Stanford to California: We Don't Need Your Money

Last September California banned "legacy" admissions in private colleges, i.e., the practice of favoring the children of alumni during the admissions process.

The law is difficult to implement, since many applicants have impressive resumes and it will be nearly impossible to prove that being a legacy was the deciding factor in a candidate's admission.

Stanford University decided not to play the game of prove-that-I'm-violating-a-complicated law. Stanford announced that it will continue to give preferential treatment to legacies: [bold added]

With three weeks to go before California’s ban on legacy admissions takes effect at private universities that receive state funding, Stanford has made a stunning decision: To preserve that perk, it’s pulling out of the Cal Grant program that benefits hundreds of low-income students at the pricey campus.

By declining Cal Grants, Stanford can continue giving admissions preference to hundreds of students who are related to alumni or whose relatives have given money to the university. The statewide ban on such legacy and donor-driven admissions takes effect Sept. 1 under Assembly Bill 1780, which was signed into law last year.

Stanford officials say they will cover the canceled aid with university money, and that it will cost just $4 million a year...

Stanford is one of six California private schools that last year reported giving preferential admissions to the children of alumni or wealthy donors. Stanford said it admitted 295 students this way in fall 2023, or 13.6% of all undergraduates admitted that year. The other private schools that relied on the practice were Santa Clara University, the University of Southern California, Northeastern University Oakland (formerly Mills College), Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College. None has said it was pulling out of the Cal Grant program.

Jonathan Levin

Without considering the moral arguments, Stanford's decision can be justified on a dollar-and-cents basis:

Stanford's endowment exceeds $36 billion and can easily cover the loss of Cal Grant's $4 million per year.

If it did forsake legacies, Stanford would risk future donations by billionaire alumni like Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Nike's Phil Knight and thousands of mere millionaires.

There are no Federal laws against legacy admissions, and therefore Federal funding to Stanford will not be jeopardized by this decision.

With the elevation of Business School Dean Jonathan Levin to its Presidency, Stanford appears to be pulling back from the egalitarian excesses (anti-Semitism, DEI) that have plagued it and the nation's most prestigious universities.

Ideological Shoehorning

Shakespeare's birthplace (Brooks/AP/WSJ)

In yet another example of the ideological capture of a venerable institution, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT), founded 1847, is "decolonizing" its extensive Shakespeare properties in Stratford-on-Avon: [bold added]

In 2022, the SBT asked Helen Hopkins, a postgraduate researcher at Birmingham City University who had inspected the trust’s archives for her doctoral thesis, to draw up the indictment. Ms. Hopkins advised that the trust “recognise the role Shakespeare has been forced to play in establishing and upholding imperialistic narratives of cultural supremacy.” The Telegraph cites a research project undertaken by Ms. Hopkins and the trust as saying that to venerate Shakespeare is to support “white, Anglo-centric, Eurocentric, and increasingly ‘West-centric’ views that continue to do harm in the world today.” The idea of Shakespeare’s “universal” genius benefits “the ideology of white European supremacy.” The “racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise harmful” material in the SBT’s collections commits “epistemic violence,” which is academic-speak for rude words. Wait till they read Shakespeare’s!

Ms. Hopkins recommended the cure: to “purge” the SBT of “Anglocentric and colonialist thought,” so that the SBT’s programming can fix “societal inequities that are embedded in imperialism and associated with Shakespeare’s global cultural status.”

When asked for a copy of the plans, a spokesman for the trust sent us a statement responding to the recent press coverage that read in part, “The collections of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust are a window into what Shakespeare has meant to diverse people across the centuries and around the globe.” But he declined to provide a copy of the report. In a similarly retiring vein Ms. Hopkins has requested that her university library not make her doctoral thesis available to outsiders. This is how “public-facing” institutions react when they are caught betraying the public’s trust.

During the life of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) England was hardly the dominant European power that it would become two centuries later. In his time many states jockeyed for position, including France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, the Dutch Republic, and Prussia.

Of course, Shakespeare wrote from his Englishman's perspective, but to say that he was, intentionally or not, a white supremacist colonizer is the worst kind of shoehorning the 17th-century world into 21st-century ideology.

In honor of the Bard I hope they limit Ms. Hopkins and SBT's output to written reports and don't cause permanent damage to Stratford land and buildings.

Democrats: Time to Put Up

At the end of yesterday's column by Peggy Noonan ("Trump and the Collapse of the Old Order") she advised Democrats how they can regain power:

Admit what your party’s gotten wrong the past 15 years. Don’t be defensive, be humble.

