Why are some universities reinstating standardized test requirements?
Some elite colleges that previously had abandoned admissions requirements to submit standardized test scores are now re-instituting such requirements. This may seem like a return to old-fashioned merit-based admissions. But apparently there’s a different explanation, at least at Yale and perhaps at other universities:
Yet, the meritocracy argument does not appear to have won the day entirely in New Haven. The university buttressed its announcement of the new admissions policy with the claim that “tests can help increase rather than decrease diversity,” and that “inviting students to apply without any test scores can, inadvertently, disadvantage students from low-income, first-generation, and rural backgrounds.” Mandatory test scores, in other words, are not back in because they produce the most qualified student body but because the university now believes that testing in fact promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion, which presumably remain Yale’s highest priorities.
How did Yale’s leadership reach this conclusion? “When admissions officers reviewed applications with no scores,” the university’s statement maintains, “they placed greater weight on other parts of the application. But this shift frequently worked to the disadvantage of applicants from lower socio-economic backgrounds.” The university’s faceless admissions bureaucrats may, for example, have failed to consider that applicants from low-income secondary schools have fewer means besides standardized test scores to demonstrate their talent, while more “privileged” students can produce transcripts with honors courses, long lists of unique study and “enrichment” opportunities, and more informative recommendation letters from dedicated teachers in stabler environments.
Seems as though it was the law of unintended consequences that took over when the tests were jettisoned.
NOTE: And while we’re at it, there’s another Harvard professor accused of plagiarism:
Harvard professor Christina Cross is a rising star in the field of critical race studies. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, secured the support of the National Science Foundation, and garnered attention from the New York Times, where she published an influential article title “The Myth of the Two-Parent Home.”
Cross’s 2019 dissertation, “The Color, Class, and Context of Family Structure and Its Association with Children’s Educational Performance,” won a slate of awards, including the American Sociological Association Dissertation Award and the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, and helped catapult her onto the Harvard faculty.
According to a new complaint filed with Harvard’s office of research integrity, however, Cross’s work is compromised by multiple instances of plagiarism, including “verbatim plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, uncited paraphrasing, and uncited quotations from other sources.”
The Harvard Crimson doesn’t think much of the charges, citing a statement by “plagiarism expert” Jonathan Bailey saying the allegations against Cross are weak. Recently a total of four black female scholars in the race or social justice fields at Harvard, including ex-President Claudine Gay, have been accused of plagiarism. The Crinson takes a “conservatives pounce” approach to the whole thing:
The allegations against Cross mark the fourth in a rapid series of anonymous plagiarism complaints of varying severity lodged against Black women at Harvard amid a growing right-wing attack against diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education. …
In an interview, Bailey said he was concerned that the recent spate of allegations represent the “weaponization of plagiarism” to score political points — not to deal with serious concerns of research misconduct.
“It’s using plagiarism allegations, not to address issues of academic or research integrity, but rather to address political or social grievances that a person may have,” Bailey said.
Squatters’ rights, 21st century style
It seems that an old and widespread law known as squatters’ rights is currently being exploited in many states by people occupying other people’s vacant property:
In many states, a person or persons can enter and inhabit another person’s vacant property, set up house, and after—in most cases—a mere 30 days claim some form of bizarre “right” to inhabit the home in which they did not pay a day’s rent nor a single mortgage payment: a home they do not own, did not buy, and have no right to occupy.
The law can then treat them as tenants, which gives them many rights. How extensive those rights are depends on the locality, but they can be very extensive indeed and it can take a long time to evict the squatter-tenants.
Florida has just passed a law, signed by Governor DeSantis, that highly speeds up the process in Florida and allows the police to immediately remove squatters.
One of the reasons squatters have been in the news recently is this:
A Venezuelan migrant has gone viral after he posted a video to social media that explained how illegal immigrants can take advantage of squatting laws and stay in American homes.
“I have thought about invading a house in the United States,” a man identified as Leonal Moreno said in the TikTok video. “I found out that there is a law that says that if a house is not inhabited, we can seize it.”
The man told his followers in Spanish that he anticipated his next business would be “invading” abandoned houses. He claimed that some of his African friends have told him they have already taken seven homes in the U.S.
Great.
