Jeffrey Blehar: Cambridge can--but evidently won't--catch Jason Arday

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I said Arday was in the Ed school...but it's worse than that...: He's a "sociologist of education."

Those are either the two most disreputable academic fields or damn close to it...

Kathleen Stock: Jason Arday, Cambridge's DEI Darling

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   Arday is clearly unqualified...even in perhaps the weakest discipline in academia...(and that's saying something...) He is undeniably a DEI hire. He is a serial fabulist--and his tall tales aren't even minimally credible. He is the poster child for academic Woketarianism and in particular DEI. Cambridge has embarrassed itself but it simply will not admit it. It and he have their defenders. Here, for example, is a mess of thermonuclear cringe, an open letter in Arday and Cabridge's defense.

Here's an embarrassing paragraph:

It is difficult to ignore the question of motivation. When a distinguished Black academic is repeatedly subjected to baseless allegations after being fully exonerated, it signals there is an attempt to undermine Black people who hold positions of influence.

Contrariwise:

It isn't at all difficult to ignore the question of motivation. Regardless of anyone's motivation, the charges against Arday are devastating. And at least most of them are far from "baseless"--they are supported by extremely strong evidence. Cofnas carefully documents Arday's extensive plagiarism, for example. But Cambridge and at least some of the relevant journals are helping cover it up. No ordinary academician would be afforded the opportunity to go back into a published paper filled with plagiarism and add references. He has not been "exonerated"...much less "fully" so. Rather, at least many of the accusations are clearly true. So, again: motives need not come into this.

...however...

When an obviously unqualified academic is obviously hired because of his race--and, perhaps, his tall tales about disability ("neurodivergence")...and when it has been proven that he plagiarized and lied...and when the leftist establishment nevertheless refuses to accept the plain facts of the matter...

...well...it's just the opposite of what the authors and signatories of the open letter would have you believe.

Obviously.

   Contrast Arday and Cofnas: the former is--well, see above. Cofnas is smart, intellecutally independent, fearless, and astute. But Cofnas is white, and has the temerity to speak politically incorrect truths. Arday is black, and checks all the woke boxes. Cofnas was chased out of Cambridge and is lucky to have found a position he hasn't been run out of...yet. Arday's indefensible actions are being defended by Cambridge et al...

I thought academia might more or less be done embarrassing itself.

But I was wrong.

"Liberal Currents": Thermonuclear Leftardation

I just stumbled across this.

facepalm

Unbelievably idiotic.

Ukraine: Viper Takes Down Su-30; Special Forces Hack Rooskies, Get Them to Shoot Down Felon w/ Their Own SAM

Unconfirmed by me, but I tend to trust Max Afterburner:

Alicia Nieves: The Left's War on Anti-Crime Tech

"Progressive paranoia costs lives"

I haven't thought enough about e.g. Flock cameras--though it's an issue in my town.

I agree with what Nieves says about the left...but I'm not sure whether they're right or wrong about the cameras and similar things.

Certainly conservatives, liberals and centrists are split on such issues. Libertarians tend to be unified and against such technology. As goes without saying.

My main objection to these new sub-movements on the left is that--as usual--they seem mainly concerned to support criminals and criminality. Progressives lean libertarian when it comes to defending criminals--but not ordinary people. They're against Flock cameras...but also against voter ID. They're libertarian about the cameras, and about gunfire detection technology...but not about gun ownership by law-abiding citizens. Very selective libertarianism...and generally in the wrong direction.

Me, again: I don't know. As Sowell says, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Flock cameras are good and they're bad. If we could be assured that the information wouldn't be used for any purpose other than catching serious criminals--that the information would be locked up except to catch murderers, rapists, child-abductors, etc--I'd be inclined to favor it. But, of course, I don't trust the government nor the relevant companies to do it that way...

So I don't know...but I'm inclined to be against them on general principle...but willing to be convinced.

James Taranto: SCOTUS Should Say It Plainly: A Man Cannot Become A Woman

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Actually, this is even slightly more fundamental:

Women cannot be male

Men cannot be female.