Most of all, make something work. You run nearly every great city in the nation. Make one work—clean it up, control crime, smash corruption, educate the kids.

You want everyone in the country to know who you are? Save a city.

Gavin Newsom hasn't fixed California
or any of its cities.

The vast majority of Americans are pragmatists, not ideologues. If methods work, people will want to bring them to their own cities and will vote for politicians who will do so.

In California Progressives have been in control for the entire 21st century, yet crime. homelessness, and taxes keep going up, while students' test scores keep going down. California politicians build multibillion-dollar trains to nowhere, cut greenhouse gas emissions by decommissioning working power plants, and enforce speech codes while cities burn and drug deaths escalate.

Peggy Noonan is correct; people recoil in horror at the prospect of spreading California governance to the rest of the country. California has the benefit of its weather and trillion-dollar employers (Apple, Google, Facebook, Nvidia), yet it still can't make a single major city a desirable place to live. It's time to stop spinning narratives, Democrats, show us what you can do.

Mange: the Last Straw

In California citizens with a license can hunt coyotes. However, the general rule is limited because firearms, including archery equipment, cannot be discharged within 150 yards of occupied structures. An exception to the exception is that an owner or his agent may hunt coyotes on the owner's property.

Coyote hunting may be further restricted by local ordinances. San Francisco, not surprisingly, bans coyote hunting and their trapping and relocating. Coyotes have been steadily encroaching on humans, and it would not be surprising if people who are worried about attacks on pets and children start pushing back.

Coyote with mange (Presidio Trust/Chronicle)

There's another reason to stay away from canis latrans:

Wildlife officials in San Francisco are warning that a rise in sarcoptic mange among local coyotes could pose a threat to domestic pets.

The highly contagious skin condition, caused by microscopic mites, can easily spread from coyotes to dogs, the Presidio Trust said in an advisory to residents. While rare, the disease could also affect humans.

Wildlife experts are advising pet owners to leash dogs and keep them away from wild animals and to report any sick or injured coyotes to authorities.

Your humble blogger senses that the pro-wildlife anti-urban branch of wokeness has peaked. The Santa Cruz wharf collapsed because repairs were not permitted during the nesting season of unendangered seagulls. Protection of the endangered delta smelt has been blamed by President-elect Trump for Los Angeles not having the water needed to fight fires. With their human advocates soon to be in retreat, wild coyotes' days appear to be numbered.

Cupertino Contretemps

(Illustration from them.us)

Just when I thought the Chronicle was a decent newspaper that kept its news and opinion sections separate, it produces this headline:

A Silicon Valley teacher used pronouns in a TK class. Parents demanded they go back ‘in the closet’

The slant from the headline? Pronouns are relatively harmless, "back in the closet" harks back to the historic suppression of homosexuality, and "parents demand" hints that they're intolerant uneducated rubes, probably religious. However, digging into the article reveals that non-binary pronouns are being taught to four-year-olds in Transitional Kindergarten.

The individual at the center of the battle teaches 4-year-olds in transitional kindergarten at Dilworth Elementary School and was placed on leave in August after parents complained that they were discussing content they did not believe was appropriate for young children. Supporters of the teacher, including many experts in early childhood development and instruction, said the criticism appears to be leveled against the teacher’s gender identity, not what they’re teaching.

The reporter's bias is evident. She accuses the parents of transphobia ("against the teacher’s gender identity, not what they’re teaching") by using the "many experts...said" ploy. She also adopts trans pronoun language ("what they're teaching" not "what she's teaching").

I agree with the parents that non-standard pronouns are wholly confusing for kids who are learning the alphabet and basic arithmetic. Teach four year olds the fundamentals, then branch out to nuances and exceptions when they're years older. Parents' protests, IMHO, have nothing to do with animus toward the teacher's personal characteristics, just the content of his or her instruction.

Get the woke ideology out of elementary schools, and the kids will have a much better chance of getting into a good college (if that's what they want).

Peggy Noonan's Take

(WSJ graphic)

Former Reagan and GHW Bush speechwriter Peggy Noonan could not bring herself to support Donald Trump. However, her personal feelings about the President-elect do not prevent her from performing an insightful analysis of Tuesday's results:

It was a triumph for the Republican Party—a sweep, a rout—and a disaster for the Democrats. Much has been written about the demographic facts but when a single candidate increases his totals in almost every group but one, white women, something big happened. Donald Trump will likely receive a majority of the popular vote—the first Republican to do so since 2004. Republicans handily won the Senate and appear poised to take the House. This amounts to a legitimately claimed mandate.

