Bari Weiss Invites All of Us to Become “Founders”

Bari Weiss is one of my heroes. She was forced off the staff of New York Times a few years ago because she refused to be muzzled on important issues of the day. She is now building her own media institution. I don't agree with her on everything, but I do see eye to eye with her on most of the topics of this podcast, an address she recently gave to a brand new college. One of her themes is that we need to bravely tell the truth, even when it causes people to dislike us. Even when they call us names. And we should never feel compelled to say things we don't believe to placate the mob. She invites each of us to avoid cynicism and to become "Founders."

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Citing Accurate Statistics Can be Harmful to Your Career: The Cases of Zac Kriegman and Roland Fryer

Zac Kriegman lost his job at Thomson Reuters for the sin of doing his job well.  Citing accurate statistics collided with the prevailing Black Lives Matter narrative regarding the extent of police violence against unarmed blacks.  Unfortunate for his career, Kriegman also concluded that the Ferguson Effect stemming from the BLM protests and riots has resulted in the deaths of thousands of black men.

[Please assume that wherever I use the terms "black" or "white" that I am using these terms in scare quotes.  I am asking readers to make this assumption because I am convinced that concept of "race" is illusory and pernicious and should be eliminated from all discourse. I am quite aware that people come in various shapes and shades of skin color, but none of this is evidence supporting a belief in "race."  I have been convinced that this is the proper course based on writings of Sheena Mason, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Zuby (and see here), Kmele Foster, Coleman Hughes, Angel Eduardo and Inaya Folarin Iman.  In an earlier post, I characterized the belief in "race" to be as absurd as the belief in astrology.]

What follows is an excerpt from Kriegman's article at Common Sense, "I Criticized BLM. Then I Was Fired: The data about police shootings just didn't add up, but no one at Thomson Reuters wanted to hear it.":

I had been following the academic research on BLM for years (for example, here, here, here and here), and I had come to the conclusion that the claim upon which the whole movement rested—that police more readily shoot black people—was false.

The data was unequivocal. It showed that, if anything, police were slightly less likely to use lethal force against black suspects than white ones.

Statistics from the most complete database of police shootings (compiled by The Washington Post) indicate that, over the last five years, police have fatally shot 39 percent more unarmed whites than blacks. Because there are roughly six times as many white Americans as black Americans, that figure should be closer to 600 percent, BLM activists (and their allies in legacy media) insist. The fact that it’s not—that there’s more than a 500-percentage point gap between reality and expectation—is, they say, evidence of the bias of police departments across the United States.

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Nellie Bowles: Fire the DEI Department to Fund College Education for 1,000 Students

Nellie Bowles, writing at Common Sense:

Why do universities need so many diversity officers? University of Michigan emeritus economics professor, Mark J. Perry, broke down the latest numbers on how many professional diversity officers are on the U of M payroll, and how much these officers make: “126 diversicrats at an average salary of $93,600 with 38 making >$100K and a shocking record-high of $430,795.” The total payroll cost for “diversity equity and inclusion” programming is over $15 million a year, or in-state tuition for almost 1,000 students. One wild DEI idea: Fire every single one of them, and use that money to free 1,000 poor students from debt each year.

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Jonathan Haidt’s Dire Prognosis for America

Jonathan Haidt is a Co-Founder of Heterodox Academy, which encourages viewpoint diversity in American Colleges and universities. Haidt was recently interviewed by Jacob Hess of Desert News. He is not in a mood to offer false hope.  Here's an excerpt:

If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse during the next major war, pandemic, financial meltdown, or constitutional crisis.” Although always pointing to possible steps we might take, Haidt adds that there is “little evidence to suggest that America will return to some semblance of normalcy and stability in the next five or 10 years. . . .

Standing up and defending others is hard for most. Everyone is afraid for their reputation. Everyone hates being shamed. What we most need is for leaders of institutions to stand up. That has been the spectacular failure of the late 2010s — that leaders of universities, of The New York Times, of our knowledge-centered institutions, have failed to stand up for the mission of their institutions. I don’t expect everyone to care about the whole truth, but professors should — and any academic institution should. They have a duty to stand up for the end or purpose of their institution. And if they can be made to know that the great majority of people support them, I think they would be more likely to stand up.

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