…. on the Supreme Court’s overturning of affirmative action.

**********************

In an email to “members of the Harvard community,” the university’s president, Lawrence S. Bacow, and other senior leaders said it would comply with the ruling. Noting that Chief Justice Roberts had said that colleges could still take into account essays in which applicants discussed how race had affected their lives, they said they were writing to reaffirm the importance of diversity in “backgrounds, perspectives and lived experiences.”

**********************

 [S]ome scholars say that dire predictions over sharp declines are alarmist and that schools will ultimately return to more racially diverse classes as they adjust to the new paradigm. They point to the University of California, which increased outreach in low-income communities. Over time, the number of Black and Hispanic students increased at most schools in the system.

Richard Sander, a law professor at U.C.L.A. who opposes race-based affirmative action, said that graduation rates for Black students improved after affirmative action was banned in California.

**********************

Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School and an expert on the Supreme Court’s education rulings, predicted that the affirmative action decision could cause some state universities to move to race-neutral strategies for increasing diversity, such as the “top percent” model used in Texas.

In that state, students with the highest grade point averages at each high school are guaranteed admission to a public university, including the system’s flagship, the University of Texas at Austin.

**********************

Wuh Oh…!

College admissions experts anticipate there will be increased pressure on elite schools to end preferential treatment for children of alumni, who are more frequently white and affluent, as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision.

Next thing you know we’ll be hearing there was something wrong with admitting dummy Jared Kushner to Harvard because his father gave the school 2.5 million dollars! Where the hell is this going?

*************************

From another source:

Democrats and blue-chip universities ought to move toward merit and income-based admissions while striving to eliminate legacy preferences.

*************************

Back to the NYT:

In 2020, with Donald Trump on the ballot, Democratic leaders in California launched a campaign to reinstate race-conscious affirmative action in California.

The governor and U.S. Senators and state legislators and a who’s who of business, pro sport and labor elites banded together, outspent opponents 19 to 1 and declared that restoring affirmative action in college admissions and hiring was a matter of racial and social justice.

Yet in a state dominated politically by Democrats and liberals, this referendum, Proposition 16, lost badly, with more than 57 percent of voters opposing it.

A recent Times analysis of that vote exposed a gulf between the party establishment and its voters. The analysis found that the opposition included a majority of Asian American and white voters and half of all Hispanics. Only Black voters offered majority support for the referendum. [See also… And see, from a scholar at the Progressive Policy Institute…]

The California results suggest the issue — and the Supreme Court decision — might have far less political salience than some Democratic activists predict.

When asked whether Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power on Jan 6, Ron DeSantis replied:

 “I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I have nothing to do with what happened that day. Obviously, I didn’t enjoy seeing, you know, what happened, but we’ve gotta go forward on this stuff. We cannot be looking backwards and be mired in the past.”

Christie’s response:

“He wasn’t anywhere near Washington. Did he have a TV? Was he alive that day? Did he see what was going on? I mean, that’s one of the most ridiculous answers I’ve heard in this race so far. You don’t have an opinion about January 6th except to say, I didn’t particularly enjoy what happened? People were killed. People were killed … on Capitol Hill, defending the Capitol. We had members of Congress who were running for their lives. We had people trying to hunt down the Vice President of the United States, chanting ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ And Donald Trump the entire time sat outside the Oval Office, that little dining room of his, eating a well-done cheeseburger and watching TV and doing nothing to stop what was going on until it got to the point where even he could no longer stand it. And Ron DeSantis doesn’t have any opinion on that?“

An earlier Christie post.

A rich dude in New Jersey just went ahead and cut down 32 of his neighbor’s trees because he wanted a better view.

Yes, he’ll be hit with an absolute fortune in fines. Yes, his name is all over the news so now everyone knows who he is and hates him. Yes, along with the fines he has to pay to replant the forest. Yes, almost certainly his enraged, equally rich neighbor will sue him for mucho damages on top of all the other payments.

All that and more is true. But it also remains true that this one POS has turned a beautiful mature forest into a dead mess simply because he’s a pig. We can’t fix that.

Recall UD’s tripartite plagiarism scheme (details here):

ATELIER

AMBITION

ADDICTED

A very successful public intellectual from Poland is credibly accused of plagiarism.

This case, as reported, has Ambition written all over it. A young man in a hurry seems to have been far too fast-lane to bother actually writing portions of his work, starting with his graduate school thesis.

Some of the plagiarism is apparently straightforward translation from English language sources; some of it seems to draw on other sources.

This is the long, Polish-language essay about the plagiarism; not only do you have to translate it, but you can’t get far in the text without subscribing to the newspaper. But anyway it’s a close analysis of the guy’s apparently prolific lifting.

Of course he’s hysterically screaming about suing the people who claim that he plagiarizes — and good luck with that, panie.

Twelve drowned in two weeks on Panhandle beaches! Quite a few of them because, apparently, they ignored big red flags/shouted instructions to stay away from rip tides.

