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The Russian conquest of Avdiivka is unlikely to alter the war's basic realities. Although delays in the delivery of aid to Ukraine have raised Russian hopes, no meaningful changes on the battlefield are near. The Russians cannot drive to Kyiv; the Ukrainians cannot eject the invaders. The first phase of the war in Ukraine is drawing to a close. Both sides are coming closer to acknowledging what has been clear to the rest of the world for quite some time: the current stalemate is unlikely to be broken in any significant way. This round of the war is going to end more-or-less along the current front lines. The actions taken in the next few years will determine whether or not there will be a round two.The war's end state is now clear, even if it may take a bit more time for the combatants to accept it. Russian President Vladimir Putin's barbaric invasion has failed, but Ukraine cannot return to the status quo ante. The only questions that remain concern the shape of the peace to come, and how best to avoid a second act in this pointless tragedy.Loud voices in the West are already suggesting that the best way to avoid round two is for NATO to expand again, and bring Ukraine into the alliance. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, on Kyiv's membership to the alliance, said over the weekend, "Ukraine is now closer to NATO than ever before...it is not a question of if, but of when." He said Nato was helping Kyiv to make its forces "more and more interoperable" with the defence alliance and would open a joint training and analysis centre in Poland. "Ukraine will join Nato. It is not a question of if, but of when," he insisted.If this is the path the alliance follows, future fighting is almost assured. One side's deterrent is often the other's provocation.NATO expansion was a necessary condition for Putin's invasion of Ukraine. It was not sufficient, since Putin has agency and made a catastrophically bad choice, but it was necessary. Those in the West who blame the United States for the war are as myopic as those who claim that Western policies had nothing to do with it. Putin remains a cold warrior at heart, and talked about NATO obsessively in the years leading up to the invasion.Expanding NATO further would again provide the necessary conditions for tension and conflict. Russia will not stand by while Ukraine joins the enemy camp. A second invasion – perhaps before Ukraine formally joined the alliance, or perhaps afterwards – would be extremely likely. Those who suggest that deterrence would keep the Russians in check should listen to the rambling interview Putin just gave to Tucker Carlson. Ukraine simply matters more to the Russians than it does to us. Putin would calculate that no American president would be willing to sacrifice New York for Kyiv.Another solution exists, one that might well assure Kyiv's security without exacerbating Russian paranoia. Ukraine should be "Finlandized."During the Cold War, Finland was essentially a neutral country. It took no official positions on the pressing issues of the day, and was careful not to criticize the Soviet Union. Leaders in Helsinki made it clear to those in Moscow that they had no desire to join the West. They resisted pressure to join both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and discouraged their citizens from openly criticizing either side. Finland avoided the Soviet embrace by making it clear that it would avoid the West as well. "Finlandization" was a forced neutrality. The term was often used in a pejorative sense during the Cold War, as a warning about what could happen to the rest of Europe if the United States was not careful. What was often overlooked at the time was just how well Finlandization worked out for the people of Finland, who managed to stay free and outside of the various Cold War crises. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that today Finns consistently rank among the world's happiest people.Finlandization was a recognition of geopolitical reality, and it was the best choice for a small nation with the misfortune to lie next to a superpower. Switzerland followed a similar path during the 1930s. Like the Finns, the Swiss realized that their independence and very survival depended on avoiding any perception of flirtation with the enemies of their neighbor.Ukraine will soon find itself in a similar situation, beside an aggressive and unpredictable great power. It should make the same choice, and the United States should help it do so.A Finlandized Ukraine would not be allowed to join the West, but neither would it come under Russia's thumb. It would be neutral, a buffer zone between NATO and Russia, an independent state that would allow hawkish Russians to imagine that it is still part of their country. The Ukrainian people would be neutral, and therefore safe.If Washington were to lead an effort to emphasize the enduring neutrality of Ukraine, to Finlandize it, Russia's paranoia could be reassured rather than provoked. Finlandizing Ukraine would be the best outcome for all involved, including for the Ukrainian people. The disappointment in being excluded from NATO would be tempered by the knowledge that it puts them on their best path to peace and stability. And it would be the best way to avoid Ukrainian War Two.

As public support for Ukraine has waned over time, and Washington's policy elites are shifting their focus more toward the conflict in Gaza, an endgame for Ukraine is desperately needed. U.S. and European officials have reportedly broached the issue of possible peace negotiations with their Ukrainian counterparts. This begs the question: What could a peace treaty between Kyiv and Moscow look like? One historical instance stands out among many as a potential model for how the Russo-Ukrainian War could end.The "Winter War," or the Soviet-Finnish War that took place from November 1939 to March 1940 (and was renewed by the Finns as allies of Germany between June 1941 and September 1944), has drawn some comparisons with the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. After Finland rejected an ultimatum to concede a considerable portion of its territory and the Soviet signing of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Joseph Stalin's Red Army invaded Finland to install a puppet Communist Finnish government and eliminate a potentially hostile presence near the Soviet Union's second city and only Baltic port of Leningrad.Similar to the initial phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Soviet officials predicted that Helsinki would fall to Soviet troops in as little as three days. However, despite the Soviets outnumbering the Finns in soldiers by three to one, Helsinki succeeded in holding off the Red Army for more than three months, inflicting extremely heavy casualties on the invading forces. Though Finland was eventually defeated and forced to concede about 11 percent of its territory, the Finns scored a moral victory. It is widely considered that the grit and courage of Finland's resistance convinced Stalin that incorporating Finland into the Soviet Union or turning it into a Communist client state like Poland would be more trouble than it was worth. This also contributed to Stalin's eventual agreement to sign a peace treaty with Finland in 1944 in return for a small amount of additional territory and a commitment on Helsinki's part to neutrality. Finland thus became the only part of the former Russian Empire that was not reincorporated into the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin.Thereafter, Finland implemented the Paasikivi-Kekkonen doctrine, which aimed to preserve Finland's survival as an independent country by maintaining a neutral foreign policy stance, while Finnish nationalism became a central ideological and political driving force in Finnish society. The Soviet Union stuck to the terms of the treaty with Finland, and during the Cold War, Finland developed as a remarkably prosperous and successful Western democracy. On this basis, after the Cold War ended, Finland was able to join the European Union in 1995 and then NATO in 2023. While "Finlandization" was considered a pejorative suggestive of accommodation, if not appeasement among Western geopoliticians during the Cold War, it turned out to be a diplomatic triumph. Finland has long had one of the world's highest per capita GDPs, scores 100% on Freedom House's Democracy Index (the United States scores 83), and Finns have long ranked as the world's happiest people. The Austrian State Treaty of 1955, which guaranteed Austrian neutrality, by which Soviet and NATO troops withdrew from the country, also ensured that Austria developed as a successful and prosperous Western democracy. Kyiv might learn from the Finnish example that surrendering some territory, though deeply painful, is still worth it if the greater part of the country thereby secures its independence and capacity for economic and political development. Hopefully, the strength of Ukrainian nationalism and the tough and united resistance of Ukrainians to Russia's invasion have also persuaded Putin, as Stalin was persuaded by Finnish resistance, that his goal of turning the whole of Ukraine into a Russian client state is impossible. This is already a great victory for Ukraine, not just in terms of Russia's initial goals but the history of the past 300 years during which Russia has dominated Ukraine.The government of Ukraine currently remains steadfast in its maximalist aims of recovering all of its internationally recognized territory, including Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Military reality, however, suggests that this goal is extremely unlikely to be achieved and that an agreement freezing the existing battle lines may well be the best that Kyiv can hope for, at least for the present. On the other hand, if the war continues, Russia's massive advantages in manpower, industry, and weapons production could lead to far more significant Ukrainian losses — just as Finland would likely have suffered complete disaster if it had continued to fight after March 1940 or September 1944.Washington can do its part by not encouraging unrealistic war goals and thereby possibly exposing Ukraine to future disaster.Ukraine has already won in key respects. Vladimir Putin has no hope of subjugating the whole of Ukraine as a vassal state in the foreseeable future. Kyiv is moving closer to the West and could be integrated into the European Union (EU) in the future. Moreover, Moscow's actions have actually reinforced Ukrainian nationalism.As with Finland, this national unity presents the best hope for Ukrainian independence.

