Volokh is on the case: I keep hearing about a supposed “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, or statements such as, “This isn’t free speech, it’s hate speech,” or “When does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas...
Some schools understand the value of data
In this small suburb outside Milwaukee, no one in the Menomonee Falls School District escapes the rigorous demands of data. Custodians monitor dirt under bathroom sinks, while the high school cafeteria supervisor tracks parent and student surveys of lunchroom food preferences. Administrators record monthly tallies of student disciplinary actions, and teachers post scatter plot diagrams of quiz...
“White Colonialism Interstellar Manifest Destiny Bullshit”
No, it’s not an Onion parody, it’s a comment on Elon Musk and SpaceX:
I can’t imagine why people don’t take social justice seriously.
Making fun of social justice, campus band and choir edition
Now even the students are making fun of it! First, from the Columbia band: Much of the band’s mockery was directed at the university’s sexual respect education program, a new requirement for all undergraduate and graduate students, which gives participants the option of attending a workshop on subjects like “bystander intervention,” or submitting artwork about sexual respect. “The arts option was...
Avoid Malcolm Gladwell bearing single studies
Malcolm Gladwell also thought the result was cool. Here is his description his book, David and Goliath: The CRT is really hard. But here’s the strange thing. Do you know the easiest way to raise people’s scores on the test? Make it just a little bit harder. The psychologists Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer tried this a few years ago with a group of undergraduates at Princeton University. First...
Dean Wormer is the hero and role model of Animal House
Have to love the title: College Kids Are Human Veal But the way students and especially administrators talk about college today, you’d think parents are paying ever-higher tuition so their children can attend a reeducation camp straight out of China’s Cultural Revolution. It’s as if college presidents, deans, and the ever-increasing number of bureaucrats and administrators and residence-life...
The future of college? Or just another over-hyped MOOC story?
Great article on a new start-up college that claims to be upending higher ed. Minerva, which operates for profit, started teaching its inaugural class of 33 students this month. To seed this first class with talent, Minerva gave every admitted student a full-tuition scholarship of $10,000 a year for four years, plus free housing in San Francisco for the first year. Next year’s class is expected...
Parental selection effects, Appalachia edition
Nicholas Kristof, visiting nearby Jackson, Ky., last year, was shocked by parents who were taking their children out of literacy classes because the possibility of improved academic performance would threaten $700-a-month Social Security disability benefits, which increasingly are paid out for nebulous afflictions such as loosely defined learning disorders.
I like to keep my taxes low as much as the next person …
But yikes! I am trying to picture the conversation between the expectant parents. New evidence on taxes and the timing of birth This paper uses data from the universe of tax returns filed between 2001 and 2010 to test whether parents shift the timing of childbirth around the New Year to gain tax benefits. Filers have an incentive to shift births from early January into late December, through...