He’s fresh off a cross-country flight and pushing through jet lag, but John McWhorter is back nevertheless, and he’s bringing the heat. With Claudine Gay now out of the top spot at Harvard, there’s little news to report. But the reverberations of her departure are going to be felt for some time, and there’s still much left to discuss. It could be that we’ll look back on the entire debacle as a pivotal event in our era’s racial politics. Or perhaps it will turn out to be no more than a blip, a vaguely remembered controversy that will slip down the memory hole.
[Time 45:00] John wonders if Amy Wax really did say “X, Y, Z” as reported by former students. Ask Wilfred Reilly his opinion. Hoaxers and the like have difficult task of imagining what another person would say. Or perhaps they are aware of other complaints that they use as a template.
[Time 39:00]; John talks about IQ Test results in Britain. Glen cautions about selection bias. I want to weigh in. People who immigrate from country A to B are a special subset of the country of origin’s population. By “special”, I mean circumstances that set them apart such as dire poverty or extreme wealth, war victim, etc. Then, those who become available to participate in the study are another special sub-group, within. Apart from geniuses who really are much more intelligent; I suspect the IQ Test actually measures knowledge and skills.
I saw Reilly on podcast with Boghossian last week. I have two of Reilly’s books, but not the most recent one.
If you watch commentators such as Marc Lamont Hill and MSNBC commentators, they seem not to be conceding errors about DEI, 1619 Project, etc. In fact, October 7 and anti-semitism charges in some way confirm that white colonialism as seen through Israel is still in power and is still in ascendancy at the expense of progress as seen by the racist firing of Claudine Gay. In short, it would seem these progressives don't see the battle as won or over, just paused. The question is where does DEI go from here? Does it change? And does it re-emerge? If so, how?
There’s a logical fallacy in how you guys are evaluating scholars here: if Claudine Gay can become president of Harvard, then conventional distinctions cannot be taken at face value absent properly expert judgment. And trust me as one in aesthetics, Oxman’s work is totally trash.
Everyone gets judged unfairly because of stereotyped identitarian notions, but they’re by no means all equally weighted in terms of prevailing forces of power. Nietzsche remains crucial to understanding how the sometimes very real power of the supposedly powerless can have absolutely disastrous consequences.
The Summers thicker tails hypothesis would be very stupid to naturalize transhistorically in any discriminatory fashion though given gender conventions (e.g., the liberty to spend much less time attending to their cosmetic appearance than women have to (or want to) as the more aestheticized sex -- I wouldn’t rule out the idea of a transhistorical natural difference entirely here, but it’s certainly historically or conventionally coded and enforced, in a way reflecting real desires and power differences -- and men have also historically been much freer to focus on their jobs with women restricted to the domestic sphere. Women couldn’t even have their own credit cards until the 1970s, and until the Sixties at least their lives could be ruined by ostracism if they moved about too freely in public: La donna e mobile!
In other words, Summers’ over naturalized sexism is just as poorly grounded as Murray’s over naturalized racism, though again I would rule out some level of natural differences, both at the extremes and on average.
The criteria for judging a scholar shouldn’t be quantitative beyond a very limited point , but rather qualitative: i.e., one great book ought to outweigh twenty mediocre ones.
Regarding John's 2 categories of plagiarism: Carol Swain wrote an oped in the WSJ entitled "Claudine Gay and My Scholarship." If a valid observation, Swain cites a case of Type-2 Plagiarism - claiming someone else's ideas as one's own without acknowledgement of attribution.
I am surprised this has not risen to TGS level . . . or did I miss something?
The part when Glenn and John were naming the black conservatives and Larry elder was a late addition was funny, and John cracked me up with “Clarence Thomas’ nephew”!
It wasn’t racist to fire Claudine Gay! It was racist to hire her in the first place!
John - we really need you to use your linguistic credentials to clarify for the rest of us what the word racist means. Does it mean that blacks can’t be racist against whites? Does it mean that only white people can be racist? If blacks can’t be racist in a white world (i.e., the US), can they be racist in a black dominant place like Nigeria?
What does “racist” mean??? I know what I think it means, but I guess I’m pretty literal.
- Amy Wax is a White nationalist and/or a White nationalist sympathizer.
Seriously. The woman socializes with Jared Taylor, a man who has been committed to that cause for literally decades. Even on this show, she questioned--or pretended to question--whether American Renaissance represented White nationalism.
Like seriously. Who tf are we kidding? =)
- In practical terms, "race realist" is a euphemism for White nationalist. Because apparently we can no longer say "White nationalist" without offending some very snowflakey (no pun intended) White nationalists.
If you call yourself a race realist and hang out with Jared Taylor, and you're White, that is enough evidence for me. The exceptions only prove the rule.
If you want to argue that there's nothing wrong with White nationalism, or that it's warranted, fine; go ahead; whatever. But don't suggest that Amy Wax is none of the above. That's just delusional.
That said, John has an interesting question. What precisely did Wax say in those instances? Have her words been twisted? Do we have the proper context? Is it possible that her political and academic enemies have opted to pull out all of the stops to get rid of her? It wouldn't shock me.
