Category: Social Justice

College admissions essays should be written in a proctored environment?

by philg

A friend is relaxing now after writing more than 20 college admissions essays. “For rich families,” he explained. “It’s normally a competition among the professional essay writers who’ve been hired, but we decided to do it ourselves.” (“do it ourselves” means the parents, both Harvard graduates, did most of it)

The question for today is why elite kids are allowed to have this kind of advantage. If a college wants to see how a 17-year-old writes, wouldn’t it make sense to have the 17-year-old sit in a big room set up like the SAT or AP test environment? The prompts would be kept hidden until the morning of the exam so that applicants couldn’t show up with memorized professionally-written responses. This would also solve the ChatGPT problem.

If colleges are sincere about leveling out the disadvantages of coming from a poor family, why haven’t they adopted this obvious approach?

Separately, a report on the continuation of elite schools’ race-based admissions system… “After Affirmative Action Ban, They Rewrote College Essays With a Key Theme: Race” (New York Times):

Astrid Delgado first wrote her college application essay about a death in her family. Then she reshaped it around a Spanish book she read as a way to connect to her Dominican heritage.

The first draft of Jyel Hollingsworth’s essay explored her love for chess. The final focused on the prejudice between her Korean and Black American families and the financial hardships she overcame.

All three students said they decided to rethink their essays to emphasize one key element: their racial identities. And they did so after the Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action in college admissions, leaving essays the only place for applicants to directly indicate their racial and ethnic backgrounds.

But the ruling also allowed admissions officers to consider race in personal essays, as long as decisions were not based on race, but on the personal qualities that grew out of an applicant’s experience with their race, like grit or courage.

This led many students of color to reframe their essays around their identities, under the advice of college counselors and parents. And several found that the experience of rewriting helped them explore who they are.

Sophie Desmoulins, who is Guatemalan and lives in Sedona, Ariz., wrote her college essay with the court’s ruling in mind. Her personal statement explored, among other things, how her Indigenous features affected her self-esteem and how her experience volunteering with the Kaqchikel Maya people helped her build confidence and embrace her heritage.

The Times features a future physician:

In her initial essay, Triniti Parker, a 16-year-old who aims to be the first doctor in her family, recalled her late grandmother, who was one of the first Black female bus drivers for the Chicago Transit Authority.

But after the Supreme Court’s decision, a college adviser told her to make clear references to her race, saying it should not “get lost in translation.” So Triniti adjusted a description of her and her grandmother’s physical features to allude to the color of their skin.

If this is her BMI at age 16, maybe she will ultimately specialize in prescribing Ozempic?

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Claudine Gay won’t be hired by any state-run university in Florida

by philg

It’s a good thing that Claudine Gay has a paycheck-for-life from Harvard…. “Florida’s State Board of Education passes rule to ‘permanently prohibit’ DEI at public colleges” (WPTV):

The board said the rule prohibits Florida College System institutions from using state or federal funds to administer programs that “categorize individuals based on race or sex for the purpose of differential or preferential treatment.”

Targeting DEI has been a key talking point of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s education department during his second term in office.

How many people will lose their Victimhood Industry jobs?

The governor also asked Florida’s public colleges and universities in 2023 to report how much money they are spending on DEI. He later said they self-reported at least $34 million.

If we assume a fully loaded cost of $200,000 per year per bureaucrat, that’s 170 DEI experts who will now be looking for jobs in more righteous states.

Who doesn’t like a race-neutral environment?

Meanwhile, Black leaders have pushed back on the initiatives to limit DEI at state colleges, saying DeSantis is playing politics in his pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination.

Some students have expressed worries that campuses across the state won’t be as welcoming to minorities in light of the changes.

A statement against racial equality from “Equality Florida”:

“There’s no surprise today that the State Board of Education, a board that has been a rubber stamp for Governor Ron DeSantis’s agenda of censorship and surveillance, moved forward with another sweepingly broad rule that abolishes diversity and inclusion programs in the Florida College System. The Board’s rules go well beyond what’s required by Governor DeSantis’s already extreme SB 266, handcuffing state colleges from using any state-funded resources on diversity programs that help recruit talented faculty, support students with unique needs, and help Florida’s colleges compete for national research and funding. This is a brazenly political attack on Florida’s colleges, and all minorities in Florida, and is one more way state agencies have been weaponized to support Governor DeSantis’s failing political ambitions. Shame on the State Board of Education for passing rules that weaken and threaten Florida’s colleges in service to one more manufactured culture war.”

