August 2, 2013

Want to get into UC Berkeley? Lie

Back in 1996, Proposition 209 outlawing racial preferences was passed by California voters and became part of the state Constitution. State officials have ever since pursued a strategy of "massive resistance" to this unwelcome demand for equal treatment of the law, such as by switching the evaluation of University of California admissions from a cheap, mechanical system to an expensive, subjective "holistic" system. After all, the Latino lobby in the state legislature could cut UC's budget if they don't get more of their people into UC.

Ruth Starkman took a job as a reader of applications to Berkeley, and writes in the NYT:
Admissions officials were careful not to mention gender, ethnicity and race during our training sessions.  
Privately, I asked an officer point-blank: “What are we doing about race?” 
She nodded sympathetically at my confusion but warned that it would be illegal to consider: we’re looking at — again, that phrase — the “bigger picture” of the applicant’s life. 
After the next training session, when I asked about an Asian student who I thought was a 2 but had only received a 3, the officer noted: “Oh, you’ll get a lot of them.” She said the same when I asked why a low-income student with top grades and scores, and who had served in the Israeli army, was a 3. 
Which them? I had wondered. Did she mean I’d see a lot of 4.0 G.P.A.’s, or a lot of applicants whose bigger picture would fail to advance them, or a lot of Jewish and Asian applicants (Berkeley is 43 percent Asian, 11 percent Latino and 3 percent black)? 
... In a second e-mail, I was told I needed more 1’s and referrals. A referral is a flag that a student’s grades and scores do not make the cut but the application merits a special read because of “stressors” — socioeconomic disadvantages that admissions offices can use to increase diversity. 
Officially, like all readers, I was to exclude minority background from my consideration. I was simply to notice whether the student came from a non-English-speaking household. I was not told what to do with this information — except that it may be a stressor if the personal statement revealed the student was having trouble adjusting to coursework in English. In such a case, I could refer the applicant for a special read. 
Why did I hear so many times from the assistant director? I think I got lost in the unspoken directives. Some things can’t be spelled out, but they have to be known. Application readers must simply pick it up by osmosis, so that the process of detecting objective factors of disadvantage becomes tricky.
It’s an extreme version of the American non-conversation about race. 
I scoured applications for stressors. 
To better understand stressors, I was trained to look for the “helpful” personal statement that elevates a candidate. Here I encountered through-the-looking-glass moments: an inspiring account of achievements may be less “helpful” than a report of the hardships that prevented the student from achieving better grades, test scores and honors. 
Should I value consistent excellence or better results at the end of a personal struggle? I applied both, depending on race. An underrepresented minority could be the phoenix, I decided. 
We were not to hold a lack of Advanced Placement courses against applicants. Highest attention was to be paid to the unweighted G.P.A., as schools in low-income neighborhoods may not offer A.P. courses, which are given more weight in G.P.A. calculation. Yet readers also want to know if a student has taken challenging courses, and will consider A.P.’s along with key college-prep subjects, known as a-g courses, required by the U.C. system. ...
Another reader thinks the student is “good” but we have so many of “these kids.” ...
IN personal statements, we had been told to read for the “authentic” voice over students whose writing bragged of volunteer trips to exotic places or anything that “smacks of privilege.” 
Fortunately, that authentic voice articulated itself abundantly. Many essays lucidly expressed a sense of self and character — no small task in a sea of applicants. Less happily, many betrayed the handiwork of pricey application packagers, whose cloying, pompous style was instantly detectable, as were canny attempts to catch some sympathy with a personal story of generalized misery. 
The torrent of woe could make a reader numb: not another student suffering from parents’ divorce, a learning difference, a rare disease, even dandruff! 
As I developed the hard eye of a slush pile reader at a popular-fiction agency, I asked my lead readers whether some of these stressors might even be credible. I was told not to second-guess the essays but simply to pick the most worthy candidate. Still, I couldn’t help but ask questions that were not part of my reader job. 
The assistant director’s words — look for “evidence a student can succeed at Berkeley” — echoed in my ears when I wanted to give a disadvantaged applicant a leg up in the world. I wanted to help. Surely, if these students got to Berkeley they would be exposed to all sorts of test-taking and studying techniques. 
But would they be able to compete with the engineering applicant with the 3.95 G.P.A. and 2300 SATs? Does Berkeley have sufficient support services to bridge gaps and ensure success? Could this student with a story full of stressors and remedial-level writing skills survive in a college writing course? 
I wanted every freshman walking through Sather Gate to succeed. 
Underrepresented minorities still lag behind: about 92 percent of whites and Asians at Berkeley graduate within six years, compared with 81 percent of Hispanics and 71 percent of blacks. A study of the University of California system shows that 17 percent of underrepresented minority students who express interest in the sciences graduate with a science degree within five years, compared with 31 percent of white students.
When the invitation came to sign up for the next application cycle, I wavered. My job as an application reader — evaluating the potential success of so many hopeful students — had been one of the most serious endeavors of my academic career. But the opaque and secretive nature of the process had made me queasy. Wouldn’t better disclosure of how decisions are made help families better position their children? Does Proposition 209 serve merely to push race underground? Can the playing field of admissions ever be level? 
For me, the process presented simply too many moral dilemmas. In the end, I chose not to participate again.

