Legal Commentary

Two Views Of Students As Customers

Posted on April 01, 2011
From Inside Higher Ed today, a report from Northeastern Illinois University of ?a two-year anthropological inquiry into how today?s students do research.? The goal of such an approach is priming librarians to ?see the library through the eyes of others,? [associate university librarian David] Green said...

A Social Psychology Hoax? (Or Is Social Psychology Itself A Hoax?)

Posted on March 30, 2011
Remember the wonderful Alan Sokal hoax on the ponderously pontificating journal, Social Text? As the New York Times reported in May 1996, A New York University physicist, fed up with what he sees as the excesses of the academic left, hoodwinked a well-known journal into publishing a parody thick with gibberish as though it were serious scholarly work...

The Lilly Ledbetter Chickens Come Home To Roost

Posted on March 30, 2011
Lilly Ledbetter still lives! Not the actual human person Lilly Ledbetter (although she too still lives), but the ostensible victim of pay discrimination who became the symbol of all things good and virtuous about the victorious Democrats in 2008 when, in 2009, the first bill President Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act...

Libya?s WMDs

Posted on March 29, 2011
In his speech tonight President Obush argued that his intervention in Libya was justified because ?Qaddafi declared he would show ?no mercy? to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment.? In other words, we went to war in response to Qaddafi?s WMDs, his Words of Mass Destruction...

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?Diversity? As Tribalism II

Posted on March 28, 2011
About two weeks ago I criticized a letter in the Chronicle of Higher Education from David Dixon, a Stanford graduate student. Dixon, who identifies himself as ?an active member of the Choctaw Nation,? pointed out that in order to receive preferential treatment Native Americans must prove that they ?maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment? and wrote that it would be a good thing if universities ?required all minorities to demonstrate that they were serving in their racial communities before they received special consideration for admissions and scholarships...

Why Can?t A (Princeton) Woman Be More Like A Man?

Posted on March 28, 2011
I bet Lerner and Loewe never considered that the president of Princeton and the former president of Wellesley and Duke would turn out to sing the same tune as Prof. Henry Higgins. To see why they should have, see Why Can?t a Princeton Woman Be More Like a Princeton Man? on Minding The Campus.

Natural Selection?

Posted on March 25, 2011
In my last post I invited (well, maybe urged) you to take a look at my discussion on Minding The Campus of yet Another Report on MIT?s Female Faculty by Its Female Faculty. Shortly after that report appeared two new studies appeared of ?the anemic underrepresentation on higher education faculties of another marginalized group, political conservatives,? and I discuss them, again, on Minding The Campus in Is This Natural Selection?...

More On Women At MIT...

Posted on March 23, 2011
I have another discussion of women in science on Minding The Campus this afternoon. (If I keep writing about that topic enough, I may become an ?expert? on it at some point.) If you?re interested, see Another Report on MIT's Female Faculty by Its Female Faculty.

Anti-Racism, Anti-Anti Racism, And Liberal White Guilt

Posted on March 20, 2011
On his terrific blog, Legal Insurrection, Cornell law professor William Jacobson has a perceptive and instructive discussion (Saturday Night Card Game [?I didn?t call you racist, I just pointed out you?re white?]) of a revealing blog-based ?spitting match? between Aaron Worthing of Pontifications and Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress over whether Yglesias argues, believes, writes, implies (or some combination) that whatever most whites want must be racist...

Three Cheers For Obama?s Restraint!

Posted on March 18, 2011
It?s been a very long time since I?ve had anything unreservedly positive to say about Barack Obama ? 6 years, 7 months, and 18 days to be exact (but who?s counting?). Yes, it?s true. 2,424 days ago, on July 28, 2004, I praised Sen. Obama?s keynote address to the Democratic Convention in which he declared (in what turned out to be one of the most mendaciously deceptive presentations of self in American politics): Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes...

Beyond Anti-Affirmative Action Bake Sales

Posted on March 17, 2011
Reader Rick Palmer sends an interesting suggestion for how those opposed to racial preferences on college campuses can move beyond bake sales to highlight their opposition: I have read about bake sales on various campuses, where the prices are determined by the customer?s race or ethnicity...

?Diversity? As Tribalism

Posted on March 16, 2011
I don?t know whether to be embarrassed, chagrined, frustrated, or just amused. I?ve been trying to expose the moral, legal, philosophical, political, and just plain common sense flaws of racial preferences on this blog for nearly 10 years (!), but every now and then a supporter of racial preference comes along who unwittingly makes my paltry efforts pale into puny insignificance...

A Twofer: Fight The Deficit, Eliminate Gov?t Discrimination!

Posted on March 16, 2011
Discussing ways to eliminate wasteful discretionary spending, Mickey Kaus writes (from his new Daily Caller home), ?There is, for one thing, a whole affirmative action/equal employment compliance bureaucracy that makes at best a secondary contribution to the public good...

Obama Justice Dept. Forces City To Lower Standards For Police

Posted on March 13, 2011
Defenders of affirmative action always try to clothe its naked racial preference with rhetorical camouflage ? ?diversity,? ?inclusion,? ?breaking down barriers,? race just ?one of many factors,? etc. ? but survey data and votes on anti-preference initiatives (where liberals haven?t succeeded in keeping such votes off the ballot) reveal that most people aren?t fooled...

Ends And Means In American Liberalism

Posted on March 13, 2011
Today George Will nicely eviscerates what may be the strongest ? indeed, it may be the only ? argument that Obamacare?s individual mandate is constitutional. That argument is as frightening as it is familiar: its essence is that if the end is legitimate, no means necessary to achieve it can ever be illegitimate...

