Why Evolution is True Feed

Thanks to readers who sent in photos, but we always need more!

Today’s batch comes from UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison, and were taken near her school.  Susan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Early spring meanderings

In late February I took a visiting college friend hiking in the hills northwest of Davis, California.  Starting up the trail, we had the good luck to see a tiny Northern Pygmy-Owl (Glaucidium gnoma) high in an oak.   Thinking I’d captured at least a low-resolution facial photo, it turned out I’d been fooled by the false eyes on the back of the bird’s head.  Pygmy-Owls prey upon and therefore are often mobbed by small songbirds. The eyespots are believed to protect the owl’s true eyes when it’s under attack.

Northern Pygmy-Owl:

We later enjoyed watching an Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna) doing yoga in the sun; just like humans, they stretch to stay flexible and prepared for action:

The setting was Valley Vista Regional Park, looking south to the organic farms of the Capay Valley and east to the remarkable Sutter Buttes and Sierra Nevada.

Capay Valley:

Sutter Buttes:

Here are a few other sightings from near Davis:

Western Bluebird (Sialia mexicana):

Merlin (Falco columbarius):

White-tailed Kite (Elanus leucurus):

In early March, invigorated by recent owl experiences, I set off to the Sonoma coast in search of Northern Saw-Whet Owls (Aegolius acadicus).   They are found in lushly forested canyons, and one such location near Jenner, California, sounded promising.

Waiting for nightfall, I hiked among the redwoods enjoying the startlingly loud and lovely song of tiny Pacific Wrens (Troglodytes pacificus):

Calypso Orchids (Calypso bulbosa) lit up the understory here and there:

After dark a Saw-Whet Owl began singing.  After I followed it and played a few of its low toots on my phone, a small ghostly presence flapped past my head into a willow.  Using a headlamp for illumination, I managed a few grainy photos.

Saw-Whet Owl:

Stopping by the coast the next morning, I saw a possible — and if so, unusual — Yellow-Billed Loon (Gavia adamsii)  in front of a smaller and darker Common Loon (Gavia immer):

The mouth of the Russian River at Jenner, California:

Here’s the latest news/comedy bit from Bill Maher’s Real Time, this one called “America’s Whore Complex.” It’s about the sudden honoring of sex workers, which I suspect derives from the movie “Anora”, featuring a stripper/prostitute played by Mikey Madison). Maher is discombobulated with the change of the word from “prostitute” to “sex worker,” and observes that the fancier word has become a liberal euphemism.  Maher also notes that 41 American actresses were nominated for Oscars for playing sex workers (they’re all shown in photos).

Maher, however, concludes that the word “sex workers” should revert to the old word “whore”, because the virtue-signaling of the former word does “harm to the cause” by sounding “too benign.” His thesis: that often the job is not voluntary, mentioning Andrew Tate, who’s been accused of forcing women into sex work (Maher criticizes Republicans for remaining silent about those activities because Tate’s a Republican).

It’s not one of his best bits. It’s okay, but I was surprised to learn that there have been over forty Oscar nominations for women playing sex workers/prostitutes/whores.

It’s not so surprising that Auckland University harbors a Māori activist like Eru Kapa-Kingi; what is surprising is that Auckland University has publicized his words and activities, amd they seem proud of them!  For Kapa-Kingi’s goal is apparently to decolonize not just Auckland University (once the best university in New Zealand, now a hotpot of identity politics), but all universities in the country. And he sees academia more as a place to enact activism than to seek the truth.

For Kapa-Kingi already knows the truth, and it’s that universities must be decolonized (I take that to mean that all “Western” influences must be expunged), and they should be run on the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, a pact that has nothing to do with academia.  If you read its three provisions, you’ll see this, but the Treaty (“Te Tiriti”) is now being interpreted by the indigenous people as meaning “Māori should get at least half of everything.” (They constitute 17.8% of New Zealanders.)  This drive for inequity is eventually going to wreck New Zealand academics, driving away those who want to study something other than the Treaty of Waitangi—and to keep away academics who ponder studying in New Zealand.

I used to think there was hope for academics (and politics) in this beautiful country, but the fact that the University of Auckland is publicizing Kapa-Kingi in a long puff piece made me realize that universities are committing academic suicide through identity politics. Yes, the whole country has been ideologically captured by the activist tendency to play on the guilt complexes of those descended from Asians and Europeans.

Click below to read the article from the Auckland Uni news site, and if the article disappears you can find it archived here.

Note that the university doesn’t bother to translate most of the Māori language into English. This is its way of virtue signaling, though most Māori (about 79%) do not have a conversational knowledge of their own language. It’s okay to use the language in articles, but the University of Auckland really should translate the Māori terms.

The article’s introduction to Kapa-Kingi:

As the early morning sun cast long shadows over the Far North town of Te Kao, hundreds prepared to embark on a hīkoi that would stretch over nine days, culminating at the steps of Parliament.

Their mission was clear: to challenge the Treaty Principles Bill and uphold the mana of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Leading them was Eru Kapa-Kingi, an emerging leader in te ao Māori. At age 28, the law academic and activist ultimately mobilised one of the largest public demonstrations in New Zealand’s recent history. But for Eru, of Ngāpuhi and Te Aupōuri descent, this was more than political activism – it was an act of whakapapa, a reclamation of identity and duty.

“Protecting the tapu, the mana, the integrity of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is something that’s closely aligned with my purpose and my identity,” he says.

“It’s tied to my journey of reclaiming my reo, my connections to who I am, to my iwi, Te Aupōuri and Ngāpuhi. I’ve come to see just where I fit in that puzzle in the matrix of te ao Māori.

“Te Tiriti and He Whakaputanga [the 1835 declaration of independence], and the kōrero that surrounds them, I’m drawn to it on more than an academic level.”

That journey began in the lecture halls of Victoria University where Eru graduated with a conjoint law and arts (te reo Māori) degree with honours, and later continued at Waipapa Taumata Rau. In 2023 he joined Auckland Law School as a professional teaching fellow, where he designs and teaches compulsory courses on te ao Māori me ōna tikanga (the Māori world and its cultural practices).

Yes, the law school at Auckland has compulsory courses on the Māori world and its culture. Compulsory! Do their laws differ from those of New Zealand? I doubt it. There may be cultural adjudications within the various tribes, but if you want a law degree from Auckland, do you really need to learn about Māori culture? Maybe optional courses, but perhaps in sociology or anthropology rather than the law school. But as we’ve seen, throughout New Zealand each major is developing compulsory courses in indigenous culture. It doesn’t matter if you’re a physics or math major, you’ve going to have to take one of these.

At any rate, I’ll give some quotes from the article uttered by Kapa-Kingi, a well-known activist. The quotes are in italics. I’ll also link to the Māori Dictionary since no translations are given:

“Protecting the tapu, the mana, the integrity of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is something that’s closely aligned with my purpose and my identity. . . . “

“It’s tied to my journey of reclaiming my reo, my connections to who I am, to my iwi, Te Aupōuri and Ngāpuhi. [JAC: Tribes from the North Island] I’ve come to see just where I fit in that puzzle in the matrix of te ao Māori.” [JAC: “The Māori world”

During a meeting in Parliament, Kapa-Kingi showed people opposed to a pure Treaty-led government that they were not welcome. (He did an intimidating haka performance):

During the Waitangi Day pōwhiri for Parliamentarians, Eru took a stand. As politicians made their entrance, he led a separate haka. He says it was a direct challenge, that sent an unambiguous message: ‘You are not welcome here’. The act was not symbolic; it was a deliberate response to the voices of the hapū within his iwi, Ngāpuhi, who he says made it clear that certain politicians should not attend, following a year of what they felt were attacks on Māori rights and sovereignty.

The “attack on Māori rights and sovereignty” appears to involve favoring the Treaty Principles Bill, a doomed bill that intended to codify what the Treaty of Waitangi really means today. People don’t want the bill because the “progressives” want to interpret the Treaty in ways that consistently favor the indigenous people. (New Zealand has no constitution.) Even the Prime Minister, who at one point pushed the bill, has realized its antiwoke implications and now says it has no chance of passing.

Finally, the dangers to New Zealand academia, my primary concern:

For Eru, academia is not just a career path but an opportunity for transformation. He sees universities as central to the colonial project in Aotearoa and believes they have a responsibility to undo its damage.

