Category: reason

Would the Mother of All NIMBY Ballot Initiatives Accidentally Allow More Development?


reason-ballotbox

In response to increasingly successful state-level efforts in California to nudge local governments into allowing more housing, anti-development opponents have introduced a sweeping ballot measure that would effectively strip the state of its ability to regulate land use.

This past week, activists submitted language for their “Californians for Community Planning Initiative” to the state’s attorney general. Their measure would amend the state’s constitution to specify that in the event of a conflict between state and local land use laws, local laws will prevail.

The immediate target of the initiative, according to the group’s website, is a series of state bills—S.B. 9, S.B. 10, and A.B. 1401—that respectively legalize duplexes statewide, allow local governments to skip lengthy environmental reviews when zoning for small apartment buildings, and forbid local governments from requiring that new development near transit stops include parking spaces.

“For far too long, California has relied on a broken land use planning system driven by Sacramento politicians and special interests that incentivizes over-development of market rate housing,” said John Heath, an initiative proponent and president of Los Angeles’ United Homeowners’ Association, in a press release. “We the people get to determine what our neighborhoods look like instead of relying on one-size-fits-all social engineering policies from Sacramento.”

Both S.B. 9 and S.B. 10 passed the legislature this week. A.B. 1401 was killed in committee.

The idea behind these bills—alongside past state legislative efforts to legalize mid-rise apartment buildings near transit stops and job centers—is to route around local governments who too often stymie new housing development.

Bills that shift land-use decisions to the state level, where policy makers are theoretically more inclined to support new development, have popped up in state legislatures from Maryland to Oregon in recent years.

The preamble to the Community Planning initiative raises a number of issues with this approach. Local officials, it says, are better positioned to address the impacts of new development on infrastructure and the environment. Allowing denser apartments close to bus and rail stops will “eliminate the availability of low or very low income housing near public transit,” it reads.

To that end, the initiative would render unenforceable any manner of state laws designed to boost housing production.

A homeowner trying to use the newly passed S.B. 9 to build a duplex on a plot the city has zoned for single-family housing would be stopped cold. Larger developers, meanwhile, would be prevented from making use of state “density bonus” laws that let them construct larger apartment buildings in exchange for including units that are below market rate.

The initiative would also take the teeth out of laws requiring local governments to allow accessory dwelling units. Those have proven remarkably successful at goosing new housing production. State laws that require local communities to plan for enough housing to accommodate population growth would also have to go.

The Community Planning initiative does carve out exemptions for state laws governing power plants, and water, communications, and transportation infrastructure. It would also leave in place state land use regulations of coastal areas, which are incredibly hostile to new development.

On the other hand, the breadth of the ballot measure’s language would, perhaps unintentionally, also prevent the enforcement of state laws that limit the development of new housing.

That would include the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a state law that requires government agencies to study and mitigate the impacts of a new development before approving it.

Because the law empowers third parties to sue if they think an agency hasn’t studied a new development enough, activists and special interests frequently use CEQA to stop new construction or extract concessions from developers.

The ballot initiative—by overriding state laws when they conflict with local zoning codes—would therefore override local activists’ ability to use CEQA to slow up development.

“Ironically enough, [CEQA] is something that has been widely championed by the interest groups that are usually on the opposition side of state housing legislation,” says Christopher Elmendorf, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Law. “It’s a law that procedurally, and through the requirement of mitigation conditions, substantively, regulates the use of land.”

The Community Planning initiative wouldn’t stop there; it would also potentially prevent the enforcement of new building code standards that require new construction to come equipped with solar panels, and which add an estimated $20,000 to the cost of a single home.

The state’s rent control law, which arguably reduces developers’ willingness to build new housing, would also be unenforceable. (The flip side is that state limits on a local government’s ability to adopt stricter rent control policies would also be unenforceable.)

“It’s uncertain how it would affect housing production in the aggregate,” says Elmendorf. “It is likely to change the pattern of housing production so that there’s more housing that’s built in far-flung areas that tend to be relatively pro-growth and less housing to be built in existing residential neighborhoods where there tends to be organized homeowner opposition.”

The ultimate scope of the initiative, he says, would end up being hashed out by the courts.