Mr. Trump’s is the biggest political comeback since Richard Nixon, whose career flat-lined in embarrassment in 1962, after a failed gubernatorial race and stumbling news conference—“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore”—only to roar back to the presidency in 1968. It isn’t enough said that Mr. Trump did this while enduring a shooting, a second, thwarted assassination attempt, and credible intelligence reports that Iran was trying to kill him. He went into all his rallies knowing that. He showed a lot of guts. Mass media didn’t dwell on this, but regular people did.

As for Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump in 2020 lost the Catholic vote. This year he carried it with a healthy 56%. That’ll teach her to blow off the Al Smith dinner.

What did it all mean? The people did what they wished. They revolted. They looked at the past four years of Washington and said no. They said “Goodbye to all that,” to the years 2020-24—to the pandemic, to the pain and damage of that era, which affected every part of our lives. That is the real turning of the page I think, from a time they hated that made them view their government as bullying and not that bright. In terms of issues it was illegal immigration, inflation and a rejection of the deterioration all around them—of drugstores locking up the shampoo and the beleaguered Walgreens employee late with the key to the cabinet and in a bad mood because he’s afraid of thieves and crazy people and it’s wearing him down. It was the woke regime, which people have come to experience as an invading force in their lives. It was Afghanistan, and other wars, and the sense Washington isn’t getting foreign policy right and perhaps barely thinking about it. They just seem to be staggering through each day. The country’s been waiting for years to hear from its leaders: What are America’s interests?

In September, pondering the race, I wrote: “This will be a path election, not a person election.” Once we chose a shining John F. Kennedy, who would choose the path. You chose dazzling Ronald Reagan, and he’d cut a path through the forest. This year I felt people would be choosing a path, not a person. “And I’m not sure they want to go down the Blue Path any deeper than they already have.”

I think that’s what happened. Tens of millions of people who didn’t like Donald Trump voted for the path he promised.

America, after its long journey through the 2010s and ’20s, is becoming more conservative again.

Lest her readers think she has changed her mind about the man, she adds:

As for me, I don’t like the SOB, I think him a bad man who’ll cause and bungle crises almost from day one, but he’ll be the American president, and we all deserve grace. I will pray for him, support what I think constructive and oppose what I think destructive, call it straight as I can and take whatever follows.

Such language, Peggy, what would the Gipper say?

SF Bay Area: the IncredibleTalent is Still Here

Using 192 laser beams, this Lawrence-Livermore apparatus ignited
a hydrogen fuel pellet the size of a peppercorn in 2022. The experiment
produced more energy than it consumed and showed fusion
energy was possible. (DOE/Chronicle)

In a man-bites-dog story an Austin tech startup is moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. [bold added]

Focused Energy, a startup specializing in laser fusion for clean energy, is relocating its U.S. headquarters from Austin to the Bay Area.

The German company announced plans on Wednesday to establish a state-of-the-art facility in the region, with an investment of $65 million. The facility will house some of the world’s most advanced lasers, crucial for developing commercially viable fusion energy, according to a press release.

Scott Mercer, CEO of Focused Energy, said that the move aims to leverage the “incredible pool of talent” in the Bay Area and benefit from established methodologies developed by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which achieved net energy gain for the first time in December 2022...

With over $175 million in private and public funding, Focused Energy is one of eight fusion companies selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for support under its Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program.

The company has also received significant grants from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to further its research and development initiatives.

Although numerous California companies such as Oracle, Tesla and Chevron have relocated their headquarters to Texas in recent years, this case illustrates the opposite trend.

The new Bay Area facility will enhance laser efficiency and establish a global supply chain necessary for scaling commercial fusion operations.

Once fully operational, fusion fuel equivalent to “three soda cans” will be capable of powering a city the size of San Francisco for an entire day, Focused Energy said.

Startups' main objective is to demonstrate their proof-of-concept. Cutting costs and red tape will be prioritized later, and the company can then decide if California is where it wishes to be planted.

Meanwhile, it's nice to know that the Bay Area hasn't yet dissipated its “incredible pool of talent” that attracts tech companies around the world. Your humble blogger still holds out hope that we can undo California's status as the worst-taxed, most woke, and most over-regulated State in the Union.

Still at the Acorn Stage

Some in Hollywood understand that the woke messaging (the villain is the white guy, the heroine of color is strong and independent and has no weaknesses) that has lost millions (see Disney's Star Wars prequel the Acolyte) requires a change of direction. The success of small-budget religious, specifically Christian-themed, movies has attracted investors' attention:

Faith-based film makers are getting bigger budgets.

