president’s veto of its decision to recognize the Students Supporting Israel student group, less than a week after voting to grant the group recognition, for the below Instagram post. In her veto, the student government president claimed that the group “singled out an individual student on their organization’s social media account in a way that was unacceptable for any student group and appeared antithetical to the group’s stated mission to be welcoming and inclusive to all Duke students, and educational in mission and purpose.” Behold the horror:

If I thought this were some kind of bold stance against cancel culture and social media mobbing, I’d be more sympathetic, even though it would still be wrong — this isn’t calling for cancellation, and Duke promises free speech and association. But color me extremely skeptical that this (wrong) policy will be enforced evenhandedly.

GOP VOTERS CARE ABOUT CULTURE WAR BEING WAGED AGAINST THEM, WOULD ACTUALLY LIKE SOMEONE TO FIGHT IT. That could easily be the headline to this NYT piece, if someone other than the NYT had written it. The left knows this; it is practically 100% in on the culture war on every front, and it has brought them great success even while impoverishing average Americans. It is not just the economy, stupid, and everyone knows this except the GOP establishment, which only pretends not to.

SEGREGATION RETURNS AS GEORGE WALLACE HARVARD BRINGS OLD-FASHIONED DISCRIMINATION TO THE DEEP SOUTH BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS? Better check your skin color before you try to hit tomorrow’s performance of Macbeth at Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre.

COASTAL CAROLINA SUSPENDS PROF FOR NOT BEING OUTRAGED ENOUGH ABOUT SOMETHING MISTAKENLY DEEMED RACIST. Colleges really think that taxpayers and tuition payers will tolerate this kind of stupidity forever. They won’t.

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! This time it’s brought to you by, and I am not making this up, Elizabethtown College’s Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking.

DO WE NEED A FREE MARKET IN LEGAL SERVICES? We need to do something to make it cheaper — too many average people refuse to get a lawyer, even when they really could use one, because of the expense.

MORE “NORMS RESTORED” BY TRUMP-LESS GOP: “In an unbelievable move, both House and Senate Republicans, many of whom view themselves as “defense hawks,” voted to add far-left language to the bill that would draft our young daughters in a time of national emergency. In the House, 135 Republicans voted last night to do just that.”

So a huge part of the “conservative” party votes to let the government drag my two daughters (and yours) at gunpoint off to some foreign war run by loser generals obsessed with “white rage” instead of victory, who can’t even lose a war correctly, and who promise to warn actual communists before our attacks so that they’ll have maximum opportunity to kill my daughters (and yours)? How about you let the other party own that one? This is clown world.

UPDATE: Given the large number of comments here (which I did not expect), let me make this abundantly clear: it is in no sense conservative to have a society where we force unwilling teenage females into the meat grinder of warfare, regardless of what “feminists” or “equal protection” may demand. Like nearly every other American man, I registered for the draft when I turned 18; I would have served if called up. I am grateful that that didn’t happen, but I accept the necessity, in some circumstances, of male conscription (though I am dubious that it’s really necessary for any non-existential conflict). Conscripting 18-25 year old females is asking for societal suicide, for reasons so obvious they do not need to be explained. You can count me and my family right out of any such suicide pact, and I urge everyone else to do the same.

OLD AND BUSTED: Genetically engineered Frankenfood is a “gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong.”

THE NEW HOTNESS: Let’s make lettuce that gives you an mRNA vaccine when you eat it! “[We] have long-term goals of people growing it in their own gardens… Farmers could also eventually grow entire fields of it.”

Dr. Ian Malcom’s wisdom is needed now more than ever.

JUST OUT: THE LARGEST COLLEGE FREE SPEECH POLL IN HISTORY, PLUS CAMPUS-SPECIFIC RANKINGS. Where does your school rank in the 2021 College Free Speech Rankings? #1 or #154?

Some topline bad news: 61% of college students oppose allowing campus speakers who say COVID lockdowns infringed on our personal liberties. 1 in 4 might use violence to stop a speech. But individual campuses can be very different.

WELL, HE’S GOT US THERE. “Early this year, when Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. took down former U.S. President Donald Trump’s accounts, Mr. Xi saw yet another sign America’s economic system was flawed—it let big business dictate what a political leader should do or say—officials familiar with his views said.” (Sorry it’s from a paywalled Journal story.) I’d call that a flaw in our political system – nobody has yet explained to me how anyone will believe we had a free and fair election if one candidate were to end up locked out of social media during the campaign – but it’s definitely a flaw.

As for the economic policy described here – “‘Xi does think he’s moving to a new kind of system that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,’ said Barry Naughton, a China economy expert at the University of California, San Diego. ‘I call it a government-steered economy'” – I am pretty sure it did exist, and it was called national socialism. As with all command economies, it will ultimately flop.

MATT TAIBBI, NADINE STROSSEN, AND AMNA KHALID RESPOND TO NPR’S SMARTY-PANTS ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH. On FIRE’s excellent podcast, So To Speak. (Or catch it on YouTube if you love Google.) Yes, I know, “government-owned station attacks rights of people opposed to government” is one of those dog-bites-man stories, but the level of smugness NPR brings to the table (“Harpsichord music will tell people something is old and therefore dumb, hyuk yuk yuk”) has to be some of the weirdest kind of propaganda known to man.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMERICA’S TOP GENERAL AND A CHINESE SPY? “Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. ‘General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.'”