But she's still a White nationalist; and pure scum to me.
I’d love to think that DEI is on its way out, and there has definitely been some movement in more conservative states, but you don’t want to get too complacent. I could easily imagine people getting themselves whipped up into a fervor in the same way that every leftist I knew (and I live in California) was 100% sure Hilary was going to DESTROY Trump at the ballot box. Then more recently every conservative was sure that a red wave would sweep through, proving that people were sick of all this woke stuff and would show it at the ballot box.
At my school I did notice that none of the FLEX talks this semester were about social justice so it seems like some sort of important shift is happening. Then again, we just drafted a land acknowledgement and rewrote our educational master plan to put DEI as one of the main pillars. What might appear to us to be some sort of opening of the floodgates could be completely dismissed by those for whom there’s nothing to gain from acknowledging it
I had to sit with the discomfort of having read that Adolph Reed piece, as the kids say. The sad thing is that I agree with him that if everything is resistance nothing is or at least you cannot use any discernment once something is called resistance which we can see the disastrous effects of in recent times. In the clear understanding that Marek warned me about them I also recall the particularly well attended J Street zoom with Khalil Shikaki that I attended and that the attendees were giving the elemental respect of listening to a pollster instead of a whisperer to the essence of the Palestinian soul.
The replication issue is real. My guess is…plenty of administrators and college presidents with thin CV(s); but they do a fine job for the university. So, no complaints.
Interview a few academics who talk about various epochs of family structure.
Glenn and John are both right about Claudine Gay, IMO. No matter how insubstantial her plagiarism was (and I agree with John on the need for a different word and that borrowing words is a lesser offense than stealing ideas or work), if it could get an undergraduate punished it's not really acceptable in the university president.
I agree with John that there are two types of plagiarism, and I agree with you that similar distinctions should be made for undergrads. However, my thoughts on plagiarism are more nuanced than John's. Gay's plagiarism might have been on boilerplate issues, but she was a serial plagiarizer. This was not due to something that she overlooked; she changed a few words around to try to legitimize the plagiarism. One also has to look at Gay's plagiarism in the context of her published work. Her work does not seem to have any substantial new ideas in it. It might be true that her plagiarizing did not involve stealing any new ideas from someone, but her work did not seem to have any new ideas. Glenn correctly contrasts this with Neri Oxman, who seems to be at the cutting edge of her field.
This being said, Gay's issues pale in comparison to what seems to have happened with Harvard Med School professors at Dana Carver. They seem to have falsified data on 36 of their publications. Data falsification on medical studies could change treatment protocols, and patients could lose their lives because of this. This could turn out to be a criminal case in which people are sent to prison.
[Time 45:00] John wonders if Amy Wax really did say “X, Y, Z” as reported by former students. Ask Wilfred Reilly his opinion. Hoaxers and the like have difficult task of imagining what another person would say. Or perhaps they are aware of other complaints that they use as a template.
[Time 39:00]; John talks about IQ Test results in Britain. Glen cautions about selection bias. I want to weigh in. People who immigrate from country A to B are a special subset of the country of origin’s population. By “special”, I mean circumstances that set them apart such as dire poverty or extreme wealth, war victim, etc. Then, those who become available to participate in the study are another special sub-group, within. Apart from geniuses who really are much more intelligent; I suspect the IQ Test actually measures knowledge and skills.
I saw Reilly on podcast with Boghossian last week. I have two of Reilly’s books, but not the most recent one.
If you watch commentators such as Marc Lamont Hill and MSNBC commentators, they seem not to be conceding errors about DEI, 1619 Project, etc. In fact, October 7 and anti-semitism charges in some way confirm that white colonialism as seen through Israel is still in power and is still in ascendancy at the expense of progress as seen by the racist firing of Claudine Gay. In short, it would seem these progressives don't see the battle as won or over, just paused. The question is where does DEI go from here? Does it change? And does it re-emerge? If so, how?
There’s a logical fallacy in how you guys are evaluating scholars here: if Claudine Gay can become president of Harvard, then conventional distinctions cannot be taken at face value absent properly expert judgment. And trust me as one in aesthetics, Oxman’s work is totally trash.
I think Neri Oxman’s aesthetics are as vulgar and hackish as Walter Isaacson’s Leonardo biography -- both totally unreadable.
Everyone gets judged unfairly because of stereotyped identitarian notions, but they’re by no means all equally weighted in terms of prevailing forces of power. Nietzsche remains crucial to understanding how the sometimes very real power of the supposedly powerless can have absolutely disastrous consequences.
The Summers thicker tails hypothesis would be very stupid to naturalize transhistorically in any discriminatory fashion though given gender conventions (e.g., the liberty to spend much less time attending to their cosmetic appearance than women have to (or want to) as the more aestheticized sex -- I wouldn’t rule out the idea of a transhistorical natural difference entirely here, but it’s certainly historically or conventionally coded and enforced, in a way reflecting real desires and power differences -- and men have also historically been much freer to focus on their jobs with women restricted to the domestic sphere. Women couldn’t even have their own credit cards until the 1970s, and until the Sixties at least their lives could be ruined by ostracism if they moved about too freely in public: La donna e mobile!