On Wednesday, supporters of the Community Planning measure filed their initiative text with the state’s attorney general, who will then write a title and summary of the measure. Petitioners will then be allowed to start gathering signatures to get it on the ballot.

They say their goal is to get their initiative on the November 2022 ballot.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3kIgkot
via IFTTT

Would the Mother of All NIMBY Ballot Initiatives Accidentally Allow More Development?


reason-ballotbox

In response to increasingly successful state-level efforts in California to nudge local governments into allowing more housing, anti-development opponents have introduced a sweeping ballot measure that would effectively strip the state of its ability to regulate land use.

This past week, activists submitted language for their “Californians for Community Planning Initiative” to the state’s attorney general. Their measure would amend the state’s constitution to specify that in the event of a conflict between state and local land use laws, local laws will prevail.

The immediate target of the initiative, according to the group’s website, is a series of state bills—S.B. 9, S.B. 10, and A.B. 1401—that respectively legalize duplexes statewide, allow local governments to skip lengthy environmental reviews when zoning for small apartment buildings, and forbid local governments from requiring that new development near transit stops include parking spaces.

“For far too long, California has relied on a broken land use planning system driven by Sacramento politicians and special interests that incentivizes over-development of market rate housing,” said John Heath, an initiative proponent and president of Los Angeles’ United Homeowners’ Association, in a press release. “We the people get to determine what our neighborhoods look like instead of relying on one-size-fits-all social engineering policies from Sacramento.”

Both S.B. 9 and S.B. 10 passed the legislature this week. A.B. 1401 was killed in committee.

The idea behind these bills—alongside past state legislative efforts to legalize mid-rise apartment buildings near transit stops and job centers—is to route around local governments who too often stymie new housing development.

Bills that shift land-use decisions to the state level, where policy makers are theoretically more inclined to support new development, have popped up in state legislatures from Maryland to Oregon in recent years.

The preamble to the Community Planning initiative raises a number of issues with this approach. Local officials, it says, are better positioned to address the impacts of new development on infrastructure and the environment. Allowing denser apartments close to bus and rail stops will “eliminate the availability of low or very low income housing near public transit,” it reads.

To that end, the initiative would render unenforceable any manner of state laws designed to boost housing production.

A homeowner trying to use the newly passed S.B. 9 to build a duplex on a plot the city has zoned for single-family housing would be stopped cold. Larger developers, meanwhile, would be prevented from making use of state “density bonus” laws that let them construct larger apartment buildings in exchange for including units that are below market rate.

The initiative would also take the teeth out of laws requiring local governments to allow accessory dwelling units. Those have proven remarkably successful at goosing new housing production. State laws that require local communities to plan for enough housing to accommodate population growth would also have to go.

The Community Planning initiative does carve out exemptions for state laws governing power plants, and water, communications, and transportation infrastructure. It would also leave in place state land use regulations of coastal areas, which are incredibly hostile to new development.

On the other hand, the breadth of the ballot measure’s language would, perhaps unintentionally, also prevent the enforcement of state laws that limit the development of new housing.

That would include the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a state law that requires government agencies to study and mitigate the impacts of a new development before approving it.

Because the law empowers third parties to sue if they think an agency hasn’t studied a new development enough, activists and special interests frequently use CEQA to stop new construction or extract concessions from developers.

The ballot initiative—by overriding state laws when they conflict with local zoning codes—would therefore override local activists’ ability to use CEQA to slow up development.

“Ironically enough, [CEQA] is something that has been widely championed by the interest groups that are usually on the opposition side of state housing legislation,” says Christopher Elmendorf, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Law. “It’s a law that procedurally, and through the requirement of mitigation conditions, substantively, regulates the use of land.”

The Community Planning initiative wouldn’t stop there; it would also potentially prevent the enforcement of new building code standards that require new construction to come equipped with solar panels, and which add an estimated $20,000 to the cost of a single home.

The state’s rent control law, which arguably reduces developers’ willingness to build new housing, would also be unenforceable. (The flip side is that state limits on a local government’s ability to adopt stricter rent control policies would also be unenforceable.)

