Sad. Looks Like David Kane '88 is Being Attacked by Harvard Students and Faculty for Being Normal

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - I have noticed over the last couple of days that the Ephblog site was down. I was going to send an email but assumed that everything was basically okay. Now, however, it looks like more is up than I imagined. My friend, David Kane, is a statistics instructor for Gov. 50 at Harvard. It looks like the kids at Harvard finally figured out he was the proprietor of Ephblog. 

The stuff that concerns them enough to boycott his class is the mildest of conservative talking points. According to The Crimson, Kane's bigotry is best captured as follows: 

Some entries posted by “Field” on EphBlog make references to “Black Supremacy” in the NBA, claim that over 90 percent of Black students at Williams College would not have been admitted if it were not for their “Black’ness” [sic], and question Williams College’s condemnation of white supremacist group Identity Evropa without similar condemnation of the Black Lives Matter and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movements.

As far as I can tell, the nonsense hit the fan after Kane showed the insensitivity to invite the beloved Charles Murray to speak at his class. 

After The Crimson reported that Kane invited Charles A. Murray ’65 to deliver a talk as part of the course, another student suggested that “Field” might be Kane, Queen said.

It looks like Kane has maintained the confidence of his employer and appears to be handling himself well. As far as I can tell, the comments on this article and the others I reviewed are overwhelmingly pro-Kane and pro-free speech.

This is a great opportunity to remind ourselves of Kane's extraordinary skills and record. According to his Harvard biography, "David Kane is the Preceptor in Statistical Methods and Mathematics in the Department of Government at Harvard University. He served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps from 1988 to 1991. Prior to returning to Harvard in 2018, he worked in quantitative finance for two decades, mostly as an equity portfolio manager at firms including Numeric, Geode, Millenium, Point72 (formerly SAC), Acadian and Hutchin Hill. In 2016 he was a Professor of the Practice at Middlebury College. He teaches Gov 50: Data and Gov 52: Models."

Maybe this deplatforming nonsense is coming to an end. I haven't had time to sift through all of this yet. Here are the articles I've found so far. 

The Harvard Crimson - Students Allege Harvard Instructor David Kane Made Racist Posts on Blog

The Harvard Crimson - Charles Murray to Speak in Gov 50 Lecture Series

The Harvard Crimson - Faculty Members Call EphBlog Posts ‘Horrible’ and ‘Deeply Disturbing’

The Harvard Crimson - Harvard Undergraduate Council Endorses Removal of Gov 50 Instructor

The Harvard Crimson - Gov 50 Preceptor David Kane to Resume Lecturing Despite Calls for His Removal

The College Fix: Students drive out Harvard instructor after he invited Charles Murray to address their class

One of the most interesting full articles is below the break. 

Haters Are Going to Hate: Still More Dr. Drew Bashing by Ephblog's Beta Males

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - I checked in with Ephblog this morning and saw that one of the authors on the site who goes by the pseudonym The Good Son was busy bashing my good name and reputation for no reason at all. As far as I can tell, TGS is planning on ending his participation at Ephblog. He intends to go out with a three-part series about Ephblog organized around the characters in the iconic spaghetti western, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966). 

I remember I saw this film at the drive-in theatre, the Mustang, in my hometown of Newhall, CA. You will undoubtedly remember it as a thrilling Civil War era tale directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as "the Good", Lee Van Cleef as "the Bad", and Eli Wallach as "the Ugly". If you have not seen the film, you really should. You will most likely recognize the musical score by Ennio Morricone.

TGS begins his carefully organized take on Ephblog by reviewing what he believes is "ugly" about it. There are only two people in that category, me and a truly bizarre loser named Kenneth Thomas '93. I have written about Ken Thomas over at Anonymous Political Scientist. If you want an example of how being smart does not necessarily lead to being successful, or well, you may enjoy my comments regarding Kenneth Thomas '93 which are included in my popular article on mental illness at Williams. 

TGS looks like an anti-conservative hater who cannot accept the value of free speech. "The one year experiment in Ephblog being a John Drew free zone is coming to an end sometime soon," he writes. "In the future, I am hopeful his voluntary banishment will continue ad infinitum." 

As I recall TGS promised Ephblog readers he would "post things that are interesting and informative" on a weekly basis. This promise was quickly broken and forgotten. As far as I can tell, TGS has only posted two articles between May 20, 2020 and August 21, 2020. 