Jeffrey Miron


This article appeared on Substack on June 13, 2023
The state of Oklahoma has recently approved a charter for the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, whose curriculum will include religious teaching. Taxpayers will fund the school, so a battle will ensue over whether such funding is desirable or constitutional.
Economic reasoning suggests three possible justifications for government support of education.
First, one person's education might benefit society more broadly. Economic productivity might be higher, for example, if everyone has mastered "the three Rs." Some individuals, however, might ignore this "spillover" and therefore choose too little education relative to the social optimum.
Second, people for whom education would be productive (by raising their future income) might underinvest due to myopia, suggesting that even without spillovers, the laissez‐​faire level of education might be too low. Some parents, in particular, might choose too little education for their children unless policy makes education cheaper.
Third, people for whom education would be beneficial, with or without externalities, and even without myopia, might have insufficient income to pay for private education and face difficulty in borrowing to finance such an investment (credit constraints).
Reasonable people can debate whether these arguments are convincing. Each has some plausibility, yet each is easily overstated.
In Libertarian Land, governments play no role in education, whether via mandatory schooling, public schools, funding for vouchers or charters, state colleges and universities, or subsidized student loans.
The reason is that, while government support might have the benefits described, this support requires government to define what constitutes education, as the Oklahoma controversy illustrates. Government definition of education limits variety and innovation, and in the extreme facilitates thought control. It is no accident that totalitarian regimes exercise extreme control over their educational systems.
If one nevertheless takes as given that, for the foreseeable future, government will fund education, and have the power to determine what kinds of education receive this support, should taxpayer funding be available for religious schools?
Assuming such education meets the curricular standards that government imposes on all schools, public and private, the answer is yes.
Why? Because religious schools can generate the three benefits that potentially justify government support of education. This is the standard reasoning for allowing private religious schools (or home schooling) to satisfy mandatory schooling laws.
Stated differently, allowing taxpayer funding to religious schools that meet the criteria for funding under the state's general rules (e.g., teaching the three Rs) is the neutral position for government with respect to religion. This neutrality is the natural interpretation of the Constitution's establishment clause, which states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Thus libertarians would prefer little or no government involvement in education. If government does fund education, however, it should not exclude religious schools a priori but instead determine funding based on the criteria that might justify such intervention in the first place.

 I know that I should not even bother to engage with such things, but I saw someone retweet this from Christopher Rufo on X-Twitter. I think that it is revealing about two fundamental different ways of thinking about diversity and differences in a university. First, as Judith Butler states in the video posted below (11:49), that classes in women and gender studies are filled with debate and discussion. This is something that I think anyone who has been in a classroom would probably agree with. I would argue that it extends that it goes beyond gender studies to other subjects of supposed indoctrination such as critical race theory or even Marxism. Christopher Rufo's response to this is to focus not on what happens in such classrooms, he has probably never been in one, but to cite some supposed fact that faculty in gender and interdisciplinary studies are 100% left. I am not sure what he means by that, or if he is including all interdisciplinary programs, but I am going to assume that the left he is referring to is voting patterns, since that is an obsession of many critiques of higher education. 
One could say if one wanted to be generous that what we have is two different ways of thinking of what difference means. Butler focuses on the differences internal to the classroom, the debates and discussion of issues of gender and sexuality, and Rufo focuses on voting, on what happens outside of the classroom. If one wanted to be generous one could call this a differend, in Jean-François Lyotard's sense, a disagreement about the terms of disagreement itself, about what it means for something to be the same or different. That is too generous, however, it is more like a bait and switch. The right's critique of indoctrination in the classroom often uses activity and speech outside of the classroom as a supposed indicator of internal classroom dynamics. Voter registration of faculty is supposed to be an indicator of what and how people teach. Or, to take another example, a faculty members activity outside the classroom, a tweet or protest, is taken to be an indicator of their bias in the classroom. I have even had this happen to me in which my blog, this one, was offered as evidence of my supposed bias in teaching. Just to be clear, if your argument about faculty bias or indoctrination looks to such evidence as faculty voter registration, tweets, political engagement or other activity outside of the class as evidence then you have not proven what you claim to prove. That does not stop people from using this standard. I even know of faculty who have internalized this standard, who curtail their own political activity so as not to appear biased, to be objective. I have heard of political science professors who refuse to register with a party or donate to candidates for fear of appearing biased. Academic freedom and free speech are confused enough to curtail each. The focus on electoral politics also explains one of the ongoing obsessions of the right wing pundit sphere. There is a whole niche publishing market of books arguing that liberalism, Marxism, postmodernism, critical race theory are all THE SAME. I believe that Christopher Rufo even wrote such a book.  Such a claim is demonstrably false from the perspective of the respective histories, ontologies, and epistemologies of different political ideologies. It does, however, make sense on one level and that is the one thing that all these different politics and philosophies have in common is that they are not likely to vote Republican. All of these shoddy, intellectually dishonest, and often anti-semitic books about the secret history of Cultural Marxism and Critical Race Theory are all attempts to give an intellectual basis to a rather Schmittian distinction of friend versus enemy, to prove that everyone who is against you is actually part of the same conspiracy. That your enemies are enemies of freedom and rationality itself. The focus on voting registration or party affiliation also seems to carry an odd assumption that the political makeup of any activity, any institution, or group, should reflect the overall division of the US. That unless a college major, or discipline, is roughly thirty percent Republican and Democrat, with forty percent unaligned or uninterested in the whole thing, it must be because of indoctrination. It seems odd to suppose that every part of society should function as a microcosm of the society. Would one also assume that all rifle clubs, churches, country clubs, and so on must reflect society at large? Which brings me to the last assumption of this overanalyzed tweet, and that is a causal one. It is assumed that the uniformity of voting or party affiliation, or whatever other paltry measure, of a department of discipline is an effect of what happens in the classroom. That is the supposed indoctrination. As Spinoza argues, however, one of the fundamental aspects of imagination, of what we could call ideology, is confusing effects for causes. I can only speculate here, but I can imagine that maybe the students who sign up for a gender studies course, or women studies, might already have a politics that corresponds with their interest. The same thing could be said for a course on global warming or the history of civil rights or any other issue seen as indoctrination, the students are already educated, already engaged, before they enter the classroom. To put it bluntly, a party that has made ending abortion rights (not to mention in Florida the persecution of gay, lesbian, and trans people) part of its central platform should not be surprised that a women studies or gender studies course has no members in it. All of this obsession with the political make up of different major and disciplines is happening at the same time that one party is openly declaring hostility towards knowledge about science (climate change, Covid), history (slavery), society (gender), and even current events (the 2020 election). I stress open hostility, because the other party, the Democratic Party might declare that climate change is real, but that does not mean it is going to do anything about it--active nihilism versus passive nihilism. Universities seem ill equipped to deal with this assault, maintaining their standard neutrality towards "both sides" of any issue, but this neutrality towards politics on part of the institutions of knowledge is being confronted by a politics that is anything but neutral with respect to knowledge. 