“It’s uncertain how it would affect housing production in the aggregate,” says Elmendorf. “It is likely to change the pattern of housing production so that there’s more housing that’s built in far-flung areas that tend to be relatively pro-growth and less housing to be built in existing residential neighborhoods where there tends to be organized homeowner opposition.”

The ultimate scope of the initiative, he says, would end up being hashed out by the courts.

On Wednesday, supporters of the Community Planning measure filed their initiative text with the state’s attorney general, who will then write a title and summary of the measure. Petitioners will then be allowed to start gathering signatures to get it on the ballot.

They say their goal is to get their initiative on the November 2022 ballot.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3kIgkot
via IFTTT

20 States Sue Over Title IX Guidance on Gender Identity


tiphotos108951

States sue the Department of Education and EEOC. Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972—which says schools can’t discriminate “on the basis of sex”—has long been a battleground, as federal authorities continually expand the definition of just what discrimination on the basis of sex means. At stake is whether the federal government can get involved in and have the final say over a huge range of affairs at U.S. schools and universities, from sports teams to sexual assault investigations to which bathrooms students can use.

The Biden administration has interpreted Title IX’s anti-discrimination provision to include discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. An executive order Biden issued his first day in office stated as much (building on Obama-era guidance). And in March, the Department of Justice issued a memo also stating that Title IX “prohibit[s] discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”

In response, the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued new guidance on federal anti-discrimination law.

It goes “far beyond what the statutory text, regulatory requirements, judicial precedent, and the Constitution permit,” argue attorneys general from 20 states in a new lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee on August 30.

The Department of Education said it “will fully enforce Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in education programs and activities that receive Federal financial assistance from the Department” and that the Office of Civil Rights “will open an investigation of allegations that an individual has been discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or gender identity in education programs or activities.”

At the heart of the lawsuit are attempts by GOP-dominated state legislatures to ban transgender students from using bathrooms or playing on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity. A number of federal courts have already blocked such bills applied to schools.

The lawsuit also objects to EEOC technical guidance stating that employers must allow trans employees to use showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

States party to the suit include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Their complaint alleges that the Education Department’s interpretation of Title IX is “contrary to law because, properly interpreted, Title IX’s prohibition of discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ does not encompass discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity” and “Title IX and longstanding Department regulations expressly permit distinctions based on biological sex in certain circumstances. ”

The interpretations “are so removed from any reasonable reading of Title IX that they amount to an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power,” their suit argues. It also alleges that the new EEOC guidance wasn’t subject to proper rule making procedure and that it violates the 10th Amendment.

You can read the full complaint here.

FOLLOWUP

No last-minute intervention from SCOTUS before Texas abortion law takes effect. With no word yet from the U.S. Supreme Court, an abortion ban in Texas takes effect today. The American Civil Liberties Union and abortion providers had asked the Court to intervene and block the new law, which bans abortion around six weeks and lets people sue anyone who provides or aids and abets the provision of an abortion.

Also, as the near-total abortion ban takes place, Texas lawmakers are apparently trying to…ban abortion again?

FREE MINDS

Leaving Afghanistan is “about ending an era of major military missions to rebuild other countries,” said President Joe Biden yesterday.

Find a full transcript of Biden’s Tuesday Afghanistan speech here and find highlights here.

FREE MARKETS

In a plan that seems destined to lead to unwarranted account suspensions, Instagram will monitor users’ accounts for truthfulness about their age. “To side-step users who enter incorrect birthday information, the company plans to leverage a new algorithm designed to analyze your posts and determine whether you’re telling the truth about how old you are or not,” reports Gizmodo.

“We recognize some people may give us the wrong birthday, and we’re developing new systems to address this,” Instagram said in its announcement. “As we shared recently, we’re using artificial intelligence to estimate how old people are based on things like ‘Happy Birthday’ posts.”

QUICK HITS

• A 21-year-old in Ohio was ordered to get the COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of his probation on a drug charge. A judge just lifted that order.

• As coronavirus cases in Florida rose in August, “the Florida Department of Health changed the way it reported death data to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], giving the appearance of a pandemic in decline, an analysis of Florida data by the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald found.”

• A viral video of the Taliban allegedly hanging a man from a helicopter isn’t what it initially appeared to be.

