Plaintiff Jonathan McCausland is a former graduate student and teaching assistant ("TA") at Penn State University …. In 2024, Jeanine Staples-Dixon, a tenured professor at Penn State, published a book that disclosed Plaintiff's childhood sexual abuse….
The facts, as alleged by plaintiff:
In 2018, Plaintiff began working as a TA for Professor Staples-Dixon's Philadelphia Urban Seminar at Penn State. This yearly seminar was held in the summer for a small number of students. As part of the course, Staples-Dixon instructed her TAs to share their "gender stories." She explained that extreme vulnerability "was an essential part of the pedagogical value of the seminar," and she wanted her TAs to model that vulnerability for her students.
To facilitate open and honest communication among seminar participants, every student was required to complete several intake forms pertaining to confidentiality. The forms stated that all information shared in class would be confidential, would not be shared outside the classroom without permission, and would be anonymized in the event of publication. Neither Staples-Dixon nor the TAs signed the confidentiality forms.
During the summer 2018 seminar, Plaintiff shared a gender story relating to how competition and athletics shaped his ideas of masculinity. However, Plaintiff felt that this story was "insufficiently vulnerable when compared to the highly personal gender stories share by other" TAs. During a planning session for the 2019 seminar, Plaintiff shared with Staples-Dixon that he had been sexually abused as a child by older boys who lived in his neighborhood. Staples-Dixon encouraged Plaintiff to share his story with seminar participants because it revealed the exact kind of extreme vulnerability that she wanted to discuss in the course.
Trusting the norms of confidentiality in the seminar and the agreements signed by every student, Plaintiff agreed. With Staples-Dixon's encouragement, Plaintiff continued to share his sexual abuse with seminar participants during the 2020, 2021, and 2022 sessions. Plaintiff graduated from Penn State in 2022.
In December 2024, Staples-Dixon published "Extraordinary Pedagogies: An Endarkened Feminist Approach to Revolutionizing Teacher Consciousness" through Teachers College Press. She based the book on the research she conducted during the seminar. The book included the following passage recounting Plaintiff's sexual abuse:
[1.] Some excerpts from Judge Steven McAuliffe (D.N.H.) Monday in the longish Fosu v. Univ. of R.I. Bd. of Trustees (D.R.I.); there's a lot more in the whole opinion. First, the backstory about the plaintiff:
In 2018, URI recruited and hired Dr. Gifty Ako-Adounvo, as Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and Senior International Officer. Dr. Ako-Adounvo asked for URI's help to locate employment for Fosu, her domestic partner, and when no outside employment options were found, URI appointed him as a visiting professor for the 2019 spring semester. URI appointed Fosu to a faculty of practice to teach in the Political Science Department for the 2019-2020 academic year. A faculty of practice is a one-year appointment and a non-tenure position.
Fosu did not have the academic qualifications to teach core curriculum classes in the Political Science Department. The Chair of the Political Science Department, Professor Marc Hutchison, decided that Fosu could teach elective courses as a faculty of practice. Fosu was to teach a course on the Supreme Court and constitutional law, and he also proposed a course on advocacy, which was approved. During the 2019-2020 academic year, Fosu taught elective undergraduate courses on constitutional law and advocacy and a graduate course….
[2.] The court discussed various bases for Fosu's appointment not being renewed; here's an excerpt of that, though there were other things happening as well. Note that, "[b]ecause Fosu has not responded to defendants' motion [for summary judgment]," the court "accept[ed] as uncontested defendants' recitation of the material facts":
On October 26, 2020, Fosu sent an email titled "Declaration of Diversity" to URI President Dooley, along with many others including members of the URI faculty and staff, URI students, law enforcement officials, and government officials. Fosu again targeted the Chief Diversity Officer, Mary Almandrez, and criticized the hiring process involving Dr. Sylvia Spears and Dr. Harry Alston. He accused the URI faculty and staff of racism, collusion, unethical conduct, and violations of the law.
The email included a boxed warning that "all parties mentioned in this letter and involved in the Dr. Harry Alston and Dr. Sylvia Spears interview process must not shred or destroy any documents, must not delete any emails or electronic messages from November 1, 2019 to present." Fosu also asserted that he and others invoked their Fourth Amendment rights.
