Education

On Andrea Mitchell’s Anti-DeSantis Lie And Aftermath: A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Classic

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Was I dreaming, or was Andrea Mitchell once a relatively trustworthy journalist? Was it working at MSNBC that rotted her professionalism away completely, as with poor Chris Matthews?

Because this is disgusting.

Last week, on her pompously titeled show “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Mitchell asked Kamala Harris, “What does Governor Ron Desantis not know about black history and the black experience when he says that slavery and the aftermath of slavery should not be taught to Florida schoolchildren?” Florida’s governor never said that, not has he advocated that, nor has any other Republican official or pundit not now residing in a padded cell. That’s a deliberately dishonest Democratic, anti-DeSantis, pro-Critical Race Theory talking point designed for consumption by lazy, gullible and uninformed citizens.

Harris might have won a bit of respect had she corrected Mitchell, but she’s an unethical hack too, so naturally she acted as if it was a fair question.Or she didn’t know it was nonsense: with Harris its hard to tell.

DeSantis’s press secretary was on the job, tweeting,

Indeed it does. From the  state requirements,  guidelines DeSantis supported and approved: Continue reading →

Update: “Vermont Law School’s Craven Art Censorship”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Slavery mural

UPDATE: The Ethics Alarms post below ran in 2021. Now the revolting controversy is back in the news: the Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vermont still seeks to remove the artwork above and below depicting the history of slavery in the U.S. As I wrote in 2021, the school simply capitulated to irrational, power-seeking student complaints alleging a racist message being conveyed by anti-racist art. To his credit, the artist has fought back, and the school has wasted resources intended for education to support the worst kind of mindless race-hucksterism.

At the end of the post, it noted that the case was headed to an appellate court, and it finally reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, where the two sides presented arguments on January 27. For two years, the law school has covered the paintings with white panels suspended just above their surface so as not to damage them, pending the outcome of the court appeal.

I still think Kerson is likely to lose. I do not see how a Court can compel a school to display an artwork it doesn’t want to display. The federal law at issue says artists can prevent modification of their work if the change would harm their “honor or reputation.” The law school says that covering the murals, even permanently, is not a modification. An attorney representing the law school states simply, “If you own a painting, of course you have the right to decide whether or not to display it.”

The white artist, Sam Kerson argues that his reputation will be scarred if his work is falsely treated as “racist.” “He must suffer the indignity and humiliation of having a cover put over his art,” his lead attorney, argued to the Second Circuit.

Nothing much has changed since the 2021 post, but some of the quotes cited in the New York Times article this week are demonstrate how thoroughly race issues have become unmoored from rationality and fairness:

  • “If someone is saying to you, ‘How you’re depicting me is racist,’ for you to live in your own ignorance, and further aggravate the situation — now you’re showing us who you are,” said Yanni DeCastro, a second-year student. [In other words, if someone claims your art is racist, disagreeing with that assessment is racist.]
  • “We need to stop protecting white fragility,” said another student. [Another transparent tactic to ban disagreement with race hucksters! Kerson isn’t uncomfortable talking about race: his painting is an invitation to face racial history. It’s his black critics who are “fragile.”]
  • The same student told the Times:  “The mural is covered, but what’s really changed? What is the plan to ensure that students of color feel safe and welcome?” [Yes, students are threatened by a covered painting. What kind of lawyer can someone like this become? My guess: a poor one.]
  •  A second-year student told the Times: “What is real to me is a painting to you The artist was depicting history, but it’s not his history to depict.” [Only blacks can write about, make movies about, or paint pictures regarding black history. Why wouldn’t the converse also be true, then?]

Here is the original post:

Continue reading →

Presidents Day Ethics Warm-Up: Sick Of Presidents Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Usually Ethics Alarms has a special Presidents Day feature, but not this year. I hope the mood passes, but right now I am thoroughly sick of the office. Three passions have driven the course of my life, beliefs, interest, pursuits, education, relationships and careers: baseball, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the Presidents of the United States. At this moment, I am disgusted with two of the three.

The accolades being heaped on Jimmy Carter as he has announced that he will wait to die with his family near rather than seek more medical care further sours my mood, because it cripples me with cognitive dissonance. All Presidents deserve the nation’s gratitude and respect, and Carter has led a life devoted to public service. Yet he was a terrible President, and did as much damage to the nation in his four years as any modern POTUS—at least until Joe Biden arrived.

