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Today is the Lord’s Day, but also John’s Day, for we have another dollop of themed bird photos from Dr. Avise.. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.  I’ll add here that I’m scheduled to go to South Africa in August to visit friends in Capetown and to see the animals at Kruger National Park. I have to see the big “game” before I croak!

South Africa Birds, Part 3 

This week’s post is Part 3 of a mini-series on birds I photographed in South Africa during an extended seminar trip in 2007.  It shows another dozen or so species from that avian-rich part of the world.  All of today’s birds have the word “Cape” in their common name and were photographed in the Cape Town area.

Cape Batis (Batis capensis) female:

Cape Bulbul (Pycnonotus capensis):

Cape Francolin (Pternistis capensis):

Cape Glossy Starling (Lamprotornis nitens):

Cape Grassbird (Sphenoeacus afer):

Cape Gull (Larus dominicanus) (also known as the Kelp Gull):

Cape Robin-chat (Cossypha caffra):

Cape Sparrow (Passer melanurus):

Cape Sugarbird (Promerops cafer) male:

Cape Sugarbird female:

Cape Teal (Anas capensis):

Cape Turtle Dove (Streptopelia capicola):

Cape Wagtail (Motacilla capensis):

Cape Weaver (Ploceus capensis) male:

Several Jewish students at Harvard, and an organization called “Students Against Antisemitism” (SAA), have brought suit against Harvard University for its antisemitic behavior.  While the plaintiffs aren’t going after Harvard on First Amendment Grounds (and wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if they tried to), the allegations in their suit involving genuine violations of federal law.

First, Harvard is accused of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says this:

No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

As the suit establishes (click below to read the long 77-page document), Harvard does indeed receive federal monies, most notably through grants to faculty.

Second, the suit asserts that the antisemitic activity at Harvard, involving students, faculty, and off-campus groups, did indeed deny Jewish students the full benefits of an education at the University, as they were intimidated to the point of finding it hard or impossible to study; some were denied access to study spaces by vocal pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel students; some classes included a huge dollop of antisemitic material, including canceling classes so students could go to pro-Palestinian demonstrations (these are invariably anti-Israeli and often antisemitic); and, finally, at least one Jewish student was attacked. This seems to add up to to “discrimination” under Title VI.

Further, and this is shocking, Harvard did little or nothing when Jewish students complained to the administration about the disruption of their education. In response, the administration invariably said, “We’ll look into it and get back to you,” eventually doing nothing. One sees this over and over again in the complaint.

Two more items are singled out. As I’ve discussed before, Harvard did not enforce its speech code uniformly: while mandating punishment for things like “fatphobia,” “ableism”, and “racism” (but not against Jewish students!), they ignored bigoted behaviors that, if directed against blacks instead of Jews, would have been punished. (Harvard does not have a First-Amendment-based speech code, and so it’s been irregular or even hypocritical in enforcing speech “violations.”)

Finally, Harvard allowed its own students (and outside organizations, who aren’t given the same license as registered student organizations), to engage in illegal violations of University rules of conduct, including sit-ins and prohibited demonstrations. In perhaps the most ridiculous demonstration of this kind of hypocrisy, Harvard not only allowed pro-Palestinian demonstrators to illegally occupy a University building, but even bought the demonstrators candy and burritos! (Jews, of course, never got burritos, as they don’t engage in sit-ins.)

As one of my friends wrote me after having read the complaint: “If even a fraction of this is true, the place has become a cesspool.”

I’m afraid he’s right.

I read the entire document, and it’s pretty shocking. You can access it by clicking below. Unlike most lawsuits, it makes pretty absorbing reading, as the degree of antisemitism that Harvard allowed, without punishing prohibited behaviors, is fascinating.  No doubt a lot of this is due to the DEI mentality that infests Harvard (ex-President Gay was infected with DEI-ism), so that Jewish students are perceived as oppressors who aren’t worthy of much protection. But perhaps I was just intrigued because this was where I got my Ph.D., and I was once proud of that (However, going to Harvard was, for me, a complete accident, and some day I’ll tell that story.)

The suit:

The plaintiffs include Students Against Antisemitism (described in the lawsuit as “a not-for-profit corporation organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, formed for the purpose of defending human and civil rights, including the right of individuals to equal protection and to be free from antisemitism in higher education, through litigation and other means”, as well as Alexander Kestenbaum, a Jewish student at Harvard, and five other Jewish students who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

Before I give excerpts from the lawsuit, here’s an article on it from Thursday’s Boston Globe. Click on the headline to see it, though it’s probably paywalled. I give an excerpt below it, but reading the complaint above tells you a lot more.

From the article:

Several graduate and law students at Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit against the Ivy League school this week, accusing the administration of failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment on campus during the Israel-Hamas war.

The 79-page civil complaint, filed Wednesday in US District Court in Boston, alleges that antisemitism at Harvard has become especially “severe and pervasive” after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, with militants reportedly raping and torturing civilians. Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign and ground invasion that has killed more than 23,000 people in Gaza.

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“Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” the complaint reads.

Only one of the six plaintiffs is named; Divinity School master’s degree candidate Alexander Kestenbaum.

The others are identified as members of Students Against Antisemitism, as is Kestenbaum. The other plaintiffs are enrolled at Harvard Law School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, according to the complaint.

A Harvard spokesperson said Thursday that the university has no comment “on pending litigation.”

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Now for the lawsuit. itself.  I’ll give my own brief summaries (flush left) to bits of the suit (indented).

The gist of the complaint:

Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant antiJewish hatred and harassment. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered, tortured, raped, burned, and mutilated 1,200 people—including infants, children, and the elderly—antisemitism at Harvard has been particularly severe and pervasive. Mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty have marched by the hundreds through Harvard’s campus, shouting vile antisemitic slogans and calling for death to Jews and Israel. Those mobs have occupied buildings, classrooms, libraries, student lounges, plazas, and study halls, often for days or weeks at a time, promoting violence against Jews and harassing and assaulting them on campus. Jewish students have been attacked on social media, and Harvard faculty members have promulgated antisemitism in their courses and dismissed and intimidated students who object. What is most striking about all of this is Harvard’s abject failure and refusal to lift a finger to Case 1:24-cv-10092 Document 1 Filed 01/10/24 Page 1 of 77 2 stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and penalize the students and faculty who perpetrate it.

The prohibited participation of unrecognized student groups in demonstrations:

44. The Student Organization Policies also provide that unrecognized student organizations are not permitted “to conduct any activity at Harvard even though their activities involve Harvard” students, except under “special circumstances,” that Harvard will not provide “access, support, or benefits” to unrecognized student organizations, and that students may not use the “Harvard” name or marks in organizations’ activities without permission from a dean or the provost.

45. Harvard nevertheless regularly permits unrecognized student groups such as Harvard Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (“Harvard BDS”) and Harvard Afro to conduct, while using Harvard’s name, disruptive antisemitic protests inside Harvard buildings and on Harvard grounds without consequence. These unrecognized groups have, in recent months, extensively engaged in discrimination against, and harassment of, Jewish and Israeli students and continue to violate numerous Harvard policies by holding unauthorized events in which they recruit hundreds of students to interrupt classes with calls for “globaliz[ing] the Intifada” and violence against Jews and Israelis, among other disruptive and harassing conduct. Harvard takes no action to prevent these organizations from regularly harassing Jewish and Israeli students in violation of Harvard’s policies.

This also happens at the University of Chicago, in which an unrecognized group called “UChicago United for Palestine” regularly participates in demonstrations and sit-ins, both legal and prohibited. The University doesn’t do anything about it.

