Why do birds fly in a V formation?

May 12, 2019 • 2:45 pm

Reader Jim called my attention to a video made by Nature addressing the time-old question, “Why do many birds fly in a V formation?” The conventional answer is based on energetic benefits: the birds following the leader draft on the birds before them, thus saving energy. You can imagine how hard this question is to answer.

Well, watch this wonderful video to see if the answer is correct, at least in one species. I won’t give away the answer, but the hypothesis makes a cool prediction that can be tested.

. . . and here’s the paper on which the conclusions are based (click on the screenshot to read it):

Andrew Sullivan on women’s sports and the testosterone issue

May 12, 2019 • 1:15 pm

I’m spending more time reading Andrew Sullivan’s Friday columns in New York Magazine than I used to, as he takes a refreshingly thoughtful and non-ideological approach to many topics. Once a conservative and frequent writer on things religious (he’s a gay Catholic), he seems to be getting more liberal and less religious. I’m hoping he’ll end up a centrist/liberal secular humanist, but maybe I’m dreaming.

Sullivan covers three issues a week, and this week’s topics are the dilemma of women athletes with high testosterone, big pharma and its expensive medicine, and extinction. The first topic occupies most of the article, and is something Sullivan has written about before, as have I (see some of the article here). Click on the screenshot to read this week’s column.

Let me first adduce two things that I believe. First, there is absolutely a connection between testosterone level and upper body strength when talking about the difference between men and women. This explains why we don’t have men and women competing together in sports. (Women’s sports are essential as a way to empower women and allow them to exercise a penchant for athletics.) Those who deny the influence of this hormone are being intellectually dishonest. Sullivan agrees with me here.

Second, “self identification” as a woman, if you’re a male, is not good enough to allow you to compete in women’s sports. In Connecticut, for instance, a biological male who self identifies as a woman, without any surgery, hormone treatment, or anything else save an assertion, can compete in women’s sports. The results are predictable—and a shambles. Two biological males who identify as women, without any surgery or hormone treatment, took first and second place in the state indoor track championships. Sixteen other states have the same regulation. That’s palpably unfair to women, and I have to say that the girls who were beaten in Connecticut were remarkably sportsmanlike (I guess I should say “sportswomanlike”).

Even with treatment it becomes a conundrum, as testosterone reduction therapy doesn’t completely reverse the strength acquired in biological males after puberty.

It’s even more dubious with intersexes like Caster Semenya, who is a biological male of sorts, having an XY chromosome and apparently internal testes that produce testosterone (she’s an “intersex” with levels of testosterone well outside the range of biological women). Ergo, she beats all the women. What do you do in a case like that? My provisional solution, offered a long time ago, was to have yet a third category of competition for athletes of intermediate sex, but that seems weird, too, as there would be few competitors.

Sullivan is also “torn,” as he says, but is on board with the new standards that designate “men” and “women” in sports using testosterone level, which shows no overlap between biological males and females. That’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than allowing just “self identification” as a criterion.

That’s all I’ll say for now before I give a few quotes from Sullivan, which are thoughtful:

I’m torn, to be perfectly honest. There is no satisfactory conclusion here: Semenya has done nothing wrong, and neither have her competitors. The CAS acknowledged that it was forced either to discriminate against Semenya or against all the other women in her sport. So they worked out a compromise that doesn’t really please anyone, but that’s designed to keep competition as fair as possible. It seems a reasonable balance to me, but it has been widely excoriated, especially in the mainstream media.

A bevy of arguments against the compromise have been provided. The first is that testosterone is no big deal when it comes to athletic ability. Men and women both have testosterone after all, and some in each sex have naturally higher levels than others. So why force someone to take meds — with side effects — when they are merely above average in one particular characteristic among the many that ultimately affect athletic performance? This appears to be the driving point behind a recent New York Times op-ed, “The Myth of Testosterone.” The authors — both professors who adhere to social-justice ideology — make some decent points. They usefully complicate the impact of testosterone on performance in differing sports, note that its effects are far more varied and subtle than mere physical strength. They then argue that “the International Association of Athletics Federations’ own analysis of testosterone and performance, involving more than 1,100 women competing in track and field events, shows that for six of the 11 running events, women with lower testosterone actually did better than those with higher levels.” Then this: “In other words, for most sports, testosterone levels do not correlate with superior performance.”

