[guest post by JVW]

An interesting dispatch from Phillip Patrick at The Spectator just came across the Women’s Soccer Desk at Patterico’s Pontifications:

The women’s soccer World Cup will kick off in under fifty days’ time in Australia and New Zealand, and England is among the favorites to lift the trophy. But who will get to see it? Broadcast deals have yet to be signed, seemingly because bids from several European countries are unacceptably, some would say insultingly, low.

Italy has reportedly offered less than 1 percent of what its broadcasters paid for the men’s event in Qatar last year — which didn’t even feature Italy — and Germany just 3 percent. FIFA are reportedly furious about these “slap in the face” offers and have threatened a blackout. [FIFA President Gianni] Infantino says that broadcasters had offered just $1 million to $10 million compared to the $100-200 million for the men’s tournament. The sports ministers of five countries have intervened with a joint statement calling for an agreement to be reached.

The European Rugby Championships are slated to take place from July 20 through August 19, and that the schedule of matches during weekdays in Greenwich Mean Time takes place between 2:30 am and noon, hardly prime viewing hours. The heart of Western Europe is one hour ahead of GMT, so major soccer nations such as France, Italy, and Germany would have a 3:30 am to 1:00 pm window for live viewing. Not only does this interfere with sleep and work, but given the tradition of Western Europeans taking vacation in July and August it becomes hard to imagine leaving the discotheque and hurrying to a television set to watch The Netherlands vs. Portugal or England vs. Denmark, though I suppose it could be a nice brunch outing if your favorite squad is lucky enough to have the latest start time of the day. The article points out that although women’s soccer attracts strong crowds in European stadiums, it has yet to demonstrate that casual viewers are willing to tune in to broadcasts the same way they will for men’s games.

This brings perspective to some of the posts I have written over the past few years as the U.S. Women’s National Team sought to bring their compensation more in line with that of their male counterparts. In our country, the women’s team made the plausible argument that their ongoing success on the world stage and their popularity among U.S. sports fans made them every bit as valuable a commodity as the men’s team, even if there was some question as to whether or not the numbers truly added up. But what we are seeing in Europe is a stark reminder that on that continent, which so often congratulates itself on having more modern sensibilities than we philistine Americans display, women’s athletics remains an afterthought:

[A]s the bid figures reveal, women’s soccer is undoubtedly, significantly less attractive from a purely entertainment and thus commercial perspective. The FIFA World Cup (men’s version) carries a glorious history in its train as it globetrots quadrennially. Domestically, each “big club” encounter evokes and references hundreds of others and feels like the latest installment of a rather good box set TV series that we know will never end.

In contrast, the women’s tournaments always have a feeling of novelty, of being the first iteration, a constant relaunch of a product that never quite catches the public imagination in the way its sponsors hope. Around 260 million people worldwide watched the last women’s World Cup final in France, which sounds healthy, but that figure was handily beaten by the men’s final in Qatar, which was watched by 1.5 billion.

FIFA reports that the overall revenue, from broadcast rights to ticket and merchandise sales to corporate sponsorship, is (brace yourself for this) about forty times as much for the men ($6.3 billion) as it is for the women ($157 million). Given that, should there be any surprise that European broadcasters would only want to pay one to five percent of the men’s fee for the rights to women’s tournament?

How do we start on the path to promoting the women’s game to close the gap on broadcast rights for the world’s most prestigious soccer tournament? Mr. Patrick suggests that Europe needs to do a better job of promoting women’s club soccer:

Perhaps those who aspire to parity, or something approaching it, with the men’s game need to lower their sights. The commercially successful men’s world cups in soccer, rugby and cricket are all supported by a deep-rooted and consistently popular club game. The World Cup is the gleaming summit of a solidly constructed pyramid. Women’s soccer hasn’t established the base of that pyramid yet: attendance at Women’s Super League games in the UK averages less than 7,000.

Or perhaps women’s soccer should stop comparing itself to the men’s game at all? The finances will never equate but there may well be a place for a different version of the beautiful game. Fewer prima donnas, fewer stoppages, less play acting, less hype, players with a closer relation to the clubs they play for and the fans who watch every week. There are many ways that the women’s game could establish itself and win a passionate, and committed, if probably smaller audience than the men. Vive la difference.

Don’t expect American feminists to lower their expectations and accept status as a minor league to their male counterparts, but it would seem that this attitude is firmly entrenched in the land of “free” health care, six-week vacations, and retirement at 62. European women’s club teams are generally off-shoots of the established and historic men’s clubs, and though their average game attendance is about one-twentieth of the men’s games (the Football Association says that the correct average figure for WLS attendance is fewer than 2,000 per game), they benefit from sharing in the club sponsorships. Still, there is a tremendous gap between the salaries of the highest-paid women players, Samantha Kerr at $502k and Alex Morgan at $439k, and those of the their male counterparts, Kylian Mbappe ($102m) and Cristiano Ronaldo ($75m). Granted, the top men benefit from ridiculous Qatari and Saudi money being thrown about lavishly. As far as averages go, the mean salary for the Women’s Super League in England was $37,000 (£30,000) while the corresponding salary in the Premier League is $3.9 million, or one hundred times as much. Closer to home, the average woman playing in the National Women’s Soccer League last year made $54,000 while the average man playing in Major League Soccer brought home $514,000, less than ten times as much.

Perhaps when the Megan Rapinoes of the world deign to lecture her fellow citizens on how rough she and her counterparts have it here in her own country, she might take a moment to be thankful that she isn’t trying to make a career playing in Britain, France, Germany, or Italy, where she and her footballing sisters truly are second-class employees. Meanwhile, as we have continually pointed out, the best way to raise the wages for women athletes is to shell out your own hard-earned money to watch them play, purchase their merchandise, and support their sponsors. Using legislative pressure to force private businesses to overpay for services based on some misguided notions of equity are not the way to go about it.