In his press conference with President Zelensky on Tuesday evening, President Biden made one statement that was both entirely true, and is the potential basis for a new U.S. approach to the conflict in Ukraine. He said that Ukraine has already won a great victory in the war — by defeating the initial Russian plan to subjugate the whole of Ukraine.If the Biden administration and Washington establishment could recognize the implications of this, they could craft a new narrative that would allow them, and the Ukrainian government, to present a compromise peace as a Ukrainian victory (albeit a qualified one) and a Russian defeat — though not a complete one.In fact, the Ukrainian victory in 2022 was even greater than that. As things stand today, by preserving the independence and Western orientation of 80 percent of former Soviet Ukraine, the Ukrainian forces, with Western help, have reversed more than 300 years of history during which, in one way or another, Ukraine has been ruled from Russia.As the distinguished Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy told the Quincy Institute on Tuesday, this achievement echoes that of the Finns during the Second World War, when their heroic resistance convinced Stalin that conquering the whole of Finland and turning it into a Communist state would be more trouble than it was worth. Finland was therefore the only part of the former Russian empire that was not incorporated into the Soviet Union or turned into a Communist client state.Given the strength and unity of Ukrainian nationalism that this war has demonstrated, it is impossible to imagine that the whole of Ukraine could ever again be ruled for long by Moscow. However, Finnish survival as a democratic state did come at a price. Finland had to surrender a portion of its territory (including the historic city of Vyborg) and sign a treaty of neutrality. It should be obvious though that this was a vastly preferable alternative to sharing the fate of Poland, let alone the Baltic States.In his own remarks to the press conference, President Zelensky categorically ruled out any cession of territory to Russia. Indeed it is very hard to imagine any Ukrainian government formally and legally agreeing to Russian annexation. On the other hand, bowing to military reality and the advice of his military commanders, President Zelensky has now ordered the Ukrainian army to go on the defensive and fortify its existing positions.If this remains Ukrainian strategy, then by default the territory now held by Russia will remain under de facto Russian control; and given the disproportion of forces and resources between Ukraine and Russia, it is very difficult to see how a future Ukrainian offensive would succeed any more than this year's has done. Even if the Biden administration does persuade the Republicans in Congress to agree to another massive aid package for Ukraine, can anyone seriously think that future administrations will be able to procure such U.S. aid next year, and the year after that, indefinitely? Yet that is what will be required if Ukraine is to sustain its fight. And when the aid stops, Ukraine will be defeated. The Biden administration and its NATO allies have declared that their goal in the war is to help Ukraine achieve a better position at the negotiating table. But the truth is that Ukraine is unlikely ever to be in a better position than it is today. It could be much worse.Finally, Biden said something that was probably just evasive phrasing, but could be spun into a new diplomatic approach. Asked about NATO membership for Ukraine, he said that "NATO will be part of Ukraine's future." NATO, for better or worse, will be part of all our futures. That does not mean that we will all become members of NATO.

DOHA, QATAR — In remarks Sunday at the 21st Doha Forum in Qatar, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov seemed to revel in what is becoming a groundswell of international frustration with the United States over its policies in Israel. Despite Russia's own near-isolated status after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Lavrov glibly characterized the U.S. as on the wrong side of history, the leader of the dying world order, and the purveyor of its own brand of "cancel culture.""I think everybody understands that this (Gaza war) did not happen in a vacuum that there were decades of unfulfilled promises that the Palestinians would get their own state," and years of political and security hostilities that exploded on Oct. 7, he charged. "This is about the cancel culture, whatever you don't like about events that led to the current situation you cancel. Everything that came before February 2022, including the bloody coup (in Ukraine) and the unconstitutional change of power … all this was canceled. The only thing that remains is that Russia invaded Ukraine."Lavrov, beamed in from Russia to the international audience in Doha, went fairly unchallenged, though his interviewer James Bays, diplomatic editor at Al Jazeera, attempted to corner him on accusations stemming from Russia's own bloody record in Chechnya in the 1990s and and 2000s and its ongoing military campaign in Syria, which Lavrov noted was at the "behest" of the Syrian government.On the issue of the failed ceasefire vote at the UN Security Council, of which Russia is a permanent veto member, Lavrov said, "we strongly condemn the terrorist attack against Israel. At the same time we do not think it is acceptable to use this (terrorist) event for collective punishment of millions of Palestinian people." Did he condemn the United States for vetoing the ceasefire measure? "It's up to the regional countries and the other countries of the world to judge," he declared.When asked if there was a "stalemate" in the Russian war in Ukraine, and what the Russians may have gained from their invasion in 2022, he said simply, "it's up to the Ukrainians to understand how deep a hole they are in and where the Americans have put them." On whether a ceasefire may be in the offing in that war Lavrov said, "a year and half ago (Zelensky) signed a decree prohibiting any negotiations with the Putin government. They had the chance in March and April 2022, very soon after the beginning of the special military operation, where in Istanbul the negotiators reached a deal with neutrality for Ukraine, no NATO, and security guarantees…it was canceled," he added, because the Americans and Brits wanted to "exhaust (Ukrainians) more."Lavrov gleefully piggybacked on themes from an earlier forum panel on the Global South. He accused "the United States and its allies" of building "the model of globalization, which they thought would serve them well." But now, Lavrov contends, the unaligned are using "the principles and instruments of globalization to beat the West on their own terms." As for Russia, Lavrov deployed a little "cancel culture" of his own, cherry picking the high points of his country's history over the last 200 years to project a nation that he boasts will emerge unscathed by Western assaults today."In the beginning of the 19th century Napoleon (rose European armies) against Russia and we defeated him; in the 20th century Hitler did the same. We defeated him and became stronger after that as well," he said. With the Ukraine war, the West will find "that Russia has already become much stronger than it was before this."

