On his Substack site “After Babel,” social psychologist Jon Haidt, most of you know of, explains the rapid rise of antisemitism on American campuses. The piece is long and a bit repetitious, but well worth reading of a Christmas Eve. Click to read: I’ll just summarize his thesis and give some quotes. First, the problem: […]
The other day I discussed how several anthropologists wrote a letter supporting the decision of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropological Society (CASCA) to cancel a panel on sex (“Let’s talk about sex, baby: why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology”) at their annual meeting. Appaerntly they objected to…
Troubles continue at the University of Auckland as it’s being sued by a somewhat off-the-rails professor named Siouxsie (real name Susannah) Wiles. Wiles apparently made some statements about Covid-19 as a public communicator of science, statements that the public didn’t like. The result was that she claimed to be inundated with hate mail and threats. […]
The Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy has published my latest law review publication titled “The Right to Rage: Free Speech and Rage Rhetoric in American Political Discourse,” 21 Geo. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 481. The work explores rage rhetoric and some of the areas addressed in my forthcoming book, The Indispensable Right: Free […]
Another writer for the New York Times, one who had accrued numerous accolades, resigned after having signed her second petition staking out a political position. As the NYT itself reported below, its Magazine writer Jazmine Hughes decided to resign from the paper after discussions with management. (She would have been fired had she not left.) […]
‘Progressive’ academics all aquiver before Siouxsie Wiles decision. Graham Adams writes – Last week, the NZ Herald published a very curious article about an “unsafe workplace”. You might have expected it to be about volunteer firefighters, or police dog handlers, or perhaps even nurses at the front line of hospital emergency departments, where unruly patients […]
One of my favorite secular organizations is the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), of which I’m a member of the “honorary board”. But even honorary boards should play an advisory role, and so I’m doing that here by calling attention to the organization’s mission creep. In previous posts, I noted that the organization, which is […]
The Atlantic‘s Conor Fridersdorf is a breath of fresh air among liberal woke media. He is in fact a liberal, but not a “progressive”, and in the new article below he reports one mathematician’s observations of how DEI has insinuated itself into academics, creating not only viewpoint homogeneity, but authoritarianism. Like my colleague Anna Krylov, […]
We have a new “progressive” mayor, Brandon Johnson, and although one of his election promises was to keep our “magnet school” system in place, he’s preparing a resolution to end it. “Magnet schools” are a form of student secondary-school tracking in which students can apply to go to any school, but the best schools, often…
Economist: The new New York Times was the product of two shocks – sudden collapse, and then sudden success. The paper almost went bankrupt during the financial crisis, and the ensuing panic provoked a crisis of confidence among its leaders. Digital competitors like the HuffPost were gaining readers and winning plaudits within the media industry as innovative. They were the…
In Bill Maher’s monologue this week, he gets serious about the war, going back in history and showing how the ethnic constitution of countries change drastically over time, how colonization is pervasive, and how ethnic cleansing has affected the Jews more than any other people (see his enlightening chart at 2:25). Those who are pro-Palestinian […]
Casey Costello provided a welcome change of perspective in her maiden speech. . . . I talk of my tūpuna, and of my whānau not to qualify for some credentials to be recognised as Māori. I know who I am and my strength comes from who has gone before and who are with me now. […]
There is a major controversy brewing in Canada over a proposal in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons that schools shift from emphasizing “medical expertise” in favor of teaching “anti-racism” and social justice values.
Steve Pinker has published his remedy for Harvard’s woes in today’s Boston Globe; he outlined these to me last week over a beer, but I didn’t feel at liberty to divulge what he said he was writing about. Now I can. But the fricking Globe is completely paywalled, so I had to go to our…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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