To put it mildly, this is bonkers. Women have a range of 0.3–2.4 npl, and we know that Semenya must have more than 5 npl, or the regulations would not apply to her. Men, in contrast, have a range from 10–38 npl. There’s not even an overlap. The range among women is tiny compared with the difference between men and women. Of course testosterone correlates with superior performance! That’s the entire reason we have separate contests for the two sexes. And the entire reason we forbid doping. How the New York Times could publish this deeply misleading sentence (to be polite) is beyond me.

Well, we all know that the new New York Times is woke, edging slowly toward HuffPost ideology. This isn’t the first misleading stuff they’ve published on the topic, or on other topics.

Two more quotes. The first calls out the ACLU for intellectual dishonesty (check out their quote):

The deeper question for me is why anyone would try to insist that biology is largely irrelevant in, of all arenas, sports. I can see trying to minimize biological sex differences in many, many areas where the distinction is trivial — but something as obviously physically rooted as athletics? It’s almost perverse. An ACLU blog post defending the participation of trans girls in school sports states that there is “ample evidence that girls can compete and win against boys,” but somehow avoids the conclusion that there should therefore be all-sexes leagues or contests, where men, women, and intersex people can all compete together. Or you can have an article in Deadspin which ridicules any idea of a testosterone advantage for trans women:

And, finally, this referring to philosophy professor Rachel McKinnon’s claim (in Deadspin) that the “unfair advantages of male puberty” are based not on science but on “social perceptions of gender.”

The idea that there is “absolutely no scientific evidence” that male puberty dramatically increases the physical strength of boys compared with girls is, well, unhinged. It’s the left’s version of climate change denial.

And for what? Why are the differences between men and women on average so offensive? Why is it problematic that men are physically stronger on average than women? Why should strength have some kind of normative value? I honestly cannot understand.

I suspect it’s related to postmodernism’s attempt to turn everything in the world into something humans have created and can therefore control. “Nature” is outside that rubric and so must be interrogated and deconstructed until it has been whittled away to nothing. Even science is a social construction, the argument goes, and so any advantage conferred by testosterone must be entirely a function of patriarchy. “Gender” absorbs “sex” altogether. But even if you end patriarchy, you are never going to end sex difference.

Well, the “bonkers” claims may reflect an influence of postmodernism, but also the influence of a new blank-slate-ism: an aversion to and denial of biological differences that, think the Authoritarian Leftists, would somehow justify sexism, racism, and bigotry. But, as I’ve said a gazillion times before, they don’t have to, and we should keep emphasizing that. It’s better to explain the science and integrate it into a liberal morality than to deny the science and integrate your denialism into an ideology resting on how you’d like the world to be.

I had a dream

May 12, 2019 • 12:00 pm

Two nights ago I had a strange dream. Instead of being visual, like all my dreams, it was a disembodied announcement that I remember almost word for word (I woke up and made an effort to remember it). The announcement went something like this:

“By 2039, the Democratic National Committee was the most powerful body in America—far more powerful than the President of the United States. Unfortunately, the DNC chairman was Jerry Coyne, who spent his time preoccupied with cats, ducks, and food.”

What does this mean?

A misguided attack on scientism in Quillette

May 12, 2019 • 10:30 am

How many times do I have to criticize attacks on scientism, all of which use various permutations of the same three claims? Here they are:

1.) There are “other ways of knowing” that don’t involve science. These often involve “why” questions, like “Why am I here? (i.e. what is my purpose?)” or “Why is the universe here”?

2.) The scientific method (or rather, the use of empirical analysis and observation, confirmation, testing, making predictions, and so on) cannot be justified a priori by philosophy, and involves untestable or fallacious assumptions.

3.) Science is  trying to take over the humanities, and this unwarranted extension of science to places where it doesn’t belong is true scientism.

The article below that just appeared in Quillette rehashes the same tired old arguments, and I’m tired of refuting them. But I’ll take up the cudgels once again. To see my numerous and previous criticisms of scientism, go here.

Read the article by clicking on the screenshot below. It’s a criticism of an earlier piece by Bo and Ben Winegard (also in Quillette) called “In defense of scientism.”