Disruption and deplatforming of study groups and classes by pro-Palestinian demonstrators (again, this is prohibited under Harvard University regulations):

63. Harvard Out of Palestine (“HOOP”), another student group, led a relentless campaign against retired Israeli Major General Amos Yadlin, a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government (“Harvard Kennedy”). For example, on February 1, 2022, HOOP organized a disruptive rally outside Yadlin’s first study group of the semester. As HOOP posted on its Instagram page, the harassment “continue[d] despite [the study group’s] efforts to change rooms every week.” HOOP also shared a video that showed its members standing in two parallel rows just outside the open door of Yadlin’s classroom, holding large banners and flags, so that anyone entering or exiting would be forced to walk through the gauntlet. The video also depicts protesters chanting and disrupting Yadlin’s discussion with students in the classroom.

64. On April 7, 2022, HOOP marched through campus, including in and out of buildings, banging on drums and using a megaphone to shout further accusations at Yadlin, charging him with personal responsibility for alleged “genocide.” Throughout the semester, Harvard did nothing to prevent HOOP from severely and pervasively harassing Yadlin and his students, notwithstanding, among other policies, Harvard’s Statement on Rights and Responsibilities proscribing such conduct as “unacceptable” violations of Harvard policy.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators storm Harvard Law school in violation of student regulations, terrorizing Jewish students. Cops stand by and do nothing, nor does the administration:

99. During this upheaval, SAA Member #1, SAA Member #2, SAA Member #3, and SAA Member #5 were in a study room on the first floor of Harvard Law’s main building, attending a small discussion session with a former assistant to the president during the Trump administration, Jason Greenblatt. At the session, the students heard drumming outside the study room and found a mob at the entrance to Harvard Law with a giant banner reading “Stop the Genocide in Gaza.” SAA Member #2 watched as HUPD officers observed, but took no action against, the hundreds of protesters, including non-HUID cardholders, who were bypassing card scanners and infiltrating the building. The group stormed Harvard Law’s main building, marched down the length of the building’s primary first-floor hallway, and blocked the hallway outside the study room where the SAA members and Greenblatt were hiding. Fearing a violent attack, students in the study room removed indicia of their Jewishness, such as kippot, or hid under desks.

101. SAA Member #2 emailed Assistant Director of Student Life Jeffrey Sierra after the mob stormed Harvard Law to describe what happened. In two previous meetings with Sierra, she had asked him what could be done to stop the rampant antisemitism on campus and explained its impact on her. In both of these meetings, and in response to her email regarding the October 19 incursion, Sierra directed SAA Member #2 to CAMHS for mental health services and, on several occasions, said he was “not in a position to do more.” When SAA Member #2 asked whom she could contact instead, Sierra said he would speak with more senior administrators, but SAA Member #2 never heard from anyone else about her concerns.

Burritogate!:  In this one, students sitting in and violating the campus code avoid discipline.  Instead of removing the students, the administration allowed them to stay overnight, and the deans brought the trespassing students candy and burritos! It seems that nobody was ever disciplined.

119. The utter inadequacy and clear unreasonableness of Harvard’s response to antisemitism on campus was further exemplified on November 16 and 17 when, for twenty-four hours, students took over University Hall, demanding that “Harvard administrators release a call for a ceasefire in Gaza,” announce that “antisemitism [is] not the same as anti-Zionism,” and “investigate Islamophobia and suppression of pro-Palestine speech on campus.” Rather than eject or otherwise penalize those students, nine hours into the takeover, Dean Khurana and Adams House Faculty Dean Salmaan Keshavjee brought the occupying students burritos and candy. After twelve hours, Dean Khurana gave them the chance to leave without disciplinary action; when the students refused, he allowed them to remain overnight. When questioned at the House Antisemitism Hearing why the deans provided food to unlawful protesters and promised them no consequences, President Gay evaded the question, stating, “where conduct violates our policies . . . we have processes underway.”

122. On November 29, Harvard PSC, Harvard BDS, and Harvard Afro again organized self-proclaimed “disruptive” mass walkouts from classes across campus, targeting major lecture halls to disrupt the largest number of students and took over the Science Center’s classrooms and lobby, among other locations. During their takeover of the Science Center lobby—conduct prohibited by Harvard’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities—protesters surrounded and intimidated Jewish students, using megaphones to shout genocidal antisemitic chants, including “globalize the Intifada,” “long live the Intifada,” “from the river to the sea,” and, in Arabic, “water to water, Palestine will be Arab.”

123. The disruption, like many before it, was led by a student recognized by Jewish students as among the primary instigators of antisemitic abuse on campus, whose presence causes considerable fear and alarm among the Jewish students who live in the same dormitory, Adams House, which he has turned into a base of operations for anti-Jewish activism. Adams House Faculty Dean Keshavjee—who supplied burritos and candy to the University Hall occupiers—has done nothing to ameliorate the situation.

Harvard cancels festival that partly celebrated Judaism, fails to stop students from disrupting a Divinity School event:

125. On December 6, rather than prevent protesters from disrupting Harvard Divinity’s Seasons of Light celebration that evening—a “beloved annual multireligious service” and Harvard Divinity’s only annual event that includes a celebration of the Jewish faith—Harvard canceled it. That same day, Harvard GS4P students took over Harvard Divinity’s “Holiday Tea,” interrupting the Harvard administrators, faculty, staff, and students who had gathered there by unfurling a large banner alleging “genocide in Gaza,” yelling about a “Zionist genocidal campaign,” shrieking “there can be no peace without justice,” “free, free Palestine,” and “shame!” The Harvard administrators did nothing to stop the students. Kestenbaum, who was present, emailed the Antisemitism Advisory Group to report this blatant violation of Harvard policy—which occurred after President Gay publicly declared that Harvard would discipline this type of violation—but has not received a response.

Harvard asks students to remove an outside menorah at night instead of the campus police protecting it. The University allows a banned protest at Widener Library. 

126. Rather than take steps to protect Jewish students, Harvard has thus required that they limit or conceal their activities. For example, as Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi revealed, Harvard requires that he remove the Chabad Hanukkah menorah from the campus at night so that it would not be vandalized. Rather than ensuring the safety and success of the Case 1:24-cv-10092 Document 1 Filed 01/10/24 Page 46 of 77 47 Seasons of Light celebration and making it unequivocally clear that vandalizing the menorah was unacceptable and would be met with harsh punishment, Harvard addresses antisemitism by canceling events that include celebrations of Jewish culture and warning celebrants to hide Jewish symbols.

127. At the same time Jewish students were being cautioned by Harvard to abandon or conceal their identity, students celebrating the October 7 massacre and advocating death to Israelis and Jews were free to do so on campus and over social media, not deterred or punished by Harvard in any way. On December 10, 2023, during final exam week, Harvard PSC, Harvard BDS, and Harvard Afro oversaw a disruptive, aggressive, flag- and banner-waving takeover of Harvard’s Widener Library, and then marched to Massachusetts Hall, where students chanted “from the river to the sea.” Kestenbaum had intended to study at Widener but abandoned his plan, as he was concerned that his religious clothing would make him a target for abuse or violence. Harvard took no action to stop the Widener protest or discipline the students or organizations that participated in it.

Professors allow students to leave class to attend a general anti-Israel strike “in solidarity”:

136. On October 20, Professor Clio Takas emailed her students stating, “[a]s many of you know, [Harvard PSC] and [Harvard GS4P] are organizing a class walk-out and general strike . . . . I have decided to cancel section today in solidarity.” Similarly, Harvard Public Health Professor Nancy Krieger accommodated students who wanted to participate in the October 20 global strike by permitting the vast majority of students to leave class to protest. Krieger then excused the remaining seven (which included several Jewish students) and asked them to return along with the protesting students at noon. As it turned out, Krieger and the protesting students returned to the classroom some forty minutes earlier than the professor had said class would resume and, in the absence of the Jewish students, Krieger resumed her lecture.