“We need to start realising that universities were one of the primary tools of colonisation in Aotearoa, replacing Māori philosophy, Māori ways of thinking, speaking and acting.”

“That places an obligation on academics today to really contribute to the deeper, longer-term decolonisation project,” he says.

“And it’s not just an academic topic but a lived reality. It should be a daily practice that all people in Aotearoa contribute to.”

And there you have it. Everybody must decolonize!

As the anonymous correspondent who sent me this article said, “This is not what we thought we were agreeing to when we supported affirmative action to increase the proportion of Māori academics, but it’s what we got. This guy is basically using his university position to further the political interests of Te Pāti Māori.” [JAC: the Māori Party].  “It’s not hard to see why people like this oppose institutional neutrality.”

Institutional neutrality, of course, would prevent universities from making pronouncements favoring indigenous people over everyone else, and also confecting mandatory courses that have the same effect. The progressives don’t want that!

Here are some photos from a new contributor, Loretta Michaels. Her IDs and identifications (the binomials are from me) are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

These were taken in Oct/Nov 2024 on the Upper Amazon in Peru, as part of a boat trip around the region. If you wanted to add this to my description, I use a Sony DSC-RX10 M4 (a fantastic camera that for some reason Sony has discontinued, much to the disappointment of fans.)

Tropical Kingbird (Tyrannus melancholicus):

Plum-Throated Cotinga (Cotinga maynana):

Large-billed tern (Phaetusa simplex):

Black Collared Hawk (Busarellus nigricollis):

Squirrel monkey (Saimiri sp.):

Another Black Collared Hawk:

Harpy Eagle (I think; Harpia harpyja):

Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax):

Great Black Hawk (Buteogallus urubitinga):

Yellow-rumped cacique (Cacicus cela):

 Oriole Blackbird (Gymnomystax mexicanus):

Roadside Hawk (Rupornis magnirostris):

I’ve dissected many crazy papers over the years—just to show what passes for “scholarship” in some of the humanities. Yes, of course there’s good scholarship there, too, but I have a feeling that in STEM you won’t find anything as inconclusive or incoherently written as this paper (h/t: Luana for finding it). And nearly all science papers at least reveal a tentative fact or two about nature. In contrast, many “studies” papers like this one seem like wheel spinning, and are baffling. They seem to be vehicles not for finding knowledge, but getting tenure and promotions. If there is a contribution to human knowledge from this effort, I can’t find it. This one was published in the Journal of Lesbian Studies.

You can read the paper by clicking on the title below, or find the pdf here.

I scanned it once and then read it more carefully a second time, and I swear I still can’t figure out what it’s trying to say. Some AI analysis given below didn’t help much.. Not only is the paper’s thesis obscure, but it is written so poorly, and with the use of so many jargon words (“attending to,” “becomings,” “intersectional ecoqueer feminist perspective,” “disrupt normative ideas,” etc), that it would kill George Orwell if he wasn’t already dead.

The paper notes that Dr. Diamond-Lenow “(she/they) is an Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at SUNY Oneonta,” but on the list of faculty in that department I cannot find her.

Knock yourself out (and you will):

Below is the abstract, and I hope you can get something out of it. All I can remember is that lesbians seem to have a special relationship with dogs (and machines like iPhones), and this tells us something about the “the rich complexity of dyke culture and its processes of continually processing and becoming.” (“Becoming” is a favorite word in the paper, and “dyke” is a word used by Diamond-Lenow). And the author decries the misuse of dogs as tools of racism, white supremacy, and militarism.

Abstract:

This article offers a queer lesbian feminist analysis attuned to lesbian-queer-trans-canine relationalities. Specifically, the article places queer and lesbian ecofeminism in conversation with Donna Haraway’s work on the cyborg and companion species to theorize the interconnected queer becomings of people, nature, animals, and machines amidst ecologies of love and violence in the 2020s. It takes two key case studies as the focus for analysis: first, the state instrumentalization of dogs and robot dogs for racialized and imperial violence, and second, quotidian queer and lesbian-dog relationalities and becomings. In the first, the article traces how dogs are weaponized as tools of state violence and proposes a queer lesbian feminist critique of white supremacy and militarization that can also extend to a critique of the violence committed through and toward the dogs. In the second, the article analyzes how, within lesbian, non-binary, and trans-dog intimacies, dogs help articulate queer gender, sexuality, and kinship formations, and as such, queer worlds for gender, sexual, and kin becomings. The entanglements of violence and love in these queer dog relationalities provide insights into the complexities of queer and lesbian feminist worldbuilding. Lesbian and queer feminist cyborg politics can help theorize the potentials and challenges of these interspecies entanglements.

Some dog-dissing from the paper, giving a flavor of its content:

As companion species, dogs have been deeply entwined with the gendered and sexual formations of white supremacy and heteronormative domesticity. They play a foundational role in symbolizing the white bourgeois heteronormative nuclear family and the U.S. home. At the same time, dogs are often used to stigmatize and police “improper” homes and communities. For instance, breed-specific bans in the U.S. disproportionately target Black and Brown dog owners, functioning as a form of racialized criminalization (Weaver, Citation 2021).

Historically, dogs have been tools of settler colonialism and enslavement mediating racialized naturecultures (Johnson, Citation 2009, Boisseron, Citation 2018). They are also instrumentalized for racialized securitization in policing, border patrol, and carceral systems—they are in this sense, part of the violent cyborg offspring Haraway discusses. Police have long used dogs to intimidate and attack marginalized communities, as seen in numerous documented incidents: during civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963; against anti-police violence protests in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 (Wall, Citation 2016); against Indigenous activists opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota in 2016 (Democracy Now!, Citation 2016); during Black Lives Matter protests in Baltimore and elsewhere (The Marshall Project, Citation 2020); and most recently, in 2024, against student protests over the genocide in Gaza on college and university campuses (Most, Citation 2024).

Look! Dogs are also vehicles for racial criminalization!

. . . . As companion species, dogs have been deeply entwined with the gendered and sexual formations of white supremacy and heteronormative domesticity. They play a foundational role in symbolizing the white bourgeois heteronormative nuclear family and the U.S. home. At the same time, dogs are often used to stigmatize and police “improper” homes and communities. For instance, breed-specific bans in the U.S. disproportionately target Black and Brown dog owners, functioning as a form of racialized criminalization (Weaver, Citation 2021).

And military dogs are tools of sexualized colonization and dehumanization!:

In the military, dogs are used as cyborg weapons, used to detect Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), patrol bases, police detainees, and target enemies. They played key roles in U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the killings of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011 (Bumiller, Citation2011) and ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in Syria in 2019 (Rogers, Citation2019). Dogs were also involved in abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad in 2004 (Schmitt, Citation2006). These deployments reflect a logic of heteronormative nationalism and sexualized colonization, dehumanizing Arab, Muslim, and Middle Eastern men within necropolitical formations of war (Diamond-Lenow, Citation2020).

There are lots of neologisms like “natureculture”. But here is the paper’s conclusion:

The article thus contributes a queer trans feminist perspective on human-dog becomings to queer ecological critique, highlighting the significance of lesbian queer feminism in analyzing more-than-human relationalities, particularly with dogs.

For some reason the last three words make me laugh out loud.

At any rate, Luana found a site where you can enter the URL of an article like this one, and it will give you both an AI summary and a podcast. I haven’t tried it, but you can if you wish. At any rate, when she put in the URL of this paper, here’s what AI spit out. I must say that it merely reiterates the paper’s language in a way that a cheating student might copy, but doesn’t shed much further  light on this black hole of scholarship:

1. What is the central focus of this article?

This article centers on the interconnectedness of queer (specifically lesbian, non-binary, and trans) identities, human-animal (primarily canine) relationships, and technology (drawing on cyborg theory) within contexts of both affection and oppression. It aims to analyze how these entanglements contribute to the formation of queer worlds and how they are shaped by and respond to societal structures of power, particularly white supremacy and militarization.

2. How does the article connect queer ecofeminism with cyborg and companion species theories?

The article brings queer and lesbian ecofeminist perspectives into dialogue with Donna Haraway’s concepts of the cyborg (as a hybrid of machine and organism challenging traditional boundaries) and companion species (highlighting the co-evolution and interdependence of humans and domesticated animals). By doing so, it seeks to understand how the relationships between queer individuals and their dogs, in their technologically mediated and ecologically situated contexts, challenge and redefine categories of nature, culture, human, and animal.

