Philip N Cohen

White House has no plan to mandate IVF care, despite campaign pledge President Donald Trump has said he wants a “baby boom,” but critics say his administration has yet to make significant family policy changes — and that Medicaid cuts will hurt.

All those Trump surrogates who touted this, and news orgs that reported it credulously, owe Americans a big fat apology www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

אני לא יודע איפה לקבור את עצמי מול העובדה שהפרויקט החשוב הזה קם בגלל מדיניות פושעת של של הצבא שלי, של הממשלה שלי, ושל המדינה שלי. די!

Yes. There are reasons why the situation is not symmetrical (raising birth rates is less likely today than lowering birth rates was in 1970), but human behavior is still in play, so prediction is harder than the arithmetic makes it seem

It's easier to be right about the past than about the future. So we're not saying that everyone should have known exactly what today's birth rates would be. But many people overlooked even the possibility that birth rates in many countries could go below two and stay there, implying negative population growth. When somebody throws a ball to a kid, it arcs up, reaches some apex, and then arcs back down. It does not hang at its high point or coast, ever parallel to the ground. The same force that slows its ascent tugs it back down to earth after it passes its peak.

Sometimes I really think I could write a popular book. Then I read a passage like this and my confidence collapses.

Or rather, used to have more just-theorists. Now we all have to pretend to be theorists to get high status publications and jobs

Sociology used to have more theorists, but then <social and academic developments> and now few people do theory without data analysis.

Too many leaps in there for me to follow. But of course how many children they will end up with is impossible to know, so you can't check it comparing past numbers to the future

ChatGPT, make a poster showing fictional speaker bio photos advertising 6 speakers at a trendy, politically moderate, tech-influenced conference

107. The US political gap in fertility is widening dramatically. Among the most recent cohort to reach their early 30s, conservatives have an average of >1 child more than liberals.

Fertility trends, inequality, and economic growth doodles Some visualizations on one of the oldest questions in social science.

Saturday #dataviz from me: Fertility trends, inequality, and economic growth doodles.

It’s almost like you can see the relief on their faces to be done with the stupid woke pressure to deal with women

Cornell: Office of Discovery and Impact, formerly Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives. There for everyone, "be they first generation, low income, foster youth, Veterans, non-traditional, transfer, students from diverse backgrounds and/or any other student that finds space in our community"

Pines also made diversity a hallmark of his tenure as dean. As a co-principal investigator, the university became a National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE grant recipient to further develop a culture of inclusive excellence, focused on improving work environments, retention and advancement of tenured and tenure-track women faculty in ways that improve the culture for all faculty. At the engineering faculty level, the number of tenured/tenure-track women faculty more than doubled from 18 to 37, and the number of underrepresented minority faculty increased from 11 to 19. At the undergraduate student level, the number of enrolled women undergraduates rose from 18% to 26.5%, and the number of enrolled underrepresented minority undergraduate students grew from 9.5% to 16%. According to Diverse Issues in Higher Education, the Clark School ranks among the top 10 in conferring the most B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees to African-American students. 2020

Diversity was a hallmark of his tenure, with increases in tenured/tenure-track women faculty, under-represented minority faculty, enrolled women undergraduates and enrolled underrepresented minority undergraduate students.

UMD President Pines (president.umd) proudly rode in on a diversity record in 2020 (Fig1), and now it's a mention (Fig2). Anyways, good luck!

It's complicated. Diversity.umd is titled "Diversity and Inclusion" but still mentions "equity" (Fig1). StudentAffairs.umd still has DEI on its menu, but it's the only item that requires a UMD login to view it (Fig2). Once you log in you can see the DEI page. It's there! (F3)

And yet curriculum content exists

Israeli sociologists and anthropologists call for immediate ceasefire, ending the starvation of Gaza, stop the ethnic cleansing, the return of the hostages, restoring electricity and water, and the rehabilitation of hospitals and universities. www.facebook.com/share/16v4Xv...

108. Although parents don't perfectly determine the political views of their children, larger family size among conservatives does move America to the right politically. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Simone Collins: "The only way we can avoid a Handmaid's Tale future is for feminists to have more kids."

Forgot I did the teen marriage rate by decade already (by state): bsky.app/profile/phil...

107. The US political gap in fertility is widening dramatically. Among the most recent cohort to reach their early 30s, conservatives have an average of >1 child more than liberals.

Two quote tweets. The first says "“The soulless resume builder bug Asians you knew in high school? Yeah we just gave them everything, fuck you, son.”" The other shows a photo of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and says "Revive it immediately."

Two quote tweets. The first is from Richard Spencer, which reads: "I genuinely prefer the Affirmative Action regime to dead-eyed “meritocracy.”" The other reads: "The yellow striver seethes in mathematics because Americans don’t want dog-eating fact memorizers taking over their institutions"

Two quote tweets. The first reads: "Mandarinization in the classroom results almost immediately in the Mandarinization of “high” society" The second reads: "If a world war broke out tomorrow, how many of these people would fight for America? Troubling extrapolation."

Two quote tweets. The first reads: "Idk who needs to hear this but realistically too many photos like this shred the reputation of harvard and stanford" The second reads: "America was a better country when there was Old Boys network of gentleman WASPs running the show. Look at this. This is not America."

Given the backlash to his photo, I encourage Asian people to gather in groups and make-up stories about them taking over some traditional WASP institution, just to make racists mad. "Went to a fancy dinner and everyone was part of the Daughters of the American Revolution."

Epstein and the Swanky Leftist Compromise We get to the bottom of it.

The great political scientist Judith Shklar proposed that liberals must oppose an ultimate evil: cruelty.

Jeffrey Epstein is a good name for cruelty. He's a formidable common enemy. He puts the rest of us on the same side.

virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/epstein-an...

This was an excellent episode.

(Includes links to Stata data and code, suitable for recreation and practice if not serious scholarship.)

Fertility trends, inequality, and economic growth doodles Some visualizations on one of the oldest questions in social science.

Saturday #dataviz from me: Fertility trends, inequality, and economic growth doodles.

At minimum every university president has to publicly explain - at every opportunity - to the university community, including parents and alumni, how what Trump (by name) is doing is unlawful, undemocratic, and inhumane. And: publicly refuse to "negotiate"

If you can't do the right thing without getting fired, you have two choices: quit or get fired.

@dieworkwear.bsky.social I don't know if Huckabee is on GLP-1s but I feel like a lot formerly-bigger men are wearing suits that don't fit anymore these days.

In my imagination this is why cosmology should be taught at universities where students also take other subjects and faculty govern collectively

Makes sense. Did your cosmology curriculum include reading or discussion to develop that thinking?