And a section on hypocrisy taken from the lawsuit:

Harvard Only Embraces Free Expression Principles When It Can Use Them to Protect and Permit Antisemitic Harassment

154. At the heart of Harvard’s double standard is its discriminatory application of free expression and other principles. Harvard’s campus is a safe space for students of all protected minority groups other than Jews.

155. Harvard’s invocation of free expression principles to justify permitting antisemitic harassment is both hypocritical and false, especially given that Harvard is ranked dead last on free speech, ranked “abysmal,” out of the 248 colleges assessed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Harvard protects speech only when it espouses positions Harvard supports and prohibits speech adverse to the interests of other groups Harvard deems worthy of protection. Harvard’s double standard is apparent when one compares Harvard’s failure to discipline anti-Jewish harassment with its warning to freshmen—during the Title IX training— that “sizeism,” “fatphobia,” “cisheterosexism,” “racism,” “transphobia,” “ageism,” and “ableism” are prohibited because they “contribute to an environment that perpetrates violence.”

156. Harvard also has no problem censoring controversial speakers or discussions— unless they espouse antisemitic views, in which case Harvard insists it is obligated to permit them on free expression grounds. In 2021, for example, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences canceled a course on a policing strategy involving military tactics after student organizations expressed concerns about the subject matter. And in 2022, the Harvard English Department disinvited Dr. Devin Buckley from speaking on campus because she is on the board of an organization that opposes incarcerating biological males with biological females or permitting them to participate in women’s sports. But, as alleged above, Harvard readily permitted El-Kurd and Hill to appear on campus spewing anti-Jewish rhetoric, Holocaust denial, and calls for Israel’s extermination.

Below is the relief that the suit is asking for.  I have no idea whether the plaintiffs will win, but the document, if it allegations are true, makes a compelling case against Harvard.  What bothers me most as an alum is the University’s abject failure to do anything about the Jewish students’ complaints. Even Claudine Gay was guilty of that non-responsiveness. Right now, Harvard looks pretty bad.

If this suit goes through—and it could be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court—Harvard could no longer violate Title VI. In practice, that means that they’d have to enforce campus rules about demonstrations, and would have to be evenhanded in enforcing the University speech code. Fingers crossed.

Today we have several cat videos and some memes, but nothing that takes intellectual acumen to appreciate.  We won’t have a Caturday Felid next week as I’m going to California, and posting of everything will be light. So enjoy this one, and we’ll be back on the 27th of January.

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First, a 5½-minute video of cats getting what they hate most: wet.  There’s nothing sadder than a sodden cat.  Listen to the orange moggie howl in the second clip! In the third, I don’t know why the video makers don’t immediately rescue the cat. That’s cruel!

Tbe cats pawing at the door are presumably trying to get out of the rain. Once again, their staff just stands by and take a video. And there’s one cat who falls in the toilet!

The Siamese at 4:45 makes quite a racket.

But, in general, people who stand by and take a video of a distressed cat without helping it are reprehensible. Don’t be one of them!

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Now a 4+-minute video of cats getting what they like most (well, next to food): NIP! This is one more advantage of cats over d*gs, as there’s no such thing as d*gnip.  You can’t get your d*g high!

You can clearly see the variety of their reactions: some wallow in the stuff; others largely ignore it.  There’s a bit of information at the end.

petMD and Wikipedia both have useful articles on catnip, the former with information for cat staff and the latter general information about the plant and its effects.

From petMD:

Cats have an extra scent organ called the vomeronasal gland in the roof of their mouth. This special pathway allows scents that are collected in the nose and mouth to be carried to the brain.

Nepetalactone is the oil that’s found within the catnip plant’s leaves that can cause behavioral changes in cats. For a cat to be exposed to this substance, they have to smell the catnip.

Catnip mimics feline sex hormones, so cats enjoying this substance will often display behaviors similar to a female cat in heat (although both male and female cats can experience the effects).

These behaviors can include overt signs of affection, relaxation, and happiness. Other cats will display active behaviors, such as playfulness or sometimes even aggression.

For cats that have a positive experience with catnip, it can help reduce anxiety and even relieve pain.

Some veterinarians have recommended using catnip to help with separation anxiety if your cat will be home alone for an extended period of time.

About 60% of cats show a catnip reaction, and Wikipedia reports that the difference is not due to a single gene form, but appears to be polygenic, that is, it’s like many human maladies, in which you have to have a combination of different gene forms (and often a certain environment) to show a trait.  As for other species, it says this:

Catnip contains the feline attractant nepetalactone. N. cataria (and some other species within the genus Nepeta) are known for their behavioral effects on the cat family, not only on domestic cats, but also other species. Several tests showed that leopards, cougars, servals, and lynxes often reacted strongly to catnip in a manner similar to domestic cats. Lions and tigers may react strongly as well, but they do not react consistently in the same fashion.

Here’s a controlled experiment showing that some big cats do react to catnip: about 72% of the big cats showed a positive reaction, but it differs greatly among species.

Here’s nepetalactone:

Finally, catnip is often grown as an ornamental plant in gardens, and I recommend it, as cats will come around, eat it, and act weird.  And you can also make catnip tea from it, supposedly a relaxant for humans. I’ve had it, but it didn’t really relax me: I just rolled around on the ground for 15 minutes.

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Bored Panda (click in screenshot below) has a variety of cat memes—50 of them. I’ll show a few of my favorites below.

 

 

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Lagniappe: A cat fiddles with its staff’s  elaborate model train set:

h/t: Ginger K.

Today we have a post on Australian trees, the eucalypts, contributed by Reader Rodney Graetz.  This is part 1 of a two-part series. Rodney’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

The Trees that identify Australia

Australia is one of many countries that include plants as part of their identity.  The national floral emblem is the Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha), one of more than 1000 Acacia species found on the continent.  The two colours of the plant represent the essence of the continent.  The golden flowers represent its beaches, mineral wealth, grain, and wool harvests.  The green of the (leathery) leaves imitates the continent’s forests and productive landscapes.

Internationally, when Australian sporting teams compete, here Cricket, their uniforms are always in the national floral emblem colours: the Green and the Gold.

What trees identify Australia by being visually dominant in the country’s diverse landscapes?  Only one tree group emphatically says Australia, and that is the Eucalypts, aka ‘Gum Trees’.  Though diverse in size, form, and colouring, this is a typical specimen.  They are all substantial evergreen hardwood trees, with tough, leathery, long-lived leaves, and the annually renewed bark can be rough or smooth, and multi-coloured.  Though widely called ‘Gum Trees’, only a few species produce a solidifying liquid ‘gum’ from surface wounds.  In contrast, all Eucalypt leaves contain aromatic ‘oils’ which render them highly flammable and fragrant, when green, and especially so, when dried.

From an estimated 900+ species total, a small sample of the variation in appearance of the adult trees is this collage of the bark of just eleven different Eucalypts.

Initially named as just one genus, Eucalyptus, it now includes Corymbia and Angophora.  Together they are still called ‘Eucalypts’, because of their common flower structure with sepals and petals fused to a cap (calyptra) and the showy insect-attracting role played by numerous stamens.  There is significant species variation in flower size and colour.’

In a 55 million-year evolutionary history, Eucalypts have evolved characteristics to repel leaf-eating animals.  Rapidly evolving insects remain the most successful, while vertebrate folivores are largely excluded by sclerophylly, the leaves are woody, and by the production of toxic chemicals.  The only vertebrate dependent on Eucalypt leaves is the marsupial Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), which spends far more time (10-15 hours) digesting than harvesting leaves.

Australia is justifiably called “A Burning Continent”, with Africa being called “The Burning Continent”.  Eucalypts are a noticeable component of all Australian landscapes, with the exception of the sandplain deserts, and the (>2000m) high country.  Wherever Eucalypts are found, wildfire is possible, only the frequency varies.  The two principal adaptations of Eucalypts to frequent fire are increased bark thickness, and the capacity to produce new (epicormic) shoots anywhere along a burnt stem or branch.