60 comments:

David said...

Typo: after "outlawing" (first line) there is an omission.

Anonymous said...

Why am I not seeing this article in the NY Times? Do you have a link?

David said...

The typa is fixed.

What do you mean, "typo," you non-intellectual over 40 you?

Anonymous said...

OK, found it now, didn't find it before because the author is Ruth Starkman, not Parkman

blogger said...

If the 'holistic' approach is so wonderful and necessary, shouldn't holism or holisticism or whatever it's called be taught as a college course? Holistics 101.

Get a Ph.D in Holistics but don't worry too much about getting poor grades since you will be judged holistically.

If holism or holisticism is great and useful enough to decide who should attend elite colleges, then it should be a field and a social science in and of itself so that we can all learn its truths and apply them scientifically.

It seems the Right and the Left have one thing in common. They both prefer to talk around race.
So, conservatives say the problem of Detroit is not blacks/race but socialism/big government, and liberals say Detroit failed because of 'conservative utopianism'.

In the California case, conservatives are being dishonest when they say ending affirmative action was about colorblindness because even if policies are colorblind, biology isn't colorblind and will favor certain races over others in certain endeavors. In other words, whites and Asians wanted a 'colorblind' policy because nature was going to favor their own colors over the colors of others. Of course, whites and Asians were not asking for special treatment but the fact is nature favors them over other races.
But liberals are also full of BS because they insist that there are no racial or biological basis in group differences in IQ.

Yitzak Amalek said...

As Dershowitz has often explained, the Harvard plan of holistic review that Justice Powell blessed in the Bakke decision was instituted to reduce Jewish admissions at Harvard, i.e. to prevent the wholesale replacement of WASPs by junior Talmudic scholars. The admissions folks are still doing it. They never stopped.

It would have been more honest if Powell had just let UC-Davis Med School throw a few extra points to black students. They are doing the same thing now, only they are disguising it with a-wink-and-a-nudge crookedness.

At the end of the year the Universities evaluate their readers, and if a reader isn't recommending the right racial or ethnic groups, they just tell them that they don't need them to read for Big U next year.

Interestingly, the Jews have insitutionalized an identical system over a couple thousand years. God says Jews cannot light a fire (or do other work) on the Sabbath. So they hire "Shabbos goys" to work for them. If a Jew is getting cold on Shabbos, he cannot say, "Bridget, please light a fire." That would be a violation of God's law since a Jew is responsible for servants following his commands.

On the other hand, a Jew CAN say, "Brrr! Brrr! Moishe it sure is cold in here, isn't it?" And Moishe can say, "Boy, Irving, I agree! I am freezing my tuchas off!"

And Bridget, (if she wants to keep her job) will say, "Irving and Moishe, I am freezing in here. I think I will light a fire to warm the place up."

If she doesn't "catch on", she will be fired. But Irving and Moishe will never tell her what they expect of her. God wouldn't like that. You have to be trained as a Shabbos goy by other Shabbos goys.

Application readers are Shabbos goys. And poor Ruth didn't have another Shabbos goy to clue her in.

JSM said...

How do I get that job of Berkeley admissions app reader? Yeah, they'd can me after 6 weeks, but I could do a bit of good for my people.

Sword said...

Here in my Nordic country, applications to gymnasium (age 16-18) is by grade average only. No fudge factors whatsoever. For University level-studies after gymnasium, grade average is the by far largest determinant, and only deciding factor in most types of University-level studies. There are exceptions of art/opera school which include tryouts, police Academy that has interviews, physical tests, and a bit more, and a few other special cases.

However, athletic prowess, parent being a donor, or ethnic Group never matters. Not at all. Likewise with all other fudge factors. Perfectly Clean system. It could be run on a Excel Chart with no human input other than data entry, and probably is. No University entrant is asked to write a letter explaining why just he is should be admitted. If you do not have the grades - sux to be you.

sunbeam said...

