Monday roundup

 As you're aware, since the Biden administration has commenced, there is a renewed focus on the global climate. One figure whose pronouncements on the subject are getting a lot of attention is Bill Gates. David Harsanyi at National Review shows that most of what Gates has to say is good old collectivist coercion based on shoddy "scientific" conclusions:

Americans use over 20 million barrels of petroleum products every day — now more abundant and easier to extract than ever before — so, unless some completely new technology emerges, it will take a fascistic technocracy to win this conflict. Now, I don’t use “fascistic” lightly here. Nor am I suggesting that Gates envisions goose-stepping Gestapo agents banging on your door every time you set the air conditioner below 75 degrees. And, anyway, what kind of monster would own an air conditioner with an extinction-level threat hanging over humanity? He does, however, envision the state dictating virtually every decision made by industry that relates to carbon emissions — which is to say the entire economy. If there is a more precise phrase that describes a state-controlled economy that directs both private and public ownership over the means of production during wartime, I will be happy to use it.

One for the you-will-get-your-mind-right file. Coca Cola has instituted a confronting-racism "training program" that shows you how to be less oppressive, arrogant, certain, defensive and ignorant. One screen from the presentation says that "one-time workshops on racism are not enough." The company needs to "establish a set of organizational practices such as monthly affinity groups, cross-racial discussions, ongoing professional development, [and] revamped interview questions that address racial issues."

Robin DiAngelo of White Fragility fame is involved in the program's development.

I do believe I've had my last swig of Dr. Pemberton's iconic American elixir. 

Another one for the you-will-get-your-mind-right file: Bari Weiss, writing at her Substack page, recounts the experience of Smith College's Student Support Coordinator Jodi Shaw, who resigned her position rather than submit to identity-politics militancy:

Jodi Shaw was, until this afternoon, a staffer at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She made $45,000 a year — less than the yearly tuition at the school. 

She is a divorced mother of two children. She is a lifelong liberal and an alumna of the college. And she has had a front-row seat to the illiberal, neo-racist ideology masquerading as progress.

In October 2020, after Shaw felt that she had exhausted all her internal options, she posted a video on YouTube, blowing the whistle on, what she says, is an atmosphere of racial discrimination at the school. 

“I ask that Smith College stop reducing my personhood to a racial category. Stop telling me what I must think and feel about myself,” she said. “Stop presuming to know who I am or what my culture is based upon my skin color. Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based on their skin color.”

From Shaw's letter to Smith's president:

in August 2018, just days before I was to present a library orientation program into which I had poured a tremendous amount of time and effort, and which had previously been approved by my supervisors, I was told that I could not proceed with the planned program. Because it was going to be done in rap form and “because you are white,” as my supervisor told me, that could be viewed as “cultural appropriation.” My supervisor made clear he did not object to a rap in general, nor to the idea of using music to convey orientation information to students. The problem was my skin color.

I was up for a full-time position in the library at that time, and I was essentially informed that my candidacy for that position was dependent upon my ability, in a matter of days, to reinvent a program to which I had devoted months of time. 

Humiliated, and knowing my candidacy for the full-time position was now dead in the water, I moved into my current, lower-paying position as Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life. 

As it turned out, my experience in the library was just the beginning. In my new position, I was told on multiple occasions that discussing my personal thoughts and feelings about my skin color is a requirement of my job. I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of my employment. I endured meetings in which another staff member violently banged his fist on the table, chanting “Rich, white women! Rich, white women!” in reference to Smith alumnae. I listened to my supervisor openly name preferred racial quotas for job openings in our department. I was given supplemental literature in which the world’s population was reduced to two categories — “dominant group members” and “subordinated group members” — based solely on characteristics like race. 

Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. I believe such a curriculum is dehumanizing, prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young people who are just beginning to find their way in the world.

Although I have spoken to many staff and faculty at the college who are deeply troubled by all of this, they are too terrified to speak out about it. This illustrates the deeply hostile and fearful culture that pervades Smith College.

The last straw came in January 2020, when I attended a mandatory Residence Life staff retreat focused on racial issues. The hired facilitators asked each member of the department to respond to various personal questions about race and racial identity. When it was my turn to respond, I said “I don’t feel comfortable talking about that.” I was the only person in the room to abstain.