Tall forests, such as this, occur only in the two wettest, temperate regions of the continent, where one species (Eucalyptus regnans) has been recorded as the Earth’s tallest flowering plant at 100 metres (330 feet).  The species here is Karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor).

The sub-tropical, Eucalypt-dominated, savannas are always impressive in the early dawn light with the blackened record of their frequent (1-3 years) fires is visible in their bark.

Growing at the low temperature limit of Eucalypts,  the Snow Gums (Eucalyptus pauciflora), are more shaped by the blizzard winds than by the brief snowfalls.

Part 2 to come.

I believe I mentioned this faux pas by the BBC earlier today, but here are the hard, cold facts.

On Christmas Eve, BBC radio repeated, six times, a completely false report that Israeli troops had executed 137 Palestinian civilians and buried them in unmarked graves. This of course came from a notice by the ever-reliable Hamas, which loves to fabricate such stuff.  Eventually the BBC corrected itself (see below), but this shows the willingness of its journalistic chowderheads to lap up and regurgitate to the public whatever saucer of cream Hamas sets before them.  The BBC and the Guardian, it seems, are doing the absolute worst and most biased reporting on the Israel/Hamas war among all mainstream media.

Click below to read the archived report, which of course isn’t in the BBC online but in the Times of London.

The story:

The BBC has apologised for reporting Hamas claims that the Israeli army was responsible for carrying out “summary executions” in the Gaza strip without seeking sufficient corroborating evidence.

The broadcaster has issued an apology via its website for the Christmas Eve report, which is understood to have aired six times on the BBC World Service and Radio 4 before being pulled.

The story, which appears to have been based on a report from the news agency AFP [Agence France-Presse], centered on a statement from the Hamas terror group. It accused Israeli troops of illegally killing 137 Palestinian civilians since the war started on October 7 and burying them in a pit in northern Gaza.

The BBC said that it had failed to “make sufficient effort to seek corroborating evidence to justify reporting the Hamas claim”.

It added that its accusations were attributed and its story contained a response from the Israeli military saying that it was unaware of the incident and that Hamas was a terrorist organisation that did not value truth.

Some staff considered that by posting the report on its corrections and clarifications web page, the BBC had not gone far enough to rectify its mistake.

“Unless this apology is public and broadcast in the same arena as the original mistake, the damage is done,” said one Jewish employee.

A second staffer added: “They have taken the Hamas line — a terror organisation — at face value, far too much since October 7. And nothing has changed. And again it’s an apology about a very serious accusation against Israel hidden on a corrections page.”

The BBC has previously apologised for a television report that Israeli troops had targeted medical staff during a raid on a hospital in Gaza in November.

The previous month it had admitted that it was wrong of one of its correspondents to speculate that that a rocket that fell outside al-Ahli hospital in Gaza had been fired by Israel.

So there you have it: a completely bogus report, originating from Hamas, that the BBC apologized for because it didn’t do “due diligence”. But crikey, the story sounds so fishy from the outset—the IDF doesn’t really do stuff like that—that serious fact-checking would be required. Apparently there was none, just a lifting of the story from the AFP followed by an online apology that was so hard to find that reader Jez, who saw the Times story, had to sniff all around the BBC website, using various permutations of words like “Gaza” and “apology” to even find the apology.

Well, he finally did, and it’s below (click the link to see it, though I reproduce it in full):

Anyway, here it is in full:

I agree with the Times: this apology has to be broadcast (preferably six times) on the same radio station where the false report appeared.  And “they didn’t make sufficient effort to seek corroborating evidence”? They appear to have made NO effort!  How many people who heard the original radio report will even know about this correction?

Fortunately, the Times did the BBC’s work for them, also mentioning how the Beeb had falsely reported the Hamas line two times before this.  In the end, it shows the BBC’s anti-Israel and antisemitic tilt, something that becomes more evident every day.

The Claudine Gay affair, in which the President of Harvard was basically fired after only a few months on the job, with her cardinal sin being plagiarism, has got to be the most dramatic and portentous academic event of 2023/2024.  I say “portentous” because although Gay was fired for stealing other people’s prose, her exit also has led many to see this as the beginning of the decline of DEI in universities.  After all, Gay had made her name, in both her academic work and as an administrator, largely by pushing DEI, and her hiring was, without a doubt, a nod to the philosophy of DEI.  In his op-ed in the Boston Globe about what Harvard needs to do to repair itself, Steve Pinker proposed five propositions (his “Fivefold Way”) that included this as one suggestion:

Disempowering DEI. Many of the assaults on academic freedom (not to mention common sense) come from a burgeoning bureaucracy that calls itself diversity, equity, and inclusion while enforcing a uniformity of opinion, a hierarchy of victim groups, and the exclusion of freethinkers. Often hastily appointed by deans as expiation for some gaffe or outrage, these officers stealthily implement policies that were never approved in faculty deliberations or by university leaders willing to take responsibility for them.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Harvard will do this, but I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that it will.  DEI is too entrenched at Harvard, and where will they put all the bureaucrats who buttress it?

At any rate, John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, whose biweekly discussion on the Glenn Show I follow regularly (despite my disdain for podcasts), have a 25-minute discussion of Gay’s departure, and I’ve put it below. As you can see from the title and the picture, they’re not going easy on her. Here’s the intro, and I’ve put my own comments and summary (flush left) below it. I suspect that on Loury’s Substack site, where the video also resides, there’s a written transcript.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume all of that is correct, and Gay was ousted over matters of identity rather than academic integrity. That still does not explain why she plagiarized in the first place, nor does it excuse the offense. Whether or not one agrees with the motivations of Gay’s opponents, there is no excuse for a professional scholar to do what she did. None of the possible explanations—underhandedness, sloppiness, a belief that small acts of plagiarism don’t matter—could exonerate Gay, because they all betray a similarly cavalier attitude toward the integrity of the scholarly endeavor. Safeguarding that endeavor and ensuring Harvard’s continuing preeminence was a major part of Gay’s job, and she was not up to the task. Anyone who looked at her paper-thin CV could have guessed as much, and now the evidence is in.

It’s no small irony that a DEI ideologue who likely views “merit” as a suspect concept was brought down by her own demonstrable lack of same. Claudine Gay is the victim of her own debased principles. Harvard’s faculty and students deserve a leader who reflects the ideals of the institution, not a functionary with people skills. I don’t know who will be next in line for the job, but if they’re more of the same—another mediocre scholar with the “correct” politics—I’d advise them to rent a place in Cambridge rather than buying.

Brief summary: Both guys largely blame DEI for getting Gay into office in the first place, and both, like Pinker, see DEI as a villain that can destroy academia.

John McWhorter says he doesn’t think that one needs a good academic record to be a good college President, but his beef about Gay is that she lack both that and the business and fundraising skills necessary to run Harvard.  As he says about DEI, McWhorter says that Gay “was raised in that culture” and “was never asked to be excellent”, so she had no motivation to be that way.

He also makes no bones about why he thinks Gay was hired:  “The reason they chose her was because of the color of her skin”  As he notes, what she brought to the office of President was simply her “blackness . . . and her commitment to DEI.”  Both McWhorter and Loury emphasize that affirmative action was instrumental in her choice; as McWhorter says, “Her blackness was not just one factor, it was not just a thumb on the scale—it was decisive. She’s a token. . . ”

He adds “Affirmative action in universities is about lowering standards.” not just a thumb on the scale. I presume that what he means by a “thumb on the scale” is that when people are roughly equally qualified, it’s okay to choose a minority person, but the problem is that people are not equally qualified: the standards must be substantially lowered for black people like Gay.  This is a debatable issue, for if you don’t lower standards somewhat, you have no chance of getting anywhere near equity, for there’s a huge gap in academic qualifications between minorities, with Asians and top, followed by whites and then by Hispanics and African-Americans.