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

I figured I should comment on the most recent, and perhaps final, development in the matter of the United States Women National Soccer Team (USWNT) and United States Soccer (USS) which we have discussed first in 2019 and then updated the following year. Please refer back to those posts for an overview of the issues, as I am too pressed for time right now to recap.

This past week, the sides settled their dispute with USS agreeing to pay $24 million to the USWNT, with 11/12 of that sum going as back-wages to players and the remaining $2 million set aside for a fund which players can tap for post-career initiatives or for charitable purposes. The settlement is contingent upon USWNT agreeing to a new collective bargaining agreement which is expected to happen within the next few months. USS also has committed to providing equal pay to both the women’s and men’s team going forward, including player bonuses which are paid by USS for participation in tournaments such as the quadrennial World Cup. (Presumably this commitment does not encompass prize money paid to players by FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, seeing as how the men’s World Cup revenue is nearly fifty times larger than the women’s World Cup revenue.)

This is being seen as a win for the USWNT, and rightfully so. Coming off of yet another World Cup title (if, to be sure, coupled with yet another underwhelming Olympics performance), the women not only are receiving the back-pay they had been fighting for, but they are also forcing USS to admit in deed if not in fact that the former collective bargaining agreement — which the USWNT’s represented had agreed to back in 2017 — was unfair. This argument had been rejected by U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner almost two years ago. Yet USS decided to give in and settle anyway, and even though the national governing body insists this is a justifiable compromise (the $24 million settlement is indeed far less than the $67 million the USWNT had originally demanded), there is no way that ever-woke sports media wasn’t going to spin this as an acknowledgement that the women were unfairly paid in relation to the men, even though neither Judge Klausner nor I was convinced of that fact. Yes, USS gets this distraction off of their daily agenda, and they say that this will save them an estimated $9 million in legal fees going forward (being a sports labor lawyer must be a ka-ching! profession), so I suppose it is entirely up to them and their legal counsel to determine whether or not this step makes sense.

Not everyone is pleased with the result, though. Former USWNT goalie Hope Solo, who was one of the first players to sue for higher pay (and a separate suit she has against USWNT is still in the court system), believes that the settlement’s dependence upon CBA ratification is actually a trap and could cause the women’s player association to settle for a lesser deal in order to unlock the back wages. An article in The Athletic (restricted to subscribers) points out that in order to align their CBA with that of the men’s team, the men’s player association is going to have to cooperate, and the fellas will certainly have their own opinions on what “equity” entails.

But let’s tip our caps to the women’s team who played their match in the Court of Public Opinion far better than they played it in United States District Court.

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

I thought I might follow-up on a post I wrote last summer, regarding the United States Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) and their lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation alleging violations in equal pay protection and civil rights laws. The USWNT’s complaints boiled down to the following:

* The men were compensated more for appearance and performance in international showcase events such as the World Cup.

* The men were given more money for appearance fees when representing the United States in international matches.

* The men were treated to more luxurious travel and enjoyed better training and playing facilities.

The matter, which spent about a year in arbitration before heading into court, is now before a federal judge here in Los Angeles. Yesterday, Judge R. Gary Klausner (appointed by George W. Bush), chucked part of the USWNT’s suit:

The team filed a motion in February asking for $67 million in damages in lieu of a trial. Female players claimed they had not been paid equally to the men’s national team, citing the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner issued a 32-page decision Friday partially granting the federation’s request for summary judgment, according to The Associated Press.

He threw out the Equal Pay Act portion of the lawsuit but left in the Civil Rights Act claims regarding the federation’s use of charter flights, hotel accommodations, medical support services and training support services.

Judge Klausner is clearly a reader of Patterico’s Pontifications, as yesterday he agreed with my conclusion last summer that a contract mutually agreed upon pursuant to collective bargaining by the USWNT’s players’ association and U.S. Soccer shouldn’t casually be abrogated because one side now feels that it has a stronger bargaining position:

In the summary decision, the judge cited the women’s team’s collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer that prioritized guaranteed money over a “pay-to-play” structure favored by the men’s team. According to the summary, the sides had negotiated for a pay-to-play structure for the women’s team beginning in May 2016, and reached a compromise in 2017 that meant the women’s team would have 20 contracted players for the year, each receiving a base salary of $100,000. The deal also included bonuses for friendlies.

“The history of negotiations between the parties demonstrates that the WNT rejected an offer to be paid under the same pay-to-play structure as the MNT [men’s national team], and that the WNT was willing to forgo higher bonuses for other benefits, such as greater base compensation and the guarantee of a higher number of contracted players,” the summary reads. “Accordingly, Plaintiffs cannot now retroactively deem their CBA worse than the MNT CBA by reference to what they would have made had they been paid under the MNT’s pay-to-play structure when they themselves rejected such a structure.”

The matter next goes to trial on June 16, to determine if the differences in training and travel for the two squads is a civil rights violation, through given the fact that the U.S. Soccer Federation has already pledged to take steps to equalize these two items for both teams, there might not be much for the women to gain by going forward.

In any case, the USWNT still has the satisfaction of knowing they are far more celebrated in their on-field efforts than the USMNT.

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

As we celebrate the victory of our United States Soccer Women’s National Team (USWNT), and their curb-stomping of every single Eurotrash nation who once thought they could colonize our lands (Did anyone else notice that we beat, in order: Spain, France, England, and the Netherlands? Ok, ok, we’re missing Russia.), talk has turned to the women’s demand for what in unhelpful shorthand is being referred to as “equal pay.” Because much of this debate seems to be arguing from premises that are not shared by each combatant, I thought it might be helpful to outline the two athlete compensation streams that are being discussed.