Who is the feckless TGS? We can learn a lot about TGS by looking through his own posts at Ephblog. As far as I can tell,  TGS was an under-achieving legacy student. He has both an older brother and a father who graduated from Williams. By TGS's own account, he wasted the chance he was given to benefit from a Williams education, writing that he "did not take full advantage of everything it had to offer." He was so lame that he never asked a girl out for a date while he was a student. He writes: " I never really mustered the 20 seconds of courage while at Williams." Perhaps the most telling clue about this privileged loser is that he reports that his "...first job after Williams was as a kindergarten assistant teacher." 

TGS's pathetic, uncourageous, beta male status has now left him with little to show for his life. He reports that he only gave the tiniest gifts to Williams until "my wife finally started to support me in the style in which I deserve." He shares, without the embarrassment, "I have been a stay-at-home dad for the last 21 years." 

Ultimately, what is sad about TGS is that he might have grown and developed his talent further if he had fully participated in Ephblog, particularly in an Ephblog that included a conservative street-fighter like me. For the record, I have been quite active in seeking to protect conservative students and faculty at Williams. Without the platform of Ephblog, I have had to invent some new communications tools. These include the following: 

Williams Liberty Twitter Account

https://twitter.com/WilliamsLibert5

Followers: 7,846

Williams Liberty Blogsite

https://williamsliberty.blogspot.com/

Visitors: 30762

Instagram - Conservative At Williams

https://www.instagram.com/conservativeatwilliams/

Followers: 712

All of these Williams related sites have been established in the last year. I have no doubt I would not have created any of them without first being asked to leave my role as a contributor at Ephblog. Sadly, Ephblog appears to be near the end of its useful life span. The proprietor has indicated he will soon give it up. This is a shame. Conservative students on campus need support. They are unlikely to get it from their faculty or the administration. Their health and safety is dependent on their ability to get there stories out to the general public. The ugly verbal abuse of white students at the hands of CARE Now activists at the April 9, 2019 College Council meeting was a vivid piece of evidence that the woke mob has no empathy for its victims. 

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND. 

Twink Williams Burns '06 Is Not Okay: More Black Angst and Undocumented Oppression from Williams College

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - If you have a white child applying for admission to Williams College this year, you might want to peruse the Facebook comments of one of the school's most visible admission and financial aid staffers. 

Her name is Twink Williams Burns '06. She is lighting up the local news and social media with her frustration with Williamstown, MA and all things Williams College. For example, she claims a family member was not served at a business in Williamstown. She declined, however, to back up that accusation.

"The person who refused service to my family member no longer works at the local business," she writes, "Please respect that we do not wish to name to local business at this time."

Ms. Burns is a graduate of Williams College, and - according to her LinkedIn profile she majored in English. 

She has had a long-running, off and on, career at the school. For example, she started in her current role as a Strategic Adviser for Admission and Financial Aid in July 2019. However, she was the Associate Director of Admission for Diversity Recruitment between June 2013 and June 2015. As far as I can tell, her first job after her graduation was as an Admission Counselor at Williams between June 2006 and July 2008.

She is married to another admissions staff member, Markus H. Burns 06'. He currently serves as an Associate Director of Admission.

Perhaps to balance out his wife's outspokenness, he has a low profile on social media. Like his wife, however, he has moved in and out of employment at Williams. On LinkedIn, he reports he served as an Assistant Director of Admissions between July 2013 to August 2016. His current run as an Associate Director started in August 2019 after he spent three years as the Assistant Dean of Admissions at Princeton. 

Twink's story, but not her name, was recently addressed over at Ephblog. As far as I can tell, her frustration with her overwhelmingly racist neighbors is making waves. Here is a sample of a recent rant she posted on Facebook:

We’re a Black family, we live in Williamstown, and we are not okay.

We are scared for our physical safety. Yes, here in Williamstown.

We don’t know what to tell our kids without ending their childhoods. Yes, here in Williamstown.

A family member was not served at a business. Yes, here in Williamstown.

We don’t want our pictures taken for the Front Porch Project because we don’t want to be easily located by people who would wish us harm based on the color of our skin. Yes, here in Williamstown.

Someone posted earlier that the N-word is “regularly used by local kids”....how in the world do I tell my sons that someone will call them this word, a word used to enslave and lynch and oppress their family tree, because of something they cannot change? That’s here in Williamstown, and apparently widely dismissed.

