text: wtf I love the New York Times now
  No. No no no. No!
  He capitalizes "black." He lower-cases "white." And if one cannot be just a wee little bit pregnant, one can't be slightly plagiaristic. He was willing to overlook what God knows how many unfortunate Harvard undergrads became un-Harvardized for over the years, little wee bits of uncitationed submissions.
  No. Johnny-come-lately. And some miserably pedestrian prose for a guy who's a linguist, for fuck's sake.
  I know you must be giddy now. Take a deep breath. Remember how long you been on our Claudine's case. You should be John's hero.
  It's in the NYT. Their standard usage is "Black" and "white." It is very possible that the editors imposed that usage even if McWhorter did not in his original essay, as though correcting a typo.
  He's an idiot who masquerades as a thoughtful person. He hasn't the guts to choose a side and stay on it. If one has principles one sticks to 'em. But he doesn't.
  I encountered him a few years ago and read the transcripts of his shared podcast with Glenn Loury who seems wrapped a lot tighter. Probably John shouldn't throw too many stones at Claudine because he might be just as lightweight intellectually despite a superior record of publishing.
  Disagree with this. McWhorter has been based for a long time and has gotten a lot of grief for it. He left a tenured position at Berkeley to work at the Manhattan Institute, and I suspect he left due to finding the political atmosphere at Berkeley stifling. And this was in the aughts--well before the current wave of wokeness when leftism on college campuses was still called "political correctness".
  He's writing in the New York Times and is subjected to their style guidelines. That would effect both the rules of capitalization and the overall heft of the prose.
  Did you read the link in my comment?
  He strikes me as a nice inoffensive guy with no strong beliefs and no particular intellectual depth--which makes him indistinguishable from the average academic liberal of former times when liberal had a rather more respectable meaning.
  As to style guidelines--if one does have strong beliefs about bullshit and conformity to foolishness, one declines to be published by an outlet that forces you to be dishonest in public. He's got an audience of his own; he doesn't need the NYT, and he did his reputation no favor by this piece.
  The fact that you say he "strikes" you as anything seems to indicate that you aren't familiar with him.
  I'm not going to write out a whole-ass comment defending him. But as someone who has been following McWhorter for years, characterizing him as "inoffensive" with "no strong beliefs" isn't accurate in the slightest. Whether or not he has intellectual depth is subjective, though I read some of his work on creolization and learned a lot from it (though I am not a linguist so weigh my opinion accordingly).
  I haven't read his books but have read quite a lot of his social media posts i.e. on Substack and newspaper columns, and the podcast transcripts with Glenn Loury, as I previously mentioned, and I think he's a nice inoffensive guy who doesn't exactly flatten me with his intellect. He seems like someone leery of taking strong points of view and holding to them regardless of the consequences.
  You like him, fine. I'm not trying to convert you away from any admiration you have. An inclination to like him that I used to have, I don't any longer.
  I couldn’t care less what he capitalizes. What did he say? That is what is important.
  One says a great deal with one's use of grammar and punctuation too.
  Let’s take the small victories when we can get them
  I'd hardly call it a victory to have McWhorter show himself to be such an idiot in public.
  Yeah the nytimes author is way off base. He talks about hiring a black person as if that is even remotely part of appropriate selection criteria.
  The truly hilarious aspect of all of this is that Gay comes from an upper middle-class background, the child of professionals, attended a prep school, and didn't need a hand up from anybody. And yet is this mediocre.
  That’s the problem with hiring ppl that don’t deserve it. They think they are that good. I feel like the types of ppl who deserve it may have more self reflective and harder on themselves.
  This ain't so different from every office I ever worked in. That it's Harvard don't make it special.
  Just saw your comment after my, redundant, one.
  Harvard Finds More Instances of ‘Duplicative Language’ in President’s Work
  "Duplicative Language". That is creative writing.
  Stop it with the grade inflation. One doesn't become a "hero" just for exercising minimal common sense.
  Is it me, but objecting to Gay for committing forty crimes against Harvard, but not objecting when she commits twenty crimes against Harvard, does not make JW a hero. Just sounds like a narcissist engaged in CYA.
  A "hero"? Karl, be more careful with word choice please
  Must be bad for a leftist to go this far.
  Poor fellow uses the adulatory spelling of the black race, but the standard spelling for White.
  John’s a good dude, I first saw him on Penn & Teller’s BS damn near 20 years ago at this point. As any good libertarian of the skeptic variety, it’s one of my favorite shows of all time. For current stuff, check out John on Glenn Loury’s show, John always has an interesting take on things. Those who don’t know him well will be surprised at what he has to say. Also, to my knowledge, the “Black” thing is an NYT style guide thing. When you write for a publication, you have to follow the style guide, no matter how stupid it is.
  "There are indeed degrees of plagiarism. The allegations against Dr. Gay do not entail promoting actual substantial ideas as her own…"
  And yet she did precisely that when she lifted the substantial ideas from Dr. Carol Swain, but I guess Dr. Swain doesn't count because she's an Aunt Tom or something.
  Fairly weak sauce here. Her process was sloppy, mistakes were made, but her ideas were original. But for the sake of the continuing DEI enterprise, she should step down. I find no bravery or boldness in his stance.
  She manipulated data. That isn’t ‘sloppy’. Sloppy is a typo.
  It’s a bit odd that no one mentions the allegations of data fabrication. Whatever happened to that, Chris?
  I believe the only solution to these problems are aligning academia to market forces. The fact the author says only one person read their dissertation shows how little value so much of academia has in the world. If you look at Substack or YouTube people need to create things of value to people and are then reviewed and critiqued by many in their market niche. It seems like academia almost doesn’t want to be read widely for fear of being reviewed and critiqued. It’s sad really so much effort is put into things no one cares about enough to even read.
  Mr McWorther's prose was a bit painful to read. As others have pointed out, his overtly racist Black/white dichotomy stands out. But his repeated (pro forma?) approval of "antiracism" (i.e. anti-white bigotry) is repugnant.
  Nevertheless, his main point is sound: in a "zero tolerance" environment for students like Hahhhhvud, it's odious for the boss to flaunt the rules xir administration forces on the student body.
  We all know what Comrade Lenin or Comrade Mao would do with a degenerate anti-working-class racist like Mx Gay. (Wall's over that way, stand up straight please, this will be brief.) While I can't endorse such harsh justice, that is kinda the ideological world Mx Gay inhabits.