• Texas Civil War Watch: A reminder from the Declaration of Independence (just swap out “President Biden” for “King George III”).
He [King George] has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• Ackman and Weiss, doing God’s work:
Five participants in the TED fellows program, which supports and promotes emerging voices in a variety of fields across the globe, resigned Wednesday after the public-speaking organization invited hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman and journalist Bari Weiss to speak at its 2024 flagship conference in Vancouver. The five fellows — self-described inventor Ayah Bdeir, filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky, cosmologist Renée Hlozek, artist Sarah Sandman, and astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz — sent a letter to TED leader Chris Anderson and fellows program director Lily James Olds. Titled “TED Fellows refuse to be associated with genocide apologists,” the letter accused TED of choosing “not only to align itself with enablers and supporters of genocide, but to amplify their racist propaganda.”
• The media reported yesterday that five elite colleges—round up the usual suspects (Yale, Columbia, Brown, Duke, and Emory)—have agreed to settle an anti-trust lawsuit alleging that they colluded to limit financial aid levels for admitted students, and will pay out $104 million. The University of Chicago settled separately last summer for $13 million. A total of 17 elite colleges were hit with the suit; Cornell, Dartmouth, CalTech and others are still fighting it.
According to the Wall Street Journal‘s story:
The lawsuit was filed in Illinois federal court in January 2022. According to the suit, the schools were allowed to collaborate on aid calculations under a federal antitrust exemption, but only if they didn’t weigh applicants’ financial circumstances in their admission decisions.
The suit alleged that these schools did weigh students’ ability to pay in some situations, including by favoring children of wealthy donors when admitting applicants off their wait lists. As a result, the suit said, the schools didn’t qualify for an antitrust exemption.
Aside from the corruption of favoring donors, what else do elite universities collude about? Admissions, anyone? Given that the admissions office and the financial aid office are usually joined at the hip, one hopes this lawsuit is the tip of the iceberg. Bury the elite colleges with more lawsuits, I say.
• I’m working my way up to a series on why the corner may have been turned on wokery, and its shock troops, the DEI cadres. But in the meantime, take in this short clip from Rob Schneider’s recent standup act, and note that if it is safe for a white comic to mock “diversity,” then the power of the “racism” charge is ebbing. (Note how the audience likes it.)
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