• In other fake news about Afghanistan:

• The man who tried to extort Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) has been indicted on fraud charges. “The scheme outlined in the indictment tracks with one Matt Gaetz, who in late March confirmed reports he was under federal investigation in connection to a sex trafficking investigation but denied committing wrongdoing, had also alleged at the time,” notes the Washington Examiner.

• How the “right to repair” might save you some money.

• 
What is the “dead-internet theory“?

• We’ve been hearing about how “monoclonal antibodies” are fighting COVID-19. Could they also fight unwanted sperm in a woman’s body?

• Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic on “the new Puritans.“

• The Biden administration continues to follow Trump-era immigration policy. “A Justice Department attorney argued Tuesday for American immigration officials’ authority to limit the number of asylum-seekers allowed to cross into the U.S. from Mexico each day, even as President Joe Biden’s administration is attempting to distance itself from the Trump administration’s policy imposing caps on asylum applicants at border ports of entry,” notes Politico.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3mX75DP
via IFTTT

Is Administrative Law Either? A Debate

On Monday evening, the Notre Dame Student Chapter of the Federalist Society hosted a “Feddie Fight Night” debate on the topic: “Is Administrative Law Either? (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Administrative State),” between Professors Gary Lawson of Boston University and Nicholas Bagley the University of Michigan. The online event featured a rollicking and wide-ranging exchange on delegation, expertise, constitutional history, and legal interpretation, among other aspects of administrative law.

Video of the event is available on the Federalist Society’s website, as well as on YouTube.

 

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3jxthC8
via IFTTT

20 States Sue Over Title IX Guidance on Gender Identity


tiphotos108951

States sue the Department of Education and EEOC. Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972—which says schools can’t discriminate “on the basis of sex”—has long been a battleground, as federal authorities continually expand the definition of just what discrimination on the basis of sex means. At stake is whether the federal government can get involved in and have the final say over a huge range of affairs at U.S. schools and universities, from sports teams to sexual assault investigations to which bathrooms students can use.

The Biden administration has interpreted Title IX’s anti-discrimination provision to include discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. An executive order Biden issued his first day in office stated as much (building on Obama-era guidance). And in March, the Department of Justice issued a memo also stating that Title IX “prohibit[s] discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”

In response, the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued new guidance on federal anti-discrimination law.

It goes “far beyond what the statutory text, regulatory requirements, judicial precedent, and the Constitution permit,” argue attorneys general from 20 states in a new lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee on August 30.

The Department of Education said it “will fully enforce Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in education programs and activities that receive Federal financial assistance from the Department” and that the Office of Civil Rights “will open an investigation of allegations that an individual has been discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or gender identity in education programs or activities.”

At the heart of the lawsuit are attempts by GOP-dominated state legislatures to ban transgender students from using bathrooms or playing on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity. A number of federal courts have already blocked such bills applied to schools.

The lawsuit also objects to EEOC technical guidance stating that employers must allow trans employees to use showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

States party to the suit include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Their complaint alleges that the Education Department’s interpretation of Title IX is “contrary to law because, properly interpreted, Title IX’s prohibition of discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ does not encompass discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity” and “Title IX and longstanding Department regulations expressly permit distinctions based on biological sex in certain circumstances. ”

The interpretations “are so removed from any reasonable reading of Title IX that they amount to an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power,” their suit argues. It also alleges that the new EEOC guidance wasn’t subject to proper rule making procedure and that it violates the 10th Amendment.

You can read the full complaint here.

FOLLOWUP

No last-minute intervention from SCOTUS before Texas abortion law takes effect. With no word yet from the U.S. Supreme Court, an abortion ban in Texas takes effect today. The American Civil Liberties Union and abortion providers had asked the Court to intervene and block the new law, which bans abortion around six weeks and lets people sue anyone who provides or aids and abets the provision of an abortion.

Also, as the near-total abortion ban takes place, Texas lawmakers are apparently trying to…ban abortion again?

FREE MINDS

Leaving Afghanistan is “about ending an era of major military missions to rebuild other countries,” said President Joe Biden yesterday.

Find a full transcript of Biden’s Tuesday Afghanistan speech here and find highlights here.