Yitzak Amalek wrote:

"As Dershowitz has often explained, the Harvard plan of holistic review that Justice Powell blessed in the Bakke decision was instituted to reduce Jewish admissions at Harvard, i.e. to prevent the wholesale replacement of WASPs by junior Talmudic scholars. The admissions folks are still doing it. They never stopped.

It would have been more honest if Powell had just let UC-Davis Med School throw a few extra points to black students. They are doing the same thing now, only they are disguising it with a-wink-and-a-nudge crookedness.

At the end of the year the Universities evaluate their readers, and if a reader isn't recommending the right racial or ethnic groups, they just tell them that they don't need them to read for Big U next year.

Interestingly, the Jews have insitutionalized an identical system over a couple thousand years. God says Jews cannot light a fire (or do other work) on the Sabbath. So they hire "Shabbos goys" to work for them. If a Jew is getting cold on Shabbos, he cannot say, "Bridget, please light a fire." That would be a violation of God's law since a Jew is responsible for servants following his commands.

On the other hand, a Jew CAN say, "Brrr! Brrr! Moishe it sure is cold in here, isn't it?" And Moishe can say, "Boy, Irving, I agree! I am freezing my tuchas off!"

And Bridget, (if she wants to keep her job) will say, "Irving and Moishe, I am freezing in here. I think I will light a fire to warm the place up."

If she doesn't "catch on", she will be fired. But Irving and Moishe will never tell her what they expect of her. God wouldn't like that. You have to be trained as a Shabbos goy by other Shabbos goys.

Application readers are Shabbos goys. And poor Ruth didn't have another Shabbos goy to clue her in."

Geez. I don't know where you are coming from with that, or if Yitzak Amalek is some kind of statement of a name.

Obviously I have no idea if that is an accurate description, even in the extreme.

But if it is true, I wouldn't touch that kind of existence with a 10 foot purple dick.

If that were the price of high intelligence and wealth, I'd rather go "full retard."

Come to think of it, after watching Portnoy's Complaint I'd sooner become a Muslim than convert to Judaism. And that ain't gonna happen.

Hmmmm, maybe we shape our personal world's to make ourselves comfortable. It's not a feeling I've ever analyzed in myself, but I'm not terribly sure I'd care for the kinds of life that some highly intelligent people lead.

Our blogger host seems to like English intellectuals, but from what I've gathered of them I wouldn't care to be in their shoes at all.

Some of us are just wired to drink a lot of beer, smoke cigarettes, and pee into urinals. And that is how we like it.

Hanging out with Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, or anyone who ever got cornholed at Eton would be my idea of hell.

They might Jetset and flit from place to place, but when they get there they never really went anywhere at all. Same old people everywhere they go, even if the faces change.

jody said...

huh. my friend does this for MIT. he interviews applicants. maybe i should ask him about this stuff.

Anonymous said...

As usual, the truth is hidden between the lines. Berkeley is 11% Latino and 3% Black (there are more Vietnamese than Blacks), despite all these shenanigans. And even that small number falls at the bottom of the class, with lower graduation rates and few who graduate with STEM degrees. These people are just playing games to make themselves feel better (even if it involves breaking the law) but they are not going to overcome the g factor any more than you can repeal gravity.

Portlander said...

For me, the process presented simply too many moral dilemmas. In the end, I chose not to participate again.

Therein lies the problem. Progressive ideologues experience no such moral dilemma and so stay in the system. Moderates (there are no conservatives) bow out and move on to other endeavors, leaving the ideologues indoctrinate another generation. Rinse and repeat. It's a structural, self-reinforcing left bias.

Anonymous said...

Why don't we just dump all of this B.S. and go straight to ethnic/racial quotas?

Sure, imposing a 14% and 15% African-American and Latino student body upon the top universities would do nothing good for either, but at least we'd be spared all the dishonesty.

Besides universities are already turning themselves into jokes by creating courses such as Women's Studies and Africana Studies (in fact anything with the term "studies" in it is pretty much devoid of intellectual quality).

Seriously, just go with quotas and be done with it.

countenance said...

In the California case, conservatives are being dishonest when they say ending affirmative action was about colorblindness because even if policies are colorblind, biology isn't colorblind and will favor certain races over others in certain endeavors.

As Larry Arnn has recently found out, you may not care about race, but race sure cares about you.