[Jon] Erwin, 42, is a Christian filmmaker whose driving purpose is to put out uplifting stories that families can watch together. After nearly two decades of making small-budget movies in the parallel world of faith-based entertainment, he’s part of a loose tribe of filmmakers, producers and independent studios from that realm now storming into the mainstream.

Some key successes turned this corner of the industry into a hotbed. The Chosen, a multiseason TV drama about the life of Jesus and his apostles, became one of the most popular series in the world. Jesus Revolution, a movie by Erwin about a pastor and a hippie evangelist who create a surge of groovy Christians, pulled people into theaters in the shaky movie market of early 2023 and grossed about $54 million. Sound of Freedom, a thriller about child trafficking, had nothing to do with religion on the surface—but it galvanized religious viewers and grossed $250 million worldwide on a $15 million budget, becoming a box-office phenomenon second only to “Barbenheimer” last summer.

While my values are more aligned with Christianity than wokeness, I hope the new family-values film makers don't forget that the story is the key. Their movies will fail like the wokesters' if they forget that audiences want to be entertained, not lectured to.

Friendly Takeover

With some of the largest, most successful companies (Tesla, Oracle, HP, and now Chevron) in the Bay Area moving to Texas because of onerous taxes and regulations, it's hard to name a company that is certain to be here a century from now.

Even trillion-dollar "megacap" corporations like Apple, Nvidia, Google, and Facebook can have their fortunes worsen suddenly, and California, seeing taxpaying individuals and companies fleeing its hostile business climate, will devise ways to squeeze the remaining golden geese. Those companies better have their "go bags" ready.

There is one private entity, however, that not only will stay here but has expanded its footprint throughout the 20th century and will do so in the 21st.

Koret Field at Notre Dame de Namur University (Chron photo)

Headline: Plans for Stanford’s new Bay Area campus move forward. [bold added]

Stanford University’s plan to purchase a historic Catholic university property on the Peninsula and turn it into a satellite campus for up to 2,500 students, faculty and staff is taking shape, according to newly released documents.

Belmont officials this month released a draft environmental impact report, the first public document detailing Stanford’s option to purchase the nearly 46-acre site of Notre Dame de Namur University in the city. In the works since 2021, the deal — if it goes through — would continue Stanford’s push into San Mateo County after local concerns about growth forced the university’s withdrawal of a huge expansion plan for its main Palo Alto campus in 2019.

Stanford already operates Stanford Redwood City, a 35-acre health care facility and administrative satellite 5 miles north across the Santa Clara County line. The proposed new acquisition, to be called Stanford Belmont, is 13 miles from the Stanford campus and a 20-minute drive up Highway 101.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, which had a $36.5 billion endowment in 2023, has the deep pockets and structure (e.g., no quarterly earnings reports to shareholders) to endure the lead times necessary for Bay Area real estate projects.

The University also has a growing long-term demand for its education and health services that will populate its projects as soon as they are completed.

The installation of Economics Professor and Business School dean Jonathan Levin as its President, the arrest of demonstrators who took over and damaged its property, and the reinstatement of standardized admissions tests indicate that Stanford is setting aside the excesses of Progressivism, DEI (diversity,equity, and inclusion), and wokeness, which is more reason to expect it to survive into the next century and beyond.

Its Demise is not in Question

In an expected development, the Governor and Legislature closed the upcoming year's California budget deficit by agreeing to a $297.9 billion spending plan.

(Image from the Economist)

In parallel news the slavery reparations bill ("Fund for Reparations and Reparative Justice"), estimated to cost $800 billion, was approved by the Judiciary Committee and moves to the State Assembly for consideration.

When I have an instinctive negative reaction to policies--in this case to pay big penalties for actions that neither I nor my ancestors had anything to do with--I like to turn to guidance from spiritual leaders to gauge whether I'm off base. This article (What the Bible Says About Reparations for Slavery) is helpful: [bold added]

Any examination of the question must begin with the notion of time and its relation to evil acts. The Bible, in Exodus 34:7 and elsewhere, tells us that God will “visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.”

These passages acknowledge that bad acts frequently have consequences that ripple beyond the temporal space of the perpetrator and can create a sphere of responsibility that far exceeds the individual actor. Importantly, the text also indicates that the ripples dissipate after three or four generations. The adverse consequences of nefarious acts don’t continue indefinitely—and, similarly, the desire for vengeance and the right to compensation for such acts can’t endure forever.

Why only three or four generations? This limitation is tied to the duration of emotional memory, including the transmitted personal sense of suffering and injustice. Most people have a vivid awareness of and emotional ties to parents and grandparents—perhaps even to a great-grandparent. Yet no such bonds can plausibly exist beyond that. The Bible is thus establishing a statute of limitations that is tied to the strength of personal memory and, therefore, to a limitation on the personalized rectification of historic wrongs.