Niall Ferguson: a second Holocaust is possible
Worth listening to:
At al Shifa hospital: the value of a surprise attack
When the post-October 7 Israeli operation in Gaza began, the IDF gave the Gazans a lot of warning. This was primarily to allow Gazan civilians to evacuate. But it also had the effect of warning the Hamas terrorists and allowing many of them to keep moving around ahead of the IDF, aided by the extremely extensive tunnel system.
It was an incredible challenge: not only urban warfare, but urban warfare with an unusual ability for the fighters to hide out underground as well as to keep hostages there and move them around as well. Nevertheless, the Israeli forces made inroads, killing, wounding, and also capturing many Hamas fighters. But not enough.
Which brings us to the recent operation in al Shifa Hospital, about which we’re getting even more information. It has been a very successful raid:
The IDF troops have retaken most of the complex, with Israeli troops engaged in isolated firefights with well dug-in terrorists, reports suggest. “Hamas and PIJ leaders are among 600 apprehended at the central Gazan hospital, after Israeli intelligence indicated the compound was retaken,” the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported Thursday evening. “The arrested terrorists were transferred to the ISA [Shin Bet] to be interrogated, and the IDF continued the operation in the Shifa hospital compound, saying firefights were ongoing.”
The IDF previously raided Shifa hospital in mid-November, uncovering and destroying the terror tunnels beneath the hospital. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists crawled back into the complex, using Gaza’s largest medical facility to hoard weapons and direct attacks against the Israeli troops.
This is a large number of operatives falling into Israeli hands in one fell swoop and probably able to provide significant intelligence:
Breaking Now: ?IDF Spokesman now: The Shifa Hospital operation, was the largest operation IDF has conducted since 10/7. We captured the entire leadership of the PIJ in Gaza and many senior Hamas members; we will only reveal their names after their questioning so as not to reveal…
— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) March 21, 2024
This is highly significant:
While Israel gave prior warnings during the November operation, this time the military carried out a surprise raid on Hamas-infested hospital — catching the terrorists off-guard. …
The surprise raid on Shifa marks a shift in the Israeli military strategy. “These IDF sources said that the paradigm for IDF action in Gaza has shifted, and it is now ready to act anywhere and anytime,” the JPost noted.
My hunch is that another very important factor was the previous destruction of tunnels under the hospital. The Hamas fighters probably had to take refuge in the above-ground hospital facilities instead, and when the Israeli attack came they couldn’t escape through the tunnels as they had before. Thus, the large number of casualties and even larger number of surrenders.
The entire episode very much underlines the price Israel has been paying for its efforts to placate the international community and to spare Gazan civilians.
Open thread 3/22/24
Lawfare against Trump: all that matters are results
I’ve had a number of interesting – although short – conversations with friends about the lawfare cases against Trump. A pattern has emerged: they’re upset that the cases have been stalled, and they perceive the courts and prosecutors as going too easy on Trump.
I find this extraordinary. But when I really think about it, it’s not so very extraordinary at all. For starters, they probably read and hear plenty of information in the MSM from “legal experts” about how valid and righteous these cases are. In addition, most people are unfamiliar with the details of law and why they protect both sides if followed scrupulously. That part of our education has been either neglected in the first place or forgotten by most people if once learned. Lawyers remember, but so many lawyers are activists (and on the left) these days that they mostly employ their knowledge and skills in sophistry to help the left.
So what most people understand are results. If Trump is evil, then he should be stopped by any means necessary, including prison. It’s the old Roper from A Man For All Seasons attitude:
In that clip, at least the people arguing to “cut a great road through the law” realized what they were advocating, and why (after all, think about how More met his end). The people I’ve been talking to don’t think that the cases against Trump involve any such thing. In wanting him convicted – and soon – they believe they are promoting the rule of law rather than flouting it.
Gazans’ perceptions of Hamas and October 7
First, we have this from a recent poll of Palestinians:
More than five months after Hamas-led savage marauders slaughtered more than 1200 Israeli men, women and children, support for the October 7 massacre is at an all-time high among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
“Despite the ensuing war, the humanitarian crisis and the atrocities committed against Israelis, the vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank (71 percent) and the Gaza Strip (71 percent) still viewed the October 7 “offensive”,” the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported Thursday citing a poll released by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).
The poll also indicated that Palestinians would like Hamas to continue in power, with 64% of those in the West Bank preferring it and 52% of Gazans preferring it.
Of course, there’s always the caveat that Palestinians in opposition to these pro-October 7 and pro-Hamas positions might just refuse to answer the poll questions, or they might lie. But from what I’ve seen, there is indeed a great deal of support among Palestinians for the pro-jihadi positions, and for eliminating Israel entirely.