I am amazed that Prop 209 is still being enforced. But, according to my secret squirrel sources in California, including one who has two college-aged kids attending UC campi, it is, and its existence and continued enforcement is the only reason why her two kids got to attend UC campi.

blogger said...

Looks like AA, holistic-version or otherwise, isn't gonna go away.

So, it is time to accept the need of AA but on the basis of truth.

If a society is made up of 50% of Group A and 50% Group B, and if on the basis of pure merit, 98 out of 100 admissions to college is of Group A, there's gonna be problems given the nature of human nature and identity politics. So, maybe, for the sake of social harmony, we allow Group B to take 20 admissions.
But this should be done on the basis of truth. Group B is less intelligent than Group A, and therefore needs a bit of help.

This way, at least there is an honest understanding on both sides.

So, we need to stop using telling lies about AA. It's not about past injustices, especially since African immigrants are counted as blacks and since white Hispanics are favored over Arab-Americans whose nations have been bombed by Zionist-American imperialism and over Chinese-Americans whose ancestry may go back to the 'bad ole days' of railroad building. And if we use the past injustice argument, shouldn't Slavic Americans and Palestinian-Americans be favored over Jews since Slavs suffered terribly under Jewish communism and Palestinians suffered terribly under Zionism?

Also, we need to come up with better categories. White Hispanics should count as whites, not as browns. Jews, because of their exceptional power and success, should count as a separate group and their numbers need to be whittled down to make room for white gentiles.
And it's about time we all admitted that blacks should be allowed to get a piece of the pie cuz most of them cannot win in the field of meritocracy. Indeed, even Atlanta schools have new education policies where black students are graded and passed according to lower standards than for other groups. Blacks will yammer about slavery and Jim Crow, but we know it's about natural differences in IQ. Also, black impulsiveness, higher than among other races, make it more difficult for blacks to sit still to do their homework. I wonder if there was any attempt to feel ritalin to lots of black students and see if they perform better simply by improvement of their self-control.

To better demonstrate this, we should call for AA in sports too. Every team must have certain numbers of non-blacks and they should be given some playing time since biological differences pretty much discriminate against most browns, yellows, and even whites from holding certain positions in big time sports.
Sports can be very useful in demonstrating this because the makeup of most teams make it obvious as day that the races are not equal in athleticism and power. So, if such dramatic differences can exist in athletics, why can't it exist in intelligentics?

So, instead of pro-AA or anti-AA, it's time for honest AA since AA is here to say.

Anonymous said...

Any predictions on when the battle royale between the lesbian mafia running and the latino lobby running the state legislature will take place?

gubbisha chechenova said...

White parents should give their kids black names. That oughta do the trick.

Anonymous said...

Question: can misstating your race on an application be grounds for withdrawal of an offer? What about after you accept and pay a deposit.

Can you say that you identify as Hispanic (for example)?

almost slept with madonna said...

Yitzak, what the hell are you babbling about? Bakke had nothing to do with Harvard or any other private Univ, and U.C. Davis wasn't giving blacks "a few extra points," - it was flat reserving 16entrance spots out of 100 for blacks.

And by the way Steve: this admissions issue is now almost completely beside the point. I've been on the Berkeley campus nearly every day since 1993 and I can tell you that outside of the hard sciences there's hardly any education going on at all. Generally, what these "students" do is one of two things: either go to tai chi or other mystical-type physical classes where they lie quietly and think about their privilege (a daily event at Hearst Gym where I swim), or they make up their own coursework in which there are no right answers and no grades below A-. Mostly they're swept up in a vortex of political volunteering and pamphleteering, everyone trying to get "involved" in something that's supposed to impress the next group of "readers" in grad school. The point is we're long past the point where we have to worry whether the admittee can "handle" the course load. This is why I and many other Cal grads stopped donating a long time ago.

Melykin said...

This is appalling. Admittance to universities in Canada is strictly by grades, at least it used to be. People don't write essays.
My son was one of the only non-Asian students in upper level science courses at the University of British Columbia. The place has been almost completely taken over by Chinese.

Anonymous said...

Interesting how unsympathetic NYT readers are to the article in the comments. And how much they ignore the racial/ethnic preferences elephant in the room. I assume this is partially the result of heavy comment moderation though.

Anononymous said...

Quantum-string theory posits that there could be a mirror-universe where
the higher education establishment is concerned about cheap labour driving down wages and reducing quality of life.

In this mirror universe, Steve has a Doppelgänger.

This anti-Steve (who of course has a goatee) is a tenured university professor and a member of the establishment. He writes articles for a website, just like the normal one does. But instead of vdare, it's a mainstream newspaper for higher education.