3. What are the two main case studies used in the article’s analysis?

The article examines two primary case studies: firstly, the ways in which dogs, including robotic dogs, are utilized and instrumentalized by the state for purposes of racialized and imperial violence. Secondly, it analyzes the everyday intimacies and relational experiences between queer (lesbian, non-binary, and trans) individuals and their dogs, focusing on how these relationships contribute to the articulation of queer gender, sexuality, and kinship.

4. How does the article critique the state’s use of dogs and robot dogs?

The article offers a queer lesbian feminist critique of the state’s deployment of dogs and robot dogs, particularly in the context of racialized and imperial violence. It argues that this instrumentalization of canines as tools of militarization and control is intertwined with white supremacist ideologies and inflicts violence not only on targeted human populations but also through and toward the dogs themselves. The critique aims to expose the underlying power structures and ethical implications of such practices.

5. In what ways do dogs contribute to the lives and identities of queer individuals, according to the article?

The article suggests that dogs play a significant role in the lives of lesbian, non-binary, and trans individuals, contributing to the formation of queer gender, sexuality, and kinship structures. Through intimate relationships with dogs, queer individuals can articulate and experience their identities in ways that challenge normative understandings of these categories. These interspecies bonds help in the creation of queer social worlds and facilitate unique forms of becoming.

6. What does the article mean by “queer canine becomings”?

“Queer canine becomings” refers to the ongoing and mutual shaping of identities and ways of being that occur within the relationships between queer individuals and their dogs. It emphasizes that these relationships are not static but rather involve processes of co-creation and transformation. The “queer” aspect highlights how these becomings often challenge and expand conventional understandings of gender, sexuality, and species boundaries.

7. How do love and violence intertwine in the queer dog relationalities discussed in the article?

The article posits that queer-dog relationships exist within “ecologies of love and violence.” This means that these intimate bonds are not immune to broader societal forces of oppression and violence. The article explores how the potential for both deep affection and the awareness of systemic violence against both queer individuals and animals shape these interspecies connections, offering insights into the complexities of queer feminist worldbuilding in a non-ideal world.

8. What is the significance of lesbian and queer feminist cyborg politics in understanding these interspecies entanglements?

Lesbian and queer feminist cyborg politics, as proposed in the article, provide a theoretical framework for analyzing the potentials and challenges inherent in the entanglements of queer identities, dogs, and technology. This perspective allows for a nuanced understanding of how power operates within these relationships, how boundaries are blurred and renegotiated, and how new forms of resistance and world-making can emerge from these complex interspecies intimacies in the face of both love and violence.

This may be the wackiest paper I’ve ever covered here, though it has had some tough competition.

UPDATE: The right-wing College Fix also found this paper, and proffers its own summary:

Basically, the professor’s argument seems to boil down to this: Dogs provide a positive relational experience for many LGBTQ people. However, the government also uses dogs and robo-dogs, or cyborgs, to commit unjust violence against marginalized people. Therefore, the relationships between dogs and humans are complex.

LOL! But although that seems satirical, it also seems accurate.

The Jewish holiday of Purim was on the 13th and 14th of March, and on the 14th a breeding pair of mallards appeared at Botany Pond, and they’re still there. The main heroes of the Purim legend were Queen Esther and Mordecai, the advisor to the King (both Jewish), both of whom saved the Jews of Persia from total annihilation. The names of our ducks were thus obvious: the hen is Esther and the drake is Mordecai.

Aren’t they beautiful? (Click photos to enlarge them.)

Esther swimming:

The pair in the open pond (see below):

In the channel; ducks on the rocks, with Esther preening herself:

Mordecai on the rocks. It looks as if he got pecked on the breast, perhaps in a fight for Esther:

More Esther. Notice that her bill is not heavily decorated with black, as was the case with our favorite ducks in previous years:

Ducks are at their cutest when they tilt their heads, which, given the placement of their eyes, they must do to look upwards (hawks, other potential predators, etc.):

Swimming and drinking in the channel:

This is the new remodeled pond, very different from the previous version. Sections of the pond have been blocked off with netting to protect the plants, but we are trying to get the netting reduced as right now the ducks don’t have full access to the pond, and ducklings can’t fly over nets.  I am worried that, if they fix the nets as they’ve promised, the men running around in the water will permanently drive away Esther and Mordecai.  We want them to nest. Another anxious duck season begins. . . .

Oh, and we’ve asked for the duckcam to be turned back on. Stay tuned.

And a bonus gray squirrel, named Shmeul, in a nearby trash can. He is just finishing noshing on a piece of pizza someone discarded.

Send in your photos, please!

It’s Sunday, so John Avise is back with a selection of North American butterfly photos. John’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge your photos by clicking on them.

This week continues my 18-part series on butterflies that I’ve photographed in North America.  I’m continuing to go down my list of species in alphabetical order by common name.

Polydamus Swallowtail (Battus polydamas), upperwing:

Polydamus Swallowtail, underwing:

Propertius Duskywing (Erynnis propertius):

Purplish Copper (Lycaena helloides), female upperwing:

Purplish Copper, female underwing:

Queen (Danaus gilippus), male upperwing:

Queen, male underwing:

Queen, female upperwing;

Queen, female underwing;

Question Mark (Polygonia interrogationis), upperwing:

Question Mark, underwing;

Question Mark, another specimen underwing:

Question Mark, another specimen upperwing:

You wanna know why I’m depressed? Stuff like this:

Today, the Harvard Law School student body (72%) voted to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel.

The Harvard Law School student government voted last year to do the same thing.

No other international issue has ever been voted on.

The Harvard Law School Alliance for Israel… pic.twitter.com/jm17dNfc6P

— Shabbos Kestenbaum (@ShabbosK) March 14, 2025

Yep, the Law School at my Ph.D. alma mater is showing a bit of antisemitism (I no longer believe that this is completely about Israel’s actions, because the Law School never had any resolutions about Hamas or its actions). As it says above, “no other international issue has ever been voted on.” Why, then they’re singling out the world’s only Jewish state? No resolutions about Syria, where there was far more carnage? Not on your life.

Here’s the article about it from the Harvard Crimson (click headline to read).

An excerpt:

The Harvard Law School student body voted on Thursday to call on the University to divest from Israel — delivering a decisive endorsement of language that Law School administrators harshly criticized before it went up for a vote.

The resolution, which called on Harvard to “divest from weapons, surveillance technology, and other companies aiding violations of international humanitarian law, including Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine,” passed with 72.7 percent of votes in favor, with 842 students participating. Nearly 2,000 students attend HLS.

The results — announced late Thursday night — mark the second vote by a Harvard student body in favor of divestment. Students at the Harvard School of Public Health voted in June to urge Harvard to divest from Israel, and governments at the Law School, Harvard Divinity School, and the Graduate School of Design have all urged divestment. But its passage is unlikely to result in change from Harvard, whose leaders have rebuffed calls for divestment at every turn.

All those misguided students, uninformed about the war but bent on flaunting their virtue! Fortunately, the people who have the power to divest, the administration, aren’t having it. They’re institutionally neutral, like Chicago:

The Law School moved swiftly to distance itself from the referendum outcome.

HLS spokesperson Jeff Neal wrote in a statement that “although it has historically administered leadership elections for student government, and offered to do so again this year, the law school administration played no role in the referendum conducted by student government.”

“As explained in a message to students, the administration expressed deep disappointment with student government’s leadership’s decision to proceed with a needlessly divisive referendum which runs contrary to student government’s stated objectives of ‘fostering community’ and ‘enhancing inclusion,’” he added.

Sadly, Mr. Neal doesn’t know that Jews don’t fall under DEI protection. We are “white adjacent.”

The referendum was first proposed in a petition by Law Students for a Free Palestine, an unrecognized student group, which passed the 300-signature threshold to trigger a Student Government referendum Feb. 18.

Of course Harvard is one of the schools (there are nine total) under investigation by the Department of Justice for allowing a climate of antisemitism to arise (a Title VI violation, I believe). This won’t make it any easier on the school.

More depressing news. My new academic home, The University of Chicago, is one of 45 schools being investigated for racial discrimination. Click below to see the Chicago Maroon article:

An excerpt:

The University of Chicago is one of 45 schools under investigation by the Department of Education for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination in programs receiving federal financial assistance.