I spent way too much time on Saturday arguing in the WSJ comments with a paradigmatically loony progressive about this. He (or she?) didn't know even the most basic things about the issue. He just accepted the blue-team talking points. Foremost among his confusions--one of the most important bits of leftist dogma: that man and woman are "genders." As I explained--repeatedly and to no avail:

[a] Man and woman are species/sex/maturity kinds (or categories), like buck and doe, boar and sow, bull and cow, stallion and mare... We have such terms for almost every species that is important to us--humans foremost among them.

   Unfortunately, 'gender' is multiply ambiguous--and that's largely by design. It functions as an equivocation engine, and the left switches around among different senses in order to obfuscate. If we eliminate the obviously defective senses of the term, and keep the meaning fixed, their arguments collapse immediately.

   As I've said for a decade, there is a sensible, defensible sense of 'gender'--basically the first one used as a technical term in such discussion: that is: the genders are masculine and feminine. These not "cultural," but, rather, behavioral kinds (though culture spins them a bit--as it does so many things). Men are typically more masculine, women more feminine. If we stick to this meaning, some of the left's central claims actually turn out to be true: these things lie on a spectrum; there's an intermediate state that could be considered a third gender: androgyny; one can, to some extent, alter them at will--by acting more masculine or more feminine. However: they have nothing essentially to do with being a man or a woman: acting in masculine ways can't make a female a man; acting in feminine ways can't make a male a woman.

   This dude I was arguing with even denied that the following definition is circular:  a woman is someone who thinks himself/herself to be a woman. I had to explain that, if the definiendum appears in the definiens...then that's circular...

   There's nothing like being [a] a pompous jackass who [b] has no earthly clue WTF you are talking about...

   Anyway, Taranto is right, of course. But the denial that men can be female and that women can be male, is slightly more fundamental. So it would be slightly better to focus on that.

Rich Lowry: Yes, the DSA Has a Communist Problem

Not so much a problem, really...it's just who they are...

Charles Cook: The DSA Wants to Abolish America

That's no exaggeration.

If this in any way surprises you, you haven't been paying attention.

Here's what I'd like to know:

What percentage of Democrats would support these DSA insurgents if they thought they could win with them?

Because there's nothing really new about these people--other than that they're rather more clear-eyed and up-front about their ultimate goals.

To be clear: I have no doubt that most Democrats oppose the "dismantling" of the United States. I'm less sure what percentage agrees with at least some of the DSA's insane goals. Look: Democrats are now mostly "progressive"...and "progressives" have been pushing these goals for at least a decade ("depolicing," "decarceration," radical DEI, abolish ICE, amnesty (ergo: de facto open borders). Many progressives have basically favored abolishing the Senate--by e.g. turning it into another House, abolishing the filibuster, etc. This DSA idiot doesn't mention abolishing the electoral college, but I have no doubt they support it. I'm sure they'd be all about trashing at least the first two Amendments...

"Entryism" aka Infiltration, the "French Turn," "Boring-from-Within"

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Roughly analogous to: the long march through the institutions.

Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee is noted for its "realignment" strategy efforts within the Democratic Party in the 1970s, while its modern-day successor Democratic Socialists of America is primarily focused on running its members on the Democratic Party platform (e.g. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib), or endorsing other democratic socialists at doing so (e.g. Bernie Sanders).

Scott Pinsker: The Great MAGA Reversal on Ukraine

About time.

IMO conservatives have been really stupid about Ukraine.

In fact, many--the Tucker Carlson wing, I guess--have been downright pro-Russian.

Abject stupidity.

I'm not saying that it was reasonable for Europe to think we should come bail them out on this one. But Trump's treatment of Zelensky has been shameful.

We should be happy for Ukraine to bleed Russia dry.

Or, rather: Putin.

I don't hate the Russians, of course. I hate their psychopathic president.

Anyway. Better late than never, I reckon.

Allysia Finley: The Republicans Who Enable Socialists

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I'm more and more sympathetic to conservatives who think we should just cut all such programs.

Undoubtedly, we'd end up cutting some we'd want back--but deal with that if/when it happens.

The massive outpouring of tax dollars to inefficient and corrupt programs that ultimately fund and otherwise sustain Democrats is worse than just a waste of money. I'd rather see it piled up and burned.

