Princeton University punishes professor for exercising free speech, shows it doesn’t understand what “free speech” really is.

April 13, 2022 • 10:45 am

I’m always surprised by the high quality of reporting in Tablet, as it doesn’t seem to be a site many people read.  It also has the reputation of being a “Jewish magazine,” which of course puts off some people, but if you look at its articles, you’ll find many of them that don’t have anything to do with Jews or Judaism. One example is the article below. It’s about the increasingly bizarre behavior of Princeton University, which is in the process of “canceling” a professor for some remarks he made about a black student group. Because the remarks were deemed racist by some, the school decided to permanently place Classics Professor Joshua Katz on a list of racist professors and actions—an official site that’s made available to incoming Princeton students as a “teaching document”.

Even if you think Katz’s remarks were unwise (I do, though I don’t see them as racist), they still constitute free speech and an exercise of academic freedom. For the University to demonize Katz for his statement, and to parade him before students as an exemplar of a racist, is a violation of the viewpoint neutrality that Princeton claims it has. Worse, when Katz fought back, supported by many of his fellow professors, Princeton claimed a “right” to add him to the List of Bad People because that was Princeton exercising its freedom of speech. (The President of Princeton also issued a statement officially denouncing Katz.)

Befuddled as Princeton and its president (Christopher Eisgruber) are, they can’t distinguish between free speech and the chilling of speech enacted by making official statements of what is politically unacceptable. That is, they are mixing up the strictures of our University of Chicago’s Principles of Free Speech with our University’s Kalven Report, with the latter mandating that the University and its constituent units make no official statements about ideology, morality, or politics unless they have to do with the functioning and purpose of the university: teaching and learning.  Princeton was in fact the first University to adopt Chicago’s Principles of Free Expression (about 80 universities have now done so). But Princeton doesn’t really understand these principles, and so, as its head goes up its fundament, has decided to make an example of Katz by consigning him to academic perdition.

Click the screenshot to read:

The scenario in short (statements from the Tablet are indented). First, though, I’d ignore Tablet‘s opening screed about what “social justice” is.  To me it’s a confusing discussion and not really relevant to this story except insofar as Katz is accused of being anti-social justice..

1.) Katz made a comment in an article he wrote in Quillette about the “Black Justice League” and about a faculty letter describing pervasive structural racism at Princeton. Here’s part of Katz’s a response to the faculty demands made in their letter (the first quote is from the letter):

“Acknowledge, credit, and incentivize anti-racist student activism. Such acknowledgment should, at a minimum, take the form of reparative action, beginning with a formal public University apology to the members of the Black Justice League and their allies.” The Black Justice League, which was active on campus from 2014 until 2016, was a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the many (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members’ demands. Recently I watched an “Instagram Live” of one of its alumni leaders, who—emboldened by recent events and egged on by over 200 supporters who were baying for blood—presided over what was effectively a Struggle Session against one of his former classmates. It was one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed, and I do not say this lightly.

The bit in bold was Katz’s undoing, particularly the phrase “terrorist group”, though the “struggle session” was against a black student and other witnesses say that that usage is accurate.

2.) Princeton put Katz’s statement—missing a crucial bit—on an official document, “To Be Known and Heard“, which recounts the racist background and nature of Princeton. This document is used didactically for new students. Also, via President Eisgruber, Princeton issued statements assailing Katz’s piece in Quillette. Again, this would be a violation of my own University’s Kalven Report: an official damning of a professor for his/her political views.

3.) In the “To Be Known and Heard” document, Princeton left out, in their quote, the parenthetical “(including many black students)”. As Tablet notes,

In order to damage Katz’s reputation as much as possible, the creators of Princeton’s rogues’ gallery of racists, an official document that bears the copyright of the university’s Board of Trustees, omitted the parenthetical words “(including the many black students).” Keep in mind that any student who had doctored a quotation, especially intentionally and with malice, would likely have been suspended.

The gallery omits any mention of Katz’s response when he was asked by The Daily Princetonian to clarify what he meant by “terrorist” and “Struggle Session,” or what he has said about these matters elsewhere. This is what Katz wrote:

… the BJL went after one fellow black student with particular vigor, verbally vilifying her in public at every possible opportunity, calling her all sorts of unsavory epithets and accusing her of “performing white supremacy.” Other students, as well as faculty and administrators, were accused, without evidence, of being “racists” and “white supremacists.”

4.) Katz is thus now a permanent part of an official Princeton “rogue gallery” of racists and racist acts. That gallery would not be allowed at the University of Chicago because it’s an official university document containing arguable contentions as well as implicitly punishing out a university professor for his speech.

5.) Respected organizations defending academic freedom called on Princeton and Eisgruber to rescind Katz’s treatment. From Tablet:

The treatment of Katz in the mandatory freshmen orientation has generated a lot of criticism, most notably from the three most prestigious American organizations dedicated to academic freedom: the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA). (I am a founding member of the AFA, as is Katz.) In his letter to Eisgruber, Keith Whittington, the chair of the academic committee of the AFA and a professor of Politics at Princeton, writes, “We are not aware of any other example of a university systematically denouncing a sitting member of its own faculty in such a way. … We call on the university to refrain from using its administrative resources to target Professor Katz or other members of the faculty in its official activities and programming.”