Second, we have this finding, from what I believe is the same poll:
Ninety-three percent of Palestinians say they believe Hamas did not commit atrocities during its mass invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7 …
Notably, among Palestinians who watched videos of the atrocities filmed by the perpetrators themselves, 81% still did not believe they were committed.
Only one in five Palestinians has seen such videos, according to the survey.
Denial is rife, and is encouraged by news sources in the Palestinian press and leadership. I’m not saying that a great many Palestinians wouldn’t support October 7 even if they knew the entire story, but I suspect that the numbers approving would at least be somewhat lower.
[NOTE: Also see this about the mindset of someone like Sinwar. Here’s an excerpt, which describes Sinwar when he was in an Israeli prison during the first decade of the 21st century, how he got there, and how he got released:
Sinwar studied his enemy assiduously. He read Israeli newspapers, took classes in Jewish history through the prison’s “open university,” and spoke to Bitton about Hamas’ goals—the expulsion of all Jews from Palestine, the duty to implement God’s laws as given to Muhammad on all sacred Muslim soil. Numerous efforts to recruit him in prison failed. “The struggle continued inside the prison,” Bitton said. Sinwar was not married then, and he had few visitors. “Hamas and the struggle were his life.” …
Having initially been arrested in 1982 for what Israel termed subversive activities, he was rearrested in 1985. Released again, he and Mushtaha founded Munazzamat al Jihad w’al-Dawa (MAJD), an organization responsible for rooting out Palestinian collaborators with Israel and other rival factions. Sinwar excelled at his job, earning himself the nickname “Butcher of Khan Yunis.” In 1988 he was arrested again for planning the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians he considered collaborators. According to Israeli press accounts, he had acknowledged during his interrogation having strangled two of the Palestinians, inadvertently killing another during his interrogation, and shooting the fourth who had tried to escape. He was said to have led investigators to the orchard where the bodies were buried. In 1989, Israel sentenced him to four life sentences.
Under normal circumstances, a man with such a violent resume would not have been released. But after Israeli Staff Sergeant (then-Corporal) Gilad Shalit was kidnapped in 2006, negotiations with Hamas inside and outside of prisons began. Bitton himself was involved in the talks with Sinwar and other Hamas negotiators. Brokered by German and Egyptian mediators and signed in Cairo in 2011, the deal agreed to Shalit’s return in exchange for the phased release of 1,027 Israeli-held prisoners, including some 315 Palestinians who were serving life sentences for having been convicted of the worst crimes. Among them were Sinwar and his two lieutenants.
Hamas’ leaders considered Israel’s willingness to release over 1,000 Palestinians for a single Israeli soldier a victory. Most of the prisoners were ecstatic about their release. But Sinwar denounced the trade. “He was furious, even though he was among those scheduled to be released,” Bitton recalled. He told me that releasing Shalit for a thousand Palestinian prisoners was “not enough.” All of the Palestinians in Israeli jails had to be released.
Much more at the link.]
The new RNC and election integrity
I hope the shakeups at the RNC described here aren’t a case of “too little, too late.”
The following is from an interview with Lara Trump on “The Benny Show”:
We have the first-ever election integrity division.
First ever? It’s extraordinary that it took this long. There certainly have been efforts before, but apparently they’ve not been coordinated by the RNC.
More from Lara Trump:
We have, in 23 states, 78 lawsuits single-handedly to address this issue, to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat in 2024. …
In addition, we now have the ability to train poll workers. These are not just poll watchers, people who physically stand in a polling location and kinda look around and maybe might be able to see something. These are people who get to handle a ballot, who can count the ballots coming in and the ballots going out, so they know what the numbers should be at the end of the day.
On top of that, we are also hiring and we are asking for volunteer attorneys all across this country. We want you in a polling location near you every single minute that there is voting going on because we want to be able to address a problem immediately, in real-time. We cannot wait until it’s too late.
Good point. In terms of voting fraud, an ounce of prevention is worth far more than a pound of cure, because it is virtually impossible to do much after the fact to prove the existence of the type of fraud made possible by widespread mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, and voting machines.
More:
But we also have to start thinking about things like legal ballot harvesting, something we’ve never embraced as a party. We’re going to start doing it now. …
We also have to embrace early voting. I know we want one day of voting in this country. It doesn’t exist right now. We’ve got to bank enough votes going into November 5th that we’re not playing catch-up on election day.