Please, instead of asking me what I’ll say to my Black sons to keep them safe, ask yourself what you’re saying to your non-Black children to ensure they aren’t complicit in the oppression of my children, my family, me. Here in Williamstown.

We are a Black family, we live in Williamstown, and we are not okay.

******

Edit: the person who refused service to my family member no longer works at the local business. Please respect that we do not wish to name to local business at this time."

All in all, her posts on Facebook sparked a great deal of consternation. She was particularly vocal at the Williamstown Select Board meeting on June 22, 2020. According to Stephen Dravis, a reporter with iBerkshires.com, she let loose on the group: 

Burns, who wrote a well-circulated Facebook post about her family's experience with racism, said she did not plan to speak at the meeting and that she was "deeply disappointed" that it took a social media post to bring the issue to the forefront in the town.

"How do I tell my children that this place that calls itself loving and progressive and welcoming is actually going to be a place where they have to get used to the fact that one of their peers is going to call them the 'n word' because their parents aren't bold enough to talk to them about it?" Burns said. "We're doing all of our children a disservice. Not just my children. We're doing your children a disservice when we don't talk about this. And I'm not just talking about in our school, I'm talking about in our town. I'm talking about in our homes. I'm talking about whenever we're out and about.

"If we don't fill that space with important information about the way that we've all been conditioned to see other people in this country that's built on white supremacy, we're basically co-signing that it's OK for our white youth to slip in the 'n word' when it's fun with their friends. Because they've never been challenged to think about it in a more critical way."

Amazingly, the Select Board even considered the idea of decorating the town with Black Lives Matter banners. Theoretically, these banners would replace the ones that routinely hang from the lamp poles in the downtown district, those are the seasonal banners that advertise local museums and such. The obstreperous Twink was opposed to that too.

"I don't understand why we're spending so much time talking about banners versus paint versus whatever," she Burns said. "I love that someone said earlier that we need to have some sort of physical sign that Black people who visit our town should feel welcome here. I would love for that to be true.

"But right now, putting up the sign would be a lie. … I don't think Black people should feel comfortable in our town."

At the very least it looks like the greedy grievance bureaucrats at Williams College have run out of soft targets for their ire.

Due to COVID-19, they no longer enjoy the advantages of working through student proxies and using what ex-professor Eric Knibbs has aptly called a high low strategy. With nothing left to do, they have focused their attention on the gentle, fragile, seemingly easily intimidated, residents of the town.

To me, Twink's histrionic rants are powerful evidence the demand for racism exceeds its supply.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.

In Awe of Eric Knibbs - America's Most Courageous Professor

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - It is difficult to describe how refreshing it is for me to read some of the recent
writing by a tenured ex-Williams College history professor, Eric Knibbs. The guy is amazing. He tears apart the leftist demons running the school while simultaneously dragging in 5th century Christianity, Plato, and the destruction of previously inoffensive statues.

His latest missive is an insightful response to a complaint over on Ephlog that it is a sign of considerable ignorance to ask for evidence from a black professor who thinks a leftist bastion of Marxist ideology is engaging in violence and murder simply because it does not spin on a dime and give black, gay, transgender professors everything they want now. Like Kayleigh McEnany beating the crap out of leftist writers at a White House press conference, Knibbs responds with devastating accuracy. It is worth reading his response twice.

For me, his best work is the observation that leftist ideology leads to the most predictable loss of freedom:

The more coherent expressions of wokery are nothing but a kind of low-resolution applied Foucaultianism. Its proponents believe some variation upon the proposition that cultural discourses structure power relationships. These discourses must therefore be changed or subverted or inverted in order to achieve more just outcomes.

At the crassest, quotidian level, certain words are therefore tabooed, microaggressions defined, etc. (A lot of this is termed “political correctness” by outsiders to the religion, for whom this is mostly puzzling pedantry.)

At more revolutionary levels, the woke attack racist power discourses by destroying statues and public monuments. This is why the woke opposed some faculty signing a petition about the Chicago principles. A college-wide commitment to free expression threatens their pseudointellectual discourse-engineering agenda.

That last sentence is expresses the observation I admire the most: "A college-wide commitment to free expression threatens their pseudointellectual discourse-engineering agenda." 