World Cup Revenue
Those who seek to dismiss the USWNT’s complaints out of hand are quick to point out the obvious fact that the revenue for the men’s World Cup dwarfs the revenue for the women’s event. Total revenues for the 2018 World Cup (for men) in Russia were estimated at $6 billion dollars, which includes event sponsorships, ticket sales, television rights, merchandising, and whatever else is sold under the auspices of FIFA, a corrupt international body of sleazy bankers, corrupt lawyers, and assorted louche princes and counts from defunct royal courts. The women’s event held the past several weeks in France, by contrast, is believed to have brought in $131 million, or about 2.2% of the haul of the men’s event. As such, the members of the French team which won the men’s title split $38 million in prize money, while the American women must make do with a pot of only $4 million, though it should be noted that the women share a much higher percentage of the total revenue than the men do. Short of socializing the funding for both events in order to even out the payoffs, I don’t see that there is a lot which can be done here.

National Team Pay
This is where the women’s team has their strongest argument that they are being treated unfairly. The USWNT is currently in mediation with U.S. Soccer, seeking to be paid stipends commensurate with the men’s team. They have also filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and filed suit against U.S. Soccer in U.S. District Court in Central California. Additionally, former USWNT goalie Hope Solo has separately filed suit against U.S. Soccer, also alleging pay discrimination.

The women’s logic is understandable, and it is laid out in an informative article by Michael McCann, a lawyer who writes about legal issues for Sports Illustrated. First and foremost, they have clearly been more successful than the men in international competitions. Documents filed in support of their position show that between 2016 and 2018, the USWNT ticket sales exceeded the men’s team sales, albeit slightly, and with the women’s World Cup victory coupled with the failure of the men’s team to qualify for last summer’s tournament, this could be a year where women’s team merchandise outsells men’s team merchandise. Given the wokedy-woke attitude of corporate America these days, one would assume that sponsorships would at the very worst be even, with the marketability of the women’s team perhaps surpassing that of the men’s team.

So, the thinking goes, why not pay women’s team members a stipend equivalent to that of the men’s team? The last real piece of revenue that hasn’t yet been mentioned is television revenue, and because U.S. Soccer packages both teams together in network deals it is hard to determine which is the more valuable piece of the pie. Traditionally the men have had higher television ratings than the women, but again, the recent success of the USWNT coupled with the on-field egg-laying by the fellas might change the numbers there and bolster the argument for a more equitable division. Olympic sports such as swimming and track & field provide a uniform stipend system irrespective of sex, and in some sports it would seem that it is the men’s team members who are getting shafted while the more popular women’s team members get by. The easy thing to do here is to simply draw up a new deal that dictates the U.S. Soccer Women’s National Team members receive the same organizational pay that U.S. Soccer Men’s National Team members do, right? At least one Presidential candidate believes so:

The @USWNT proved even before their World Cup win yesterday that they have what it takes to succeed. They generate more revenue than the men’s team and now hold the record for most FIFA Women’s World Cup wins. The world is watching — it’s time they were paid what they deserve.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 8, 2019

But hold on; not so fast.

It turns out that the USWNT’s compensation was the product of a a collective bargaining agreement negotiated by their own player’s association with U.S. Soccer. The men’s and the women’s teams have separate player’s associations, and thus each squad reached a different sort of deal. The men’s team pay is highly dependent upon the number of games in which a player appears for the national team; a player who makes ten appearances in a year makes 25% more than a player who makes eight appearances, and a player who is injured and does not appear for the men’s national team gets nothing for a stipend. By contrast, all women’s players in the national team pool are guaranteed a flat sum, and in return they get a smaller per-game appearance fee. This way a player who appears in ten games makes only slightly more than the player who appears in eight games, but the player who sits out the year with an injury (or, perhaps, maternity leave) still makes something. If the women choose a model so that everyone gets at least a little something while the men choose a model where you are paid to play, I don’t see how that violates any equal pay principles.

(To be completely fair, though, I do think the USWNT has a legitimate point when they complain that the men’s team has better training facilities and more luxurious travel. This is something that U.S. Soccer ought to rectify and make equal.)

One would think that a good pro-labor Democrat like Kamala Harris might be a little bit skittish about demanding that a collective bargaining agreement which is in effect for another 30 months be tossed aside just because one side now has a stronger hand to play. Imagine if the USWNT had lost in the round of 16 to Spain, and had thus ignominiously bowed out of the tournament much earlier than expected. Would U.S. Soccer be justified in demanding that the collective bargaining agreement be reopened and the player’s compensation adjusted downward? It’s impossible to see Senator Harris supporting that kind of move, so why should she be in favor of abrogating the agreement now?

It would be a classy move — and justifiable too — if U.S. Soccer would address the disparities in training and travel between the two teams, and provide a better experience for the women players. If they want to reopen the collective bargaining agreement and revisit compensation then I have no problem with that, but I am against the idea that they should somehow be compelled to do so by outside activists. The men’s and women’s player associations could also explore the idea of merging into one organization which would ensure that both sides are treated equally, though the USWNT may find itself having to compromise here and there to keep the men aboard. Who knows, with the success of the women’s team perhaps it would be a smart move for the men to latch on for the ride. But simplistic chants of “equal pay” and turning this into yet another tiresome grudge in the grossly misleading “pay gap” argument will only serve the purposes of the professional activist crew.

– JVW

[Headlines from DRJ]

They won the World Cup and two members are on the cover of SI (with bikini photos inside).

And apparently one or two hates Trump.

EDIT 7/10/2019: Megan, please read this.

— DRJ

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Stop me if you heard this before (note the link has changed from before because I “bumped” it several times).

