Hi all,

I vehemently disagree with the SCOTUS majority opinions on Affirmative Action, and those empowering homophobia and disempowering student loan borrowers. I have notes. Please also check out the references on my East Wind articles for a lot more detail. I think the truth and the evidence are in favor of Affirmative Action. I've just heard about some research by Stanford GSB Professor Deborah Gruenfeld "Diverse Teams Produce Better Decisions." A conservative supermajority in SCOTUS is producing less reasonable decisions, and this is why. A diverse society requires diverse perspectives that support diversity.

Two of my articles got published in the official psychiatric press:

Psychiatrist/psychoanalyst Constance E. Dunlap and I co-authored an article for Psychiatric News:

SCOTUS Deals a Blow to American Diversity by Overturning Affirmative Action | Psychiatric News (July 14, 2023)

For over 60 years, affirmative action has been a bulwark of American life, an attempt to mend the gap between America’s promise of equality and the reality of profound and widespread discrimination and disparities in health, wealth, and well-being due to racism, past and present. The Supreme Court’s recent majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina upends precedent, misreads history, and reveals a court all too willing to advance the causes of the dominant culture and perpetuate abuses of power.

The other "official" article was in the Northern California Psychiatric Society May/June 2023 newsletter.

Vulnerability Solidarity: A Campaign for Unity, Community, Depth and Growth (on page 14 online). Here are the PDF and JPG - feel free to share!

I also published two articles at East Wind eZine on Affirmative Action:

MOSF 18.6 Affirmative Action: SCOTUS and the Dominant Culture Tell on Themselves (Part 2) – East Wind ezine

SCOTUS’s decision on Affirmative Action adds to the penalty of early death to millions of Black, but also likely Latinx, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander lives. As poet Terrance Hayes said of Donald Trump, “I think this dude is trying to kill me.

Here’s my first article on the subject:

MOSF 18.5 Affirmative Action: SCOTUS and the Dominant Culture Tell on Themselves (Part 1)

Why is it that BIPOC people are always put on their back foot about Affirmative Action and the idea that racism, casteism, and hierarchy have impacted them, historically and in the present day? Why isn’t the dominant culture put to task and called on the carpet more often? Why is it that the mechanisms of deciding questions of great import to minorities are left to the majority, who frequently have a blinkered view of the questions at hand? Why is it easier for the majority to pull up the ladder rather than build a stairway, or even an elevator?

And I haven't written yet about Barbenheimer - but this is from 2011: 

Twice Bombed – Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Psychology Today (August 6, 2011)

August 6^th and August 9^th are days to contemplate the awful possibilities of mankind, and resolve ourselves to do better. Pandora's box of horrors was smashed on these days, and again many times in our gruesome history of war this last century. Of all the crimes and terrors that flowed out, we must make sure that one message endures: War no more.

Thanks all! Have a great month.

Warmly,

Ravi