The San Diego Unified School District had a problem. Or at least it thought it had a problem.

In the first semester of the 2019-20 school year, the San Diego Unified school district board discovered that 20% of black students had received a D or F grade. In comparison, 7% of white students earned the same failing marks.

This reflected what’s called the “education gap,” that black students do worse than white students. This is where one might be inclined to ask the uncomfortable question, “Why?” But not San Diego. Continue reading →

Among his other duties, Zach Greenberg gives presentations for FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which has its offices in Philadelphia for reasons that elude me. In giving presentations, he might have to say some “bad” words to make his point. Except the Pennsylvania Supreme Court adopted a version of the ABA’s model rule 8.4(g) to dictate that lawyer speech and conduct be sufficiently woke to avoid disbarment.

Plaintiff alleged specific examples of individuals filing disciplinary and Title IX complaints against speakers who were presenting on similar topics as those discussed by Plaintiff, which he alleges will “force[ him] to censor himself to steer clear of an ultimately unknown line so that his speech is not at risk of being incorrectly perceived as manifesting bias or prejudice.” Therefore, in addition to showing that the “chilling effect on his speech … is objectively reasonable,” Plaintiff has shown that he will “self-censor[] as a result.”

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Should publicly-traded companies on NASDAQ have a diverse board of directors? Sure. Why not? If they want to, and they should, but is that any of NASDAQ’s business? In what the Wall Street Journal calls a “publicity stunt,” NASDAQ has asked the SEC to approve its new diversity mandate.

If approved by the SEC, the new listing rules would require all companies listed on Nasdaq’s U.S. exchange to publicly disclose consistent, transparent diversity statistics regarding their board of directors. Additionally, the rules would require most Nasdaq-listed companies to have, or explain why they do not have, at least two diverse directors, including one who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as either an underrepresented minority1 or LGBTQ+. Foreign companies and smaller reporting companies would have additional flexibility in satisfying this requirement with two female directors.

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The old district attorney was a Democrat and a black woman, Jackie Lacey. As it turned out, identity wasn’t good enough to re-elect her, even as the same people demand that important government officials meet their demographic criteria rather than possess the ability to do the job well. So much for the assumption that being a woman of color is the defining characteristic for a position of power and authority. Lacey was defeated by one of the new breed of progressive prosecutors.

George Gascón, the former top prosecutor in San Francisco, seized the momentum swirling in the streets and honed his promises to reduce incarceration, tackle racial bias and reopen old police shooting cases that the incumbent had declined to prosecute. At his swearing-in ceremony on Monday, Mr. Gascón immediately put his plans in motion, announcing an end to seeking cash bail and other sweeping policy changes.

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Personal relationships notwithstanding, the life of a judge is of no greater inherent value than the life of anyone else. It’s sad to learn of a judge’s untimely passing, whether from COVID or a car accident, It’s sad to learn of a judge’s passing from natural causes. It’s the same sadness that does, or should, apply to the loss of any human life. But as United States District Judge Esther Salas writes, there is an additional concern when someone, litigant or lawyer, targets a judge for harm.

Then the doorbell rang. Daniel raced up the stairs. Seconds later, as I stood alone in our basement, my beloved son was shot to death. Mark Anderl, my husband of 25 years, was shot three times and critically injured. Continue reading →

In yet another example of asteroid strikes earth, women and minorites affected most, New York City public schools will reopen, which, the New York Times reports, exacerbates the “racial divide.”

But as some school buildings reopen this week, the mayor has found himself presiding over a starkly unequal school system in which many white families have flocked back to classrooms while most families of color have chosen to learn from home indefinitely.

That gulf is illustrated in a startling statistic: There are nearly 12,000 more white children returning to public school buildings than Black students — even though there are many more Black students than white children in the system overall.

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I’m not a big fan of the Marvel comic book character movies. I’ve seen a few and could take them or leave them. But when a movie about a new character, named “Ms. Marvel,” whose super power appears to be that she’s Muslim, the primary interest that arose was in the casting controversy.

Marvel is under fire for some of their rumored casting choices for Ms. Marvel, resulting in #FixMsMarvel trending online. One of the upcoming MCU projects on Disney+, the show will debut Iman Vellani as the titular character, Kamala Khan. But while fans are excited for her portraying the part, it’s not like that for some of her co-stars.

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When it comes to using the word “fuck,” or any number of other profane words, I’m no one to point fingers. I use it when I feel like it, usually to add emphasis to a point as the word still has a bit of jarring power left in it. I’m not always proud of myself for it, and many people disagree with my decision to indulge on such language, but then, you be you and I’ll be me. Okay? No. There is almost invariably someone who will chime in to reliably inform me that my word choice has offended their sensibility.

And it’s not just me. Continue reading →

The idea was put to the test last July in Portland, when Naked Athena took to the street. Whether she had any impact on the point of the protest seems beside the point. She stopped the police advance. She became a symbol.

People love symbols these days, perhaps more than they care about anything else, like solutions, as the former is easy to grasp and adore, while the latter requires thought, which in turn can make people’s heads hurt. Ugh. But what police officer can fire rubber bullets when facing this adversary? Continue reading →

After a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, we sat at the table talking about one of our guest’s new job in academia. Eventually, we got to the problem of learning students’ personal pronouns, which the university required. It was, he explained, not that big a deal, as only one or two use a pronoun out of the ordinary, and when he messed up, there was no offense taken. It wasn’t a big deal, he told me.

Then I asked him about the singular “they.” He went through the usual litany of excuses, that it was always there, had deep linguistic roots, was better than the alternative of “he/she” when gender was unknown, and was only an issue because old school English teachers, all named Miss Grundy, insisted that the proper English convention was “they” was plural. Real people, he told me, didn’t talk that way. I, for one, appreciate having a young person explain to me what “real people” do. Continue reading →