Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
We had an unexpected snowstorm last night, dropping less than an inch but still covering the ground, as it’s below freezing. Fortunately the weather has warmed up today.
Armon and Vashti were starving this morning because of the cold, and were waiting for me at the “feeding spot” at the north end of Botany Pond. They had a huge breakfast, and gave me the gift of their tracks in the snow. This is the only way I know they walk around on the ground when I’m not there.
I can’t get enough of Duck Tracks in the Snow. In fact, that would be a good title for a song. . .
Since I was in an upsetting kerfuffle with the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF, and I call the squabble “The KerFFRFle”), over which I resigned from its Honorary Board along with Steve Pinker and Richard Dawkins, I haven’t paid much attention to the organization. I do get their alerts, for they’re still doing good work in upholding the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, reinforcing the wall between church and state. Their condemnations, like the one I highlight here, don’t usually accomplish much, but their lawsuits or amicus briefs have been effective, and the FFRF does raise awareness about Constitutional violations. Yes, they are overly woke, which is why I resigned (see the first link), but that doesn’t mean that their overall effect is bad. It isn’t!
I noticed the other day that they’ve gone after New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who I see as both an antisemite and an Islamist. And by “Islamist” I mean a Muslim who is active in trying to make countries adopt Islam as part of their system of governance. In this case, Mamdani is mixing Islamic religious celebrations with city business: a violation of the First Amendment. I have little doubt that he would like the U.S. to become the Islamic Republic of America.
Click the screenshot below to read:
An excerpt:
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is again warning New York City’s mayor that the Constitution prohibits government officials from using the machinery of public office.
FFRF has sent its second letter in a couple of months to Mayor Zohran Mamdani after receiving a complaint from a New York City employee regarding a recent religious event organized through official city channels. The national state/church watchdog previously contacted Mamdani in February after he posted on the official New York City Mayor’s X account about participating in a suhoor meal and praying with Department of Sanitation workers during Ramadan. [JAC: he appears to have deleted the tweet, and if that’s the FFRF’s doing, good for them],
Despite that warning, FFRF has now learned that the mayor’s office held a “City Workers Iftar” on March 12 to “celebrate workers who keep New York City running while fasting.” The event notice was emailed to city employees by Interim Commissioner Melissa Hester and it noted that the event included a call to prayer.
A city employee who contacted FFRF observed that it is “completely inappropriate for a government agency to have a religious celebration.” The employee expressed concern that events like this may create the perception that the mayor’s office favors one religion and that employees attending city-sponsored events may be expected to participate in religious activities.
“While you are entitled to observe your faith in your personal capacity, the Constitution prohibits government officials from organizing, promoting or participating in religious exercises in their official roles,” FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line writes to Mamdani. “Hosting a religious observance for city employees of one religion and facilitating a call to prayer through official government communications and personnel crosses the line between private religious expression and government-sponsored religious worship.”
FFRF emphasizes that city employees work under the authority of elected leadership, creating a dynamic where even “voluntary” religious events can carry implicit pressure. “Public employees should not be placed in a position where they may feel compelled to attend a religious event or appear supportive of a particular faith tradition to maintain favor with their employer,” the letter states.
I oppose Mamdani not only because of his Islamism and apparent antisemitism, but because he’s a faux Democrat, promising much but likely to deliver little. (See his latest gaffe on St. Patrick’s day!) And I worry that because the Democrats are so befuddled and besotted by “oppressor/victim” ideology (Mamdani, being a Muslim, is seen as “oppressed”), he will have a future in politics beyond being mayor. He could become a Congressman, though fortunately not President, as he wasn’t born in the U.S.
Anyway, be aware of what’s going on in NYC, and kudos to the FFRF.
Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “Minor 2” came with a note that it’s “a resurrection today, from the more innocent time of 2007.”