So this morning the Jammie Wearing Fool (JWF) takes a swipe Obama for playing soccer in Brazil as our nation goes to war.

And the article by the AP makes an attempt to, in JWF’s words, “prop up Obama” writing:

The competing stories of Obama’s itinerary – a war front in Africa, an economic commitment to South America – divided his time in incongruous ways. By morning, he spoke with his security team about the international assault against Moammar Gadhafi’s defenses; by night, he was to stand atop a mountain and admire Rio’s world famous statue of Jesus.

Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes pounded faraway Libya.

It was all summed up by one image: Obama, adeptly juggling a soccer ball, as his aides helped him juggle his agenda.

But a funny thing happened when I clicked on the link JMF provided.  The reference to soccer was gone.  Mind you, it was in many other versions of the story.  But it was not at the link JMF provided.  I asked him about that, and he told me “it was apparently rewritten.”  Now there is not so much of a mention of any soccer ball.  Indeed the author even changed.

So it seems that as hard as they tried, the image of our President playing soccer as our military goes to war, was too much for the AP to successfully spin, so they tried to nix that part of the story entirely.  Nice.

Now as you guys know, I have tangled with the AP changing its story without any indication to the new reader that any change had been made.  Indeed, that is why I believe JWF when he says that the story at the link had changed.   Their stated policy is that breaking news stories can change.  Well, good, but did the AP suddenly decide the President didn’t play soccer?  Because, um, there is a picture there of him doing that.  What seems to have changed was what the AP felt like highlighting as examples of incongruous behavior:

Still, his team was eager to portray him as fully engaged in Libyan decision-making, even as the photographs and television images showed him touring a Rio de Janeiro shantytown and gazing with his family at Christ the Redeemer, the massive Art Deco mountaintop statue that has come to symbolize Rio.

See, touring in the shantytown sounds and looking at a statue of Jesus sounds a lot better than playing soccer.

Look, let me say that as a matter of fact the President should have some down time.  So I don’t object to him following March Madness, filling out his own brackets.  But what I object to is him doing it for the cameras.  He has an image to project, for his own sake and for the sake of our interests.  Going into the very room where Roosevelt managed WWII and filling out basketball brackets doesn’t send that image.  (And don’t even get me started about telling the world he had been bullied as a child.)  And if you have to play soccer and prove that you can hang with da kidz, can you at least try to look Presidential as you do it?

And to the AP, don’t cover up unpleasant truths just because it harms your side, okay?

And for the sake of preservation, I will cut and paste the text of both versions of the story after the break.

(more…)

Germany overran Poland yesterday, while millions of English-speaking people stood by and watched.

Now where have I seen this before?

UPDATE: I am reminded of a passage from a great Tom Lehrer song:

Once all the Germans were warlike, and mean
But that couldn’t happen again
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they’ve hardly bothered us since then

UPDATE x2: My friend Abe said yesterday that he raised an eyebrow when he learned that the winning goal had been scored by an allegedly German player with the suspiciously French-sounding name “Oliver Neuville.” “I’d check his papers,” Abe said.

Oh, I’m sure the Germans already checked his papers, Abe. They’re quite good at that.

[guest post by JVW]

Might as well do it this way.

Item One: Keep It in Your Pants, Pal
I, as many of you know, have been assigned by the newsdesk at Patterico’s Pontifications to provide unstinting coverage of women’s soccer, the fiendishly stupid bullet train, My Little Aloha Sweetie, and, of course, sex deviants. So I found this story to be right up my alley (wait, not the idiom I ought to be using):

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse chancellor Joe Gow, who was axed over the adult videos he created with his wife, said he was shocked that board members weren’t a “little more understanding” — but maintained that he had no regrets about filming the content.

Gow, 63 — who was fired from his long-term position by the Board of Regents on Wednesday — has argued that he shouldn’t have been given the pink slip because his videos should be protected by the First Amendment.

“I did not expect that we’d end up where we are now,” Gow told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the aftermath.

“I thought the board, given their staunch support of free speech, would be a little more understanding. But clearly, that’s not the case.”

When I reported on the candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates who made sex videos with her husband for a paid audience, some of the comments were along the lines of “Hey, consenting adults, and all that.” I get that attitude, and I want my inner libertarian to be cool with what a couple chooses to do behind closed doors. But when they then open up those doors and invite us to peek in, my inner conservative reserves the right to call them perverts. Joe Gow had previously been criticized by the UW board for having invited porn actress Nina Hartley to lecture on campus and paying her an honorarium, so rather than being some sort of First Amendment crusader I’m sort of thinking that Mr. Gow is simply a pornography addict.

Item Two: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
This probably won’t end well:

The national governing body for amateur/Olympic-style boxing recently codified a rule permitting male participation in the women’s division in its 2024 rulebook.

USA Boxing added a ‘Transgender Policy,” written in August 2022, into its 2024 rulebook, declaring that male boxers who transition to female are eligible to compete in the female category under certain conditions. To qualify for the female division, a man must declare his gender identity as female, have undergone gender reassignment surgery, have done hormone testing for a minimum of four years after such procedures, and have met testosterone limits set by USA Boxing.

“The athlete’s total testosterone level in serum must remain below 5 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category,” the 2022 rule said. Male boxers must demonstrate a total testosterone level in serum that is below 5 nmol/L for at least 48 months before first competition.

Minor boxers under the age of 18 must compete in the category aligned with their biological sex, but adult boxers can switch to the category of their preferred gender if they meet the requirements.

Raise your hand if you expected boxing to be a woke sport. I appreciate that they are now requiring four-years of hormone testing after gender reassignment (previous athletic policies required as brief a duration as one year). But according to this conversion app, a level of 5 nmol/L is equivalent to 144 ng/dL, which is roughly six times the testosterone level of the average woman under age 50 even if it is also apparently the same limit that the International Association of Athletics Federation adopted five years ago.