The announcement alleges that the University has engaged in “race-exclusionary practices in [its] graduate programs” through its partnership with the PhD Project, an organization that works to expand diversity in business school Ph.D. programs. Booth School of Business’s Stevens Doctoral Program is included on the Project’s website as a university partner.

The PhD Project, the Department of Education’s announcement reads, “purports to provide doctoral students with insights into obtaining a Ph.D. and networking opportunities, but limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”

By “race-exclusionary,” of course, they mean “violation of DEI strictures”, and, indeed, some of that has been going on here. But since those violations are kept quite quiet, with phone calls used instead of emails (or so I hear), so it’s hard to know what’s going on.  As far as I can see, DEI initiatives are still pervasive at Chicago, (here’s the main website), but I don’t know if they rise to the level that would cause the government to withhold federal money—as they did for Columbia University.

A bit more. The link at “has quietly removed” below tells you how DEI sites are being muted here. However, if we follow the model of other schools, they’re not being shelved but just put into a file cabinet with a different name.

The investigation follows a February 14 letter sent by Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor, which informed educational institutions and agencies that they had 14 days to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs or “face potential loss of federal funding.”

In the letter, Trainor wrote that universities’ “embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia.”

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, the University has quietly removed many mentions of DEI from its websites.

In a statement, the University informed the Maroon that it had received notice of the Department of Education’s investigation.

“The University has been notified that a complaint was filed with the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and an investigation was opened. The University prohibits unlawful discrimination and will cooperate with OCR on its investigation,” the statement read.

The list of schools being investigated.

From the Times of London we have the story of a tuxedo cat appropriately named Mischief, who’s become famous for his wide-ranging perambulations around the city of Plymouth. Click headline below to read, or find article (archived here):

Some excerpts:

You might think Tonie Blackmore would get worried when her pet cat Mischief goes missing for days on end, but thanks to his friendly nature he has the city of Plymouth tracking his every move.

The appropriately named feline has been making himself at home across the city for the past three years, and developing thousands of committed Mischief megafans.

Ever since he was old enough to leave his house in the centre of the city, he has been searching for strokes, suntraps and catnap spots in schools, shops, pubs, colleges, sports halls, youth clubs and strangers’ homes.

Mischief, a distinctive black and white tuxedo cat, can often be found lazing in hotel receptions, churches, supermarkets, railway stations and regularly visits HMS Drake naval base — where staff had to be reminded not to take and upload photos of him on site as it could threaten national security.

One woman was escorted home by the cat, while others have had him join them for car journeys, trick or treating outings and walks along the seafront.

One of his favourite haunts is Devonport High School for Boys, where he can often be found lazing in a staff room, sleeping through double physics or watching the netball and football teams compete on the weekend.

. . .Barry Hardman, the school sports co-ordinator, outlined a typical weekend visit from Mischief: “Inspected the toilets, got cuddles from two little girls, fell asleep in girls coat, sat by a window until netball girls left, followed the netball girls, and with that he’s gone again. Such a flirt.”

Rachel Fisher, a local jeweller, said it was “such a pleasure when he wandered into our house one day for a look around, a bit of a tickle under the chin, a sit by the fire and then he asked if he could leave to continue his wanderings”.

When he’s been away from his family for too long or found his way miles from home, he has a group of dedicated followers willing to drive across the city to pick him up and return him home.

. . . He has been microchipped and neutered and Blackmore’s family love to see what he gets up on his adventures, through the regular updates posted by locals on his Facebook fan page.

Here’s where Mischief has been spotted–as far as three miles from home!

And now he’s famous!

Mischief’s fame went global this week [March 7], after an admirer posted videos on TikTok about his affectionate antics and received more than nine million views.

Now the curious cat has fans declaring their love for him on his Facebook page — Mischief’s adventures in Plymouth — from across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Italy, Switzerland, Romania, Georgia, Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, the Philippines and Panama.

You can find Mischief’s Facebook page here; it’s temporarily paused for a day. Here are a few snaps of the wandering moggy:

Mischief as a kitten:

Mischief hitting the bars:

Mischief and his staff:

Of course outdoor cats have lives much shorter than feral cats or all-indoor cats, so I worry aboui Mischief. However, so many people are looking out for him that I hope he’ll be okay.

Mischief away from home for 3 days!

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Here’s Tuna (she/her, please) in love with delivery people.  Follow her and her mate Loki on their Instagram page. She’s sort of an outdoor cat, but never leaves the yard, and mostly hangs out on the porch. 

A quote from her staff: “I think we could all learn a little bit from Tuna: about putting ourselves out there.”

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And from the AP (click to read), we read about Aggie, a cat lost after the California wildfires and presumed gone forever, but rescued after two months. Shown is the staff Katherine Kiefer with Aggie; photo by Carolyn Kiefer for the AP):

Aggie’s tail:

It appears the tall tale that all cats have nine lives may be true for a California Maine coon named Aggie.

The beloved feline was feared dead for two months after the Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles left her family’s home in ashes. But her owner, 82-year-old Katherine Kiefer, held out some hope.

Over the weekend, Kiefer got a call from the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter. Her daughter Carolyn Kiefer shared their reunion Saturday in a TikTok video that quickly garnered more than 1 million likes. It shows tears pouring from Katherine Kiefer’s eyes as Aggie curled up in her arms.

“I was very much worried that I was going to wake up and (discover) it had been a dream,” she said.

Kiefer was at a medical appointment the day fire engulfed her neighborhood and her children couldn’t find Aggie — who was prone to hiding — when they tried to rescue her.

“The one thing my mom asked was: ‘Did you get Aggie?” Carolyn recalls.

Many pet owners struggled to reach their domesticated animals during the frantic rush to evacuate from the Palisades wildfire in January.

Aggie, who is about 5 years old, was gifted to Katherine Kiefer by a friend during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media users have been so touched by the pair’s reunion video that many have been asking for daily updates. The family’s $30,000 GoFundMe campaign for Aggie’s vet bills had topped $21,000 by Tuesday afternoon.

The reunion from Tik Tok:

@apnews

When Katherine Kiefer, 82, lost her home to the Palisades Fire on Jan. 7, she feared she had also lost her beloved cat, Aggie. But two months later, Aggie was found alive in the fire’s ruins. Here’s the moment Kiefer and Aggie reunited.

♬ original sound – The Associated Press

h/t: Richard

We’re getting near the end again, and I ask you to think about a submission of good photos to keep the feature going (I can always make it sporadic). Today we have the last batch of Robert Lang‘s photos from the Brazilian Pantanal: birds. But we have one more post from him to come: eight videos of various creatures. Robert’s narrative and IDs are indented, and click on the photos to enlarge them.

Readers’ Wildlife Photos: The Pantanal, Part XII: Birds

Continuing our mid-2025 journey to the Pantanal in Brazil, by far the largest category of observation and photography was birds: we saw over 100 different species of birds (and this was not even a birding-specific trip, though the outfitter also organizes those for the truly hard core). Here is the final installment of the alphabetarium of common names of birds (though not quite the final installment from the Pantanal!).

Whistling herons (Syrigma sibilatrix):

White-headed marsh tyrant (Arundinicola leucocephala). Though I like to think of this one as a “baby bald eagle”:

White-rumped monjita (Xolmis velatus). The only bird that comes with a sprig of mint:

White woodpecker (Melanerpes candidus):

Wood stork (juvenile) (Mycteria americana):

Yellow-billed cardinal (Paroaria capitata):

Several yellow-billed cardinals with a saffron finch (Sicalis flaveola) sneaking into the scrum:

Yellow-billed tern (Sternula superciliaris):

Golden-collared macaw (Primolius auricollis):

The same bird, taking flight:

And that wraps up the birds of the Pantanal! This was by far the best bird-sighting place I’ve ever traveled to (both for quantity of species and ease of photography; most photos were taken with a Canon 200–400 mm zoom lens on a Digital Rebel XTi body (both now sadly contributing to global warming—recommendations from experts for their replacements gratefully accepted). But not the last of my Pantanal imagery: one more installment coming, this time with the newfangled moving-type pictures.

Posting will be light today as I am embroiled in many issues and am troubled.

One question for which I’ve always received feedback is this: did a “Jesus person”—a human on which the Biblical legends of the New Testament are based—really exist? I’m not accepting that any of the deeds attributed to a “Jesus” are true, merely asking whether such a person existed around whom the legends could be woven.