 

The nice article by the Winegards uses a narrow definition of scientism: “science based social policy” (SBSP) which they say is “the view that social policy should be based on the best available theory and data; in other words, that social policy should be decided using the weight of the evidence. And that is all scientism is—the view that scientific attitudes and methods can enhance all modes of empirical inquiry and should, therefore, be promoted.” Well, some would disagree with that. Others define scientism as “the extension of science beyond its proper bailiwick.” Two such construals of that are 1.) The claim that science devalues nonscientific realms like art and literature, and 2.) Science tries to construct an objective morality, saying that empirical investigation alone can tell us what and what is not desirable and good.

The Winegards address both of these construals, admitting that science can’t replace art and literature, which convey emotion and experience rather than empirical truth. But they also argue—and I agree—that science can helpfully infuse areas like sociology, literary criticism, and other areas that try to make claims about reality. And they agree with me that no, science can’t tell us objectively what is good and moral and desirable, for those are subjective preferences. But once you agree on those preferences—and in morality many of us do adopt similar consequentialist views—then science can tell us how to best achieve them; for how to achieve a desired goal is an empirical matter.

But Aaron Neil, a researcher at the Canadian think tank Cardus, wants to go beyond what the Winegards say, in particular conveying the first two tropes given at the top.  I’ve refuted both of these claims before, most extensively in my book Faith Versus Fact, but I’ll try again, and will also try—and probably fail—to be brief. My refutations of claims 1 and 2 as emitted by Neil are these:

1.) Neil fails to tell us a single bit of knowledge that wasn’t derived by science, though he bloviates at length about how this is possible. If there are “other ways of knowing”, what is the knowledge produced by those ways? If it’s so pervasive, Neil should be able to give us many examples. But he fails miserably, coming up dry.

2.) Indeed, you can’t justify philosophically the use of the empirical method to produce truths about the universe. But the justification is not by philosophy, but by usefulness. In other words, the scientific method works to tell us truths about the universe, and some version of it (the varieties of empirical methods that I call “science construed broadly”) are the only way to find out facts. To paraphrase theology, we justify science by works rather than faith.

Let’s take Neil’s two claims in reverse order (his quotations are indented):

1.) The scientific method can’t be justified by philosophy, and involves untestable (and sometimes failed) assumptions. Here are some of the philosophical attacks on science leveled by Neil:

a. Science is self-refuting in saying that “scientific truth is always provisional.” To wit:

Although the Winegards present an innocuous definition in their essay, they commonly drift into the less benign form of scientism identified by Hayek. The Winegards’ Hayekian scientism manifests itself early in their piece with the claim that “Truth is always provisional.” As they correctly note, scientific “truths” appear to be true so long as they provide “the best available theory” based on the evidence at hand. However, not all truths bear this hypothetical quality. Ironically, the very statement, “Truth is always provisional” is not itself a provisional truth claim. If it is always true that truth is always provisional, this statement is self-refuting. Not all truth claims are theoretical statements that are vulnerable to empirical falsification. Take the proposition, “there are no square circles.” This is not a hypothesis that is true so long as scientists do not discover a square circle. Logically, a circle can never be a square.

Do I need to waste time on this? It’s philosophical pilpul. Instead of saying “truth is always provisional”, let’s restate it as “science doesn’t tell us anything with absolute certainty, but we have degrees of certainty about various things, and are more confident about some scientific truths than others.”  That revision is sufficient to refute Neil’s philosophical twiddling.

b. Science is based on untestable metaphysical assumptions. To wit:

. . . as the greatest critics and advocates of modern science have argued, science is full of extra-scientific assumptions.

Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, saw that far from doing away with faith and metaphysics, the scientific enterprise of the “godless anti-metaphysicians” rested upon its own “metaphysical faith.” In The Gay Science, Nietzsche explains that science depends on dispelling personal convictions and replacing them with provisional hypotheses. However, Nietzsche argues, the scientific attempt to disallow a priori convictions is itself based on “some prior conviction…one that is so commanding and unconditional that it sacrifices all other convictions to itself.” For scientific inquiry to occur, the conviction must “be affirmed in advance” that “‘Nothing is needed more than truth.’” Implicit in the modern “scientific spirit” is the metaphysical belief that “truth is divine.” Therefore, he argues, “there is simply no science ‘without presuppositions.’”