DCj: WE'RE LITERALLY IN HITLER'S FIRST 100 DAYS !!!!!!1111

But, hey, on the bright side: time travel...

Kurt Micelli: Trump Lucks into a Plan to Reform the AMA

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DO EET

  Absolutely do not stop. Do not slow down. In fact, put the pedal to the metal. For Trump's myriad flaws, he's doing a creditable job crushing the cult and undoing its works. Transanity and DIE are among its most heinous.

   If Harris had won, these things might have been further solidified, for all the backlash against them. We haven't won this--not by a long shot. Rooting it all out of our institutions will take hard work, intelligence and stubborn persistence. But this is a battle for the USA, the West, and sanity. Transanity seems to be on the run, and I've always thought it was too insane to survive...DEI is less overtly Orwellian. It's already burrowing farther in and surviving the backlash merely by e.g. changing words on university web pages.

Cathryn Townsend: "Epstein's Gifted Scientists" (A Screed on Race Realism)

LOOOOOOLOLOLOLOL

I guess you shouldn't expect too much from an anthropologist writing on a venue called "Liberal Currents"...but this is a weak effort by just about anyone's standards.

Not really the first part, so much, which is about famous academicians who hung out with Richard Epstein. That pretty much seems like legit reporting. The most surprising bit to me was when I looked on of the pix from the "Lolita Express" and thought Hey, that looks like Dan Dennett...which, indeed, it was. Alongside Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins...

   Anyway, smart money says none of these guys knew what Epstein was up to. And lemme tell ya: it's easy to seduce academicians with money, attention and flattery... That's probably the really embarrassing part of the whole thing. According to one participant, the only girls they saw were young, but of legal age. And, of course, no old farts can be blamed for being entranced by young, attractive women.

   But the essay becomes downright laughable when the author comes around to her real point: trying to link Epstein up to race realism. Of course she uses the politically correct dysphemism "scientific racism"...which isn't even vaguely accurate... She gives no arguments against race realism, but, rather, relies on the reservoir of negative emotions and hysteria that drive so much of leftism. REEEEE Heterodox Academy!!11 REEEEEEEEEE Nathan Confas!!111 REEEEEEEE IQ differences!!1111!! REEEEEEEEE Steve Sailer!1!1! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.....

   It's all pretty pathetic. But it's all the Cult really has on this one. Lysenkoism is the lifeblood of Woketarianism... And, since they're wrong, they're really gonna have to go all-in on this one. They're in too deep. If large numbers of people start letting themselves actually consider the evidence, major pillars of leftism will come tumbling down...

Nathan Confas: DEI Fraud and Coverup at Cambridge

Almost unbelievable even if you're already hip to the DEI scene. That shit is made of fraud. Fraud is what it is. This guy, Jason Arday, concocted a bogus backstory about not speaking a single word before the age of 18. He became (for realz) a professor at Cambridge before the age of 30. In the Ed school...so...asterisk...but still...  His "research" looks like unmitigated woke bullshit...and it's almost all plagiarized. His punishment? He was permitted to insert citations after publication. In one case he seems to have been permitted to rewrite the paper...again, after publication.

   If I were ever found to have done such a thing...well first I never would...and second I'd commit seppuku if I did...whether it was ever discovered or not...but still: I'd be fired so damn fast I wouldn't know what hit me. As I should be under such circumstances...

   Confas was a student (postdoc?) at Cambridge, but was (IIRC) run off campus when it was found that he had drawn very naughty, politically incorrect conclusions about race. Arday is manifestly incompetent and a serial plagiarist. And he has a faculty appointment there.

   Unfuckingbelievable.

O NOEZ! Homeschooling Keeps Women at Home!

...with their children...where many of them would prefer to be.

Feminism used to hold that women should be able to work outside the home if they choose to...

...now it holds that women who don't do so are defective.

I'm hardly a friend of hard-core conservative Christianity.

But homeschooling is no longer just for those folks--as the schools have become shittier, more dangerous, and more insane/woke, more and more people are choosing to homeschool.

And I've written against both creationism and Woketarianism publicly.

Creationism is wrong.

Woketarianism is insane.

Now, both views tend to come with shit-ass epistemic defense mechanisms.

