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Assistant Professors in Statistical Science (Tenure Track)
Vacancy number
Function type
Hours (in fte)
2.0-3.0 (2 to 3 positions)
External/ internal
15 January 2021 Vacancy closed
The Faculty of Science and the Mathematical Institute are looking for multiple
The Mathematical Institute at Leiden University in the Netherlands has several openings for new assistant professor positions in statistics. We are looking for the most talented individuals to strengthen the statistics group in the Mathematical Institute. We invite interested candidates to explore whether Leiden University is a potential match.
You develop your own identity as a statistician and you are expected to acquire national or European research grants to support your research line;
You are actively involved in teaching and contribute to the development of our curriculum;
Mastery of the Dutch language is not a requirement, but of course a long term goal.
A PhD in Mathematics or a closely related field;
A track record in statistical research, as evidenced by publications in high rank journals, or otherwise strong evidence of high research potential;
Good communication skills and you are an inspiring teacher;
Good command of the English language.
Leiden University requires teaching staff to obtain the University Teaching Qualification (UTQ). If the successful applicant does not already possess this qualification or its equivalent, she / he must be willing to obtain this qualification within two years. Within two years there's a language proficiency of a minimum at level B2 Dutch required.
The Faculty of Science is a world-class faculty, where staff and students work together in a dynamic international environment. It is a faculty where personal and academic development are top priorities. Our people are committed by curiosity to expand fundamental knowledge and to look beyond the borders of their own scientific discipline. Their aim is to benefit science and to make a contribution to addressing the major societal challenges of the future.
The research carried out at the Faculty of Science includes mathematics, information science, astronomy, physics, chemistry and bio-pharmaceutical sciences to biology and environmental sciences. The research activities are organized in eight institutes. These institutes offer eight bachelor's and twelve master's programs. The faculty has grown strongly in recent years and now has more than 2,300 staff and almost 5,000 students. We are located in Leiden's Bio Science Park, one of Europe's biggest science parks, where university and business life come together.
The Mathematical Institute is one of the eight institutes within the Faculty of Science and has a strong international orientation. Its mission is to perform high quality research at the frontiers of mathematical knowledge, and to educate future generations of mathematicians and statisticians in a friendly but challenging environment. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity. We are proud that students have named us Top Teaching Institute for the fifth time.
A Tenure Track position consisting of a temporary appointment for a period of six years maximum. The gross monthly salary at assistant professor level is between € 3.746,- and € 5.826,- depending on your level of experience.
Our Tenure Track is expected to lead to a tenured position as associate professor and grow into the role of a full professor. With our Tenure Track we offer you a clear and inviting career path to support you in the development of your personal and professional talents. It has a strong focus on coaching and training. Read more about our Tenure Track at the website..
An appointment with Leiden University includes a pension build-up and other benefits; these include an annual holiday premium of 8%, an end-of-year premium of 8.3% and a paid parental leave of 62,5%. Candidates from outside the Netherlands may be eligible for a substantial tax break.
Leiden University is strongly committed to diversity within its community and especially welcomes applications from members of underrepresented groups.
For any questions, you are welcome to contact Johannes Schmidt-Hieber, email schmidthieberaj@math.leidenuniv.nl.
Written applications using the vacancy number and including a brief description of a research plan, a full curriculum vitae, a list of publications, as well as the names and e-mail addresses of at least three contact persons (who have been informed of this), should be submitted no later than January 15, 2021 to Martine Goderie-Vliegenthart, email m.l.goderie@math.leidenuniv.nl.
Mathematical Institute (MI)
Johannes Schmidt-Hieber Oud-hoogleraar / gast
Gorlaeus Gebouw


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PZ Myers dissects evolutionary psychology: brief, sharp and fabulous
I admit I LOL'd at the part about "lighting up like a Christmas tree." WATCH AND LEARN all IDWs!
~ PINKERITE TALKS TO ANTHROPOLOGISTS ~
• The Brian Ferguson Interview
• The Maxine Margolis Interview
How conservative and white supremacist is Quillette? Part 2
As we discussed in Part 1, Claire Lehmann threatened via tweet to sue an Australian writer for opining that the publication she founded, Quillette, is a conservative website happy to publish authors known for promoting theories of white supremacy.
It was quick work to demonstrate that Quillette is widely considered to be a conservative website.
The white supremacy issue is a little more complicated.
The Anti-Defamation League has two similar but contrasting definitions of white supremacy.
One is white supremacy:
White supremacy is a term used to characterize various belief systems central to which are one or more of the following key tenets: 1) whites should have dominance over people of other backgrounds, especially where they may co- exist; 2) whites should live by themselves in a whites-only society; 3) white people have their own "culture" that is superior to other cultures; 4) white people are genetically superior to other people. As a full-fledged ideology, white supremacy is far more encompassing than simple racism or bigotry. Most white supremacists today further believe that the white race is in danger of extinction due to a rising "flood" of non-whites, who are controlled and manipulated by Jews, and that imminent action is need to "save" the white race.
The other is "traditional white supremacists"
Traditional white supremacists are one of the major segments of the white supremacist movement in the United States, as well as the oldest. The term is used to refer to a variety of groups and individuals whose white supremacy centers around or originated from the struggle to deny equal rights to African-Americans. Ku Klux Klan groups are the most common type of traditional white supremacist, but the movement also includes other groups, such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, the League of the South, and others.
Quillette is devoted to race science, and the main focus of race science is the claim that black people are intellectually inferior to all other "races." Race science also believes Ashkenazi Jews are the most intelligent "race," a belief expressed in the Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence (NHAI) hypothesis published in 2005, which has been promoted by Steven Pinker.
The intellectual inferiority of blacks and the intellectual superiority of Jews are also white supremacist beliefs as demonstrated in segregationist Henry E. Garrett's article "The Equalitarian Dogma" published in Mankind Quarterly in 1961.