This is a good strip because it makes the point that the claims of many “standard” religions, when laid out in black and shown to someone who hasn’t been religious, seem just as silly as the claims of Scientology, which do involve Xenu, space travel, volcanoes, and hydrogen bombs. (They don’t tell that to novice Scientologists.) For example, Wikpedia lays out the beliefs of Scientology in its “Xenu” article:
Xenu (/ˈziːnuː/ZEE-noo), also called Xemu, is a figure in the Church of Scientology‘s secret “Advanced Technology”, an esoteric teaching held sacred by adherents. According to the “Technology”, Xenu was the extraterrestrial ruler of a “Galactic Confederacy” who brought billions of his people to Earth (then known as “Teegeeack”) in a DC-8-like spacecraft 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology scriptures hold that the thetans (immortal spirits) of these aliens adhere to humans, causing spiritual harm.
These events are known within Scientology as “Incident II”, and the traumatic memories associated with them as “The Wall of Fire” or “R6 implant“. The narrative of Xenu is part of Scientologist teachings about extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in earthly events, collectively described as “space opera” by L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan level III (OT III) in 1967, warning that the “R6 implant” (past trauma) was “calculated to kill (by pneumonia, etc.) anyone who attempts to solve it”.
The Church of Scientology normally only reveals the Xenu story to members who have completed a lengthy sequence of courses costing large amounts of money. The church avoids mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain the story’s confidentiality, including legal action on the grounds of copyright and trade secrecy. Officials of the Church of Scientology widely deny or try to hide the Xenu story. Despite this, much material on Xenu has leaked to the public via court documents and copies of Hubbard’s notes that have been distributed through the Internet.
Scientology has done a lot to try to prevent its dictates from being known, but it’s too late. And those dictates are not that much sillier than the Christian myth of a scared Jesus who was God/Son of God, came to Earth, was killed, came back to life, and ascended to Heaven, with belief in this being helping you to have a pleasant eternal life rather than burning in hell. Every faith I know of, down to those of Cargo Cults, is based on irrational beliefs or unproven claims about the supernatural (some forms of Buddhism may be exceptions so long as they don’t belief in karma or successive rebirths).
Today I’m putting up an animal cam in lieu of Readers’ Wildlife Photos because I need to conserve the latter: I have only about two batches left. If you have some, send them in!
But this is one of the best animal cams I have seen, for it shows in real time a very rare animal: a brooding female kākāpō and her chick (Strigops habroptilus). This is the world’s only flightless parrot, and is found in New Zealand, where it evolved in the absence of mammalian predators. Now it’s highly endangered, with only a few hundred individuals left, but an intensive conservation effort by New Zealand is bringing them back. This effort includes putting all kākāpōs onto islands where potential predators birds have been removed. As Wikipedia notes,
The kākāpō is critically endangered; the total known population of living individuals is 236 (as of 2026). Known individuals are named, tagged and confined to four small New Zealand islands, all of which are clear of predators; however, in 2023, a reintroduction to mainland New Zealand (Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari) was accomplished. Introduced mammalian predators, such as cats, rats, ferrets, and stoats almost wiped out the kākāpō. All conservation efforts were unsuccessful until the Kākāpō Recovery Programme began in 1995.
Newsweek, via reader Ginger K, offers us a link to a live kakapo cam. This is the only such bird ever to be livestreamed with a cam, and here’s some information about the video below from Newsweek. I find the feed mesmerizing, and watched the female sleep for a while last night (it was day in New Zealand), sitting on her fluffy white chick and occasionally grooming herself and the chick.
Newsweek:
A quiet underground nest on a remote island off New Zealand’s coast is captivating viewers around the globe as the world’s largest parrot species is livestreamed.
The YouTube livestream, Kākāpō Cam, offers a continuous view inside the nest of Rakiura, a 24-year-old female kākāpō—one of just 236 left worldwide. Rakiura has been living beneath a rātā tree on Codfish Island, also known as Whenua Hou, off the country’s southern coast, where she hatched two chicks this breeding season.
Since January, the footage has offered unpolished, intimate glimpses of the nocturnal, flightless parrot. Rakiura shuffles in the nest, preens her green feathers, settles her body protectively over her chick, and occasionally leaves under the cover of darkness to forage before returning to feed. At times, the screen shows little movement at all—just the soft rise and fall of a bird resting, giving viewers a rare, real‑time look at a species most will never see in person.