Our legal system echoes this biblical teaching. Civil and criminal statutes of limitation generally bring to an end the pursuit of perpetrators for acts that are too distant in time to warrant subjection to judicial processes. Implicitly they also recognize that witnesses, tangible evidence, and raw emotions engendered by wrongful acts have disappeared—no matter how heinous the offenses.

While American slavery remains a powerful and tragic historical event, there are no individuals alive today who have direct personal links to it or even to those who suffered directly as a consequence of it. For all its evil and injustice, slavery is no longer a personal reality in the U.S. It is still a wrong to be righted, but in a collective manner, through national efforts—civil-rights legislation, improvements in education, public services, quality-of-life enhancements for the descendants of slaves, and the like. To its credit, our nation has vigorously pursued such efforts for decades.

The notion that direct compensation should be paid to sixth-, seventh- or eighth-generation descendants of slavery’s victims by similarly distant descendants of those who may have been complicit with slavery is simply unjust. The original actors, perpetrators and victims, are too far removed in time to merit punishment or retribution.

It is appropriate to punish a perpetrator or exact restitution from an individual who may have benefited directly from the acts of the perpetrator. Yet more than 1½ centuries’ distance makes such punishment for slavery incompatible with justice. Similarly, individuals separated by many generations from a vile act suffered by distant ancestors can’t have a justiciable claim for suffering they didn’t endure directly or indirectly.

The above interpretation of Biblical justice doesn't relieve me of my moral responsibility to help the poor and downtrodden. However, it's quite different to use the State's taxing authority to take from Peter to pay Paul --by force, if necessary--when both Peter and Paul and no one they know have any first-hand experience with the injustices perpetrated.

However, there is no point in getting too worked up about reparations. There is zero probability that California can come up with $800 billion, so it's just the timing and manner of reparations' demise that's in question.

Stanford: A Reconsideration

Cleaning the mess at White Plaza (Chron photo)

Maybe, just maybe, Stanford University has had enough of the extremes of Progressivism, DEI (diversity,equity, and inclusion), and wokeness: [bold added]

Thirteen people were arrested at Stanford University in a protest led by pro-Palestinian students, university officials confirmed Wednesday.

"All arrested students will be immediately suspended and in case any of them are seniors, they will not be allowed to graduate," the university said in an emailed statement.

In the demonstration, students "unlawfully entered" Building 10 where offices for both the president and provost are located, according to the statement. Stanford officials said the offices were damaged and a public safety officer was injured "after being shoved by protesters who were interfering with a transport vehicle." The university did not elaborate on the severity of the injury.

Richard Saller, 71, the former Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences and specialist in Roman history, is Stanford's interim president and was willing to tolerate the pro-Palestine protests up to a point. However, the arrests, suspensions, and refusal to confer degrees on arrested seniors showed where his red line was.

(After seven years as Stanford president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned in 2023 after an investigation showed his research lab had produced reports that contained "falsified information." He had been cleared of personal misconduct.)

Jonathan Levin, the Dean of Stanford Business School for the past eight (8) years, will become Stanford's next president on August 1st.

Jonathan Levin, a renowned economist, comes to the top spot of one of the world’s most prestigious, and wealthiest, universities at a challenging time in higher education...

Levin, 51 years old, will begin his new job Aug. 1. A Stanford alum and son of former longtime Yale University president Rick Levin, he has been dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business since 2016.

Jonathan Levin has a glittering pedigree, as well as an unsurpassed record of achievement. He was born in New Haven to Yale Assistant Professor Rick Levin, who rose through the ranks to become Yale's President from 1993 to 2013.

Earning degrees from Stanford, Oxford, and MIT, Jonathan Levin "received the John Bates Clark Medal as the outstanding American economist under the age of 40." As the Dean of the GSB, he kept Stanford atop the Business School rankings.

Successful business educators and leaders know that they must keep their organizations from taking political positions that will alienate customers, suppliers, and governments. Based on his record, Jonathan Levin will strike the balance between free speech, protest, and the rights of all Stanford students to receive a quality education.

I know that this has as much realistic impact as declaring which politician I will vote for, but I am reconsidering my decision to never make another donation to Stanford.

The Academy Oversteps and Begins to Pay the Price

Bill Ackman, 57, is a hedge-fund billionaire who made his fortune by taking unconventional short and long positions.

He always gives interesting business-related interviews on CNBC, and that, frankly, was the extent of my knowledge about him.