This puts the fight at Williams over the Chicago Principles into a clear statement that explains what was really at stake for the CARE-Now students who believed humiliating young white liberal students on the College Council was an admirable course of action. It reminds me of why I was exposed to unrelenting hostility when, as a young political science professor, I publicly supported George W. H. Bush and became a Republican candidate for the local assembly seat. At the time, I was startled at how quickly I had gone from being a Marxist acquaintance of the young Barack Obama to my new status as an out and out racist. I was, of course, easy to remove. Embarrassingly, I was perhaps even easier to gaslight. 

Luckily, ex-Williams College professors like Eric Knibbs can now leverage the power of Twitter, and their personal blog sites, to get out the news of how they have been intimidated and mistreated. His story shows how risky it is to be even a well-meaning cynic regarding the left. To his credit, his recent article strikes me as the boldest and most courageous statement I have seen from a Williams College professor, ex or otherwise. As far as I can tell, only political science professor Darel Paul has even come close. 

At any rate, I am pleased to do what I can through my own blog and Twitter accounts, friendships, and connections to assorted conservative websites, to get the truth out to the public. There are angry mobs dominating schools like Williams. 

As Knibbs observes, there are no sensible solutions for "...indefensible demands that the college needs to double down on wokery, triple down on wokery. And, should it do that, the complaint would then be that it has not quadrupled down on wokery, or quintupled down on it, and so forth."

Please enjoy reading his comment in full below the break. You might also wish to follow the debate over at Ephblog by clicking on these links in order. 

http://ephblog.com/2020/07/06/against-race-theology-1/

http://ephblog.com/2020/07/07/against-race-theology-2/

http://ephblog.com/2020/07/08/against-race-theology-3/

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.

Where's the Manager? Ephblog Karens Lament Dr. John C. Drew for Hating Williams College

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - I don't appear much in Ephblog anymore. My presence got so distracting that I found it was easier to set up my own Williams College related site, rather than subject the proprietor of Ephblog to further abuse and headaches from his leftist readers. 

Nevertheless, I get a thrill out of checking in frequently to see what I can do to help build the audience for Ephblog. Today, I see I'm under attack for the crime of wrong think or perhaps the related crime of saying bad things. See this comment from Chief Eph.

Sometimes I don’t understand how you can compartmentalize this much dissonance in your brain.

John Drew ACTUALLY hates Williams. He hates it and wants to see it burn, and it doesn’t take much digging on the internet to see that what he posts verifies his deep-seated hatred. He is constantly slandering the College, posting specious articles or citing himself on online college message boards, and driving students away from the College. The fact that he runs a cheap blog where he pretends to represent conservative views at Williams when he hasn’t been associated with the campus in thirty plus years is not only pathetic, but harmful to the reputation of the College since an unknowing audience would take him to be a reputable source of conservative opinions (which exist at Williams, he definitively isn’t one of them). He doesn’t criticize the College in any constructive way, and his lack of an academic career after he was fired from the College is evidence enough that he is wholly incompetent and unqualified to participate in any kind of academic discussion.

To say that these protesters hate Williams, but turn around and agree with Drew is ridiculous. You let Drew run rampant on this website, and I never once saw you condemn him for denigrating the reputation of the College. At this point, I honestly think you have some internalized hatred for the school as well.

Note: I don’t agree with all of these demands that these activists have compiled, but I can’t stand your hypocrisy.

I doubt that few if any Ephblog readers will wander over here, but I should take a moment to set things straight.

1. Of course I hate the place. 

Williams College folks assume the people it harms through affirmative action eventually get over it. That is a pleasing illusion for them. It makes it easier to harm the people they want to harm. I'm just here to remind them they are wrong. In my experience, people never get over being mistreated. I don't think there is any doubt I was gravely mistreated while I was teaching there. I've written about the discrimination and threats I endured as an assistant professor in the political science department.  Here are some wonderful articles describing my experience as a young, vulnerable, white male professor at the school in the late 1980s.

Forgiveness and the Shack: Remembering My Old Antagonist, The Late Timothy E. Cook

Lonely Days and Lonely Knights: OC Resident Dr. Drew Was Once a MA Republican Political Science Professor

2. I'm telling the truth.  

The only way you could claim I'm slandering the college is if you can prove that I'm saying false things about it that I know to be false. By that common sense standard, I'm not guilty. Everything I report is tied to real world evidence, transcripts, documents, videos and so on. Much of the reporting I have done about the school is based on objective, publicly accessible records. See, 

The Purple Rubble: Williams College Council Deletes Anti-White Rant by Isaiah Blake '21

Evergreen Now! Anti-White Hate at Williams College

3. I'm a reputable source. 

My experience at the school remains in the news even though I last set foot on campus in 1989.  Much of the reason for my extended 15 minutes of fame is that conservatives are still poorly treated at the school. 

