FIRE Files Suit to Ask Federal Court to Declare that DEI Statements Constitute Compelled Speech

From FIRE: FIRE is suing to stop regulations that force our clients to espouse controversial views about “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Here is an excerpt from FIRE's announcement today:

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a lawsuit on behalf of six California community college professors to halt new, systemwide regulations forcing professors to espouse and teach politicized conceptions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Each of the professors teach at one of three Fresno-area community colleges within the State Center Community College District. Under the new regulations, all of the more-than-54,000 professors who teach in the California Community Colleges system must incorporate “anti-racist” viewpoints into classroom teaching.

The regulations explicitly require professors to pledge allegiance to contested ideological viewpoints. Professors must “acknowledge” that “cultural and social identities are diverse, fluid, and intersectional,” and they must develop “knowledge of the intersectionality of social identities and the multiple axes of oppression that people from different racial, ethnic, and other minoritized groups face.” Faculty performance and tenure will be evaluated based on professors’ commitment to and promotion of the government’s viewpoints.

“I’m a professor of chemistry. How am I supposed to incorporate DEI into my classroom instruction?” asked Reedley College professor Bill Blanken. “What’s the ‘anti-racist’ perspective on the atomic mass of boron?”

“These regulations are a totalitarian triple-whammy,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner. “The government is forcing professors to teach and preach a politicized viewpoint they do not share, imposing incomprehensible guidelines, and threatening to punish professors when they cross an arbitrary, indiscernible line.”

DEI requirements are controversial within academia. FIRE’s research indicates that half of professors believe mandatory diversity statements violate academic freedom. The sole mention of academic freedom in California’s model framework frames it an inconvenience, warning professors not to “‘weaponize’ academic freedom” to “inflict curricular trauma on our students.”

“Hearing uncomfortable ideas is not ‘curricular trauma,’ and teaching all sides of an issue is not ‘weaponizing’ academic freedom,” said Loren Palsgaard, a professor of English at Madera Community College and a plaintiff in the suit. “That’s just called ‘education.’”

Continue ReadingFIRE Files Suit to Ask Federal Court to Declare that DEI Statements Constitute Compelled Speech

False Facts Lead to Bad Legal Conclusions

In the recent affirmative action decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Jackson made a startling claim:

Dr. Vinay Prasad takes issue with the shoddy study on which Justice Jackson might well have relied upon in good faith. I will assume that neither she nor her law clerks have the necessary expertise for critically analyzing the study she cited for making the claim that Black doctors are twice as good at saving the lives of Black newborns. In this article, Dr. Prasad shows the skepticism one needs to show upon hearing such an extraordinary claim.

The paper in question is catastrophically flawed. First, consider that it is a bold claim that a white doctor is twice as likely to kill a black baby. The effect size (TWICE as likely!) is massive. . . .

Next, in my podcast from Aug 2020 I discuss why this paper is flawed (full podcast is 91 min. but relevant discussion runs from 1:31:00 to 0:52:00 mark). Those notes are also captured here.

  • If white doctors have so much worse outcomes, one would expect they are making different decisions in the care of neonates than Black doctors— but this paper cannot show the mechanism of the difference

  • The paper assumes doctor-baby pairings are quasi randomized, but that is unfounded assumption. It may not be quasi randomized and well off Blacks may be more likely to have Black doctors

  • A baby born is seen by a team of doctors— pediatricians, anesthesiologists, obs— which doctor is ascribed the ‘assigned provider’ per baby. What determines this assignment? (the authors do not provide this information)

  • Since, the paper was published it was revealed that some hospitals put a treating doctor on the form and others put the head of the unit. (massive bias)

  • A baby born is seen by a team— nurses, staff, doctors, etc— why are the races (and racial concordance) of these people not accounted for.

  • If a baby gets sick, and goes to NICU and dies, which doctor is ascribed responsibility. If NICU doctors have different racial make up than other doctors could this not bias results?

  • Broader issues of administrative data/ multiple hypothesis testing detailed in the episode.

Prasad also breaks down a second article claiming that Black doctors are substantially better at saving Black lives: "The Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision puts lives at risk."

Prasad sets forth the limitations on this second study, which also makes an extraordinary race-based claim:

Continue ReadingFalse Facts Lead to Bad Legal Conclusions

A Chart that Challenges Uni-causal Arguments on Income Disparity

p> It's trendy to argue that "racism" is the necessary and sufficient explanation for the lack of earnings of groups at the bottom of this chart of household income. Anti-racists reject the need for multivariate analyses. If so, what would it be that accounts for the groups at the top of the chart? That Americans especially like members of those groups? This is an inconvenient chart for those who promote DEI dogma.