Since the accounts of Jesus’s life occur in a single book that is not only hard to believe, but wrong in many details that we can test (e.g. the Exodus); and that book was surely not written by people who were Jesus’s contemporaries; and, because the four “independent” account of his life differ in crucial details, then as a scientist all I can say is that the Biblical account is flawed and gives no strong evidence for a “Jesus person.”

Yes, I know Bart Ehrman wrote a book concluding that Jesus was a real person, but not the son of God. Ehrman maintained that the “Jesus person” was an apocalyptic preacher. It’s been some years since I read that book, and so I’ve forgotten the evidence Ehrman adduced, but I can remember that I wasn’t strongly convinced.

Below are two old videos in which Christopher Hitchens addresses the issue.  In the first 7-minute one, he compares with Jesus with Socrates, and concludes that there’s not that much more evidence for Socrates as a real person than for Jesus. But because Socrates’s supposed method has persisted, and has proven immensely valuable, Hitchens doesn’t really care. In contrast, Jesus asserted that people had to believe in what he said—and what he said (“take no care for the morrow. . and just follow me”) was delusional. In other words, Hitchens takes the “lunatic” view of C. S. Lewis’s “liar, lunatic, or lord” trilemma.

On the other hand, certain falsities in the Bible (getting Jesus from Nazareth to Bethlehem under a nonexistent census), suggest to Hitchens that these tortuous fabrications wouldn’t have been necessary had there not been a Jesus person. (“Otherwise, why not have him born in Bethlehem?”)  This kind of “cobbling” may constitute for Hitchens weak evidence that there was a Jesus person.

Of course the reason why people are so invested in having hard proof that a Jesus person existed, even if we can’t document his miracles, is that if we can’t even show that a Jesus person existed, then all of Christianity falls apart—at least to those who want evidence to buttress their faith.

Here’s a 1½-minute video, Hitchens says that there’s no firm evidence he existed, even in light of Ehrman’s book. (“There’s no reason to believe that he did [exist].”)  In contrast, Hitchens says that Muhammad is a figure of history, but of course he rejects any claim that an angel dictated the Qur’an to Muhammad.

I’m sure people will have divergent opinions.  I am not bothered by being pretty agnostic on Jesus, but some of my friends, even nonbelievers, are. And that puzzles me.

Here’s Richard Dawkins ostensibly discussing his new book (The Genetic Book of the Dead) with Steve Pinker, but of course you can’t confine a discussion between these two to a single book. Even from the beginning it ranges widely, in which Pinker discusses not only the epiphany that The Selfish Gene gave him, but levels some trenchant criticisms at Lewontin and Gould’s attacks on adaptationism, and (to my delight) at Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, which never held any water save (perhaps) as the notion that fossil evolution proceeds at varying rates. (People often forget that the novel parts that Gould saw about punc. eq. was its mechanism not its speed: a mechanism that involved questionable propositions like leaping adaptive valleys, macromutations, and species selection (see here for a summary of my beefs with punc. eq., along with scientific references). I myself crossed swords with Gould about these issues, and have concluded that his greatest contribution to science was not any novel paleontological discoveries, but his popularization of evolution in his Natural History essays. (Even those were misleading when they discussed adaptation and punctuated equilibrium.)

Other things discussed: the ubiquity of selection, the nature and importance of epigenetics, the motivation for Richard writing several of his many books, and even “the meaning of life.”  I’ve listened to about 40 minutes of this discussion, but my tolerance for any podcast, even one with these big brains, is limited.  At 1:05:15 begins a Q&A session in which Steve reads audience questions written on cards.

Notice Steve’s cowboy boots, custom made by Lee Miller in Austin.

As I note in my new review of Francis Collins’s new book, The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust, he’s a very good scientist and science administrator, but also a pious evangelical Christian (remember the frozen waterfalls that brought him to Jesus?).  Collins had previously written a book arguing that science and Christianity were not only compatible, but complementary ways of finding the truth, but now he’s produced another. As I say in my review of the new book in Quillette (click on screenshot below, or find my review archived here):

While much of the Road to Wisdom reprises the arguments of the earlier book, this new one takes things a bit further. Collins is deeply concerned about the divisions in American society highlighted by the last presidential election, by people’s inability to have constructive discussions with their opponents, and by our pervasive addiction to social media and its “fake news”; and he believes that accepting a harmony between religion and science will yield the wisdom that can mend America.

As the author of Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible, I wouldn’t be expected to laud Collins’s thesis, and I didn’t.  You can read the review for yourself, but I spend a lot of time criticizing Collins’s claim that science combined with religion is the best way to find the “truths”to repair the deep divisions in America’s polity. Even if those divisions—Collins largely means Republicans vs. Democrats—can be repaired, saying that the way forward is combine the “truths” of science and religion is a deeply misguided claim.

I won’t go into details, but of course religion is simply not a way to discover truth, especially since Collins’s definition of “truth” is basically “facts about the world on which everyone agrees”: in other words, empirical truth. Religion can’t find such truths, as it lacks the methodology.  Note that Collins does not espouse Gould’s “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” claim that science and religion are compatible because they deal with completely different issues, with science alone getting the ambit of empirical truth. Gould’s claim, described in his 1999 book Rocks of Ages, was also misguided, and you can read my old TLS critique of it here.) No, Collins asserts that religion can find empirical truths. Sadly, he gives no examples where religion can beat science–just a bunch of questions that religion can supposedly answer (e.g., “How should I live my life?”).

I’ll give one more quote from my review:

What are the truths that religion can produce but science can’t? Collins’s list is unconvincing. It includes the “fact” of Jesus’s resurrection and the author’s unshakable belief that “Jesus died for me and was then literally raised from the dead.” In support of this claim, Collins cites N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God as compelling evidence for the Resurrection, which Collins claims is “historically well documented.” But when I worked my way through the entirety of Wright’s 817-page behemoth, I found that the “historical documentation” consists solely of what’s in the New Testament, tricked out with some rationalisation and exegesis. Neither Collins nor Wright provide independent, extra-Biblical evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection, much less for the Biblical assertion that upon Jesus’s death the Temple split in twain and many dead saints left their tombs and walked about Jerusalem like zombies. Absent solid evidence for these claims, they are little more than wishful thinking.

Other “truths” that one finds in religion are “moral truths”: the confusing set of rules that Collins labels the “Moral Law.” To him, the fact that our species even has morality constitutes further evidence for God, for Collins sees no way that either evolution or secular rationality could yield a codified ethics. That claim is belied by the long tradition of secular ethics developed by people like Baruch Spinoza, Peter Singer, Immanuel Kant, and John Rawls. While many faiths and societies aspire to common goals like “love, beauty, goodness, freedom, faith, and family,” this does not suggest the existence of a supernatural being.

Click below (or here):

Although it seems obvious to me that religion and science are incompatible insofar as both make empirical claims (granted, some of faith’s claims are hard to test), it’s not obvious to the many Americans who blithely get their vaccinations but then head to Church and recite the “truths” of the Nicene Creed. Sam Harris pointed this out in a piece he wrote opposing Collins’s appointment as NIH director:

It is widely claimed that there can be no conflict, in principle, between science and religion because many scientists are themselves “religious,” and some even believe in the God of Abraham and in the truth of ancient miracles. Even religious extremists value some of the products of science—antibiotics, computers, bombs, etc.—and these seeds of inquisitiveness, we are told, can be patiently nurtured in a way that offers no insult to religious faith.

This prayer of reconciliation goes by many names and now has many advocates. But it is based on a fallacy. The fact that some scientists do not detect any problem with religious faith merely proves that a juxtaposition of good ideas/methods and bad ones is possible. Is there a conflict between marriage and infidelity? The two regularly coincide. The fact that intellectual honesty can be confined to a ghetto—in a single brain, in an institution, in a culture—does not mean that there isn’t a perfect contradiction between reason and faith, or between the worldview of science taken as a whole and those advanced by the world’s “great,” and greatly discrepant, religions.

While I wouldn’t have opposed Collins’s appointment on the basis of his faith, I would have if he had shown any signs that his faith would affect his science. As it turned out, it didn’t: Collins left his religion at the door of the NIH.  But he continues to proselytize for both Christianity as the “true” faith and for a perfect harmony between science and religion.

