Politics

Research isn’t advocacy and other commentary

Campus beat: Research Isn’t Advocacy

Michigan State University leaders forced physics professor Stephen Hsu to give up his position as vice president of research and innovation after he touted an MSU study that found police aren’t more likely to shoot African-Americans, reports Brittany Slaughter at The College Fix. Pressure came from MSU President Samuel Stanley and the Graduate Employees Union, which accused him of “scientific racism” and “launched a campaign to oust” him amid a “Black Lives Matter-linked #ShutDownStem day.” Appallingly, the GEU insisted administrators “should not share research that runs counter to public statements by the university.” Hsu blasted the “racism” charge, insisting that such research is “essential” to understand “how to improve policing.” His ouster, he sighs, “will have a chilling effect on academic freedom.”

Conservative: Trump’s Sliding Suburban Support

“To win in November,” maintains The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen, President Trump “needs to win suburban swing voters.” Four years ago, he won suburbs by five points, giving him “his narrow margin of victory in states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida.” And a November poll found “almost two-thirds of voters in six battleground states” who had “defected in 2018 to give Democrats control of the House” planned to return to Team Trump in 2020. But “Trump’s uncompromising rhetoric and retweets” are driving them away, handing Joe Biden “a commanding 25-point lead” in the ’burbs. To turn the tide, Trump “needs to make himself more palatable” by showing some “empathy and compassion.” For every “law and order” tweet, for example, “he needs to tweet about racial reconciliation.” It’s “stop inflaming and start uniting” — or lose.

Times watch: Back to the Leak Game

The New York Times is once again citing anonymous leaks to suggest that President Trump “is an agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” sighs The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, with claims that the president did nothing about Russian plots to target US troops in Afghanistan. Notably, the three Times reporters involved all “played key roles in disseminating the Russia-collusion hoax” — citing similar anonymous sources. Yet ­the White House says “intelligence officials didn’t brief Trump or Vice President Mike Pence” on the new information, contradicting the Times story. Fact is, no anonymous source can “ ‘confirm’ anything for a reader” who can’t even be sure it isn’t all coming from a single source. Once again, the media are using “unverified intelligence for political aims.”

Ex-prosecutor: The End of the Rule of Law

The death of Rayshard Brooks is “a tragic case but, legally, a straightforward one,” Andrew C. McCarthy notes at Spectator USA: Brooks “assaulted the police, stole the Taser from one officer” and shot it at officer Garrett Rolfe, who “returned fire,” killing Brooks. But “Rolfe is white, and Brooks was black,” so Fulton County Prosecutor Paul Howard, behind in his re-election campaign, “preposterously charged Rolfe with felony murder, a death-penalty offense,” without even waiting for “investigators to finish their probe.” The grand jury shouldn’t stand for “so blatant an abuse of prosecutorial powers” — but both the grand and the trial juries may bow to “the mob baying for” policemen’s blood. This kind of overcharging means “the rule of law is collapsing. Reason is out, passion is in.”

Science desk: Not Another Pandemic!?

Heavy media coverage of a new paper suggests the emergence of “a new virus that could cause a pandemic,” even while we are still fighting COVID-19 — but, Slate’s Shannon Palus points out, it’s overhype. Scientists have no evidence the virus, “a variation of 2009’s swine flu,” is “circulating in humans, despite five years of extensive exposure,” or even that “it makes people sick.” It’s worth “keeping an eye” on all potential ­virus threats, but “clickbait headlines” don’t help at a time when we see “the word pandemic and start screaming.” Far better if we just become “less lax” about viruses and the possibilities of pandemics in general.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board