As the University of California at Davis’s vice chancellor for DEI explained, “In these searches, it is the candidate’s diversity statement that is considered first; only those who submit persuasive and inspiring statements can advance for complete consideration.” In one faculty search at University of California at Berkeley, around 75 percent of applicants were screened out of consideration — irrespective of criteria such as teaching ability and research skills. Small wonder that many applicants engage in what Daniel Sargent, a history professor at UC Berkeley, calls “performative dishonesty.”

We spend evenings walking along the beach in search of northern lights. So far no go, but ya gotta admit that auroras over the Atlantic wouldn’t be too shabby.

The only thing I’ve wanted to share is a teeny local story, from Utica, NY.

78-year-old Louis LaPolla of Utica pled guilty in federal court in Syracuse on Friday, May 10.

LaPolla pled to soliciting and then stealing donations that were meant to be used for a scholarship fund that was under his late wife’s name…

Earlier this year, LaPolla pled guilty in Oneida County Court to a misdemeanor petit larceny charge after he admitted to using stamps, envelopes, and mailing labels belonging to the Utica City School District to send out the fundraising flyers.

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I dunno. Not just that he stole. Nothing special about that. But from a fund dear to the heart of his dead wife…

And that he even stole school district postage for the fundraising letters…

File under: Whoroscope, by Samuel Beckett.

An Arizona goat farmer who asked not to be named for fear of being embroiled in partisan politics said Noem’s decision to use a weapon on the goat that required more than one shot was tougher on the animal than it was on her.

“The goat gets shot… but the brain’s intact, it’s aware of what’s going on,” the farmer said. “And then she has to go and futz around and get another shell and then come back and do the same thing and it finally expires.”

The farmer suggested that Noem’s account “reveals not just callousness toward life and poor political acumen, but also a limited understanding of the basics of farm life.”

Figures.

LOL diversity statement counseling but as ever UD stands amazed and impressed by the money-agility of capitalists. Now that even Harvard academics are reduced to pledge-reciting Girl Scouts (I promise to do my best to help other people at all times, especially those at home.), it’s time to cash in on coaching.

But let’s see what else Randall Kennedy, Harvard prof and man of the left, has to say.

Such pressure constitutes an encroachment upon the intellectual freedom that ought to be part of the enjoyment of academic life… By overreaching, by resorting to compulsion, by forcing people to toe a political line, by imposing ideological litmus tests, by incentivizing insincerity, and by creating a circular mode of discourse that is seemingly impervious to self-questioning, the current DEI regime is discrediting itself… I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice. The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince. The practice of demanding them ought to be abandoned, both at Harvard and beyond.

But hey whoa! Not only are arrogant snobs like Kennedy (‘make me wince’) shutting down TWO viable industries (DEI statement generation/enforcement, and DEI statement coaching), they are also impeding the suicide mission of Democrats as the coercive, “easy to parody DEI lingo” makes us look like assholes to the world and thereby makes the world safe for Donald Trump.

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More of the same.

Much ado about income inequality.

… universities this blog has chronicled. Go here for its perfect storm of corrupt athletics, inept leadership, give-a-shit board of trustees, demoralized faculty, homicidal frats, etc., etc. Go here for a sample post, from 2021.

Now – finally – 207 of its professors demand radical change. The school’s national ranking has tanked; its athletic debt is beyond belief; research faculty shrinks by the minute.

They want the clown president out, for starters.

An administrator at UCSF’s nursing school stole a million and a half dollars by the simple expediency of directing students to give her their money.

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Le hid her theft by removing students from enrollment rosters so no tuition would be expected or creating fake bank deposit slips to indicate received tuition and providing them to her supervisor, the memorandum said. Le also falsely documented tuition payments on an Excel spreadsheet. 

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And as to how you get students to hand you blank checks... UD’s figuring most of the students Le chose to rob were just-arrived foreigners?

The biggest high school in Massachusetts scares off gobs of its teachers and really can’t operate anymore with all the violence: A committee there has requested National Guard protection.

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Antioch Library in Contra Costa County is in emergency shutdown: Same chaos/violence/crime/drugs/public sex as Brockton High. Staff scared witless. Details, if you can stomach them.

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What? Whaddaya want me to say?

Here’s a couple of things.

Contemptible local/state politicians made it happen, outright deny it, or insist they had no idea and if they’d known they would of course have solved the problem lickety split.

Everyone at these two places knows it’s a matter of time before guns add to the fun. It’s amazing it hasn’t already happened.

Esformes pleads guilty, and we will be deprived of a trial.

On the upside: His life has been ruined.

Put Esformes in my search engine to revisit all his despicability.

UD was there a few weeks ago, and Florence is indeed pimping itself out to the world. The Italians shouldn’t pretend to be shocked when someone calls them on it. Stop allowing unrestricted tourism, and people will stop calling you a prostitute.

Even Venice has imposed restrictions.

[He and his third wife had] a $230,000-a-month spending habit, six houses and 11 country club memberships.

He’s tried unloading the real estate, but no one will buy because the houses have Rudy Cooties.

Rats. Just the civil equivalent.

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In the event, the jury did not award the women the original rumored amount of damages – around forty million dollars.

It awarded them $148 million.

 “[This award sends a message] to any other powerful figure with a platform and an audience who is considering whether they will take the chance to seek profit and fame by assassinating the moral character of ordinary people.”

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“This case is what happens when you combine vicious, over-the-top defamation against innocent victims with the single worst legal strategy ever devised by a human mind,” [Elie] Honig said [the day before damages were announced]. The former federal prosecutor broke down Giuliani and his lawyer’s approach to the case, explaining that because they agreed Giuliani was liable and conceded to defamation, he should have gone into the trial expressing remorse in an effort to minimize damages. “Instead, they go in on this damages trial and commit more defamation,” Honig concluded. “They are just asking for a massive verdict and I think we’re gonna see that tomorrow.”

My much-missed hero, Christopher Hitchens, nailed it.

No wonder The Great Leader wept with desperation recently as he begged the linings of the country’s uteri to thicken.

Why reproduce? Why do anything?

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Yes, yes, of course: South Korea’s fertility numbers are even worse. But there’s a difference between living in an advanced society full of competing possibilities for women, and living mouth to mouth in a squalid gaping hole.

Hope not. She just pled guilty to stealing four million dollars from Facebook when she was an executive there.

I wonder when – if? – Spelman College will take down the page celebrating this contemptible person. And her comrade in crime husband.