"I view Stanford and MIT as mainly political lobbying operations fighting American innovation at this point...."

"The combination of DEI and immigration is politically lethal. When these two forms of discrimination combine, as they have for the last 60 years and on hyperdrive for the last decade, they systematically cut most of the children of the Trump voter base out of any realistic prospect of access to higher education and corporate America.... So of course you have to go overseas to get qualified PhD candidates, most of the native born kids who could have been in that pipeline were cut out of it.... I was born in 1971 in Iowa and grew up in Wisconsin. My cohort of citizens was told that we just had to put up with this as a cost of prior American bigotry even though the discrimination was now aimed at us. And for the most part we did. But the insanity of the last 8 years and in particular the summer of 2020 totally shredded that complacency. And so now my people are furious and not going to take it anymore. The universities are at ground zero of the counterattack since they are BOTH actively discriminating against us AND primary origin points and propagation vectors.... They declared war on 70% of the country and now they’re going to pay the price...."

Wrote Marc Andreessen in a group chat with White House officials and technology leaders.

Quoted in "Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreesen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI/The investor in a private group chat also criticized Stanford and said colleges are biased against Trump voters: 'My people are furious'" (WaPo).

My prompts to Grok were "What does Marc Andreessen mean by 'my people'?" And then: "That's going to be seen as racist by a lot of people. Why wasn't he smart enough to use different words? One answer would be that he meant to signal to white people that they need to come together and fight for their own interests." Answers: here.

"Did the entire admission department threaten to quit? Or did the incoming class turn out to be morons?"

An indelicate question, sourced anonymously at Instapundit, inquiring after the new policy announced by MIT admissions: "We are reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles." 

From the policy announcement, there's an excess of delicacy — to the point where you might find it funny or terribly disturbing:

Our research can’t explain why these tests are so predictive of academic preparedness for MIT, but we believe it is likely related to the centrality of mathematics — and mathematics examinations — in our education. All MIT students, regardless of intended major, must pass two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics.... The substance and pace of these courses are both very demanding, and they culminate in long, challenging final exams that students must pass to proceed with their education. In other words, there is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students are ready for that as soon as they arrive.⁠

It sounds as though they have a large number of students whom they misled into believing that they could do the work. These students are not morons. Most of us are in no position to jump into fast-paced college physics and calculus! The students I visualize are suffering and properly outraged at the administration for tempting them with an opportunity that they were naive to take. Don't blame the students. Blame the administration. They did it for themselves. That's the right presumption. Now, they're in damage-control mode. 

I'm giving this post the tag "stupid" because of the administration. I don't think any of the students are stupid. They're just at the wrong school because a wrong was done to them.

"This American Life" reveals more than you might expect about how Harvard discriminates against Chinese-American applicants.

I strongly recommend this 25-minute segment of "This American Life," "The Veritas Is Out There" (listen at that link or read the transcript). A propos of the lawsuit against Harvard, which alleges that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants, a Chinese-American who did get into Harvard looks at his own admissions file and sees what the alumnus who interviewed him had to say. This student, Alex Zhang, is on Harvard's side in the lawsuit: He wrote an amicus brief supporting Harvard and he got the Chinese Students Association to sign another pro-Harvard amicus brief. He doesn't change sides when he sees what's in his file, but he is sorely challenged.

The interviewer wrote a very long memo, strongly pushing Alex, but you can tell that the interviewer believed that the way to do that is to distinguish him from other Asian-American applicants. At one point the interviewer wrote "was this a perfect for MIT mechanical engineer playing me?" The "This American Life" producer, Diane Wu editorializes: "Perfect for MIT, I guess, is code for too boring for Harvard."

The most telling line in Alex's file is about his mother: "She is far from the stereotypical 'tiger mother.'" Wu asks Alex how he feels about that, and he says "it's true." Wu pushes harder: "Is it weird to you at all that the interviewer is pointing to stereotypes that you aren't? Is he a perfect-for-MIT engineer playing me, or does he have a tiger mom?" Alex concedes, "That's a good point."