“This is the only camera in a kākāpō nest this season, and the only nest we’ve ever streamed live,” Deidre Vercoe, operations manager for Kākāpō at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC), told Newsweek. “Kākāpō Cam provides insights that help guide us to support their recovery, while also giving people around the world a chance to connect with this incredible species.”
. . .While most female kākāpō choose new nesting spots each breeding cycle, Vercoe said Rakiura has returned to the same site every season—allowing conservationists to reinforce the nest and carefully plan a reliable camera setup months in advance through the DOC’s Kākāpō Recovery team.
Hands‑on fieldwork began in October 2025 and will continue for most of the year, involving around 30 DOC staff, specialist support teams and 105 volunteers, each donating two weeks of their time.
The team also added drainage and a small access hatch to protect eggs and chicks without disturbing her natural behavior.
The camera was first trialed during the 2022 breeding season, but this year’s stream went live in time to capture egg‑laying and hatching for the first time.
Rakiura successfully hatched two genetically important chicks on February 24 and March 2, though the older one was later transferred to a foster mother so she could focus on raising the remaining chick, Nora‑A2‑2026, now the star of the livestream. The team will check on the chick every three days until it is one month old.
Okay, enough information. Watch below live NOW. If mother Rakiura is out, you’ll still see the chick. When I put this up at 8:15 a.m. Chicago time, it will be 2:15 a.m. in New Zealand, and it looks loke mom is still sleeping. Watch from time to time so you can see the chick. She’s very solicitous of it and grooms it often.
Lagniappe: a tweet on this season, a great one for baby parrots, from New Zealand Conservation
And one of the best animal videos ever: a male kākāpō, Sirocco, shagging biologist Mark Carwardine while Stephen Fry looks on and narrates. This was from the BBC show “Last Chance to See,” about endangered species:
When I went to New Zealand a while back, I really wanted to see these birds, but you really can’t: you need a good reason to get to the islands where kākāpō are kept. To do that, you have to be somehow involved in their conservation. You can volunteer to live on the island for several months and help monitor the birds, but that’s a big commitment just to see them. However, if you want to help save them, you can donate here.
Welcome to a hump day (“Горб кече” in Meadow Mari): Wednesday March 18, 2026, and National Sloppy Joe Day. I love them (a vmore hamburger-y version in the Midwest is often called “loosemeats”), but haven’t had one for years. It was a staple of cafeteria school lunches when I was young. Here’s one with coleslaw:
National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day celebrates lacy oatmeal cookies, commonly known as lace oatmeal cookies. They differ from regular oatmeal cookies in two ways: they are particularly thin cakes, similar to wafers, and they are often topped with Sorbet or ice cream.
Oatmeal cookies, which are healthy but not tasty, are the rhubarb pies of cookies. And they’re even worse when they put raisins in them (another desperate attempt to make a healthy cookie).
Oh, and there’s a Google Doodle put up yesterday celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Click below to see where it goes:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 18 Wikipedia page.
Paul R. Ehrlich, an eminent ecologist and population scientist whose best-selling book, “The Population Bomb,” was celebrated as a prescient warning of a coming age of food shortages and famine but later criticized by conservatives and academic rivals for what they called its sky-is-falling rhetoric, died on Friday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 93.
His death, at a nursing facility in the retirement community where he lived, was caused by complications of cancer, his daughter, Lisa Marie Daniel, said.
As a young professor of biology at Stanford University in the mid-1960s, Dr. Ehrlich was known for his absorbing lectures on evolution, in which he described what plants and animals faced on a planet stressed by industrial pollution and rapid population growth. He distilled those lectures into an article published in December 1967 in New Scientist magazine.
Six months later, encouraged by David Brower, the executive director of the environmental group the Sierra Club, to write a book on the subject, Dr. Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb.” In 233 pages, he asserted that the planet’s condition began to deteriorate rapidly in the 1950s, when the rate of population growth exceeded the increase in food production — or, as he put it, when “the stork passed the plow.” He called on couples to limit their families to one or two children.
Witty, knowledgeable and not at all reticent, Dr. Ehrlich gained a huge audience on television, especially on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” which he appeared on roughly 20 times. His forecast of food riots in the United States and of imminent global famines caused by escalating population growth found a worldwide readership.
