Month: February 2022

First take: Putin calls everyone’s bluffs

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By Monica Chen  On Monday, President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced that his government would formally recognize the independence of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russia would also send troops into the region for “peacekeeping.” This came after nearly a week of the Biden administration’s steady drumbeat of a “Russian invasion” in the media despite the scheduled date of invasion, Feb. 16, having come and gone without any sign of trouble. The Biden administration also said he would hold a meeting with Putin soon, supposedly to show off President Joe Biden’s diplomatic skills and talk Putin down from any further invasions. On Monday afternoon, Putin put his foot down: Enough.  Putin’s speech sent shockwaves through the Biden administration, its allies in Europe and elsewhere, and the media that had become used to the public and even political leaders swallowing the warmongering narrative without any pushback.  It was a stunning move.  Everyone expected Putin to keep playing along. He refused. “Show your cards,” his actions said. “You’ve got nothing.”  And he is right.  Let’s look around this …

Criticisms of Critical Race Theory

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Contrary to what the media would have the general public believe, there always have been criticisms of Critical Race Theory in academia and even in the media. Here are some examples: Leroy Clark, professor emeritus at Columbus School of Law and former Legal Defense Fund counsel during the Civil Rights Movement, in the “Denver Law Review,” 1995: Professor Bell’s “analysis” is really only accusation and “harassing white folks,” and is undermining and destructive. There is no love — except for his own group — and there is a constricted reach for an understanding of whites. There is only rage and perplexity. No bridges are built — only righteousness is being sold. A people, black or white, are capable only to the extent they believe they are. Neither I, nor Professor Bell, have a crystal ball, but I do know that creativity and a drive for change are very much linked to a belief that they are needed, and to a belief that they can make a difference. The future will be shaped by past conditions …

The corrupt intellectual foundation of Critical Race Theory

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By Monica Chen  In the summer of 1989, the leaders of Critical Race Theory held their fledgling movement’s first conference in Madison, Wis.  For the first time, it was made official the academics who were devoted to the CRT cause beyond the main founder, Derrick Bell. Bell was the first tenured black professor at Harvard Law School who had written the definitive CRT treatise, “Race, Racism and American Law,” published in 1970. He died in 2011. The event has been painted ever since as the time when minority and women professors found strength by coming together. It was about “support and survival within the white male-dominated legal academy,” an admirer would write as late as 2012.  There were 20 professors in attendance, including Bell, Richard Delgado, Kimberle Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, Patricia Williams, and Angela Harris, all of whom have been and are still teaching CRT in higher education.  But the CRT founders’ views on race show they are the opposite of being anti-racist:  Matsuda, for example, does not support removing quotas for Asian-American students at …