Wu knows she's pushing: "As soon as I asked the question, I felt like I overstepped, like I was planting the idea in Alex's head that something racial was going on. But when I heard tiger mother, I thought, there is the implicit bias they're talking about in the lawsuit in a way more explicit form than I was expecting."

Alex cannot resist too much or he'll forfeit credibility: "Yeah, that is really weird. I guess it kind of goes into a narrative like the Asian applicant has to disprove certain things to be considered viable for something ivy league."

Wu paraphrases: "In other words, if you want to get into Harvard, don't be too Asian."

Alex: "Hmm. That makes sense. I don't know what his motivations are, my interviewer's motivations. Maybe the interviewer was like, oh, I should distinguish him from other Asians, or maybe he just does it subconsciously."

Wu:

Alex's friends saw his screen grab [of his admissions file] saying tiger mom and perfect-for-MIT engineer and texted him back, oh, my god and that's kind of horrible. Tiger mom was actually a lot more explicit than any of the examples of bias that came up at the trial. It was really a fight over statistics and economic models, but a few stereotypes did come up. They were subtle. Things like Harvard referring to Asian applicants as one-dimensional or book smart.

So "This American Life" gets Alex talking to the alum who wrote the memo, Jim McCandlish (who is, according to Alex, "an old white guy" with a "Chinese wife"). McCandlish without obvious prompting, reveals an attitude that is — though he doesn't seem to notice — very damaging to Harvard's position in the lawsuit. This is McCandlish:

Most likely, at least certainly from a place like Oregon, the interviewer is Caucasian. And we know there are stereotypes. I'm just curious how that plays out. If you have an expectation that an Asian interviewee is going to have a drab personality or meek and mild, you may play into your stereotype and not develop the rapport that would defeat the stereotype or at least resist it. You're in a really gray area of human nature.

Alex asks him about "tiger mom," and McCandlish says, "Well, recall, I live with one" (that's how he refers to his wife, this man who went to Harvard).  He adds: "I live with a tiger mom and fight it all the time." (I'm not sure what "it" is. Does he fight the tigerish qualities of his own wife or is he fighting other people who hold negative stereotypes against persons of Chinese descent?)

Later, McCandlish says — and remember, he went to Harvard — "I use that term because I'm an Amy Tan fan." He must have meant Amy Chua, author of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." Amy Tan is another author, as Wu explains. Tan wrote "The Joy Luck Club." (But see this review of Amy Tan's memoir "Where the Past Begins" that says it would make sense to call it "Post-Battle Hymn Of The Damaged Daughter Of A Tiger Mother.")

In an interview with Wu that McCandlish didn't allow to be recorded, Wu says he admitted that he was trying to get Alex in by — in Wu's words — "overtly pointing out to the admissions officers that Alex was different from other Chinese-American applicants. That this young man did not fit whatever stereotypes that he or the admissions officers might have."

Later, we hear Alex wondering why having a "tiger mom" should count against you: "Is that not part of your upbringing and who you are now?... There seems to be these very negative connotations about the way Asians are raised or the way that they behave growing up. And it just seems like there's this very deeply ingrained prejudice and misunderstanding."

"MOOCs may soon become a prominent factor in admissions decisions at selective colleges..."

"... a way for students who may not do well on traditional measures like the SAT to prove they can hack it."

That’s the argument by officials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which on Wednesday announced a plan to create what it calls an "inverted admissions" process, starting with a pilot project within a master’s program in supply-chain management.

... Students who come to the program after first taking the MOOCs will then essentially place out of the first half of the coursework, so they can finish the degree in a semester rather than an academic year. That effectively makes the master’s program half the usual price.