One of the best-selling nonfiction books about the environment to date, “The Population Bomb” sold three million copies and transformed Dr. Ehrlich, who was 37 at the time, into one of the global environmental movement’s most recognized leaders. His influence motivated international governments to convene conferences on controlling population, and his message was heard in private homes across the industrialized world as couples conceived fewer children.
Dr. Ehrlich expanded on his thesis in “The End of Affluence” (1974), which he wrote with his wife, Anne H. Ehrlich, who wrote or edited 15 books with him. The book forecast a “nutritional disaster” in the 1970s, predicting that “before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity.”
Ehrlich was a good scientist (he studied butterflies) who became The Chicken Little of Biology, and perhaps in love with his fame. His predictions of overpopulations and famine were not met, but perhaps for reasons he couldn’t predict. Here’s an op-ed in the LA Times (click to read; you’ll have to block ads):
An excerpt from the LAT article:
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is not that Ehrlich turned out to be so wildly wrong, but that he was so obviously wrong from the beginning. My old boss Ben Wattenberg battled Ehrlich throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His feud began with a 1970 article for the New Republic titled, “The Nonsense Explosion,” in which Wattenberg explained that even as Ehrlich was writing about soaring birthrates, birthrates were already declining.
Ehrlich’s defenders — and they are legion — argue that he was a true prophet in that prophets issue apocalyptic warnings that, if heeded, can be avoided. This is more nonsense. He said mass “die-offs” were unavoidable with even the best policies, and the anti-growth fads he supported largely made things worse.
Simply put, his pessimism was simply too big to fail.
*War news. Israel says it’s targeted and killed two important figures: Ali Larijani, an important official in running Iran since the death of the Ayatollah and the injury of his son, and Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij (Iran’s plainclothed police who killed so many protestors in January).
Iran’s top security official and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ volunteer force were killed in overnight strikes in Iran, Israeli officials said Tuesday, claiming to have eliminated two of Tehran’s most senior remaining officials.
Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, and Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the Basij, were “eliminated” in strikes overnight, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.
Iranian authorities did not immediately comment on the strikes or Israel’s claims. A post on Larijani’s X feed appeared to show a handwritten tribute to Iranian Navy servicemen ahead of their funeral this week, but it was not clear when it was written.
Larijani’s death would mark one of the highest-level assassinations of Iranian officials since the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a strike on his Tehran compound on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The military campaign has decimated Iran’s political and military leadership, destroyed critical infrastructure and damaged civilian buildings, but the weakened Iranian regime maintains its grip on power and has stifled shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices spiking.
The Israel Defense Forces also announced the deaths in separate statements Tuesday, saying Larijani was killed in an airstrike near Tehran. Iran’s “de facto leader” led national security coordination across the country, including the repression of anti-government protesters, the IDF said.
Larijani had recently shared photos and videos that appeared to show him in Tehran on Friday for a march marking Quds Day, a day of solidarity with Palestinians held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.
Here’s the WaPo diagram of the government hierarchy of Iran and those who have been eliminated (click to enlarge). They really need to know the proper meaning of “decimated,” which has come to mean “destroying everyone/every thing” instead of its original meaning.
That’s pretty good striking, but how does Israel know Iranian leaders are dead before Iran even confirms it? Spies? Those without “killed” labels should be shaking in their slippers. At any rate, the regime is not collapsing yet and I’m scared to think that this war will end like the one in Gaza, with many of the oppressors still in power. (Hams still controls a lot of Gaza with its armed goons patrolling the streets).
Despite more than two weeks of relentless airstrikes, U.S. intelligence assessments say, Iran’s regime likely will remain in place for now, weakened but more hard-line, with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps security forces exerting greater control.
The United States and Israel have significantly degraded Iran’s missile capability and navy, removed the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and wiped out scores of top military and intelligence leaders. But the war’s costs are mounting — at least $12 billion so far and 13 U.S. troops killed. Iran’s viselike grip on the Strait of Hormuz has slowed shipping traffic to a trickle, creating a historic oil disruption.