These all sound like excellent ideas. They need to be implemented pronto.
Open thread 3/21/24
Natalia Makarova was a great ballet dancer. I never knew she was a comedienne too:
Is the universe twice as old as previously thought?
Last year, theoretical physicist Rajendra Gupta from the University of Ottawa in Canada published a rather extraordinary proposal that the Universe’s currently accepted age is a trick of the light, one that masks its truly ancient state while also ridding us of the need to explain hidden forces.
Gupta’s latest analysis suggests oscillations from the earliest moments in time preserved in large-scale cosmic structures support his claims.
“The study’s findings confirm that our previous work about the age of the Universe being 26.7 billion years has allowed us to discover that the Universe does not require dark matter to exist,” says Gupta.
“In standard cosmology, the accelerated expansion of the Universe is said to be caused by dark energy but is in fact due to the weakening forces of nature as it expands, not due to dark energy.” …
To replace existing models with CCC+TL, Gupta would need to convince cosmologists his model does a better job of explaining what we see at large. His latest paper attempts to do that by using CCC+TL to explain fluctuations in the spread of visible matter across space caused by sound waves in a newborn Universe, and the glow of ancient dawn known as the cosmic microwave background.
While his analysis concludes his hybrid tired light theory can play nicely with certain features of the Universe’s residual echoes of light and sound, it does so only if we also ditch the idea that dark matter is also a thing.
I don’t pretend for even a moment to be able to evaluate the competing theories, but wouldn’t the jettisoning of dark matter be a feature rather than a bug?
Calling all astrophysicists and cosmologists!
Another roundup
Sometimes there’s just too much news to do justice to it all. Thus, another roundup.
(1) Tony Bobulinksi address the House:
EXPLOSIVE: Hunter Biden's former business partner Tony Bobulinski describes the Biden family, says, they are serial liars, criminals. WATCH pic.twitter.com/XMjT0ROY6u
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) March 20, 2024
Brave man.
(2) Apparently we will finally get to see the Nashville shooter’s manifesto.
(3) If you’re confused by the various court rulings about the Texas law on detaining illegal aliens, reading this LI post but in particular this comment in response to the post should help.
(4) Trump might let Letitia James seize Trump Tower:
As Donald Trump faces a Monday deadline to post a $454 million bond in the civil fraud case against him in New York, insiders said he may be weighing a little-discussed option: Doing nothing.
The ex-president reportedly has been struggling to raise the cash for the bond — either from banks or wealthy friends — with his lawyers claiming on Monday that it was a “practical impossibility.”
While some reports have raised speculation that Trump may “go nuclear” with a Chapter 11 filing to protect his prize real estate assets across Manhattan, experts said bankruptcy would create unwelcome complications as the 2024 election season comes to a head. …
A third possibility, however, is to let the deadline pass, leaving it to New York Attorney General Letitia James to seize Trump’s bank accounts or buildings — including Trump Tower, from which he declared his 2016 presidential run, and which famously includes his personal penthouse.
It’s an option Trump appears to have considered – partly because he believes the chances are good that he could recover the assets on appeal, even if he is forced to take his case to the US Supreme Court, according to friends.
The NY case has great potential to hurt the economy of New York by scaring off real estate investors, and such a taking of real estate assets would only further that perception and that reacion. It also will further the perception of Trump as a victim of injustice – a perception I believe is quite correct.
In the NY court system, Trump can’t appeal unless he posts the money. But if James seizes the assets, I assume that would give him the right of appeal, because it would be the equivalent? If not, I’m pretty sure he still could appeal on an emergency basis to a higher federal court.
(5) Trump is suing ABC and Stephanopoulos for saying he’d been convicted of rape:
“Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw, ” Stephanopoulos asked during the interview.
But because both defendants are part of the news media, actual malice and/or reckless disregard for the truth must be proved in order to win a judgment. It’s certainly been alleged, but proving it is often very very difficult, which is why the MSM feels free to issue such defamations for political purposes. From the complaint:
“These statements were and remain false, and were made by Defendant Stephanopoulos with actual malice or with a reckless disregard for the truth given that Defendant Stephanopoulos knows that these statements are patently and demonstrably false,” Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, wrote in the 20-page complaint.
I predict that Trump won’t win this case, because of Sullivan and the resultant high burden of proof.