However, race science promoters can defend themselves against the charge of white supremacy by pointing out that they either consider Jews to be separate from whites, and consider Jews the most intelligent "race" or, in the case of the race science intelligence rankings that don't separate Jews from whites, East Asians are claimed to be genetically most intelligent. And so they don't, theoretically, believe whites are supreme.
But because they share many core beliefs, it is easy to mistake race science promoters for white supremacists, and there are certainly cases where race science promoters are also white supremacists, as in the case of one of the co-authors of the NHAI paper, the late Henry Harpending.*
So it is correct to say Quillette is happy to publish those who promote white supremacist theories.
To get an idea of how strongly race science promoters believe in the genetic intellectual inferiority of blacks, here are two examples, both by Quillette authors.
The first is a couple of selections from John Paul Wright, professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati College of Education Criminal Justice and Human Services, as well as its director of the graduate program in criminal justice. I've referenced these selections a lot on this blog because they are the plainest demonstration of the beliefs of race science.
In Biosocial Criminology: New Directions in Theory and Research edited by Anthony Walsh and Kevin M. Beaver (Quillette author) Wright said:
Page 149:
...Areas afflicted by crime and other social pathologies are more frequently black than white, and even less frequently Oriental. Part of the reason for these visible and dramatic differences may have to do with the differential abilities of races to organize socially.
From the available data it would seem ludicrous to argue that "race" is a construct devoid of a biological or evolutionary backdrop. That evolutionary forces have produced biological variance across races is now scientifically undeniable. That many of the characteristics that define races appear to be universal and time stable is also undeniable. Evolution can produce many forms of adaptations, but it cannot produce equality.
The connection between race and criminal behavior is clearly complex and involves a range of historical, social, psychological and individual variables. Evolution however, provides a powerful mechanism to understand the development of human races and the distribution of traits and behaviors within and across races. It helps explain why races would appear and under what conditions races would appear. It helps to explain why certain traits would be beneficial and why these traits such as higher IQ, would be unequally distributed across races. Moreover evolutionary theory helps explain why race-based patterns of behavior are universal, such as black over-involvement in crime. No other paradigm organizes these patterns better. No other paradigm explains these inconvenient truths.
It's important to note that Wright is a "biosocial criminologist" so not only does he believe blacks are intellectually inferior, he believes they are more inclined, genetically, to criminal behavior than other "races."
On his blog, Conservative Criminality, Wright expressed his antipathy for Black Lives Matter:
So, I'm inclined to see BLM as movement that is largely immoral even if it contains individuals who are moral. I'm inclined to view their general claims as largely hollow even if the occasional case supports their view. And I see more and more how their rhetoric and their actions are brining (sic) harm to people.
The second example is by Bo Winegard, former assistant professor at Marietta college and currently on staff at Quillette and his twin brother Ben who is currently Assistant Professor of Psychology at Carroll College. Bo and Ben Winegard wrote a defense of The Bell Curve in Quillette called "A Tale of Two Bell Curves" in which they agree with John Paul Wright, in so many words that "No other paradigm explains these inconvenient truths" about the failure of African Americans to thrive, post-Emancipation:
Of course, there are other possible explanations of the Black-White gap, such as parenting styles, stereotype threat, and a legacy of slavery/discrimination among others. However, to date, none of these putative causal variables has been shown to have a significant effect on the IQ gap, and no researcher has yet made a compelling case that environmental variables can explain the gap. This is certainly not for lack of effort; for good reason, scholars are highly motivated to ascertain possible environmental causes of the gap and have tried for many years to do just that.
Bo Winegard can be seen promoting the work of John Paul Wright here.
Quillette has published many supporters of race science, several of whom have been previously mentioned on this blog.
Johnny Anomaly
Rosalind Arden (author, staff member & sometime co-author with Linda Gottfredson)
Brian Boutwell
Noah Carl
Cory Clark
Gregory Cochran
Nathan Cofnas
James Damore
David C. Geary
Richard Haier
David M. Haskell
Lee Jussim
Geoffrey Miller
Kathrine Jebsen Moore
Robert Plomin
Jason Richwine
Todd "T.K." Shackleford
Ben Winegard
Bo Winegard (author and staff member)
Colin Wright (author and staff member)
John Paul Wright
Toby Young (also Quillette's London editor)
There are probably others. I will add them as I find them.
For those who are wondering why Andy Ngo, who is currently listed in Quillette as Sub-editor, Contributing Writer, didn't make the list, it's because although he is a grifter and a Trump flunky, I have not found anything written by him about race science or associated theories. On the other hand, Emil O. Kirkegaard, while very much a proponent of race science, and who would seem to be a natural fit for Quillette, hasn't had a Quillette byline.
Several on the list have appeared on the video channel of Stefan Molyneux, who is described as a white supremacist by Vice, and Media Matters: Beaver, Boutwell, Haier, Haskell, John Paul Wright, Shermer, Richwine, Perkins and Damore.
I will look at more white supremacist-race science connections in a future post.
* In a blog called West Hunter, which Harpending shared with Gregory Cochran and in which Cochran still writes as of June 2020, Harpending published a post in 2012 called My friend the witch doctor in which he shared a colleague's thoughts, with apparent approval:
A colleague pointed out a few weeks ago, after hearing this story, that if (the belief in witchcraft) is nearly pan-African then perhaps some of it came to the New World. Prominent and not so prominent talkers from the American Black population come out with similar theories of vague and invisible forces that are oppressing people, like "institutional racism" and "white privilege".
Labels: Claire Lehmann, Michael Shermer, Pinker, Quillette, Stefan Molyneux
Weren't we just talking about Claire Lehmann and her threats to sue people because she doesn't like their flagrant use of free speech?
She did it again.