Western officials and analysts who study Iran said they see little near-term prospect of a “regime change” end to the 47-year-old Islamic republic or the rise of a more democratic government. The latter is a goal cited by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sometimes by President Donald Trump, who has said he’ll know the war is over “when I feel it in my bones.”
U.S. intelligence assessments issued since the war began predict Iran’s regime will remain intact and possibly even emboldened, believing it stood up to Trump and survived, according to two people familiar with the assessments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. U.S. Arab allies in the Persian Gulf, meanwhile, are angered and alarmed at being the targets of retaliatory barrages of Iranian ballistic missiles and drones.
One European official said the likeliest postwar scenario is a “rump IRGC regime” in Tehran that will retain some nuclear and missile capability as well as the support of regional proxies, though the regime will be “degraded enough that we’re in a better place than we were.”
Trump has been receiving “very sobering briefings” on the U.S. intelligence, said one of the two people familiar with the assessments. And he was told of the likelihood of a more entrenched IRGC before he gave the go-ahead to jointly launch the war with Israel, this person said.
“It wasn’t just predictable,” they said. “It was predicted. He was told in advance.”
He got the predictions, and they might be right or they might be wrong. Nobody knows what will happen save that we have at least several other weeks of war ahead of us. In the meantime, I wonder what the good people of Iran are thinking and feeling now that they haven’t yet been liberated, and perhaps never will be. But note that one by one, the leadership is being eliminated. What will happen when there’s not enough left to “consolidate”?
Last month in Toronto, at one of the largest synagogues in North America, I stood in the back of a dimly lit auditorium and listened to law expert Natasha Hausdorff speak at length about Israel, antisemitism, and threats to Jewish life in Canada. To attend the event, guests had to pass through a police checkpoint, wait in freezing temperatures to get an entry badge, and then go through metal detectors. The venue was teeming with security both inside and out.
This has become the norm in Canada, and for good reason. Just weeks later, that same synagogue, along with two others in the city, was riddled with bullets. Then, in what police are calling a “national security incident,” two suspects shot at the U.S. consulate in Toronto, leading to beefed-up protection for U.S. and Israeli diplomatic buildings in the city.
The question many Jewish Canadians are now asking is, how long before we experience our own Tree of Life or Bondi Beach attack? Virtually everywhere I turn, Jews in Canada are not only wondering whether this country can remain our home, but if it’s ever truly been ours to begin with.
. . . . Yet, since the terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, that has been turned on its head, and the expectation of Jews for safety, security, and acceptance in Canada now feels like a shattered illusion. There are no warning sirens alerting us to run to bomb shelters like in Israel, but we live with a general unease that comes with isolation and a growing sense of abandonment and betrayal. Jews in Canada have been forced to recognize that, making up just one percent of the population, they are no less a minority than their ancestors were in Kishinev, Baghdad, or Kielce, and now may face the kinds of threats that drove Jews away from the places that they once called home.
According to a report published by B’nai Brith Canada in April 2025, there were 6,219 antisemitic incidents in Canada in 2024, or an average of about 17 incidents of harassment, vandalism, and violence per day, or nearly one incident an hour for every hour of the year. Data released by Statistics Canada confirms the severity of the situation, showing that between 2020 and 2024, antisemitic hate crimes in Canada nearly tripled.
At the time of writing, it is not yet mid-March, and already 22 antisemitic incidents have been reported in Toronto alone, accounting for nearly 65 percent of all hate crime reports in the city. In addition to multiple shootings of synagogues, numerous Jewish-owned businesses in Montreal were recently vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, and earlier this year in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a synagogue and childcare center were spray-painted with swastikas and other hate symbols.
A bit more:
Heather McPherson, a sitting Member of Parliament, is sponsoring a petition asking the current government of Canada to investigate Canadian citizens who have served in the IDF—effectively including almost all immigrants from Israel, where military service is mandatory—on suspicion that they may have committed war crimes.
There are also the weekly demonstrations across the country, veiled as Palestinian activism, which often include vile antisemitic content and images reminiscent of Nazi Germany, calls for Jews to “go back to Poland,” direct threats to “Zionists,” and a wide range of libels used to vilify Jews and Israel. Virtually none of this is considered a “hate crime” here, yet it all fuels a deep and growing sense of seclusion, helplessness, and alienation.
