Tag Archives: culture

Rationalization

Posted on by
Reply

Congresswoman Katie Porter (D, CA) is on Leave Without Pay from her job teaching law at the University of California, Irvine, and has been for the last four years while she serves in Congress. The concept isn’t particularly unusual; what draws attention is that the normal California (or at least UC Irvine) LWOP period is two years, and the school has just approved (after the fact) extending Porter’s status for the period January 2021 through December 2022.

What drew my attention, though, is the rationalization used by the UCI Dean, L Song Richardson, in arguing successfully for the decision to extend Porter’s status, especially after a senior Academic Personnel analyst at UCI had formally recommended against the extension.

…from the university’s perspective, it would not shed a good light on UCI for a member of the US House of Representatives to be told to either resign from a democratically-elected position or resign from UCI.
Moreover, this seems inconsistent with the aspiration for members of UCI’s faculty to serve at the highest levels of national public service. Finally, to have an elected member of the United States Congress who can advocate on behalf of Orange County, including UCI, surely has significant benefits for the campus.
I am also certain that when news of our decision to not grant her a leave of absence through the end of her second term in office goes public, it would surely reflect very badly on UCI[.]

[I]t would not shed a good light on UCI…. Here’s the school being more interested in its public image than it is in the rightness or wrongness of this highly unusual extension. There’s also nothing wrong with telling a (sort-of) employee to choose between her job at the school and the job she’s currently working instead. Porter’s job as a Congresswoman doesn’t alter that in the slightest. There’s no reason an employee of a collection of people in a district should be treated differently from any other employee of a local business who’s on leave to work an alternate job.

[I]nconsistent with the aspiration for members of UCI’s faculty…. Not at all. Nothing stops other faculty members from pursuing their aspirations for national service, at any level. They just would have to choose between jobs, the same as any other employee of a business.

[Having a] member of the United States Congress who can advocate on behalf of Orange County, including UCI…. No doubt, and that’s part of the duties of any Congressman. But they don’t have to be on leave from this or that organization in order to advocate for that organization while in office, or to advocate from any other platform. The well-known lobbyist revolving door is one of the more unsavory illustrations of that capability.

Finally, when news of our decision to not grant her a leave of absence…goes public, it would surely reflect very badly on UCI…. There’s that preference for public image over what’s right, bookending Richardson’s first rationale.

There’s that “rationale” term. It’s not entirely accurate. Richardson’s case is pure rationalization, and nothing more, for giving special treatment to a member of the Progressive-Democratic Party. Even an Emeritus Professor, or a Senior Judge, shows up for duty on occasion.

Progressive-Democrat Contempt

Posted on by
Reply

Recall the brutal murder of Keaira Bennefield in New York, who was murdered, allegedly by her estranged husband after he was released from jail, where he’d been detained—briefly—for the crime of…beating Ms Bennefield. Bennefield’s mother, in the aftermath of this failure of justice, said Hochul “should be charged for the crime. She’s also responsible for the crime.”  New York’s Progressive-Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul contemptuously dismissed the elder woman:

All I can say that is a grieving mother. I understand the anguish she’s going through. She doesn’t understand how this could have happened to her beloved daughter leaving her children—her grandchildren without their mom…. The system failed and I will just simply say—I’m not going to argue with the facts with a woman who is in such pain.

Because of course the woman can’t possibly understand the gravity of the New York system favoring criminals over victims. The woman can’t possibly understand the politics that created the system. Being a woman, she can only be irrationally overcome with grief and not at all thinking clearly during her grief.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party.

The Ubiquitous Computer

Posted on by
Reply

It’s coming to our homes?

Imagine this scenario in the not-too-distant future. You’re awakened at 6:11 a.m. by the gentle sounds of tinkling bells and birdsong, even though you live in a 12th-floor apartment. Your alarm clock uses radar to track your breathing, and wakes you gently, with sound and light, when it detects you’re in a lighter phase of sleep.
Your transition to wakefulness triggers a cascade of changes in your apartment. Your window shades open automatically. In the kitchen, coffee starts brewing. As you pad into the bathroom to brush your teeth, a display projected onto the mirror above the sink shows your calendar for the day. It highlights what time you’ll have to leave to get to your office for the in-person meeting you scheduled for 8:30.
Returning to your bedroom, you find your stowaway robotic bed has retracted….

Nah.

I’ll never get so lazy I can’t have the wife or daughter or SIL or grandkids do those things.

Racism in School Admission Selection Criteria

Posted on by
Reply

The advocates for Harvard and the Federal government in defending Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s racist selection criteria—all in the name of diversity and equity, understand—both said that they saw no end to their use of race in their selection criteria. Our Progressive-Democratic Party President Joe Biden, through his Solicitor General, doesn’t even see a need to end racism in admission selection criteria.

Seth Waxman, Harvard’s advocate, admitted that the school is trying hard to get to a race-neutral future but sees no end in sight for preferences.

Sure they’re trying to put an end to it. Or to something.

Waxman went further, rationalizing

Harvard’s use of race by saying it is merely one of many “tips” that the school uses in making judgments about whom to admit—like whether a student is the child of an alumnus, or an athlete. …”just as being, you know, an oboe player in a year” when the school orchestra needs an oboe player “will be the tip.”

Chief Justice John Roberts commented on the disgusting nature of that:

We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players. We did fight a Civil War to eliminate racial discrimination.

Biden was even more explicit:

Elizabeth Prelogar, the US Solicitor General…said using race the way the schools do could continue as long as their interest in diversity is “compelling.”

This disdain for the ability of some groups of Americans to compete, and so to maintain the need explicitly to protect those groups, is straight out of the philosophy of Roger Taney, and it’s shameful.

Racial Discrimination and College Admission

Posted on by
Reply

Racial discrimination—racism—is enthusiastically practiced in a broad number of American colleges and universities, including in particular Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, whose racial discrimination in admission has been hauled before the Supreme Court.

Edward Blum, Founder and President of Students for Fair Admissions, made a sound argument against those two schools’ racism in admissions in his Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

The common element in each lawsuit is the claim that both schools racially gerrymander their freshman classes by illegally raising the bar for certain racial and ethnic groups and lowering the bar for others.

I say the matter is broader than that, though. Racial discrimination everywhere and always is an immoral discrimination. The immorality doesn’t make it illegal, but it should inform Americans considering whether two support these two institutions in any form. It’s also wholly illegal under the 14th Amendment of our Constitution, which states in pertinent part

…nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

UNC is a public institution, and so is plainly bound by our Constitution. Harvard is a private institution, but stands in blatant violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It’s also plainly a public accommodation within the spirit of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and so still cannot discriminate on the basis of race.