Lehmann's threat is over an opinion piece, clearly marked "opinion," by Sean Kelly in Australia's Sunday Morning Herald called Australian politics is becoming a sick, inside joke.
Kelly makes a passing reference to Quillette in this sentence:
...That video was retweeted by the editor of Quillette, a conservative website which has been happy to publish authors known for promoting theories of white supremacy. My point is not any direct connection. It is that non-crazy senior members of the Liberal Party, in the midst of a global pandemic, feel the need to pander to the same audience as these publications
So there are two claims for which Lehmann might want to cry defamation, probably both:
Quillette is a conservative website
Quillette has been happy to publish authors known for promoting theories of white supremacy
The Australian magazine Crikey responded by including a link to a Nation article by Donna Minkowitz.
Freedom Fighters You can set your watch to it. Yesterday columnist Sean Kelly briefly observed that Quillette "has been happy to publish authors known for promoting theories of white supremacy". (He hasn't been the only one to make such an observation.)
Quillette founder Claire Lehmann, doing her bit for free speech and "broadening the Overton Window", responded with a loaded reference to Australia's complainant- friendly defamation laws.
"This is going to be fun" she tweeted, presumably referring to the ability of people with money to shut down debate in Australia using the court system. And while we'd never dare quibble with the leader of the… sigh… "intellectual dark web", we're not sure what her being born in Australia has to do with defamation law.
Minkowitz wrote:
Meghan Daum, the feminist memoirist and opinion writer, told me that she had joined a Facebook group for Quillette fans and attended the group's meetup as part of what she wrote was an "affair" she'd been having with the "intellectual dark web," the far-right grouping for which Quillette serves as the house organ.
As an aside, Meghan Daum is friendly with professional misogynist Christina Hoff Sommers, which I wrote about. I don't think Daum is much of a feminist these days.
In any case, plenty of other established publications have described Quillette as conservative or right-wing. Inside Higher Education describes Quillette as "the conservative academic publication Quillette."
The Daily Beast wrote:
Quillette, a site that fancies itself intellectually contrarian but mostly publishes right-wing talking points couched in grievance politics...
The New Republic:
This should all be abundantly clear—as should Quillette's real role in the conservative media ecosystem.
The Ringer:
It's easy to read Quillette and detect a classic conservative magazine; it's more like National Review, or even Taki's Magazine, than the old libertartian standard-bearer, Reason. Quillette channels the key right-wing anxieties: the fussiness about modernity, the antipathy against civil rights activism and college students, the general hysteria about various "hysterias." The publication's writers have the knee-jerk tendency to describe any left-wing articulation about anything as "ahistorical," with vague but nonetheless vigorous gestures toward Plato and glib but nonetheless fearful reassessments of Marx. And they agonize about all the same watchwords: "political correctness," "cancel culture," "wokeness," "wrongthink," etc. In fact, the distinctions among so many figures and forums—Quillette and Reason, National Review and Breitbart, 4chan and 8chan, the Intellectual Dark Web and Gamergate, Shapiro and Milo Yiannopolous, Jordan Peterson and Alex Jones—have spent the Trump years delivering one long, unpunctuated screed in defense of "wrongthink."
And it isn't only Claire Lehmann's ideological enemies who call Quillette conservative. Lehmann's right-wing admirers, the Koch-funded "Independent Women's Forum" agreed with a characterization of Quillette as "a conservative niche publication."
I know nothing about Australian defamation laws, but it seems very unlikely that any court would agree that Quillette has been smeared by Sean Kelly for calling it a conservative website.
The "happy to publish authors known for promoting theories of white supremacy" charge is a little less of a slam-dunk than "Quillette is a conservative web site," but there is certainly evidence for the claim, which I will get into in How conservative and white supremcist is Quillette? Part 2.
Labels: Christina Hoff Sommers, Claire Lehmann, Quillette
Good work by Colbert and Stewart
Pinkerite is a long-time fan of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but I really didn't expect them to get into the socio-economics of American post-Emancipation racism from the Homestead Act to Levittown. KUDOS!
This history is essential for understanding the African American failure to thrive, which leads to things like lower test scores, which is used by race science proponents like Charles Murray and friends to claim as evidence that black people are innately, evolutionarily inferior.
Stewart boils it down perfectly:
"while (black people) were fighting for equality, white people were building equity."
And that's why so many of the IDW hate the 1619 Project: How dare those African Americans talk about the actual circumstances of America!
Maybe - as Stewart points out in this clip - if the right-wing race science mongers hear it from two white men it will register in their brains.
Labels: Charles Murray, The good guys
Emil O. Kirkegaard and his friends
Pinkerite has written about Emil O. Kirkegaard, whose work was promoted by Charles Murray.
He's mentioned in passing in a column written about Toby Young by comedian Stewart Lee which I blogged about yesterday.
But Kirkegaard isn't only admired by Charles Murray. Kirkegaard has a contingent of Nazis who will jump on a Twitter thread and defend him and attack his enemies.
And I don't mean Nazis in any hyperbolic Godwin's law sense. I mean actual, self-confessed Nazis.
This is not surprising. But it's important to recognize how much rightwing extremists love promoters of race science.
Here is Nazi Ed admitting to be a Nazi.
Nazi Ed's tweet was retweeted by one person, Nazi "Kneeger Historian" who is much less subtle than Nazi Ed. From the silent-K name to the Schutzstaffel insignia to "parties like it's 1933."
These are Emil O. Kirkegaard's people. In addition to Charles Murray.
Labels: Charles Murray
Stewart Lee vs. Toby Young
I discovered Stewart Lee in 2013 when Rebecca Watson linked to his routine about Top Gear which is perfect in its sharp and funny criticism of the "it's just a joke" Jeremy Clarkson defense, now used so flagrantly by Trump and his cult.
The Top Gear bit is from Lee's 2010 show If You Prefer a Milder Comedian Please Ask for One.