The AFA letter (pdf here) is especially good. A quote from it:

The university climate would quickly become poisonous and intolerable if administrative units on campus made it a practice to hold up dissenting members of the faculty for ritual condemnation and if the precedent now being set were followed in the future. If the Office of the Vice President for Campus Life uses its administrative position on campus to organize official university programming for the purpose of heaping opprobrium on faculty for expressing disfavored personal political opinions, the risks of chilling speech on campus are severe. The university can hardly create a climate welcoming of heterodox opinions if it creates an administrative apparatus to target the heterodox and stamp them as campus pariahs.

. . . Professors expressing controversial political opinions should expect criticism from members of the campus community, and if those views are unpopular then no doubt such criticism will be loud. However, professors should not have to anticipate that the university administration will adopt those criticisms as its own and place members of its faculty in the pillory as an object lesson for each class of entering students to learn where the boundaries of acceptable speech can be found.

6.) Did Princeton give any credence to any of these letters? It did not. In fact, it accused these organizations of demanding that Princeton violate its own freedom of speech by withholding official criticism of Katz. This is unbelievable:

The university has not yet responded to the accusations—the latter two of which are especially broad—of FIRE, ACTA, or PFS. Eisgruber did, however, reply speedily to Whittington, feigning concern that what the AFA is asking for is contrary to academic freedom and amounts to censorship.

“Are you asking that I censor the website?” Eisgruber inquired. “If so, I find that request” (which is similar to the requests of FIRE, ACTA, and PFS) ”troubling, and I would need to understand better how you reconcile it with the principles of academic freedom and free speech that you champion. I am certain that you would agree that, on a University campus, censorship, including via the compelled removal of information from a website, is a strongly disfavored response to controversial speech.”

In defending the shameful treatment of Katz though such scholastic gymnastics, Princeton’s president seems to be advancing the bizarre notion that somehow the free speech protections enshrined in the university’s rules and regulations extend to administrators in situations where they exercise their official power in order to denounce, harass, and otherwise discredit and threaten individual members of the academic community.

This is a bit like saying that, in denouncing would-be traitors of the Soviet Union on trumped-up charges, Andrey Vyshinsky, the main prosecutor of Stalin’s Moscow trials in the 1930s, was simply exercising his freedom of speech. Or that Joseph McCarthy was merely exercising his right to free speech when he launched his campaign in the 1950s to unearth hidden Communists in Hollywood. Or that the Cultural Revolutionaries in China who denounced their countrymen for imaginary crimes were free speech heroes.

A University has no “freedom of speech” to officially punish a professor who exercises his own freedom of speech.

7.) Complaints to other Princeton administrators have met with the same kind of pushback. The Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity, Michele Minter, argued that the “To Be Known and Heard” website “is not an official university document” (it is; it’s on a princeton.edu site and has been called “teaching material” by President Eisgruber). Further, Minter claims that Katz isn’t a member of a “protected class”, which is irrelevant, though I think he’s probably Jewish.

And so Princeton, while espousing free speech, has created a climate in which a professor who exercises that right is officially damned by the the University and held up to the students as an example of racism. If that’s not punishment for speech, I don’t know what is.

Two comments. First, Princeton’s twisted construal of free speech appears to be a form espoused by one faculty member quoted in the Tablet article (the professor turns out to be Padilla Peralta, whom we’ve met before):

Instead, freshmen were informed by a professor that he “envision[s] a free speech and academic discourse that is flexed to one specific aim, and that aim is the promotion of social justice, and an anti-racist social justice at that.”

And here’s a reaction to the Princeton mishigass by a fellow academic:

[Eisgruber] is a spineless toady to the woke mob that has taken over Princeton.

You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie!

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ denial

April 13, 2022 • 9:15 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “setback,” came with the note, “It’s a tough one to spin.”  Once again the Crucifixion story comes up, and once again I’m still baffled by it. At least Jesus admits it’s a post facto confabulation, but the whole story, even after explanations from the readers here, doesn’t make sense to me. If God wanted to separated the sheep from the lambs, isn’t there an easier way to do it? How about looking into people’s hearts, which presumably He can do?

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 13, 2022 • 8:30 am

Today’s photos come from Susan Harrison, an ecologist at the University of California at Davis. Her notes are indented, and be sure to click on the photos to enlarge them.

The Pair a’ Ducks Paradox

Winter is normally a drab-plumaged time, with birds lacking the colors and behaviors that go with attracting the opposite sex.   Ducks are an exception!  The birds below were photographed in California and southern Oregon in November 2021 to early March 2022, well before their spring breeding season.   So why all the pretty plumage and paired-up behavior?

Northern Shoveler, Spatula clypeata:

Northern Pintail, Anas acuta:

Green-winged Teal, Anas carolinensis, a pair that alternated watching and dabbling:

Cinnamon Teal, Spatula cyanoptera:

American Wigeon, Mareca americana:

Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos:

Wood Duck, Aix sponsa, pair with Canvasback, Aythya valisineria, in background:

Wood Duck, tame birds in an urban park:

Like most ducks, these species choose a new mate each year.  Such seasonal monogamy is common in short-lived birds. Ducks are unusual, though, in courting and pairing up well before breeding and even before migration.  This is why we get to see happy couples and the drakes’ fine colors in winter.