Shut Up, He Argued: Listening at the Great Awokening

4. I'm a contemporary source too. 

I should add that I'm in email and telephone contact with various Williams College professors, students and alumni. I am part of a network of observers who have specialized in raising the visibility of ideological conflicts at Williams College by bringing them to the attention of media outlets including Breitbart, Fox News, College Fix, Campus Reform and other news sources. 

Black students explode in anger at white students in vulgarity-laced rant (VIDEO)

Former Williams College professor speaks out: Campus hostile toward conservatives for decades

5. I had a wonderful career after leaving Williams College. 

The research that was degraded by my colleagues in the political science department went on to win the highest possible honor for a doctoral dissertation from the American Political Science Association. It was so good that it was later published almost word for word with only the most minor edits.

I succeeded in running my own consulting practice and winning millions in funding for various colleges and universities. I've won two prestigious NSF grants.

I'm still active as a public intellectual. My comments on Barack Obama have appeared in multiple history books including David Garrow's Rising Star. I have remained a steadfast opponent of affirmative action. The way I was treated by affirmative action programs is now illegal in the State of California.

If you want to continue this discussion. Please feel free to comment below. 

The Usual Suspects: Ephblog Searches for the Mystery Professor Who Threatened Violence Over the Chicago Principles

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Although Maud appears to have got the woke student activists out of the headlines for now, I'm still very interested in uncovering the the identity of the professor who threatened violence to stop the Chicago Principles from coming to Williams College. Earlier Ephblog came up with four professors whose background seemed to fit the report we read earlier from Luana Maroja. Click on the link below for the full Ephblog article.

Admit Your Privilege, 5

The enterprising leader of Ephblog, David Dudley Field '25, is intrigued by the educational benefits of having this potentially violent mystery professor share her personal experience regarding the anti-free speech riots at UC Berkeley. He writes:

A professor threatening violence is nuts! Is anyone else shocked by this? But, at the same time, tell us your story! EphBlog loves a riot. What was the Berkeley riot like? What did you do? What lessons did you learn? Perhaps you could share those lessons with your Williams students . . .

Field '25 recommends the student journalists at the Williams Record investigate Luana Maroja's story and reveal her identity. This might happen. In my experience, Nicholas Goldrosen, the current editor-in-chief, seems eminently fair. He has treated me fairly and I admire his courage for doing so. The work should be relatively easy because Ephblog has already revealed the names of the professors who are the most plausible suspects.

Ephblog reports one useful resource is the Williams College Course Catalog (pdf) which describes faculty backgrounds. The faculty with the most recent degrees from UC Berkeley include Sarah E. Olsen (PHD 2016), Ianna Hawkins Owen (PHD 2016), Kailani Polzak (PHD 2017) and Yana Skorobogatov (PHD 2018).

After a bit of on-line research, I would probably suggest Field '25 cross Sarah E. Olsen off his list. She was teaching at Amherst (or is it amHerst?) during the two years prior to her arrival at Williams College in the Fall of 2018. I think it is safe to assume she wasn't active in the rioting which led to the cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos’s speaking engagement on February 1, 2017.

Ianna Hawkins Owen is an Assistant Professor of English who took her PhD in African American Studies from UC Berkeley. My Google research shows she was at UC Berkeley at the time of the riots. She was enjoying a post-doctorate fellowship which ran from 2016 to 2017. She arrived at Williams College in the Fall of 2017 and is part of the same cohort which included woke faculty activists Kai Green and Kimberly Love.

Kailani Polzak was probably not at UC Berkeley in January 2017. I'm thinking this only because I found she was a C3 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History at Williams College for two years starting in 2015-2016. Accordingly, it doesn't look like she was at UC Berkeley during the riots. Nevertheless, she does seem to be a woke faculty member. She has been involved in the effort to establish an Asian studies position. She is also a member of the same faculty cohort as Green, Love and Owen.

