Katherine Timpf on the latest cause of campus outrage: 

According to an article in the University of California–Los Angeles publication The Rival, people who are kind of into activism but not totally into activism are guilty of “activist appropriation.”

Katie Clancy and Justin Haskins on fake education at Butler University:

In the course’s description, students are told they’ll be taught the real reason Trump won the 2016 election and they’ll be provided “strategies for resistance” to the Trump administration’s evil agenda. “Donald J. Trump won the U.S. Presidency despite perpetuating sexism, white supremacy, xenophobia, nationalism, nativism, and imperialism,” the course description reads. “This course explores why and how this happened, how Trump’s rhetoric is contrary to the foundation of the U.S. democracy, and what his win means for the future. The course will also discuss, and potentially engage in, strategies for resistance.”

Malhar Mali on the dogmatic rot of the humanities: 

Activist professors incapable of surviving in the more arduous disciplines… are the most vociferous in limiting the academic freedom of others. 

Related: The Heterodox Academy Guide to Colleges. 

And Kevin Williamson on the psychology of the feckless and chronically disorganised: 

The passivity and subjectlessness of these narratives is striking, and strikingly consistent. Domestic events happen. Cheques come or don’t come. (Mostly they don’t.) Husbands are sent to jail, children are taken away by the clipboard-toting minions of Authority, disease descends. The money isn’t there. And, in the end, they are evicted. Bad things just happen, and, today, I am the bad thing that is just happening to one of these luckless and unhappy children of God… They’d had years and years to prepare for this moment, and, of course, they hadn’t… They very much wanted to stay in the house, though not enough to offer to rent it or buy it. But certainly enough to sit tight and hope that the situation would somehow just resolve itself in their favour.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Anthony Gockowski reports from Purdue University, where a debate on abortion takes a strange turn: 

“What would you call the public display of a butt naked body of a child?” [pro-abortion speaker, Professor David] Sanders questioned. “I would call it child pornography. Do they have their permission? Do they have the permission of the foetus? Obviously not.”

The permission of the foetus. All things considered, not the happiest turn of phrase.

He went on to question whether or not [anti-abortion group] Created Equal obtains “the permission of the parents to show these images of children,” soliciting a shocked reaction from the audience, with one in attendance pointing out that Sanders had effectively admitted that “it’s a child.”

So, to recap. Showing images of terminated babies-to-have-been during a debate on abortion is apparently pornographic and indecent, a violation of the subject, unlike actually terminating said subject with forceps, suction tubes or abortifacient drugs.

Related: Just Thwarted Sperm. 

Ordinary people are perfectly comfortable with the idea that some people are smarter than others. They’re perfectly comfortable [with the idea] that what we call smart gets you kinds of jobs that you can’t get otherwise, all that kind of stuff. It’s the elites who are under the impression that “Oh, IQ tests only measure what IQ tests measure, and nobody is really able to define intelligence,” and this and that, “it’s culturally biased,” and on and on. And all of these things are the equivalent of saying the Earth is flat. These are not opinions that you can hold in contest with the scientific literature.

Sam Harris has a long and wide-ranging discussion with Charles Murray, spanning the taboos of IQ, social stratification, the poisonous effects of identity politics, the pros and cons of a universal basic income, and how Donald Trump became a weapon against a disdainful establishment.

Dr Murray’s adventures among the campus Mao-lings have been noted here previously. 

Portrait of a mindset in a single Tweeted selfie: 

I was sent an urgent email the day before, saying they were considering moving the venue to a place with fewer plate glass windows and more means of egress. That’s not exactly reassuring.

In the latest FIRE podcast, Nico Perrino interviews Heather Mac Donald, who discusses her recent, rather lively visit to the Land Of The Mao-lings.