Until he took issue with the December 5th performance of Harvard then-President Claudine Gay before Congress on the subject of anti-semitism and free speech at Harvard, his alma mater.

The scales had fallen from his eyes:

Twenty-four hours after Hamas attacked Israel, Mr. Ackman “saw students supporting terrorists—Harvard students, no less.” With astonishment that hardened into outrage, Mr. Ackman witnessed 34 student groups at his alma mater “come out to say that Israel is solely responsible for the most heinous acts we’ve seen in modern history.”

Harvard wasn’t the only American campus where students railed against Israel and at Jewish classmates. But Harvard was the place to which Mr. Ackman, an “absolutely loyal alum in all respects,” had given $50 million over the years. “I lecture at the university multiple times a year,” he says, adding that he’s on the dean’s advisory board. Observing the protests, and the Harvard administration’s refusal to curb them, he mounted a mutiny of donors, calling on them to help drive Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, from her job. He feared that her continued presence at the helm would lead angry donors to stop giving. “I am personally aware of more than a billion dollars of terminated donations from a small group of Harvard’s most generous Jewish and non-Jewish alumni,” he wrote on Dec. 10.

Ms. Gay’s resignation on Jan. 2 was a result of her maladministration as well as of convincing accusations of plagiarism in her academic writings.

After reviewing Claudine Gay's, as well as MIT President Sally Kornbluth's and Penn President Liz Magill's, testimony before Congress, Mr. Ackman came to believe that their tepid response to student groups' calls for genocide against Jews was attributable to the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) practices that have pervaded campuses nationwide. On January 2nd he tweeted: [bold added]

Under DEI, one’s degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so-called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews, and Asians are deemed oppressors, and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people, and/or women are deemed to be oppressed. Under this ideology which is the philosophical underpinning of DEI as advanced by Ibram X. Kendi and others, one is either an anti-racist or a racist. There is no such thing as being “not racist.”

Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist.

As a result, according to DEI, capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist, or in other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology.

In order to be deemed anti-racist, one must personally take action to reverse any unequal outcomes in society. The DEI movement, which has permeated many universities, corporations, and state, local and federal governments, is designed to be the anti-racist engine to transform society from its currently structurally racist state to an anti-racist one.

Claudine Gay's resignation on January 2nd was only the first battle in what may well turn out to be a long cultural war between wokeness and traditional values. Claudine Gay not only was criticized for her actions as Harvard President but for alleged instances of plagiarism on her scholarly work.

Neri Oxman (WSJ photo)

The Business Insider then accused Bill Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, for plagiarism on her 2010 doctoral dissertation at MIT. Ms. Oxman apologized.

Bill Ackman, convinced that the source of the Business Insider report was someone(s) at MIT, vowed to develop AI tools to examine a broad swath of MIT dissertations and publications for plagiarism.

Circling back to the three-presidents testimony before Congress on December 5th, MIT President Kornbluth is the only one of the three who still holds office, Penn's Liz Magill having resigned on December 9th. It would be surprising if she lasts out the year.

After the break is the text of Bill Ackman's January 2nd tweet.


 

California: The Dysfunction All Around

(Image from Facebook)

California's dysfunctions--homelessness, crime, taxes, regulatory red-tape, schools that don't educate, housing costs, etc.--have been written about endlessly, and not just by opponents of Progressive ideology.

One aspect of that ideology is intense criticism, even vilification, of other power centers (religion, private enterprise, Republicans, etc.) that won't toe the line. The irony is that California's government can't even meet the minimum performance standards that other institutions are held to. [bold added]

for five consecutive years, California has failed to produce audited financial statements on a timely basis. In fiscal 2021, California took 642 days to issue its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, more than twice the nine months the federal government allows for such reports. New York took only 120 days to issue its 2021 financial report.

One reason for California’s tardiness is the incomplete rollout of the state’s new accounting system. Launched in 2005, the Financial Information System for California, or FI$Cal, was intended to streamline the state’s financial processes. But 18 years and $1 billion later, FI$Cal has yet to be fully implemented, forcing accounting staff to consolidate data across multiple systems.

Also complicating recent attempts to produce a state audit was the pandemic-era meltdown of California’s unemployment system. Although many states had problems keeping up with the rush of unemployment claims in Spring 2020, California’s crisis was far worse, combining long delays for legitimate claimants with tens of billions in benefits collected by scammers. Unlike most other states, California had no procedure for matching claimants against a list of prison inmates...

