Higher education still playing race games, AI sucks at poetry and other commentary

Campus beat: Still Playing Race Games“Higher education institutions across the country,” note The Washington Examiner’s editors, “have continued racist [admissions] practices with creative workarounds” despite “the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision finding that race-based admissions standards violated the Civil Rights Act.” Notably, medical-school accreditation is still premised on “achieving mission-appropriate diversity outcomes,” leading to overt discrimination against white men.The claim that a diverse “healthcare workforce improved health outcomes for black and Latino patients” has been debunked, but administrators still “employ intimidation and shaming tactics” to pressure staff to continue using “race unlawfully in admissions decisions.” The Trump administration has shown “dogged determination” in pursuing race-blind admissions, but “a return to blatant racism in the medical profession is just one election away.”From the left: AI Sucks at PoetryThe Nation’s Katha Pollitt tested several AI programs’ ability to write poetry in her voice.

The resulting poems have “all the tics of contemporary mediocre poetry,” with “nothing fresh or original” to them, no “wit or zing,” no “pressure on language or form or voice or thought.” The AI version of Katha Pollitt is the “uncanny-valley version of me, a Stepford writer.” Writers should take note that “AI can’t make you a better writer,” only a “more conventional, lazy one.” Using AI may help a writer avoid “struggle and suffering and self-doubt,” but also “discovery and joy.”Eye on NY: Preserve Fairness in NY CourtsThe socialist ethos “has taken over New York’s federal appellate court,” observes Michael A.Fragoso at City Journal, where a “divided panel” has “thrown a lifeline to Argentinian socialists” while undermining “the sanctity of New York’s envy-of-the-world capital markets.” After Argentina privatized its national o...