In a patronizing New Yorker article (is that redundant?) about Collins and his book that I just discovered, I was sad to see another pal soften his views about Collins, science, and faith:

Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist who fiercely criticized Collins’s nomination on account of his “primitive, shamanistic, superstitious” religious views, told me in an e-mail that he had changed his mind about Collins, for two reasons. “One is the sheer competence and skill with which he’s directed the Institutes, blending scientific judgment with political acumen,” Pinker wrote. “The other is a newly appreciated imperative, in an age of increasing political polarization, toward making institutions of science trustworthy to a broad swath of the public, of diverse political orientations.” In a way, I thought, Pinker was saying that representation matters: science has an audience, and the right speaker can persuade all of that audience to listen. “A spokesperson for science who is not branded as a left-wing partisan is an asset for the wider acceptance of science across the political spectrum,” Pinker said. But Collins is more than a spokesperson for science. He is also a kind of representative, within the scientific community, of American communities that his peers sometimes fail to reach.

Pinker’s first point is right, and, as I said, I wouldn’t—and didn’t—oppose Collins’s nomination as NIH director.But the author then interprets Pinker as making the “Little People” argument: science will be accepted more broadly if scientists accept religion, even if those scientists don’t practice it. In other words, we have to avoid criticizing superstition if America is to fully embrace science.

But while there’s no need for scientists to bang on about religion when we’re teaching about or promoting science, no scientist should ever approve of a belief in unevidenced superstition, or of any system of such supterstition.  Yet that’s exactly what Collins does in his book, and it’s why the book is misguided, flatly wrong about accommodationism, and unenlightening.

Along with the other rules I’ve proposed (e.g., “button your shirt from the bottom up and you’ll never mis-button”), I have one that I’m sure I’ve mentioned here before. However, the pandemic seems to have had a lasting effect on the incidence of logorrhea, and so I will propose this one again, with a couple of qualifiers. First, the rule, which is mine. It’s coming.  Here it is:

In general, in a conversation between two individuals, you should limit yourself to no more than three sentences in a row before the other person gets to speak.

There are of course exceptions.  If someone is telling you a story, giving you instructions, or has a problem or is distraught, then, yes, they can speak longer and you should be more patient.  Or if you’ve being interviewed, you can go longer, for they can cut the transcript; and anyway, the purpose of an interview is to give the interviewee more airtime than the interviewer.

I’m sure there are other exceptions as well. What I am referring to is polite social discourse, which should involve an exchange between individuals—a fair exchange. I’m sure you’ve chafed when someone runs on and on and on, which seems self-absorbed; so you understand the value of “fair conversational exchange. I have found that three sentences is about the optimum length to ensure a decent conversation, but of course remember that this rule reflects my judgement and limited patience.

When the two American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) last June because their return vehicle had a problem that could not be fixed, I wailed to my friend Jim Batterson (a former employee at NASA) that they were going to die.  How could they survive if they couldn’t get back? Batterson (“Bat”) reassured me that there were plenty of vehicles that could bring them home, and there was nothing to worry about.  But their one-week visit turned into nine months of waiting, and my wailing increased. (To be sure, they did seem happy to have an extended stay on the ISS, since they like being in space.)

Well, it now looks like they’re coming home, so I have one less thing (among millions!) to worry about. I got the good news from Bat yesterday in an email, and asked him to expand it as a post, but also to keep some of the wording in his orginal email to me, which is beneath the asterisks. Bat’s post, original and fleshed out, are indented.

In 2014, contracts were awarded to SpaceX and to Boeing to each develop ways to take human crews to the International Space Station (ISS) and return them safely to Earth.  SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule was developed and has been operating successfully since 2020. It’s also used (along with Russian vehicles) to effect crew rotations of the ISS about every six months.  The Boeing Starliner capsule, after much delay, underwent a crewed test flight to ISS last June with two senior NASA astronauts onboard: Barry (Butch) Wilmore and Sunita (Suni) Williams.  The mission called for them to rendezvous and dock with the ISS and to stay aboard ISS for a week. But unexpected anomalies on the Starliner during rendezvous and docking led to NASA delaying their return until Boeing could understand and fix the cause of the anomalies.

After several months of testing both the docked Starliner and ground-based models, the problem was neither understood nor resolved, to NASA’s satisfaction. The astronauts could not be safely returned on this vehicle, so Starliner returned to Earth, uncrewed, in September 2024, having a soft landing in the New Mexico desert.  Astronauts Butch and Suni, as veterans of previous ISS missions, were integrated into the standing ISS crew to work and await the appearance of two future capsule seats for return to Earth.

Those seats finally appeared when the Crew 9 SpaceX capsule with two astronauts and two empty seats docked with the ISS in Septemberl, 2024.  The Crew 9 capsule is scheduled to undock and return to Earth with four astronauts—including Butch and Suni—in the next week or so.  Meanwhile four fresh astronauts (Crew 10) are scheduled to launch in a SpaceX capsule on Wednesday, March 12 and spend a week getting the ISS duties handed over to them.

This has been an excellent use of the ISS as a “safe haven” for astronauts, an idea that came about after the Columbia Shuttle accident for situations in which there are safety concerns about a return vehicle, allowing astronauts to await a rescue vehicle or simply another set of available return seats.  While there is constant danger in space, NASA decided that spending time on the ISS was deemed safer than returning on the Boeing Starliner ship.

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But now Bat is worried that I might have been right: the returning astronauts might be in some danger. From Bat’s original post:

But NOW: Jerry,

You may have been right all along, as it is unfortunately turning out.

Now I also worry about Butch and Suni.  USA Today described tomorrow’s launch (Wednesday March 12 at 7:48 PM EDT – I usually go to Space.com to get a link or C-SPAN may carry it) of Crew-10, the replacement for Butch and Suni and the two Crew9 astronauts as routine. But Jeebus…nothing about human spaceflight is routine, and as soon as people start thinking it is, we are closer to losing a crew due to inattention. Then there is Musk, who in the past few weeks has exploded two suborbital spacecraft, raining debris down on the National Airspace System and on populated Caribbean islands, leading to significant flight delays and endangering 100’s if not 1000’s of air passengers.  I am convinced that Musk’s inattention to his launches led to at least the second failure and maybe both since it appears to me that he is the kind of hands-on boss whose constant physical presence makes a huge difference. So with him running all over the world as Trump’s chief of federal gov’t chaos, his space operations are running on autopilot for maybe the first time.  Both the booster rocket and the capsule for Crew 10 tomorrow are SpaceX products as is the Crew 9 capsule, currently docked at Station, which Butch and Suni are scheduled to return to Earth in sometime in the next several days.

And of course NASA has just announced a Reduction in Force per Trump’s and Musk’s actions, which has to get pretty much everyone’s (in NASA) attention.

Here’s Butch and Suni talking about their return. Look how her hair stands up in zero gravity!

I argued yesterday that Mahmoud Khalil, the ex-Columbia grad student and pro-Palestinian activist snatched by ICE, had been illegally detained and was facing deportation simply for exercising free speech. That of course was my first reaction, and I explicitly said I didn’t know what else he was being charged with, or what evidence the government had.

We even had a pro-Palestinian demonstration on campus yesterday, though it involved issues besides Khalil.  Still, the deportation has caused cognitive dissonance in many of us who detest pro-Hamas demonstrations or sentiments: Khalil was clearly a public espouser of Palestinian terrorism, but that espousal is not a violation of free speech, which I strongly support. The big questions are a). did Khalil do more than simply verbally espouse terrorism, a “more” that would make him subject to laws that could cause his deportation? and b.) are those laws just?

I’m not going to adjudicate question b.) as I’m not a lawyer or judge and don’t know the historical underpinnings of the U.S. Code that deals with “aliens,” as they call them. As for a.), well, let’s hear what venues who want Khalil deported say.

I’ll highlight posts from three sites: the National Review (conservative) the Elder of Ziyon (pro Israel), and City Journal (conservative). All three ultimately claim that Khalif was not only lawfully detained, but that deporting him is a no-brainer.  I’ll simply give you their arguments and then my own conclusion based on their pro-deportation stands, which I see as the strongest arguments for deportation I can find.

The National Review actually had two articles on Monday by Andrew McCarthy. The first (archived here) dealt largely with Khalif’s alleged activities and the second (first headline below) arguing that those activities meet the standards for deportation. In contrast, the Elder of Ziyon piece simply argues that Khalil’s membership in an organization promoting terrorism, regardless of his activities, warrants deportation. The third is similar, not detailing what Khalif actually did to promote terrorism.