Parents, would you want your daughter in the ring with a competitor who just barely met these requirements?

Item Three: How Can Claudine Gay Possibly Survive?
It simply has to be that the walls are closing in on Claudine Gay. It is inarguable that she has, on several occasions, failed to properly cite sources in academic articles and papers that she has written. It is inarguable that Harvard has bent over backwards trying to find flimsy rationale why this is not a dismissible offense, and has run a slipshod investigation into her acts of plagiarism. It is furthermore inarguable that Harvard students are held to a far more rigorous definition of academic misconduct than their president is, and this is an ongoing problem in West Cambridge. We are reminded that Claudine Gay failed to support fellow black colleagues when the baying woke mobs came for them, so she should not expect her race and gender to bail her out of this predicament.

It’s actually quite sad that Ms. Gay lacks the dignity to simply step down and spare Harvard this ordeal, but the higher education establishment has spent the last half-century choosing political posturing over maintaining principles and standards, so I guess the reckoning is long overdue. Veritas my ass, Harvard.

I’m going to wrap it up here, gang. Happy New Year. I may try to sneak in one more post tomorrow that is already a few weeks overdue.

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

I’ve been fulminating for several years against campus student disciplinary tribunals, a nasty feature of contemporary campus life kicked into high gear by a notoriously awful edict from the Obama Administration delivered nearly thirteen years ago. Team Trump, under the solid leadership of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, made some strides in rolling back some of the more obnoxious and unconstitutional aspects of the Obama order, but unsurprisingly Joe Biden has worked to once again establish the preeminence of the intersectionality hierarchy in higher education.

Yet within the past month two developments have emerged which will complicate the desires of authoritarian administrators to arbitrarily exact justice on their charges. The first story comes from Yale University, where a federal court has recently reinstated the defamation lawsuit brought by a student who was dismissed from the university based upon questionable charges. Stephen Carter, a professor of law at Yale, explains:

The case of Khan v. Yale University has traveled a winding road. (Full disclosure: Yale pays my salary.) Testimony given under oath in a courtroom is ordinarily privileged, meaning that the witness can’t be sued for defamation. The trial court dismissed Khan’s lawsuit on the ground that Yale’s tribunal should be treated like a court. On appeal, the Second Circuit asked the Connecticut Supreme Court whether testimony at a university disciplinary hearing was privileged. The justices said no. Thus the Second Circuit’s decision to reinstate the lawsuit could not have come as an entire surprise. What hardly anyone expected was that it would be so sweeping.

The judges quoted the Connecticut Supreme Court, which had concluded that Yale’s tribunal “is not a quasi-judicial proceeding because it lacked a significant number of procedural safeguards — e.g., an oath requirement, cross-examination, the ability to call witnesses, meaningful assistance of counsel, an adequate record for appeal — that in judicial proceedings ensure reliability and promote fundamental fairness.”

Moreover, the Connecticut court explained, part of what makes courts actually, well, courts is that when they decide whether to punish individuals, they’re adjudicating based on laws they themselves didn’t create. By contrast, the tribunal “creates and applies only” the “internal policies” of the university, and therefore “lacks the necessary components of public participation and approval to be considered quasi-judicial.”

In other words, if you want witnesses at disciplinary hearings to be protected from defamation suits, you’ll need to add layers of those “procedural safeguards” that judicial proceedings entail.

The second item refers to a lawsuit filed against Stanford University by the family of Katie Meyer, a dedicated student/athlete who took her own life in spring 2022 after learning that a student disciplinary tribunal would be determining if she would be punished for an altercation she had with a fellow student. Sports Illustrated has a terrific article about this which I believe is available to non-subscribers (I no longer subscribe, and I’m able to pull it up), and it’s certainly worth a read to understand some of the more nuanced problems that these tribunals can create:

The Meyers’ search for answers started on the day she died, as a handful of teammates and friends began to fill in [her parents] Steve and Gina. Katie had hidden an incident from her family for months. It started with a teammate alleging that she had received an unwanted kiss from a football player on Aug. 20, 2021. Then, according to court documents and confirmed in several interviews, eight days later, Katie happened by the football player while riding her bike through campus, and she spilled hot coffee on him. Katie, in her communications with Stanford’s Office of Community Standards (OCS), said she fell off her bike and that the spilled coffee was an accident—that she didn’t know the person it landed on. But according to a letter from Stanford’s disciplinary arm, the football player said she had intentionally poured it on his back. On Sept. 16, the OCS launched an investigation. Katie was informed the next day. The office interviewed her shortly afterward—and began talking to others as well.

[. . .]

In the wake of Katie’s death, Steve and Gina found communication from the school lacking. They say they had trouble accessing Katie’s records and were put off by the clinical tone of Stanford’s statements. But that disappointment paled in comparison to their shock over what they would learn about Stanford’s disciplinary process.

The article explains that Katie was a high-achiever both in the classroom and on the soccer pitch, and was thus rather tightly wound. She had wanted to attend Stanford Law School the next year where she could use her extra year of athletic eligibility from the lost COVID year to captain the Stanford Women’s Soccer team one more time, and try to replicate their 2019 NCAA Championship. By all accounts, she was devastated when she received word in early spring 2022 that she would face a disciplinary proceeding, six months after the incident had first been reported. Katie feared that this would derail her law school application. It won’t come as a surprise to any of you that Stanford’s OCS office doesn’t quite follow what we know as due process:

Stanford’s Office of Community Standards operates as the school’s disciplinary arm for most cases. It is run by administrative staff who investigate and prosecute cases, while a panel of faculty, students and staff sit in judgment.

