Edmund Burke famously ridiculed the radicals and revolutionaries of his day for justifying violent and unjust acts by simpleminded appeals to abstract values. The abstract value he had in mind was liberty, which the mountebanks of France and their cheerleaders in England used to justify murder and…
Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Andrew Ferguson discusses his piece on the reeducation of Starbucks baristas.
Like Paul Newman’s chain gang in Cool Hand Luke, Starbucks is suffering from a failure to communicate. First, of course, was the Philadelphia branch manager who had two African-American men arrested on the grounds they were loitering (they weren’t). Then, in a burst of enthusiasm and contrition,…
Liberals and progressives sometimes complain that Republicans win more elections, and they do. But cheer up, lefties—you’ve got a lock on the nation’s elite colleges. The thought occurred to us when we read through Homogeneous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty, a new…
Hollywood is notorious for taking certain ideas to unpleasant extremes: CGI in Star Wars movies, saccharine romantic comedy tropes, the Fast and Furious franchise. But in our current #MeToo moment, activists intent on remaking the world in a more female-friendly image have gone beyond outing…
Last month, after two men were asked to leave a Philadelphia Starbucks on the grounds that they were loitering, the Starbucks Corporation announced that it would close more than 8,000 stores for a day in order to impose “unconscious bias training” on its employees. (Readers contemplating the wisdom…
A futile and stupid gesture from Starbucks.
On April 26, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, threatened to organize protests against President Trump on Twitter: “If he comes to London, President Trump will experience an open and diverse city that has always chosen unity over division and hope over fear.” He’ll also see, the mayor boasted, that…
When diversity morphs into discrimination.
It shouldn’t be either newsworthy or controversial to discover that college students are learning about the work of Aristophanes, studying the Peloponnesian War, or analyzing Aristotelian notions of happiness. But this is 2018, when college administrators often seem more focused on the subtle…
American universities are out of control. Tuition rises even as the quality of teaching sinks and the value of a degree falls into question. Students assault speakers and suffer no punishment. Others are accused of crimes and condemned without evidence or due process. All the while, curriculums are…
Of all the professional sports, Major League baseball has the broadest range of players from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds: In 2015, more than 230 foreign-born players from 17 countries played the game at its highest level.
Meet Scott Yenor.
In Chaos Monkeys, his memoir about his rocky career in high tech, Antonio García Martínez lists a few pithy rules for understanding how Silicon Valley really works. The best of these insider insights: “Company culture is what goes without saying.” That is, if you want really to understand the firms…
In Chaos Monkeys, his memoir about his rocky career in high tech, Antonio García Martínez lists a few pithy rules for understanding how Silicon Valley really works. The best of these insider insights: “Company culture is what goes without saying.” That is, if you want really to understand the firms…
By now you’ve read about the ten-page “anti-diversity screed” that was published by an anonymous engineer at Google. Well, he’s no longer anonymous. His name is James Damore and yesterday Google fired him.
Political scientist and law professor Carol Swain retired from academia just when some of her research had become remarkably relevant. She doesn't see it quite that way, though. Swain prophesied the rise of the alt-right 15 years ago, but she won't call Donald Trump's election victory a vindication…
Political scientist and law professor Carol Swain retired from academia just when some of her research had become remarkably relevant. She doesn't see it quite that way, though. Swain prophesied the rise of the alt-right 15 years ago, but she won't call Donald Trump's election victory a vindication…
"Zach Wood may look black but as far as I'm concerned, he's white." This was one of many disparaging comments posted on Yik Yak when I invited Charles Murray to speak at Williams College last spring.
"Zach Wood may look black but as far as I’m concerned, he's white." This was one of many disparaging comments posted on Yik Yak when I invited Charles Murray to speak at Williams College last spring.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook has been experimenting with its hiring policies "to help diversify its largely white, largely male workforce." Thus, two years ago the company began to incentivize in-house recruiters by offering them 1.5 points "for a so-called 'diversity hire'—a black,…
As the Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook has been experimenting with its hiring policies “to help diversify its largely white, largely male workforce." Thus, two years ago the company began to incentivize in-house recruiters by offering them 1.5 points "for a so-called 'diversity hire'—a black,…
The invitation promised Omarosa, the much loved/hated star of "The Apprentice."
In May, Tennessee lawmakers banned all funding for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The $436,000 that had been budgeted for the office will instead be put toward scholarships for minority students in engineering. The UTK diversity office was…
The Republican candidates for president were remarkably unified in the (few) policy preferences they espoused at their debates on Wednesday night. All support cutting taxes and reducing regulation, and all oppose crony capitalism. The candidates may be remarkably diverse in terms of ethnicity and…
Wikipedia defines “startup accelerators” as “fixed-term, cohort-based programs that include mentorship and educational components and culminate” in a “demo day” on which hopeful entrepreneurs make pitches to prospective funders. On August 4, President Obama hosted his own demo day, recasting it to…
Our virtues lose themselves in selfishness as rivers are lost in the sea. —La Rochefoucauld If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in 2016 she will not only be the nation’s first woman president but our second affirmative-action president. By affirmative-action president I mean that she, like…
Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is the affirmative action case that won’t go away. It’s been to the Supreme Court once and may return. It is a case that could well turn on a failure to define terms—“critical mass” being the critical term.
It's an article of faith among bien pensant liberals that all institutions in society must achieve perfect gender parity. Consider, for example, the left’s outrage at the dearth of women employed at Google and other tech firms (despite the fact that far fewer women study computer science than men)…
The state agency in charge of Maryland's beleaguered Obamacare Marketplace, the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange (MHBE), is looking to establish a standing advisory committee to provide the board of the MHBE advice and input on a "broad range of policy issues." The MHBE sent out a letter to…
News from academia! “President Salovey and I,” writes Yale’s provost, “have invited a distinguished group of academic leaders to a diversity summit at Yale on February 11-12, 2014. Their visit will include a series of discussions with faculty and administrators about the challenges of diversifying…
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the "Diversity in Cyber Security Conference" tomorrow in Washington, D.C., a press release from the organization hosting the event announced in a press release. The group Women in International…
The Scrapbook resolutely refuses to take the Kennedy Center Honors seriously, and this year’s carefully balanced, politically vetted selection of lifetime achievers in the performing arts—Dustin Hoffman, Led Zeppelin, Buddy Guy, Natalia Makarova, David Letterman—prompts us to change our mind…
Ever since DC Comics decided to reboot their entire universe of characters, they’ve been trawling the diversity waters. They’ve done all sorts of stunt casting with their characters. In June, for instance, they turned the Green Lantern gay.
The Arkansas Democratic party is denying presidential candidate John Wolfe the delegates he earned in the state's primary because Wolfe's selected delegates fail to meet the party's standards for diversity. Wolfe is suing the party to seat his delegates after he won over 40 percent of the vote…
NATO agrees to oversee no-fly zone.