Glenn Loury is more exercised, and see’s the choisc of Gay as a “corruption of the meritocratic order underlying our most precious institutions of human achievement”. He also feels–and I agree with him–that yes, business executives can run a university, but they but can’t lead one. I prefer to have an academic who has had some administrative experience become president of a university. To appreciate and promote a good university’s mission, you have to be more than just a businessman or fundraiser.

Loury is really exercised about the corruption he sees in the choice of Gay. As he says, “What we’re seeing with Gay is the culmination of a process that is corrupt to its core”. His assessment of her academic qualifications, which he sees as important, is that they are very thin; he’s read her papers and finds “no really original ideas.” Like McWhorter, he blames DEI:  “DEI people put a mediocre person into the position of intellectual–of presiding over the precious jewel in the crown of American academia” By “corruption,” Loury apparently means that because of DEI, unqualified people get jobs and prevent qualified people from getting them, that politicians encourage identity politics and victimology, and that universities aren’t “developing black talent.”

Although a friend of mine judged the discussion as “a bit too harsh,” I think the guy are just being honest and speaking their minds. Claudine Gay wouldn’t like hearing it, but it’s not aimed at her. It’s aimed at us and at “progressive” Democrats.

The story of Nicholas Winton (1909-2015) is about as heartwarming as it gets, but also has, as I’ll claim, a double overtone of sadness. Born in London in 1909 to Jewish parents who had immigrated from Germany, Winton was a broker and stockbroker, but in 1938 moved to Prague to work with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. (The country was at that time already occupied by the Nazis).  And he became a man on a mission: to save Jewish children from falling into the hands of the Nazis.  It was tough, and he had to get the kids through the Netherlands, where they could board a ship to England.

In the end Winton saved 669 children, nearly all of them Jewish, though, sadly, their parents remained in Europe because only children younger than 17 could be rescued. Nearly all their parents later died in the camps or ghettos.  Here’s the account from Wikipedia.

Alongside the Czechoslovak Refugee Committee, the British and Canadian volunteers such as Winton, Trevor Chadwick, and Beatrice Wellington worked in organising to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis.Many of them set up their office at a dining room table in a hotel in Wenceslas Square. Altogether, Winton spent one month in Prague and left in January 1939, six weeks before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Other foreign volunteers remained, such as Chadwick, Warriner and Wellington. In November 1938, following Kristallnacht in Nazi-ruled Germany, the House of Commons approved a measure to allow the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17, provided they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 (equivalent to £3,397 in 2021) was deposited per person for their eventual return to their own country.

Netherlands

An important obstacle was getting official permission to cross into the Netherlands, as the children were to embark on the ferry at Hook of Holland. Following Kristallnacht in November 1938, the Dutch government officially closed its borders to any Jewish refugees. The Royal Netherlands Marechaussee searched for them and returned any found to Germany, despite the horrors of Kristallnacht being well known

Winton succeeded, thanks to the guarantees he had obtained from Britain. Following the first train, the process of crossing the Netherlands went smoothly. Winton ultimately found homes in Britain for 669 children, many of whose parents perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His mother worked with him to place the children in homes and later hostels.Throughout the summer of 1939, he placed photographs of the children in Picture Post seeking families to accept them. By coincidence, the names of the London and North Eastern Railway steamers which operated the Harwich to Hook of Holland route included the Prague and the Vienna; the former can be seen in a 1938 Pathé Newsreel.

Back in Britain, Winton lived to the ripe old age of 106, and the children he saved had become middle-aged.  Many of them, unknown to him, were in the audience during a 1988 episode of the BBC show “That’s Life”. At that time Winton was 79.  He knew the show was celebrating his life, but had no idea that the audience consisted not only of the children he saved (now grown up) but of their own children and grandchildren. When they stood up to identify themselves, seen in the clip below, the magnitude of what he’d done became clear, and he wept.  I always do, too, when I see this video. I challenge you not to mist up when you watch this!:

Winton was modest and didn’t flaunt his achievements. In fact, they were unknown to his wife, who discovered them only when she found a scrapbook in their attic with the names of the children and of their parents.  She gave the scrapbook to a Holocaust researcher, who tracked down many of the children, finding 80 of them in Britain.  Many of them are in the video above. The rest is history.

Winton eventually accrued the honors he deserved, and got a knighthood in 2003 for “services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia”.

As the old Jewish proverb goes, attributed to Hillel the Elder, “Whosoever destroys one soul, it is as though he had destroyed the entire world. And whosoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire world.”  I interpret this to mean that “the entire world” refers to the world apprehended by the person who lives or dies. (I often think of this when saving ducklings.) Well, Winton saved 669 entire worlds, and that’s something to marvel at.

Recently the BBC made a movie about Winton, using the title “One Life” taken from the proverb above. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Winton—an excellent choice—and has been critically acclaimed,  garnering a 89% critics’ rating and a 96% public rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Well worth seeing, I’d think. (It also features Helena Bonham Carter and Lena Olin.)

But watch this 2-minute trailer, which includes a version of the scene above. But you may notice that one thing is missing: the trailer doesn’t use the words “Jew” or “Jewish.” They say “the children” and refer to them several times, but you’d have no idea from this trailer that they were Jewish children. The only sign of what’s happening is one scene in which there are a few Nazi flags.

Is this omission an accident?  I tried to convince myself that it was, but after seeing the video and reading the articles below, I decided that it was no accident. They left “Jewish” out because they thought it might turn off the prospective audience. (Of course, once the audience has their butts in the theater, the movie can use the word more often.) But I’m not sure how often they use it. Can you imagine “Schindler’s List” having a trailer that doesn’t use the word “Jew”? It is, after all, about another man who saved Jews. (Winton is often called “The British Schindler”). And sure enough, it does: it mentions the word several times and shows lots of people wearing yellow stars, a Jewish wedding, and other tropes.  What’s going on is very clear. Things sure have changed in the last thirty years (“Schindler’s List was released in 1993.)

Now, what about “One Life?” Here’s “Israeli filmmaker, director, and activist Yuval David [speaking] about the antisemitic environment in Hollywood and the purging of Jewish references in marketing of ‘One Life.’” David, who knows what he’s talking about, has absolutely no doubt that the omission was deliberate, engineered by the progressive ideology that pervades Hollywood (I’m starting to wonder if “Jew” or “Jewish” even appears in the film!). Have a look:

And below is an article from the popular entertainment magazine Variety that discusses how, in the movie’s promotion, they omitted mentioning the religion of the children who were saved, which of course is why they had to be saved.  Click the headline to read.  And here’s an excerpt from that piece about how they erased “Jewish” from the marketing materials, using instead the words “Central European.” That is shameful:

The marketing materials for Anthony Hopkins latest feature film, a Holocaust biopic titled “One Life,” are set to be amended after controversy ensued over the lack of reference to Jews.

“One Life” tells the story of Nicholas Winton (played by Hopkins), better known as the British Oscar Schindler. Winton helped save the lives of over 600 children – the majority of them Jewish – from the Nazis during World War II.

But there has been disquiet over marketing for the movie after it was claimed Jews had been erased from the synopsis.

The furore started after British media retailer HMV tweeted about the film and referred to the children saved by Winton as “Central European” rather than Jewish. A number of independent cinemas also used the term “Central European” instead of “Jewish” while describing the film on their websites. [JAC: This makes no sense: children who were “Central European” but not Jewish weren’t usually endangered.]

See-Saw Films, who produced “One Life,” and Warner Bros. Pictures., who are distributing it in the U.K., subsequently also came under fire for omitting the word “Jewish” from their marketing materials when describing the children saved by Winton, although they did not use “Central European.”

