Or, Gratitude, Baby.

Like, you have to come out to me as cis and straight.

It turns out that if you, a straight person – or worse, a straight couple – attend a Pride event, your presence may only be tolerated if you meet certain terms and conditions. Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Also, open thread. Have at it, me hearties.

And over at the University of Alberta:  

As an academic drag queen, Tommy is uniquely embodied in their scholarship and praxis of teaching and learning and has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, including their forthcoming co-edited collection of essays on RuPaul’s Drag Race as it relates to teaching and learning. 

Tommy, we’re told, has a “decolonial, anti-racist, and equity-driven intersectional vision,” which is just the ticket, apparently. For an Executive Director of a Centre for Teaching and Learning. At a university with serious budget problems and supposedly gripped by austerity. Our cross-dressing educator will nonetheless bring to bear “strategies and resources for positive engagement with gender pronouns,” while prompting the less enlightened to “reflect on whiteness, marginalisation, trauma, and continued struggle.” Against reality, one assumes.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Meanwhile, at Princeton, more “equity” in action: 

The Ivy League institution announced in April that it admitted 1,498 students for the class of 2025. A full 22 percent of admitted students are first-generation college students and 68 percent self-identify as “people of colour.” The record number of racial minority admittees comes after the school removed its standardised testing requirement.

Thereby giving the best possible impression.

The university now boasts that there are no longer “minimum test scores for admission,” as “the entirety of a student’s background” will be “considered in context.” Though based on efforts elsewhere, it seems reasonable to suppose that one particular – and academically irrelevant – aspect may weigh more heavily than most.

Having signalled a retreat from conventional metrics and expectations of ability, more ground may soon be ceded. Minority faculty are also demanding the removal of questions, for student applicants and potential employees, regarding “felony convictions,” as this is somehow unfair and an affront to “racial justice.” Other demands include an “additional semester of sabbatical” exclusively for “faculty of colour,” to ease the burden of their “invisible labour” and for being “emblems and spokespersons of diversity at Princeton.” In other words, a brown-person-only holiday to compensate for all of the work time they spend invoking “white supremacy,” claiming to be oppressed, and demanding special favours in enormous lists.

Update, via [+] in the comments:

Pitzer College in California has adopted a “test-blind” admission policy, meaning that standardised tests including the SAT and ACT “will be eliminated from the admission review process entirely.” […] Yvonne Berumen, the vice president for admission and financial aid at Pitzer College, said in the press release that “The elimination of standardised test scores from our review process entirely has the potential to send a strong message about equity, access, inclusivity, and excellence.” 

Message received.

Someone not quite making the case she thinks she’s making. 

Open thread. Do chat among yourselves.

I’m not hungover. You’re hungover.

Or, Prattle Beyond The Stars: 

Physicists at MIT and SUNY Stony Brook recently announced findings that the total surface area of two black holes was maintained after the two entities merged. While this research was a welcome confirmation of both Stephen Hawking’s work and the theory of general relativity, it failed to address a crucial matter: what were its racial implications?

Heather Mac Donald browses an astronomy course at Cornell University, titled Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos, and premised on the question, “Is there a connection between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness?” It seems unlikely that said course will enable any great scientific revelations, despite marshalling the combined forces of “Black Studies theorists” and the late jazz musician Sun Ra, who claimed to have visited Saturn; though it promises to “conjure blackness through cosmological themes.” 

And so, while some observe the merging of bogglingly massive astronomical objects, others regard themselves as a more fascinating topic, and “conjure” their own “blackness.” Via farce, contrivance, and racial narcissism.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.