If true, this explains a lot about the decisions our “leaders” have been making lately.

I DARE YOU TO IDENTIFY WHAT HARVARD THINKS IS OFFENSIVE IN THIS NICKI MINAJ POSTER. Seriously, we need to know. Harvard didn’t say.

RELAX ABOUT THE PUSH FOR VACCINE MANDATES. The Supreme Court said more than a hundred years ago in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that vaccine mandates are constitutional. Indeed, vaccine mandates might even improve your liberty. The idea that such rules could set a dangerous precedent is simply paranoid. As one of America’s most famous jurists once pointed out,

The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Oh.

Well, crap.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The Horrific Outcomes of the Jacobson Case You’re Using to Justify Biden’s Vaccine Mandates.

Plus: The Irrepressible Myth of Jacobson v. Massachusetts. “During the COVID-19 outbreak, Jacobson v. Massachusetts became the fountainhead for pandemic jurisprudence. Courts relied on this 1905 precedent to resolve disputes about religious freedom, abortion, gun rights, voting rights, the right to travel, and many other contexts. But Justice John Marshall Harlan’s decision was very narrow. It upheld the state’s power to impose a nominal fine on an unvaccinated person. No more, no less. Yet, judges now follow a variant of Jacobson that is far removed from the Lochner era decision.”

SNARK AND LIES ARE NOT A PLAN. It’s not just Rolling “Fact checking? Whatever, man” Stone participating in the “code red” on Ivermectin. The FDA itself contributed this professional and sober-sided tweet:

Who doesn’t want misleading Twitter snark from their supposedly serious government agencies? The FDA knows perfectly well that Ivermectin is not just horse or cow medicine – the agency itself approved it for human use, just not for COVID. (Take it from me, it’s a miracle when head lice is going around your kids’ school.) It being used for both humans and animals has zero to do with whether it works for COVID. If you wonder why nobody trusts the FDA on COVID issues, this is why – there’s no reason you should.

THE UNC ATHLETIC SCANDAL 10 YEARS IN – FROM A STUDENT WHO WAS THERE. Aside from the obvious fact that D1 revenue athletes are barely students, I think universities put so much effort into athletics in order to distract from their manifest failures to be universities. How can you attack the ole alma mater when you’re rooting for it on the gridiron or court? Colleges know this, and they’re counting on it.

HARD EVIDENCE THAT “CANCEL CULTURE” IN ACADEMIA IS, IN FACT, AS BAD AS YOU THINK. FIRE’s new report found that an alarming 74 percent(!) of the 426 campaigns found that targeted college faculty for their expression resulted in punishment.

Also, in extremely related news, FIRE has launched a Faculty Legal Defense Fund to provide lawyers, at no cost, to public college faculty members targeted for their expression. Know someone like that? Send them our way!

JAN. 6 COMMITTEE TO SEEK PHONE RECORDS OF LAWMAKERS. Norms are being restored so much that we’re gonna get sick and tired of all the norm restoring. (Hat tip to Ace of Spades this time – I had missed this insanity.)

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Call me cynical, but could this be an effort to trump up an excuse to expel some Republicans so as to protect Pelosi’s majority in the House?

THE ESTABLISHMENT: WE MUST DRIVE BADTHINK OFF BIG SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS. ALSO ESTABLISHMENT: ALTERNATE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS ARE FULL OF BADTHINK! Oh no. Who could have predicted this.

After the relentless efforts to destroy Gab for refusing to censor people, I can’t think of a single reason why Andrew Torba should care what the media or Silicon Valley thinks, except to predict their next attempt to kill the company.

POLICE CARS INTENDED TO ENCOURAGE BRITS TO “REPORT INCIDENTS SUCH AS SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTS.” Welp.

Reached at his home in Market Snodsbury, Commissioner Cyril Fotheringay-Phipps had the following comment:

Update (from Ed): In accordance with the prophecy:

(Updated and bumped.)

NEW BOOK, ‘UNDOCTRINATE,’ FROM FIRE’S BONNIE SNYDER, COMING SEPTEMBER 14. Yes, you can push back when your kids get indoctrinated instead of educated. Snyder shows you how.

UPDATE: For those avoiding Amazon, some alternative sellers.

PRACTICAL PROBLEMS OF CENSORSHIP. Glenn’s earlier post about Facebook censoring an Asimov quote about censorship – a decision that inexplicably survived Facebook’s appeal process – brings up a point opponents of censorship (including me) don’t make enough: It seems apparent that the “line workers” of the censorship apparatus are, in the aggregate, too stupid and/or ignorant to do the job. This makes sense, though. Who else would do it?

(It’s also possible the big companies have hired non-Americans to do this who don’t understand English or America very well. That’s actually worse, if true.)

I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO SAY. This simply can’t be the best the United States of America can do, even in defeat.

NAVY COULD RETURN TO USING PHOTOS FOR PROMOTIONS: “The Navy could include service photos in promotion packages again after data suggested minorities are less likely to be selected blindly in some situations by promotion review boards, the service’s chief of personnel said Tuesday… [Marine Brig. Gen. A.T. Williamson said,] ‘There are elements of the photo that are…very helpful for us. I think that we may find that we may have disadvantaged individuals by removing those photos from the boards.'”

I kept waiting for the twist that would tell me that this isn’t what it looks like, but it never came.