There's no question that war leaves behind its lingering destruction. This includes both harm to people and to the environment. As the world marks the second year of Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, we must reflect on the impact of war on Ukraine, the resiliency of its people and global response to resolving the issues of bomb contamination.Roughly one-third of Ukraine's territory is contaminated. This is the size of an average country in Europe. Ukraine is currently experiencing the worst environmental disaster in terms of soil pollution per unit of time.Toxic elements such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury leach from ammunition and weapons into the soil. If potential areas of contamination are not identified and recorded in time, harmful substances can enter the food chain and become carcinogenic. This threatens global food security and export opportunities. Failure to act now could result in the deterioration of human health.Prior to the war, about 400 million people worldwide relied on Ukraine for their food supply making this a large-scale problem. Spent ammunition and chemical weapons can contaminate soil for decades or longer. Land is not a renewable resource. Soils and their fertile layer are formed over thousands of years. Just 1 cm of soil is formed in 200-400 years, and 20 cm in 5,000-6,000 years. Military operations that take place for 2 years like in the case of Ukraine can destroy what has been formed over thousands of years.Contaminations left behind from war are nothing new. We know this from wars in SE Asia, conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and the list goes on. It's no surprise then that at least 50 countries are impacted by landmines and other explosives. The good news is there are solutions to the long lasting impacts of conflicts like unexploded ordnance on humans, all living things and our planet.One example is a project called "Assessing farmland and ecosystems damage in north-eastern Ukraine from the Russian invasion" (UA-UK-CH) led by this article's co-author Dr. Olena Melnyk. This project is a joint initiative with researchers from Ukraine, England and Switzerland aimed at enhancing the capacity for mapping, environmental monitoring, and managing the effects of war-induced damage on Ukraine's agricultural land, utilizing existing networks of scientists and field-based analysis to safeguard food security. The first component of the project involves gathering ground truth data on the damage inflicted on Ukrainian farmland, which is then utilized to analyze the extent of soil pollution and calibrate remote sensing data.The second component focuses on developing an application for mapping farmland to document hazards and contamination and prioritize land for production and remediation.The third aspect involves building up "citizen science" by training non-combatant experts to inspect and analyze contaminated farmlands and contribute to land mapping efforts.The fourth component aims to facilitate the decontamination and remediation of Ukrainian lands to restore agricultural productivity while promoting post-war environmentally friendly agricultural practices to ensure sustainability and climate neutrality. This project will enable Ukrainian farmers to avoid dangerous areas and prioritize the land for targeted decontamination. The data collected from this research project will help inform government agencies, civil societies and other stakeholders.The United States is the largest funder of global humanitarian demining. Since 1993, the U.S. has provided at least $4.2 billion to over 100 countries from Laos to Ukraine. Funding is invested in activities such as bomb clearance, victims' assistance and explosive risk education.Environmental research like the UA-UK-CH in Ukraine has proven to be necessary and important to the future of soil rehabilitation post conflict. This should be a norm and donor countries, funders, academic institutions can leverage the future findings from Ukraine and leverage it as a model that can inspire research in other war impacted countries — especially 50-year-old legacy contaminations in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam—where no study has been done.

Forget the record haul of campaign cash, the
polling numbers consistently making him the front runner, or the avalanche of
endorsements that Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry has racked up in his
quest to become the state's next governor. The most significant indicator of
impending success in his campaign just flashed while telling us more about another
state politician.

This week, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy gave
his official seal of approval to Landry's bid. In a social media
post, he cited clamor for Landry helming the state and policy congruence on
issues of flood insurance pricing, coastal restoration, and access to mental
health services as his reasons for choosing Landry over four other
decently-funded Republicans, all of whom trail Landry badly in donation amounts
and polling numbers.

A high-profile blessing can't hurt Landry's prospects,
although at first glance it seems like an odd paring. Landry has become known,
and popular in Louisiana, because of his unapologetic conservatism that he
invokes in head-on clashes with Democrats and liberals from which not only does
he not shy away, but he instigates when provoked, such as the series of legal
actions he has helped to launch against a number of Democrat Pres. Joe Biden
actions, emulating similar challenges to executive overreach committed by
Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards. In most of these legal conflicts, Landry's side has prevailed.

By contrast, ever since he won a second term
commencing with Biden's term, Cassidy
has slid in the opposite direction, adopting an accommodationist view of
Biden by signing on to part of the president's legislative program almost
universally opposed by his party, the most consequential of which, the
hyper-inflationary and waste-ridden Infrastructure and Investments Jobs Act,
will fritter away hundreds of billions of dollars and act as an anchor dragging
on economic growth. And he was one of a few GOP senators to vote for the
impeachment conviction of Republican former Pres. Donald
Trump on spurious, delusionary charges.

This illuminates the most bizarre aspect of the
endorsement, for Landry in his take-no-prisoners style often is compared to
Trump, and won
Trump's endorsement nearly three months ago. More than any other
incongruity, this points to the main reason by Cassidy threw in his lot with
Landry.

Since he began selective sellouts to Democrats, the
mistaken impeachment vote and subsequent efforts to evade
responsibility for it, Cassidy's popularity among Louisianans has plunged.
His approval numbers have polled significantly lower than his GOP counterpart
Sen. John Kennedy, with Republicans
actually holding him in lower esteem than Democrats according to one taken over
a year ago.

This puts any hopes of serving beyond 2026 in jeopardy.
And matters become much worse if prior to then if the state switches back to a
closed primary system for federal elections, where Cassidy almost assuredly
would lose the GOP nomination against any quality conservative – a system
Landry has advocated in the past.

Understand that Cassidy's tabbing of Landry
attempts not only to try to align himself with a popular conservative favored to
take over the executive branch, as a means of trying to make conservatives in
the electorate forget their displeasure with him, but also a strategy to
mitigate Landry actions that could harm a reelection attempt. With the endorsement,
he may hope Landry reciprocates, or at least observes neutrality, in 2026 regardless
if Landry serves as governor, and that Landry not go to great lengths to back
institution of closed primaries if he gains the governorship.

Importantly, that Cassidy did this reveals his
calculation that Landry has a very good chance of triumphing this fall. Yet the
real consequence of the Cassidy endorsement of Landry isn't that it will pick
up a few votes for Landry, but that an endangered Cassidy hopes that it creates
a lifeline to keep him in office three years from now.