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Could a white or Asian graduate in Black Studies get a job anywhere that he/she/ze/they applied?

by philg

If we look at a representative Black Studies department at a university, such as the one chaired by Prof. Dr. Dr. Maulana Karenga, Ph.D., Ph.D. at California State University, Long Beach, there is no evidence of any person identifying as “white” or “Asian” among the faculty. Here’s a poster from 2022:

What if a mediocre non-Black person with a Ph.D. in some branch of Comparative Victimhood were to apply to a department with no faculty identifying as non-Black? Would the non-Black person have to be hired in order to satisfy the university’s commitment to DEI? Or could the university say that whites and Asians in engineering and #Science balanced an all-Black Black Studies department?

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Doubling down on DEI at MIT

by philg

A statement from the president of MIT, who recently made the news for sharing Claudine Gay’s and the Penn president’s enthusiasm from suppressing all hate speech except against the Jews:

We will soon announce a new Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI). With this new role, we have an important opportunity to reflect on and comprehensively assess the structures and programs intended to support our community and create a welcoming environment.

While we address the pressing challenge of how best to combat antisemitism, Islamophobia and hatred based on national origin or ethnicity in our community, we need to talk candidly about practical ways to make our community a place where we all feel that we belong.

Note the obligatory pairing of “Islamophobia” with “antisemitism”, as though Islamophobia were now a Homeric epithet relating to Jews. As far as I am aware, there has never been an anti-Muslim demonstration at MIT, so it is unclear why Islamophobia is relevant to the recent strife.

We were supposed to have a guest speaker today in our FAA ground school class. He’s a superstar physician, long-time pilot, jet owner, immigrant (we are assured this is a superior class of humans), and nice guy who was great with the students last year. He refused to show up this year unless Sally Kornbluth resigns (where “resigns” means “get a paycheck until death as a professor, maybe on a $1 million/year salary”).

Another interesting section of the statement, which was emailed to everyone even slightly connected to MIT:

The Israel-Hamas war continues to cause deep pain for many around the world, including at MIT, and is an ongoing source of tension in our community. Here on campus, its repercussions have pressure-tested some long-standing systems and assumptions, presenting challenges to our community and to fulfilling our mission of research and education.

Characterizing the fighting as between the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and all of Israel fails to recognize the military contributions of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Party of Allah (“Hezbollah”), and the Gaza “civilians” who went through the border fence on October 7, raped, killed, and kidnapped, and also the Gazans, including at least one UNRWA teacher, who held hostages in their homes. It also justifies, I think, the kidnappings of and attacks on civilians that Hamas perpetrated (since these brave fighters are battling with all Israelis) as well as the continued rocket launches by Hamas against civilians in Israel.

Here’s Mariam Barghouti, a CNN contributor based in Gaza, on October 7. She was “laughing her ass off”:

A hater replied within 45 minutes:

Ms. Barghouti enjoyed a consistent Internet connection and electric power since October 7, apparently, since she kept up a steady stream of tweets. Whatever she and her fellow Gazans have suffered, though, she still has plenty of fight left in her and isn’t “crying” (like the Palestinians polled in November, who overwhelmingly supported the Oct 7 attacks). Example from January 2, 2024:

A video of Gaza civilians celebrating:

A lot of the participants in the above video don’t wear uniforms or the face masks that one sees in official Hamas videos.

In addition to the fighting being between Israel and opponents beyond Hamas, I disagree with the characterization of the current battles being a distinct “war” from the one that the Arabs, including ancestors of today’s “Palestinians”, declared against Israel in 1948. I think it is more accurate to describe what’s happening now as a “battle” in a longer-term war.

Circling back to the DEI theme, upgrading what used to be an “officer” to a “vice president” would seem to indicate a renewed and increased commitment to the race-based programs that got Harvard in trouble at the Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court says you’re violating the Constitution, that’s the time to double down?

