Ethics Zugzwang as USC Silences Its Valedictorian

USC has banned this year’s graduating class valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, from Chino Hill, California, from making her speech during the university’s commencement ceremony. The justification: anti-Israel (or pro-Palestine…same thing, really) posts on Instagram, including thise calling for the “complete abolition” of Israel

Asna is a Muslim, not that there’s anything wrong with that. USC officials chose her from nearly 100 student applicants who had GPAs of 3.98 or higher. It seemed like a good idea at the time: certainly in this age of enlightened DEI, the woke school wasn’t going to choose any icky white male. Tabassum majored in biomedical engineering with a minor in resistance to genocide—wait, what??? USC has a “resistance to genocide” major?

The USC Provost explained the decision thusly:

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Update on NPR’s Unmasking

That is kind of a fanciful title, I guess. The only people who didn’t realize that NPR has been strongly biased leftward over the last, oh, two decades or more would be those who agree with that bias, so naturally think the taxpayer funded radio network is just “telling it as it is.” Selective editing to make, say, Ted Cruz sound like a far-right nut case, or having a Supreme Court correspondent who is pals with the most liberal justice on the Court are just, you know, “mistakes.”

But having an insider who is obviously a progressive Democrat himself blow the whistle and announce that “the nonprofit radio network had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage” (Ya think???) meant that attention must be paid, and the furious reaction of NPR’s leadership to that statement of the obvious–-“How DARE he! We’re NPR!”—gave instant credibility to his indictment, again, not that it should have needed any more, if people were paying attention.

Now comes the news of the obvious other shoe dropping: Uri Berliner, the senior business editor who blew said whistle, has been suspended by the network but for just for five days. In an interview with NPR earlier this week, Berliner revealed that NPR said he would be fired if he violated the policy against unapproved work for another media outlets again. Apparently NPR figured out that the Streisand Effect applies, and the more they go after Berliner and deny, deny, deny, the more visible the network’s progressive propaganda proclivities will be.

They figured it out too late, unfortunately. The mask, which was hanging anyway, is off now. NPR can blame any future criticism on Republicans and conservatives “pouncing,” but as long as it is led by a woman whose social media comments mark her as an extreme anti-American social justice activist, the strategy is unlikely to work. Fine, let NPR preach to the metaphorical choir—but I shouldn’t have to pay for it.

Meanwhile…

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Ethics-DEI-Baseball Dunce: Ja’han Jones

I know, we’ve been seeing a lot of Sidney Wang lately.

Ja’han Jones is the blogger for Reid Out, the MSNBC race-baiting show (well, one of them) starring Joy Reid. As such, the fact that he has such a bone-headed and biased position regarding diversity is like finding out that water is wet, but it is still surprising to see anyone who can put his shoes on (I’m assuming Ja’Han can) write something as ignorant and idiotic as “The decline of Black players in MLB should be a warning about the war on DEI.

If DEI proponents keep making arguments this bad, eventually even the dimmest members of the public will figure out that it’s a hustle. (Won’t they? Don’t they have to?) Another rule Ja’Han seems to have missed is “Don’t write about subjects you know nothing about when a lot of your readers do, because they will figure out that you are a fake.”

To summarize one of the worst published screeds I have read in a long time, this supposed “futurist,” journalist and pundit argues that Major League Baseball needs DEI programs to increase the percentage of black baseball players. (Baseball’s number of black players has been declining for a welter of cultural, financial and attitudinal reasons, none of which involve discrimination.) It’s difficult to know where to start a rebuttal of an argument that is only worthy of “What the hell are you talking about?” Might as well just dive right in…

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How Can NPR Maintain Even Its Current Diminished Level of Credibility If It Keeps Katherine Maher As Its CEO?

Let’s see if the tax-payer funded progressive propaganda network has even Harvard’s survival instinct, or is even more arrogant. Amazingly enough, this story has gotten worse since I posted about it just four days ago.

You will recall that veteran NPR journalist, Uri Berliner, frustrated that his concerns about blatant progressive and Democratic bias reaching destructive proportions in the workplace he loved, blew a harsh whistle with an article on Substack headlined “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” Nothing in the article was surprising, certainly not to me, except that a current and prominent staffer wrote it. NPR, also hardly unexpectedly, circled its wagons while pretending Berliner didn’t write what he wrote, but rather a criticism of NPR’s DEI obsession. In fact he was writing about the lack of diversity at NPR of the kind that matters: viewpoint diversity and political diversity. One smoking gun he cited in his piece was the infamous tweet by NPR’s former public editor, now the Editor-in-Chief at USA Today:

Yes, in the world of “advocacy journalism,” being wrong gets you promoted, as long as you’re wrong while helping Democrats.

Then, incredibly, proving how deluded the organization is regarding both its own bias and the right way to respond to Berliner, NPR’s newly appointed CEO lied, spun and erected straw men. That’s sure to bolster NPR’s credibility!

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Presumed Racism Raises Its Obnoxious Head at “Social Qs”

Philip Galanes’ stultifyingly woke advice column in the New York Times has been off my metaphorical radar screen since I dumped the print version of the paper, but somehow (I don’t recall why) this recent inquiry is an exception. Here was the inquirer’s question:

My wife and I attended my nephew’s wedding 18 months ago. He and his wife are now expecting a baby, and I was looking forward to meeting my newest relative. The problem: At their wedding, group pictures of our extended family were taken before my wife and I realized it. When we asked the photographer why we had been overlooked, he only reiterated that pictures had already been taken. My wife, a woman of color, believes that racism may be the reason for our exclusion. She wants nothing to do with my nephew or his family again. I understand her feelings, but I’d like to restart these relationships. My wife doesn’t want me to broach the subject. Thoughts?