In his articles he complains that people with names like 'Mohammad' are driving down professors salaries by using cheap, low quality teaching methods. He also criticizes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for financially supporting this. He says administrators are trying to replace professors with cheap alternatives. He says that the quality and character of the education experience will deteriorate in the pursuit of cheaper teaching methods.

In this universe, professors have a union and some go on strike, refusing to teach with these new teaching methods. They say that big-business is threatening their traditional collegial form of government. Slogans like "Our University is not Walmart!" and "our university is not an e-commerce site!" abound.

You are never going to guess what's coming next. Go ahead, guess.

Oh, you saw it coming. Well here it is.

From The Chronicles of Higher Education:

Why Professors at San Jose State Won't Use a Harvard Professor's MOOC
By Steve Kolowich

As MOOC Debate Simmers at San Jose State, American U. Calls a Halt
By Steve Kolowich

San Jose State U.'s Faculty Association Responds to MOOC Backlash

Anonymous said...

1. If graduation rates are lower for NAMs than for whites and Asians, that would suggest that too many minorities are being admitted already at the margin.

2. Liberals wouldn't put themselves in these ridiculous positions if they stopped being such intellectual elitists. In the liberal mind, being a credentialed smarty-pants is so necessary for respectability that they really think they're minding the Pearly Gates and deciding upon who gets into Heaven. Weighty stuff!

But if liberals could accept that it's okay for some people (and broad groups) to be intractably unintellectual, they wouldn't feel the need to put themselves through these contortions to elevate a ruling class from among the benighted peons.

To wit, liberals believe egalitarian BS because it's the only way to avoid recognizing their illiberality. But this is Cultural Marxism 101.

Anononymous said...

Continued.

From The Chronicles of Higher Education:

Why Professors at San Jose State Won't Use a Harvard Professor's MOOC
By Steve Kolowich

Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University are refusing to teach a philosophy course developed by edX, saying they do not want to enable what they see as a push to "replace professors, dismantle departments, and provide a diminished education for students in public universities."
[...]
Under Mohammad H. Qayoumi, the university's president, San Jose State has cast itself as a proving ground for the licensing model. In a pilot program, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, [...]

As MOOC Debate Simmers at San Jose State, American U. Calls a Halt
By Steve Kolowich
[...]
But the university's philosophy department last week said it would refuse to use content from an edX course led by a Harvard University professor. In an open letter, the professors declared a deep distrust of the San Jose State administration's intentions in its partnerships with MOOC providers. "Let's not kid ourselves," they wrote. "Administrators at the CSU are beginning a process of replacing faculty with cheap online education."

From The Chronicles of Higher Education:

San Jose State U.'s Faculty Association Responds to MOOC Backlash
The union representing professors at San Jose State University wrote the following statement expressing concerns about recent efforts by the university's president, Mohammad H. Qayoumi, to work with commercial MOOC providers. (See a related article.)
[...]
Finally, Associated Student Senator Leo Postovoit's opinion published
in the Spartan Daily "Just Add Coffee: Our University is not Walmart" challenges the business
model of the university put forth by President Qayoumi stating that the educational experience
at SJSU is not just a "shopping cart" or "e-commerce site."
[...]
The faculty
association is alarmed by the expressed preference of President Qayoumi for private rather
than public solutions for the CSU. Moreover, what consultation and meetings have occurred
with the faculty run counter to his comments in the press, which celebrate private enterprise at
the expense of the University and its collegial form of government. Walmart and other private
firms have a command and control authority structure and resulting inflated executive salaries.
This is the antithesis of public service and more specifically of university governance, and raises
for CFAs questions about the stated commitments to shared governance. Does SJSU really want
to be known as Wal-Mart U?
The
people with whom he [President Qayoumi] associates, members of the Silicon Valley elite, are the very people who
have succeeded in privatizing the wealth generated by our society and making the rules that
reduce their tax obligations to California.

bjdubbs said...

Can you imagine a Berkeley of nothing but Jews and Asians and a few super brainy whites? It would be as much fun as Johns Hopkins. Then UC Irvine or another of the schools would turn into the new hot school.

NOTA said...

There sure is a lot of energy being spent there to maintain the pretense that:

a. They aren't implementing affirmative action by the back door.

b. Black and brown students aren't less capable of succeeding at Berkeley.

c. The whole holistic admissions scheme isn't being gamed like crazy by everyone.

I wonder what might be done with all thatbmental energy if it werent being used to pretend.

