The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Planet of the Fat Black Statues Persons of historical color Donald Jeffries Recently, there has been a veritable epidemic of statues suddenly popping up all over the globe, depicting overweight Black females. This is decidedly odd, as the figures don’t represent a particular person of historical significance, but rather a modern “Woke” phenomenon of a  brand  of human being; the loud and proud Black woman. One of these statues, incredibly enough, was erected in Italy. If anyone can tell me what significance any Black woman has had on Italian history, I’m willing to listen. Maybe the Italians covered up how the Black females in their society- cleverly hidden away from the eyes of the world- have manipulated things behind the scenes for eons. Kind of like an Illuminati of Color. I’m sure Michelangelo and Da Vinci would be proud. Maybe a fat Black woman invented spaghetti. Pizza. Lasagna. Why not? Any African American Studies course worth its salt will tell you how suppres...

  The Once and Future College What was and what will be once more Librarian of Celaeno Everyone can sense it. Though it is a mighty edifice, the university has neglected its foundations, which have so thoroughly rotted away that the whole thing will collapse under its own weight. This is true of education more generally as well; the K-12 system with which we are all as familiar as the air has the same problem. While there are isolated pockets of excellence, they are few and far between and subject to the same pressures. There is a great fall coming. Many people point to AI as both problem and solution. As a nail in the coffin, it’s fairly plausible. I teach online classes, and Chat GPT has essentially made them meaningless. A huge percentage of my students simply do not do their own work at all. I have no way to prove that they’re cheating beyond the fact that it’s obvious to anyone who is a careful and experienced reader, but with no empirical way of demonstrating that, I am force...