Yana Skorobogatov is a native Russia speaker with a strong interest in the Soviet Union. She is an assistant professor of history. Like Owen, it looks like she was definitely in the UC Berkeley area at the time of the riots. She seems pretty woke too. While at Berkeley she taught a courses on incarceration and global history. The only thing that would make her less likely to be the mystery professor is that she would have been in her first semester of her employment at Williams College. Specifically, she would have been publicly calling for violence within the first three months of her tenure track job.   

"Of course," Ephblog cautiously asserts, "just because this professor was at the riot does not mean that she has a degree from Berkeley, but this is the place to start." Field '25 concludes: "I also suspect that this is more likely to be a new faculty member since most already-hired Williams faculty would have been teaching during the February 2017 Milo riots."

All of this would be easily cleared up if I got a couple of phone calls from participants at the event or if Professor Luana Marojo is willing to give me the name. My number is 949-338-5921. You can email me at johndrew25@msn.com. I'm happy to protect your anonymity.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.

Shut Up, He Argued: Williams College Anti-Free Speech Advocate Chad M. Topaz Tries to Get a UC Davis Professor Fired

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Williams College math professor Chad M. Topaz is in the news today for fighting to get a female math professor fired from her job at at UC Davis. Her egregious offense?  She had the temerity to argue that requiring diversity statements from young people applying for teaching positions is suspiciously similar to McCarthyism. This is the latest example of woke policing coming from the perpetually offended Topaz whose exploits have already caught the attention of places like Ephblog, the Williams College alumni run blogsite.

Chad Topaz, a professor of mathematics at Williams College
is leading an effort to get a fellow math professor at
UC Davis fired from her job for her opposition to mandatory
diversity statements. 

Tearing into Abigail Thompson, Topaz demands his readers contact UC Davis, Thompson's institution "to express your concerns about diversity in the Department of Mathematics and about Thompson’s role as Chair. If she has gone on record in a very public way as being opposed to diversity statements, and if UC Davis requires them, the school must look into whether or not she has been abiding by institutional policy."

Abigail Thompson

Basically, Topaz is mobilizing a nation-wide effort through his QSIDE organization to get Abigail fired for speaking her mind. FYI: I've taken a screenshot of the above statement so that I'll have a record of it if he is ever forced to delete it.

Thompson wrote an argument against the use of diversity statements for what Topaz believes is the most widely-read mathematics publication in the world, the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. He found her argument so noxious that he refused to provide a link to it. Nevertheless, you can read about it here. 

The other target for his woke vitriol is the publication which published Thompson's statement. Topaz is particularly incensed that the Notices of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) seems to believe that there are two sides to the argument.

"By amplifying Thompson’s views to a large audience, the American Mathematical Society lends legitimacy to them, and in doing so, engages in both-sides-ism," he writes. "It’s ok to use diversity statements, on one hand, and diversity statements are like McCarthyism, on the other hand." 

In his most recent blog post, he complained that the Notices is a little too eager to publish dissenting points of view. He writes, "...it seems the Notices (part of AMS, obviously) holds a value something akin to “let all sides be heard.”

As you might expect, Chad M. Topaz's woke instincts have brought his dopey, totalitarian anti-free speech views to the world of Twitter. The story has also been picked up by Inside Higher Education. Most recently, he was the subject of a blistering attack from the blogsite Leiter Reports.

In his original attack on Thompson, Topaz tries to suggest that the use of diversity statements in the hiring process isn't another backdoor way of discriminating against whites and conservatives who believe such statements are unnecessary or unhelpful. He denies that these diversity statements have anything to do with either politics or affirmative action. "A straight white cisgender man can write a stupendously effective diversity statement," according to Topaz, "if he learns about the issues and thinks about how to address them in his professional life."

The professor he attacked, Abigail Thompson, is quite distinguished. She serves as the Vice President of the American Mathematical Society and Chair of the Department of Mathematics at UC Davis.

In his article, Topaz attempts to mobilize the full hatred of the left against her by suggesting other efforts in addition to trying to get her fired. All of this, by the way, is published at QSIDE. For example, he provides the emails of those who were responsible for publishing her article along with his own suggested text. He calls for us to "stop doing favors" for Notices. "Spread the word about this debacle on social media and in your workplaces," he writes.