1. “Red Joan” Not helping my mood was watching “Red Joan,” the 2019 British film celebrating the foolish Melita Stedman Norwood, a British civil servant who became a KGB spy in the post-war years. She was convinced that she was doing a good and ethical thing to send nuclear secrets to Stalin’s government so the USSR could develop its own atom bomb. The movie is fictionalized enough that Norwood, played by Judy Dench, is given a different name (Joan Stanley), but the beliefs she espouses are accurate representations of Norwood’s various explanations and rationalizations.

She thought Communism was the hope of the future; she thought the Russians “deserved” to have the nuclear advances developed by the U.S. and Great Britain shared with them; she thought the US using the atom bomb to end World War II was mass murder; and she believed that giving the Soviets the ability to wield nuclear power would prevent World War III—and continued to justify her treachery with the last excuse after she was exposed and caught in her 80s, taking credit for “saving millions of lives.”

My head exploded when the British nuclear scientist who was her lover erupted over learning that she had sent his work to the Soviets, telling her it was madness to give such secrets to a “ruthless dictator” like Stalin. “But we didn’t know that then!” Joan protests.

That’s what ethicists call “contrived ignorance.” Continue reading →

Britain’s Unethical And Deliberate Micro-Viewpoint Indoctrination In The Schools: It Can Happen Here, And Probably Already Does

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I have been blissfully ignorant of the existence of Andrew Tate (above) until very recently; my life was better before. He is considered a social media influencer, aka “someone with power in the culture without any genuine reason to have it.” Tate was a professional kickboxer who appeared on the British reality show “Big Brother”—which is just as moronic as the American version— and was the source of controversy when his social media posts got him kicked off the show. He began offering paid courses and memberships through his website promoting an “ultra-masculine, ultra-luxurious lifestyle,” as well as sexism and misogyny. Last year, Tate and his brother were arrested in Romania on suspicions of human trafficking. He’s also been charged with rape.

In summary, this creep makes Kim Kardashian seem like Eleanor Roosevelt. But he’s got a buff bod and drives cool cars, so British boys and teens are suckers for his act. In response, British schools, the New York Times tells us, are now spending class time condemning Tate rather than teaching their students math, reading and critical thinking.

“I am sad that I have taken up important curriculum time to talk about Andrew Tate,” Chloe Stanton, an English teacher in East London tells the Times. “But women have to fight enough in society without this type of attitude to deal with.” The Times writes, “Believing that schools are a microcosm of society — and a preview of its future — educators said it was crucial to target Mr. Tate’s influence early. Since last fall, principals have sent letters to parents warning of his reach, and Britain’s education secretary has said that influencers like Mr. Tate could reverse the progress made in countering sexism.”

Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: George Sen. Emanuel Jones

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

George Santos broke this Ethics Alarms distinction last year, but I still can’t let Georgia State Senator Emanuel Jones get off scot free. I’m not even awarding him “Incompetent Elected Official of the Month” for smearing Clarence Thomas as an “Uncle Tom.” That slimy tactic is well-worn, far from original, and a lazy cliche, as stupid and wrong as it is. MSNBC’s Joy Reid, among other hacks, has used it. The theory seems to be that there is an ongoing race war between blacks and whites, so any black appointed or elected official , including a judge, who doesn’t defy the ethical obligation to serve the whole public and not abuse their position by favoring his own race is an “Uncle Tom.”

I really can’t designate a black state senator “Incompetent” for saying that, since apparently a large number of black voters approve of such divisive and dastardly rhetoric. They are the true incompetents.

No, Jones is more incompetent than the others who have used this lazy slur. Oh, he’s a racist, all right: in the same speech that got him today’s distinction, he said,  “Y’all just don’t get it. And I don’t expect people of non-color to get the sensitivity that we feel.” Nice. But he really scored with his casual admission that he didn’t know the origin of the term “Uncle Tom” or whether Uncle Tom was a real or fictional character. Continue reading →

Gee, I’ve Turned My Harvard Diploma To The Wall And Lowered It To Floor Level…What’s Left?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

And the unethical hits just keep on coming in Cambridge…

Harvard Law School’s journal “Civil Rights and Civil Liberties” requires that applicants reveal their sexual orientation, gender identity and race for their article submissions to be considered, as well as including their preferred pronouns (mine are “Bite me!”) and whether he or she is blessed with a disability. These are the very same people who would scream if an employer required the same information. To be fair, that’s because the journal wants to practice good discrimination—you know, penalizing white, straight men, the source of all evil, strife and injustice.