In the email, Fosu notified President Dooley that Fosu's private corporation, Diversity Think Tank, was "headquartered" at URI and that it was the corporation's goal "to directly target and expose URI's indefensible and offensively prejudicial and discriminatory policies and the people who perpetuate intentional racism and normalized racist inequities through the machinations of white supremacy." …
[Fosu attached a] "Declaration of Diversity" that purported to be issued by "organized URI students." The Declaration began with a statement that "We as organized URI student, hold these facts to be self-evident, that there is a deliberate and racist dehumanizing exclusion of highly qualified African-Americans/Blacks, Latinos/Hispanics and Native Americans from positions of senior leadership and other positions throughout the university, including Administrative Staff, Deans, Department Chairs, Faculty, Functional Staff and Students." …
The Declaration included 46 "complaints and demands," one of which said:
We students will create a White-list of all those white professors who define and list themselves as diversity initiative conveners, race experts and researchers while they are silent and benefit from white supremacy and racism at URI, self-evident by the fact that no African-American with an ancestry to slavery and no Latino has been hired to a senior leadership position since 1892—and NOT ONE WHITE FACULTY member has expressed a problem with that fact, and the glaring fact that there are NO BLACK FACULTY members in the Criminal Justice Department and only a couple at the Harrington School. You white professors do not need research to find out about systemic racism at URI—you are part and parcel of the creation and maintenance of systemic racism at URI though your self-serving policies, unapologetic excuses, discriminatory behavior and your hegemonic culture of impunity. You should be ashamed of yourselves and we will help end this metastasized disease of racism. Your panel discussions about diversity and ethics should be our panel discussions about diversity and ethics, and we pick who should be on these panels.
While the D.C. Circuit has held that some areas of the White House grounds constitute a nonpublic forum, Sherrill v. Knight (D.C. Cir. 1977), that decision is wrong and should be overruled. But even under Sherrill, the President's actions must be sustained because the President has "compelling interest[s]" in enforcing minimum standards for bona fide journalists and safeguarding national security information…. [T]he President's actions were not retaliatory because the Government would have taken the same action anyway, notwithstanding Plaintiffs' speech criticizing the President—indeed, the President has not revoked access to other outlets that have equally criticized the President….
Sherrill v. Knight … held that because "White House press facilities hav[e] been made publicly available as a source of information for newsmen, the protection afforded newsgathering under the first amendment guarantee of freedom of the press, requires that this access not be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons." While Defendants acknowledge the D.C. Circuit's decision in Sherrill, that case was wrongly decided, and Defendants expressly reserve their right to argue so on appeal.
Access to the White House is a privilege, not a right. In Sherill, the D.C. Circuit emphasized that "[t]hese press facilities [were] perceived as being open to all bona fide Washington-based journalists[.]" The reality is much better described by the D.C. Circuit's more recent decision in AP v. Budowich (D.C. Cir. 2025). There, the court acknowledged that there are more journalists who wish to interview the President than he can accommodate; "[i]n deciding which journalists to speak with, the President may of course take into account their viewpoint." Accord Baltimore Sun Co. v. Ehrlich (4th Cir. 2006) (upholding State Governor's press directive that "no one in the Executive Department or Agencies" should speak with two named reporters because the "Governor's Press Office feels that currently both are failing to objectively report on any issue dealing with" that administration). As a result, the court concluded that at least for certain spaces, "the White House may consider journalists' viewpoints when deciding whether to grant access."
The same logic and standard should apply to access to White House grounds more generally. "Opening" the "White House" to some journalists should not "transform these spaces into nonpublic fora to which access must be granted on a viewpoint neutral basis." Indeed, there are currently a finite number of hard passes, and yet the White House briefing room and West Wing facilities can accommodate only so many reporters. Under the AP decision, this counsels against the conclusion that the White House is a nonpublic forum. See AP ("These spaces should not be classified as nonpublic fora because access to them is tightly controlled and highly selective…. When access to government property is very limited, considerations of viewpoint may be permissible.").
As I noted Friday, according to the D.C. Circuit (the federal appellate court with jurisdiction over D.C.), it's
unconstitutional for the government to exclude press outlets based on viewpoint from spaces that have been broadly opened to the press, such as the main White House press briefing room but
constitutional to do so as to spaces that aren't generally open to the press, such as interviews in the Oval Office.
The key precedent on this in AP v. Budowich (D.C. Cir. 2025), which upheld the exclusion of the AP from the Oval Office (because of AP's refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico "Gulf of America"), but reaffirmed (citing Sherrill v. Knight (D.C. Cir. 1977)) that
When the White House opens its facilities to the press generally, as it does in the Brady Briefing Room, it cannot exclude journalists based on viewpoint.
