August 22, 2026

TWO TIERS:

Posted at 1:06 pm by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Hofstra professor facing possible termination over discrimination claim for saying ‘word salad.’

A Hofstra University political science professor has been trapped in a nearly one-year investigatory nightmare after a colleague reported him for racial discrimination for using the phrase “word salad.”

Professor Richard Himelfarb made the remark at a Nov. 3, 2025 faculty meeting about proposed new courses at the private Long Island University.

Santiago Slabodsky, the chair of the school’s Jewish Studies program, sparked an outcry when he proposed two courses — one on conspiracy theories and another tying religion to “revolutionary movements in Latin America” be taught in his department, Himelfarb told The Post.

When five professors objected, Slabodsky allegedly launched into a meandering diatribe where he waxed poetic about his professional accomplishments but didn’t address the professor’s concerns, Himmelfarb said.

After the rant, Himelfarb called out his colleague, saying, “That is complete word salad; I don’t understand a thing Professor Slabodsky said.”

The next day, Slabodsky — who was born in Argentina — filed a complaint against Himelfarb alleging that the use of the term “word salad” disparaged his accent and South American heritage.

“University politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small,” as Henry Kissinger was attributed as saying (along with many others).

Posted at 12:44 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE WOODMAN IN WINTER: Oscar Winner Woody Allen at 90 Preparing to Shoot 51st Film in Spain This Fall, Also Finishing Up New Book and Stage Play.

Woody Allen will turn 91 this November but that’s not stopping him.

By the time the Oscar winning director and writer reaches his birthday, he will have filmed his 51st movie in Madrid, Spain.

I’ve confirmed that Woody will make the film, possibly called “Madrid,” in September and October. No cast has been announced yet. This was the film he was supposed to shoot last spring, but now he’s ready.

I’m also told that Woody is putting the finishing touches on a second novel, and on a stage play.

Spain has proved to be a good luck setting for Allen. His “Vicki Cristina Barcelona” is a classic, and Penelope Cruz won her Oscar in that film. An all time classic.

Good luck, and if completed, I’ll look forward to reading the initial reviews, but as Peter Biskind wrote in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls:

The kind of reckless passion that Scorsese brought to Raging Bull is the privilege of the young, and as the New Hollywood directors got older, as they had more to protect and more to lose, as they grew familiar with failure, the passions of their youth were replaced by lassitude and cynicism. “When I first came out here, in the late ’60s, I met guys like Richard Brooks and Billy Wilder who were still active,” says Friedkin. “The two of them would invariably talk about what shit was being produced then. I thought, These guys who made films that I thought were astounding, are totally out of it today. How can this happen? The truth is, in America, film is a young man’s game. When I made French Connection and The Exorcist there was no doubt in my mind that those pictures would be popular. Because they were exactly what I wanted to see and what I wanted to see was what most people wanted to see.”

Having the seen the last films by Ridley Scott, Michael Mann, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, I’m sadly forced to agree, but I’d love to find someone who proves Biskind and the late William Friedkin wrong.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WE’RE UNDERGOING A POPULATION IMPLOSION. WE SHOULD BE MAKING IT EASIER FOR PEOPLE TO GET TOGETHER, NOT HARDER.

Posted at 10:32 am by Glenn Reynolds

NO, THE NATIONAL DEBT ISN’T $40 TRILLION: That figure, published by the Treasury Department earlier this week, is off by at least $130 Trillion. And, if Adam Smith is right about nations and debts, it’s doubtful we will ever be out from under this mountain of dependency upon creditors, domestic and foreign.

Posted at 10:16 am by Mark Tapscott

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:  I studied in Jason Arday’s department at Cambridge. Here’s the crap I was taught.

I studied in the academic department at Cambridge that later employed Jason Arday. My degree was in ‘Politics, Psychology and Sociology’, and one of my papers was on the Sociology of Education. Arday became a professor of Sociology of Education a few years after I left.

I want to give a few examples of the scale of progressive ideological capture even then, pre-Peak Woke, in 2012 (when I graduated). As well as to try to illustrate the sheer intellectual bankruptcy of so much of what gets passed off as chin-rubbingly profound academic scholarship at some of the most elite educational institutions in the world.

Where to begin?

For one module, I wrote a lengthy essay about how cultural products like kids’ cartoons and jazz songs serve as instruments of capitalist oppression. I got a top mark on that paper (despite knowing at the time that I was essentially regurgitating complete crap).

While studying for another paper I had a debate with the professor, an eminent anthropologist, because she insisted that native tribes could fly through the trees – not metaphorically, but that they could literally fly because they believed they could fly. After all, who are we to question ‘indigenous ways of knowing’…

O’Brien smiles: “‘We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation — anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.’”

Read the whole thing.

 

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll

CULTURAL CHANGE IS HAPPENING:

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

ICYMI: CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

OLD AND BUSTED: “Are We the Baddies?”

The New Hotness? Am I a Bond Villain?

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

REMINDER:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

IF YOU’RE CONTEMPLATING A CROSSCULTURAL MARRIAGE, READ THIS:  Cross Culture.

And for the record, my husband waited till the kids were adults, and then got them to join him in the revolution of “No more bacalhau for Christmas eve.” Sigh.

Posted at 6:24 am by Sarah Hoyt

HEED THE SPEAKER TO ODDS:  Many people think social rituals are pointless and seem proud that they’ve discovered that small talk and other courtesies are inane. This feels particularly strange to me because many of the same people understand concepts like control channels for data, metadata, and headers. How can you not see that human communication also needs similar framing? Small talk is a negotiation protocol. If it bores you, imagine a modem noise. You can’t send the packets until you’ve established a channel that decodes them properly.

X-cancel.

Posted at 6:00 am by Sarah Hoyt