Harvard College’s Applications Crashed. Good!

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Harvard has issued a102-page draft document to persuade investors to buy a new bond designed to raise funds to replace the billions being withheld from the school by the Trump Administration until Harvard agrees to comply with “both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.” In other words, Harvard can eschew federal funding until it stops being a leftist indoctrination and propaganda tool and starts educating again.

Harvard has used Massachusetts’ municipal bond authority, overseen by hard-left Bay State governor Maura Healy, for $1,169,075,000 in bond offerings in 2024 and 2025. The proposed 2026 bond offering is for $675 million, which would bring the total to $1.8 billion in three years. You wouldn’t want Harvard to have to dip into its approximately $57 billion endowment, would you?

One eye-catching item in the draft: “First-year student applications received” by Harvard dropped more than 21 % to 47,893 for the 2025-2026 academic year from a high of 61,221 in 2022-23. This is below Yale with 54,919 applicants , Brown with 47,937 applicants, and Columbia’s 61,031 applications.

Harvard won’t release its application numbers for students entering in the fall of 2026 until it is required to by the federal government, the Harvard Crimson reported. Hey! I thought democracy dies in darkness! When an institution refuses to disclose something, one may fairly presume it has something to hide.

The Washington Free Beacon notes that while it is complaining that Nazi Trump is endangering potentially life-saving cancer research with its suspension of federal funds, Old Ivy employs 12 vice presidents while, for example, MIT somehow survives with a mere seven.

Harvard’s applications drop, I suspect, comes as it becomes increasingly clear that it fosters a culture antithetical to a full education and freedom of thought, all while remaining committed to anti-white, anti-male, anti-American objectives and os actively hostile to large sectors of American society. This has been in evidence for many years; the campus anti-Semitism and Claudine Gay debacle only brought into the open the ethics rot that was already well underway. Veteran readers here know that Ethics Alarms has been pointing to Harvard’s revolting conduct continually.

If my efforts have had even the most minuscule role in diverting a single vibrant young mind from attending this destructive institution, in the eloquent tradition of Lena Lamont in “Singing in the Rain,” it makes me feel as though my “hard work ain’t been in vain for nothin’.”

How Ignorant and Biased Are Reporters? This Ignorant and Biased…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Oh great: “war crimes” again. I’m afraid to check Facebook because I am sure that about 20 of my Trump Deranged show biz friends will be ranting about this.

Yesterday, President Trump posted on Truth Social that a number of Iranian targets would be obliterated if Iran does not allow the Hormuz Strait to be opened immediately. NBC White House correspondent Garrett Haake channeled his inner John Lennon and mewled to White House Paid Liar Karoline Leavitt,

“The president posted this morning about his threat that on leaving Iran he said, ‘Blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, hard island, and possibly all desalination plants,’ Under international law, striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited. Why is the President threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the US military? And how do you square that with the administration repeatedly saying that the US does not target civilians?”

My metaphorical hat is off to Leavitt, who was appropriately diplomatic and did not smite this Axis idiot with the rhetorical barrage that I would have.

“Look,” she said. “The President has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time, as evidenced by the statement that you just read, that their best move is to make a deal, or else the United States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination and the President is not afraid to use them.” Shethen denied that that Trump was contemplating “war crimes.”

I would have said, “Garrett, the United States is in a war, and the Geneva convention, which is an imaginary set of pacifist edicts that the United States does not feel bound by when the interests of the nation, Americans and civilization itself are at risk, will not restrain the United States in its efforts to conclude this conflict or any conflict as quickly as possible. Moreover nothing in the President’s message suggested that he was “targeting civilians.” But if civilians are at risk because it is necessary to remove facilities and resources that Iran needs to continue fighting, and if the real threat of losing these prompts Iran to surrender or make a good faith effort to negotiate a peace settlement, that is regrettable but unavoidable. This is a war. The United States will not limit its options to prevail.”

I might have been able to avoid concluding with, “you idiot.”

Several commentators have noted that the Axis media and the anti-American Left are using the same playbook and propaganda to support Iran against their own country that they embraced to support Gaza (Hamas, terrorists…) against Israel. I still await the tipping point when the public turns decisively and permanently against these people.

Surely it must be on the horizon.