California’s local governments are taking on their own big, hairy, audacious goals and not attending to core services. San Francisco is studying reparations for slavery and implementing public banking, while failing to provide public safety and clean streets. Cities around the state are adding sustainability managers to reduce municipal carbon footprints, even though any individual city in California contributes a small fraction of 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Why don't California residents, the majority of whom can see the dysfunction all around them, try to change things? It's a puzzlement that's worthy of serious study.

"A Catastrophic Act of Cultural Destruction"

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021): my last DVD rental?

Spider-Man: No Way Home is the current DVD I'm renting through Netflix. It may be my last, because Netflix announced it will terminate its DVD business on September 29th (discs can still be returned after that date).

Paying $9.99 per month, I haven't been an efficient user of the rental service. Sometimes the disc sits in the player for a month before viewing, or worse, it's returned because I just didn't care to watch it after all.

But I still maintain the DVD plan, because it's convenient to pay one provider instead of hunting for which streaming service is carrying the movie I want to watch. Also, many older movies cannot be found on any streaming plan:

Netflix’s recent announcement that it will discontinue its physical DVD distribution business later this year is a catastrophic act of cultural destruction...

In 2018 the film-data researcher Stephen Follows tracked the availability of the 100 top-grossing films from 1970 to 2017. Those released in the most recent decade were available via streaming, digital renting or purchase. As Mr. Follows worked back in time, however, movies became hard to find commercially. Just half of top-grossing films from the early 1970s could be streamed. Older, less profitable, experimental and independent works hardly streamed at all.

If it’s worth seeing, you may think, the magic of the marketplace will bring it to Hulu or Amazon Prime. This month the Washington Post’s Ty Burr reminds us of some movies we can’t stream: “Cocoon” (1985), directed by Ron Howard, “Short Cuts” (1993) by Robert Altman, “New York, New York” (1977) by Martin Scorsese, “Henry & June” (1990) by Philip Kaufman and “Silkwood” (1983) by Mike Nichols.

Of the 23,000-plus movies released in the U.S. since 1899, streaming services offer only 7,300—and that includes foreign titles. If a film happens to be streaming somewhere, odds are it’s on a platform you don’t pay for. The average American household subscribes to four streaming services out of the many available.

Another point in favor of DVD's: they are impervious to sneak-editing of their content. Steven Spielberg inveighed against the recent tendency to edit books and movies to make them conform to today's morality:

Spielberg acknowledged that the digital modifications [turning police guns into walkie-talkies] he made to the 20th anniversary edition of E.T. were "a mistake. I never should have done that. E.T. is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily, or being forced to peer through."

The director insisted that "All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like, and what the world was receiving when we got those stories out there."

If there arises a business that rents a fairly complete library of un-bowdlerized DVD's, I would be a customer.

Putting the Boycott Out of its Misery

Prohibited states in red (local news matters)

We posted in February and October about how San Francisco's boycott of other States backfired in a tangle of red tape and higher costs. After seven years the Board of Supervisors repealed the law.

The boycott law was originally passed by supervisors in 2016 and first applied only to states that had restricted LGBTQ rights after the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the country. Supervisors amended the law in subsequent years to apply also to states that placed new limits on abortion access and voting rights.

A central goal of the boycott was to put pressure on other states, but a recent report by City Administrator Carmen Chu’s office found that only one state had been removed from the list and none ever said they changed their laws because of San Francisco’s. Additionally, the report found that the law made city contracting a more cumbersome and expensivere process.

An earlier report from the board’s Budget and Legislative Analyst found that implementing the boycott had cost the city nearly $475,000 in staffing expenses. And the city was approving a large number of exemptions to the boycott anyway: Departments granted 538 waivers for contracts worth $791 million between mid-2021 and mid-2022, the report found.

If San Francisco had given any thought to how people change their thoughts and minds, San Francisco would have tried to engage in discussions and allay opponents' fears. Instead it resorted immediately to the bully-and-boycott approach. The latter failed, and I'm glad it did even though I agree with some of the principles that San Francisco espouses.

The Pity of The Preening

(Image from Brewminate)

Beginning in 2016 the City of San Francisco prohibited travel to and business with states that disagreed with progressive values. (The restrictions applied to the City and its employees.) The list of banned states that had different laws on LGBTQ, abortion, and/or voting rights has mushroomed to 30, and San Francisco has found itself greatly inconvenienced.

a new city report said the law has been ineffective and cumbersome....The report also found the law adds costs and complexity to city contracting...

“It’s an ineffective policy that complicates the business of San Francisco government and makes it very likely that we pay more than we should for goods and services,” [Supervisor Rafael] Mandelman said in an interview Monday...