Creationism often (but not always) comes packaged with fideism and a dogmatic epistemic admonition not to question the view.

Woketarianism usually comes with extensive, insane epistemic defense mechanisms including political correctness / Lysenkoism and a radioactive mishmash of skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and "social constructionism." Also, it's commonly implanted via indoctrination/brainwashing. It seems to me to be much more difficult for people to get over it.

Finally, of course: send your kids to public schools, they might convince him that he's a girl, possibly leading to lifelong medical mutilation...

WATCH: Jennifer Welch doubles down on her attacks against homeschooling, calling it “patriarchal step of the fascist project” made by those “dumber than a box of hot rocks” and “dead-ass broke” women refusing to divorce “piece of shit, closet-case husbands”....

“And I stand by… pic.twitter.com/40WNQ4oUYF

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 20, 2026

Illegal Alien Attempts to Abduct Loudoun County Woman

Oh, sorry...I meant "undocumented non-citizen"...

Wouldn't want to hurt the fee-fees of an attempted rapist...or perhaps murderer...

The woman fought the sonofabitch off.

Your blue future.

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 Edition: Definition of 'Woman'

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WOMAN, noun plural women. [a compound of womb and man.]

1. The female of the human race, grown to adult years.

And the rib, which the Lord god had taken from the man, made he a woman Genesis 2:22.

Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible.

We see every day women perish with infamy, by having been too willing to set their beauty to show.

I have observed among all nations that the women ornament themselves more tan the men; that wherever found, they are the same kind, civil, obliging, humane, tender beings, inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest.

2. A female attendant or servant.

WOMAN, verb intransitive To make pliant.

Funny how they'd neglect to include anything about male women...

Of course the Woketards are in a bind here.

Sometimes they pretend that everyone has always known that women could be male...but we all know that's false. And this is easily refuted by the fact that no sources anywhere ever claim such a thing before very recently...

Or they may have made some kind of empirical discovery...which isn't the case.

Or they may have discovered some conceptual/philosophical arguments that prove the point--but they haven't. Their arguments are total shit, and when confronted with this fact, their standard response is: oh, you haven't read enough feminist philosophy and don't understand the rich complexity of the view. Which is bullshit.

Or...and this is what they're really doing: they're just trying to change the meaning of the word. Which will make exactly zero women male...though it will basically alter the language such that the sentence 'some women are male' no longer means that some women are male...but instead means that some people who are (either women or men pretending to be women) are male. Which is, of course, true...but it doesn't mean that some women are male.

Mandami Really Does Aim to Seize the Means of Production

Hey there, Gary. Here’s a video of the currently sitting Mayor of New York City saying that “winning Socialism” is the most important purpose of this project, with the end goal being to “seize the means of production”. Can I get a comment from you on this? https://t.co/7NxYfP6roZ pic.twitter.com/kndQyUfK8P

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) July 24, 2026

Shellenberger: The Utopian Dream that's Destroying Society (on Purpose)

Rahm Emanuel wants you to believe that the last decade of Democrat madness was all because of socialists

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It was socialists who led the charge to defund the police, open the borders, abolish prisons, release violent criminals onto the streets and degrade the flag.

Hey, Rahm...

[a] You left out: brainwash and maim children; force both children and adults to attend indoctrination sessions in which gender ideology, CRT (and other racist ideas) were represented as known facts; embed GI, CRT, etc. in the policies and structures of K-12, universities, the military, and government; perpetrate and cover up the Russiagate hoax; promote lies and authoritarian policies re: COVID and lockdowns; force DEI into every institution; undermine the First Amendment (e.g. under "misinformation" rubric); generally promote political correctness and the Lysenkoization of science; promote climate apocalypticism; defend left-wing riots and terrorism (e.g. Antifa)....one could go on...and on...and on...

[b] It wasn't just socialists who did these things. There has been widespread support among Democrats. Stop trying to pretend that your party is innocent. You have been promoting this nonsense for at least a decade. Now suddenly you're alarmed because some young insurgents with very slightly more radical views threaten your grip on power in the party.