ADDED: With so much hanging on success in the MOOCs, how will MIT deal with cheating? Here's an article from last month in the MIT News: "Study identifies new cheating method in MOOCs/Research from MIT and Harvard shows how to exploit and protect MOOC certification":

In this [new] method of cheating, a user creates multiple accounts, one of which is the primary account that will ultimately earn a certificate. The other accounts are used to find or “harvest” the correct answers to assessment questions for the master account.

"MIT’s incoming class hacked the Harvard 2017 website Sunday night..."

"... by replacing all the pictures with Mitt Romney’s mug."

The puzzling dearth of women in computer science and the annoying lack of statistical competence in the NYT.

Here's an article about how few women there are in the field of computer science, written by Randall Stross (which I noticed because of its rank on the NYT most-emailed list). It begins this way:

ELLEN SPERTUS, a graduate student at M.I.T., wondered why the computer camp she had attended as a girl had a boy-girl ratio of six to one. And why were only 20 percent of computer science undergraduates at M.I.T. female? She published a 124-page paper, “Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?”, that catalogued different cultural biases that discouraged girls and women from pursuing a career in the field. The year was 1991.

Computer science has changed considerably since then. Now, there are even fewer women entering the field. Why this is so remains a matter of dispute.

What’s particularly puzzling is that the explanations for under-representation of women that were assembled back in 1991 applied to all technical fields. Yet women have achieved broad parity with men in almost every other technical pursuit. When all science and engineering fields are considered, the percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent in 2004-5 from 39 percent in 1984-85, according to National Science Foundation surveys.

When one looks at computer science in particular, however, the proportion of women has been falling....

Now, wait a minute. You can't compare the average of all the fields to the number in one particular field, then assert that the one field stands out from all the others -- or even "almost" all the others. The numbers that make up that average could be all over the place, with many lows balanced by highs. They could be drastically skewed by the inclusion of some science field that is unusually attractive to women -- or unattractive to men. I wish the NYT would link to the NSF surveys so I could see for myself what is inside that 51%. Also, unstated, is the fact that more women than men receive bachelor's degrees these days. What percentage of female college graduates major in science and engineering, and what percentage of male college graduates major in science and engineering?

Anyway, the failure of women to enter computer science is especially interesting if it is true that it's the only field -- or "almost" the only field -- that women have shunned as they pour into the rest of science and engineering, but I'm not convinced it's true. If it is, though, maybe it's a bit puzzling. One professor, we read, theorizes that in the past "young women earlier had felt comfortable pursing the major because the male subculture of action gaming had yet to appear." So there's this idea that the key to getting more women to enter the field is to entice young girls to play computer games. Indeed, there was a "girls game movement," but it's already failed.

There are other theories too: women who like computers prefer to do website design, women are more sensitive about being regarded as nerds, etc. These theories already contain the belief that women's interests differ from men's. That being the case, why not just say that fewer women are interested in computer science? Presumably, the answer is that because the percentage of women in computer science has been falling over the years, it probably doesn't reflect an innate gender difference. If it's something out there in the culture, then, supposedly, it's something that can -- and should -- be manipulated.

I think there are at least 3 shaky assumptions in the previous 2 sentences but I won't lengthen this post by belaboring them.

I'll lengthen this post by pointing to the news that Barack Obama might appoint Larry Summers as Secretary of the Treasury, and some women are displeased:

A controversial comment at a Cambridge conference may cost former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers a second stint in the Cabinet.....

In 2005, [Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] walked out of an academic conference after Summers, the keynote speaker and the president of Harvard University at the time, said that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers.....

And now women’s groups have expressed so much outrage over Summers’ possible appointment that, according to top Democratic sources, his name may even have been stricken from the short list....

Just after Obama won, National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy told the Huffington Post she had “mixed feelings” about Summers, saying he doesn’t “get” the economic implications of gender-based wage disparities.