The Meyers’ complaint against Stanford echoes many other criticisms of its disciplinary arm and the school’s pressure-cooker atmosphere. In 2019, the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, reported that a psychiatric ward near campus admitted between one and three students a week. From ’19 to now, at least nine Stanford students have died by suicide.

Two independent analyses—from the Student Justice Project (2012), a group of Stanford students, parents and alumni, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (’20)—found a host of problems with Stanford’s disciplinary system, including slow response times and poor communication.

“It’s a system that presumes guilt,” says Bob Ottilie, a lawyer and one of the SJP founders. After issuing his report, at first privately to Stanford, his group met with school administrators. Officials engaged, Ottilie says, for seven months. But, he adds, “Literally, nothing changed.” In May 2013, the SJP started publicizing the report. It hammered the OCS for failing to provide due process and said its officers used their positions to intimidate students. Stanford responded by criticizing the study as flawed. So the SJP produced a second report in ’13, this time including 24 testimonials from students. Each described trauma, depression, anxiety and more born from the disciplinary process.

The SJP offered recommendations—like free representation for the accused—but Ottilie says the school met them with “hostility.” Stanford does allow for trained, independent advisers called “judicial counselors” to assist students. The counselors can be faculty, staff or students, but are not professionals. Ottilie thinks the advocates should be able to operate more like lawyers.

The Meyer family alleges that Stanford should have known that Katie was intense, that she was under great stress regarding her future, and that the disciplinary procedure could easily send her over the edge. Katie had been in counseling through the university, and her family believes she was poorly advised:

Katie also described her assertiveness as demonized. A perfectionist, she had been terrified of making mistakes her entire life. No alcohol, no speeding tickets, no A- marks. “I have given everything to this school,” she wrote [in her journal]. “I love Stanford.”

On Nov. 12 [2021] she had met with Julie Sutcliffe, then the assistant director of sport psychology. Katie detailed elevating feelings of anxiety and depression, describing her mood as irritable, frustrated and down, according to Sutcliffe’s notes, referenced in the Meyers’ complaint against Stanford. Katie scheduled a follow-up for the next week but missed the appointment after oversleeping from exhaustion, according to the complaint. She also saw Francesco Dandekar, the university’s associate director of sport psychology. According to the lawsuit, on Nov. 22 she told him she “was experiencing increased depression symptoms associated with perceived failure and [she reported] suicidal ideations.” (Dandekar did not respond to a request for comment.)

Stanford’s policy is that conversations between its students and its psychologists are confidential. For confidentiality to be broken, there must be an imminent threat of harm to oneself or others. The judgment call would have fallen to Dandekar as to whether Katie had met that threshold and he should alert others at Stanford of her condition. Kim Dougherty, the Meyer family lawyer, says the family believes the situation merited reporting. “There should have been communication,” she says. “There are supposed to be flags within the system.”

The next day, the lawsuit says, Katie met again with Sutcliffe, describing “worsening anxiety and mood and increased depression” coinciding with her interactions with the OCS. The lawsuit also states that, at the same time, she was having trouble filling her prescription for an ADHD medication. Though it is uncertain whether Katie suffered from withdrawal symptoms from the drug, they can include feelings of depression and increased anxiety.

Thus, on the last day of February 2022 when Katie received formal notification from Stanford that she would be charged with a discipline violation, she immediately fell into despair, which the Meyer family believes Stanford should have anticipated:

After hanging up with her family on the evening of Feb. 28, 2022, Katie hopped on another FaceTime call, with [teammate Naomi] Girma. They talked about which classes both should take, with enrollment starting the next day. Shortly after 7 p.m., Katie paused abruptly. She said to Girma, “Oh my god. They’re charging me.”

Katie hung up and continued reading the email that had landed in her inbox from the OCS dean telling her that she would shortly be receiving a “formal written notice” from her office. The charge: “Violation of the Fundamental Standard by spilling hot coffee on another student.” The notice ran five pages and listed potential witnesses in her case (some of whom have been redacted from the version that became public through court proceedings). Katie also had access to a case documents folder. According to the notice the OCS sent her, the folder included interview notes from meetings with both her and the football player as well as other interview notes and pieces of evidence (like text exchanges between the football player’s mother and his coach). None of these documents are public.

[. . .]

The notice said that violating Stanford’s fundamental standard of behavior could result in “removal” from the university. Per university policy, the college senior’s degree was put on hold, meaning that she could not graduate until the matter was resolved. Having redshirted, she still had soccer eligibility left and could have continued as Stanford captain if she were accepted to its law school. Now both those things were threatened.

Six months had passed from the day Katie learned of the OCS complaint to the night she received that letter. In that time, communication from the OCS was sporadic. Hearing little, Katie considered the saga over, according to four others at Stanford who knew her well. Administrators sent the formal OCS charge on the last day before the university’s statute of limitations would have closed the case. It was sent after hours, when offices that could help Katie deal with any aftershocks (fear, anxiety, dark thoughts) were closed.

Naomi R. Shatz, a lawyer at Zalkind, Duncan & Bernstein, in Boston, who represents students in similar cases, says Stanford’s actions reflect “very common” problems in school disciplinary systems. Specifically, Shatz cites the length of the case and the lack of communication between officials and Katie. She wondered to SI why Stanford did not at least notify her during normal business hours. Difficult messages should be delivered face-to-face, she says. In-person meetings allow disciplinary officials to gauge student reaction while giving immediate referrals for any counseling, treatment or support options available. The notice directed Katie to the “on-call dean” as a support resource. But that’s it.

[. . .]

Often in the case of suicide, families spend decades searching for why. The Meyers think they have theirs. In some ways that helps. In others it makes it harder.

