Heather Mac Donald A Worthy Read. Palestinians Spill Their Blood For What? Saban's Wife Nails Him. Elder Statesman Time? Stickability? We Did Right?

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Saturday we leave for our 30th consecutive Litchfield Beach Week with our "family" from Epping Fores tDays and while there I will become 88. No more kids, they have all married, had children of their own and are living out their own productive lives. As parents we must have done something right.  All our kids have remained married, unlike the Gates, have brought wonderful kids into the world who are also  good , productive and responsible.  We must plan for a reunion!

No memos for a while.

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 Diversity Over Discovery

Biden’s war on merit puts America’s scientific edge at risk.

Heather Mac Donald

 

President Joe Biden has now taken the push for “diversity” in STEM to a new level. His candidate to head the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the largest funder of the physical sciences in the U.S., is a soil geologist at the University of California, Merced. She has no background in physics, the science of energy, or the energy sector. She has never held a position as a scientific administrator. The typical head of DOE’s Office of Science in the past has had managerial authority in the nation’s major physics labs and has been a physicist himself, Science reports. The new nominee’s only managerial experience consists of serving since 2020 as an interim associate dean of UC Merced’s graduate division.

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is, however, a black female who has won “accolades for her work to promote diversity in science,” as Science puts it. Berhe would be the first black woman to head the $7 billion office, and that is reason enough, according to the diversity mantra, why she should oversee X-ray synchrotrons, the development of nuclear weapons, and ongoing research on nuclear fusion. Her nomination requires Senate confirmation; if Berhe will not commit to hiring and grantmaking on the basis of scientific expertise alone, irrespective of race and sex, senators should vote her appointment down.

As head of the Office of Science, Berhe would be asked to choose strategic directions for DOE-funded science. Should the agency try to expand understanding of fundamental particle physics or of the physics of the universe? How much attention should be given to solid-state lighting, semiconductors, or artificial intelligence? With regard to energy conservation and clean energy, should DOE pursue geothermal or biomass, tackle storage issues, or seek greater energy efficiency through insulation and refrigeration? Each day, the Office of Science turns out dozens of “one-pager” descriptions of projects and proposals. It is unlikely that a soil geologist (with an M.S. in political ecology) will have the knowledge to evaluate proposals for, say, advanced scientific computing research or nuclear physics, or make the policy judgments that those “one-pagers” require.

It is fitting that Berhe teaches at the University of California, Merced. UC Merced was created as a diversity campus, in the hope of minting more Hispanic graduates with a UC degree. No one advocating for this new institution, located in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, made the case that California needed more university research capacity. Berhe herself benefited from UC’s obsessive diversity push, having received a President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, a program for promoting “underrepresented minority” graduate students.

A physicist wonders if Berhe “can know merit when she sees it.” Preference beneficiaries “think that merit is a myth and hierarchies of achievement are arbitrary and based on power and oppression,” this professor observes, based on years of watching academic admissions and hiring. Berhe argues that the lack of race and sex diversity in STEM is due to exclusion, rather than to the absence of a proportional number of competitively qualified “diverse” candidates in the hiring pipeline. Her co-authored articles include: “Leaky Pipeline vs. Vicious Obstacle Course: metaphors for the persistent exclusion of minoritized scholars from STEM,” “A critical feminist approach to transforming workplace climate in the geosciences through community engagement and partnerships with societies,” and “Hostile climates are barriers to diversifying the geosciences.” She will undoubtedly further elevate the importance of race and sex as criteria for federal research awards.

Berhe’s Soil Biogeochemistry Lab at UC Merced strives, according to its website, to “create a dynamic, diverse, and equitable STEM community that represents the public.” Scientists do not mirror the public’s demographics, however, thanks to yawning academic skills gaps. Nor is it the mission of science to be representative of population groups; its sole mission is to advance knowledge. Berhe’s lab, however, is developing and testing “sexual harassment bystander intervention training programs . . . that incorporate experiences of diverse women,” as part of a National Science Foundation consortium. Her lab recommends readings on racism and offers tips on writing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” statements that are increasingly required of academic science hires. Expect such statements, thinly disguised euphemisms for announcing oneself as “diverse,” to become mandatory for a DOE science job or grant.

The Biden administration’s war on merit is being waged at an unprecedented rate. The White House is not submitting its judicial nominees to the American Bar Association for evaluation because the ABA may not be sufficiently attuned to the benefits of judicial “diversity,” the administration has explained. The ABA has been on the diversity bandwagon for years, however, and has become a thoroughly woke institution. If the Biden team thinks that its “diverse” judicial nominees could not even pass ABA muster, then it must anticipate bending traditional notions of legal competence beyond all recognition. (Republican presidents since George W. Bush have refrained from seeking ABA evaluations in light of the group’s regularly demonstrated bias against originalist judges.)

The anti-meritocratic diversity push on the federal bench will undercut the caliber of our jurisprudence and, with it, the rule of law. But the subjection of scientific research to the requirement of race and sex parity threatens future human progress. Such parity can be achieved only by sacrificing intellectual standards. An electrical engineer at a prestigious California university compares Berhe’s nomination to “putting a newspaper delivery boy in charge of Google.” Theoretical physicist Alessandro Strumia warns that by choosing scientific leadership according to a political agenda, “science itself risks becoming another form of covert political activism.”

The national science agencies have already wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on identity politics. The Biden administration will multiply that waste at a time when China is relentlessly racing to surpass the United States at the frontiers of science.