Yecchh.

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The Résumé Bias Experiment

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) released this month the results of an experiment designed to measuring the degree of racial bias displayed by various large companies when choosing which job résumés justify further consideration for hiring.

Ninety-seven of the some of the largest companies in the country were sent made-up résumés by fictional job applicants, in nearly identical pairs with equivalent qualifications but bearing names that (the researchers presumed) suggested that the applicants were white or black, and male or female. Latisha and Amy was one pair; Lamar and Adam was another.

This week the NBER released the results, the researchers’ conclusions, and names of the companies. The study seemed to show that, on average, employers contacted the fake white applicants 9.5% more often than the fake black applicants, though this depended on the company. Those logos above represent the companies with the smallest racial gaps in hiring, based on the experiment’s results.

This was the largest such experiment yet, with researchers sending 80,000 résumés applying for 10,000 jobs between 2019 to 2021. The apparent racial bias seemed to spike in food stores, food products, freight and transport, and wholesale enterprises. The New York Times concludes, “The results demonstrate how entrenched employment discrimination is in parts of the U.S. labor market — and the extent to which Black workers start behind in certain industries.”

The Times also quotes Daiquiri Steele, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama School of Law who previously worked for the Department of Labor on employment discrimination as saying, “I am not in the least bit surprised. If you’re having trouble breaking in, the biggest issue is the ripple effect it has. It affects your wages and the economy of your community going forward. The results demonstrate how entrenched employment discrimination is in parts of the U.S. labor market — and the extent to which Black workers start behind in certain industries.” (Gee, what kind of name is “Daiquiri”?)

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Hamas-Israel War Ethics Train Wreck Update: Biden’s Incompetent and Irresponsible Handling of the Crisis Defies Belief

I have long thought Joe Biden was an idiot, even before he started losing brain cells like a scalp shed dandruff, and the complete fecklessness of the 21st Century mutation of the Democratic Party has been brain-blowing for quite awhile as well. This sequence, however, is signature significance for an administration without any internal logic or ethical compass at all:

1. Hamas (a.k.a. the government of Gaza) launches a brutal sneak attack on civilians in Israel, raping women, killing babies, and taking hostages. The U.S. condemns the attack and proclaims its full support of Israel.

2. Israel, appropriately and necessarily, declares war on Hamas (and therefore Gaza), vowing that it will not permit the terrorist organization to exist literally next-door. The U.S. provides economic aid and weapons to the effort.

3. Israel’s assault kills Gazans as well as Hamas fighters, which is how Hamas intends it, because the Hamas tunnels containing war material and fighters is deliberately positioned under schools, hospitals and other structures that turn Gazans into human shields.

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WHAAAAT? NPR is Politically BIASED??? How Could That Be? [CORRECTED!]

Oh for heaven’s sake. National Public Radio’s cronies in Woke Journalism Land are stunned that Uri Berliner, a senior business editor who worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote in an essay published on Substack that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.” Seldom has the “Die Hard” clip above from the Ethics Alarms archive been more appropriate.

Here’s the Ethics Alarms NPR tag, which mostly catalogues the examples of NPR bias and unethical journalism Ethics Alarms has covered, and I’m sure it is still a drop in the metaphorical bucket. NPR was an Ethics Dunce recipient—again— just a few months ago.

NPR is extremely biased; its bias is flagrant and undeniable and has seeped into it programing on virtually every topic for decades. The only thing shocking about an NPR editor publicly admitting this is that anyone who was marinated in the organization’s dishonest and untrustworthy culture would be capable of telling the truth.

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So It Looks Like Harvard Students Aren’t Learning Logic, Ethics or History, But Damn If Those Kids Don’t Know How to Play the Race Card!

Harvard student pundit Maya Bodnick authored an indignant column in the Harvard Crimson arguing that “A Witch Hunt Is Targeting Black Harvard Faculty.” Bodnick, the niece of high-powered tech exec Sheryl Sandberg (not to suggest that her connection to a wealthy former CEO of Meta had any bearing on her admission, mind you), gives us this argument: because conservatives (like Christopher Rufo) have uncovered genuine plagiarism on the part of prominent black members of Harvard’s administration and faculty, including deposed Harvard president Claudine Gay, it is clear that the objective is to target black academics and scholars, and thus is racist.

To begin with, it would be nice if someone being educated at Harvard understood what “witch hunt” means. After all, it’s a historical reference, in fact, it’s a historical reference to an infamous event that occurred not all that far from Harvard. You see, there were never any witches, because they don’t exist. Various members of the Salem community in colonial days exploited the fear of witches to get innocent people tried, ruined, and executed. “Witch hunt” means a contrived and organized effort to falsely accuse and harm an innocent person for other, sinister motives. However, plagiarism, unlike witchcraft, is real, and the Harvard plagiarists the investigations have uncovered deserved the consequences of their dishonest scholarship. This last part is apparently beyond the ability of Bodnick to comprehend.

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This Lawyer’s Incredible Ignorance Prompts Me to Propose a New Standard For Disbarment

That’s the outspoken, racist, Dunning-Kruger suffering lawyer on “The View,” Sunny Hostin, saying out loud and on national TV that climate change causes eclipses (yes, also earthquakes, but we’ve already heard public figures make fools of themselves on that topic, like here and here…). This was so bad that even Whoopie felt compelled to correct her: Whoopie’s problem is that she’s uneducated, but she’s still easily the smartest lady on “The View,” which admittedly is faint praise.

We could have an entertaining debate over whose statement is more idiotic, Rep. Jackson Lee’s claim that the moon is “mostly gas,” of this head-exploder from Hostin. But that’s not the point of this post.

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