 A few days ago I gave a short talk on the subject. I was partly inspired by a little comment made at a seminar, roughly "of course we all know that if prices are sticky, higher nominal rates raise higher real rates, that lowers aggregate demand and lowers inflation." Maybe we "know" that, but it's not as readily present in our models as we think. This also crystallizes some work in the ongoing "Expectations and the neutrality of interest rates" project. The equations are the utterly standard new-Keynesian model. The last equation tracks the evolution of the real value of the debt, which is usually in the footnotes of that model. OK, top right, the standard result. There is a positive but temporary shock to the monetary policy rule, u. Interest rates go up and then slowly revert. Inflation goes down. Hooray. (Output also goes down, as the Phillips Curve insists.) The next graph should give you pause on just how you interpreted the first one. What if the interest rate goes up persistently? Inflation rises, suddenly and completely matching the rise in interest rate! Yet prices are quite sticky -- k = 0.1 here. Here I drove the persistence all the way to 1, but that's not crucial. With any persistence above 0.75, higher interest rates give rise to higher inflation. What's going on? Prices are sticky, but inflation is not sticky. In the Calvo model only a few firms can change price in any instant, but they change by a large amount, so the rate of inflation can jump up instantly just as it does. I think a lot of intuition wants inflation to be sticky, so that inflation can slowly pick up after a shock. That's how it seems to work in the world, but sticky prices do not deliver that result. Hence, the real interest rate doesn't change at all in response to this persistent rise in nominal interest rates.  Now maybe inflation is sticky, costs apply to the derivative not the level, but absolutely none of the immense literature on price stickiness considers that possibility or how in the world it might be true, at least as far as I know. Let me know if I'm wrong. At a minimum, I hope I have started to undermine your faith that we all have easy textbook models in which higher interest rates reliably lower inflation. (Yes, the shock is negative. Look at the Taylor rule. This happens a lot in these models, another reason you might worry. The shock can go in a different direction from observed interest rates.) Panel 3 lowers the persistence of the shock to a cleverly chosen 0.75. Now (with sigma=1, kappa=0.1, phi= 1.2), inflation now moves with no change in interest rate at all.  The Fed merely announces the shock and inflation jumps all on its own. I call this "equilibrium selection policy" or "open mouth policy." You can regard this as a feature or a bug. If you believe this model, the Fed can move inflation just by making speeches! You can regard this as powerful "forward guidance." Or you can regard it as nuts. In any case, if you thought that the Fed's mechanism for lowering inflation is to raise nominal interest rates, inflation is sticky, real rates rise, output falls and inflation falls, well here is another case in which the standard model says something else entirely. Panel 4 is of course my main hobby horse these days. I tee up the question in Panel 1 with the red line. In that panel, the nominal interest are is higher than the expected inflation rate. The real interest rate is positive. The costs of servicing the debt have risen. That's a serious effect nowadays. With 100% debt/GDP each 1% higher real rate is 1% of GDP more deficit, $250 billion dollars per year. Somebody has to pay that sooner or later. This "monetary policy" comes with a fiscal tightening. You'll see that in the footnotes of good new-Keynesian models: lump sum taxes come along to pay higher interest costs on the debt. Now imagine Jay Powell comes knocking to Congress in the middle of a knock-down drag-out fight over spending and the debt limit, and says "oh, we're going to raise rates 4 percentage points. We need you to raise taxes or cut spending by $1 trillion to pay those extra interest costs on the debt." A laugh might be the polite answer. So, in the last graph, I ask, what happens if the Fed raises interest rates and fiscal policy refuses to raise taxes or cut spending? In the new-Keynesian model there is not a 1-1 mapping between the shock (u) process and interest rates. Many different u produce the same i. So, I ask the model, "choose a u process that produces exactly the same interest rate as in the top left panel,  but needs no additional fiscal surpluses." Declines in interest costs of the debt (inflation above interest rates) and devaluation of debt by period 1 inflation must match rises in interest costs on the debt (inflation below interest rates). The bottom right panel gives the answer to this question. Review: Same interest rate, no fiscal help? Inflation rises. In this very standard new-Keynesian model,  higher interest rates without a concurrent fiscal tightening raise inflation, immediately and persistently. Fans will know of the long-term debt extension that solves this problem, and I've plugged that solution before (see the "Expectations" paper above).The point today: The statement that we have easy simple well understood textbook models, that capture the standard intuition -- higher nominal rates with sticky prices mean higher real rates, those lower output and lower inflation -- is simply not true. The standard model behaves very differently than you think it does. It's amazing how after 30 years of playing with these simple equations, verbal intuition and the equations remain so far apart. The last two bullet points emphasize two other aspects of the intuition vs model separation. Notice that even in the top left graph, higher interest rates (and lower output) come with rising inflation. At best the higher rate causes a sudden jump down in inflation -- prices, not inflation, are sticky even in the top left graph -- but then inflation steadily rises. Not even in the top left graph do higher rates send future inflation lower than current inflation. Widespread intuition goes the other way. In all this theorizing, the Phillips Curve strikes me as the weak link. The Fed and common intuition make the Phillips Curve causal: higher rates cause lower output cause lower inflation. The original Phillips Curve was just a correlation, and Lucas 1972 thought of causality the other way: higher inflation fools people temporarily to producing more.  Here is the Phillips curve (unemployment x axis, inflation y axis) from 2012 through last month. The dots on the lower branch are the pre-covid curve, "flat" as common wisdom proclaimed. Inflation was still 2% with unemployment 3.5% on the eve of the pandemic. The upper branch is the more recent experience. I think this plot makes some sense of the Fed's colossal failure to see inflation coming, or to perceive it once the dragon was inside the outer wall and breathing fire at the inner gate. If you believe in a Phillips Curve, causal from unemployment (or "labor market conditions") to inflation, and you last saw 3.5% unemployment with 2% inflation in February 2021, the 6% unemployment of March 2021 is going to make you totally ignore any inflation blips that come along. Surely, until we get well past 3.5% unemployment again, there's nothing to worry about. Well, that was wrong. The curve "shifted" if there is a curve at all. But what to put in its place? Good question. Update:Lots of commenters and correspondents want other Phillips Curves. I've been influenced by a number of papers, especially "New Pricing Models, Same Old Phillips Curves?" by Adrien Auclert, Rodolfo Rigato, Matthew Rognlie, and Ludwig Straub, and "Price Rigidity: Microeconomic Evidence and Macroeconomic Implications" by Emi Nakamura and  Jón Steinsson, that lots of different micro foundations all end up looking about the same. Both are great papers. Adding lags seems easy, but it's not that simple unless you overturn the forward looking eigenvalues of the system; "Expectations and the neutrality of interest rates" goes on in that way. Adding a lag without changing the system eigenvalue doesn't work. 

Louisiana State University System President William
Tate IV, on the eve of a change in gubernatorial administrations to one which
he doesn't see eye-to-eye, is saying the right things. Still, he needs to put
his money where his mouth is on others.