Lee has never presented any of his shows in the United States, although he did work in Canada in his early days. As a result Stewart Lee is not as well known as he should be by Americans, in spite of the fact that he is the co-author of Jerry Springer: the Opera.
All opponents of the race science-mongering promoted by Quillette should know Lee because he is the liberal mongoose to Toby Young's eugenicist snake. Young is Quillette's Associate Editor London, and Quillette founder Claire Lehmann is lately promoting Young's "Free Speech Union."
In March of this year on the Guardian, in a column devoted to Toby Young, Lee had this to say:
The word "free" in the Free Speech Union™®'s name refers only to free speech. Membership actually costs between £49.95 and £250 a year, depending how freely you need to speak. If you are a student oppressed by political correctness gone mad, jonesing for freedom, Toby Youngs gives you the first hit half-price. It is not clear if the Free Speech Union™® will defend non-members on principle or members who are, as Youngs says, "ghastly, puritanical, po-faced, sanctimonious, finger-wagging, woke" people or "universally unattractive, small, vaguely deformed" working-class students. It's a protection racket, capeesh?
It wasn't the first time Lee wrote a column about Young. In How Toby Young got where he isn't today, Lee wrote about the fallout when it was discovered that Young was a eugenicist hobnobbing with Richard Lynn:
while national media slept, or commissioned supportive thinkpieces from his wealthy and powerful celebrity friends, the London Student newspaper was about to reveal that the Maverick Toadmeister had attended a secret conference on "intelligence", featuring notorious speakers including in previous years white supremacists and a weird far-right paedophilia apologist called Emil.
"Emil" is Emil O. Kirkegaard, promoted by Charles Murray in December 2019, who I recently discovered (although was not surprised) has a fervent following among self-confessed Nazis, which I will talk about soon.
Lee continues:
But where now for the Maverick Toadmeister? Can even vile jam-rags like the Telegraph and the Daily Mail employ him now? Who calls themselves, as an adult, the "Toadmeister" anyway? And "maverick" is what the commissioner shouts at Dirty Harry. It's not what Dirty Harry tells the commissioner he is himself. That would be very uncool. Who does these strange and desperate things? Someone in search of an identity that has eluded them.
Sometime around 20 years ago Toby Young started being nasty about people less fortunate and privileged than him, and, like a shit Clarkson, he found it was easy to do and paid good money...
When the Telegraph and the Daily Mail won't have you anymore, where can you go? To Quillette of course. And you can count on Quillette's cousin, the right-wing garbage Post-Millennial to defend Toby Young against Stewart Lee. Although author Kathrine Jebsen Moore apparently feels that Toby Young is such a snowflake that Stewart Lee might drive him to suicide.
It's telling that the Guardian is just as bad at ad hominem—perhaps worse—than the British gutter press it loves to deride. Just last week, it published an article condemning the tabloids, particularly the Sun, for their "media frenzy" in the months before TV presenter Caroline Flack's suicide. Putting themselves on a pedestal in this instance is easy when the target of relentless media attention is a young woman. A white, middle aged, "privileged" (I hate that word) man such as Toby Young is fair game, however. I can't for one minute imagine slurs found in these two articles – and there are more like them – being used against a woman. Especially not a woman on the left. Imagine the uproar if, say, Afua Hirsch, black feminist and author, was ridiculed in the same way by the Telegraph or the Daily Mail.
But men suffer from mental illness, too. In fact, men are at much higher risk than women from death by suicide. According to the Samaritans, middle-aged men are three times more likely to take their own lives than women. Yet the Guardian doesn't seem to bat an eyelid as its journalists devote their column inches to insulting conservative men like Young. #bekind doesn't apply to people like him.
As Stewart Lee rightly notes, Toby Young has made a living being shitty to the less-fortunate, but the garbage Post-Millennial expects people to be nice to him anyway. Talk about privileged.
For his part, Stewart Lee is not bothered at all by Toby Young's hostility towards him, he uses a Young quote in the announcements of his latest show - which of course I can't see unless I go to England - called Snowflake/Tornado, which is getting very good reviews in publications like the Telegraph.
Labels: Charles Murray, Claire Lehmann, Quillette
A celebration of African Americans - get down, boogie-oogie-oogie
A Taste of Honey was not 100% African American, lead singer Janice-Marie Johnson is Native American, but most of the band was. And they were badass.
Labels: African American History, The good guys
Andrew Sullivan, race science monger
Rightwing pundit Andrew Sullivan has long been known as a fan of evolutionary psychology, pointed out so perfectly by Slate's Tom Scocca in this tweet.
To understand Scocca's point you have to know that proponents of evolutionary psychology are strict adaptationists - they believe almost all current human behavior is based on sexual selection, the sexual choices made by pre-historic people. This is why the existence of homosexuality is such a problem for evolutionary psychology.
More on the drawn and quartered conception of evolution that evo-psychos subscribe to and why it's wrong from P. Z. Myers.
June 19 was Juneteenth and Sullivan decided to observe it by misrepresenting a piece in the NYTimes by Jamelle Bouie about the participation of the enslaved in fighting for freedom, including in the Civil War.
Now we see Sullivan joining in with the Intellectual Dark Web/Quillette gang to mourn the loss of statues to white supremacists and slavers. It seems there are few things that get IDW types madder than the loss of their beloved public statuary to scumbags who never should have been honored in the first place.
And he isn't content to retweet a Christina Hoff Sommers - he has to go even lower than that - writer and journalist Donna Minkowitz who wrote an excellent piece about Quillette for The Nation caught Sullivan retweeting race science monger "HBD Chick" - HBD stands for human biodiversity, a term invented by professional racist Steve Sailer, and a code word for the race science belief in black genetic inferiority.
Can Andrew Sullivan sink any lower?