If Nietzsche provides an example of a moral assumption implicit in the scientific method, David Hume, the great skeptic and pioneer of the modern empirical project, provides a philosophical one. For Hume, “all inferences from experience suppose that the future will resemble the past.” To observe that a cause follows from an effect, and to conclude that the same effect will always follow from the same cause, assumes that nature remains the same. This assumption is impossible to prove. “It is impossible,” writes Hume, “that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance.” In other words, arguing for uniformity in nature based on experiences assumes that uniformity already exists. To prove the consistency of the causal relationship would require stepping outside of empirical experience.

Again, this is easily refuted. First, not all scientists think that the pursuit of truth is the most important thing they do. But as scientists it is our job to pursue truth and that’s all, though many of us do value truth above nearly everything. (For example, many of us would prefer to be told we have a fatal disease than be lied to.) Further, if you are interested in solving problems like “How can we stem global warming?” or “How can we quash this outbreak of measles?”, then science is the only way to go. The so-called a priori assumption that the empirical method is the best way to find truth is not a prior conviction, but the result of centuries of experience of what works and what doesn’t.

As far as Hume is concerned, science does not assume that the future will resemble the past. Indeed, evolutionary biologists assume that the future will NOT resemble the past. The resemblance we do see, and this is not an a priori conviction but also the result of experience, is that the laws of physics appear to remain unalterable in our universe, so in that sense future laws and events (i.e., as instantiated in the evolution of stars) can be assumed to resemble the past laws and events. We use uniformitarianism insofar as our experience tells us this applies. We do not assume it a priori.

It’s a common mistake of people like Neil to think that scientists once sat down and constructed a scientific method, complete with dictums like “value truth above all else”, “assume the future will be like the past”, and “empirical investigation, replication, and so on are the best ways to find empirical truth”. No, those procedures developed from experience when people learned about the best ways to find truth.

2.) There are other ways of knowing. I discuss this at length in Faith Versus Fact, concluding that if you want to know facts about our universe, the scientific procedure (“science construed broadly”) is the only way to proceed. This does not denigrate philosophy or mathematics, both of which are logical systems that are very important in doing science and in thinking hard about what you’re doing. Mathematics does not tell us truths about the universe, but truths about the logical system it comprises. That’s why we can sensibly speak of “proof” in mathematics but not in science. Philosophy, by teaching us how to think clearly and logically, can point out errors in our thinking and lead us to conclusions that aren’t obvious. One of them is the Euthyphro Issue, which teaches us that most religious people get their morality not from religion itself, but from secular and extra-scriptural sources. That is not a truth about the universe, but a logical (and valuable!) truth that comes from reflection and perhaps some observation of how people construe morality (the border between this kind of philosophy and science is very tenuous).

What are the other ways of knowing? Neil discusses two areas.

a. Ways to answer “why” questions. To wit:

A notable example of this scientistic shift from method into metaphysics comes from Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins who, like Dawkins, is a prolific author as well as a fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford University. During the question and answer period following a discussion of The God Delusion, Dawkins was asked whether science provides the answers to the great existential ‘why’ questions. In his reply, Dawkins declared that questions like “why does the universe exist” are “silly” questions that do not deserve answers. Peter Atkins makes a similar point in a recent article. He argues that questions like “Why are we here?” are “not real questions because they are not based on evidence.” Real questions, according to Atkins, are questions “open to scientific elucidation.”

Unfortunately, for Dawkins and Atkins, the belief that all questions must be open to scientific explanation is a metaphysical commitment, not a scientific one. Science does not say that only scientific questions are worth pursuing. Nor does science say that every aspect of reality can be explained by science. Lurking beneath their rejection of the non-scientific lies a fundamentally extra-scientific worldview. In their dismissal of the deepest questions concerning human existence, Dawkins and Atkins speak not as dispassionate scientists, but as partisans to their own philosophical picture of reality.