Warner Bros. in the U.K. declined to comment but Variety understands that following the criticism all Warner’s official marketing for the film will be amended to describe the children as “predominantly Jewish,” which reflects the fact that while most of the 600+ Czechoslovakian children were Jewish, a handful of them were non-Jewish political refugees.

Click:

At least they fixed the materials, but it’s clear that they left Judaism out of the materials on purpose. It’s the progressive Zeitgeist: Jews aren’t exactly the world’s most popular group.

The BBC itself, however, continues to omit any mention of Jews in its article below (click to read). There is not a single mention that the children were Jewish, which of course drives the whole movie. In case the BBC has a social-media promoted “change of heart,” you can find the original BBC article archived here.

Click to read:

I’ve put the entire text of this article below the fold, and you can do a search for “Jew” or “Jewish”. You won’t find it.  That has to be a deliberate omission, for the reason the kids were saved simply must be part of the story. 

Finally, there was a series of tweets about whether the BBC used the word “Jewish” in stores about the Holocaust. Their score: 50% (2 out of 4). Given the history of the BBC’s antisemitism, I call the omission deliberate, especially for the Winton movie. And, as you saw, I’m not alone,

Here are the tweets. Reader Jez says this about the first Tweeter:

Cath Leng, whose tweet alerted me to it, is a former BBC employee herself. She just posted a piece about how the BBC broadcast an unbalanced piece about the man who won a recent women’s pool competition – the woman he was going to face in the final politely declined to take part, forfeiting the prize. The BBC didn’t even interview her, and just focused on the man’s feelings.

This one does https://t.co/AZXqMjWnyN

— Cath Leng (@leng_cath) January 9, 2024

It’s in here

Surprised to see those words absent from any Holocaust story https://t.co/VmQUSNPGcm

— Cath Leng (@leng_cath) January 9, 2024

As Vonnegut said, so it goes.

h/t: Jez, Malgorzata

Click “continue reading” to see the BBC story:

Sir Nicholas Winton: Holocaust saviour ‘did not think he was a hero’ 5th January 2024, 06:09 UTC By Caroline Gall & Matt HutchinsonBBC News, West Midlands The family of Sir Nicholas Winton, who organised the rescue of more than 600 children from the Nazis, say he refused to think of himself as a hero. The philanthropist is now the subject of a film which tells the story of him bringing them from German-occupied Czechoslovakia to the UK in 1939. His grandson Laurence, who lives in Herefordshire, said the making of the film had been an emotional process. It also had a pertinent message about refugees today, he added. Sir Nicholas, known as Nicky to his friends and family, saved 669 young children in the nine months leading up to the outbreak of World War Two. But his actions only really became widely known in 1988, when he was celebrated on the BBC’s That’s Life programme when the children, then adults, were in the show’s audience. Sir Anthony Hopkins plays Sir Nicholas Winton in the film One Life “As a child, it was a thing, it didn’t really mean anything to me at that point,” Mr Winton said. “It took a while for me to re-evaluate and think ‘oh, actually this is quite special and unusual’. “It wasn’t that he kept it a secret, it was more that he was focused on the future and he wasn’t interested in patting himself on the back – and that was true throughout his life.” Sir Nicholas, who received a knighthood in 2003 for services to humanity, died in 2015 aged 106. Mr Winton said his grandfather had become friends with many of the rescued children and had met them when they went to Maidenhead in Berkshire, where Sir Nicholas and his grandmother lived. Laurence Winton said the family were pleased the film also showed the collaborative effort behind saving the children “We didn’t think of him as a hero because it was so hard to get him to accept that. He would just say ‘no, no.. I would do what anyone would do’,” he said. Sir Nicholas’s daughter wrote a book about her father, which forms the screenplay to the film One Life, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins. She died last year and was very sad she would be unable to see the movie, Mr Winton said. She had always wanted Sir Anthony to play her father and the actor had done a “brilliant job” in portraying him, he added. The family are also pleased the film showed the collaborative effort behind saving the children and had a relevant message for today, which was that it happened in spite of so many things. “I think that’s the lesson for us today, is to think ‘what’s changed’? Are things really different, do we think about refugees in a different way? antisemitism is still a huge issue,” he said. “That’s what would have made Nicky happy to see the story told, if he thought it was going to inspire people to do something and take action today or to support refugees today – we are very pleased to see it on that basis.”

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “repeat“, came with the note, “I’m not sure about that.”  And Jesus falls for Mo’s bromide.

Once again, I urge you to patronize this worthy artist; you can do so for as little as $1/month. Go here to sign up.

Thanks to the half-dozen readers who responded to my call for photos; our tank is now somewhat replenished and I can keep this going for a while. But please think of this site if you have good wildlife photos.

Today’s photos come from Jim Blilie of Washington State, but were taken by his son Jamie.  Jim’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge Jamie’s photos by clicking on them.

Jamie is now a freshman at Washington State University (WSU) at Pullman Washington. He is thriving there.  We love WSU.  It’s very welcoming and is focused on student success. Jamie is studying engineering.  Some of these photos were taken during backpacking trips he has taken to Idaho through the WSU Outdoor Recreation Center, a wonderful service WSU provides. Jamie is the wildlife photographer of the family, though has become a good landscape photographer as well.

Jamie did not identify this bird, photo taken a few feet from our house in Klickitat County, Washington; but I think it is a Western Kingbird (Tyrannus verticalis).  Any help with a positive ID would be welcome:

Bumblebee, species uncertain.  Taken on the trail to Lookout Mountain, Oregon, east of Mt. Hood:

Red-breasted nuthatch (Sitta canadensis) and an unknown species of flying ant, taken on Lookout Mountain, Oregon, east of Mt. Hood:

Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel (Callospermophilus lateralis), also taken on Lookout Mountain, Oregon, east of Mt. Hood:

A similar looking rodent:  Based on his location in the mountains of the Idaho panhandle, I think this is a Red-tailed Chipmunk (Tamias ruficaudus), although the eponymous part is not visible in the photo.  Jamie took this photo on one of his backpacking trips in northern Idaho:

Also taken on one of his backpacking trips to Idaho (Selkirk Range, close to Upper Priest Lake):  A very small brown spider (note the size of the adjacent moss).  We were unsuccessful in identifying this spider:

A Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri), taken on our place.  We love the beautiful blue and black plumage of these jays.  These are very common here in winter.  In summer they seem to move to higher elevations (we are at 2000 feet (610m) above sea level) and then the Scrub Jays (Aphelocoma californica) move in for the summer.  The Steller’s Jays can make a pretty good mimic call of the Red-tailed Hawk’s scream (Buteo jamaicensis):

My favorite of the bunch:  A coyote (Canis latrans) in a snowstorm, taken from our back deck.  The coyote was perhaps 100 yards away:

A  beetle at 5600 feet (1707m) elevation in Oregon, taken on the Flag Point Lookout Tower.  Also unable to identify this beetle:

A Cyanide Millipede (Harpaphe haydeniana).  This millipede can exude hydrogen cyanide gas as a defense!  The photo was taken on the hike to the former fire lookout site, Sleeping Beauty, Skamania County, Washington.  This is a favorite hike (though unrelentingly steep) because of the very good views of Mount Adams from the top:

Finally, a ringer:  Jamie and me on top of Lookout Mountain with Mount Hood behind, just a day or so before he headed off to university:

Equipment:

Nikon D5600 (1.5 crop factor)
Nikkor AF-P DX 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR lens
Nikkor AF-P DX 70-300mm f/4.5-6.3 G ED lens
Sigma 150-600mm f/5.0-6.3 DG OS HSM lens
Canon PowerShot SX530

In today’s politically polarized country, however, the notion that standardized tests are worthless or counterproductive has become a tenet of liberalism. It has also become an example of how polarization can cause Americans to adopt positions that are not based on empirical evidence.  —David Leonhardt

 

Glory be—the New York Times has published an article that should put to rest a fundamental tenet of wokeness: that standardized tests are socially harmful because they don’t help predict college or later-life success, and also discriminate against racial minorities.  In fact, they turn out to be the best single predictor of success regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic status, according to NYT columnist and author David Leonhardt (a Pulitzer winner). Nor are they “racist” in any way that is meaningful, so racial gaps in college admissions cannot be imputed to the nature of standardized tests.  Those tests are, in fact, much better predictors of school and life success than are grade point averages.