Affirmative Action In Practice: ?It?s An Automatic Hire?

Posted on March 11, 2011
Evidence abounds (and is routinely ignored or denied) that the descriptions and defenses of affirmative action by its supporters have almost no relation to what affirmative action policies and practices actually are. Two days ago, for example, we saw (If This Isn?t Affirmative Action, What Is?) the Syracuse police chief asserting that preferential treatment of women and blacks, who ?would be able to score lower on entrance exams and still be admitted to the academy,? was not affirmative action...

The Ineffability Of Academic Equity

Posted on March 10, 2011
ineffable adjective 1. too great or intense to be expressed in words; unutterable 2. too sacred to be uttered 3. indescribable; indefinable Today brings two striking examples of how equity, ?the quality of being fair or impartial,? is understood in both the lower and higher reaches of academia today...

If This Isn?t Affirmative Action, What Is?

Posted on March 09, 2011
At first they tried to argue that affirmative action doesn?t mean quotas. Now they?re arguing that affirmative action doesn?t even mean ... affirmative action. Saying it?s not affirmative action, Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler tells CNYcentral the hiring of new police officers will be based on several preference lists...

Do Female Students Need Stereotype Inoculation?

Posted on March 07, 2011
If you?ve been wondering whether female students in the STEM fields (or who are not but, some think, should be) need to be inoculated against dangerous stereotypes, you may want to take a look at my discussion of that issue on Minding The Campus this morning...

A Half Century Of Affirmative Action

Posted on March 07, 2011
Roger Clegg reminds us that yesterday, March 6, was ?the 50th anniversary of the first time the phrase ?affirmative action? was used in the civil rights context, in Executive Order 10925, which President Kennedy signed on March 6, 1961.? He also reminds Washington Times readers of something diligent readers of DISCRIMINATIONS should have memorized by now (since I?ve referred to or quoted Kennedy?s Executive Order 10925 over 25 times, such as here) that it is clear that the phrase in Kennedy?s document meant taking positive steps, proactive measures ? affirmative action, get it? ? to make sure racial discrimination did not occur, that individuals were treated ?without regard? to race by government contractors...

?Quality Is Irrelevant In The Face Of Diversity?

Posted on March 05, 2011
The Wall Street Journal published an interesting and troubling letter yesterday under the heading, ?Diversity Can Conflict With Quality Hiring.? [HatTip to a professor in a major university science department who, for reasons related to ?diversity,? prefers to remain anonymous...

What?s Wrong With ?Diversity? Preferences For Whites?

Posted on March 02, 2011
Recently some students at Texas State University, emulating I believe the successful news-making success of the anti affirmative action bakes sales, ?formed the Former Majority Association for Equality ? a San Marcos-based nonprofit group that is offering five $500 scholarships exclusively to white male students...

No Room At The Inn (For Equality)

Posted on March 01, 2011
Roger Clegg sends the following: The Washington Post?s weekly ?Capital Business? supplement focuses on diversity this issue, and there?s all the usual corporate bean-counting nonsense. But the prize goes to the hotel industry. Marriott had ?a goal of getting 500 hotels in the hands of diverse owners by 2010,? which was merely ?part of a larger diversity agenda that included a pledge to spend $1 billion with minority suppliers?...

Why Not?

Posted on March 01, 2011
In vehemently denying to a Congressional committee today that the Department of Justice?s refusal to pursue the case against voter intimidation by Black Panthers in Philadelphia had anything to do with race, Attorney General Holder insisted ?This Department of Justice does not enforce the law in a race-conscious way...

Krugman Undermines ?Diversity?

Posted on February 28, 2011
A couple of weeks ago I discussed a remarkable criticism of ideological orthodoxy ? the virtual absence of conservatives ? among social psychologists (and in some respects an even more remarkable appreciation in the New York Times). The ideologically orthodox Paul Krugman was, predictably, not impressed by the criticism, and he was especially critical of the implied comparison of the underrepresentation of conservatives to the underrepresentation of blacks, calling that ?a really, really bad analogy...

Should Conservatives Not Stand On The Shoulders Of Dead Liberals?

Posted on February 27, 2011
David Bernstein has in interesting post ? interesting in itself, and raising interesting questions ? noting and generally lamenting the fact that the dominant conservative view of the role of the judiciary ?simply adopted and advocated views regarding the role of the judiciary previously championed by the likes of Frankfurter and Holmes,? i...

Stigmatism

Posted on February 25, 2011
Don?t get all in a dither; I know ?stigmatism? is not really a word. You?ll have to read my post on Minding The Campus this morning to see why I use it anyway. (I mistakenly thought I had coined another word, ?blackademia,? only to find that it is already well established...

Blank Page

Posted on February 22, 2011
Several years ago I began a post on Chicago Tribune generic (though black) liberal columnist Clarence Page, ?Turn This Page Down,? as follows: In the past I have dogeared a number of Pages (columns by Clarence Page, that is) as good examples of the thinking (or lack thereof) of mainstream liberal columnists/talking heads...

?The New Wisconsin Idea?

Posted on February 19, 2011
On National Review Online earlier today, Rich Lowry wrote that ?the cradle of American progressivism might yield the solution to states? budget woes.? Gov. Scott Walker is bringing austerity to the intellectual breadbasket of American progressivism, and seeks to break the grip of the public-sector unions in a state that had a large hand in empowering them...

UPDATE

Posted on February 19, 2011
My post below on the hypocrisy of the California Bar Association has been UPDATED.

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