Anonymous said...

Pay Jeantel to write your UC application essay,

Anonymous said...

"Underrepresented minorities still lag behind"...

Well, duh!

But since she couldn't write: "Minorities still lag behind"...

vinteuil said...

Steve Sailer - I think you're misusing quotation marks in your title.

In fact, the whole post is a bit - well - gnomic? Is that the right word?

Not that I blame you.

Steve Johnson said...

Yitzak Amalek said...

As Dershowitz has often explained, the Harvard plan of holistic review that Justice Powell blessed in the Bakke decision was instituted to reduce Jewish admissions at Harvard, i.e. to prevent the wholesale replacement of WASPs by junior Talmudic scholars. The admissions folks are still doing it. They never stopped.

Yeah, except now they make sure they exclude non-Jews from the slots that are allocated to Jews + whites.

Anonymous said...

As Dershowitz has often explained, the Harvard plan of holistic review that Justice Powell blessed in the Bakke decision was instituted to reduce Jewish admissions at Harvard, i.e. to prevent the wholesale replacement of WASPs by junior Talmudic scholars. The admissions folks are still doing it. They never stopped.



And yet Jews are overrepresented in Ivy League colleges relative to their IQ and share of the population. How could that be if the anti-Jewish discrimination you mention was taking place?

Dave Pinsen said...

Worth reading the Israeli Water Engineer's take on this, in which he likens it to the approach taken by admissions committees in communist Hungary, where he grew up: "Is Holistic Selection Better?".

Anonymous said...

My job as an application reader — evaluating the potential success of so many hopeful students — had been one of the most serious endeavors of my academic career.

Sounds like academic careers are full of incredible hardships.

Asher said...

Since we started giving youngsters in sports leagues a trophy for particpation why not just have the government issue a PhD in "Participation" to every citizen on their 21st birthday? strike that. Every resident, not citizen, becaus e the latter is discriminatory.

Education gap? What education gap?

Kibernetika said...

It's easier to get hired on as a big shot IT guy there than it is to get accepted as an undergrad or grad, lol

Hey, Larry!

Derb's Mossberg said...

What Bizzaro-assed day was the Editor of NYT having when he let that go out from the Ministry of Propaganda?

Education Realist said...

A while back I wrote a piece Why Most Low Income Strivers are white:

http://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/why-most-of-the-low-income-strivers-are-white/

(based on Steve's discussion of an earlier study)

Anonymous said...

http://castrobiscuit.com/2013/05/07/evictions-hit-twelve-year-high-in-the-castro-and-throughout-the-city/

Anonymous said...

http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2013/08/seattle-officials-ban-speech-by-white.html

"Government workers in the city of Seattle have been advised that the terms "citizen" and "brown bag" are potentially offensive and may no longer be used in official documents and discussions."

"Luckily, we've got options," Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights wrote in the memo obtained by the station. "For 'citizens,' how about 'residents?'"

Jews are now at the forefront of speech control. All their stuff about speech freedom in the past was a lie and fraud, merely a tactic.

Charrington said...

Off-topic (apologies).

It looks as if just as "teen" is jumping the shark in the USA, it is being adopted with gusto by the Ministry of Truth a.k.a. the BBC.

Compare this BBC story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23557801

With this one from Sky News:
http://news.sky.com/story/1122523/walthamstow-rape-police-hunt-three-men

guest007 said...

According the the article, no only does one need to lie but one needs to be good at it. The author stated that hiring others to do the lying does not really work and the elite cannot lie about the fact of attending elite private schools or public schools in the best neighborhoods.

Anonymous said...

SHOCK VIDEO Shows Horrible Racial Beating on FL School Bus (Liberal Media Silent)

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/08/shock-video-shows-horrible-racial-beating-of-florida-child-on-school-bus-liberal-media-silent/

Physically stronger blacks beat up a white boy, black bus driver does nothing, Obama doesn't care, and Liberal media silent.

Anonymous said...

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/03/the_suburbs_are_dead_and_thats_not_a_good_thing/


Joe Louis said 'you can run but you can'y hide'. And Obama is working with rich urban Jews and homos to brown-bomb the suburbs with dangerous blacks who commit crime, ransack malls, mess up schools, etc.

Brown-bombing is the new strategy against whites... but white conservatives' main priority is serving Zionists and Israel.

Fernandinande said...

Steve Hsu writes:

"Holistic evaluation of applicants = noise? (Or worse?)

Why no evidence-based admissions?