My colleague John Eadie, a distinguished waterfowl biologist, says that early courtship likely stems from the unusually huge costs and risks of reproduction for female ducks, with their egg batches weighing 25-100% as much as the bird.  Females are in short supply, so males must start early and work hard to win a mate.  And once they choose a male, females benefit from a vigilant partner as they feed and bulk up. “Female choice rules the day, even more so than in other birds,” to quote John.

The above are dabbling ducks.   Diving ducks are also seasonally monogamous, but often spend the winter in mixed-sex and even mixed-species groups.  They do pair up before migrating, and breed later than the dabblers.   Below are some groups and pairs of diving ducks in winter.

Ring-necked Duck, Aythya collaris:

Common Goldeneye, Bucephala clangula (males with round facial spot) and Barrow’s Goldeneye, Bucephala islandica (males with crescent-shaped facial spot):

Common Goldeneye:

Hooded Merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus, with Bufflehead in the background:

Lesser Scaup, Athythya affinis, female with two admirers:

Bufflehead, Bucephala albeola :

Geese and swans live longer than ducks, form lifetime pair bonds, and sport unisex plumage.  Below are overwintering pairs of two closely related goose species.

Canada Goose, Branta canadensis (large) and Cackling Goose, Branta hutchinsii (small):

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 13, 2022 • 7:00 am

Good morning on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, a Hump Day, or, as they say in Arabic: يوم الحدبة.  It’s National Peach Cobbler Day, a treat you’re most likely to find in the American South, as well as Holy Wednesday (clearly we’re coming up on Easter), Scrabble Day, and Thomas Jefferson Day.

Wine of the Day: As I keep saying, there’s great value for money in Rioja, and even at higher price points, like this one ($35), you can get wines that are world class: the equivalent of a $100 bottle of Bordeaux.

This Rioja, had with my first T-bone dinner since I returned (Monday, with second half consumed Tuesday), is from R. Lopez Heredia, and the bottling is in the review below. Note the grape composition, typical of Rioja, and the fact that it was aged in oak for six years before bottling. Robert Parker gives it a tremendous score of 95, and you can see other laudatory reviews here and here.  I knew the wine would be good if properly aged? Had it been? Yes, and it has years to go. Parker review below:

The red flagship 2006 Viña Tondonia Reserva was inspired by the vineyards of the Médoc but produced with local grapes, 70% Tempranillo, 20% Garnacho, 5% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo, which achieved 13% alcohol in 2006. It always matures in used American oak barriques for some six years. The oldest of all the reds I tasted, it was also the one with more freshness, which speaks to the quality of the vineyard. This takes the lion’s share of the 400,000 bottles the winery produces, with some 220,000 bottles filled over a period of 12 consecutive days in May 2014

This was a spectacular bottle (sadly, my last, though I have a 2010). I decanted it because I expected a sediment, but there wasn’t any. The aroma of spice and fruit (cherries at first) leaped from the glass, and I had to ration myself. After dinner, I poured myself a glass, put it by my chair, and sipped it occasionally while reading. It just got better and better over two hours, and eventually assumed a fragrance of strawberries. It was smooth but robust: a great specimen of the heavy genre of Riojas. I was very sad to take the last sip, but as I write this on Tuesday, I have half a bottle left. Stay tuned. . .

The second half was marginally worse than the first, as the fruit had attenuated a bit and the tannins relatively more dominant. It was still a great tipple, but yesterday’s ration palpably better. Is this wine worth the money? To me it surely was, but your mileage may vary.

Stuff that happened on April 13 includes:

Do you know the “five Ks”—the five items that all pious Sikhs must wear at all times? If not, go here.

  • 1742 – George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah makes its world premiere in Dublin, Ireland.
  • 1861 – American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederate forces.
  • 1873 – The Colfax massacre, in which more than 60 black men are murdered, takes place.
  • 1943 – World War II: The discovery of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile in London and the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.

For years the Soviet Union blamed this on the Germans, but finally admitted it in 2004, but denying it was a war crime. Over 22,000 people were killed. Here’s a view of the exhumed bodies:

Sometimes I wonder how long it will be until they tear this memorial down. I used to walk there (a several hour hike) from my childhood home in Arlington, Virginia.

Here’s a short video report about Van Cliburn and his win, and the entire final concert (Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1;38 minutes) is on YouTube (no video) here.  Van Cliburn was only 23.

Here’s Poitier getting his Oscar: he gives a short speech and tears up a bit. Thankfully, there’s no mention of being “a credit to my race”.

Why don’t we see more of these bills. They would be useful!

  • 1997 – Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament.

Here’s a documentary of Woods’s victory: he was ust 21, but won by 12 shots.