Continue ReadingA Chart that Challenges Uni-causal Arguments on Income Disparity

Left-Leaning Corporate Media Tries to be Respectful of the Need for Joe and Hunter Biden to Have some Together Time Shaking Down Chinese Businessman

The New York Post reports:

The IRS Whistle-Blower disclose a disturbing Hunter Biden text message shakedown:

"[IRS whistle-blower] Shapley, who sat for a six-hour deposition with the committee on May 26, took over the Hunter Biden case in January 2020 and said that investigators had turned up fresh evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s overseas income.

That included eye-popping communications from Hunter Biden’s iCloud account, Shapley said, citing a message that directly implicated the president in an attempt to coerce money from a Chinese businessman.

“[W]e obtained a July 30th, 2017, WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, where Hunter Biden wrote: ‘I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,'” Shapley recounted.

“We couldn’t believe that we saw that,” the second whistleblower told the committee. “That was more indication that the dad might have been involved.”"

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Who is refusing to discuss this disclosure? NYT, CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post and NPR (as of June 24 at noon, CT).

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Meanwhile, at today's WH Presser, KJP is twisting in the wind, as this video demonstrates at length:

Glenn Greenwald breaks down the story in detail, including the blatant corporate media complicity, at System Update, "Media Silent as IRS Whistleblowers Expose Blatant Biden Family Corruption."

These developments must be terrifying for DNC operatives. Biden is borderline senile and not competent to have conversations without teleprompters. He is so inept that the DNC will not allow Joe Biden to engage in a primary debates, including with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (currently have the support of 20% of Democrats) or Marianne Williamson (currently having the support of 8% of Democrats). Recent results here.

Further complicating things is that there is no Plan B to Joe Biden, given the repeatedly-demonstrated incompetence of Kamala Harris. The DNC won't deny Harris the chance to run for President because they simply would not be able to bear the resulting inevitable charges that they are racist. That's what happens when a corrupt political party decides to pick a VP purely based on optics rather than competence.

Continue ReadingLeft-Leaning Corporate Media Tries to be Respectful of the Need for Joe and Hunter Biden to Have some Together Time Shaking Down Chinese Businessman

Ideology is Hollowing-Out Academic Biology

At Skeptical Inquirer, Jerry A. Coyne and Luana S. Maroja have written about the damage ideology is doing to the field of biology. Like many well-written articles today by people with their eyes open, this is not fun to read. It is never easy to read about the ideological capture of universities or the corruption of entire fields of study or the fact that numerous intelligent good-hearted people are increasingly afraid to speak up. I had the same reaction when viewing this 2022 video by Lawrence Krauss: "Is Woke Science the Only Science Allowed in Academia?"

Here is the Summary of the new article by Coyne and Maroja, "The Ideological Subversion of Biology."

Previous research indicated that corrective information can sometimes provoke a so-called “backfire effect” in which respondents more strongly endorsed a misperception about a controversial political or scientific issue when their beliefs or predispositions were challenged. I show how subsequent research and media coverage seized on this finding, distorting its generality and exaggerating its role relative to other factors in explaining the durability of political misperceptions. To the contrary, an emerging research consensus finds that corrective information is typically at least somewhat effective at increasing belief accuracy when received by respondents. However, the research that I review suggests that the accuracy-increasing effects of corrective information like fact checks often do not last or accumulate; instead, they frequently seem to decay or be overwhelmed by cues from elites and the media promoting more congenial but less accurate claims.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

Here we give six examples of how our own field—evolutionary and organismal biology—has been impeded or misrepresented by ideology. Each example involves a misstatement spread by ideologues, followed by a brief explanation of why each statement is wrong. Finally, we give what we see as the ideology behind each misstatement and then assess its damage to scientific research, teaching, and the popular understanding of science. Our ultimate concern is biology research—the discovery of new facts—but research isn’t free from social influence; it goes hand in hand with teaching and the public acceptance of biological facts. If certain areas of research are stigmatized by the media, for example, public understanding will suffer, and there will follow a loss of interest in teaching as well as in research in these areas. By cutting off or impeding interest in biology, the misrepresentation or stigmatization by the media ultimately deprives us of opportunities to understand the world.

[More . . . ]

Continue ReadingIdeology is Hollowing-Out Academic Biology