FREE MARKETS

In a plan that seems destined to lead to unwarranted account suspensions, Instagram will monitor users’ accounts for truthfulness about their age. “To side-step users who enter incorrect birthday information, the company plans to leverage a new algorithm designed to analyze your posts and determine whether you’re telling the truth about how old you are or not,” reports Gizmodo.

“We recognize some people may give us the wrong birthday, and we’re developing new systems to address this,” Instagram said in its announcement. “As we shared recently, we’re using artificial intelligence to estimate how old people are based on things like ‘Happy Birthday’ posts.”

QUICK HITS

• A 21-year-old in Ohio was ordered to get the COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of his probation on a drug charge. A judge just lifted that order.

• As coronavirus cases in Florida rose in August, “the Florida Department of Health changed the way it reported death data to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], giving the appearance of a pandemic in decline, an analysis of Florida data by the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald found.”

• A viral video of the Taliban allegedly hanging a man from a helicopter isn’t what it initially appeared to be.

• In other fake news about Afghanistan:

• The man who tried to extort Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) has been indicted on fraud charges. “The scheme outlined in the indictment tracks with one Matt Gaetz, who in late March confirmed reports he was under federal investigation in connection to a sex trafficking investigation but denied committing wrongdoing, had also alleged at the time,” notes the Washington Examiner.

• How the “right to repair” might save you some money.

• 
What is the “dead-internet theory“?

• We’ve been hearing about how “monoclonal antibodies” are fighting COVID-19. Could they also fight unwanted sperm in a woman’s body?

• Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic on “the new Puritans.“

• The Biden administration continues to follow Trump-era immigration policy. “A Justice Department attorney argued Tuesday for American immigration officials’ authority to limit the number of asylum-seekers allowed to cross into the U.S. from Mexico each day, even as President Joe Biden’s administration is attempting to distance itself from the Trump administration’s policy imposing caps on asylum applicants at border ports of entry,” notes Politico.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3mX75DP
via IFTTT

Is Administrative Law Either? A Debate

On Monday evening, the Notre Dame Student Chapter of the Federalist Society hosted a “Feddie Fight Night” debate on the topic: “Is Administrative Law Either? (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Administrative State),” between Professors Gary Lawson of Boston University and Nicholas Bagley the University of Michigan. The online event featured a rollicking and wide-ranging exchange on delegation, expertise, constitutional history, and legal interpretation, among other aspects of administrative law.

Video of the event is available on the Federalist Society’s website, as well as on YouTube.

 

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3jxthC8
via IFTTT

The Academic Freedom Podcast #4 with David French

A new episode of The Academic Freedom Podcast from the Academic Freedom Alliance is now available. Subscribe through your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode.

This episode of the podcast features my conversation with David French, the former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and current senior editor at The Dispatch. We talk about his experience in the trenches defending free speech on college campuses, the growing hostility to liberal values in some segments of the American right, and recent legislative efforts to ban “divisive concepts” and “critical race theory” in American schools, including state universities.

From the podcast, on the difference between students and professors in free speech controversies:

We had a lot of professor inquiries, but very few professors willing to sort of make a public stand. So the students were much more willing to sort of like saddle up and go to battle against their university. And the professors were much less willing. There were there was more than one instance where I would talk to a professor who’d be in there and they would have tenure. But they would be in their office and they would be talking to me in hushed tones, lest anyone overhear them. And this is, again, going back 15 years. And so we did have some professor litigation, including what I think is either the first or one of the first cases where we actually won a jury trial on behalf of a professor who had been denied a promotion because of his political point of view. And that was Mike Adams sadly committed suicide during the pandemic. And that case was- you know, it’s understandable why people would have reluctance to challenge their school. He won. He won. He got his promotion. He got all of the back pay that he was due. You know, he was vindicated. But the whole process also took seven years. So that’s a hard, hard thing to endure when you’re when your professional reputation in your professional, in your peer relationships are on the line.