But in the end all three come down to the same thing, arguing that Khalil violated the same provision of the U.S. Code §1182 on Inadmissible Aliens: section 3B.

Click if you subscribe to the National Review (or find the article archived here):

First realize that Khalil, who had a green card (and a graduate degree from Columbia) was regarded as a “lawful permanent resident alien” (LPR), giving him special rights, though not rights equivalent to those of a U.S. citizen.  But he is married to an American citizen, who happens to be pregnant.  He was picked up by ICE and apparently taken to Louisiana, where he was held. Two days ago, a federal judge blocked Khalil’s removal from the U.S., and there will be a habeas corpus hearing today. As far as I know, he has not been formally charged with any crimes.

This is from the first National Review article detailing the law and how what Khalil supposedly violated it:

To be sure, visas and green cards are saliently different. Unlike a mere student-visa holder, a green-card holder, such as Khalil, is an LPR. That is the highest category of alien: a non-American who has lawfully relocated to the United States and is on track to become a naturalized citizen (see §1427 of federal immigration law — Title 8, U.S. Code). In many contexts — e.g., tax law and the privacy protections — federal law deems green-card holders to be “U.S. persons,” meaning they are part of our national community. Their rights can approximate those of American citizens but, as the administration will surely argue, they are not equal to those of Americans citizens (who, of course, may not be deported).

. . . Section 1182 of federal immigration law controls the categories of aliens who may be excluded from the United States. In the category of national security, the statute mainly targets aliens who have “engaged in terrorist activity,” who are “members” of terrorist organizations, or who have received paramilitary training from terrorist organizations. Fortunately, though, there is additional latitude: An alien may be excluded if he has “endorsed” or “espoused” terrorist activity — see subsection (a)(3)(B)(i)(IV)(bb), under the subheading “Terrorist activities.” The statute defines terrorist activity to include violent attacks and the planning of such attacks. That should be sufficient to bar from entry into the United States aliens who support Hamas, which has been a designated terrorist organization under U.S. law since the mid-Nineties (when the designation process began).

. . . His most prominent role seems to have been as a negotiator of sorts on behalf of student radicals with the university administration. Objectively speaking, his activities are pro-Hamas, but I assume that if the government had strong evidence that he’d committed the crime of providing material support to a designated terrorist organization — such as recruiting or fundraising on behalf of Hamas — the Justice Department would indict him.

Fortunately, it need not be provable in criminal court that an alien agitator committed crimes in order to establish that the alien should be deported.

That is weird to me. One can violate the law, but you don’t have to prove that the law was violated to deport a green-card holder.

The second National Review article argues that Khalil should be deported because the judgement of the Secretary of State should override that of any judge:

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the executive branch has broad discretion when it comes to national security judgments about which aliens may be admitted and which should be expelled from the United States. Nevertheless, because §1227 says the Secretary of State must have a reasonable ground to believe the alien’s presence or activities in the U.S. could cause “serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” counsel for Khalil will argue that the court has authority to review whether Secretary Rubio’s judgment is “reasonable.”

It would be highly controversial for a politically unaccountable judge — who has no constitutional responsibility for foreign policy, national security, or immigration enforcement — to substitute the court’s judgment for that of the Secretary of State, especially one who was just unanimously confirmed by the Senate to steer American foreign policy. I do not believe a majority of the Supreme Court would abide such judicial imperialism.

. . . To repeat, §1227 incorporates by reference the “terrorist activities” provision in the exclusion statute — specifically, subsection (a)(3) of §1182, which prescribes the excludability of aliens who, among other things, represent “a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity” (that’s subsection (a)(3)(B)(i)(IV)(bb) — a mouthful, I know).

But there is one free-speech-like exception in the law:

“An alien … shall not be excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States … because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States, unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest. [Emphasis added.]”

This is what I argued yesterday: to me, speech alone cannot justify deportation. But author Andrew McCarthy argues that this exception is “maddening” and legally insupportable.  In addition, he argues that Khalil did more than just speak: he acted:

I do not believe that Khalil’s activities in the U.S. should be deemed lawful speech and association. If reports are correct, Khalil was active as an agent of agitators who carried out lawless activities. That is not mere speech and association, and it would be unlawful if engaged in by Americans — indeed, that is why dozens of Americans were arrested in connection with the campus unrest.

I still have not heard the details of Khalil acting as an “agent of agitators,” except as a negotiator with Columbia on behalf of the two expelled students. Even if he demonstrated on behalf of Palestine or Hamas, that a statement, not a promotion of terrorism. But as McCarthy says:

. . . If the government can prove that Khalil was in a campus group that endorsed or espoused Hamas’s atrocities against Israel, it should be able to deport him regardless of his LPR status. And if it can deport him, there are likely to be thousands of others who can be deported, too — and should be.

That is also the argument of the Elder of Ziyon below, who claims that Khalil’s mere membership in an organization that foments or endorses terrorism is enough to get him deported, and the case is “airtight”. Click to read:

An excerpt:

According to 8 U.S. Code § 1227 – Deportable aliens, “Any alien who is described in subparagraph (B) or (F) of section 1182(a)(3) of this title is deportable.” The relevant part of those subparagraphs say:

The Elder argues, then, that Khalil was a “representative” of a Columbia group that endorsed terrorism:

There is no question that Khalil is a representative of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD.) He represented CUAD in negotiations with Columbia a number of times; he was interviewed on TV numerous times as its lead negotiator, he is described as one of CUAD’s leaders.

There is also no question that CUAD endorses and espouses terrorist activity. For example, on the one year anniversary of October 7, it handed out newspapers on campus called “The New York War Crimes” that included this full page “ad:”

And the Elder continues, trying to demolish the idea that Khalil was merely exercising free speech:

Besides that, CUAD chants include explicit support for Hamas (“Yes, we’re all Hamas, pig!” and “Al-Qassam, you make us proud, kill another soldier now.”) Yet even without explicit support for Hamas, CUAD has praised “resistance’ over and over again, and that “resistance” is terrorism. One example is that they praised the October 1 shooting attack in Tel Aviv that murdered seven civilians, saying “On October 1, in a significant act of resistance, a shooting took place in Tel Aviv, targeting Israeli security forces and settlers. This bold attack comes amid the ongoing escalation of violence in the region and highlights the growing resolve of those resisting Israeli occupation.”

What seems clear is that CUAD did indeed endorse terrorism. But did Khalil himself? Is his membership in the organization sufficient to show he endorsed terrorism? You could say that it certainly is, but then you are saying that Robert Oppenheimer deserved to lose his security clearance because at one time he was a member of the Communist party, which to the government implied that he endorsed the Communist plan to overthrow capitalism (Oppenheimer didn’t, of course). To me it seems necessary to give evidence that Khalil himself endorsed terrorism. Perhaps the government has that information, but I haven’t seen it.  Thus I don’t find the Elder’s argument below convincing:

Even if Khalil claims that he is personally against the pro-terrorism stance of CUAD and only acted as their liaison, even if he claims that he never uttered a word of support for terror, he is CUAD’s representative by the legal definition and CUAD unambiguously endorses or espouses terrorist activity, making him subject to deportation. Free speech is a red herring.

Under US law, Mahmoud Khalil should be deported.

Finally, we have the article below by Ilya Shapiro arguing briefly that Khalil (or any supporter of Hamas) should be deported). Note the Shapiro himself was an immigrant who had to swear fealty to the U.S. twice (upon arriving and upon getting his green card). Click to read.

A short excerpt:

it’s a basic application of U.S. immigration law, which says that people here on a visa (tourist, student, employment, or otherwise) who reveal themselves to be ineligible for that visa—“inadmissible,” in the parlance of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA)—can have their visa revoked. As I wrote in a broader analysis of campus-related civil rights issues after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, “The Immigration and Nationality Act allows the denial or revocation of a visa of ‘any alien who . . . endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.’” Biden’s State Department also told then-Senator Marco Rubio that it could revoke the visas of Hamas supporters.