A lawyer representing Bill Watterson really has to
put a stop to HBD Chick associating her grotesque racism
with his character Hobbes.
Meanwhile, good news about Ron Unz's pal Stephen Hsu:
Michigan State University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr. announced Friday that Stephen Hsu is resigning as Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation, returning to a tenured faculty position, effective July 1.
John Jackson of Fardels Bear has more.
Labels: Christina Hoff Sommers, Quillette
A celebration of African Americans - No Woman No Cry
There are few songs or performances more beautiful than Bob Marley doing "No Woman No Cry." Although when I think of how young he was when he died - 36 - it makes me want to cry.
Happy Juneteenth 2020!
Pinkerite has been observing Juneteenth for several years now: 2019, 2018 back to 2014 when I said I thought it should be a national holiday.
So I am very pleased that Juneteenth is finally getting the attention it deserves.
These companies are giving their employees time off for Juneteenth
Google, Nike and Target have joined a growing list of companies around the country that have decided to give their employees time off for Juneteenth, June 19.
The decision comes as businesses balance how to fight racism and support black employees in the wake of George Floyd's death and global protests demanding racial justice and an end to police brutality.
Juneteenth Now an Official Holiday for Philadelphia
Juneteenth has been designated an official holiday for the city of Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney announced Tuesday.
As a result, all city offices and facilities will be closed to the public on June 19 to observe Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
"Now more than ever, it's critically important to acknowledge America's original sin of slavery -- something we as a nation have never atoned for," Kenney wrote. "The only way to dismantle the institutional racism and inequalities that continue to disenfranchise Black Philadelphians is to look critically at how we got here, and make much-needed changes to the governmental systems that allow inequality to persist."
What is Juneteenth? It could become a state holiday in Virginia
Juneteenth, celebrated annually on June 19, commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union general Gordon Granger read federal orders in Galveston, Texas, that all slaves in Texas were free. The day is also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day.
It's become big enough that Trump caught flack for scheduling one of his Nuremberg rallies on Juneteenth, so he moved it to the next day.
Meanwhile the Mighty Krugman makes some excellent points about the history of African Americans - the struggle was not over after Emancipation:
Freed slaves started with nothing, but over time many of them would surely have worked their way up, acquiring property, educating their children and becoming full members of society. Indeed, that started to happen during the 12 years of Reconstruction, when blacks briefly benefited from something approaching equal rights.
But the corrupt political deal that ended Reconstruction empowered Southern white supremacists who systematically suppressed black gains. African-Americans who managed to acquire some property all too often found that property expropriated, either through legal subterfuge or at gunpoint. And the nascent black middle class was effectively subjected to a reign of terror.
Which is where Tulsa fits in. In 1921 the Oklahoma city was the center of an oil boom, a place to which people in search of opportunity migrated. It boasted a sizable black middle class, centered on the Greenwood neighborhood, which was widely described as the "black Wall Street."
And that was the neighborhood destroyed by white mobs, who looted black businesses and homes, killing probably hundreds. (We don't know how many because the massacre was never properly investigated.) The police, of course, did nothing to protect black citizens; instead, they joined the rioters.
I find this part especially interesting though... not too long ago Krugman was saying and Steven Pinker was agreeing with him that we don't know why there was so much crime in New York City in the 1970s - 1980s.
Now Krugman seems to have gotten it:
Unfortunately, for many African-Americans Northern cities turned into a socioeconomic trap. The opportunities that lured migrants disappeared as blue-collar jobs moved first to the suburbs, then overseas. Chicago, for example, lost 60 percent of its manufacturing employment between 1967 and 1987.
And when the loss of economic opportunity led, as it usually does, to social dysfunction — to broken families and despair — all too many whites were ready to blame the victims. The problem, many asserted, lay in black culture — or, some hinted, in racial inferiority.
Such implicit racism wasn't just talk; it fueled opposition to government programs, up to and including Obamacare, that might help African-Americans. If you wonder why the social safety net in the U.S. is so much weaker than those of other advanced countries, it comes down to just one word: race.
That last sentence tells you so much about why the American white middle-class is so opposed to social programs. They are always afraid social programs will help "those people" - so afraid that they are willing to hurt themselves economically to spite black people.
Caliper Claire Lehmann, still mourning the loss of statues that glorify white supremacy
Claire Lehmann founded the last bastion for phrenology apologists, Quillette, and is in constant turmoil recently along with other members of the Intellectual Dark Web, over the removal of monuments to white supremacy.
And as you can see in the image, Lehmann is trying to use love of white supremacist imagery to rally her troops, the defenders of race science, against Kevin Bird.
Free speech panics in Academia are a favorite tactic of the right-wing free speech grifters so memorably discussed in the GQ article The Free Speech Grifters.
And now Caliper Claire is going to make Stephen Hsu her latest "free speech" cause.
Per Kevin Bird's web site:
Against a backdrop of protests, uprisings against police brutality, and calls for real reform and racial justice, the Particles for Justice collective began an initiative to #ShutDownStem and #ShutDownAcademia to take a day to focus on issues of racial equity in the academy. https://www.particlesforjustice.org/
A group of faculty and graduate students began discussing what to do to make tangible change. The topic of Stephen Hsu's role as Senior Vice President of Research & Innovation came up (note: It was incorrectly thought his title was Vice President of Research & Graduate Studies; his title had recently changed).
Hsu's views had been brought up before as a problem, but there had never been a concrete sense of what could or should be done. In line with the focus of the day, which was to discuss and uproot racism and structures that protect racism in the university culture, the group turned its attention towards gathering publicity and public knowledge around Hsu's views.