As others have noted, it sure looks like Emanuel is thinking of trying to snag the Dem nomination for '28. Which isn't going to happen. Especially given something a WSJ commenter points out that I didn't know: his middle name is 'Israel.'

Given that, dude, you might as well just go enjoy retirement.

There is exactly zero chance of the Dems nominating you.

NRO: NJ's Damning Admission on Illegals' Voting

Funny how blue state voting "errors" always benefit the Dems...

What're the odds?

   Though I think there's a good chance this really was mainly error.

   OTOH: it's error NJ would be more likely to uncover if it benefitted the Pubs...

   Thing is, being generally slack about voting benefits the Dems. So blue states are generally slack about voting. As usual, I'd say: the vanguard of the left seeks to "dismantle" America, and undermining the security of our elections and trust therein is a good tactic. (Note also leftist proposals that children be allowed to vote, and even that everyone in the world be allowed to vote in American elections (because America's actions allegedly affect everyone.)) The less-radical parts of the left--e.g. mainstream Dems--won't go for that...so for them it's repackaged as ways of increasing voter turnout. Better that a million illegals vote than that one bum on Skid Row fails to cast a ballot!

   I've generally thought that Trump and the Trumpy Pubs have exaggerated the problem. But, as The Editors argue, that doesn't mean it isn't a problem.

   And: I suspect that voter fraud is rather like public assistance fraud. Blue states have roughly the same attitude to both (better to lose $millions to fraud than that one child go without...etc.)

  And: just as we're finding that public assistance fraud is more widespread than we thought, I hypothesize that voter fraud will ultimately turn out to be more common, too.

Canada: Assembly of First Nations Call for the Criminalization of Residential Schools Denialism

Thing is, of course, that the stories about mass murders, mass graves, etc. at Canada's residential schools are false.

So, political correctness again: the subordination of facts and evidence to leftist political dogma.

Here's something I posted in the past about "experts" on residential school "denialism."

Typical lefty academic douchebags.

You may be surprised to learn that "residential school denialism" isn't really about claiming that the mass murders and graves are fictional... Oh no:

"[It's about] denying survivors' experiences, how they experienced their institutionalization as a child, but also the so-called intent of residential schools," she said.

Fraser said she sees denialism when people suggest the residential school system had good intentions, as well as when people question the motives of survivors who share their stories.

She said denialism will still exist even after all the facts about residential schools are accepted.

"The ideology of denialism is going to continue beyond residential schools because we still live in a sociopolitical context that justifies colonialism," she said.

"In order to interrupt the rejection of Indigenous knowledge, whether it's about residential schools or something else, we will need some kind of a radical transformation in society."

This is one of my main disagreements with the left: its retreat into bullshit subjectivist and relativist pseudo-philosophy when it starts losing arguments. The residential schools story is bullshit...so, hey, let's just ignore that and focus instead on disagreeing with the beliefs of contemporary Canadian Indians...

   And, of course: all appeals to "indigenous knowledge" actually mean: indigenous belief. Or, rather: the beliefs of such people.

   And ya gotta get colonialism in there!

   I'm kinda surprised they didn't work in the "two spirit" nonsense... 

Erin Shaw: Bans on "Divisive Concepts" Threaten to Stifle Speech

Absolutely right.

Period.

No 'ifs,' 'ands,' or 'buts'...

Er...

...but...:

The point of those policies was actually to block indoctrination, as is clear if you read the seminal ones from e.g. Florida.

So how could someone aim at No leftist indoctrination and end up with No promotion of divisive concepts?

Two ways:

First, We might be tempted to say No promotion of concepts at all, only discussion...but the case is at least provisionally closed on many issues. E.g. the approximate shape of the Earth, that evolution occurs in at least some form, that the Battle of Lexington was in 1775, and so on.

Second--and speaking from personal...oh, sorry...of course I meant "lived"...experience: whenever you argue against leftist indoctrination, leftists respond that there is no clear line between teaching and indoctrination. This is really just a rhetorical ploy to allow them to keep indoctrinating students...but actually they're right...because there are relatively few clear lines between any two such things. Nature is filled with lines...but blurry ones. Generally not clear ones. 

   And it's on this latter ground that the battle ought to be fought.