Naturally, a presumably white, straight male has objected to these required disclosures. Wisconsin-based attorney Michael Cicchini, who submitted articles in the past, has blown the whistle on the journal. While the form includes the option “prefer not to say,” the application also announces in bold, “This form is mandatory. CR-CL will not review submissions from authors who have not completed this form,” thus making it clear that one will not curry favor by insisting on privacy. “Harvard should not be judging article submissions based on identity politics,” Cicchini says. Continue reading →

RETRACTED!: “5 Ethics Observations On The Woke Student’s Stanford Admission Essay”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’m retracting this post, for several reasons. First, it is old, really old, and the source that led me to it for some reason posted it as recent. It does appear to be true, despite the April 1 date on the tweet. Second, some of my points are not valid if the episode was not recent.

This has happened to me a few times before, usually when I’m in a rush, like today. For the second time this week, I had to get my wife to the emergency room, this time at 4:00 am. That’s no excuse: it’s my problem, not yours, and my obligations to my readers don’t change regardless of extenuating circumstances.

My thanks go to sharp-eyed Curmie, who pointed out the error.

Oh—I checked: Ziad Ahmad is real, he’s still an extreme progressive, and he didn’t go to Stanford after all. He graduated from Yale.

The post is below for posterity’s sake.

***

“When it comes to college essays, one teen is showing that a short but powerful message may be the path to success,” gushes NBC News. “Short but powerful”? I ‘d call the stunt by Ziad Ahmed, a teenager from Princeton, New Jersey, something a bit different from that.

In response to a question on his Stanford college application asking “What matters to you, and why?” the teen wrote “#BlackLivesMatter” 100 times. Ahmed then received an acceptance letter from the prestigious California school and is bragging about his successful gambit on social media.

Observations:

1. Assuming that Ahmed would not have been admitted (even if he had solved the mysteries of cold fusion in his spare time) had he written “Make America Great Again” a hundred times in answer to the same question, this incident proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Stanford is using political preferences to cull its applications. That’s not a stunning revelation, but we now know that the school isn’t even trying for “diversity” of thought, opinion or world view. And, of course, Stanford’s bias is almost certainly the rule, not the exception.

2. “It was important to me that the admissions officers literally hear my impatience for justice and the significance of this issue,” Ahmed told NBC News. “The hashtag conveys my frustration with the failure of judicial system to protect the black community from violence, systemic inequity, and political disenfranchisement.” Oh. But the question didn’t ask him to express his impatience, however, or how “significant” he thinks the phony revelation expressed by the BLM mantra is.  The logic expressed by Ahmed’s statement to NBC shows a serious lack of critical thought, remarkable arrogance even for a teen, and his acceptance of propaganda as fact. So does his “answer” to the Stanford application query.

Yeah, I guess Stanford is right: he’s perfect for its student body. Continue reading →

‘OK, But What Has He Done Lately?’

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Conservative black scholar Thomas Sowell, now 92 but still as courageous and perceptive as ever, has, to engage in understatement, been critical of the fake history “1619 Project,” now being inflicted on school children across the country. That centerpiece of current CRT indoctrination is the brain-child of Nicole Hannah-Jones, an African-American reporter with an agenda, and for her divisive misinformation, declared hooey by a large number of historians who can smell rot when they encounter it, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and later a tenured chair in “Race and Journalism,” as if that was a legitimate study rather than propaganda, at Howard.

Flushed with the perceived authority such a contrived position confers, and lacking the sense God gave a lemming, Professor Hannah-Jones took to Twitter yesterday to sneer, “Other than being Black, what exactly is Sowell’s expertise in slavery or history?” Proving that she asked this employing the same diligence and research skills that marked her “1619 Project” (which claimed that the American Revolution was fought to protect slavery, and is low-grade baloney), one of the many Twitterphiles who weighed in to mock her listed Sowell’s relevant publications by year: Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: On ChatGPT And Artificial Intelligence

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On yesterday’s Open Forum, Null Pointer clarified some of the ethics issues surrounding ChatGPT, currently causing panic and consternation among teachers worried that their students will use artificial intelligence to write their essays. (They are already receiving an artificial education from most of those teachers, so this seems a bit hypocritical to me.)