In other words, Summers’ over naturalized sexism is just as poorly grounded as Murray’s over naturalized racism, though again I would rule out some level of natural differences, both at the extremes and on average.
The criteria for judging a scholar shouldn’t be quantitative beyond a very limited point , but rather qualitative: i.e., one great book ought to outweigh twenty mediocre ones.
Regarding John's 2 categories of plagiarism: Carol Swain wrote an oped in the WSJ entitled "Claudine Gay and My Scholarship." If a valid observation, Swain cites a case of Type-2 Plagiarism - claiming someone else's ideas as one's own without acknowledgement of attribution.
I am surprised this has not risen to TGS level . . . or did I miss something?
The part when Glenn and John were naming the black conservatives and Larry elder was a late addition was funny, and John cracked me up with “Clarence Thomas’ nephew”!
It wasn’t racist to fire Claudine Gay! It was racist to hire her in the first place!
John - we really need you to use your linguistic credentials to clarify for the rest of us what the word racist means. Does it mean that blacks can’t be racist against whites? Does it mean that only white people can be racist? If blacks can’t be racist in a white world (i.e., the US), can they be racist in a black dominant place like Nigeria?
What does “racist” mean??? I know what I think it means, but I guess I’m pretty literal.
Racist is a word that I (almost) never use for this very reason. It has come to mean whatever people want it to mean.
A few quick points:
- Amy Wax is a White nationalist and/or a White nationalist sympathizer.
Seriously. The woman socializes with Jared Taylor, a man who has been committed to that cause for literally decades. Even on this show, she questioned--or pretended to question--whether American Renaissance represented White nationalism.
Like seriously. Who tf are we kidding? =)
- In practical terms, "race realist" is a euphemism for White nationalist. Because apparently we can no longer say "White nationalist" without offending some very snowflakey (no pun intended) White nationalists.
If you call yourself a race realist and hang out with Jared Taylor, and you're White, that is enough evidence for me. The exceptions only prove the rule.
If you want to argue that there's nothing wrong with White nationalism, or that it's warranted, fine; go ahead; whatever. But don't suggest that Amy Wax is none of the above. That's just delusional.
That said, John has an interesting question. What precisely did Wax say in those instances? Have her words been twisted? Do we have the proper context? Is it possible that her political and academic enemies have opted to pull out all of the stops to get rid of her? It wouldn't shock me.
But she's still a White nationalist; and pure scum to me.
I’d love to think that DEI is on its way out, and there has definitely been some movement in more conservative states, but you don’t want to get too complacent. I could easily imagine people getting themselves whipped up into a fervor in the same way that every leftist I knew (and I live in California) was 100% sure Hilary was going to DESTROY Trump at the ballot box. Then more recently every conservative was sure that a red wave would sweep through, proving that people were sick of all this woke stuff and would show it at the ballot box.
At my school I did notice that none of the FLEX talks this semester were about social justice so it seems like some sort of important shift is happening. Then again, we just drafted a land acknowledgement and rewrote our educational master plan to put DEI as one of the main pillars. What might appear to us to be some sort of opening of the floodgates could be completely dismissed by those for whom there’s nothing to gain from acknowledging it
I had to sit with the discomfort of having read that Adolph Reed piece, as the kids say. The sad thing is that I agree with him that if everything is resistance nothing is or at least you cannot use any discernment once something is called resistance which we can see the disastrous effects of in recent times. In the clear understanding that Marek warned me about them I also recall the particularly well attended J Street zoom with Khalil Shikaki that I attended and that the attendees were giving the elemental respect of listening to a pollster instead of a whisperer to the essence of the Palestinian soul.
In my mind, there's not a more honest or legitimate discussion to be found than these two accomplished men. Never cowardly.
The replication issue is real. My guess is…plenty of administrators and college presidents with thin CV(s); but they do a fine job for the university. So, no complaints.
Interview a few academics who talk about various epochs of family structure.
Glenn and John are both right about Claudine Gay, IMO. No matter how insubstantial her plagiarism was (and I agree with John on the need for a different word and that borrowing words is a lesser offense than stealing ideas or work), if it could get an undergraduate punished it's not really acceptable in the university president.
I agree with John that there are two types of plagiarism, and I agree with you that similar distinctions should be made for undergrads. However, my thoughts on plagiarism are more nuanced than John's. Gay's plagiarism might have been on boilerplate issues, but she was a serial plagiarizer. This was not due to something that she overlooked; she changed a few words around to try to legitimize the plagiarism. One also has to look at Gay's plagiarism in the context of her published work. Her work does not seem to have any substantial new ideas in it. It might be true that her plagiarizing did not involve stealing any new ideas from someone, but her work did not seem to have any new ideas. Glenn correctly contrasts this with Neri Oxman, who seems to be at the cutting edge of her field.
This being said, Gay's issues pale in comparison to what seems to have happened with Harvard Med School professors at Dana Carver. They seem to have falsified data on 36 of their publications. Data falsification on medical studies could change treatment protocols, and patients could lose their lives because of this. This could turn out to be a criminal case in which people are sent to prison.
It certainly does speak to intellectual laziness.