Dear Weekend Jolter,
It’s been something of a newsy week. The defeat of the border deal. The Mayorkas-impeachment failure. Rumblings atop the RNC. A victory for “none” in Nevada. Then, incontrovertible evidence of why voters are right to be concerned about President Biden’s age and mental acuity, brought to us by the special counsel investigating his mishandling of classified documents and the president’s botched attempt to defend himself Thursday night.
But let’s rewind the clock for the purposes of this newsletter, just a bit, to the beginning of the week — and, for scene-setting, to early last year — to unpack another story that’s maybe not as politically shocking but definitely something that will impact generations of young adults and their futures. That is: standardized tests. (Imagine an old-school dissolve effect hitting your screen right here . . .)
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In March 2023, NR editorialized that the move by Columbia University and other colleges to make SAT/ACT scores optional for applicants was wrong. The tests identify “intellectually gifted children from all strata of society” and allow “talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds (whether economic or minority) to shine.” In other words:
You might have gone to Phillips Exeter Academy and had the best SAT tutors available to you — but this kid over here living above his parents’ corner store and studying when he doesn’t have to mind the shop? He took it once and scored a 1590.
This week marked what may be a turning point in that movement, as schools and researchers in the field begin to voice second thoughts about the wisdom of deemphasizing these tests. As Caroline Downey reported, Dartmouth announced Monday that it will restore its SAT requirement for admissions, becoming the first Ivy League school to do so after a Covid-era relaxation:
In an email to the university community, Dartmouth president Sian Beilock wrote that the decision to reimplement the standardized test was made in response to a faculty study which found that “standardized test scores are an important predictor of a student’s success in Dartmouth’s curriculum” regardless of a “student’s background or family income.”
Those involved in the school’s review arrived at a set of conclusions that might seem obvious: Test scores help admissions officers identify high-achieving students from around the world, they help otherwise disadvantaged students with high potential stand out, and they especially help make those distinctions clear for elite institutions inundated with applications featuring stratospherically high grades and Tracy Flick–level extracurriculars. Dartmouth now follows MIT, which, as Caroline noted, reinstated the testing requirement two years ago, determining it would be “more equitable and transparent than a test-optional policy.”
This realization runs completely counter to the thinking that led to the rollbacks in the first place.
David Leonhardt wrote a great piece for the Times last month describing the “misguided” campaign (which predated the pandemic) to ditch standardized tests out of concern that racial and class gaps in the scores were contributing to a less diverse student body. While Ivy League and other schools initially suspended test requirements by citing Covid-related hardships, those that embraced the change long-term did so on more ideological grounds. The California State University system, for example, removed the SAT and ACT from undergrad admissions to “level the playing field and provide greater access to a high-quality college degree for students from all backgrounds,” per the acting chancellor at the time.
But Leonhardt highlighted research showing test scores are “more reliable” than high-school grades and are solid indicators of success. They can “be particularly helpful in identifying lower-income students and underrepresented minorities who will thrive” even if they don’t score as high as others. One study from a Harvard-based group found that “SAT and ACT scores have substantial predictive power for academic success in college,” and high scores are associated with higher college GPAs “even when comparing students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.”
While concerns about elite test prep were a mark against the SATs, a fascinating and at-times infuriating New York magazine story recently showed how the ultra-wealthy don’t lack for avenues to gain an edge — including by contracting the services of a sought-after consultant who charges $120,000 a year to shape teens into Ivy material (though the article’s subject insisted he’s only giving the rich an unfair advantage over “other rich students”). Against this backdrop, Jeff Blehar points out, ahem, that “the one thing those parents and pros cannot do is walk into a testing room and take a child’s exam for them.”
The same profiled consultant acknowledged a month ago that standardized testing is, in fact, making a comeback, with most Ivies’ test-optional extensions set to lapse soon absent intervention. Dartmouth’s dean of admissions likewise told the student newspaper that other “peer” schools are considering reinstating the requirement as Dartmouth did. Universities should follow through, treating the score once more as one of multiple admissions criteria — though count this as another misbegotten educational experiment of Covid times that, like prolonged remote schooling, will have crimped the potential of a cohort of students before the mistake was realized.
As Jim Geraghty wrote for the Morning Jolt, “it says something about the evidence-free, ideology-heavy mentality in America’s colleges and universities that so many institutions ditched a tool for recognizing excellence in disadvantaged students because they believed they could persuade everyone else that the test was unfair, contrary to what the actual evidence said.” This tracks with the example of charter schools, which a recent Stanford study found outperform traditional public schools and help black and Hispanic students, especially those in poverty, get ahead.