This can be dispelled easily when we realize that what Dawkins and Atkins (both scientists) are talking about as “fake questions” are “questions that cannot be answered with any certainty.” They are construing “real questions” as questions that have answers that we can all agree on, and can have some certainty about the answers. And for those kinds of questions, Dawkins and Atkins are correct, for only science can answer questions that have answers like that. Sure, you can say, “I had a vision of Jesus,” but there is no way to verify it. Beyond this kind of subjective “truth”, we must turn to science. If questions like “Why are we here?” do have “correct” answers, or answers that most of us can agree on, then pray tell us what the answers are, Dr. Neil! For religions, which occupy themselves with such questions, cannot agree of any answers.

b. Areas that constitute “other ways of knowing.” Disturbingly, besides philosophy, which I’ve already discussed, the only field mentioned by Neil is theology. (I’m not sure whether he thinks theology can really tell us any truths.):

Science is not the only form of knowledge. There are valid non-scientific ways of approaching reality. In fact, before the empirical science of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, science (from the Latin scientia) simply meant “knowledge.” For the ancients, natural philosophy (the rough pre-modern equivalent to modern science) and philosophy were ‘sciences’ because each intellectual discipline contributed towards knowledge of reality. Not only were philosophy and theology considered legitimate ways of knowing, the medievals placed natural philosophy below philosophy and theology. It may be tempting to dismiss the medieval hierarchy as an example of pre-modern ignorance. Before too quickly discounting it, consider first the following explanation behind the ordering provided by Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologian-philosophers of the Middle Ages: “Lower sciences,” Aquinas writes, “presuppose conclusions proved in the higher sciences.”

And that’s about it: philosophy and theology (“natural philosophy” is just another word for “science”). Neil doesn’t mention literature or art or music or any of the other classic but bogus “ways of knowing.” (I’m not denigrating these areas, but claiming, as I did in my book, that they are ways of feeling rather than ways of knowing.)

Again, it’s extremely telling that despite Neil’s repeated claim that “science is not the only form of knowledge,” he cannot give us a single example of “knowledge” that comes from outside science. That alone invalidates this part of his argument.

For further discussion of the fallacious “other ways of knowing” claim, read pp. 185-196 of Faith Versus Fact, and for a longer discussion of the scientism canard, read pages 196-224—a section that goes over many of the issues discussed by Neil as well as the Winegards.

 

Sunday: Duckling report

May 12, 2019 • 7:45 am

In lieu of Reader’s Wildlife today, I present Katie Peck and her brood of ten (all still alive and thriving). Happy Mother’s Day!

With Gregory, sitting on the brood (you can see one tiny head beneath her). This was two days ago when it was chilly, and she was keeping them warm and protected:

 

One lone duckling:

And some of its siblings:

The family having lunch on Friday:

Sunday: Hili dialogue

May 12, 2019 • 6:45 am

It’s Sunday, May 12, 2019, and it seems as if May began just a few days ago. Thus time’s wingéd chariot draws near. . . .

It’s National Nutty Fudge Day, as well as International Nurses Day, celebrating an honored and altruistic profession.  And, of course, it’s Mother’s Day! Here’s to all moms everywhere! A shot of my own duck mom and one of her brood:

And today’s Google Doodle is an animated duck cartoons, for of all the beasts of the air, water, and land, the mallard most truly exemplifies the caring mom. (Click on the screenshot to go to the animation.)

C|Net explains:

Following with Google tradition, this Mother’s Day the search giant turned to nature to represent the parent who bore us into this world; previous representations have included a cactus and dinosaur. This year, three buttons on the Doodle allow us to move among a series of lessons for life from a mama duck to her young offspring.

She tries to teach her young charges the proper way to waddle — not without dealing with some challenges — and that it’s sometimes necessary to change direction. And when their plans go south, she welcomes them back to the fold, err, flock.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, regardless of species, who help teach us to spread our wings.

On this day in 1364, the oldest university in Poland, Jagiellonian University, was founded in Kraków.  But this doesn’t even put it in the top 10 oldest universities; can you guess the oldest? (It’s really old; see here.) In 1784, the Treaty of Paris, signed in September of 1783, took effect, finally ending the American Revolutionary War. On May 12, 1846, the Donner Party of pioneers heading to California left Independence, Missouri. That winter they got stuck in the Sierra Nevada mountains during a snowstorm, spent the winter trying to survive, and had to resort to cannibalizing the dead. That was a great scandal then, but it seems expedient and not immoral to me. Of the 87 pioneers who set out, only 46 survived.

On May 12, 1932, ten weeks after the infant son of Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped, his body was found in New Jersey close to the Lindbergh’s home. Bruno Hauptmann was eventually executed for the abduction and murder. It’s hard to overestimate the power of this story at that time.