The bomb (below) was called MOAB, which stood for GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, but that’s been modified to “Mother of All Bombs”:

And look at this blast when it was dropped in Afghanistan. You can see a test video of the bomb as it was dropped with the help of a parachute at this site.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1519 – Catherine de’ Medici, Italian-French wife of Henry II of France (d. 1589)
  • 1570 – Guy Fawkes, English soldier, member of the Gunpowder Plot (probable; d. 1606)
  • 1743 – Thomas Jefferson, American lawyer and politician, 3rd President of the United States (d. 1826)

Here’s one image of what Jefferson might look like today:

Here he is with the Wikipedia caption “Butch Cassidy poses in the Wild Bunch group photo, Fort Worth, Texas, 1901″

  • 1906 – Samuel Beckett, Irish novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
  • 1906 – Bud Freeman, American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader (d. 1991)
  • 1909 – Eudora Welty, American short story writer and novelist (d. 2001)
  • 1919 – Madalyn Murray O’Hair, American activist, founded American Atheists (d. 1995)
  • 1924 – Jack T. Chick, American author, illustrator, and publisher (d. 2016)

You’ve seen Chick’s anti-evolution and pro-Jesus pamphlets, right? I’ve been given many. A snippet:

Here’s the “evolution professor” getting pwned by a religious student in the most famous Chick cartoon about evolution:

  • 1939 – Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2013)

Those who went to the Great Beyond on April 13 include:

Brady, below, was famous for his appetite, but I still can’t believe he could eat all this stuff. From Wikipedia:

Brady’s enormous appetite was as legendary as his wealth, though modern experts believe it was greatly exaggerated. It was not unusual, according to the legend, for Brady to eat enough food for ten people at a sitting. George Rector, owner of a favorite restaurant, described Brady as “the best 25 customers I ever had”.  For breakfast, he would eat “vast quantities of hominy, eggs, cornbread, muffins, flapjacks, chops, fried potatoes, beefsteak, washing it all down with a gallon of fresh orange juice”. A mid-morning snack would consist of “two or three dozen clams or Lynnhaven oysters”. Luncheon would consist of “shellfish…two or three deviled crabs, a brace of boiled lobsters, a joint of beef, and an enormous salad”. He would also include a dessert of “several pieces of homemade pie” and more orange juice. Brady would take afternoon tea, which consisted of “another platter of seafood, accompanied by two or three bottles of lemon soda”. Dinner was the main meal of the day, taken at Rector’s Restaurant. It usually comprised “two or three dozens oysters, six crabs, and two bowls of green turtle soup. Then in sumptuous procession came six or seven lobsters, two canvasback ducks, a double portion of terrapin, sirloin steak, vegetables, and for dessert a platter of French pastries.” Brady would even include two pounds of chocolate candy to finish off the meal.

Brady (not as fat as I imagined)
  • 1956 – Emil Nolde, Danish-German painter and educator (b. 1867)

Here’s a fine Emil Nolde painting: “Exotic Figures II” (1911)

  • 1993 – Wallace Stegner, American novelist, short story writer, and essayist (b. 1909)
  • 2015 – Günter Grass, German novelist, poet, playwright, and illustrator, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1927)

Yes, Grass was a member of the Waffen-SS during WWII, but I love his books, and he did spend a lot of his writing trying to get Germany to own up to its Nazi past.

*It’s bad news everywhere—for Ukraine, for America, and for the Democrats and Biden.

*Below the headline from this morning’s NYT about Ukraine, though the top left spot is about the New York subway shooter, who injured 23 (but fortunately killed nobody) in a gun + smoke-grenade attack on a Brooklyn subway Tuesday. there is a “person of interest”, which hasn’t yet been upgraded to “suspect”:

The police on Tuesday evening identified a man they called a “person of interest” in the mass shooting, one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the subway in recent history. The man, Frank R. James, 62, was not named as a suspect, but the authorities said that people should call with any information they had on Mr. James.

The war news; click on screenshot to read:

And the NYT’s summary under that header:

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Wednesday praised President Biden for accusing Russia of committing genocide in Ukraine, describing the remarks as “true words of a true leader,” as investigators accelerated their efforts to collect evidence of alleged Russian atrocities outside Kyiv.

French forensic investigators joined Ukrainian authorities working to exhume bodies from mass graves in the northern town of Bucha, where hundreds were found after Russian forces withdrew, even as Ukraine was bracing for another Russian onslaught in the east.

Satellite images released on Wednesday offered new evidence that Russia is building up troops and military equipment for what analysts say could be a decisive battle in the region, with Russian tanks and artillery units seen moving on a highway near Kharkiv and positioned in fields and farms on the Russian side of the border.

In other news about the war, Biden, as noted above finally called the Russian acts a “genocide”, which it is since its aim is to wipe out Ukrainians, and it’s a genocide committed by a “dictator half a world away.” Them’s strong words, but them’s true words.

*In Afghanistan, the Taliban are busy executing former U.S. allies and government officials, despite their promise to be merciful. Did anybody really believe that then? Yes, some dupes did! They even thought the Taliban would, as they also promised, let women go to school.  Another duping: Iran’s statement that it’s not trying to make a nuclear weapon.

*The rate of inflation in the U.S. hit a four-decade year high using the data from March, with a yearly rate of 8.9%—a number not seen since 1981. I’m sure most Americans, including me, have noticed the rise in prices, and it spells trouble for the Democrats come November.  Biden has blamed it on the Ukraine, but American voters don’t believe that:

A poll released by Rasmussen Reports Monday found a similar trend.