Is there any serious study of whether subjective criteria used to judge applicants actually predict success? In psychometrics this is referred to as test validity. In the article below, it is not even clear that the evaluation method satisfies the weaker criteria of consistency or stability: applicants passed through the system another time might generate significantly different scores. "Expert" evaluation often reduces the power of prediction relative to simple algorithms."

Anonymous said...

Podhead who viciously attacked Sailer for the comment "Let the good times roll" is full of praise for the late Rachel Abrams who wrote stuff like "Then round up his captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose."

So, according to Podhead:

"Let the good times roll" = Mein Kampf

but

calling Palestinian children "devil's spawn" is the purest poetry.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/my-sister-rachel/

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/10/30/elliott-abrams-wife-calls-palestinian-children-devils-spawn/

Great allies, these neocons.

Anonymous said...

"Benjamin - I would like to know
what you're doing here."

"Here? In Berkelely?"

"Yes."

"Well, I have this very pleasant room on Carter Street, and I've been getting to some classes."

"But you're not enrolled."

"No, I just sit in. They don't seem to mind. They've been very congenial about it."

-------

I say we should all attend classes at Harvard as 'unenrolled students'(like 'non-citizens'). Maybe they'll be very congenial about it.


blogger said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383855/How-Roma-invasion-sparked-rise-Frances-racist-Right.html

So, French people who want to save their nation are 'racist rightists'? Then, we need more 'racists' if indeed 'racism' means defending one's race and nation.

Btw, why don't they frame this story in terms of "France's globalist left sparked the rise of massive Roma invasion that has destroyed entire regions of the nation?"

It seems like out-of-control leftism led to the rise of the 'racist right'.

Luke Lea said...

Steve must be working on something big.

Anonymous said...

Obama's Sons in action. Or what Obama might have been 35 yrs ago.

http://weaselzippers.us/2013/08/03/horrible-video-of-13-year-old-being-beaten-on-school-bus-by-3-older-teens/

Anonymous said...

"...even to the point where Israel was about to supply SA with nukes."


Or it may have been the other way around or a lot more mutual.

Many of Steve's younger readers may not be aware that South Africa was/is a major supplier of uranium in the world and also developed it own atomic weapons.

South Africa had the mines, the uranium, and a large metallurgy capability. (Mining was one of the major reasons South Africa existed; South Africa still is a major uranium producer.) South Africa also had a world-class indigenous arms industry. Still does, the US adopted/adapted/evolved a lot of their stuff to deal with the IED/mine threat in Iraq/Afghanistan; Rhodesia and South Africa had developed the MRAP to counter Soviet and Chinese anti-tank mines when those African wars became Cold War battlegrounds.

About South African nuclear weapons:

"South Africa was able to mine uranium ore domestically, and used aerodynamic nozzle enrichment techniques to produce weapons-grade material. ...

South Africa developed a small finite deterrence arsenal of ... fission weapons in the 1980s. Six were constructed and another was under construction at the time the program ended...

According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, in 1977 Israel traded 30 grams of tritium for 50 tonnes of South African uranium..."

ben tillman said...

1. If graduation rates are lower for NAMs than for whites and Asians, that would suggest that too many minorities are being admitted already at the margin.

Whites and Asians are minorities. Please pay attention. The fact that Whites are a minority is extremely important.

ben tillman said...

"Government workers in the city of Seattle have been advised that the terms "citizen" and "brown bag" are potentially offensive and may no longer be used in official documents and discussions."

If you ever wanted a textbook case of a Jew pretending to act on behalf of Black people without caring or knowing anything about them at all, this is it.

"Brown bag" has no racial history. It's always been the "paper bag" test.

Maya said...

"Can you say that you identify as Hispanic (for example)?"

According to the government, any person who feels that he or she has any ethnic or cultural connection, presently or historically to a Spanish speaking country or culture can be considered Hispanic.

You probably are Hispanic. Can anyone prove that no ancestor of yours ever lived in Spain or Latin America? If you are any type of a Caucasian, you could very well be part Sephardic Jew. They count as Hispanic, and a bunch of them were exiled to the Netherlands and throughout Europe as well as back to the Middle East. If you are, say, of English or German or Polish origin, you can always claim that part of your family moved there from Spain. As long as the tradition survived within your family.

I've met people on Hispanic scholarships with some pretty out there stories behind their supposed ethnicities. In my experience, people either won't question your claim to Hispanic roots at all, or they'll nod and smile encouragingly as you tell them about your Spanish great grandma who was sold to your family by the gypsies, in Scotland.