Supervisors established the boycott in October 2016 when they approved a law that banned city-funded travel to states that had restricted LGBTQ rights in the wake of the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The law also prevented the city from approving contracts with companies based in the banned states.

In subsequent years, supervisors expanded the boycott to include states that passed laws to limit abortion access and voting rights.

Your humble blogger believes that it is perfectly within the City's right to conduct its affairs according to its own moral code. But the City had another objective--to convert other jurisdictions to San Francisco values by withholding business. Accomplishment of the latter has been nil.

[City Administrator Carmet] Chu’s office said in its Friday report that it could not find any concrete evidence that the states targeted by the boycott had changed their laws because of San Francisco’s actions.

The law “has created additional administrative burden for City staff and vendors and unintended consequences for San Francisco citizens, such as limiting enrichment and developmental opportunities,” Chu’s report said. “Few, if any, other jurisdictions implement travel or contracting bans as expansive as the City’s.”

Lectures and threats rarely convert anyone to a cause, though San Francisco may have had a chance if it was excellent in its governance. However, its widely publicized failures in dealing with crime, homelessness, and drug use, plus the exodus of middle-class families and businesses, have put paid to that notion.

The pity of this preening is that it wasted money, squandered moral capital, and made fellow Americans less inclined to help San Francisco when it needs it, and that day will assuredly come.

Speaking of Holes

Don't call it a manhole, you sexist pig.

This headline puzzled your humble blogger:

Body found in ‘sewage hole’ near Jack London Square in Oakland

My initial reaction was that a "sewage hole" must be a new element of the wastewater system. Is falling into a sewage hole another danger we must avoid? The entire story (below) did not provide clarity.

A body was found “lodged inside of a sewage hole” near Jack London Square, according to the Oakland Police Department.

The person was found unresponsive inside the hole at about 7:40 a.m. Saturday in the 300 block of Broadway, the police department reported. Oakland firefighters helped remove the person, and though paramedics tried to render aid, the person was pronounced dead at the scene.

The circumstances surrounding how the person ended up in the hole, and how long that person had been in there, remain unclear. The person’s name has not been released, pending notification of next of kin.

Anyone with information about the death can contact Oakland police at 510-238-3821 or 510-238-7950.

Understanding came with the realization that the new stylebook tries to eradicate all traces of gender from ordinary language. "Manholes" should be called maintenance, utility, or sewage holes.

IMHO, the replacement of "sewage hole" for "manhole" obfuscates meaning, substitutes a multi-syllabic phrase for a perfectly fine two-syllable one, and makes unnecessary work for a reporter who has to look up which system the hole leads to. And that's why I never understood or did well in the language arts.

Nary a Tweet

I recall the uproar when Elon Musk was letting go 3,000 people from Twitter, today Google is firing 12,000 people but not a word from MSM 😄

— حسن سجواني 🇦🇪 Hassan Sajwani (@HSajwanization) January 20, 2023

I Predict This Business Will Wane

Fortune-cookie fortunes fall into two general categories: predictions ("you will get good news at work") or self-improvement ("eat more protein").

Your humble blogger has noticed a recent annoying tendency to insert fortunes with political messages.

There's no sanctuary from people who, ironically, like to create safe spaces and sanctuaries for various groups, just not consumers of fortune cookies.

Free the Tree

"Stanford hates fun" passes for controversy in 2022

Each of the two institutions of higher learning that I attended in the 1970's had a marching band that annoyed alumni greatly. Their halftime shows were filled with iconoclasm, not to mention scatological and sexual humor.

The more that our elders' generation was horrified the better. Halftime shows were a rollicking time, often better than the football game.

50 years later the people who want to clamp down on politically incorrect humor come from within the band, the student body, and faculty. Stanford University is a leader in this role reversal, and its mascot, the Tree, has become the center of a cultural contretemps. During halftime at a game between Stanford and ASU, "the Tree unfurled a 40-foot banner that said 'Stanford Hates Fun.'” [bold added]

The students on the band’s executive committee said in a statement to the Stanford Daily that they suspended the Tree because he used his platform to spread a message without going through the required channels.

"Required channels"? These brilliant students, many of them not old enough to drink, are going to be our future leaders and are already inured in bureaucratic pettifoggery. But it gets worse.

Administrators this year published a 13-page index of words to be avoided on the school’s websites. It suggested “ballsy” be replaced by “risk taker,” “you guys” by “everyone” and “Karen” by “a demanding or entitled White woman.”

The language policing is far more extensive than anything the blue noses attempted to do back in my day. With its multi-billion dollar endowment Stanford asks for but doesn't need my money. And I don't intend to give a another cent, at least until the Tree is free.