Ya-ya Sisterhood And speaking of sexual discrimination at the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law. It turns out that there is a Boalt Hall Women's Association, which boasts that "BHWA's Member Lounge is a convenient, private space just for women!". (For some reason I can't find any signs of a men's association or a men-only lounge) Are women a beleaguered minority group at Boalt who need special protection and refuge? Nah, women comprise 60% of the student body. Is this "underrepresentation" of males evidence of discrimination or simply a matter of self-selection? I suspect the latter, but you never know.
(I should also point out that I'm proud to be married to a Boalt graduate, and it is really a very good law school. Still, gender-based discrimination is gender-based discrimination, and it should be exposed, shouldn't it?)
UPDATE In regards to the above, Prof. Reynolds asks "Doesn't this violate the Constitution?". Now I'm no lawyer, and at first I thought he was just exaggerating. But this is what the Supreme Court had to say in 1950 about a situation where a Negro [sic] graduate student at the University of Oklahoma was denied access to the same campus facilities as the white students.
We conclude that the conditions under which this appellant is required to receive his education deprive him of his personal and present right to the equal protection of the laws. See Sweatt v. Painter, ante p. 629 . We hold that, under these circumstances, the Fourteenth Amendment precludes differences in treatment by the state based upon race. Appellant, having been admitted to a state supported graduate school, must receive the same treatment at the hands of the state as students of other races.And more to the point of gender discrimination there is Title IX. Am I missing something, or can someone explain how having a women's only lounge in a public university might somehow not be unconstitutional?
No surprise Saddam Hussein isn't too keen on unconditional inspections after all.
A Pakistani branch of the Religion of Peace apparently bombed the home of the honorary consul of Macedonia in Karachi today. Presumably this was due to festering resentments over Alexander the Great's invasion of the Indian sub-continent in 329 BC.
I had a beer yesterday with Haggai Elitzur, the Israeli-born, Kentucky-raised, Michigan-based blogger, who was in town for a conference. I am pleased to report that Haggai is as smart and engaging in person as he is on the pages of his fine blog. In our discussion of the Middle East, Haggai made a number of good points, among them:
* Arafat was never serious about following through on Oslo and obtaining a peace agreement. So why did he bother to start down that road in the first place? At the time he had no choice. With the end of the Soviet Union and because of his dimwitted support for Saddam in the first Gulf War, nearly all of his funding sources dried up. This was the only chance he had to gain legitimacy and fill his coffers, and apparently he milked it for all it was worth
* Barak wasn't such a patsy to pull out of Lebanon after all. Israel never wanted to stay there in the first place, so it's not like they gave up very much. And what they did do was deprive the Hizbollah of a grievance that others might think legitimate. The conflict on the northern border is now relatively low-level and as far as encouraging the Palestinians to start the intifadah? Feh, they would have done so anyway.
Yes, they would have done so anyway (Palestinians, I mean). They are insane.
Posted by: Anna on December 4, 2002 07:01 PMThanks, I enjoyed it as well!
Posted by: Haggai on December 4, 2002 11:32 PMAnd then there's those segregated batchrooms.
The horrors! Somebody call the ACLU!
Posted by: Tom on December 5, 2002 04:21 AMThe Lebanon game is not over. I would say it is still the first quarter, in fact. If it stays as is for the next twenty years than perhaps the above argument will prove correct. If it reverts to a basing ground for terror attacks and rocket barrages than it will have proved foolish on Israel's part. The one part of the above argument that I think is certainly wrong is that the withdrawal would "deprive the Hizbollah of a grievance that others might think legitimate." The types of people who would support Hizbollah don't need a legitimate reason. Israel's mere existence is sufficient for them.
Posted by: quiet storm on December 5, 2002 07:15 PMTrue, Hizbullah doesn't care about legitimate or illegitimate reasons, not by the standards of those who find jihadist terrorism illegitimate. But the Hizbullah situation is basically this: they run things in South Lebanon, which is kind of their own state within a state. They're allowed to do so by Syria, which as we know occupies and controls Lebanon. Syria does care about international legitimacy, and they might withdraw support from Hizbullah if the latter provided Israel with a reason to strike at Syria. Since Israel doesn't occupy southern Lebanon anymore, Hizbullah no longer has the international legitimacy that came from "resisting occupation," so Syria knows that Hizbullah has no excuses for firing missiles into Israel (yes, there's still the Shebaa Farms that they occasionally attack, but that hasn't provided a pretext for big missile launches or terror attacks into Israel). Not wanting to anger their main sponsors, Hizbullah has by and large refrained from launching attacks into Israel. They're still a very evil and dangerous terrorist organization, without a doubt, but Israel would be more threatened by them if the IDF were still in Lebanon than they are now that Israel is out of Lebanon.
Posted by: Haggai on December 5, 2002 11:53 PM