On recent state legislative efforts to ban “critical race theory” in schools:

You will see young kids in a public school system in this state or this city being taught some pretty outrageous stuff about race. You know, you’ll see some diversity, DEI diversity, equity, inclusion training programs that are almost like a caricature of critical race theory that will place people into racial affinity groups that will, you know, put people on privileged walks. I mean, these things actually exist. And many of them are so, actually so outrageous as to, in all likelihood, violate civil rights law by being racially discriminatory. But there’s been little sense of how widespread it is. For example, how much does it actually exist in your own local school?

And so there was there was a rush to try to ban critical race theory. And so because critical race theory is such a slippery concept to define concisely, it’s got a lot of different branches, a lot of different scholars, a lot of the scholars will argue with each other. They instead began to ban the not just the advocacy of certain specific concepts, but the inclusion of these concepts in courses in some of the concepts. So the concept it might be the idea that one race is inherently superior to another, which is a concept that, if taught in class, would violate civil rights law. Right. But it began to be these concepts. There were a variety of these concepts that were attempted that that schools attempted or legislatures attempted to ban. And that the breadth and the vagueness of these statutes began to be very, very concerning, they weren’t just replicating the requirements of civil rights law, for example, they weren’t just replicating the requirements of the First Amendment, which prohibits, for example, compelled speech. They were going way beyond that.

And they were both under inclusive and overinclusive. They were under inclusive in the sense that they weren’t banning critical race theory. They weren’t. But they were overinclusive in that they were banning kinds of conversations and an instruction that even the legislators themselves would say we didn’t intend to ban. And so they were very sloppily written. They would have a profound, chilling effect and wouldn’t even accomplish the goal that they were drafted to accomplish. Other than that, they were fine.

Listen to the whole thing.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3kHXo9n
via IFTTT

The Academic Freedom Podcast #4 with David French

A new episode of The Academic Freedom Podcast from the Academic Freedom Alliance is now available. Subscribe through your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode.

This episode of the podcast features my conversation with David French, the former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and current senior editor at The Dispatch. We talk about his experience in the trenches defending free speech on college campuses, the growing hostility to liberal values in some segments of the American right, and recent legislative efforts to ban “divisive concepts” and “critical race theory” in American schools, including state universities.

From the podcast, on the difference between students and professors in free speech controversies:

We had a lot of professor inquiries, but very few professors willing to sort of make a public stand. So the students were much more willing to sort of like saddle up and go to battle against their university. And the professors were much less willing. There were there was more than one instance where I would talk to a professor who’d be in there and they would have tenure. But they would be in their office and they would be talking to me in hushed tones, lest anyone overhear them. And this is, again, going back 15 years. And so we did have some professor litigation, including what I think is either the first or one of the first cases where we actually won a jury trial on behalf of a professor who had been denied a promotion because of his political point of view. And that was Mike Adams sadly committed suicide during the pandemic. And that case was- you know, it’s understandable why people would have reluctance to challenge their school. He won. He won. He got his promotion. He got all of the back pay that he was due. You know, he was vindicated. But the whole process also took seven years. So that’s a hard, hard thing to endure when you’re when your professional reputation in your professional, in your peer relationships are on the line.

On recent state legislative efforts to ban “critical race theory” in schools:

You will see young kids in a public school system in this state or this city being taught some pretty outrageous stuff about race. You know, you’ll see some diversity, DEI diversity, equity, inclusion training programs that are almost like a caricature of critical race theory that will place people into racial affinity groups that will, you know, put people on privileged walks. I mean, these things actually exist. And many of them are so, actually so outrageous as to, in all likelihood, violate civil rights law by being racially discriminatory. But there’s been little sense of how widespread it is. For example, how much does it actually exist in your own local school?

And so there was there was a rush to try to ban critical race theory. And so because critical race theory is such a slippery concept to define concisely, it’s got a lot of different branches, a lot of different scholars, a lot of the scholars will argue with each other. They instead began to ban the not just the advocacy of certain specific concepts, but the inclusion of these concepts in courses in some of the concepts. So the concept it might be the idea that one race is inherently superior to another, which is a concept that, if taught in class, would violate civil rights law. Right. But it began to be these concepts. There were a variety of these concepts that were attempted that that schools attempted or legislatures attempted to ban. And that the breadth and the vagueness of these statutes began to be very, very concerning, they weren’t just replicating the requirements of civil rights law, for example, they weren’t just replicating the requirements of the First Amendment, which prohibits, for example, compelled speech. They were going way beyond that.