And:

Lunacy continues in Washington State:

Washington Governor Signs Bill Mandating Critical Race Training in Public Schools

BY GQ PAN

 

biggersmaller 

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has signed into law a bill that incorporates the doctrine of “equity, cultural competency, and dismantling institutional racism” into the training for all K–12 educators across the state.

Under Senate Bill 5044 (pdf)—which passed the state legislature in April—school districts in Washington must use one of three professional learning days to specifically train all staff in the topics of “cultural competency, diversity, equity, or inclusion.”

Those topics were among several listed in the bill’s text: “The legislature plans to continue the important work of dismantling institutional racism in public schools and recognizes the importance of increasing equity, diversity, inclusion, antiracism, and cultural competency training throughout the entire public school system by providing training programs for classified staff, certificated instructional staff, certificated administrative staff, superintendents, and school directors that will be provided in an ongoing manner.”

Proponents of the bill, according to a state Senate report (pdf), said it would help educators better support those who are “immigrants and students of color” and that it would make students “feel safe, heard, and understood.” But opponents have called it a “divisive” and “dangerous” bill based on critical race theory (CRT), through which students would be taught to “judge others based on the color of their skin.”

Some key concepts in the bill, such as “equity,” “systemic racism,” and “antiracism,” are popular among advocates of CRT, an outgrowth from Marxism that views society through the lens of a race-based power struggle.

Equity—in contrast to equal opportunity—seeks to create equal outcomes by redistributing resources along lines of perceived economic or racial disparities. In the name of equity, New York City replaced the competitive entry exam for its Gifted and Talented programs with a lottery so that more black and Hispanic students could qualify for such classes.

Meanwhile, the idea of “antiracism” is that one can only be “antiracist” by actively identifying and confronting perceived racism all the time, in everything, because in a critical race worldview, it’s impossible for racism to be absent from any situation. According to Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi, as explained in his 2019 book “How to Be an Antiracist,” an “antiracist” policy is “any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.” There is “no such thing as a non-racist or race-neutral policy,” Kendi writes.

The controversy around critical race training gained more attention in 2020, when President Donald Trump placed a ban on training materials based on “divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies” in federal workplaces. President Joe Biden rescinded the order, instead issuing an order stating that his administration would pursue “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.”

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If Palestinians want blood it will be their's and well deserved. Good thing Jerusalem's Mayor is not a Democrat:

IDF sends reinforcements to West Bank amid Jerusalem violence

Security forces on Friday increased their alert level and sent more than two and a half extra battalions for reinforcements after two terrorists were killed.

The IDF has sent an additional three battalions to the West Bank to reinforce four already in the area, following violence in Jerusalem and overall heightened tension in the area.

The decision by Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi was made following a situational assessment held at the Salem base in the Menashe Regional Brigade and attended by the OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Tamir Yadai, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj.-Gen. Rassan Aliyan, Commander of the Judea and Samaria Division Brig.-Gen. Yaniv Alaluf and head of the Civil Administration Brig.-Gen. Fares Atila.The additional forces have been deployed with the aim of strengthening troop readiness, with an emphasis on strengthening defenses in the Seam Zone. IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi holds a situational assessment at the Salem base in the Menashe Regional Brigade, Sunday, May 9, 2021. (Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)Israeli security forces on Friday increased their alert level and sent more than two and a half extra battalions to reinforce troops after two Palestinians were killed earlier in the day and a third was seriously wounded after they opened fire towards the Salem base in the northern West Bank.

Yadai called it “a major attack” that was “prevented thanks to the sharp, determined and professional combat efforts of the Border Police officers.”The three gunmen, all armed with knives and improvised Palestinian-made Carlo submachine guns, opened fire on the gate of the Salem base before they were shot by Border Police officers. There were no casualties among the Israeli forces; the third Palestinian attacker was evacuated to HaEmek Medical Center in Afula.

During his visit to the base, Kohavi thanked the border police for thwarting an attack that “could have affected the situation in the entire country.”

Though the IDF had already bolstered forces for Ramadan, concerned that violence might erupt, the deadly shooting attack and a rare statement threatening Israel by Hamas terror chief Mohamed Deif casused the military to prepare for a range of possible scenarios, both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Over 200 Palestinians and 17 police officers were injured on Friday in the worst violence in years in Jerusalem where tens of thousands of Muslim worshipers gathered to mark the last Friday prayers of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Saturday night and Sunday morning over 100 Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem after more than 90,000 worshippers visited Al-Aqsa Mosque to mark Laylat al-Qadr which commemorates the night that Muslims believe the Koran was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.

Palestinian groups,– Fatah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – have all threatened Israel. According to the Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily, Hamas has rejected a message sent by Israel via Egyptian mediators which called on the terror group to prevent a further escalation of violence.Incendiary balloons launched from the coastal enclave have started dozens of fires in southern Israel. According to Palestinian media the “night confusion units” have resumed rioting along the security fence. One rocket has been launched falling in a field. The IAF retaliated by striking a Hamas post.
The IDF had been expecting more violence from Gaza on Saturday and believes that despite Hamas and Islamic Jihad threats, terror groups in the blockaded coastal enclave are more deterred than was thought.

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Saban's wife nails him:  

d://mobile.twitter.com/i/status/1382055053729669129

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Trump had his chance, defied all odds and now should step aside and be an elder statesman adviser but not in public:

For The Good Of The Country, Donald Trump Should Pass The Torch Scott Morefield +++

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and The Disuniting of America Jeff Davidson +++ Sparky, the loser who became a winner because he knew he had talent and believed in himself when others did not. Would it not be nice and a better world if all peoples had this "stickability?" +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++