He even seeks to dry up the supply of young graduate students for UC Davis, saying: "For those of you who are in mathematics, advise grad-school-bound undergraduate students – especially students who are minoritized along some axis – not to apply to UC Davis." Who knows? In a couple more days, maybe Chad Topaz will call for the utter destruction of the UC Davis campus itself for the sin of not reacting quickly enough to his anti-free speech fatwa?

Previous fatwas issued by the prodigious Chad M. Topaz include his attacks on various institutions which are way too white for his tastes including art museums and or mathematics editorial boards. For more information about his organization the QSIDE Institute, check out the following link.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND. Pronouns - Master/Commander.

No Win for You: Student Member Asserts Sawicki Committee Report Was Not a Victory for Free Speech Watchdogs

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - In a recent Press Record podcast, one of the student members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Inquiry and Inclusion, Eli Miller '21, pushed back on campus watchdogs who believe the Sawicki report supports free speech to the extent that it would allow controversial speakers like John Derbyshire to appear on campus. Miller, a math and statistic major, was interviewed by a fellow student, Rebecca Tower '21.

Rebecca Tauber 

Do you have any last thoughts on the committee, their report, going forward? 

Eli Miller

I think my one concern is that this committee -- which I don’t think I’ve seen very much here, but I’ve seen sort of from like campus watch dogs -- is that this is seen as a victory for people who believe that free speech is like an absolute right and that people on college campuses who try to dis-invite people are like liberal snowflakes.  

That whole narrative is very popular, and my concern that this report gives those people a win.

I don’t think those people are correct in assuming this report supports them. But I think that definitely people have read it that way. And I guess I wish we had done more to resist that reading because I think it is a lot more nuanced and complicated than that. But I think at end of the day people are going to want to read what they want to read. 

As was reported in the Williams Record, the committee recommended the adaptation of both the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and PEN America frameworks for free speech, both of which give student groups the right to invite any speaker of their choosing without prior approval and allow the administration to disinvite speakers only in the “rarest of circumstances.”

Critics of the report including John Drew a former Williams College political scientist and Jerry Coyne a biologist with the University of Chicago, have decried the weakness of the report by pointing out that its recommendations allow for the censorship of campus speakers if those speakers should be a threat to "dignitary safety" or, more specifically, “the sense of being an equal member of the community.” As Coyne has pointed out, it is physically impossible to support both inclusion and freedom of speech. Eli Miller's comments verify the critics' views.

In a Williams Record article, Miller reports he was unhappy with the process because the group never attempted to reach a consensus on whether or not the administration should have had the authority to disinvite John Derbyshire, a political commentator for VDARE, who had been dropped by the National Review for a satirical piece he wrote for Taki's Magazine.

“It became clear that the goal of the committee was less to reconcile the differences that people have — on the most basic level — about whether John Derbyshire should’ve been allowed to speak on campus, and it was a lot more focused on taking the temperature of the campus and doing outreach to as many groups as possible,” Miller said. “It felt like the primary objective was just to calm people down.”

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND. 

To Readers of Ephblog

LAGUNA NIGUEL, CA - If you would like to stay in touch, I have established a new blog called Williams Liberty.

Williams Liberty has a different mission compared to Ephblog. Williams Liberty will be focused primarily on breaking news. It will be promoted through my existing Twitter accounts, accounts that have more followers than the college's Twitter accounts. Covering breaking news at our nation's top liberal arts college is a service which cannot be provided by the Williams Record and would not be allowed on the college's websites.

It will, of course, be conservative friendly and politically incorrect.

In particular, it will provide the conservative viewpoint which has been largely absent on campus since 1989. Its contributors will be immune from ideologically motivated abuse or boycotts.

Consistent with conservative sensibilities, it will be well-written, tightly edited and moderated. Its language will be professional and PG at worst. Williams Liberty will be open to guest contributors (anonymous or not).

Guest contributors will be restricted to existing or prior William's College faculty and students. 

Comments will be welcome from all. It may reserve a few spots for student contributors who will be picked on a competitive basis at the beginning of the school year or who have done a good job as guest contributors.

If you would like to submit an article for publication at Williams Liberty, please contact me through the form available on the blogsite, or me at 949.338.5921.

By the way, you can follow Williams Liberty on Twitter at @williamslibert5.

John C. Drew, Ph.D., is a former Williams College professor in American politics and political economy. He contributes to American Thinker, Breitbart, Campus Reform, The College Fix, and WorldNetDaily.