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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board decries “the tyranny of the DEI bureaucracy.” Two slices:

Critical race theory is becoming institutionalized across American universities, and a major reason is the educational bureaucracy. Most universities now have offices for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, that exercise a broad writ on campus and act as speech police within the university.

That power was on ugly display last week at Stanford Law School, where a mob of law students shouted down Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan in a spectacle unfit for any institution of higher learning. (Judge Duncan relates his experience nearby.)

Heckling unpopular speakers is common on campus, but what makes this episode stand out is the role played by administrators. As the room grew unruly, Judge Duncan asked that a college official step in. The law school’s associate dean for DEI, Tirien Steinbach, took the podium. “Me and many people in this Administration do absolutely believe in free speech,” the dean said, but then went on to ask if “the juice is worth the squeeze”—that is, whether tolerating free speech is worth the pain it causes.

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DEI officials have a vested interest in ensuring that the grievances of identity politics continue lest the offices have no reason to exist. As the Stanford experience shows, they promote racial division rather than redress it, and institutions need to rethink their value.

David Henderson explains that bailing out SVB is a very bad idea. A slice:

But imagine what would have happened if the federal government had stuck to the rules. Yes, there would have been pain. Yes, several Silicon Valley companies would have had trouble meeting their payrolls. But the reason that SVB was not counted as a “too big to fail” bank was that the federal government had judged that there would not be a system-wide run on banks if SVB’s depositors had taken a large haircut. The impact would almost certainly have been regional, not national. In short, “contagion” likely would have been limited. Then banks, depositors, and others would have thought much harder in the future about what to invest in.

The FDIC, Janet Yellen, and the rest of the feds who were involved had a chance to do something good for the economy: stand firm on existing FDIC rules. They blew it.

el gato malo isn’t impressed by Janet Yellen.

Alberto Mingardi celebrates Mario Vargas Llosa’s classical liberalism.

Randy Holcombe is understandably befuddled by some of today’s befuddling social norms.

Reason‘s Christian Britschgi reports that “researchers pressured Twitter to treat COVID-19 facts as ‘misinformation’.” Two slices:

Researchers at Stanford University—in partnership with several nonprofits that have received government funding—worked with social media platforms to flag and suppress commentary on COVID vaccines, science, and policy that contradicted public health officials’ stances, even when that commentary was true.

This new information comes from yet another Twitter Files entry of screenshotted emails and reports from independent journalist Matt Taibbi that reveals the back and forth between the Stanford-led Virality Project and receptive Twitter executives about policing alleged COVID misinformation on its platform.

Beginning in February 2021, and continuing with regular reports, Virality Project researchers encouraged Twitter to expand its misinformation policies to include true reports of vaccine side effects, criticism of vaccine passport systems for their imposition on rights and freedoms, and even discussion of legitimate scientific research on breakthrough infections on natural immunity.

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There’s been a lot of reporting already (including from Reason) on the efforts by government agencies to pressure social media companies to police COVID speech they deemed false or misleading.

The latest Twitter Files shows that the definition of what’s considered damaging misinformation is being stretched to include true things that might cause the public to react in ways that don’t meet the approval of public health officials.

Writing in the Telegraph, Jay Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalén explain that much of today’s inflation is inflamed by lockdowns and related government interventions. A slice:

The economics profession failed to speak out in 2020 about the predictable harms of Covid lockdowns and school closures to children and those on lowest incomes. Economists believed that many people would stay home because they feared the virus, not because of lockdown. Hence, they reasoned, restrictions themselves were not responsible to any significant degree for the damage done to the economy.

Surveys suggested many economists were united in their support for draconian controls. Surveys of economists did not even ask about inflation until far too late (June 2021) and never asked about the terrible human cost of school closures.

But the fear of the virus that drove much of the behavioural change did not happen independent of lockdowns, nor did it correspond to objective facts about the disease. Surveys consistently showed that the perceived mortality and hospitalisation risks far exceeded the objective risks from a Covid infection for young and middle-aged people.

Wall Street Journal columnist James Freeman reflects on the three-year anniversary of the onset of covid derangement. A slice:

This column was a lockdown skeptic right from the start of the Covid panic and an early Fauci skeptic as well. Gov. DeSantis for his part was among the earliest governors to recognize the failings of the panicked Covid consensus and became the most forceful advocate for allowing an open society to prosper while focusing on protection of the most vulnerable.

Looking back it’s hard to believe how many media and political players bought the idea that one could shutter much of society and then try to simulate prosperity with trillions in government spending and money creation at the Federal Reserve—and then expect a positive result. Of course Joe Biden and the Fed inflamed the problem by continuing the binge of spending and money creation long after the economy had begun to rebound. This led to inflation and now to banking tumult from higher interest rates as the Fed finally started to tighten monetary policy,

But even though anyone can now recognize how bad the outcomes were for the country when policy makers listened to Dr. Fauci and experts in public health, which is a failed discipline, one could argue that Faucian economics continues.

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