However, I'm not sure if it would be wise to claim yourself black. The only blonde white girl I've met who claimed to be black in college and lived on the African American Collegiate floor in our dorm had a few high yeller looking extended family members in her pictures.

Anonymous said...

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/07/30/detroit-is-that-you-chicago-in-big-trouble/

Anonymous said...

Therapeutic speak or theraspeak, the mode of the Obama age.

Do nothing but make soothing pronouncements and speeches that give the impression that something is being done about the problem, as if the best minds are mulling over how to solve them.

Anonymous said...

"Brown bag" has no racial history. It's always been the "paper bag" test."

Maybe the problem is it sounds too much like 'brown fag'.

Anonymous said...

The thing that jumps out at me is that if they are really taking some unqualified students, then they are in fact increasing the rarity of degrees in STEM. 31% of white and Asian students enrolled that want STEM degrees manage to get one from Berkeley? Really? So, 69% head out the door without the STEM degree they planned on? Well, that seems to bode well for the graduates, doncha think? If employers really do ooh and aah over a Berkeley engineering degree, then those who graduate certainly are getting the real deal.

Also, Steve, do they publish the racial gender background of the graduating class v. the incoming freshman class? That would be interesting. If the class is 40% Asian going in but 70% Asian on graduation day, then in effect, Berkeley is a much smaller school than its size indicates. It is educating some and failing out many others, right?

Hey maybe the dear ethics professor would like to tell us what happens to all those who flunk out of Berkeley.

Anonymous said...

The thing that jumps out at me is that if they are really taking some unqualified students, then they are in fact increasing the rarity of degrees in STEM. 31% of white and Asian students enrolled that want STEM degrees manage to get one from Berkeley? Really? So, 69% head out the door without the STEM degree they planned on? Well, that seems to bode well for the graduates, doncha think? If employers really do ooh and aah over a Berkeley engineering degree, then those who graduate certainly are getting the real deal.

Also, Steve, do they publish the racial gender background of the graduating class v. the incoming freshman class? That would be interesting. If the class is 40% Asian going in but 70% Asian on graduation day, then in effect, Berkeley is a much smaller school than its size indicates. It is educating some and failing out many others, right?

Hey maybe the dear ethics professor would like to tell us what happens to all those who flunk out of Berkeley.

Dan Kurt said...

re: entering vs graduating in stem fields

I remember well my freshman year how many fresh faces started and how few got the degree. The only number I actually recall was that for the pre-meds as the school was proud of its record in getting their graduates in to med schools but I think all of the STEM fields were as bad if not worse.

The year was 1959 only a few years into the space race. 81 students declared to be pre-meds so as to be assured that they would get guidance in taking the required courses to get into med school no matter what actual major they wanted to take. Of those 81 only 11 got into med school eventually which translates to an eighty sixth percent failure rate.

Dan Kurt

NOTA said...

I keep wondering what is going to happen when this massive effort at believing so hard we make reality go away (about race, ethnicity, culture, crime, IQ, behavior, etc.) stops. It will stop sooner or later. Cracks are beginning to show around the edges--this article is not unique among mainstream media articles beginning to call the energetically-maintained consensus reality into question. Look at the poll numbers on the Zimmerman verdict and the role the press played in the case for a bit more evidence in this direction.

We need to think about this--what happens when this goes away, when nobody fears losing his job for saying what he thinks about affirmative action hires, or black teenagers walking through the neighborhood after dark in hoodies, or whatever. The massive MSM persuasion machinery is losing power, and is also losing the unanimity of message on this issue.

I don't think we will see a widespread return to the kind of gut level racism you got in the US 50 years ago. That's not intellectual, it's visceral, and the public shaming and propaganda campaign has broken most of that spell, I think. (This strikes me as a *wonderful* example of good ends being reached by evil means, like the electrification and modernization of Russia under Lenin and Stalin.) Very few people now react with shocked outrage and indcandescent anger to the sight of a white woman kissing a black man--something that could and did provoke a riot or a beating or worse in the past.

But at some point, more and more people are going to be able to be open about what is widely said quietly at work--that diversity training is a silly waste of time, that affirmative action hires are a waste of office space, etc. Support for AA in education and hiring will lose most of its ideological cover, and become more and more like other small special-interests that try to fly under the radar rather than make a big splash--just let's keep the Director of Diversity Programs a few more years, till I reach retirement age, OK? Let's just quietly keep that special carve-out for black women applying to Harvard, because some pretty influential people have black daughters they'd really rather see at Harvard than at Columbia.

What happens after that?