On May 12, 1941, according to Wikipedia, “Konrad Zuse present[ed] the Z3, the world’s first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin.” Here’s a Z3 replica displayed in Munich’s Deutsches Museum:

On this day in 2002, President Jimmy Carter went to Cuba to visit Fidel Castro for five days—the first U.S. President to visit Cuba since the Revolution in 1959. Finally, four years ago a massive earthquake struck Nepal, killing 218 and injuring over 3800.

Notables born on this day include Edward Lear (1812), Florence Nightingale (1820), Otto Frank (1889, father of Anne Frank), Dorothy Hodgkin (1910, Nobel Laureate), Julius Rosenberg (1918), Yogi Berra (1925), Burt Bacharach (1928), and Frank Stella (1936).

Those who fell asleep on May 12 include John Dryden (1700), J. E. B. Stuart (1864), Amy Lowell (1925), Erich von Stroheim (1957), Nelly Sachs (1970, Nobel Laureate), Saul Steinberg (1999), and Perry Como (2001),

Here’s a Steinberg cat-themed cover of the New Yorker. Nothing to eat!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is wary of a new comestible:

A: Whar are you watching?
Hili: I’m wondering whether I like dandelions or just the opposite?
In Polish:
Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Zastanawiam się, czy ja lubię te mlecze, czy wręcz odwrotnie.

Some tweets from Matthew:

The cryptic bird below appears to be some kind of potoo. The translation: “The nictibio urutaú is a nocturnal insectivore that always hunts from an elevated position. He spends the day perched upright on a tree stump, with which he mimics as if it were part of him The posture, immobility, and closed eyes make it hard to detect.

Nobody ever claimed that puffins are graceful. Even their flight looks labored and clumsy. But they are CUTE! Some day I shall see one.

Here’s an especially clumsy puffin:

Matthew calls this one “A very patient capybara. (Is there any other kind?)”. Translation: “The alleged Capybara figurine.” And there are DUCKS!

Learn this word, as there will be a quiz:

This is unbelievable, and I wonder how the person dealt with it:

Tweets from Grania. I love murmurations, but rarely see them over water.

https://twitter.com/ZonePhysics/status/1125351310197440512

A helpful raccoon for Mother’s Day. Translation: “I like your mother.” What???

A protective kitten. Translation: “Bad! Screwed!”

In Chicago this pigeon would get a $100 ticket:

When life imitates satire:

 

Harvard shames itself: fires faculty deans at Winthrop house because students object to one of them taking Harvey Weinstein as a client

May 11, 2019 • 1:16 pm

UPDATE: The New York Times article about this episode includes this information:

But a number of Mr. Sullivan’s colleagues came to his defense; 52 professors at the law school signed a letter supporting him, saying that his commitment to representing unpopular clients was fully consistent with his roles as law professor and faculty dean, and that Harvard should not pressure him to resign.

At the same time, the dispute took on a racial element, with some saying that Mr. Sullivan was being treated unfairly. In a statement in late March, the Harvard Black Law Students Association criticized the decision by the university to conduct a climate review and expressed concern about “the racist undertones evidenced by the disproportionate response to this issue by the university.”

. . .Mr. Sullivan has represented other controversial clients, including Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots player, when he was tried for double murder, and the family of Usaamah Rahim, a man, shot by the Boston police, who had been accused of being a terrorist.

Mr. Sullivan also represented the family of Michael Brown, a man killed by the police in Missouri, in bringing a wrongful-death suit against the City of Ferguson; the family ultimately received a reported $1.5 million settlement.

He has specialized in overturning wrongful convictions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he led an effort to change the system that provided legal defense for the indigent in New Orleans; the effort resulted in the release of thousands of wrongfully incarcerated inmates. In 2014, the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth Thompson, asked Mr. Sullivan to design and implement a conviction review unit to identify and exonerate wrongfully convicted people. It became a national model.

None of this counts for anything against the rage of the aggrieved students. They need to understand two things: everyone is presumed innocent until they’re convicted, and that everyone, no matter how horrendous the crime they’re accused of, deserves a vigorous defense, for that keeps the legal system fair. The students might also consider the “good” cases Mr. Sullivan has taken on.

You can see Khurana’s letter to the Winthrop House students here.

__________

 

This is late-breaking news from the Harvard Crimson (click on screenshot). And it’s reprehensible for a university supposedly as enlightened as Harvard.