Later, the facilitators told everyone present that a white person’s discomfort at discussing their race is a symptom of “white fragility.” They said that the white person may seem like they are in distress, but that it is actually a “power play.” In other words, because I am white, my genuine discomfort was framed as an act of aggression. I was shamed and humiliated in front of all of my colleagues.

I filed an internal complaint about the hostile environment, but throughout that process, over the course of almost six months, I felt like my complaint was taken less seriously because of my race. I was told that the civil rights law protections were not created to help people like me. And after I filed my complaint, I started to experience retaliatory behavior, like having important aspects of my job taken away without explanation. 

Per Frederick Hess at the American Enterprise Institute, more campus identity-politics jackboot-ism, leveled at an economics professor who had the temerity to speak common sense about poverty:

Professor Frank Gunter has learned that, the next time Lehigh University asks him to talk about poverty, he should keep his mouth shut. Earlier this year, Lehigh asked its business school faculty to offer counsel to the Biden administration in a series of short “kitchen table talk” videos.  

Gunter, a professor of economics, did as he was asked. In late January, Lehigh posted his video on “Three Myths Concerning Poverty.” Sounding a lot like AEI’s own Ian Rowe, Gunter argued that poverty is not “mostly a matter of race,” that it’s not a “generational curse,” and that individuals have great agency when it comes to determining their own economic fate.

Gunter observed that most black Americans are not in poverty and that three-quarters of poor Americans aren’t black, while pointing to data on economic mobility to rebut those who suggest that poverty is an inherited condition. He proceeded to note that evidence on the “success sequence” suggests that a series of straightforward actions (finish high school, get a job, get married before having kids) will keep most Americans out of poverty. 

For doing what Lehigh had asked, Gunter was soon attacked by students and faculty for his choice of topics, evidence, data presentation, verbiage, and context. Students for Black Lives Matter thundered, “The points brought up by Professor Gunter were not points of opinion, but incorrect and damaging statistics meant to put blame on impoverished people.” Of course, what Gunter said is more accurately characterized as a series of “accurate data points” than as “points of opinion.”

In any event, Students for Black Lives Matter labeled Gunter’s little video “racist and ignorant” and then gave the game away, declaring, “We don’t need a debate, we need action.” In short order, the university complied. It took down the video. The College of Business then explained that, to correct for Gunter’s wrongthink, it would “post more videos with diverse perspectives on this topic.” Lehigh then reposted Gunter’s informal little video chat alongside a critique created by its departments of sociology and anthropology, without informing Gunter of what it was doing or giving him a chance to respond in turn.

Even the teaching of mathematics is not untouched by this kind of poison.  

Look, I'm no fan of Ted Cruz or Kayleigh McEnanay, and not much of one of Dan Crenshaw, but this campaign afoot on the Harvard campus to revoke their degrees from that institution is chilling.

Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition on what you need to know about the Equality Act that the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on. The essence of why it's disturbing:

As Andrew T. Walker wrote in an article for TGC, “The bill represents the most invasive threat to religious liberty ever proposed in America. Given that it touches areas of education, public accommodation, employment, and federal funding, were it to pass, its sweeping effects on religious liberty, free speech, and freedom of conscience would be both historic and also chilling.”

“Virtually no area of American life would emerge unscathed from the Equality Act’s reach,” Walker added. “No less significant would be the long-term effects of how the law would shape the moral imagination of future generations.”

Twenty-four states have similar laws, and the consequences for residents of those states have been disastrous, says Monica Burke, research assistant in the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society. “These policies are not being used to promote equality,” Burke says. “Instead, they are being used as a blunt-force weapon to ban disagreement on marriage and sexuality by punishing dissenters.”

Arkansas state senator Jim Hendren's powerful statement on why he's leaving the Republican Party. 

The valid argument that the Very Stable Genius's most positive legacy is his judicial appointments is rich with irony. Today's example is the Supreme Court ruling that a New York grand jury can obtain the VSG's tax returns.  Hee hee.