With the cocoon in which higher education exists catching
out some prominent university leaders recently over their schools'
reactions to anti-Semitic activities, Tate has avoided any such problems with a
very sensible attitude that should
be made official policy at all Louisiana public institutions: the Kalven
Principle of university neutrality regarding public issues. Recently,
he spoke to his faculty members at the Louisiana State University campus about
how he'll not comment on political controversies but then try to defend faculty
and student commentary.

It shows he's come a long way from almost
three decades ago when his academic publications complained about how math education,
an allegedly white-created/"Eurocentric" pedagogical environment, stultified and
misjudged black children's learning, as well as missed opportunities to become
an agent of social change. With a woke worldview dimly looked upon by incoming governor
Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, in his over two years leading the system Tate
hasn't publicly articulated an opinion for any agenda related to his past
published views or any others, including his silence
over a measure that failed this year in the Legislature for a report about "diversity,
equity, and inclusion" efforts in state higher education criticized by two
other system heads.

But Tate's defense of free expression and inquiry
is in part only lip service because of LSU's uneven record in fulfilling that,
even today. That's the conclusion gleaned from the leading interest group defending
free expression in academia, the Foundation
for Individual Rights and Expression. Annually it evaluates and ranks
larger institutions for their adherence to principles maximizing constitutional
free expression, derived by media reports, active litigation, and student surveys.

The 2024
report gives LSU a dismal below average score putting it 140th,
worse than more than half of the field. There are bright spots, ranking 29th
for speaker tolerance and credits Tate's administration by ranking it 27th
for student perception of administrator support of free speech. But students
also rank the school lowly on their comfort in expressing views in class, in
assignments, and to other students and faculty members, at 238th, and
even lower at 240th for perceptions about their ability to discuss
controversial matters on campus.

Yet perhaps the most disappointing are several expression
policies that, depending upon application, violate constitutional speech
protections, and one that is unambiguously facially unconstitutional. That one,
which deals with prohibitions against electronic dissemination of "material
that is defamatory, obscene, fraudulent, harassing (including uninvited amorous
or sexual messages), threatening, incites violence, or contains slurs,
epithets, or anything that may be reasonably construed as harassment or
disparagement based on race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation,
age, disability, or religion or to access, send, receive, or solicit sexually
oriented messages or images or any other communication prohibited by law or
other University directive," sequesters LSU along with a minority of other
public institutions with such restrictive speech codes.

This actually marks an improvement for LSU, which three
years ago ranked second-from-last among the largest and most prominent
institutions with largely the same strengths and weaknesses. And, FIRE
lauds LSU for the system adopting a measure relating to the Kalven Principle,
the Chicago
Statement of Free Speech (something the Legislature required all systems to
do in principle five years ago) that emphasizes robust freedom of expression
standards at institutions of higher learning, although aspects of its speech code
that intertwines among university and system policy statements and permanent
memoranda certainly contradicts that.

With Landry as governor and not keen about
politicization within academia and especially infused into instruction, Tate
and other system leaders will have to toe the line as the new governor
gradually through his appointment powers reshapes the various governing boards,
as well as the Board of Regents. He, and they, can start by making constitutional
the expression policies of the schools in their systems consistent with the Chicago Statement – among state schools with at least 10,000 students enrolled
only McNeese State receives an all-clear grade from FIRE – as part of a broader
effort to ensure robust discussion takes place without institutions favoring certain
viewpoints that subverts their academic missions by replacing that with indoctrination.

A group of faculty at Penn have written A Vision for a New Future of the University of Pennsylvania at https://pennforward.com/.  They encourage signatures, even if you're not associated with Penn. I signed. Big picture: Universities stand at a crossroads. Do universities choose pursuit of knowledge, the robust open and uncomfortable debate that requires; excellence and meritocracy, even if as in the past that has meant admitting socially disfavored groups? Or do universities exist to advance, advocate for, and inculcate a particular political agenda? Choose.  Returning to the former will require structural changes, and founding documents are an important part of that rebuilding effort.  For example, Penn and Stanford are searching for new presidents. A joint statement by board and president that this document will guide rebuilding efforts could be quite useful in guiding that search and the new Presidents' house-cleaning. There is some danger in excerpting such a document, but here are a few tasty morsels: Principles:Penn's sole aim going forward will be to foster excellence in research and education.Specifics:Intellectual diversity and openness of thought.  The University of Pennsylvania's core mission is the pursuit, enhancement, and dissemination of knowledge and of the free exchange of ideas that is necessary to that goal.....Civil discourse.  The University of Pennsylvania ... acknowledges that no party possesses the moral authority to monopolize the truth or censor opponents and that incorrect hypotheses are rejected only by argument and persuasion, logic and evidence, not suppression or ad-hominen attacks. Political neutrality at the level of administration.  ... In their capacity as university representatives, administrators will abstain from commenting on societal and political events...The University must remain neutral to scientific investigation, respect the scientific method, and strive to include many and varied approaches in its research orientation.Admissions, hiring, promotion ... No factor such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, or religious associations shall be considered over merit in any decision related to the appointment, advancement, or reappointment of academic, administrative, or support staff at any level. Excellence in research, teaching, and service shall drive every appointment, advancement, reappointment, or hiring decision.no factor such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, or religious associations shall be considered in any decision related to student admission and aid. Faculty committed to academic excellence must have a supervisory role in the admission process of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. Admission policies should prioritize the fair treatment of each individual applicant, and criteria must be objective, transparent, and clearly communicated to all community members. Faculty have outsourced admissions to bureaucrats. While the cats are away, the mice play. Faculty complain the students are dumb snowflakes. Well, read some files. And no more "bad personality" scores for asians. Education:A central goal of education is to train students to be critical thinkers, virtuous citizens, and ethical participants in free and open but civilized and respectful debate that produces, refines, and transmits knowledge. Competition:as Penn's competitors struggle to define their mission and lose their focus on this manner of excellence, Penn has a unique opportunity to emerge as a globally leading academic institution in an ever more competitive international landscape....An unconditional commitment to academic excellence will become Penn's key comparative advantage in the decades to come. As many other universities in Europe and the U.S. compromise their hiring decisions by including other non-academic criteria, Penn will be able to hire outstanding talent that otherwise would have been hard to attract. I have been puzzled that the self-immolation of (formerly) elite universities has not led to a dash for quality in the second ranks. There is a lot of great talent for sale cheap. But many second rank schools seem to have bought in to The Agenda even more strongly than the elite. I guess they used to copy the elite desire for research, and now they copy the elite desire for fashionable politics. Or perhaps donors government, alumni or whatever it is that universities compete for  also are more interested in the size of the DEI bureaucracy than the research accomplishments and teaching quality of the faculty or the competence of the students. Clearly, the writers of this document think in the long run competition will return to the production and dissemination of knowledge, and that universities that reform first will win.  

The hits just keep coming from Louisiana's governor-elect,
signaling major and welcome changes from the policy path of the current chief
executive.