I’ve put a quote from Leonhardt above to show how ingrained this idea has become among “progressives” (a point he repeatedly notes). There are several lessons from his piece, which is based on substantial data. Here’s my summary which is mine. And here it is (it’s coming now):

1.)  Standardized tests have repeatedly been shown to be the best single predictor of “success”, not only in college grade-point averages, but of the ability to get into a good graduate school and of the likelihood of being hired by a “desirable company”.

2.) Grade-point averages (GPAs), which many tout as being a better replacement for standardized tests, are not nearly as tests like the SAT for predicting “success” as defined above. This is largely because GPAs have steadily risen due to grade inflation, so they don’t carry the discriminatory power of standardized tests.

3.) Contrary to progressive opinion, the tests don’t appear to be “racist.” Further, the correlation between GPA and success is just as high for students coming from “disadvantaged” schools as those from “advantaged” schools. For a given SAT score, your average GPA is going to be the same regardless of whether your parents were rich or poor.

4.) The debate about the value of SATs doesn’t apply to most colleges, in which the majority of applicants are admitted. Rather, it centers on “elite colleges” (Leonhardt names Harvard, MIT, Williams, Carleton, UCLA, and the University of Michigan. These are colleges that most pride themselves on being meritocratic, though they are of course also concerned with diversity.

5.)  Many colleges and universities have gotten rid of standardized tests like the SAT on the grounds that they keep minority students out and reduce “equity.”  This is the case if tests are the only criterion used for admission. However, by adding criteria like “overcoming adversity”, one can achieve more racial balance (MIT is Leonhardt’s example of this). One reason is that tests can help identify promising students from minority groups who might otherwise be overlooked because they’re from schools that aren’t well known or because they have mediocre grade-point averages.

6.) Around 40% of Americans, regardless of ethnicity, think standardized tests should be a major factor in college admissions. Around 45% think it should be a minor factor, and 10-20% think it should not be a factor at all.

The lesson is that the progressives have been wrong: SATs are not only the most useful way to predict both college and life success for applicants, but, when used as part of a mixed-criteria system, can also help achieve greater racial balance. The many schools that have ditched such tests on the grounds of equity need to reinstate them.  My own view is that SATs should be mandatory but that other criteria, based not on simple race but on things like “overcoming adversity” (for which there are many signs: socioeconomic class, being handicapped, and so on) should be used, and together these may get us where we want.

You can read the article by clicking below, or find it archived here.

I’ve divided the content into short sections for your ease in reading (or read the original). Headings are mine, excerpts from Leonhardt’s piece are indented

Why tests were deep-sixed:

After the Covid pandemic made it difficult for high school students to take the SAT and ACT, dozens of selective colleges dropped their requirement that applicants do so. Colleges described the move as temporary, but nearly all have since stuck to a test-optional policy. It reflects a backlash against standardized tests that began long before the pandemic, and many people have hailed the change as a victory for equity in higher education.

. . .When I have asked university administrators whether they were aware of the research showing the value of test scores, they have generally said they were. But several told me, not for quotation, that they feared the political reaction on their campuses and in the media if they reinstated tests. “It’s not politically correct,” Charles Deacon, the longtime admissions dean at Georgetown University, which does require test scores, has told the journalist Jeffrey Selingo.\

In 2020, the University of California system went further than most colleges and announced — despite its own data showing the predictive value of tests — that it would no longer accept test scores even from applicants who wanted to submit them. In recent months, I made multiple requests to discuss the policy with university officials. They replied with an emailed statement saying that “U.C. remains committed to maintaining a fair admissions process that reviews every applicant in a comprehensive manner and endeavors to combat systemic inequities.” University spokespeople declined to discuss the policy by telephone or to schedule an interview with an administrator.

This is part of the eternal conflict between universities seen as meritocratic institutions and universities seen as institutions engaged in social engineering by creating equity among their students. The goals are in conflict for sure, but according to Leonhardt a mixed-criterion strategy can achieve a decent compromise. If this has satisfied MIT’s administration (see below), as it has, then it’s ok by me.

Leonhardt’s summary of why we need tests:

Now, though, a growing number of experts and university administrators wonder whether the switch has been a mistake. Research has increasingly shown that standardized test scores contain real information, helping to predict college grades, chances of graduation and post-college success. Test scores are more reliable than high school grades, partly because of grade inflation in recent years.

Without test scores, admissions officers sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between applicants who are likely to do well at elite colleges and those who are likely to struggle. Researchers who have studied the issue say that test scores can be particularly helpful in identifying lower-income students and underrepresented minorities who will thrive. These students do not score as high on average as students from affluent communities or white and Asian students. But a solid score for a student from a less privileged background is often a sign of enormous potential.

“Standardized test scores are a much better predictor of academic success than high school grades,” Christina Paxson, the president of Brown University, recently wrote. Stuart Schmill — the dean of admissions at M.I.T., one of the few schools to have reinstated its test requirement — told me, “Just getting straight A’s is not enough information for us to know whether the students are going to succeed or not.”

An academic study released last summer by the group Opportunity Insights, covering the so-called Ivy Plus colleges (the eight in the Ivy League, along with Duke, M.I.T., Stanford and the University of Chicago), showed little relationship between high school grade point average and success in college. The researchers found a strong relationship between test scores and later success.

Likewise, a faculty committee at the University of California system — led by Dr. Henry Sánchez, a pathologist, and Eddie Comeaux, a professor of education — concluded in 2020 that test scores were better than high school grades at predicting student success in the system’s nine colleges, where more than 230,000 undergraduates are enrolled. The relative advantage of test scores has grown over time, the committee found.

“Test scores have vastly more predictive power than is commonly understood in the popular debate,” said John Friedman, an economics professor at Brown and one of the authors of the Ivy Plus admissions study.

The data on the predictive power of tests.

First, test scores themselves are very good predictors of college GPA, much better than are high-school GPAs (the regression of college GPA is much stronger and tighter in the former than in the latter case). The graph below shows that.

Here’s a plot showing the correlation between SAT scores (the test is taken in high school) and college GPAs, separated by “advantaged” vs. “disadvantaged” high school (the division is apparently made not by race, but by socioeconomic class, though I’m not sure).  Note that for a given GPA, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve come from an advantaged vs. disadvantaged school—your predicted GPA is about the same. That means that, if you choose students solely on how their college grades will turn out, you should go solely by standardized test scores and not by “advantaged” or “disadvantaged” educations. But of course there are other measures of “success” that we’ll see below, measures that haven’t been assessed by dividing up the students by their “advantage”:

If your sole criterion for “success” is college GPA, you don’t need to take into account “advantage” or “disadvantage” educations, whether the sign of that be race, socioeconomic class, or reputation of the school. But there are other criteria for success, like the two below. Both are highly correlated with SAT (or ACT-equivalent) scores, but the outcomes haven’t been separated by socioeconomic class or race. It is possible that “overcoming adversity” could add to the predictability for getting into grad school or getting a good job above just using SAT scores. (Click to enlarge all graphs.)