Baseball Ethics: More ABS Notes [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The major ethics issues animating discussion early in the baseball season are arising from the new computer ball and strike calling system, or ABS. Each team begins with two challenges. A batter, pitcher or catcher may challenge any strike or ball call at home plate, but must do it immediately by announcing “Challenge!” and touching his cap. Challenges that are made after two seconds elapse may be disallowed by the umpire. If a challenge results in a changed call, that challenge is preserved. If not, it is lost.

Already, game results have been affected by the rule. That’s not a surprise at all. Major League Baseball (MLB) umpires miss an average of about 10 to 15 calls per game; the overall accuracy rate was around 92%. in 2025. Every game generally includes at least one incorrect call, and it is estimated that 8.5% of all games have bad calls that alter the score. The accuracy of the umpires has increased since computers started double-checking them, but umpires still made 26,567 incorrect ball and strike calls during the 2025 MLB regular season, and any one of them might have altered a game’s outcome. Some early results:

1. The younger players are better at challenging than the veterans, because the system was used in the minor leagues the last couple of years. Red Sox player Trevor Story was called out on strikes on a pitch that looked well out of the strike zone, but didn’t challenge. Sox TV color man Lou Merloni, an ex-player, said that after a career of thinking that an umpire’s call was final, veteran players are likely not to remember that they could challenge until the two seconds have passed. Now players are being criticized for their strike-challenging skills.

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“No Kings” Hangover Notes

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
  • I found the responses of the two grinning protesters empty and fatuous, but not incoherent. They are protesting to protest, because it’s “democratic.” It’s fun being in all that energy and shared emotion. I marveled at this back in college; I’d venture that most protesters at these large rallies can’t articulate what it is they are so upset about.
  • I also think the mother might have brought her daughter to the “No Kings” rally as to experience democracy in action, and because they probably live in a community where the schools and institutions and communities are knee-jerk Left, and the mother can boast of her commitment and virtue. It’s sort of nice in a way.
  • In New York, there were Palestinian flags, plus signs and chants calling for defunding the police. Communist groups were part of most of the demonstrations. Of course, pro-open borders, anti-ICE signs were in abundance too. Question: how do mostly moderate, educated, otherwise rational  Americans  appear to be allied with such groups—pro-terrorist, anti-law enforcement, anti-American—and not wonder, “Wait, why am I associating with these people?”
  • There were riots in the demonstrations in Portland and L.A. “Peaceful protesters” threw bricks at police officers in L.A. Nice. How many of those people know that the “right to protest,” aka free speech, does not include throwing things?
  • Doug Emhoff, Kamala’s Beta Male hubby, posed for pictures in Malibu with Trump Deranged D-list celebrities like Kathy Griffin. How low can you go?
  • According to a copy of the permit for the “flagship” “No Kings” march in St. Paul, Minnesota, Indivisible, a national Democratic political advocacy organization funded by radical Left billionaire George Soros is the lead coordinator for the protest. Fox News reported that Neville Roy Singham, an American tech tycoon and self-proclaimed  communist living in China also finances many of the activist groups that fueled the “No Kings” tantrums, including the People’s Forum in New York, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ANSWER Coalition and CodePink, whose co-founder Jodie Evans is married to Singham.

My father used to tell a joke about a man who kept snapping his fingers compulsively. His wife sent him to a psychiatrist, who asked him, “What’s with the finger-snapping?” “It keeps the elephants away,” the man said.

“What?” said the shrink. “There are no elephants for hundreds of miles from here!” “See?” the man said. “It works!”

The “No Kings” protests are like that.

This Is How Axis Media Bias Warps The News (This Also Is CNN…)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

[I submit that question above as a less vulgar substitute for “Does a bear shit in the woods?”]

Just sat down a while ago to wake up to what we laughingly call “the news” while cuddling my dog and drinking some Italian Roast to get my brain functioning, sort of. As usual I wandered aimlessly among CNN, Fox News and MSNOW to gauge the difference in emphasis and tone, while jumping back periodically to check with the MLB channel’s morning round-up of yesterday’s baseball games.

The second I landed on CNN, I was told that a new HUD policy put forth by…THE EVIL TRUMP ADMINISTRATION!!!!…could put thousands of homeless people “including many veterans” back on the street. HUD wants to transfer billions in funding from permanent housing to temporary housing, which means, CNN kind of explained, two-year residency. BUT, the grim-faced reporter said, many homeless would probably leave sooner than that. A judge has halted the policy’s implementation after a law suit—of course—but the report simply regurgitated what the complaint from homeless activist organizations alleged.