The Meyer family has amended its original lawsuit to remove six of the eight allegations, but the core contention that Stanford is responsible for a wrongful death remains. These things move at a glacial pace in the constipated California legal system, so the next court date is in March, for a “Case Management Conference” hearing.

Perhaps a large settlement against Stanford will strike a meaningful blow against the idea of university administrators running their own quasi-judicial arms with rules devised entirely by themselves and answerable to no one. Of course, Stanford is a phenomenally wealthy school, so they might just determine that wielding this sort of authority over their students is worth paying out a large settlement every now and again. But what has happened at Yale and Stanford ought to give pause to the higher education establishment and the Biden Administration and convince them to tread very carefully in these matters, though we have no reason to expect that it will.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

[Out of necessity, this is being written on Tuesday. So feel free to bring up anything that happened later in the week.]

Let’s go!

First news item

Good!

A Republican-aligned group is making a new push to turn the tide of GOP opinion on US aid for Ukraine as Congress gears up for what could be a major spending fight when it returns from recess next month.

“Republicans for Ukraine,” a project of the conservative non-profit Defending Democracy Together, is launching a $2 million campaign that will include an ad airing nationally on Fox News during next week’s Republican presidential primary debate in Milwaukee…The group behind the campaign, led by conservatives and so-called never-Trump Republicans Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell, warns that former President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies have eroded what it says are traditional Republican values.

Why are Republicans against continuing aid to a sovereign and modern democratic state that was viciously invaded by a brutal leader determined to wipe Ukraine off the map? Why does the political party long known for supporting the spread of freedom and democracy throughout the world, now say “no” to a country which has been heroically fighting for its very existence for over a year? Consider:

Before Donald Trump, Republicans were not the type to abandon a fight for a strategic partner’s democracy, handing a potential victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin. We were the warriors of the Cold War who brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

With Trump, who has embraced Putin, some Republicans are learning to let go of America’s role as the bulwark of democracy and freedom. These Republicans are choosing, instead, the tragic isolationism of those who opposed joining the fight against Hitler. Back then, radio priest Charles Coughlin had a powerful voice among do-nothings. Today, they find comfort on Fox News.

Second news item

Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, wants to be tried in federal court:

In a 14-page petition in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Meadows’ attorneys argued that he had the right to be tried in a different court because his alleged criminal activity “all occurred during his tenure and as part of his service as Chief of Staff.” Going further, his lawyers went on to insist, “Nothing Mr. Meadows is alleged in the indictment to have done is criminal per se: arranging Oval Office meetings, contacting state officials on the President’s behalf, visiting a state government building, and setting up a phone call for the President. One would expect a Chief of Staff to the President of the United States to do these sorts of things.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, given that Fani Willis said she plans to try all 19 defendants together.

Third news item

While it’s true that language is always in flux, I’m just going to say that I’m glad I’m old. It’s all gotten to be too much :

People may use neopronouns for the same reason someone else uses “she” and/or “they” — neopronouns may better align with one’s identity. Some people may use a common pronoun, like “she” or “they,” in addition to a neopronoun.

Neopronouns are ultimately a “reflection of (someone’s) personal identity,” according to the Human Rights Campaign, and thus the “number and types of neopronouns a person may use (are) limitless.”

Examples and how to use them:

xe/xyr (commonly pronounced zee/zeer)

I asked xyr to come to the movies. Xe said yes!

ze/zir or ze/hir (commonly pronounced zee/zeer or zee/heer)

The teacher graded zir paper today, and ze got an A!

Ze said hirself that I’m hir favorite neighbor.

fae/faer (commonly pronounced fay/fair)

Fae told me that faer best friend is in town this week.

ey/em/eir (commonly pronounced aye/em/air)

I’m taking em to the park today. Ey wants to bring eir camera to capture the garden for emself!

ae/aer (commonly pronounced aye/air)

Ae is my best friend — most of aer’s weekday evenings are spent at my house.

Fourth news item

Trump’s delusional take on the latest “witch hunt” against him:

“A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me … on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey,” the post said. “Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others. … They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”

How is it possible that the Republican Party continues to back a candidate who is facing 91 criminal charges against him under five indictments? What does it say that GOP leadership continues to come to his defense? I’ll tell you what it says: absolutely nothing good – about the individuals and about the Party as a whole:

Republicans rallied to Donald Trump’s defense after the former president was indicted on 13 criminal charges in Georgia over his attempt to overturn his defeat there by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the US House, said: “Justice should be blind, but Biden has weaponized government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election.”

…[H]e dominates Republican primary polling, leading his closest challengers nationally and in early voting states by about 40 points.

Referring to Fani Willis of Fulton county, McCarthy continued: “Now a radical [district attorney] in Georgia is following Biden’s lead by attacking President Trump and using it to fundraise her political career. Americans see through this desperate sham.”

You know what’s also a real shame? The Trump will milk this indictment for every last penny they can get. And unfortunately, sycophants and true believers will obediently cough up what they can to help their savior defeat the uh, mysterious and undefinable Deep State:

On Monday night, after charges were filed in Georgia, an email soliciting donations bemoaned a “FOURTH ACT of Election Interference on behalf of the Democrats in an attempt to keep the White House under Crooked Joe’s control and JAIL his single greatest opponent of the 2024 election”.

Friday morning update from JVW: Guess what? Team Trump has cancelled the press conference where they were to lay out the “Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT.” What a surprise. I just feel bad for all of the suckers who continue to believe the nonsense that comes out of Mar-a-Lago.