Rescue crews probably don’t want any more drownings, so lifeguards will, I guess, double down on the shouting, leading beachgoers, in irritated response, to pack heat. (Useful tips here.)

The Onion weighs in.

There's little to say for its forthcoming plume

In fact I'll admit to a feeling of gloom
When I think of its flowers and cloying perfume

The recent remarks of Wisconsin State Representative Chuck Wichgers, during a debate in the state house, have gone viral.

Wichgers’ statement in opposition to birth control points to the failure of Wisconsin’s schools to educate its citizens in even rudimentary literacy, oral expression, and thinking skills.

“Nature has an intention and when you have that act—when pregnancy naturally occurs, that’s nature doing what nature does. The woman then has to counter nature by taking something that is highly systemic and highly invasive, according to the documents and the books that people that are pro the pill stated in their books. That’s a science. We would begin to see ourselves as the ultimate masters of nature, so when nature does something it’s supposed to do and then we say, ‘Let’s not do that’—we’re talking not about getting a pimple if you eat Doritos and eat chocolate; that would be contrary to a health movement or nature.”

It is hard to think of a more poignant demonstration of the importance of quality, universal education than this public statement by a high-ranking official of the state of Wisconsin. Surely with all of America’s wealth and resources we can do better.

If the California bar court finds [John] Eastman culpable of the alleged violations, it can then recommend to the California Supreme Court that Eastman’s law license be suspended or revoked. The outcome of this proceeding is surely of less importance to Eastman than his likely forthcoming indictments in Atlanta and Washington as a Trump co-conspirator.

Women’s rights. Democrats seem rather fired up about them. That’s because the Supreme Court took important women’s rights away.

We’ve already seen this fervency play out in various states. We’ll see much, much more.

********************

According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 62 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, [which represents] the high-water mark for legal abortion in Pew’s polling, which dates back to 2007.

… Gallup — which has some of the longest trendlines when it comes to issues like abortion — asked Americans to choose between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” after asking about views on the legality of abortion. They found these numbers to be higher than any other annual recording dating back to 1996: 52 percent picked “pro-choice” this May and 55 percent picked “pro-choice” last May…

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month found that nearly three-in-four Americans, 72 percent, think abortion pills should be legal in all or most cases. 

****************

Of course, none of this bothers the Catho-Falangists (‘Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.’) or the Pencerian Evangelicals, since these sects possess divine moral truth and will happily shove no abortion/no porn/no contraception/forced reproduction onto the American population whether we like it or not. But it turns out that Americans are pretty ornery about people trying to destroy their basic liberties; and since current attacks blatantly go after American women‘s liberties, we can now watch in real time as American women rear up to become a most fearsome voting bloc.

*****************

Another poll.

Via her reader, Seelye, UD learns of the latest iteration of way-bogus psychology scholarship.

She’s named Francesca Giro and she has a really cool website.

We’re all looking for easy steps to a better brighter you, and Happiness + Efficiency experts oblige us with studies showing that, like, thinking of eating meat makes you more boorish and less social. (I read this particular result, from world-famous Diederik Stapel, to Mr UD, who laughed merrily.) H+E experts (Dan Ariely – a co-author of Francesca Giro’s! – Marc Hauser – who shares with Giro the Harvard affiliation – Jens Förster, etc.) are always flooring us with amazing whodathunkits, and we fall for this shit every single time cuz it comes out of Harvard or cuz we just want to believe it or because we’re thrilled by the weird.

But Uri Simonsohn (a name known to readers of this blog) doesn’t fall for it. At all. He finds discipline-destroying lies enraging, and sets about, with a couple of colleagues, to keep the field reasonably clean through exposure of research fraud. The miscreants make stuff up and manipulate numbers in order to keep generating attention-grabbing amazements and giving amazing TED talks re: the amazements and Uri’s right behind them, running the numbers.

How can we protect ourselves from marauding high-profile psych frauds?

Step One: If something sounds bogus, it’s probably bogus.

…ever rings in that Wagnerian manner.’

Vlad hears Prigozhin at the door.

… to see the Pride March. She’s all over Europe, for a month, for business and pleasure.

Background here.

If Huggins or the institutions of higher learning that employed and enabled him gave a rat’s rectum about “student-athletics,” he wouldn’t have spent 16 years coaching Cincinnati as it and he became nationally known for winning by recruiting “high social risk” players and academic non-achievers who had no legitimate reason to be enrolled in any college. Only 28 percent of his Cincinnati players, including walk-ons, reportedly graduated.

And he wouldn’t have spent another 16 years coaching his alma mater, WVU, paid up to $5 million per year to do so, apparently because WVU fully approved of his winning ways and means honed at Cincinnati.

So the national con of college sports — student-athletics — proceeds, no education, and in many cases fundamental illiteracy, in exchange for full scholarships, often on taxpayer funding.

[Book banning group Moms for Liberty] released a newsletter called The Parent Brigade on Wednesday, which included a quote from Hitler on the front page …