As I’ve reported before (see here and here), the housemaster of Winthrop house, black law school professor Ronald Sullivan, took on Harvey Weinstein as one of his clients. That was too much for the students, who, mindful of the #MeToo movement, demanded his firing. No matter that Sullivan had a history of defending people all over the political and ideological map. As I wrote earlier:

As with many University law professors, Sullivan does private law practice in addition to his academic duties. And his clients have ranged over a whole spectrum, including the family of Michael Brown, the black teenager killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and whose death helped ignite the Black Lives Matter movement. That should give Sullivan some bonus points to the students. Sullivan has defended other people whom the Left should approve of as well. In his eloquent and admirable defense of Sullivan in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy (another African-American), says this:

[Sullivan] helped win an acquittal in the double-murder prosecution of the professional football player Aaron Hernandez (a convicted murderer in a different case, who eventually committed suicide). He represented the family of Michael Brown, whose death at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., fueled the Black Lives Matter movement. At the invitation of the Brooklyn district attorney, he designed and adopted a conviction-review program that freed scores of improperly imprisoned people. Sullivan is, in short, an imposing, deeply respected figure in the legal community.

. . . When a disoriented undergraduate running down the street naked was arrested by the police in April 2018, Sullivan was among the first to leap to the student’s aid, providing him with assistance that led to a favorable outcome. That student might well have been marked by a criminal record or suffered jail time but for Sullivan’s intervention. That instance was by no means idiosyncratic. Sullivan is characteristically drawn to defending the vulnerable. A piece in The Boston Globe notes an undergraduate who described how Sullivan supported her efforts to hold to account a sexual abuser. Sullivan’s record of vigilant attentiveness to the interests of students at Harvard should, at the very least, have earned him the benefit of the doubt. Instead he is the target of impudent disdain.

Click on the screenshot to read the news:

This is a no-brainer: students should let Sullivan defend whom he wants so long as he’s doing his job at Winthrop House, which apparently he was until the Weinstein news broke. Then the Outrage Brigade went to work, with the help of Harvard Dean of Students Rakesh Khurana—the embodiment of knee-jerk Authoritarian Leftism. (Khurana has been behind many ridiculous “social justice” shenanigans at Harvard, including punishing Harvard students who join “finals clubs” not affiliated with the university.) Khurana commissioned a “climate review” of Winthrop House, which of course would clearly reflect the students’ outrage at Sullivan’s choice of client.

As expected, the review wasn’t good, so Harvard fired not only Sullivan, but also his co-dean Stephanie Robinson. As the Crimson reports in a very short piece (the news just came out):

Khurana wrote that he decided to remove Sullivan and Robinson because the environment in Winthrop is “untenable.”

“The concerns expressed have been serious and numerous. The actions that have been taken to improve the climate have been ineffective, and the noticeable lack of faculty dean presence during critical moments has further deteriorated the climate in the House,” Khurana wrote. “I have concluded that the situation in the House is untenable.”

He also called the situation “regrettable,” adding that he admires many of Sullivan and Robinson’s accomplishments.

Khurana added that he, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Claudine Gay, and Dean of Students Katherine G. O’Dair, will go to Winthrop at noon to answer students’ questions.

The atmosphere is untenable because the students can’t abide Sullivan taking on Weinstein as a client.  Because they are unjustly outraged, Sullivan and Robinson have to go.

I can see how Sullivan appears “tainted” to the students, and how that might affect their interactions with him, but it seems to me palpably unfair to punish him for something that wasn’t even a bit wrong, and for a climate created not by Sullivan, but by the privileged and entitled crystudents. The students could be told to “suck it up”, but they’ll still be disaffected.

I don’t know what to suggest here, but it wouldn’t involve firing Sullivan. Perhaps all the residents of Winthrop House could be offered accommodations outside Harvard Yard—maybe in a hostel in Somerville. They, and not Sullivan, are the ones who must learn to behave. And that is Harvard’s responsibility.

I have nothing but contempt for Harvard’s behavior in this episode. I have nothing but contempt for Khurana for capitulating to the students’ manufactured outrage and their very real ignorance of how lawyers operate.

You can be sure that, because I’m an alumnus with a will (in both senses), Harvard will be hearing from me.