What they alleged, CNN appeared to believe, is the only way to see this situation. All CNN did was quote the plaintiffs’ filings. Why does HUD want to change the policy? We got no information about that at all. I have other questions: what are the benefits of “permanent housing” as opposed to “temporary housing”? What is “permanent housing” anyway? If someone is in “permanent housing,” why are they still called homeless? If they leave temporray housing before their time is up, why wouldn’t they leave permanent housing? Will spending money on temporary housing rather than permanent housing serve the homeless population better? Will it serve taxpayers better?

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Kim Novak: I Hereby Introduce You To “The Golden Rule”…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Kim Novak is now 92 years old. She is one of the more forgotten sirens of the Hollywood Fifties Golden Age, and to the extent that she is remembered at all, it is because she was one of Alfred Hitchcock’s interchangeable blondes somewhere between Doris Day and Tippi Hedren. Her Hitchcock vehicle, “Vertigo,” is for some reason regarded by film schools as Hitch’s best, but it can’t be because of Novak, who was cool, sexy, but not much of an actress.

They are making a movie about one aspect of Novak’s life because it can be twisted into some kind of woke message: she had a relationship of some sort with quadruple threat (drama, comedy, singing and dancing) Sammy Davis Jr., at a time when white sex symbols weren’t supposed to hang out with black superstars. Chosen to play Kim is current hot blonde Sydney Sweeney. It’s a high profile opportunity for the young woman, who is looking for opportunities to be taken seriously as an actress before her window of genuine stardom closes, just a Kim was, once upon a time.

So what does Kim Novak do? She gives an interview to the U.K.’s scandal The Times and trashes Sweeney, whom she has never met. Novak called Sydney “totally wrong” to play her in the upcoming biopic “Scandalous,” sneering that she “would never have approved” of Sweeney’s casting in the film, because she “sticks out so much above the waist.”

Funny, the degree that Kim was regarded as “sticking out above the waste” was substantially responsible for her having a career in films at all; Bette Davis she wasn’t. The size of women’s breasts that caused them to be lusted after as unusually busty has increased substantially over the decades: Raquel Welch, whose endowments were the object of endless jokes in the Sixties, would be regarded as unremarkable today.

But never mind the fact that Novak’s complaint is silly: she is 93 after all. Because Kim was a rising young actress once, she demonstrates ethical incompetence by not considering how would she have felt if she got a plum part in a Hollywood film biography portraying an earlier era’s blonde sex symbol like, say, Mae West, and Mae had announced in public that Kim was wrong for the role. She would have regarded Mae as a vicious bitch…and she would have been right.

Now Novak has laid the foundation for critics to crush whatever Sydney does in the film, something many of them are itching to do anyway. Woke World hates Sydney because she made a jeans ad that they absurdly claim advocated white supremacy. Yes, they are that desperate.

Nice, Kim. Here’s a little bit of advice that somehow you’ve managed to miss in your nine decades: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Bi…never mind. You owe Sydney an apology, Kim.

Another Dispatch From The Trump Deranged:

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I keep posting these because I regard them as snap-shots of how the combination of irresponsible biased journalism, bubble-bases ignorance, and peer reinforcement is warping our social discourse and pushing the public into foolish and dangerous misconceptions. Is it an ethical problem? Sure it is. Posts like the one below make readers upset and irrational. They create false framings that warp perceptions of reality. The activate cognitive dissonance, in which the people who like, admire and respect the writer are moved to feel postively about the absolute garbage that he has published.

The author of the screed below that arrived on my Facebook feed yesterday is a wonderful human being. He is kind and effusive in his positive rhetoric; he sends me a birthday card every year, and I have only spent time with him face to face twice in 30 years. He never posts political rants: he is a lifetime showbiz writer, scholar and producer.

I assume this was triggered by the latest “No Kings” lunacy. My friend is also virtue-signaling to his showbiz connections, including me; since he likes and respects me, he assumes that I must agree with his sentiments. My friend is way, way out of his lane.

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“The Ethicist” Slaps Down Manipulative Parenting

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I was stunned that this question made it into “The Ethicist” column, but who knows: maybe it was a week light on difficult ethical dilemmas.

A mother who wanted to use Prof Appiah the way ethicists are often used in the consulting world—to back the client’s opinion after that individual has already made up his or her mind—wanted to be able to appeal to the professor’s authority in a family dispute. Her adult son is morbidly obese and she and her husband fear for his health. They want him to go on a chemical weight-loss regimen with Ozempic or the similar drugs, but he keeps getting fatter and fatter. Years ago, they bought a house for the son, and he is paying them back in monthly installments. Their plan is to waive the rest of the payments and give him the house now, but Big Boy’s father wants to condition their generosity on the son agreeing to use the drugs to lose weight.