Related:

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Claudine Gay will be paid $50 million to write her next book

by philg

Back in July 2023, I remarked on the Stanford president’s “resignation” in which he would get a paycheck for the rest of his life:

The last part is my favorite. Involvement with academic fraud is intolerable in an administrator, but acceptable for an active researcher and teacher. (Note that CNN implies in the headline that he will be gone (“resigned” from Stanford) when, in fact, he is merely moving offices.)

(Unlike Claudine GPT, Prof. Tessier-Lavigne may not have personally violated any rule. It may have been co-authors who manipulated data (Wikipedia).)

From the folks who broke the proven-untrue-then-banned-by-Facebook-and-Twitter Hunter Biden laptop story… “Harvard’s Claudine Gay set to keep her nearly $900K annual salary despite resigning as university president” (New York Post):

She won’t be leading the Crimson, but green shouldn’t be a problem.

Outgoing Harvard University president Claudine Gay will still likely earn nearly $900,000 a year despite being forced to resign her position as the school’s top administrator.

Political science professor Gay — who stepped down amid a tempest of allegations that she did not do enough to combat antisemitism and academic plagiarism Tuesday — will return to a position on the Cambridge, Mass., school’s faculty.

Prior to being named president just six months ago, Gay earned $879,079 as a faculty of arts and sciences dean in 2021 and $824,068 in 2020, according to records published by the university.

Her new position was not specified Tuesday, but she is expected to receive a salary comparable to what she previously received — if not higher.

Claudine Gay is 53. If we assume that $880,000 in salary translates to $1 million per year including benefits, the Comparative Victimhood scholar could get approximately $50 million before she dies. (No reason to retire since tenure trumps mental infirmity.) Her last book was a popular hit:

O.J. Simpson’s publisher has announced that it will be handling Gay’s next work: If I Did Research.

Let’s check in with Harvard commitment to free speech now that Suppressor-in-Chief Gay is gone. A tweet from before the Gazans’ October 7 raping/killing/kidnapping spree allows anyone to comment. A tweet from December 12 is locked down so that the unrighteous can’t besmirch with comments:

The latest tweet is similarly locked down against vox populi:

Harvard does not have to pay taxes on its $60 billion hoard (it was $50 billion in 2022, so I’m adjusting for inflation). The university doesn’t have to pay sales tax on stuff that it buys, nor real estate taxes on the land that it uses for nominally academic purposes (it does make a voluntary contribution to Cambridge). Harvard receives direct infusions of taxpayer cash via student loan subsidies, tuition grants, and research grants. But the school doesn’t want to hear from the chumps who pay for the federal and state infrastructure in which it sits.

Claudine Gay recently broke her silence to email “Members of the Harvard Community”. She is not resigning because she did anything wrong, but because it will be better for Harvard:

… after consultation with members of the Corporation, it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.

Those who objected to her tight control of speech on campus with the single exception of anti-Jewish/Israel speech were motivated primarily by racism:

Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.

Nobody hates hate and plagiarism more than Prof. Gay! Ergo, anyone who is against this scholar and leader is a racist. The board members (“Fellows of Harvard College”) agree. They simultaneously spammed out a message condemning “racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls”.

Speaking of racism, the Affirmative Action/DEI religion says that U.S. society should have quotas for Black Americans whose ancestors lived through slavery and then Jim Crow. Descendants of victims of these pre-Eisenhower systems (it was Eisenhower who engineered the desegregation of schools) are entitled to preference in college admissions, government contracting, executive jobs, etc. Claudine Gay’s parents, however, are from Haiti (Wikipedia). Her retention as Harvard president was supported by Barack Obama, whose father was an elite Kenyan and whose mother was white, yet Obama was able to take advantages of quotas intended for descendants of slaves. Wouldn’t it make more sense for Black Americans to be angry with this pair of quota-stealers than to embrace them as fellow victims of Systemic Everything?

Update from a reader:

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White vs. Black in Maskachusetts

by philg

From a chat group with some of my friends who are still up in the Boston suburbs:

[9th grader] lost points on a grammar test today because she capitalized Black and also White when referring to groups of people. Her teacher said that only Black should be capitalized, as that is an identity – but white is just a color and doesn’t refer to a cohesive group of people.