Fifth news item – from JVW

We wrap up the Women’s World Cup this weekend with a third-place match of Sweden taking on the host nation Australia followed by a championship final of reigning European champ England being challenged by a rising young squad from Spain. This is a as good a time as any to address the longstanding claim — first popularized as far as I can tell during my boyhood when the late, great Pelé chose to spend the golden years of his career playing in the nascent North American Soccer League — that soccer will soon overtake the Big Three sports in the United States and become our nation’s favorite sport. A new study pours a great deal of cold water on that conventional wisdom:

The numbers are startling. According to annual reports by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play, in the last decade, the proportion of boys and girls aged six to 12 involved in team sports slumped to 36.8 percent, down from 41.4 percent. Among the five top team sports tracked by Aspen, that represents a loss of about 2.8 million participants—or nearly one-fifth of all players. Among high-school-age kids engaged in team sports, the share of those participating similarly dropped to 41.7 percent, from 45.4 percent.

These represent big declines for some of our biggest sports. Soccer, the country’s third-most-popular team sport among kids, has sustained the largest losses. Participation has slumped by more than a quarter of all players, or about 800,000 kids aged six to 12, from a peak of 3 million players in 2010. The number of children aged six to 12 playing basketball has declined to about 4.2 million in 2021, down from a peak of 4.5 million in the same period. Baseball now suits up slightly under 3.7 million participants between the ages of six and 12, a sharp fall from almost 4.5 million in 2008.

Some of this can probably be attributed to the Baby Bust, a poor decision regarding age classification made by the youth soccer federation, and our nation’s predilection for taking youth sports far too seriously. Certainly the pandemic wrought havoc on sports, including soccer, by delaying team formations for kids born in 2014-15, giving more casual players an easy out for quitting the sport, and in general turning kids into couch potatoes.

Inside of three years from now our continent will host the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, so we’ll see if that can be the shot in the arm that the sport needs in this country. But they have their work cut out for them.

Sixth news item – from JVW

Hunter Biden’s cozy plea arrangement with his dad’s Department of Justice appears to be dead, though the attorneys for the scuzzy son are insisting that the very favorable gun deal still needs to be honored. The original defense attorney, Christopher Clark, has resigned from the case, claiming that he may end up being called as a witness with respect to the aforementioned sweetheart deal offered to the irksome Biden whelp. This likely buys more time for Team Biden to push any court proceedings beyond November 2024, though it does raise the possibility that Hunter could be going to trial as soon as next summer, right as the campaign season heats up.

How we ended up with these two jamokes leading our two biggest parties is beyond mortal comprehension.

Seventh news item – from JVW

For all of the media caterwauling about “the return of fascism” every time a party slightly more conservative than Rockefeller Republicans is on the verge of winning office in Europe, it’s important to be reminded that some of the worst actors on the international stage come from the hard left. Meet the nasty Julius Malema of South Africa:

“Shoot to kill! Kill the Boer, the farmer! Kill the Boer, the farmer! Brrrr! Pah! Pah!” These were the words chanted in fine voice by Julius Malema to a rapturous crowd of 100,000 at South Africa’s biggest stadium in Johannesburg on Saturday July 29. Malema was celebrating the tenth birthday of the EFF, the political party he founded and leads.

EFF stands for Economic Freedom Fighters. It is dedicated to fighting economic slavery. It declares itself Leninist-Marxist, wants to seize private property (as Malema’s hero Robert Mugabe did in Zimbabwe), plans to nationalize the banks and the mines and enforce total state control. The EFF is the fastest-growing political party in South Africa and Malema the most forceful political leader. After the general election next year, he could become the deputy president of South Africa. Anybody thinking of investing in the country should know this.

Mr. Malma and EFF’s policy proscription is a mix of Mugabe-style seizure of land from white farmers, ostensibly to be reappropriated to poor black South Africans but in practice given over to political allies who then become feudal lords, along with the usual hodgepodge of Marxism, Maoism, Putinism, and extreme brutality, with a predilection for torture and cruelty when dispatching their perceived enemies. Mr. Malma himself preaches solidarity with the working classes and poor but outfits himself in Italian suits and luxury watches, then drives his children to expensive private schools in his Mercedes-Benz or Range Rover.

Mr. Malma’s political rise has been accelerated by the utter incompetence and corruption of the African National Congress, the party which made Nelson Mandela the first post-apartheid President of South Africa. Since that memorable moment, it has all gone downhill:

The ANC has been a disaster for South Africa, and especially for ordinary black people, whom it has impoverished while making a tiny ANC elite fabulously rich. In 1994, for all the cruelty and stupidity of apartheid, South Africa had excellent infrastructure and reasonably advanced industry. Eskom, the state electricity utility, provided the cheapest electricity in the world, very reliably; there were good passenger trains for workers; the freight trains carried ores to the port. The ANC has wrecked it all with looting, corruption, incompetence and a plethora of racist policies, appointing people on the basis of skin color and political connections rather than merit.

Goods and services are procured not on competitive pricing and quality but on Black Economic Empowerment, which means awarding contracts for shoddy services at high prices to ANC cronies. Eskom has been wrecked, and as a result we have hours of blackouts almost every day. Meanwhile the passenger trains hardly run at all; the freight trains cannot deliver our export minerals to ports. The economy is stagnant, industry is shrinking and unemployment is catastrophic, now at 42 percent (including those who have given up looking for work).

Into this breach steps parties like the EFF, whose politics of resentment and brutish operations have been appealing to a country that remains stubbornly poor, corrupt, and backwards. The academic/media/bureaucratic left doesn’t care to acknowledge when tranquility (such as it is in Africa) is threatened by a leftist totalitarian, especially one from a “historically marginalized” community. This may not end well at all.

[It’s JVW here, gang. I so badly wanted to end this update with some sort of light-hearted or whimsical item, especially given how the items I have contributed to this thread are so overwhelmingly negative. But I can’t seem to come up with anything particularly interesting in these ridiculous times. So if you are willing, any nice stories or humorous anecdotes would be quite welcome.]

Have a great weekend.

–Dana