And they were both under inclusive and overinclusive. They were under inclusive in the sense that they weren’t banning critical race theory. They weren’t. But they were overinclusive in that they were banning kinds of conversations and an instruction that even the legislators themselves would say we didn’t intend to ban. And so they were very sloppily written. They would have a profound, chilling effect and wouldn’t even accomplish the goal that they were drafted to accomplish. Other than that, they were fine.

Listen to the whole thing.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3kHXo9n
via IFTTT

The New Yale Book of Quotations Is Published (Post 3 of 3)

Immediately after the publication of the original Yale Book of Quotations, readers—some of them scholars, but more of them ordinary quotation-lovers—sent excellent new information to the editor. These discoveries are now incorporated into The New Yale Book of Quotations. The preeminent contributor was Garson O’Toole, who was inspired to create the magnificent quoteinvestigator.com website. The help furnished by the crowd-sourcing resulted in a new volume that not only traces famous quotes to their true origins, but also captures the many famous quotations omitted by other reference works. Below is the third part of the NYBQ’s introduction.

The publication of the first edition of The Yale Book of Quotations triggered a remarkable “crowd-sourcing” response by quotation-lovers and researchers spanning the globe. Employing printed books, online searching, and their own memories, many readers emailed, or communicated by other avenues, outstanding contributions of quotations for inclusion or of improvements in information about quotes in the YBQ. The names of the more active such contributors are given in the Acknowledgments above, but special credit needs to be elaborated here for Garson O’Toole.

In 2007 O’Toole became curious about the genesis of the supposed Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times,” which Wikipedia had traced back to 1950. He then was able to find the curse in a 1944 book and posted his discovery on a blog. This posting was noticed by the Yale Book of Quotations editor, who added a comment pointing out that the YBQ had a 1939 citation. O’Toole later wrote that he “purchased a copy of The Yale Book of Quotations and began purposefully scanning its entries.” The rest is history, as he was inspired by the Yale volume to create, three years later, a website he titled Quote Investigator (quoteinvestigator.com). Quote Investigator has grown to include well over a million words of authoritative quote-sleuthing. O’Toole’s brilliant researches have greatly aided The New Yale Book of Quotations, which has many dozens of entries reflecting Quote Investigator findings.

The compilation of the present book has also benefited from extensive use of the electronic mailing list of the American Dialect Society and the Project Wombat network of reference librarians and researchers, both of which bring together very skilled people dedicated to answering sophisticated questions. Specific contributors are listed in the Acknowledgments. Finally, traditional methods of library research, utilizing the resources of the Yale University Library and Yale Law Library as well as interlibrary borrowing from other institutions, were pursued to verify quotations and to find their origins.

The research efforts outlined above were devoted not only to tracing and verifying quotation origins, but also to ensuring that all of the most famous quotations were included in this book. As a result, many important quotations not found in prior quotation dictionaries appear here, such as Willard Motley’s 1947 suggestion to “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse”; the famous sentence from Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech at Yankee Stadium in 1939: “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth”; and Friedrich Nietzsche’s 1888 epigram, “Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.” More than a thousand previous quotation collections and other types of anthologies were canvassed; many Internet resources were perused; and experts on specific authors and types of literature were consulted.

As a result of the unique approaches and methods employed, The New Yale Book of Quotations has a Janus-like duality. As noted above, the NYBQ serves a very traditional function of gathering the monuments of literary expression and other forms of enduring culture. It also, however, captures the most celebrated items of contemporary discourse and public life. Thus William Shakespeare and Donald Trump coexist in these pages. One of them is far less eloquent than the other, but, for better or worse, both are now part of our verbal heritage, with Mr. Trump’s most remarkable utterances and Tweets carefully recorded here. Other recent individuals whose quotes have been introduced or supplemented in this edition include, among many others, Warren Buffett, Hillary Clinton, Pope Francis, Jonathan Franzen, Alan Greenspan, Steven Jobs, Cormac McCarthy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Toni Morrison, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, David Foster Wallace, and Warren Zevon.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3mSmJAk
via IFTTT