“President Joe Biden’s policies have increased inflation, according to a majority of voters, who expect the issue to be important in November midterm elections,” Rasmussen said. “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 64% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the policies of Biden’s administration have increased inflation, while only eight percent (8%) think Biden’s policies have reduced inflation. Another 25% say the Biden administration’s policies have not made much difference in inflation.”

*I’m not sure whether , given the war and inflation, border issues (assigned to be addressed by VP Kamala Harris, who hasn’t done squat) will play a role in the election, but if it does, it won’t help Democrats. Mark Thiessen, at least agrees. , In a column at the Washington Post called “Biden is turning the border crisis into an outright catastrophe,”

Democrats are poised to lose control of the House and Senate this November in no small part because of the crisis President Biden has unleashed on the southern border. Now, Biden is ready to double down on disaster by lifting Title 42 — the Trump-era public health order that allows border officials to turn away illegal migrants to prevent the spread of covid-19. If Biden does so, he will turn crisis into a catastrophe — both at the border and at the polls.

By lifting Title 42, the Biden administration is trying to have it both ways — declaring the pandemic emergency over for illegal migrants at the border, but not for the rest of us. If the pandemic emergency is over, why are they still insisting we wear masks on planes? Why are all lawful international air passengers still required to get a negative coronavirus test before entering the United States (while illegal border crossers are not)? And why, if the emergency is over, is the Biden administration asking Congress for billions of dollars in emergency covid spending? Democrats need to decide: Either we are in a covid emergency, or we are not.

. . . Biden has created the worst border crisis in U.S. history — and does not seem to care that he is about to make it worse. But voters do. A new Politico-Morning Consult poll finds that 56 percent of voters oppose ending Title 42, making it Biden’s “most unpopular decision so far.” Considering the fact that Biden’s approval is underwater on virtually every issue, that is saying something. And the decision will become even less popular when Americans see the debacle it produces.

I’m not sure whether this will be as big an issue for voters as, say, their pocketbooks (“It’s the economy, stupid”). But it irks me that Kamala Harris has done nothing tangible about this, given me, and many Americans, the idea that Democrats simply don’t care about enforcing immigration policy.

*This is a great idea, and I’m surprised that those wily, world-domineering Jews haven’t thought about it before: create and promulgate a “Palestine Apartheid Week” to advertise which faction is the real “apartheid state.”

A pro-Israel student group is going on the offensive by tabling at multiple campuses across the United States, highlighting systemic discrimination against Jews in Palestinian-controlled territories such as the West Bank and Gaza Strip for the first time ever in what the group is calling “Palestinian Apartheid Week.”

Students Supporting Israel (SSI) has visited three college campuses throughout the country since March 21, highlighting the realities college students rarely confront about the Palestinian-controlled territories.

Issues like salaries paid to the families of Palestinian terrorists for killing Jews as part of a policy called “pay for slay;” the Palestinian Authority making it illegal to sell property to Jews; Jews not being able to openly pray at holy sites in the Palestinian territory unless accompanied by security; erasing the existence of Jews from Palestinian textbooks and maps; as well as Hamas’s charter calling for the killing of all Jews.

Not to mention Jews not being allowed to even live in the Palestinian Territories, much less the discrimination in Palestine (but not Israel) against women, apostates, and gays.

*I recently wrote about new evidence that the ivory-billed woodpecker is still with us. We can’t be even relatively certain, though: a lot more evidence is needed. The Guardian’s experts, though, tend to believe (as do I) that the bird is still with us. I love the last line here:

“No one has held a camera and got a picture of one in years because it’s a scarce bird in tough swampy habitat and they don’t want people close to them because they’ve been shot at for 150 years,” said Geoffrey Hill, a biologist at Auburn University who took part in another, largely frustrating, trip to find the bird in Florida in 2005.

“They have better eyes than we do, they are high in the trees and actively flee people. They aren’t great thinkers but they have developed a pretty simple strategy to avoid people.”

Hill said Latta’s research was “very interesting” and that he thought it likely that the bird pictured is indeed an ivory-billed woodpecker. He added that the FWS was premature to decide the species was extinct and that several dozen could still be holding on in forests across the south.

“Some people cannot believe a bird can defy documentation by modern humans because we have such dominion over nature but it is endlessly interesting because if it has done that, it’s one pretty impressive bird,” Hill said.

“People who are into birds are fascinated by them. Ivory bills couldn’t care less, though. They hate all people.”  (h/t: Trevor).

*From ZME Science: a rare giant bee  has been rediscovered.

While working as a curatorial assistant at the American Museum of Natural History, Eli Wyman learned about a very unusual bee that was presumed to be extinct. The bee, Megachile pluto, also known as Wallace’s giant bee, is a massive unit. It is the largest bee in the world, four times larger than a honeybee and measuring about the length of a human thumb.

