In the light of the “Operation Varsity Blues” college scandal last week, a lot of people were complaining about university admissions generally. I learned that a lot of people:
Think university admissions are hopelessly corrupt across the board, and that these cases were not “a few bad apples.”
Are super grumpy about “legacy admission.”
I knew about court cases about affirmative action (including the current one at Harvard), but I got curious as to whether legacy admissions had ever faced a legal challenge, and if so, what was the basis for keeping it.
Plaintiff also attacks the policy of the University whereby children of out-of-state alumni are exempted from the stiffer academic requirements necessary for out-of-state admission. Again, since no suspect criteria or fundamental interests are involved, the State need only show a rational basis for the distinction. In unrebutted affidavits, defendants showed that the alumni provide monetary support for the University and that out-of-state alumni contribute close to one-half of the total given. To grant children of this latter group a preference then is a reasonable basis and is not constitutionally defective. Plaintiff's attack on this policy is, therefore, rejected.
The questions raised here are, in large part, attacks on administrative decision-making, an area where the federal courts have not and should not heavily tread. Plaintiff has not shown a constitutional reason for abandoning this judicial policy.
The court is saying legacy admissions are okay because the university can make money. And it’s not up to courts to change administrative decisions.
Regardless, I kind of suspect that legacy admissions are going to come under increasing pressure because they are, as the pundits say, “a bad look” for universities.
External links
At any given moment in time, there are people who are well known for giving good presentations.
In the early part of the twenty-first century, many people pointed to Steve Jobs as an example of what a great presenter could do. In her book Resonate Nancy Duarte says, “Jobs had the uncanny ability to make audience engagement appear simple and natural.” She points to the iPhone launch in 2007 as one of the best product launches of all time.
I often pointed to Hans Rosling, who leapt into people’s awareness with some of the first TED talks in 2006. Indeed, Rosling practically provided the templatefor what a TED talk was. Others followed in his footsteps for years to come.
But we lost Jobs in 2011, and Rosling in 2017.
But now I would like to nominate the person who is, I think, one of the best presenters of this time.
Hasan Minhaj.
You might object that Minhaj is a stand-up comedian, and stand up isn’t really a presentation in the usual sense. That’s certainly what I might have thought when I had only seen him on The Daily Show. Funny, yes. But a great presenter?
But then I saw his special Homecoming King. It’s stand up, but like many one person shows, there’s a strong narrative running though it. It mostly revolves around a prom date gone wrong.
But it’s not just Minhaj on a stage. He has a screen that shows a lot of images that are relevant to what he is describing. In other words, his Peabody Award winning special is a PowerPoint presentation. A high end and heavily disguised PowerPoint presentation, but it’s not such a different beast than many.
His Netflix series Patriot Act is less personal but more topical, and Minhaj pushes his presentation skills even further. In each episode, Minhaj does a deep explanation of one or two subjects. In science communication terms, Minhaj is making “explainers.”
And these are data driven episodes on somewhat esoteric subjects. You don’t see a lot of coverage of the Indian general elections in the news on North America.
Chinese censors, street wear hype, drug pricing, and affirmative action all come under the microscope. (In light of the university admissions scandal that broke last week, the first episode about university admissions is worth a watch, too, as Minaj lays out the the background for the lawsuit against Harvard about admissions that is being backed by white guys trying to destroy affirmative action.)
Patriot Act the only show I can think of that wouldn’t surprise me if it did an entire episode about Plan S and academic publishing.
Why I think Minhaj’s presentation is the best around right now?
Obviously, Minhaj is legit funny. But he isn’t afraid to tell niche joke. In one episode, he says something like, “I tell jokes for four people at a time.”
Minhaj’s show is committed to evidence and data. Minhaj says he has a team of researchers that help him look smart, but most shows wouldn’t bother. Most comedy shows would just be content to have their comedian mouth off whatever thoughts they have, maybe with some light fact checking. But Minhaj is not just expressing opinions. He’s building arguments.
Minhaj is concise, and has the ability to sum up complicated backstory in a few short, well-chosen sentence. Almost accidentally, this makes him fast. I sometimes think an episode of his show would almost be one of the best “Intro to political science”lectures on any campus, but then I realize that it would be too quick for students to take notes. But you’re not taking notes, so it doesn’t matter. You can just enjoy the delivery and flow.
And Patriot Act is filmed in front of an audience. While his monologues are obviously incredibly tightly scripted, Minhaj still pays attention to his audience. He goes off script for a few seconds to responds to them and interact with them.
While I said Minhaj’s lectures wouldn’t be too effective for students trying to take notes, I will be taking notes: not on the content, but to figure out what makes his presentations so good.
This morning I learned of the UK advocacy group “Crustacean Compassion”, which wants to change laws around the handling of crustaceans in the United Kingdom. They are currently engaged in a campaign to recognize the decapod crustaceans as having “sentience.”
They claim to be an “an evidence-based campaign group,” but when I went to their tab on whether crustaceans feel pain, I was presented with a one-sided view. Not lopsided. One-sided.
All the evidence comes from one lab, that of Professor Robert Elwood.
Weirdly, the page is so singularly built from Elwood’s work that it even omits research from other labs that could be viewed as supporting their premise that decapod crustaceans might feel pain.
They present experiments that have not been independently replicated as though they were unquestioned. They discuss none of the interpretive problems behind those experiments. They act as though there is a clear consensus within the scientific community when there is not (review in Diggles 2018).
Their full briefing for politicians is similarly one-sided.
In science, single studies are not definitive. Studies all arising from a single lab are not definitive.
If you claim to be all about the evidence, you have to present all the evidence, not just the evidence that supports your position. Some of the individuals behind the group have academic and scientific backgrounds, but judging from their bios, none have training working with invertebrates. None have training in neurobiology.
While I have reservations about the information provided by their group, the part of me that loves graphic design gives them full points for their clever logo (shown above).
References Diggles BK. 2018. Review of some scientific issues related to crustacean welfare. ICES Journal of Marine Science: fsy058. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsy058
Puri S, Faulkes Z. 2015. Can crayfish take the heat? Procambarus clarkii show nociceptive behaviour to high temperature stimuli, but not low temperature or chemical stimuli. Biology Open4(4): 441-448. https://doi.org/10.1242/bio.20149654
