University of Pennsylvania

Luigi Mangione is officially the “suspect” in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but he is plainly the culprit, and public discussion has moved on to his motives. Why would a young man possessed of intellectual gifts, friends, family, good looks, a winning personality and, apparently, lots of money, gun down a man he had never met? This isn’t the kind of question my organization, the National Association of Scholars, normally takes up. We concern ourselves more with academic standards and questions of state and federal policy. But I’ve been nudged several times with questions about Luigi’s academic background. This has two parts: Luigi’s high school and Luigi’s college.

One of the key critiques of DEI — the identity-based preference system better known as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — is that it places workers in professional positions they’re clearly unqualified for. Often with devastating outcomes. Boeing, for instance, has been accused of favoring race and gender when hiring for its factory floor — factories that have turned out airplanes that have literally fallen from the skies. Disney, too, has seen its quest for race- and gender- and sexuality-based inclusiveness come at a cost — a steep slide in its stock price.  But no area of public life has been more fully infiltrated by DEI than the academy — and the results have been disastrously on display since the Hamas attack against Israel nearly seven months ago.

It was a clarifying moment, wasn’t it? The presidents of MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania testifying for the House Education Committee about the wave of rabid antisemitism on their campuses. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York asked the same question of UPenn’s Liz Magill, MIT’s Sally Kornbluth and Harvard’s Claudine Gay. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your campus’s rule of conduct, yes or no? That was the question.  You might think it was a pretty simple question.

I have always admired the tag corruptio optima pessima: the corruption of the best is the worst. Take the Ivy League. These super-rich, super-prestigious institutions are so wealthy and so beguiling because, once upon a time, they represented and — more to the point — successfully transmitted to their students the prime civilizational values of our culture. We’re told, and I have no reason to disbelieve it, that the light we see from distant stars is very old and, in some cases, is light from stars that were long ago extinguished. It is same with the Ivy League and their near competitors. Today, they are utterly bankrupt — not financially, of course. No, in a good old greedy capitalist sense, they are filthy, stinking rich.

Reka Gyorgy showed commendable courage this weekend for finally speaking out against the National College Athletic Association's rules regarding trans competitors. The Virginia Tech swimmer and Olympian was bumped out of a finals spot in the 500 free due to transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas's participation. In a letter posted to her Instagram account, Gyorgy wrote, "It feels like that final spot was taken away from me because of the NCAA's decision to let someone who is not a biological female compete... [Thursday] is the result of the NCAA and their lack of interest in protecting their athletes." Gyorgy is one of the first NCAA female swimmers to speak publicly about the negative impact Thomas's participation in the sport has on women.

An anonymous Instagram account surfaced this weekend that accused multiple Ivy League students of racism, without evidence.‘Ivy League Racists’ (@ivyleagueracists) — which has since been deleted — posted pictures of white male students alongside descriptions of the racist acts they purportedly committed.For instance, one post read: ‘[name redacted] of [location redacted] raped an innocent black freshman at Penn. The victim is now suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts. Contact Penn Police at 2155733333.’Another post was aimed at a former Princeton sportsman, naming his hometown, parents and siblings. Neither post provided any tangible proof of the students’ alleged misconduct. The Spectator reached out to both men for comment.