It’s possible that if you had an expansive definition of “advantaged” education, which surely relies somewhat on socioeconomic class but also on other types of potential disadvantages (physical handicaps are one, but there are others), you could show that disadvantaged students with the same SAT score as advantaged students would nevertheless do better in life.  Or, if you prize some kind of “experiential diversity” or “thought diversity” in colleges, then you might want to use criteria other than SAT scores or grades.  In fact, that’s what many college-admissions essays are about: “Tell us about your life—what you’ve done, have you done anything unusual” etc. etc.

As far as rich white kids being able to do better because they can afford tutoring, music lessons and the like, Leonhardt says this with regard to the inequities that do exist among racial admissions:

The [SAT-like] tests are not entirely objective, of course. Well-off students can pay for test prep classes and can pay to take the tests multiple times. Yet the evidence suggests that these advantages cause a very small part of the [racial] gaps.

It’s a long article, but the point is this: SATs predict a lot about success, but there are still huge inequities among races in how they do, though that’s more a problem for elite schools than non-elite ones. If we’re concerned about more than just merit, but in things like thought diversity, experiential diversity, and (in my view) educational reparations, then what can we do?

First, here are the data on different ethnic groups in America, and how they think standardized tests should be counted in college admissions. It’s not that different among groups:

What is the solution to get students who will succeed while maintaining a decent racial balance?

We can use a “mixed strategy”:

But the data suggests that testing critics have drawn the wrong battle lines. If test scores are used as one factor among others — and if colleges give applicants credit for having overcome adversity — the SAT and ACT can help create diverse classes of highly talented students.

This has apparently worked at MIT, which dropped the test requirement for a couple of years and then reinstated it. The reinstatement brought improvement:

M.I.T. has become a case study in how to require standardized tests while prioritizing diversity, according to professors elsewhere who wish their own schools would follow its lead. During the pandemic, M.I.T. suspended its test requirement for two years. But after officials there studied the previous 15 years of admissions records, they found that students who had been accepted despite lower test scores were more likely to struggle or drop out.

Schmill, the admissions dean, emphasizes that the scores are not the main factor that the college now uses. Still, he and his colleagues find the scores useful in identifying promising applicants who come from less advantaged high schools and have scores high enough to suggest they would succeed at M.I.T.

Without test scores, Schmill explained, admissions officers were left with two unappealing options. They would have to guess which students were likely to do well at M.I.T. — and almost certainly guess wrong sometimes, rejecting qualified applicants while admitting weaker ones. Or M.I.T. would need to reject more students from less advantaged high schools and admit more from the private schools and advantaged public schools that have a strong record of producing well-qualified students.

“Once we brought the test requirement back, we admitted the most diverse class that we ever had in our history,” Schmill told me. “Having test scores was helpful.” In M.I.T.’s current first-year class, 15 percent of students are Black, 16 percent are Hispanic, 38 percent are white, and 40 percent are Asian American. About 20 percent receive Pell Grants, the federal program for lower-income students. That share is higher than at many other elite schools.

“When you don’t have test scores, the students who suffer most are those with high grades at relatively unknown high schools, the kind that rarely send kids to the Ivy League,” Deming, a Harvard economist, said. “The SAT is their lifeline.”

Leonhardt ends his piece with the quote at the top, followed by this:

Conservatives do it [ignore the data] on many issues, including the dangers of climate change, the effectiveness of Covid vaccines and the safety of abortion pills. But liberals sometimes try to wish away inconvenient facts, too. In recent years, Americans on the left have been reluctant to acknowledge that extended Covid school closures were a mistake, that policing can reduce crime and that drug legalization can damage public health.

There is a common thread to these examples. Intuitively, the progressive position sounds as if it should reduce inequities. But data has suggested that some of these policies may do the opposite, harming vulnerable people.

In the case of standardized tests, those people are the lower-income, Black and Hispanic students who would have done well on the ACT or SAT but who never took the test because they didn’t have to. Many colleges have effectively tried to protect these students from standardized tests. In the process, the colleges denied some of them an opportunity to change their lives — and change society — for the better.

If there’s any lesson in this, it’s that the “progressives” have been misguided in their call for dropping standardized tests. Doing so causes confusion and also leaves out many worthy students who have no other way of being identified. Standardized tests like the SATs should be required for all students, particularly in “elite” colleges, as a useful form of predicting who will do well and who won’t. But there are other criteria that should be considered, too. Readers are welcome to answer this question:

If you want a pure meritocratic admissions process, one that ensures that students get good grades in college, that can be done by relying almost entirely on SAT scores and not GPAs. But perhaps you’d prefer some criteria beyond those necessary to judge “probablility of success”. If so, what would you look for? (Remember, the Supreme Court has rule that race itself cannot be a criterion for admission.

Today’s post, and perhaps one of the last, comes from reader Graham Parton of New Zealand. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photo by clicking on them.

Kia ora- I’m an immigrant to NZ since 2009 and exploring a fair amount of the country have taken snaps of various wild life – I’m not a wildlife photographer so these are mainly with a Canon M50 with 55-200mm lens.

First up is a weta [a cricket in the suborder Ensifera] on my wife’s arm—she is braver than I—taken from a day out to the Maud Island wildlife sanctuary in the Marlbourough Sounds:

This a New Zealand fur seal (Arctocephalus forsteri) on Wharariki Beach in Golden Bay. Despite being hunted nearly to extinction, fur seals are increasing in numbers across NZ and this little pup was in a nursery pool at low tide on the beach with others:

The kiwi (Apteryx sp.) is the eponymous signature bird of NZ and this one was photographed in red light foraging on a beach near Stewart Island – where mustelid predators have not migrated – although rats have come ashore/jumped off ships.  Originally in red light, it’s been grey-scaled.

This is a juvenile kea (Nestor notabilis) – a mischievous and inquisitive and intelligent alpine parrot.  This particular youngster took a liking to my pack when I was walking the Kepler track near Mount Luxmore:

Wekas (Gallirallus australis) are ubiquitous around many camp sites and tracks around the South Island – mainly on the look out for tidbits of food but they are not above invading tents and running off with footwear – or your chocolate rations:

Here’s duck photographed at Lake Rotoiti in the Nelson Lakes area of the S Island – I have no idea what species but suspect it’s an imported species! [JAC: It’s a mandarin duck, Aix galericulata, and is indeed imported.]

Here’s the South Island Robin (Petroica australis); this little guy was spotted in forest on the way to Milford Sound in Fjordland.

Cats are often considered a hazard for our native wildlife but our experience is that they are a mixed blessing – here is Squeak with a dead weasel he’s killed and brought home. Until the day comes when all mustelids are exterminated, it’s likely that cats will still have a niche role in NZ helping keep the population of rodents and mustelids in check:

Finally, a warning sign with a little class – letting people know about the little blue penguins (Eudyptula minor) that might nest near the Boat Shed Restaurant on Wakefield Quay in Nelson, NZ:

Two items this morning:

If you’ve never posted here before, please read the commenting rules “Da Roolz” on the left sidebar (or here), paying particular attention to the comments about civility towards other readers and your host. There have been a lot of nasty comments here, laden with insults that will not be tolerated. Any comment that addresses me as “dude” will be deep-sixed, and I’m not keen on comments who call me “Coyne.” As I say in rule #7, “Pretend that you’re speaking to me in my living room which is, in a sense, what this website is.”  There are all too many readers who completely disregard not only the rules, but don’t seem to have read a post before commenting on it.

Second, I have one more day’s worth of wildlife photos after today’s post. If I don’t get any more, it’s possible that I’ll cancel this feature—part of the slow death of this website. If you like the photos and want to keep the feature going, please contribute your good photos. I needn’t point out that content here is free, unlike Substack, and I count on readers to pitch in from time to time.

Thank you,
Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus), whose origin is shown below::

Thank you!