   Don't avoid engagement here. If you do, you'll always be running from it. And you'll run to even shakier ground--like a prohibition on discussing "divisive concepts"...

...except, again (and of course) the original policies banned promotion of them, not discussion of them..

...and the promotion/discussion distinction is basically a way to discuss the teaching/indoctrination distinction...

   Look, here's what's really up, so far as I can tell:

   It's perfectly permissible to just teach/tell students that p if/when p is true...or at least it seems to be, and the case is at least provisionally closed. It is NOT ok to just teach/tell students that p when p is controversial...and especially when it is extremely so.

   But what the left has been doing is actually taking ideas that are not only NOT proven nor even well-established...and just teaching/telling students--and adults--that they are established facts. And, worse: they've been teaching/telling students (and adults!) that the case is closed and that obvious falsehoods are true. E.g. (again, their flagship dogma) Women have penises...

   It's generally a judgment calls whether to represent something as proven beyond any appreciable doubt...because, again, what we really have is a spectrum of degrees of proof. And we can't couch everything we say in preponderance of evidence language.

[subroutine: if we try to do that, we fall into a regress. Instead of Earth is round (actually it's an oblate spheroid), I say The evidence clearly indicates that Earth is round. Well, why is the nature of the evidence get exempted from these considerations? It, too, is something that must be established...so if I wanted to do the same thing for every question, I'd have to say: the evidence clearly indicates that the evidence clearly indicates that Earth is round... and so on. Or: so far as I can tell, the evidence clearly indicates that Earth is round. Anyway: at some point we just have to say something straight up and drop the evidence language...]

   To cut to the chase: in schools and "training" sessions run by the left, it's been promoting its wacko, poorly-evidenced theories as proven facts. The rest of us are demanding that that stop. We'll always face the generic problem, discussed above, about when to treat things as at least provisionally settled...but that's a completely different problem. What has to stop is what the left is doing. The other problem is never going to go away. But when challenged, they pretend that what they're doing is an instance of the generic problem...which it isn't.

   Almost every time I've spoken out against indoctrination at my university, someone has responded in a way that attempts to blur the distinction between the generic problem and the specific leftist indoctrination problem--and that's how we end up with the "divisive concepts" approach. It's a way of answering the left's sophistical defense of indoctrination. But, again, that's a confusion.

   The above is all written in one draft, as usual, but it's a bit more haphazard than usual. But I don't have time to revise it.

   Bottom line: there are some clear cases of indoctrination, and it's those that must stop. My own university got busted for a clear case of indoctrination of student orientation leaders (or maybe resident advisors) when it foolishly taped one of the session. It clearly showed two grad students basically telling the undergrads that leftist doctrines about "privilege" and whatnot are true. No qualifications, no indication that they were speculative, controversial, leftist views...they simply said things like "Here is a list of groups with 'privilege'" and so on. That was a clear instance of indoctrination. 

   Anyway, I think the bans were better than nothing, though obviously just band-aids. They helped blunt the edge of pervasive leftist indoctrination...but they're no substitute for going right at the problem. 

   Final note: when our faculty senate was drafting its condemnation of such policies, I spoke against the resolution. I noted that, after years of leftist indoctrination, it had never even considered condemning that...and noted that the real goal was blocking indoctrination...and I moved that we add a clause condemning indoctrination. Another faculty-member said that it was too hard to distinguish between teaching and indoctrination. I responded that, difficult as that might be, indoctrination was still bad, and that we should condemn it, so that the criticism of divisive concept bans wasn't interpreted as a defense of indoctrination. My motion was soundly defeated. That's the situation in microcosm right there...

[Case in point:  the president of the AAA says that the case is closed on the number of sexes, and that for anthropologists to teach students that there are two of them is like turning astronomy classes into astrology classes...]

Rubio Knocks It Out of the Park Again: Left-Wing Terrorism

He's exactly right. The progressive establishment, including the MSM, throw the term 'far right' around at the drop of a hat, using it to describe anyone to the right of Obama. They rarely describe anyone as 'far left.' Leftist propaganda and idea-laundering organizations like SPLC and ADL produce reports propping up the myth that almost all terrorism is right-wing. 

Oh yeah, and:  Rubio '28...: