Author Archive | David Bernstein

Ariel Beery of Columbia writes to emphasize that in his view the problem is not Massad per se, but the entire wildly ideological and intolerant Columbia Middle Eastern Studies Department. Ariel has also started a blog, focusing on the controversy at Columbia, that corrects several errors that have appeared in media accounts of the controversy. […]

Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia, accused in a film by one student who approached him after a lecture of an overtly hostile attitude toward the student as an Israeli, and by another student of responding obnoxiously when the student tried to defend Israeli policy in class, has responded: “Massad called the documentary ‘a propaganda film’ […]

From the New York Jewish Week.

Here’s a poorly-reasoned article (via How Appealing) that relies on statements by an NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney for criticism of the supposed dearth of black Bush appointees to the federal judiciary. According to the article, 7.5% of all Bush judicial appointees have been black (the list doesn’t include Janice Brown, whose nomination has been […]

Brian Leiter links to an online petition in support of Prof. Joseph Massad of Columbia. Brian states that the charge of misconduct vis a vis a student by Mr. Massad are serious, but do not warrant dismissal. First, let’s be clear that I have no personal knowledge as to whether any accusations made against Prof. […]

Readers have asked about my evidence for the proposition that conservatives are generally better informed about politics than are liberals. I was likely recalling the following chart, posted on the VC several months ago: Political Knowledge by Strength of Party Identification 2000 National Election Study Self-Described Party Alignment / Average Political Knowledge Score (Average number […]

Regarding Stuart Benjamin’s post below, the study he cites is just one example of the broader problem of political ignorance, well-documented by my colleague Ilya Somin. Since, as I recall, studies show that conservatives are overall better-informed than are liberals, I suspect that the study Stuart cites is an artifact of two factors: (1)Bush supporters […]

The paperback edition of my You Can’t Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws—the Cato Institute’s all-time best-seller* —will officially be released on Monday, but you can already get it from Amazon for a mere $10.36, or from one of Amazon’s Marketplace dealers for under nine bucks. If you already have […]

Duke University welcomes to its campus a non-academic conference sponsored and attended by supporters of Palestinian terrorism, offering to foot the bills for security. Questionable judgment, but I’d have to know more about Duke’s policies on such conferences to reach a conclusion. If Duke would be similarly hospitable to a conference of fundamentalist Christians and […]

Columbia University has an endowment of approximately $4 billion (that’s billion). Jewish and Israeli students in the Middle Eastern Studies Department report being harassed and harangued by their professors. Columbia, implicitly acknowledging problems with the department, and having already taken money from an evil Middle Eastern dictatorship for a chair named after the late Egyptian […]

Kieran Healy has an interesting non-snarky post on what the data on May-December marriages tell us, with an interesting comments section beneath it. Kieran doesn’t point out, but I will, that the data confirm support my original observation: that the common wisdom that men are more likely than women to prefer younger mates and to […]

I have received many e-mails purporting to explain why Jews tend to despise Republicans. Most of these emails (and this blog post) instead give plausible reasons why Jews may prefer to vote for Democrats instead of Republicans. What I was referring to, however, is the kind of visceral discussed [update: sic–disgust; that’s what I get […]

Instapundit points to this very perceptive analysis of John Kerry’s policies and attitudes toward Israel by Martin Peretz. But Peretz also begins his piece with this puzzling but accurate statement: “Like many American Jews, I was brought up to believe that if I pulled the Republican lever on the election machine my right hand would […]

This article from the Guardian contains what (I think is) a whopper: that “Detroit is the largest Iraqi City outside of Iraq.” I couldn’t find exact statistics, but I am fairly certain that Ramat Gan, Israel (where my Iraqi-Jewish wife is from) has many more Iraqis than does Detroit. The vast majority of the 100,000 […]

An article in my alma mater’s (Brandeis University) newspaper, The Justice explains that two Brandeis Women’s Studies professors argue that (surprise!) what most of us think of as gender (or, some would say, “sex”) differences are actually mere stereotypes. Maybe it’s unfair for me to comment without reading the professors’ entire book, not to mention […]