It’s almost as if “faculty diversity salons,” DEI librarians, and their policy complements have nothing to do with leveling the playing field in any practical way.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Even with the border deal dead, this aid should pass: Pass the Ukraine and Israel Funding Bill
On the administration’s approach to Mideast chaos: Biden’s Ineffective Response to Iran
This bill is a good start: The House Tax Bill Is Modest but Good
ARTICLES
Michael Brendan Dougherty: The President Isn’t Home
Philip Klein: Special Counsel Account of Biden’s Mental Decline Is Frightening
Andrew McCarthy: On Hur Report, Democrats Shoot at the Wrong Target
Brittany Bernstein: Special Counsel Finds Biden ‘Willfully Retained and Disclosed’ Classified Info — but Recommends No Charges
Brittany Bernstein & Audrey Fahlberg: Haley Camp Looks Past South Carolina to Open Super Tuesday Primaries as Momentum Wanes
Rich Lowry: Biden’s Telling Retreat
Luther Ray Abel: Why Military Recruitment Is Miserable
Danielle Pletka: The Empty Sloganeering of a ‘Two-State Solution’
Christian Schneider: The Impenetrable Liberal Bubble
Noah Rothman: Presidents Don’t Get to Run a ‘Basement Campaign’
Abigail Anthony: WHO Taps Gender Ideologues, Activists to Develop Guidelines on Trans Medicine
Michael McCaul: The Rot at the U.S. Agency for Global Media
Jim Geraghty: The Self-Defeating Republican Party
Dan McLaughlin: Trump Is Unlikely to Be Disqualified — for Now
Dan McLaughlin: There’s No Defending Woodrow Wilson
Ryan Mills: Michael Mann Vows to Target NR Yet Again: ‘They’re Next’
Haley Strack: House Republicans Fail to Impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas in Major Blow to GOP
Zach Kessel: Haley Loses to ‘None of These Candidates’ Option in Nevada GOP Primary
Dominic Pino: Global Baseball Is Fun Baseball
CAPITAL MATTERS
David Bahnsen is out with a new book, about the importance of work and its connection to our identities. Read an excerpt here: The Problem with a ‘Work–Life Balance’
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Watch out, Armond White is coming for a closely guarded cultural treasure: The Curse of The Princess Bride
Brian Allen hits up the ole alma mater, for a visit to the rare-books library that is itself a work of art: Boola Boola for Yale’s Beinecke Library, a Modernist Masterpiece at 60
THESE EXCERPTS WERE DONE IN ‘DOBLY’
As noted, Thursday was a tremendously bad day for President Biden and those in his inner and outer circles who have brushed off voter concerns about his mental fitness as he seeks another four-year term at age 81. The special-counsel report detailing his memory problems in unsparing terms, followed by Biden’s press conference, amount to a hazmat spill in aisle 4 that his political janitors must labor for months to clean up. MBD lays it all out:
That final report by special counsel Robert Hur detailed that the president of the United States couldn’t accurately recall the years he was vice president and that he could not identify, “even within several years,” when his son Beau died. It was by reacting to this report as he did Thursday night that Biden confirmed the worst. It wasn’t just that he confused the names of the Egyptian president and Mexico’s. It was that he yelled about his own impotence. “I didn’t know how half the boxes got in my garage,” he said. To another reporter he shouted, “That’s just your opinion!” And thereby he dismissed the public’s concern with his age in a way that made him look exactly like many senile people do when they are denying their present diminishment. He insisted his memory of Beau was sound and then demonstrated it wasn’t when he said he got the rosary beads from “Our Lady of” and then blanked out. . . .
Joe Biden and America are at risk of becoming metaphorically conflated. The country is aging rapidly. The number of Americans over 65 is set to double in the next 40 years. His forgetfulness mirrors America’s own lack of historical perspective. His unsteadiness on the stage is like our own lack of confidence in the national institutions upon which our lives depend for security and independence. His absence of mind seems to reflect the country’s own absence of strategy on the world stage. America is the old power on the world stage, while others are rising.
More to the point in an election year, our lack of confidence in Biden’s abilities mirrors a similar sinking feeling about the direction of our country. Not even good economic numbers can put to bed America’s sense of unease, fragility, and vulnerability.
There is a great majority in this country who looks upon the forthcoming presidential election with something like sullen horror. Why are our institutions producing this rematch? What is it about American democracy that is so paralyzed? Why, for fear of small risks, are we gambling, well, everything on these geezers?
“Hell hath no fury like progressives exposed to conservatism on their home turf.” So concludes Christian Schneider in his column looking at the tantrums inside progressive sanctums over the presence of non-progs in their airspace. Now, here’s how he begins:
After Nikki Haley appeared on Saturday Night Live to mock Donald Trump last weekend, you would think Trump would be the most aggrieved party. But instead, it appears Haley’s cameo put SNL cast member Bowen Yang in the front seat of the struggle bus.
Following the show, Yang took to Instagram, lobbing a shot at Haley in a post where he suggested that he, for one, didn’t “welcome” her to the show. He has since deleted it.
Haley’s sin, of course, is that she entered the inner sanctum of progressivism, a network show that only recently ran a sketch in which it portrayed members of Congress as bad people for questioning university presidents about antisemitism on their campuses. This is a show that allows cast members to lecture its audience on transgenderism and abortion and permits cast members to sing songs bemoaning the end of Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s political careers.
