How bad are hate speech laws in the UK? Saying "it's OK to be white" can result in a harsher sentence than child pornography.
@abigailandwords found numerous cases in which UK judges jailed thought criminals while letting actual criminals off the hook.
The list is shocking.🧵
Judge Benedict Kelleher sentenced a man to 18 months in prison for chanting "who the fuck is Allah?" He gave a lighter sentence to a man who physically assaulted a police officer.
Judge John Temperley gave a man 12 weeks in prison for a racist Facebook post. He did not impose any prison time on a man with 46 indecent images of children.
An incendiary Facebook comment earned a man 20 months in prison, in part because his lack of privacy setting was taken as evidence of incitement.
But 8,000 images of child porn? That will only get you a six month sentence from Judge Kearl.
Judge Rupert Lowe sentenced a man to nine months in jail for shouting racist comments at a football player. Lowe gave no jail time to a doctor who ejaculated into a cup of coffee and gave the cup to a woman.
NEW: The University of South Carolina required all students to affirm the value of "diversity and inclusion" as part of a mandatory training this summer.
Then, when I reached out for comment, USC claimed the training was "optional" despite telling students it was "required."🧵
In a module on "Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging," which included 10 multiple choice questions, the training asked students how "diversity and inclusion help create a healthy, positive campus environment."
Students who said these values do not create such an environment—or that they give "unfair advantages" to "people from marginalized identity groups"—were told that their answers were "incorrect."
NEW: The RNC has sent letters to election officials in six swing states urging them to monitor Vot-ER, the nonprofit that helps doctors register their patients to vote, for possible violations of election law.
This is the Dem-aligned group registering patients in psych wards.🧵
Addressed to secretaries of state in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada, the letters argue that Vot-ER is "weaponizing the healthcare system" for partisan ends and "threatening … election integrity" with its materials.
"It is not difficult to imagine how a patient could feel pressured to register to vote or support a certain candidate to receive medical care," the letters say.
NEW: Robin DiAngelo tells her "fellow white people" that they should "always cite and give credit to the work of BIPOC people who have informed your thinking."
But she appears to have plagiarized numerous scholars—including two minorities—in her doctoral dissertation.🧵
"When you use a phrase or idea you got from a BIPOC person," DiAngelo says, "credit them."
But according to a complaint filed last week with the University of Washington, where DiAngelo received her Ph.D. in multicultural education, she hasn't always taken her own advice.
The 2004 dissertation, "Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis," lifts two paragraphs from an Asian-American professor, Northeastern University's Thomas Nakayama, without proper attribution, omitting quotation marks and in-text citations.
NEW: Two professors on Columbia's top disciplinary body were involved in the unlawful encampment that upended campus life in April and led to the resignation of Columbia president Minouche Shafik, raising questions about the school's ability to keep order in the coming term.🧵
The professors, Joseph Slaughter and Susan Bernofsky, sit on the university senate’s rules committee, which helps set rules governing campus protests as well as the process for enforcing them.
Both have publicly defended the students involved in the encampment and—according to photographs and metadata reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon—appear to have participated in it themselves.
NEW: Doctors at Seattle Children's Hospital were forced to attend a racially segregated DEI training that claimed black people are "systematically targeted for demise" and pressed white docs to "tap into their repressed racial memories" to develop a white "race-consciousness."🧵
Held in August 2022, the training was mandatory for the gastroenterology department and divided participants into three "racial caucuses"—a white caucus, a black caucus, and a "Non-Black POC Caucus"—to "minimize harm to our black learners and facilitator."
Each caucus completed separate "racial identity development exercises" based on the work of prominent diversity consultants, including White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo.
NEW: Tim Walz signed into law a bill that established racial quotas throughout the state's health department, from a requirement that two members of a pregnancy task force be "Black or African American" to rules governing the ethnic composition of a "health equity" council.🧵
The legislation, which Walz signed last May, created race-based membership requirements for five separate committees while setting up additional race-conscious programs. Legal experts said the quotas were patently unconstitutional and would be easy pickings for a plaintiff.
"Any time the government uses a racial classification without a compelling state interest, that is unconstitutional," said Adam Mortara, the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.