Here is Null Pointer’s edifying Comment of the Day:

***

“AI” programs like ChatGPT are interesting toys that have some real world utility, but are not really artificial intelligence. They are pattern recognition applications. I would not suggest using them to do one’s homework because they lie. They are trained on large datasets pulled from the internet, and if the data pulled off the internet is wrong, then they spit out wrong answers. If they don’t know the answer, they make things up. https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/8/23590864/google-ai-chatbot-bard-mistake-error-exoplanet-demo

Like any tool, the ethics lies in the user utilizing them. Having someone or something else do your homework for you is cheating. Using an AI to proofread your grammar is not really any different than the built in grammar checks in Microsoft Word. Pattern recognition tools probably have a lot of real world utility, but they are not going to be replacing humans anytime soon. Continue reading →

Trans Ethics Train Wreck Update: Why Is All This This Happening? [With A Bonus Comment Of The Day On “Hogwarts Legacy”]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Among the many things I don’t understand about the increasingly bizarre trans-advocacy bullying and propaganda is the ideological divide. Why are Democrats and progressives supporting this manifestly bonkers—and unethical—effort to defy reality?

Some of the latest “revoltin’ developments”:

1. The unhinged fury at J.K. Rowling for not falling in with the pro-trans guerillas.

Today is the release date for Hogwarts Legacy, the most highly anticipated video game of 2023. But many trans-fans are conflicted about the game because of supposedly transphobic comments made  about transgender people by J.K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, Hogwarts, and the whole empire.  Conveniently, EA Comment-Master Humble Talent registered a report on today’s Open Forum. In his Comment of the Day, slightly shortened here (read it all at the link) HT writes,

[P]rogressives hate JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, feminist icon, and TERF extraordinaire. It’s not like Rowling is particularly offensive….The problem isn’t that she’s offensive, the problem is that she’s a traitor. Worse, she’s a traitor that they helped prop up, she has “Fuck You” levels of money, and nothing they do can actually cancel her, because again… She’s independently wealthy, isn’t particularly offensive, and doesn’t care what they think.

Her offense, such that it is, is a less than enthusiastic endorsement of the trans agenda. She has no problems using pronouns, she tries, generally, to be polite, but sometimes uses a variation of the TERF maxim of “there are very few places where gender actually matters anymore, but where it does, it matters a lot” and doesn’t put much stock in the idea of trans women in women’s sport, and feels that trans women shouldn’t be in women’s prisons or abuse shelters, off the top of my head.

Trans people, not very well adjusted to reality to begin with, are so used to getting their way when they whine on Twitter that they’re not dealing very well with the idea that Warner Brothers would continue to risk their ire by further developing the Harry Potter Franchise, which in some very unclear way involving assumed royalties benefits Rowling, the newest iteration of which is “Hogwarts Legacy.”

…It’s fairly obvious that the developers were acutely aware that they were going to be under a DEI microscope, so there is a LOT of representation in the game. This isn’t a huge departure from the source material, there was a lot of representation there too… Rowling is, after all, progressive….

Very early on in the game, you meet the Potterverse’s first trans character: Sirona Ryan. Trans people apparently don’t think that pandering was enough, because Sirona starts with Sir, and that’s an obvious slight.

Because of course it is. The developers going out of their way to try to cleanse the franchise of the filth of its creator by shoehorning in as much DEI as possible is just cover so that they could name their first trans character Manlina McBeefcake to squick the trans people they’re not actually pandering to. Because that makes sense.

Which is the theme here… Nothing is enough. They’re bound and determined to hate it. Which is why the success of the game seems to feel like pure rock salt in the open wound of their entire existence. It’s a good game with a very popular franchise released at a time when there aren’t any other new releases worth note on the market.

So…. What do you do when something you hate is succeeding and you’re really unused to the market not giving a damn about your displeasure? You melt down. The fireworks over this have been some of the most entertaining terminally online bullshit I’ve seen in my life. Brigades of trans people and their allies are joining Twitch streams of people playing HL and cramming their chats with bile, article after article after article written by progressives whining belligerently over the market’s apathy to their discomfort, but most interestingly, because it’s new: Someone coded a website that would log whenever someone streamed HL and compiled it in a searchable database, so trans people could know who to boycott…. Which was basically everyone, so it’s not exactly effective.

Any and all of this would have been derided by the same people doing it as targeted harassment and bullying if they were the target of what they’re doing to others, and they’re doing it without a spark of self awareness. Which lends more credit, I think, to my prevailing theory of: These people don’t actually care about targeted harassment, bullying, or any other professed principle. They’re consistently unhappy people and their single last joy in life is bitching with the intent of depriving other people of the joy they are incapable of feeling.

2. More Lia Thomas ethics rot… Continue reading →