Yesterday,
Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry
announced that he would appoint Aurelia Skipworth Giacommetto as head of the
state's Department of Environmental Quality. Giacommetto served as the director
of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under Republican Pres. Donald
Trump, is trained as a biologist and lawyer and has extensive experience
working in the chemical and public policy areas. As with all gubernatorial
appointees prior to receiving Senate confirmation, she will retain the job
unless the Senate doesn't vote to confirm her by the end of its 2024 regular
session.

The choice will discomfit the political left, because
Trump! In its bizarre worldview, anybody or anything having to do with Trump
not only is a terrible thing for mankind, it's entirely illegitimate within the
American political system. That's why it has loathed Landry, who Trump likes,
and this selection likely will be the first of many to work it into a lather.

In reality, Louisiana's DEQ, unlike state agencies
dealing with environmental concerns in some other states (witness Democrat
Pres. Joe
Biden's Environmental Protection Agency's Director Michael Regan
in his previous post), never has been captured by leftist environmentalism,
much less climate alarmism, not even under Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, so
there won't be much policy change. Giacommetto's appointment won't work up
leftists as much as what Landry said about her appointment.

Landry made clear that in his administration no
favoritism would be played by state government policy-making, at least insofar
as emanating from his office, in picking winners and losers among energy
providers. This markedly differs from the creed of climate alarmists like
Edwards, whose faith dictates that any energy source not renewable, particularly
fossil fuels, be shunned because those forms that release carbon, methane, or particular
other gasses allegedly cause – even if real world data never have demonstrated this
– too much climate warming.

Indeed, Landry pledged that not only discrimination
against the state's fossil fuel industry would stop but also he would do what
he could to support it, to the point that it doesn't contribute to actual
degradation of the environment. This also runs counter to the alarmist creed
that government must bend over backwards at any cost to taxpayers put its thumb
on the scales to favor renewable sources, if not punish all others, because climate
emergency!

His full-bore defense of a more
scientifically-derived understanding of the place of fossil fuels in public
policy and Giacommetto's selection seemed to flummox the news corps attending
the announcement, who Landry had to coax into asking questions. After a few
seconds hesitation and a prompt, he was asked about whether he would continue the
Edwards crusade for carbon neutrality. Landry noted the evidence showed that kind
of unrelenting emphasis and its associated costs and economic disruption was economically
destructive, especially for the working class.

So that would be a negatory. He answered another
question signaling his rejection of any power
portfolio mandating use of renewables.

Not that this comes as any surprise. Last week, at
the final
meeting of Edwards' Climate Initiatives Task Force – his method of trying
to go around the Legislature as best he could that issued a garbage-in-garbage-out
report that formed the basis of executive actions he undertook to implement
as best he could as limited as it was the climate alarmist creed – it devolved
into a weird combination of elegy, obituary, wishful thinking, and updates on plans
largely to waste federal dollars already in the pipeline. Expect Landry to
ignore, if not retract, any of Edwards' executive actions that allowed this to
exist and any actions taken related to its work products.

This is the agenda that will send leftist elites into
a tizzy. It's also the agenda that will aid Louisianans, outside of ideologues
and rent-seekers latched onto the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming
hoax, to prevent wasting tax dollars and reducing the quality of their lives.
And promises much more of the same kind of relief in other policy areas as
Landry rolls out more of his agenda.

The men gathered in a graveyard in the dead of night. They wore body armor, boots and carried semi-automatic weapons. Their target lay a mile away, the official residence of the president of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh — a U.S.-trained military officer who seized power in 1994. Those in the cemetery planned to oust him, but within hours, they were either dead or on the run.


One of those killed, the ring-leader and former head of Gambia's Presidential Guard, Lamin Sanneh, had previously earned a master's degree at the Pentagon's National Defense University in Washington, D.C.


Some of the plotters were eventually convicted in the United States "for their roles in planning and executing an unsuccessful coup attempt to overthrow the government of The Gambia on December 30, 2014." Four pled guilty on counts related to the Neutrality Act — a federal law that prohibits Americans from waging war against friendly nations. A fifth was sentenced in March 2017 for buying and exporting weapons used in the failed coup, which pitted two generations of U.S.-trained mutineers against each other.


The State Department doesn't know about any of this — or doesn't want to. A simple Google search reveals this information, but when Responsible Statecraft asked if Yahya Jammeh or Lamin Sanneh had received U.S. training, a State Department spokesperson responded: "We do not have the ability to provide records for these historical cases at this time." When asked about other trainees in other nations that have experienced military uprisings, the response was the same.


Responsible Statecraft has found that at least 15 U.S.-supported officers have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror. The list includes military personnel from Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Chad (2021); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, 2021); Mauritania (2008); and Niger (2023). At least five leaders of the most recent coup in Niger, received U.S. training, according to a U.S. official. They, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as governors, according to the State Department.


The total number of U.S.-trained mutineers across Africa since 9/11 may be far higher than is known, but the State Department, which tracks data on U.S. trainees, is either unwilling or unable to provide it. Responsible Statecraft identified more than 20 other African military personnel involved in coups who may have received U.S. training or assistance, but when asked, the State Department said it lacks the "ability" to provide information that it possesses.


"If we are training individuals who are executing undemocratic coups, we need to be asking more questions about how and why that happens," said Elizabeth Shackelford, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and lead author of the newly-released report, "Less is More: A New Strategy for U.S. Security Assistance to Africa." "If we aren't even trying to get to the bottom of that, we are part of the problem. This shouldn't just be on our radar — it should be something we intentionally track."


Shackleford and her colleagues say that the U.S. penchant for pouring money into abusive African militaries instead of making long-term investments in bolstering democratic institutions, good governance, and the rule of law, has undermined wider American aims.


In addition to training military mutineers in Africa, other U.S. security assistance efforts during the war on terror have also foundered and failed. Ukrainian troops trained by the U.S. and its allies stumbled during a long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian forces, raising questions about the utility of the instruction.


In 2021, an Afghan army created, trained, and armed by the United States over 20 years dissolved in the face of a Taliban offensive. In 2015, a $500 million Pentagon effort to train and equip Syrian rebels, slated to produce 15,000 troops, yielded just a few dozen before being scrapped. A year earlier, an Iraqi army built, trained, and funded — to the tune of at least $25 billion — by the U.S. was routed by the rag-tag forces of the Islamic State.


"U.S. policy in Africa has for too long prioritized short-term security to the detriment of long-term stability by prioritizing the provision of military and security assistance," Shackelford writes in the new Chicago Council report. "Partnerships and military assistance with illiberal, undemocratic countries have delivered little, if any, sustainable security improvements, and in many cases have prompted further instability and violence by building the capacity of abusive security forces."