The New Agenda, a nonpartisan women’s rights group, issued a press release, saying Summers’ “record of derogatory comments aimed at women ensures that his selection would be divisive and thus distract from efforts to fix the economy.”

How much does the work of the Secretary of the Treasury have to do with getting the implications of gender-based wage disparities? And does NOW really get the implications of gender-based wage disparities or does it simply invoke them to get attention and try to appear relevant and powerful? Is there some innate gender difference that makes women want to stand between the new President and the man who might be the best person for what is a phenomenally important job?

IN THE COMMENTS: Joan writes:

I read the article yesterday when I saw the headline -- couldn't resist. I graduated from MIT and worked for 15 years as a software developer. I did not major in computer science. My informed opinions on why fewer women are choosing computer science:

1. You can easily work in computer science fields without a computer science degree. The joke at MIT back in the late '80s was it didn't matter what you majored in, we'd all end up writing software anyway. It was true for about 80% of the people in my living group, at least for portions of their professional careers.

2. As far as choosing CS as a career, the field is dominated by people (both men and women) with stunted emotional and social maturity. High-school level drama in the workplace is wearing and unpleasant.

3. The work is challenging and can be really fun. It can also be a real grind, and the cyclical nature of new product releases means you have to work overtime for extended periods every year. The pay is good, and that is one form of compensation. But the work itself is ephemeral, and this is the key to why I don't work in software anymore: If I kill myself to get this release out, the software will be used for 6 months, maybe a year, until the next release. It never ends, and there's no perceptible benefit. Aren't you tired of the new versions of your favorite software continuously appearing, laden with feature-bloat and a host of new problems?

I'm teaching now because I get a sense of fulfillment, and because it works with my own children's schedules. The money is horrifically bad compared to what I was making as a project lead at Oracle, but money is not my only concern.

Regarding Larry Summers, he was right when he talked about the innate differences between men and women -- women self-select into professions they enjoy, just as men do, and those who deny this are insufferable. I stopped donating money to MIT after the Nancy Hopkins incident. They should have repudiated her, and instead she was lauded. I'm disgusted by how PC my alma mater has become over the years, and question the quality of the education kids are getting there, if they have idiots like Nancy Hopkins on staff.

John McCain said he'd hate to live in Milwaukee?!

When did McCain say that? Back in 2004. Here, I found the old WaPo article. It's long, but eventually we get to the part where he's at a Diamondbacks-Padres game with the journalist (Mark Leibovich):

McCain spent 51/2 years as a POW and is now sitting at a ballgame, spooning Heath bar ice cream into his mouth and belly-laughing at his joke. If any demons linger, they are perfectly hidden.

The Diamondbacks score four runs in the third inning. Outfielder Luis Gonzalez waves to McCain from the on-deck circle. "You see that, Luis-Luis waved to me," McCain says.

Between pitches, the following tidbits of McCainiana are gleaned:

• He would hate to live in Milwaukee.

• He has been unimpressed with Kerry's recent performances: "Kerry's gotta stop nuancing everything."

• John Edwards would have been a tougher nominee to beat.

"This is your pitch, Richie, c'mon, c'mon," McCain yells at Diamondbacks slugger Richie Sexson. Sexson is facing San Diego's Jason Szuminski, a rookie pitcher who attended MIT.

"NASA, here we come," McCain says after Sexson hits a towering home run. Szuminski leaves the mound after giving up five runs.

"That's why we don't have more pitchers from MIT," McCain says, speaking loudly enough for fans nearby to hear. He is showing a version of himself unseen to this point, but one which suits him: senator as heckler.

Hey, let's get another video, with MIT folk grousing about how McCain insulted them.

Suing the architect.

The building is incredibly cool, a showpiece. Check out these pics of the Stata Center at MIT, designed by Frank Gehry. But MIT is suing, "charging that flaws in his design... one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up."

Do you want a wild and crazy building dreamed up by an artist? Stop and think whether all the less strange buildings look the way they do for a reason.