Acacia Ackles (GEU Vice President of Organizing & Outreach), as part of the group, brought me (Kevin Bird, GEU President) into the discussions, because of my experience with addressing the recent resurgence of scientific racism (my efforts in this area were recently highlighted in a 2018 New York Times article). The group gathered evidence from Hsu's blog and past tweets regarding his publication of views which the group believes to be racist, sexist, eugenicist and anti-scientific, and his promotion of known white supremacists and Holocaust deniers, along with evidence that he failed to uphold conflict of interest protocols regarding his status as a co-founder, shareholder and board member of Genomic Prediction Inc. The following Twitter thread was published. The tweets went live at 5:23 PM on June 10th. See Tweets and Unrolled. The thread immediately gained support from MSU faculty, staff, and students who are familiar with Hsu, and within the broader scientific community, where many are aware of Hsu's conduct and beliefs. Another account of Hsu's conduct was published shortly after by MSU professor John Jackson, who studies the history of scientific racism.
Predictably Hsu threatened to sue his critics.
Free speech champion Caliper Claire once suggested to Sam Harris that he sue the Southern Poverty Law Center because they truthfully and accurately reported on Harris's influence on the alt-right.
Meanwhile, as explained by John Jackson on his indispensable Fardels Bear web site:
It has been six days since my post on Stephen Hsu hosting a Holocaust denier on his podcast. He has not responded in any way and certainly not apologized. It has been four days since he has threatened a lawsuit against his critics, including graduate students at his own university. He has not explained or apologized for that threat.
There is a right-wing, online magazine called Quillette that is a home for people to publish their ideas about how race is real and black people are just dumber than white people, how scientists are afraid to talk about it, and regurgitate segregationist ideas about how the "equalitarian conspiracy" covers up the truth about racial differences. Naturally, they have now decided to ride to Hsu's rescue. Hsu claims to be agnostic, on race differences in intelligence. But he seems to happily accept support from those who do believe in those differences. He claims everyone should be treated equally, but people who reject that idea rally around him. In their call to defend Hsu, Quillette simply recycles ancient arguments against racial egalitarianism that have been floating around the racist right for half a century. This time the strategy is what I like to call the "Lysenkoist Exchange."
Stephen Hsu, among other questionable features, considers himself a friend of racist and Holocaust-denying crackpot Ron Unz. I wrote about Unz in detail here. Professional racist Steve Sailer also considers Ron Unz a friend.
Kevin Bird is a graduate student, and it looks like Lehmann is trying to smear Bird by pointing out his opposition to the glorification of white supremacy through statuary.
Claire Lehmann's hypocrisy strikes me once again - I criticized Bo Winegard's race science mongerism in Quillette two years ago on my personal blog (and continue to do so on this blog) and Lehmann had a meltdown about it, screaming I was " bullying and smearing" him, a wee little grad student.
I "smeared and bullied" Winegard by truthfully recounting his beliefs and expressing my contempt for same. Lehmann is trying to smear Bird by noting he's opposed to public art that glorifies slavers and white supremacists. But that doesn't actually smear him, except with the right-wingers and racists who adore Claire Lehmann.
To get a really good idea of the racist bubble Claire Lehmann lives in, observe her tweet about the statues to white supremacists and slavers:
"No-one" meaning no-one among the race science mongers and white supremacists and Confederacy apologists and eugenic fans and Koch-funded libertarians that comprise Claire Lehmann's social and professional world.
There is a grassroots organization in New Orleans devoted to removing statues raised to the glory of the Confederacy called Take 'Em Down NOLA which has been around since at least 2015. And of course the Southern Poverty Law Center, but I guess Lehmann doesn't think of them unless she's urging someone to baselessly sue them.
Certainly none of them count as "someone" in the book of failed human being Claire Lehmann.
Bo Winegard is supporting the cause of his boss.
I wonder if Winegard feels that he has to kiss up to his boss even more than before, Quillette recently put hard-core hereditarian Colin Wright on its payroll and Winegard has some competition.
I think Quillette has become the gateway drug to the wingnut welfare system so beloved of rightwingers.
UPDATE: PZ Myers also makes good points.
Labels: Claire Lehmann, Quillette
A celebration of African Americans - Hey Yah
When I first heard this on the radio, I could not believe my ears - it was the greatest thing I had ever heard.
Andre Benjamin is of course currently better known as an actor, and you could see he had acting ability in this video, playing all the roles of the band. The guy is a Renaissance man.
Celebration of African Americans - rolling on the river
Can't forget Tina Turner.
A celebration of African Americans - if you really love me
One of the greatest songs of all time, hands down.
This isn't the best video, it's clearly overdubbed, but I love the original recording more than any live versions I've found on YouTube so far.
A celebration of African Americans - take the A train
Take the A Train. Classic. And it still goes up to Harlem, express.
A celebration of African Americans - Tightrope
Speaking of insanely talented, here is Janelle Monae's Tightrope. She is also an actor and I was very impressed by her in "Hidden Figures."
Interesting homage to "Meshes of an Afternoon" in this video.
Celebration of African Americans - the Supremes
The Supremes were all the rage when I was a little kid. I grew up in an all-white suburb, and pictures of the Supremes were my first awareness of black people as separate from white people. They were my first impression of African Americans: beautiful and glamorous.
A celebration of African Americans
Although it is entirely necessary to talk about the race science hawkers and white supremacists and the Intellectual Dark Web and other awful right-wing creeps, it can get depressing and monotonous, week after week.
So even though it's not Black History Month, I thought I'd take a little break from the bad guys and take a moment to appreciate how lucky the United States is to have African Americans.
I never really noticed it until I went to Ireland on business in 2000. It was the first time I had ever been out of the United States (like not even to Canada.) There are many nice things about Irish culture but I just felt like there was something missing. I reflected on this a little while and suddenly it hit me - no black people. African Americans are an extremely important part of why American culture is what it is and why its music is beloved all over the world.
African Americans of course invented Jazz and Rock and Roll and Hip Hop among many other beautiful things all the while being treated like dirt for hundreds of years. The United States owes so much to African Americans.