Huge mandibles hang like dastardly garden shears from its head. Or, at least, did — the bee hadn’t been seen alive since 1981 and was feared lost. “I just thought ‘someday I’ve got to go to look for this bee.’ It’s a sort of unicorn in the bee world,” Wyman says. “If you love bees, as I do,” he added, “this is the greatest possible adventure to have.”

They organized a small expedition to Indonesia, and then, on the last of five day of looking, found a nest of the giant bee in a termite colony, where these behemoths build a tubular, resin-lined nest. But they’re having trouble getting this rare bee protected by the Indonesian government, and worse: they found a specimen of the bee for sale on eBay!

Worse, knowledge of the bee’s existence lit up a murky corner of the internet that specializes in the trade of rare animals. Shortly after he got back to the U.S., Wyman saw that someone was trying to sell a specimen of the bee on eBay for a few thousand dollars — a tempting lure for the subsistence farmers and fishermen of North Maluku who could get a portion of this relative fortune.

The bee had become something unusual, a sort of rare trophy like an endangered rhino. This sometimes happens with insects: In Germany, a rare beetle named after Adolf Hitler was considered at risk of extinction more than a decade ago due to its soaring popularity as a collector’s item for neo-Nazis.

Here’s a photo of M. pluto next to a European honeybee:

One of the first images of a living Wallace’s giant bee. Megachile pluto is the world’s largest bee, which is approximately 4x times larger than a European honey bee. (Composite). Photo by Clay Bolt.

*Finally, it was warm and sunny yesterday, and the turtles who vanished over the winter came out in force at Botany Pond:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili evinces her usual pessimism:

Hili: I see positive changes.
A: Where?
Hili: Only in the garden.
In Polish:
Hili: Dostrzegam pozytywne zmiany.
Ja: Gdzie?
Hili: Tylko w ogrodzie.

And here’s Karolina from Kyiv, making herself at home chez in Dobrzyn:

Kulka on the front steps:

From Lorenzo the Cat: a d*g fighting for freedom:

From Ginger K.:

From Su and Anna:

Sadly, God is mistaking cultural evolution with biological evolution. He knows better than that!

A tweet from Simon. Oy, are people mixed up about the CDC! Simon calls this “comic relief”, and it is, but these chowderheads also spreading dangerous information.

Barry says, “I wonder what he’s drinking.” My guess is a piña colada:

From Ginger K.: What a clever idea!

From the Auschwitz Memorial:

 

Tweets from Matthew. This first one shows two people who are like halves of a critical nuclear mass: put them together and POW!

Matthew and I love stoats, and look at this family of seven gamboling about!

It will tear it apart later:

The answer’s in the thread:

Proprietor’s wildlife: Two photos from Antarctica

April 12, 2022 • 12:15 pm

Yesterday I finally downloaded my Antarctica photos onto my big desktop computer, and it was fun to relive the trip while doing that.  There were a lot of good pictures, which I attribute to the photogenic nature of the area rather than my own “skills”, but there are two pictures I do want to show. The first one is my favorite (for now at least).

Do click on the photos to enlarge them. My camera is modest: a point-and-shoot Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS50. It’s tough, easy to use, has a Leitz lens that zooms to about 30X, and, most important, fits in my pocket. And the resolution is good.

This is my favorite, and I took this one deliberately, trying to show the isolation of the penguins in their vast and icy environment. I wanted it to look as if the surroundings awed the birds, and I think it turned out well. It’s on my website somewhere, but I can’t be arsed to find out where I took it.

As for “scenery” photos, well, I love this one, though I didn’t go through them all. It’s a mountain reflected in the magnificent Lemaire Channel, which has extraordinarily calm waters for the area, producing lovely reflections everywhere.

I may post small groups of photos, or single ones, as the mood strikes me.

Science “studies” helping bring down science

April 12, 2022 • 10:00 am

Those of us who want our science free of ideology can only stand by helplessly as we watch physics, chemistry, and biology crumble from within as the termites of Wokeism nibble away. I once thought that scientists, whom I presumed would be less concerned than humanities professors with ideological pollution (after all, we do have some objective facts to argue about), would be largely immune to Wokeism.

I was wrong, of course. It turns out that scientists are human beings after all, and with that goes the desire for the approbation of one’s peers and of society.  And you don’t get that if you’re deemed a racist. You can even be criticized from holding yourself away from the fray, preferring to do science than engage in social engineering. (Remember, Kendi-an doctrine says that if you’re not an actively working anti-racist, you’re a racist.)

There’s no clearer sign of science’s ideological pollution than the institution of required DEI statements for getting an academic job or getting promoted, along with the elimination of standardized tests for students going into graduate study in STEM. The DEI statements violate “viewpoint neutrality” and turn science into a form of social engineering, with the engineering supposed to go in a preferred direction. But as Stanley Fish said (a book title): “Save the World on Your Own Time.”

And everybody knows, though few dare to say it, that what’s happening is the erosion of the meritocratic aspects of science, replacing them with standards of social justice determined by a small group of “progressive” people on the Left. Further, the less that merit is considered and used as a fundamental tenet of science, the slower science will progress. But I suppose the proponents of injecting Wokeism into science would say “merit is an outdated criterion; what we really need is equity.” Perhaps, but the effort is all directed at calling present science riddled with “structural racism.” And that’s not true.