Also:

My friend wrote a letter to the head of the private school saying they should take down the BLM-logo mural because they endorse the Palestinian attack. After much pressure, she agreed to replace it with a general message of inclusion without the BLM logo. This is what it was replaced with:

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Hierarchy of victimhood from the CDC

by philg

Our celebration of Kwanzaa and the work of Professor Dr. Dr. Maulana Karenga, Ph.D., Ph.D., with and without toasters, begins today…

A Libs of Tiktok Tweet includes the following photo of a poster in a public school in Nashville, Tennessee:

Note the hierarchy of victimhood: The undocumented (listed first) are more important than Black students. Muslims are more important than those who identify as LGBTQ. Almost everyone is more important than the disabled.

Also, why does the school commit to celebrating Latinx culture, but not Muslim culture? What is stopping the school from celebrating what happens in Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Yemen?

Where does the money to research, develop, print, and post this hierarchy come from? Your federal tax dollars via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

Here’s the glsen.org web site:

It looks like it is mostly a 2SLGBTQQIA+ organization, yet somehow they’re experts on other victimhood categories such as “undocumented” and “Black”. Their Form 990 for 2021 shows that they’re getting about $8.5 million per year in grants, perhaps part of “CDC allocated $85 million for grants requiring schools to start student-led clubs supporting LGBT youth” (The Center Square, 2022).

What if one wanted a victimhood poster without the hierarchy? How about a motorized wheel of victimhood in which the groups are arranged around the circumference? If the wheel rotates once every 7 hours, for example, that will make sure that students don’t see the same victimhood group on top every morning. I tried having my favorite artist put this together:

I’m not sure where ChatGPT got these bizarre spellings. I think that I spelled everything correctly in my prompt:

[after asking for a circular poster] Please change the poster so that the labels are only the following: Black, LGBTQ, Undocumented Immigrant, Muslim, Latinx, female, disabled

Are we seeing the HAL 9000 glitching following some circuitry removal?

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The profitable side of DEI

by philg

“Former Facebook employee pleads guilty to stealing $4 million” (CNN):

An Atlanta woman pleaded guilty to stealing more than $4 million from Facebook while she was an executive at the company.

Barbara Furlow-Smiles who worked as a lead strategist, global head of employee resource groups and diversity engagement at Facebook, Inc., now known as Meta, from about January 2017 to September 2021 according to U.S. Attorney Northern District of Georgia Ryan K. Buchanan’s Office.

“This defendant abused a position of trust as a global diversity executive for Facebook to defraud the company of millions of dollars, ignoring the insidious consequences of undermining the importance of her DEI mission,” said Buchanan in a statement.

That last paragraph is my favorite. The U.S. government employee implies that the mission of DEI, despite its having been found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, is sacred.

The other interesting aspect is that she stole $4 million via expense account fraud. Where can the rest of us get an expense account big enough that $1 million per year in fraud isn’t detected for more than 4 years?

Loosely related… a Maskachusetts Congresswoman says that the Supreme Court is “corrupt”:

Maybe this is why federal employees can ignore the Court’s ruling that the principal objectives and methods of DEI are unconstitutional?

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Science is a fundamental right for humans…

by philg

…. as long as they can afford $15,000 for a lifetime of access to Nature.

A tweet from the righteous:

Science is a right, which means it is something that anyone, regardless of wealth level, should be able to claim and, if denied, be able to enforce the claim.

Suppose that a person attempts to claim his/her/zir/their human right to science at the nature.com web site? He/she/ze/they quickly hits a pay wall:

My response via X:

Aren’t you the same people who say that nobody can have access to the science published in your journal unless they pay $200/year (that’s $15,000 during a human lifetime)? Science is then a “right” for anyone who can afford to pay you? If that’s the standard then we can say that owning a superyacht is a right as well because anyone with enough money can buy a 100-meter yacht. Here are some yachts that are available on the same terms as the science published by Nature:

Related:

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Social justice in the Palo Alto high school

by philg

A friend sent me this assignment, recently given to students at the public high school in Palo Alto, California:

Let’s focus in on a few…

This is a little confusing. Racism explains why “Black and Latino men” are incarcerated at higher rates than other residents of the U.S. But how can racism explain why men are more likely to be incarcerated than people who identify with the other 73 genders recognized by Science?

What would happen to a student who cited Elizabeth Warren as an example?

This is the one that upsets me. Our house is 3 miles from the climate change-enhanced ocean, yet we are redlined by State Farm and excluded from homeowners insurance.

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