OK, if it’s blind review, then how does the reviewer know I’m a woman? It’s not gender studies, it’s not feminism, it’s not female writers, it isn’t an area where you can reasonably assume the author is female.

I do have a bit of a recognizable style, what’s with my overuse of utterly and entirely, my rants about neoliberalism and the nation-state, and my obsession with Zygmunt Bauman. So my question is whether the review is so positive because the reviewer knows me in person and likes me or because they recognize my work.

Hmm…..

One, in Fogo de Chao v. Department of Homeland Security (2014), Judge Kavanaugh dissented from the majority opinion, which held that Brazilian churrasqueiro chefs and servers qualified for L-1B “specialized knowledge” visas. The restaurant (a Brazilian steakhouse) had claimed that these workers were eligible for L-1B visas on the ground that “a cook ‘born in America’ cannot learn to cook Brazilian steaks as well as a Brazilian-born person.” The majority agreed with the restaurant.

The majority of judges actually agreed? And it’s supposed to be a great victory for liberalism to assume that Brazilians have steak-grilling in their blood? What’s next, arguing that Mexican women are born with superior toilet-cleaning skills?

This is egregiously racist and outright disgusting.

In a case involving free speech and academic freedom at private institutions and faculty responsibilities toward students, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday ruled, 4-2, in favor John McAdams, the Marquette University professor who was suspended for criticizing a graduate student instructor on his blog in 2014.

This is really good news for all professors who don’t hide in the ivory tower and instead engage with the public. This case represented the first step towards shutting up professors completely. I’m very glad Marquette was defeated and the professor won.

Here are the facts.

As I mentioned before, my school is in a fight with our sister school over state funding. We are clearly in the right and the sister school is clearly in the wrong.

The president of our university system (meaning, the president of both schools) is biased in favor of my school and against the sister. He wrote a personal email that was immediately leaked where he used unfortunate language to refer to the sister and made clear he was against them and pro us.

Sister school tried to remove him from office on the grounds of bias.

And now for the dilemma.

My colleagues are all defending the president, contorting themselves into weird shapes to prove to themselves he isn’t biased.

And I concur with the sister school in that he should be removed. Even though it will set our cause back significantly.

It slaughters me that these very same people would be arguing the exact opposite of what they do now if he were biased against us.

I understand it’s normal to want a win. But I don’t want to win like this! I want an honest, clean win. I don’t know how to live without organizing principles of existence.

If we are so eager to compromise our integrity over something so not life-threatening, what kind of people are we?

Does anybody here understand what I’m on about or am I completely alone on this?

Since morning, my colleagues have been engaging in a heated debate over what will happen if

China places tariffs on soybeans and then

Soybean farmers in the region will suffer and then

This will negatively impact the entire farming sector and then

Even though the portion of the state’s GDP brought in by farming is negligible, it will really hurt the economy and then

The state funding for our school will be cut and then

The university will have to tighten its budget and then

There will be layoffs and then

It might get so bad we will all be fired.

I’m sure by the end of the day they will get this line of reasoning all the way to the apocalypse.

After ISIS collapsed (and by the way, where is the widespread celebration of that fact?), many of the ISIS women and their children remained trapped in refugee camps in Syria because, understandably, nobody wants them.

A widespread position among these women seems to be the following:

“We made a mistake, but everyone in the world makes mistakes,” she said. “How long can we pay the price for a mistake? For our whole lives?”

The statement comes not from a pouty teenager but from a 44-year-old woman. Nobody expects great adjustment from a woman whose idea of fun is to join ISIS, yet the sense of entitlement is quite striking. Not only doesn’t everybody in the world make “mistakes” of this caliber but everybody who is an adult is, indeed, aware of having to live with the consequences of their actions for their whole lives. Usually, people get the message by their early teenage years.

When people vacationing at luxurious resorts place weepy posts on social media about how much compassion they feel for the poor 3rd world folks they observe from the balconies of their 5-star hotels.

The people you pity are right there. Go share your condescension with them in person.

Finally, somebody says something reasonable about immigration. Being anti-immigrant and being disturbed by the porousness of the borders are not remotely the same thing. For many people, the concepts of “an immigrant” and “a person who crosses the border illegally” occupy completely different places in their heads.

An example. I’m preoccupied by the porousness of the borders. The issue began to matter to me since I found out about the opioid epidemic, which is something I care about deeply. Before I didn’t give a toss.

I’m sure we are all aware that finding any bias against Hispanic immigrants in me is a hopeless enterprise. There can never be too many Hispanic people around me. I don’t blame anybody who doesn’t share this idiosyncrasy of mine and I recognize people’s right to be discomfited by a different culture and language. God knows I’ve experienced what it feels like to be in a place where you don’t understand many or most of the people and I know how traumatic it can be. I, however, live in the grip of an almost physiological affinity for the Spanish language and the Hispanic culture. At the pool in Florida, there were many Spanish speakers, and I can’t tell you, folks, what it feels like. It’s like being on drugs. I experience little explosions of pleasure in my brain. I can’t explain it, it just is.

But I do recognize there is a problem at the border and that it needs to be addressed. If that’s anti-immigrant, I’m a graceful swan.

We all dressed in patriotic clothing for the barbecue. Even Canadians went all red, white, and blue. The only real American among us didn’t. Immigrants are always the most patriotic because it means something to us while fifteenth-generation Americans are jaded.