An under-discussed sub-value on the Six Pillars of Character is autonomy, listed under the RESPECT pillar. That means allowing those we have contact with in out lives autonomy, and not using resources, power or emotional bonds to control the conduct and choices of others. To me, the answer to The Ethicist’s inquirer is an easy call, and I was pleased that his answer tracked with mine exactly.

Professor Appiah wrote,

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Oh Look: The ABA Wants To Circumvent The Second Amendment (Again)…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As a lawyer who has scrupulously avoided joining the American Bar Association (except when a discounted membership allowed me to feel more comfortable when the ABA invited me to speak about ethics at a convention), I found the recent resolution calling for the repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, (“PLCAA”), 15 U.S.C. §§ 7901–7903, consistent with what I now expect of the nation’s largest legal trade association. Over the last several decades years, the ABA has moved steadily leftward on the ideological spectrum, and signs that bias had made it stupid began turning up as early as 1987, when four members of the association’s special committee evaluating Supreme Court nominees found the extremely well-qualified Robert Bork, nominated by President Ronald Reagan, unqualified purely because of his conservative judicial philosophy. This gave Senate Democrats the ammunition they need to reject Bork, thus beginning the destruction of a crucial “democratic norm” that Presidents should be able to choose SCOTUS justices as long as they were sufficiently qualified and experienced.

You can read Resolution 604 here. Ten states (New York, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington…do you see a pattern?) have enacted “Firearm Industry Responsibility Acts,” and the ABA, being properly woke, is calling for a national version. The resolution purports to be concerned about a “small percentage” of “irresponsible” gun manufacturers who violate consumer protection or engage in deceptive trade practices, and wants the gun industry’s unique immunity from product liability lawsuits to be narrowed and reformed.

Because the latest resolution begins its arguments with the usual scaremongering statistics compiled by anti-Second Amendment activists—“Approximately 46,000 Americans are killed by a gun every year—approximately 125 people every day,” I find the resolution to be disingenuous, a “camel’s nose in the tent” tactic to make gun manufacturers so vulnerable to lawsuits that the business becomes untenable, and guns become so expensive that the right to bear arms is illusory.

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I Just Thought Of A Possible Ethical Justification For Another Silly “No Kings” Protest Today…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I have made it clear with several posts, including this one, in June, and this one, in October, that I yield to no one in my contempt for the “screaming at the sky” “No Kings” demonstrations. From the June post:

We don’t have a king, and Donald Trump doesn’t act like one. If he did (or could), all the obstructionist, partisan judges we have seen over-reaching to block his legitimate policies would be in prison, without heads, or on the lam. The anti-democratic citizens (and illegals) demonstrating yesterday are not the supporters of our elected President and our system that elected him, but those who still refuse to accept that election (or his first one, for that matter).

Nevertheless, a lot of my good friends, formerly thoughtful, rational people, are either participating in the latest iteration of this…well, let me hand over the floor to Otter for a moment…

A futile and stupid gesture! But three of them (or is it four)? I have measured these protests against the Ethics Alarms Protest Ethics Checklist and found the “No Kings” tantrums to be 0 for 12:

1. Is this protest just and necessary?

2. Is the primary motive for the protest unclear, personal, selfish, too broad, or narrow?

3. Is the means of protest appropriate to the objective?

4. Is there a significant chance that it will achieve an ethical objective or contribute to doing so?

5. What will this protest cost, and who will have to pay the bill?

6. Will the individuals or organizations that are the targets of the protest also be the ones who will most powerfully feel its effects?

7. Will innocent people be adversely affected by this action? (If so, how many?)

8. Is there a significant possibility that anyone will be hurt or harmed? (if so, how seriously? How many people?)

9. Are the protesters prepared to take full responsibility for the consequences of the protest?

10. Would an objective person feel that the protest is fair, reasonable, and proportional to its goal?

11. What is the likelihood that the protest will be remembered as important, coherent, useful, effective and influential?

12. Could the same resources, energy and time be more productively used toward achieving the same goals, or better ones?

However, I am considering whether the checklist is missing a possible redeeming feature of not only these protests but other protests as well. There is the possible #13:

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