From coast to coast, demonizing and targeting Jews has become so normalized that large swaths of the Jewish community are beginning to retreat inward.
The situation in Canada has become so dire for Jews that Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador to Canada, recently described the country as one of the world’s leading “centers of antisemitism.”
You could tell similar stories about Belgium and Spain, and to a lesser extent France. Nobody loves the Jews, or, as Dara Horn said in her book, they love only the dead ones.
*Here’s a video of Barbra Steisand, now 83, paying tribute—and offering a bit of singing—to Robert Redford at the Oscars on Sunday. Redford died last September at 89. I love Babs, one of the two greatest female pop singers of my lifetime (the other was Karen Carpenter), as well as a great actor and director. Redford was, in my view, the handsomest actor of our era, and also a very good one. They starred together in only one movie, “The Way We Were”, a romantic tearjerker from 1973. The song she sang at the Oscars. written by Marvin Hamlisch, was the theme of that movie theme (original release here). Her voice has gone, but what do you expect at that age? She retired from singing long ago, but managed to come up with a tune for this tribute.
The final bittersweet scene, when Hubbell (Redford) meets ex-wife Katie (Streisand) in front of New York’s Plaza Hotel, where Katie is demonstrating to ban the bomb. They haven’t seen each other for years, have a sad, extended goodbye, and slip out of each other’s lives. If you look into the dictionary under “handsome”, you’ll see Redford’s picture.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili plays Galileo:
Hili: And yet it moves. Andrzej: Some are still not sure.
In Polish:
Hili: A jednak się kręci.
Ja: Niektórzy nadal nie są pewni.
*******************
From Jesus of the Day, with the caption, “While many are feeling green and rather drunk, I prefer St Gertrude of Nivelles,patron of cats and gardeners.” ” St. Gertrude died on St. Patrick’s day in 659, aged 30 or 31, and the cat attribution is a bit questionable.
From Masih. The gang-rape of nurses appears to be true (see here and here). Not a good look for Starmer:
A Sky News editor and representatives of prime Minister of UK @Keir_Starmer’s government attended a party at the Iran’s regime embassy in London celebrating the anniversary of the Islamic Republic. On the same days the regime’s security forces stormed a hospital and gang-raped… pic.twitter.com/GnImr8JwL3
I can’t remember where I found this, but it’s very sad. I wonder what will happen to the soccer players who tried to defect and then decided to go back home. Iran was horrible enough to arrest their families just to get lure them back in the country.
Just so people understand what happened here:
These women claimed asylum because they were likely to be tortured and killed for a gesture standing up to the regime. The regime then started kidnapping their families instead to force them to come home and face likely execution. https://t.co/vPlEVc0jsC
Matthew says this is the third Guardian article about Colossal in the last year. Is the paper credulous?
I can see every ancient DNA scientist in the world currently cringing about @itiscolossal.bsky.social scientists' lack of gloves when sampling moa bones 🤦♂️ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026…
Yep, my babies are trotting around in the snow. Fortunately, they have a kind patron who feeds them twice a day. Armon and Vashti are still here, and what reason would they have to go, given that they are fed two big square meals a day: nutritious duck pellets for main and tasty freeze-dried mealworms for dessert?
They are looking good, and Vashti seems positively plump.
Over at the Heterodox Stem site, Iván Marinovic, a professor at Stanford, has hit on a way to measure wokeness in college curricula. He uses key words to distinguish “ideological and activist” courses from those that hew to the “Western intellectual tradition” (note the caveats in his piece), and shows that, using this measure, the curriculum of the University of Chicago over the 13 years from 2012 to2025 has more than doubled the percentage of courses whose description include woke words, while the percentage of courses described with “Western canon” words has remained relatively constant. Marinovic calls this process “curriculum degradation,” and notes this:
The University of Chicago occupies a unique position in American higher education. Its undergraduate Core Curriculum, built on the Hutchins-era Great Books model, has historically been the strongest institutional commitment to the Western canon at any major research university. If curriculum degradation is occurring even at Chicago, it is likely occurring everywhere.
