Wednesday Potpourri

First, the current mania about diversity, equity and inclusion has produced one unfortunate consequence. Giving people credentials they did not earn and jobs they cannot do is coupled with a strict prohibition against stating the obvious. In other words, the DEI regime is coupled with censorship.

Canadian nurse Amy Eileen Hamm reports on Twitter:

I was seeing a therapist who said most of her clients have become professionals who are deeply unhappy with DEI & woke culture at work. They feel afraid of speaking up, but are sick of the constant barrage of racist, delusional nonsense they’re supposed to champion. It is making people miserable & fearful. It is making people leave careers, or get forced out for infractions. Organizations still clinging to DEI are making a terrible mistake.

Second, on a recent episode of the television show, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, a white rape victim declared that she did not want to see her rapist punished-- because he was a man of color. 

Libs of TikTok has the story:

A character in Law & Order is a white woman who was r*ped by a black guy. She declines to press charges because she’s privileged and doesn’t want the black perpetrator to go to jail. White people are privileged so they shouldn’t seek justice for r*pe!

So, according to the wokerati, it should be open season on white women. So much for the fools who claim to be defending women against violent predators. 

Third, Allie Beth Stuckey declares that liberal white women are suffering from “pathological empathy.” In her words:

Liberal white women suffer from pathological empathy, which has convinced them that the oppressor (if black or trans or an immigrant) is oppressed. And while it may seem selfless, it’s actually a form a narcissism, borne of the toxic self-love culture that consumes them, because it allows them to pose as heroes and saviors

Fourth, on a lighter note, the satirical Babylon Bee has this comment on the passing scene:

Joe Biden Beats Out Brussels Sprouts For America's Least Favorite Vegetable

Fifth, just in case you were missing one of Kamala Harris’ word salads, White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre was an apt stand-in. Speaking of the three soldiers who were killed in Jordan by an Iranian proxy group, she said

Karine Jean-Pierre gives condolences to "three folks who are military folks who are brave who are always fighting, who were fighting on behalf of this administration..."

Sixth, on the academic front, anti-Semitism is alive and well at Harvard University. So says Lawrence Summers, and he has shown exceptional integrity these days:

My confidence in Harvard leadership’s ability and will to confront anti-semitism and the demonization of Israel continues to decline. Unfortunately, it is becoming ever clearer why Harvard ranks first on anti- semitism, even as it ranks last on upholding free speech. Confronting anti-semitism does not mean punishing offensive speech as some suggest. Free speech is sacrosanct in a university.

Seventh, you will be dismayed and perhaps not surprised to discover that plagiarism is alive and well at Harvard. It is not limited to former president Claudine Gay. The university’s chief diversity officer, Sherry Ann Charleston has been found out.

Aaron Sibarium explains it in the Washington Free Beacon:

It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own husband—according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston's thin publication record. In her 2009 dissertation, submitted to the University of Michigan, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution, the complaint alleges. And in her sole peer-reviewed journal article—coauthored with her husband, LaVar Charleston, in 2014—the couple recycle much of a 2012 study published by LaVar Charleston, the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, framing the old material as new research.

Eighth, we have been fairly scrupulous in reporting on pandemic learning loss, so we feel obliged to keep everyone informed about the latest. Vince Bielski reports in Real Clear Investigations. 

Rather than remedy learning loss, our educators have chosen to cover up the problem with grade inflation: 

The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.

Four years later, the money is almost gone and students haven’t made up that lost academic ground, equaling more that a year of learning for disadvantaged kids. Driven by fears of a spike in dropout rates, especially among blacks and Latinos, many states and school districts are apparently leaving in place the lower standards that allow students to get good grades and graduate even though they have learned much less, particularly in math.

It’s as if many of the nation's 50 million public school students have fallen backwards to a time before rigorous standards and accountability mattered very much.

The learning loss debacle is the latest chapter in the decade-long decline in public schools. Achievement among black and Latino students on state tests was already dropping before COVID drove an exodus of families away from traditional public schools in search of a better education. Although by lowering standards and lifting the graduation rate districts have created the impression that they have bounced back, experts say that’s the wrong signal to send, creating complacency when urgency is needed.

Ninth, did someone say grooming? Apparently, Gen Z has been so fully exposed to LGBTQ propaganda that it has become more gender confused. NBC reported:

More than 1 in 4 Gen Z adults in the U.S. identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, dwarfing the percentages of LGBTQ Americans in older age groups, a new survey has found.

Twenty-eight percent of Gen Z adults — which the survey’s researchers specify as those ages 18 to 25 — identify as LGBTQ, according to a report released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI. That compares with 10% of all adults, 16% of millennials, 7% of Generation X, 4% of baby boomers and 4% of the Silent Generation, the institute found. 

“With respect to LGBTQ identity, it’s very clear that Gen Z adults look different than older Americans,” said Melissa Deckman, PRRI’s chief executive.

Call it foolproof contraception. It’s one way to resolve the abortion issue.

Tenth, Charles Hurt, of the Washington Times, offers this comment on the Biden response to the murder of our soldiers in Jordan:

 

Perhaps most terrifying of all, however, is not Mr. Biden’s doddering indolence that has led us to where we are now but rather what he possibly holds for the future. In response to the latest attack by Iran, Mr. Biden declared that he “shall respond,” and Republicans in Congress are urging him to bold action.

The only thing more dangerous than a man this hopelessly stupid stuttering meaningless words is a man this hopelessly stupid taking action.

Eleventh, remember when the Biden administration decided to punish Russia by confiscating its dollar holdings. Well, things are not quite working out as planned. Is the dollar’s status as a reserve currency in jeopardy? Consider this, from George Friedman of the site, Geopolitical Futures: 

 

In today's Memo: The head of Russia’s central bank said the BRICS countries now represent 40 percent of Russia’s trade, doubling over the past two years. She added that settlements in national currencies have increased to 85 percent compared to 20 percent in 2021.

Twelfth, this is what it looks like when you are in way over your head. We recall that Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe-- no right winger, he-- declared that Sonia Sotomayor did not know anywhere near as much as she thought she knew.

New, we discover that she is tired, because the workload is too much for her limited knowledge. The New York Post reports:

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor vented about being “tired” from her demanding workload on the high court as well as her “frustration” with the conservative-dominated bench.

Speaking to a group of students at the University of California, Berkley School of Law, the 69-year-old jurist opened up about the vicissitudes of serving on the court while increasingly in the political crosshairs.

“Cases are bigger. They’re more demanding. The number of amici are greater, and you know that our emergency calendar is so much more active. I’m tired,” she said, per Bloomberg Law.

Thirteenth, on the UNRWA front, we now discover what these do-gooders were really doing in Gaza:

Hillel Neuer, the director of UN Watch, which monitors the UN, told Congress about his investigation into a Telegram channel for 3,000 UN teachers in Gaza that was filled with posts praising the bloodbath. Users on the channel glorified the 'education' the terrorists received, shared photos of dead or captured Israelis, and called for hostages to be executed. 'It's time to stop pretending that UNRWA is at all fixable,' Neuer told lawmakers. 'The very existence of a Telegram group of 3,000 teachers in which members celebrate Hamas atrocities is but a symptom of the core problem of UNRWA.'

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