Anastasia P. Boden


Today was a watershed moment in Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence. For all intents and purposes, racial preferences in higher education are no longer allowed. Over the course of 237 pages, the nine Supreme Court justices traded barbs over affirmative action with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion. But Justice Thomas's concurrence was the star.
As expected, the majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina was written by Chief Justice Roberts, who has long authored vigorous defenses of race‐​neutrality in government policymaking. He coined the (depending on who you ask) much lauded or much mocked phrase, "the best way to get rid of discrimination on the basis of race is to get rid of discrimination on the basis of race." He included a similar statement in this case, remarking that "Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it."
In typical Justice Roberts fashion, the Chief never explicitly overruled Regents of the University of California v. Bakke or Grutter v. Bollinger, the two primary Supreme Court cases permitting race‐​based college admissions for the purpose of "obtaining the benefits that flow from a diverse student body." Instead he concluded that the challenged admissions programs failed to satisfy those opinion's safeguards. For instance, they amounted to quotas, relied on stereotyping, penalized some students based on race, and had no ending point in sight. Though Chief Justice Roberts never explicitly said so, the implication is that the diversity rationale is no longer permissible, since preferences will always act as a negative for some students (after all, admissions is a zero‐​sum game) and the diversity rationale is inherently stereotypical (because it assumes that students bring something to the table by virtue of their race alone).
Justice Thomas's individualist concurrence, by contrast, was a strident show‐​stopper that beautifully defended the principles of equality before the law and individualism. His opinion began with a lengthy history of the Fourteenth Amendment and concluded with a whopper of a line accusing Justice Jackson of engaging in racial determinism.
The concurrence covers a lot of ground beginning with an Originalist analysis of the original public meaning of the Equal Protection Clause. Though the dissenting justices argue that the Clause does not require race‐​neutrality, Justice Thomas persuasively demonstrates that the Clause was passed to forbid "all legal distinctions based on race or color," including purportedly benign ones.
He also wrote at length about the inherent arbitrariness of racial classifications (covered in David Bernstein's new book, Classified), mismatch theory (which posits that affirmative action perpetuates stereotypes by placing recipients in classes where they are "less likely to succeed academically relative to their peers"), and the pernicious effect race‐​based admissions has had on Asian students, who are placed at a significant disadvantage by Harvard's and UNC's preference system. But he reserves the most powerful language for rebutting Justice Jackson's assertion that racial preferences can be justified as a remedy for societal discrimination.
Justice Thomas begins his rebuttal by noting that there's a difference between genuine remedial measures for racial discrimination (which are permissible under the Equal Protection Clause) and racial balancing for its own sake. To prevent the former from becoming the latter, proponents of government sponsored racial classifications must demonstrate a traceable link to government perpetuated discrimination. Justice Jackson has no such evidence and instead relies mainly on statistical disparities. Or, as Justice Thomas puts it:
As she sees things, we are all inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society, with the original sin of slavery and the historical subjugation of black Americans still determining our lives today. The panacea, she counsels, is to unquestioningly accede to the view of elite experts and reallocate society's riches by racial means as necessary to "level the playing field," all as judged by racial metrics. I strongly disagree.

As Justice Thomas notes, not all disparities can be ascribed to race, let alone discrimination. Disparities can arise from socio‐​economic status, geography, and myriad other factors. And while Justice Jackson focuses on group outcomes, Justice Thomas focuses on individuals. Even where disparities exist, they don't exist for everyone in the group. But "[e]ven if some whites have a lower household net worth than some blacks," Justice Thomas says, "what matters to Justice Jackson is that the average white household has more wealth than the average black household." He continues:
This lore is not and has never been true. Even in the segregated South where I grew up, individuals were not the sum of their skin color. Then as now, not all disparities are based on race; not all people are racist; and not all differences between individuals are ascribable to race. Put simply, "the fate of abstract categories of wealth statistics is not the same as the fate of a given set of flesh‐​and‐​blood human beings." T. Sowell, Wealth, Poverty and Politics 333 (2016). Worse still, Justice Jackson uses her broad observations about statistical relationships between race and select measures of health, wealth, and well‐​being to label all blacks as victims. Her desire to do so is unfathomable to me. I cannot deny the great accomplishments of black Americans, including those who succeeded despite long odds.

To the extent individual Black Americans have fewer means, or poorer health, or any of the disparities Justice Jackson describes, universities can take those factors into account. What it can't do, says Justice Thomas, "is use the applicant's skin color as a heuristic, assuming that because the applicant checks the box for 'black' he therefore conforms to the university's monolithic and reductionist view of an abstract, average black person." In other words, individuals are more than the skin color they are born into.
He uses as an example Justice Jackson's hypothetical regarding John and James, two applicants competing for admission to UNC. John is a white, seventh‐​generation legacy at the school and James is black applicant would be the first member of his family to go to UNC. Putting aside that the university could take into account James's first‐​generation status rather than his race, Justice Thomas asks, "why is it that John should be judged based on the actions of his great great‐​great‐​grandparents? And what would Justice Jackson say to John when deeming him not as worthy of admission: Some statistically significant number of white people had advantages in college admissions seven generations ago, and you have inherited their incurable sin?" As Justice Scalia wrote elsewhere, "under our Constitution, there can be no debtor or creditor race." Instead, "in the eyes of the government, we are just one race here. It is American."
Contrary to the dissenters' view of equality, which seeks equality based on group outcome, Justice Thomas emphasizes individual traits over group membership, noting that "All racial groups are heterogeneous, and blacks are no exception—encompassing northerners and southerners, rich and poor, and recent immigrants and descendants of slaves. Eschewing the complexity that comes with individuality may make for an uncomplicated narrative, but lumping people together and judging them based on assumed inherited or ancestral traits is nothing but stereotyping."
Contrary to being mere products of their race, "Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments." Whereas the dissenters consider individuals passive actors in an inherently and inexorably racist scheme, Justice Thomas believes individuals have agency. "What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals' skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism."
Justice Thomas concludes that "the great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny. And, the tragic failure of this Court was its misinterpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments, as Justice Harlan predicted in Plessy." He's right. Some of the biggest injustices have occurred because of the Supreme Court's narrowing of civil rights under the Fourteenth Amendment (looking at you, Slaughter‐​house and Cruikshank) and its upending of equality before the law. If we want all people to achieve the American Dream, the Court must protect individuals' liberty and prevent government created barriers from getting in the way.
It's true, of course, that society has never been colorblind, but as Justice Thomas says, the government must be—lest we start a vicious and self‐​perpetuating cycle of race‐​based balancing. So will it follow that command given today's opinion?
There's a very real possibility schools will just drive their discrimination further underground. It took a great deal of discovery to get to the bottom of Harvard's and UNC's systems, which though multi‐​factored on their face amounted to quotas in practice. There will likely be litigation over covert racial balancing or the use of "neutral" proxies in the future. But for now, the Court has affirmed its commitment to treating people without regard to race or other immutable characteristics, which is a win for our individualist Constitution.