But I digress. What I didn’t realize until I revisited this article—the centerpiece of a short post by Lawrence Krauss on his Substack site—is that science is being undermined not just by woke scientists, but by those in “science studies,” like the authors of the paper at hand. I had read it a while back, and intended to post on it, but decided that I can’t spend all my time calling out ludicrous Woke articles. Well, I’m glad Krauss did mention this one. First, read his short post by clicking on the screenshot below:

One of Krauss’s colleagues sent him the paper. He reproduces the title and abstract, and I will, too, but my screenshot links to the paper, which has a free pdf you can download here. Krauss notes that the paper comes from The Physics Review, but it’s actually from Physical Review Physics Education Research. It’s not a physics journal per se, but a journal about physics education.

Voilà:

First author Amy Robertson is a physicist whose job is apparently curricular development and testing; as her page at Seattle Pacific University notes,

Dr. Robertson is PI of the federally funded grant, “Collaborative Research: University Student Conceptual Resources for Understanding Physics.” This project seeks to identify student resources for understanding forces and mechanical waves in the context of introductory physics instruction and to develop and test curricular materials that build on student resources. She is co-PI of two additional grants, one that studies elementary teacher learning about energy, and one that identifies best-practices for creating inclusive physics learning environments.

Your tax dollars at work.

Hairston’s c.v. shows him to be engaged in many things—mostly in the equity business—but not in physics research:

A noted speaker, consultant, researcher, minister, and lecturer, Tali’s capacity for multi-sector work is most realized in the variety of organizations and projects that seek his involvement. His expertise is in the work of organizational culture, equity-inclusive learning, and the intersections of public policy and community development. As a researcher, Hairston is contracted to do university physics and equity research work under several National Science Foundation grants. He travels nationally and internationally advising community development and social change work.

And I cannot emphasize enough how bad the paper is. Have a butcher’s. First, read the abstract above, and then have a look here.

The first paragraph sets the tone:

Critical Race Theory names that racism and white supremacy are endemic to all aspects of U.S. society, from employment to schooling to the law [1–7]. We see the outcomes of this in, for example, differential incarceration rates, rates of infection and death in the era of COVID, and police brutality. We also see the outcomes of this in physics.

And in the short incident analyzed at great length in this paper. The entire paper is, in fact, a lengthy and tendentious exegesis of six minutes of observing a presentation by three physics students, seen as “a case of whiteness”:

In this paper, we analyze a case of whiteness as social organization from an introductory physics course at a large public institution in the Western United States. We use the analytic markers from Sec. II to illustrate how whiteness shows up in this context, and we identify and discuss a number of mechanisms of control that co-produce whiteness in the six-minute episode of classroom interaction. We draw on tools of interaction analysis [59], including discourse, gesture, and gaze analysis, to unpack how whiteness is being constituted locally or interactionally. Our hope is that illustrating whiteness as social organization can contribute to readers’ awareness of and vision for disrupting and transforming this social organization in their own contexts [56,60] and support other researchers who want to do similar analyses.

Gaze analysis!

Three pseudonymous students, who self-identify as white (Gail), Hispanic (Paris), and Middle Eastern (Drake), are given a task to work together to present a physics problem to a class:

In this episode, Paris, Drake, and Gail have been tasked with constructing an answer to a series of questions about heat capacity. In particular, they have been asked to construct an energy interaction diagram (see Fig. 2) for measuring the heat capacity of a big bucket of water. They are then asked to use their energy interaction diagram and the definition of heat capacity to develop an algebraic relationship relating the change in thermal energy to the change in temperature and the heat capacity.

In the episode, Paris, Drake, and Gail work together as a small group in an introductory physics course at a large public institution in the Western U.S. The course draws extensively on physics-education research-based methods, and course meetings often alternate between small- and whole-group discussion, with students collaboratively constructing answers to questions .  in their groups and then sharing out to the whole class. Whiteboards feature prominently in the course; what is represented on the group’s whiteboard is often what gets oriented to in the large-group share-out.

There’s a footnote:

4 Middle Eastern is considered white according to U.S. federally mandated race categories [71], but middle Eastern people in the U.S. are subjected to and oppressed by white supremacy and Islamophobia [72]

Then the students interact, and it seems that Drake makes himself (and is seen by the teacher) as the center of attention. This is the six-minute “centering of whiteness”:

We argue that it is whiteness as social organization that makes Paris, Gail, Drake, and Iris’ behavior sensible. Within whiteness as social organization, there is a center that has been ascribed transcendent value; all else is, in effect, marginal. In this context, it makes sense that the EID, standing in for correctness and/or physics, will capture the attention of the actors, and it also makes sense that the person closest to it (by consensus or by force) would also receive the most attention. Activity that is not seen as productive toward these ends would also be seen as less valuable, highlighting ways in which whiteness and capitalism intersect. Whiteness makes “normal” this interactional unfolding, prompting questions like, “What else could have been done?” Importantly, here, whiteness masks that: there are many ways (not just Drake’s or even the prescribed, endorsed way) to construct the EID, many representations for the energy dynamics of this scenario, many ways to understand the heating of water (including those outside of traditional physics), etc. The point is not that Drake’s EID has no value; the point is that the space has been organized such that the EID and those closest to it have value at the exclusion of all else.