Let's start with Gladys Knight and the Pips' immortal Midnight Train to George.
Claire Lehmann: "Cops was cancelled! It's the Cultural Revolution!"
Quillette founder Claire Lehmann is a race science-monger and a ninny and her meltdown over the cancellation of COPS among other things is one of the funniest examples of her ninnitude.
She compares decisions made by free-market organizations like Paramount and HBO Max, doing what they feel is in their best - and most profitable - interests - to the Cultural Revolution.
Lehmann is a case study of how far someone who is not very bright can go thanks to the wingnut welfare system of the Right.
Christina Hoff Sommers, another idiot beneficiary of right-wing largess - and in her case indisputably from Koch - is also sad about the fruits of capitalism but she compares it to 1984.
The IDW are such drama queens when it comes to decisions made by capitalists.
What likely bothers the Weird Sisters of the IDW most is the removal of statues to white supremacists, the people who hold beliefs most closely aligned with Quillette. Here is Lehmann being sad about the loss of the Colson statue.
According to the NYTimes article:
Colston has long been a problematic presence in Bristol, 120 miles (195 kilometers) southwest of London. He was a senior official in the Royal African Company, which in the late 1600s trafficked 80,000 African men, women and children to slavery in the Americas. About 20,000 died on the journey.
Bristol went on to become Britain's biggest port for slave ships during the early 18th century. Ships based in the city transported at least half a million Africans into slavery before Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807. Many 18th-century Bristolians helped fund the trade and shared in the profits, which also built handsome Georgian houses and buildings that still dot the city.
Lehmann and the rest of the IDW hate the 1619 Project because it is unvarnished history, which is anathema to race science mongers pushing the "human biodiversity" belief that African Americans are the victims of their own genetic inferiority.
Part of the hereditarian project against the recognition of the history of slavery and its aftermath is denying the evil of slavers and white supremacists. So of course Lehmann is crying for the statue of Colson.
It's funny I don't remember right-wingers being sad when they toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein.
Trump accuses injured 75-year-old of being ANTIFA provacteur
If Putin is advising Trump on his campaign, as he likely is, he's doing a very bad job.
UPDATE: turns out the man, Margin Gugino, is a Catholic peace activist.
Labels: Trump's ratfucking
The Trump Reichstag fire strategy continues
The Trump campaign web site.
It isn't just Trump crazy-tweeting about antifa - the whole Republican establishment has gotten behind the antifa Reichstag fire strategy.
Few people outside Twitter even know what "antifa" is and Trump doesn't actually care about antifa which is a collection of probably 300 people at most who regularly attend anti-fascist demonstrations.
Trump's end game is to smear Democrats with the nebulous "terrorist" organization.
He's already made a move in that direction last August. Same with his boy Andy Ngo.
Then things got off-track thanks to the Ukrainian scandal that led to impeachment, and after that the coronavirus pandemic.
But now the antifa scheme is back on and it is likely that Andy Ngo & Republican committeewoman Harmette K. Dhillon will be working on that angle during their bogus lawsuit against antifa.
Harmeet K. Dhillon & Andy Ngo - the biggest clowns in the Trump circus
Wow how did I miss this story in the NYTimes from June 4?
Lawsuit Aims to Hold Nebulous 'Antifa' to Blame for Injuries
From the story:
A conservative writer from Portland, Oregon, filed a lawsuit Thursday against purported elements of the nebulous, far-left militant groups collectively known as antifa, days after President Donald Trump blamed those groups for inciting violence at protests over police killings of black people.
The suit was filed on behalf of Andy Ngo, who is known for aggressively covering and video-recording demonstrators.
"I am hoping that this marks a turning point, that militants belonging to a criminal movement can no longer depend on the anonymity ... to get away with their crimes," said Ngo, who previously was a writer with the online publication Quillette and now is with The Post Millennial.
Ngo has drawn attention to antifa for years and said he was targeted and suffered brain injuries when he was assaulted while covering protests in Portland a year ago. Video of the attack was widely viewed online and led to national calls for investigations as well as a subsequent rally led by the Proud Boys, a right-wing organization that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Antifa — short for "anti-fascists"— is an umbrella term for leftist militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
That makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to pursue a lawsuit, said California-based attorney Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican Party official who sued on Ngo's behalf.
Dhillon said the timing of the antifa lawsuit was coincidental to recent protests over the death of George Floyd, who struggled to breathe as his neck was pinned down by a white Minneapolis police officer's knee. She said she waited months to sue in the futile hope that authorities would bring criminal charges against Ngo's attackers.
This is obviously part of Trump's long-standing ratfucking Reichstag fire plan to make ANTIFA the bogeyman. The lawsuit is the next step after Trump declared the "nebulous" group a "terrorist organization" and will be used to justify more authoritarian moves by Trump.
Pinkerite has written about these two clowns several times. Andy Ngo is a right-wing stooge and failed "journalist" who makes money through the free speech grift.
It's the involvement of Republican Party official Harmeet K. Dhillon in this scheme that demonstrates how truly degraded and corrupt and - there's no other word for it - evil - the Republican Party has become.
I'm glad others are talking about Trump's Reichstag Fire tactics.
Labels: Quillette, Trump's ratfucking
Steve Sailer exposes another race science promoting college professor - meet Charles Negy
As much as Pinkerite would like to take credit for reducing the amount of hereditarian bullshit being promoted on college campuses, it seems that the most effective way to expose academic race science promoters is to associate them with Steve Sailer.
By way of Steve Sailer's blog was the claim apparently from Quillette's Bo Winegard himself, that Winegard was fired from Marietta college because of his association with Steve Sailer:
one of the triggers to his being fired was him liking a tweet by Steve Sailer…
And now, right after Charles Negy retweeted Steve Sailer promoting one of his typically racist articles in right-wing Taki's mag (I talked at length about its founder Panagiotis "Taki" Theodoracopulos here) Negy is the subject of a NYTimes article which links to that retweet.