Click the title below to see the article:
Here’s Marinovic’s methods
We classify every course in a university catalog using two keyword lists: a progressive list and a Western canon list, as described below. We assign a course to a category if its title or description contains at least one keyword from the category’s keyword list.
We matched via word-boundary regular expressions on the combined title and description text (case-insensitive). Word-boundary matching ensures that partial matches are avoided (e.g., the term “race” does not match “interface” or “brace”). Each course’s title and description are concatenated into a single text field; if any keyword from a given list appears within that text, the course is flagged for that category.
The progressive keyword list comprises approximately 55 terms and phrases signaling engagement with progressive social frameworks, diversity/equity/inclusion initiatives, or critical identity scholarship. These terms are organized into eleven thematic sub-categories, shown in Table 1.
Here’s Table 1: Progressive-signal keyword list by thematic category.
And the Western canon method:
The Western canon keyword list comprises approximately 45 terms and phrases signaling engagement with the traditional Western intellectual and literary canon, spanning classical antiquity through the Enlightenment. These terms are organized into six thematic sub-categories, shown in Table 2.
This is Table 2: Western-canon keyword list by thematic category.
The example school chosen (Marinovic suggests that this be done for other schools as a preliminary indicator of what’s going on in them):
We extract course data from thirteen annual catalogs (2012–2013 through 2024–2025). After deduplicating crosslisted courses, which appear under multiple department codes, we obtain 21,381 unique courses across 114 departments. Departments are mapped to broad areas: Humanities, Social Sciences, STEM, Professional, and Other.
Figure 1 presents the central finding. The progressive signal rose from 12.7% of the catalog in 2012–2013 to 28.3% in 2024–2025—more than doubling over thirteen years. The canon signal dropped from 13.2% to 11.9%. The progressive-to-canon ratio consequently rose from 1.0× (parity) to 2.4×.
Now you can say that this is obvious because “wokeness” or “progressivism” is a fairly recent phenomenon, and has invaded academia since most professors are liberals or Democrats. And that invasion is expected to be reflected in course content. But this index is a way of measuring the extent of that invasion (or “degradation” as the author calls is), and seeing which universities and which feels have been the most “degraded.”
Marinovic also divided up the proportion of “progressive” versus “canon” courses in each of four area: the humanities, the social sciences, STEM (science, technology, enginnering and mathematics), and professional areas, presumably courses in medicine, business, and the laws. The conclusion, presumably for the final period, is shown in Table 3 below:
Table 3 shows that the progressive signal is highest in the Social Sciences (27.4%) and Humanities (24.6%). The progressive signal is naturally lower in STEM (7.6%) but still unexpectedly high given the technical nature of STEM content.
Indeed, I have personal experience with the increasing “progressivization” of the biological sciences:
Marinovic proposes that we might make Curriculum Content Indices for many schools, saying it takes only a few hours to do this if course information is publicly available. How would we use thse?
Such an index would allow prospective students to assess how much of a university’s catalog engages the Western intellectual tradition versus ideological content; donors to direct funding toward institutions that maintain intellectual breadth, and policymakers to monitor trends and evaluate the effects of reform efforts.
Finally, Marinovic gives an important caveat about the data and how it should be used:
A word of caution is in order. Keyword-based textual analysis of course descriptions is a blunt instrument. A course flagged by our progressive keyword list may turn out, on closer inspection, to be a rigorous scholarly treatment of the topic; conversely, a course that escapes detection may nonetheless promote an activist agenda in practice. The signals we measure should therefore be understood as a noisy first approximation—useful for identifying broad trends and prompting further inquiry, but never a substitute for substantive evaluation of what is actually taught. Policymakers, in particular, should resist the temptation to use simple keyword counts as the basis for funding decisions or regulatory action. Our goal is to promote transparency and informed conversation, not to supply a scorecard that short-circuits careful judgment.
As far as I know, the University of Chicago is the only school to be vetted this way, but many universities have their course catalogue—though not necessarily the course descriptions—online and could be crunched in this way. I’d love, for example, to see similar data from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as Columbia University, Barnard College, and, of course, Reed College, Swarthmore, Harvard, and Smith. And how could we forget Oberlin?
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