All posts tagged: Black Lives Matter

Did the BLM Protests Against the Police Lead to the 2020 Spike in Homicides?

Published by Wilfred Reilly

Serious crime, particularly murder, soared while everyone was supposed to be locked indoors. Between 2019—by no means a famously peaceful year—and 2020, homicides alone surged by 42 percent during the summer and 34 percent during the fall. Many politically acceptable explanations have been advanced for this, with left-leaning publications like Vox preferring to focus on the undeniable economic devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, an alternative explanation fits the data far better: crime increased because major police departments had their budgets slashed and reeled in their stops dramatically—and similar chaos has followed such “woke” policy moves nearly every time they have been implemented. The plain fact of the crime surge is a matter of little if any dispute. According to a serious 20-plus page report from the Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice (CCCJ), “homicides, aggravated assaults, and gun assaults rose significantly beginning in late May and June of 2020.” As just noted, murder rates jumped more than 30 percent fall-over-fall and more than 40 percent summer-over-summer from 2019 to 2020. Across just the …

A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor

Published by Joshua T. Katz

In Congress, on July 4th, 1776, came the “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” Signed by 56 men, many of whom were considered national heroes just a few minutes ago, it opens with a long and elegant sentence whose first words every American child knows, or used to: “When in the Course of human events…” In Princeton, New Jersey, on July 4th, 2020, just two hours after my family and I sat around the festive table and read the Declaration aloud in celebration, a group of signatories now in the hundreds published a “Faculty Letter” to the president and other senior administrators at Princeton University. This letter begins with the following blunt sentence: “Anti-Blackness is foundational to America.” One important difference between the two documents might wrongly be dismissed as merely cosmetic. In 1776 there were “united States” but there was not yet the “United States”; in these past two months, by contrast, at a time when we are increasingly un-united, “black” has become “Black” while “white” remains “white.” I am friends …

PODCAST 94: Professor Glenn Loury on Racial Unrest in America

Published by Quillette Magazine

Glenn Loury, a professor of economics at Brown University, talks to Jonathan Kay about the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd. Professor Loury recently published a piece about this in Quillette entitled Condemn the Violence Without Equivocation.

PODCAST 83: Professor Wilfred Reilly on his new book Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About

Published by Quillette Magazine

Kentucky State political science professor Wilfred Reilly talks to Toby Young about his new book Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About. Professor Reilly’s last piece for Quillette was about the 1776 project.

Quillette Podcast 5 – Heather Mac Donald on the Free Speech Crisis in the Academy

Published by Quillette Magazine

Canadian editor Jonathan Kay talks to Heather Mac Donald, a Fellow of the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal and the author of several books, most recently The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture. Among other topics, they discuss her run-in with Black Lives Matter, her experience of being mobbed on campus and the free speech crisis afflicting America’s universities.