The article is University to Investigate Professor Who Tweeted About 'Black Privilege' and says:
Dr. Negy's remarks prompted outrage among students and faculty and led to calls for him to be fired. On Twitter, the university denounced Dr. Negy's remarks but said they could be considered constitutionally protected speech.
"Being actively anti-racist means calling out and confronting racist comments," the university wrote. "We are aware of Charles Negy's recent personal Twitter posts, which are completely counter to UCF's values. We are reviewing this matter further while being mindful of the First Amendment."
The University of Central Florida, near Orlando, enrolls more than 69,000 students. Dr. Negy, 60, was granted tenure by the university in 2001, according to his résumé.
His book, according to a synopsis, argues that "white Americans and white culture frequently are under siege for a host of transgressions, ranging from colonialism to slavery, Jim Crow laws to racism, and from microaggressions to white privilege."
In an interview Thursday, he defended his remarks, saying, "Why would I resign?"
"Despite what so many 'haters' are saying about me on Twitter, I've never said ANYTHING critical of George Floyd," Dr. Negy said in an email. "The man was murdered in cold blood by a man who was a total sadist. So cruel."
Dr. Negy added that while he was not a white supremacist or racist, he was critical of all ethnic and cultural groups.
"In my classes, we critically look at various groups, including whites," he said. "There is no way I can be brutally honest about each racial/cultural group without offending someone."
But if you look at his Twitter timeline, it's obvious Negy is lying. First because Steve Sailer is a professional racist who especially hates and lies about black people.
And this wasn't the first time Negy agreed with Sailer on Twitter.
But Negy doesn't need Sailer's help to promote race science ideology:
Claiming that the African American experience is similar to the Asian American experience is a standard "human biodiversity" tactic as demonstrated by Bo Winegard's twin brother Ben.
Now I am not one to believe that race science promoters are especially bright, but they cannot possibly be so stupid and ignorant as to believe that the African American experience is comparable to any other ethnic group's experience.
Unlike Bo Winegard, who was let go by Marietta, Charles Negy has tenure at UCF. I don't know how the rules of tenure work, but there is an online petition calling for Negy to be fired.
If he is fired I wouldn't be too worried about him. Steve Sailer has made a living supported by wealthy old racist men like Theodoracopulos, Ron Unz, and Peter Brimelow. And Charles Murray has been supported by Koch via the AEI for many years. Bo Winegard is on staff at Quillette, which is supported by right-wing plutocrat Mark Carnegie, and also, I'd be willing to bet, by Koch.
The Right's wingnut welfare machine takes care of its favorite promoters of race science.
Labels: Charles Murray, Quillette
How conservative and white supremacist is Quillett...
A celebration of African Americans - get down, boo...
Caliper Claire Lehmann, still mourning the loss of...
Celebration of African Americans - rolling on the ...
A celebration of African Americans - if you really...
Claire Lehmann: "Cops was cancelled! It's the Cult...
Trump accuses injured 75-year-old of being ANTIFA ...
Harmeet K. Dhillon & Andy Ngo - the biggest clowns...
Steve Sailer exposes another race science promotin...
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Is Uni 'harder' than the HSC?
Where do I obtain my ID card?
Where do I buy a lab coat?
The Faculty of Science Peer Mentoring Program is available to students in the majority of undergraduate degree programs (the exceptions are listed below). The Program operates across the first semester and also includes social activities such as an Orientation Week BBQ and an activity such as a Trivia night early in the session, providing opportunities for students to meet other students (mentees and mentors). Information about peer mentoring and the benefits of actively participating in such a program can be found below in the FAQ section.
If you have any questions about the Science Peer Mentoring Program please contact the Science Learning and Teaching Unit by email via sltu@unsw.edu.au.
You can register for the 2019 program by filling in the survey here.
The School of Psychology offers a peer mentor program as part of a first year course. A small group of first year students will be mentored by a third year student within the Bachelor of Psychology and Bachelor of Psychological Science programs. You will be contacted by the School regarding this program if you are eligible and there is no need to register.
* Please note: Students who are completing a Psychology Major within the Bachelor of Advanced Science or Bachelor of Science degrees can participate in the Faculty of Science Peer Mentoring Program.
This Peer Mentoring Program runs during Semester 1 each year. In this program a senior student mentors a small group of first year students. You will be contacted directly by the School if you are completing an eligible degree program. There is no need to register.
Further information: visit the FAQs on the School of Materials Science and Engineering website.
The program revolves around social interaction and support rather than academic tutoring and involves final year Optometry students mentoring first year students.
Eligible Students: All Vision Science students (including students completing a Bachelor of Science (Vision Science Major) or Bachelor of Advanced Science (Vision Science Major)).
For further information: email the School of Optometry and Vision Science.
What is a peer mentor and mentoring?
A mentor is generally a more experienced student, passing on their knowledge, tips, ideas and skills to a less experienced student. Mentoring is different to friendship. Mentoring has a specific purpose, and the relationship is entirely focussed on you - the mentee.
Mentoring is not tutoring, although it does provide you with an important support structure to help you make the transition to university life while you 'find your feet'. Mentoring is an informal process.
can ask any question you may have about university life - no question to small, big or silly!
Trained and experienced senior science students who know all about the challenges of being a new student at UNSW.
"My mentor is really caring and helpful and we email each other very frequently. "
"Help is always there whenever I need it."
"We have been emailing each other whenever I had some questions and got good responses."
"My mentor has been very helpful whenever I need a help. "
"Thank you for providing such Mentor/Mentee program. It help me a lot."
"I had a peer mentor in first year and found the experience helpful and insightfully for a variety of reasons"