When I reread the paper (it’s been a long time), I thought to myself, “No, they’re not going to use whiteboards as an example of white supremacy!” But they did (my emphasis

3. Whiteboards

Entangled with the above is the use of whiteboards as a primary pedagogical tool. Though whiteboards have been shown to have a number of affordances when they are used as a collaborative tool that all members have access to [88], in this episode, they also play a role in reconstituting whiteness as social organization. In particular, whiteboards display written information for public consumption; they draw attention to themselves and in this case support the centering of an abstract representation and the person standing next to it, presenting. They collaborate with white organizational culture [89], where ideas and experiences gain value (become more central) when written down.’

I wonder what the authors would have said had the presentation been on a blackboard.

And the obligatory conclusion to the paper, flaunting virtue and mentioning the obligatory “harm” that can be caused by the observed six-minute interaction. And believe me, there are many sources of harm:

As we dream, and as we wait for whiteness as social organization to be dismantled, we can work to reduce harm in the spaces we move and work. Harm reduction, as a framework, acknowledges that white supremacy, patriarchy, classism, fatmisia, transmisia, ableism, xenophobia, and myriad other systems of oppression infuse space and structures and are a part of our socialization. Paired with real-time repair, harm reduction provides support and accountability in the midst of this reality, inviting us to be humans in process and in community and offering space and support to see and respond to harm [100]. Harm reduction, then, lives in the interstitial space between not yet, without giving up on what could be.

But Drake isn’t white: he identifies as “Middle Eastern”! It’s Gail who “presents as white.”  In fact, the whole six-minute scenario, analyzed in tedious Critical Theory detail over pages and pages, is simply a post facto confirmation of the authors’ CRT biases. It is not a piece of science, for there is no hypothesis to be tested. There are only confirmation of the authors’ biases.  It is tendentious, tedious, and offensive. In fact, the authors even include long statement of their “positionalities” showing their ideologies and backgrounds—and, perhaps unwittingly, devaluing any objectivity to the paper. I’ve put the entire positionality statement below the fold, but here’s the first bit of Robertson’s “positionality”:

Authors’ positionalities.—Robertson is a chronically ill and disabled, physics-Ph.D.-holding, thin wealthy white woman. Her analysis and writing were shaped by these identities, including her “insider” status in physics: because of her socialization in the discipline, she is able to name and make sense of physics values, representations, and practices.

Can’t we judge the “research”—although this isn’t research, but post facto justification—from the description of the work alone? Do we need the authors to give us their bona fides at length in the paper?

But enough. This is the second time I’ve gone through the paper, and it’s even worse than the first time. Note that although one author has physics training, this is not a physics paper but a physics study paper. Yet it’s in a physics-related journal, and could influence others who teach physics. It’s this kind of nonsense that explains why science itself, nibbled around the edges by termites, is going downhill.

Here’s a bit of what Krauss says:

That this got published in a peer-reviewed physics journal is what makes this so surprising.  It means there is something fundamentally wrong with the system, and it isn’t systemic racism.  It is sheer stupidity combined with lethargy.

The natural tendency of academics, and scientists in particular, is to ignore this kind of nonsense and focus on their own work.   But once the bar gets this low, and the flood waters are rising, you can be certain a lot of nasty effluence will be flowing out as well.    And with the pressing need for better physics education at all levels (that is, better ways to actually teach physics), this garbage filling up journals and taking away precious research resources means that there is less room for the good stuff.

The standards of a field are determined by the practitioners in the field.  That means it is about time that physicists started doing something about it.

Well, besides the fact that this is not a physics journal but a physics education journal, Krauss is right. He doesn’t pull any punches, and I agree that this kind of craziness leads to the displacement of good stuff— including ideology-free physics teaching.

But this doesn’t just displace the good stuff, it replaces the good stuff, turning regular physics into social engineering. And it’s not just in physics: we have plenty of examples in chemistry and biology. I’ve written about some of these, but don’t want to overload this website with this kind of stuff. Still, if you’re not in the sciences yourself, you do need to know what’s going on.

Click “read more” to see the authors’ “positionalities”:

Continue reading “Science “studies” helping bring down science” →

Now the “warranty scam” is going postal

April 12, 2022 • 8:15 am

I’m sure all of us get these scam phone calls asking whether your car warranty is up to date. I get at least one daily on my cellphone and many on my office phone, too. Does anybody actually fall for this scam?

It’s particularly amusing because my car is a 2000 Honda Civic—a 22 year old car! (I bought it used.) The warranty has long expired, but it’s in great shape (78,000 miles and I just had some preventive work done). But if this scam didn’t work on at least some people, it wouldn’t be ubiquitous. (Do they have it in Canada and the UK, too?)

But things have escalated. I checked my mailbox on the way to work today, and found this ludicrous postcard. It’s the first time I’ve been the recipient of this scam via mail.

Front (I’ve redacted my address):

Back:

I love the way they try to make it look official. I throught about calling the number, but I’m afraid they’d never leave me alone if they could get my incoming number. But somebody clearly has it anyway.