But that’s not all Trump can do. The INA’s inadmissibility provision also empowers the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whom he determines to be “detrimental to the interests of the United States” or to impose on them “any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” During Trump’s first term, the Supreme Court upheld that broad grant of presidential discretion to vet, restrict, and even ban immigrants—and thus to direct executive-agency action in that regard—at the culmination of the high-profile “travel ban” litigation. In Trump v. Hawaii, the Court okayed an executive order restricting travel from various countries, with Chief Justice John Roberts affirming that the only statutory requirement is that the president “find” the entry of the affected aliens to be “detrimental to the national interest.”

That’s exactly what’s happening now.

Shapiro is arguing about whether immigrants should be admitted under a visa, but concludes that the same restrictions prohibiting one’s admission should permit one to be deported when they’re already here—even if you have green card, which apparently counts as a visa:

While the government can’t send foreigners to jail for saying things it doesn’t like, it can and should deny or pull visas for those who advocate for causes inimical to the United States. There’s nothing objectional or controversial about removing those who harass, intimidate, vandalize, and otherwise interfere with an educational institution’s core mission. More, please.

MY TAKE:  As I noted yesterday, Khalil undoubtedly holds sentiments that I detest and was part of a group that holds similar sentiments—a group that seems to have approved of terrorism and thereby (the government argues) promoted it. However, I’ve seen no evidence that Khalil himself engaged in such activities, nor do I think it’s okay to deport somebody for saying something that would be legal if uttered by an American citizen.  Given that Khalil was one step away from citizenship, and (at least in the press) has not been shown to actually promote terrorism beyond being a member of a group that arguably does, I don’t think that what he does rises to the level of deportation.

Nor do I think that one should slough off the problem by saying “let Marco Rubio decide”.  Clearly the Secretary of State is an agent of the President, and of course our President wants anybody deemed “anti-American” kicked out of the U.S. (I would be making this argument, however, no matter who is President.) This seems to me—because Khalil is charged with violating immigration law—that it is the law—the courts—that must ultimately decide about his deportation.

This case may go to the Supreme Court.  Regardless of that Court’s conservatism, their judgement is the law, a law that should be obeyed. Right now, though, I haven’t seen any grounds for deporting Khalil.  That may change, but we are a country of laws, not of dictators.

The Jesus and Mo artist is back from hols, and proffers a new strip called “unsafe,” mocking the Emotion of the Decade. As so often, the theme is hypocrisy: the boys are unsafe because they can’t make others feel unsafe.

We continue with photos from the journey of Robert Lang through Brazil’s Pantanal region last year.  Robert’s notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

Readers’ Wildlife Photos: The Pantanal, Part XI: Birds

Continuing our mid-2025 journey to the Pantanal in Brazil, by far the largest category of observation and photography was birds: we saw over 100 different species of birds (and this was not even a birding-specific trip, though the outfitter also organizes those for the truly hard core). Here we continue working our way through the alphabetarium of common names.

Sunbittern (Eurypyga helias):

Rufescent tiger heron (Tigrisoma lineatum). This one could warrant an alternate name, “giraffe bird,” because…

…when it wants to see something far away, it does this:

Toco toucan (Ramphastos toco). Another amazing coloration. (It also makes me want to go get a bowl of cereal for some reason…):

Turkey vulture (Cathartes aura).

A pair of the same, warming up in the morning:

Blue-fronted amazon (Amazona aestiva):

Unidentified species—I wasn’t able to find this one (and the guide probably told us, but I couldn’t find a note). Any of our birder enthusiasts have an idea?:

Vermilion flycatcher (Pyrocephalus obscurus). He was very distant, so the photo isn’t great, but I couldn’t resist including it for its brilliance:

Wattled jacana (Jacana jacana). Also called the Jesus Christ bird for its ability to walk on water (or rather, walk on the tops of aquatic vegetation) without sinking. Alas, this one seems, like the Apostle Peter,to have lost his faith:

Coming next: the final birds.

The weather is warming, the crocuses are starting to poke their leaves above ground, and you know what that means. It’s Protest Season again on American campuses!

The poster below appeared on the University of Chicago Students for Justice in Palestine (spuchicago), University of Chicago United, and Faculty for Justice in Palestine sites.  It announces a pro-Palestinian protest at noon today on our Quad, sponsored by these organizations and, as you can see on the poster, also by the American Association of University professors (AAUP). The text accompanying the poster:

sjpuchicago On Saturday night, the federal government abducted Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil from his home, in collaboration with Columbia University. He is currently being held in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. Join us at noon this Tuesday to stand in solidarity with Mahmoud and rally against the Trump administration’s fascist escalations against the student movement! We demand that UChicago refuse collaboration with DHS/ICE and that UChicago admin and DA Eileen Burke drop all disciplinary proceedings and charges against Student A and Mamayan.

“Mamayan” apparently refers to Mamayan Jabateh, one of two students put on indefinite involuntary leave from the U of C this January after being arrested charged with “aggravated battery of a peace officer and resisting/obstructing a peace officer”.  The demonstration was last October, and I described it here.

As I noted this morning, Mahmoud Khalil was a Syrian-born, pro-Palestinian grad student at Columbia University who engaged in many activist activities there but, as far as I can see, none of them illegal.  He’s married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant and holds a green card as well.  Nevertheless, he was snatched up by ICE and spirited away, apparently to Louisiana.

This looks to me like Trump pulling another illegal move to punish the kind of speech he doesn’t like. (Note that Ilya Shapiro argues otherwise at the City Journal.) Now make no mistake, I don’t like this kind of speech, either, and I know that the aim of most of these organizations (save the AAUP, which seems to be going bonkers) is to destroy American democracy and its professed values. But the test of free speech is whether you give the okay to legal speech even when it says things you detest, and so, given that this is a legal protest (which I suspect it is), here’s what I think right now.

1. As far as I know about the law, the snatching up and attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil is unconscionable, a violation of the First Amendment. (There may be other things Khalil did that I don’t know.)  And right now a federal judge agrees: “On Monday, a federal judge in Manhattan ordered the government not to remove Mr. Khalil from the United States while the judge reviewed a petition challenging the legality of his detention. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers also filed a motion on Monday asking the judge to compel the federal government to transfer him back to New York.”
2. While I don’t particularly want to live another summer on a campus roiled by protests, with pro-Palestinians shouting through speakers, if the University deems this protest to be legal, then I can’t say it’s wrong.  That said, however, our administration has been very lax on protestors, both faculty and students, and as far as I know, despite at least five illegal pri-Palestinian protests, only the two students mentioned above hav been sanctioned. (SJP was given a toothless “warning by the University).
3. I do deplore the AAUP abandoning institutional neutrality, though one might argue that they are defending free speech here. But given their decision to stop opposing academic boycotts, an implicitly anti-Israel move, the AAUP may be taking political sides. If they are, they’re going the way of the ACLU and SPLC.

I do have a queasy feeling in my stomach, because I simply don’t want to live through another protest season like last year’s. Several of the protests, including the encampment, were illegal and disruptive, but little was done by our administration, although eventually, after a couple of warnings, University police did remove the encampment. But nobody was ever punished. J’accuse!  Legal demonstrations are okay, but many college administrations, including ours, don’t seem to have grasped that failure to punish those who participate in illegal demonstrations not only promote more of them, but erode the reputation of universities.

Here’s what will happen today.  Although I’d like to go and take pictures, one of my friends is giving a biology talk on evolution, and that takes precedence.

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Today we have part 10 (three to go) of Robert Lang‘s photo series from his trip to Brazil’s Pantanal region last year,  His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Readers’ Wildlife Photos: The Pantanal, Part X: Birds

Continuing our mid-2025 journey to the Pantanal in Brazil, by far the largest category of observation and photography was birds: we saw over 100 different species of birds (and this was not even a birding-specific trip, though the outfitter also organizes those for the truly hard core). Here we continue working our way through the alphabetarium of common names.

Rufous hornero (Furnarius rufus):

They build mud nests that look like small ovens; here’s one:

Savanna hawk (Buteogallus meridionalis):

Sayaca tanager (Thraupis sayaca):

Snail kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis). Usually, I’m using my big lens to try to bring in a distant bird, but sometimes they pop up so close that I can’t get them all in the frame even zoomed out. Especially when they’re flying transversely to the line of sight:

Social flycatcher (Myiozetetes similis):

Southern lapwing (Vanellus chilensis):

Southern screamer and chick (Chauna torquata):

Spot-breasted woodpecker (Colaptes punctigula):

Squirrel cuckoo (Piaya cayana):

More birds still to come.