But no, Haley’s mere presence was enough to send liberal viewers to their fainting couches.
It has been a rough few weeks for Yang. Two episodes ago, comedian Dave Chappelle appeared on the show’s stage during the end credits, and Yang was spotted keeping his distance while looking displeased. Of course, Chappelle is loathed by many on the left for telling “transphobic” jokes, a reaction that tells us much less about Chappelle than about his hypersensitive critics. . . .
This is all, of course, the by-product of progressives’ inability to accept anyone from the right into their tightly sealed liberal utopia. The left-wing body politic cannot produce the antibodies necessary to cope with a dissenting position, so it forcefully rejects it as a warning to anyone else who might try to encroach on its pristine realm.
Abigail Anthony reports on a case of transgender-medicine guidelines being influenced by activists:
The panel convened by the World Health Organization to develop guidelines for “gender-affirming care” consists of individuals who have clear conflicts of interest that would appear to disqualify them under WHO policy, according to a National Review analysis of the panelists’ past publications and professional affiliations.
The WHO Guideline Development Group (GDG) tasked with establishing the influential public-health body’s policies on the “health of trans and gender diverse people” is almost entirely made up of activists who have extensive records of advocating a “trans-affirmative” approach that seeks to remove barriers to medicalization.
“The majority of the GDG clearly have strong, one-sided views in favor of promoting hormonal gender transition and legal recognition of self-asserted gender,” reads a January 4 letter by Reem Alsalem, United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, addressed to the WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus. “Of the 21 announced GDG members, not one appears to represent a voice of caution for medicalizing youth with gender dysphoria or the protection of female only spaces.”
There’s a rich history of hating Woodrow Wilson around these parts. Dan McLaughlin rises in defense of that hatred in response to a recent piece by David Frum:
Frum’s article, “Uncancel Woodrow Wilson,” appears in the March 2024 issue of the Atlantic. How perverse a choice is it to write on this now? Consider that the last thing the magazine published was a special issue dedicated to the topic “If Trump Wins,” warning of peril to the American system and the civil liberties of our people from a man who would come to the Oval Office with a dictatorial temperament and contempt for the constraints of our Constitution. . . .
Wilson openly scorned our constitutional system in his academic writings; he explicitly ran for governor of New Jersey openly pledging to be “an unconstitutional governor” who would burst restraints on his powers. He was elected president in 1912 with 42 percent of the vote almost entirely as a result of a third-party challenge that split his opposition — and both of his elections depended upon the mass disenfranchisement of black voters in the Solid South. He was reelected with less than a majority of the vote on the pledge to keep America out of war, and proceeded to lead the United States into a global war and a global pandemic, trample civil liberties in office, engage in mass censorship, jail political opponents, intern and deport people of disfavored national origin, lead a racist backlash against vulnerable minorities, stoke runaway inflation, and conduct a secretive White House in which an unelected First Lady ruled while Wilson himself was immobilized by a stroke. . . .
The aspect of Wilson that today attracts the most unified opprobrium across the partisan and ideological spectrum is his racism, which is by now proverbial. Frum wrestles with the topic, and is bested by it.
Wilson was not merely a man of his time who shared its common prejudices. He was notably racist even by the standards of the 1910s. Nor was he simply a man who looked the other way at racial injustice: He actively made things worse. In assessing the racism of Wilson’s time, he was not the led but the leader.
Wilson did not just refuse to rock the boat in the noontide of Jim Crow — although he did that, too, bluntly refusing to racially integrate Princeton on his watch — he bent federal law in a pro-segregation direction. He imposed rigid segregation on the federal government where it had not been before. His administration required photos on job applications to spot the black people. Even with hundreds of thousands of black Americans serving their nation in the First World War, Wilson’s policies compelled United States Army units to fight under French command because they were manned by black soldiers. This was a disgrace to the American flag.
Wilson employed, promoted, and allied himself with even worse people, such as the ardently pro-lynching Senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman. He did other racist things Frum neglected to mention (covered in my long bill of particulars), including supporting legislation making interracial marriage a felony in the District of Columbia and putting government backing behind eugenic compulsion, decades before the Nazis did so. Wilson made Dr. Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen the chief eugenicist of New Jersey, in pursuit of a campaign of forced sterilizations. Katzen-Ellenbogen ended up working at Buchenwald and was convicted of crimes against humanity in 1947.
Shout-Outs
Sean Trende, at RealClearPolitics: What Is Nikki Haley Doing?
Jacob Sullum, at Reason: He Was Arrested for Making a Joke on Facebook. A Jury Just Awarded Him $205,000 in Damages.
Aaron Sibarium, at the Washington Free Beacon: Yale Law School Students Protest Presence of IDF Soldier on Campus
CODA
You might already know that Ellington could swing The Nutcracker. But did you know his orchestra also swung In the Hall of the Mountain King? And another well-known theme from its original composer?
Edvard Grieg was either rolling over, or boogying, in his grave.
Enjoy listening, enjoy the weekend, and thanks for reading.