I stand by this legal analysis, but wanted to pass along the White House's contrary argument that was posted yesterday:
Last week, President Donald J. Trump removed CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House grounds after yearsoffalsereporting. The First Amendment protects their right to publish; it does not entitle them to a hard pass, briefing room seat, or place in the press pool.
Access changes are nothing new. What is new, however, is the sudden claim that it becomes sacred only when the outlets are friendly to the Radical Left. The rule was never "every outlet gets in." It was always "our side stays in."
For years, Democrat Administrations have restricted, punished, and locked out the press.
Prof. Jack Goldsmith (Harvard Law) interviews Prof. John Coates (Harvard Law, former SEC general counsel). An excerpt:
Jack Goldsmith: President Trump regularly breaks news on his social media platform, Truth Social, where he posts market-moving presidential and White House announcements. The company now sells faster access to those posts for up to $100,000 a month. The advantage is apparently just 50 milliseconds, but that is enough to benefit traders.
To date, the early access has attracted more than a dozen subscribers. The arrangement effectively lets Trump profit off the presidency. Can this arrangement possibly be lawful? …
John Coates: … If you pay roughly $1.2 million a year to Trump Media, you get Trump's Truth Social postings ever so slightly before they hit the public website. And Truth Social, of course, is Trump's primary way to talk to the public.
In fairness, just one little nuance: it's not Trump himself selling this access. It's Trump Media. He did create that company. He only owns 41% of it. He's not an officer of it. His stock is in a trust. His son is the trustee. He's the sole beneficiary of the trust, and Trump can revoke the trust at any time. So I say all that just to be fair. But nevertheless, yes, I think you captured it correctly.
From Posey v. Bushnell, decided today by the Idaho Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Richard Bevan (see also this a post from when the verdict was handed down):
In June 2022, Posey performed on stage at a drag show in Coeur d'Alene City Park. The performance was attended by members of the public, including children. Bushnell did not attend the live show, though she later obtained a video recording of Posey's performance. On social media, Bushnell posted a video of herself describing what she saw in the video, claiming that Posey had "flashed his genitalia" during the performance, and asking why Posey had not been arrested. Bushnell then uploaded an edited version of Posey's performance to social media, blurring out the area around his crotch and claiming that the blurred area covered Posey's "fully exposed genitals."
Posey sued Bushnell for defamation, alleging that Bushnell had lied about his performance for the sake of gaining attention on social media. The case went to trial and the jury found in favor of Posey, awarding him $926,000 in compensatory damages and $250,000 in punitive damages.
The court affirmed the verdict, chiefly on the grounds that Bushnell (who represented herself) didn't properly preserve the arguments at trial and make them on appeal; an excerpt as to of the bases for the court's decision:
Members of Congress often hold demonstrations on the Eastern Steps of the U.S. Capitol building. Ordinary citizens, however, are barred from holding demonstrations on those same steps without congressional sponsorship. This selective limitation is unacceptable under the First Amendment, even conceding that the Eastern Steps are a nonpublic forum. So concluded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today in Mahoney v. U.S. Capitol Police Board.
Although all three judges on the panel agreed the regulations were impermissible, they disagreed on the rationale. Judge Rao, joined by Judge Henderson, wrote for the court. Her opinion begins:
Federal regulations prohibit the public from demonstrating on the Eastern Steps of the United States Capitol unless sponsored by a member of Congress. A minister seeking to pray and demonstrate on the Steps brought a First Amendment challenge to these regulations. The district court granted summary judgment for the minister and universally enjoined enforcement of the regulations.
Although the Eastern Steps are a nonpublic forum, the regulations are not reasonable because an individual's right to demonstrate outside the Capitol cannot turn on the discretion of a member of Congress. The universal injunction, however, exceeded the district court's equitable authority. We therefore affirm the grant of summary judgment for Mahoney on his First Amendment claim but vacate the injunction and remand for the district court to determine the appropriate scope of relief.
As Judge Rao explained, it would be permissible to reserve the Eastern Steps as a means of entering and exiting the Capitol building, but it is not permissible for the government to privilege those demonstrations endorsed or supported by members of Congress over those that are not.
"[T]he government has no authority to license one side to fight freestyle, while forbidding the other to fight at all." Mahoney v. Babbitt, 105 F.3d 1452, 1454 (D.C. Cir. 1997). As applied to the Eastern Steps, the Traffic Regulations are unreasonable because members may not exercise unbridled discretion over which individuals may speak on the Steps of the Capitol.
On the question of remedy, Judge Rao noted that the district court should not have entered a universal injunction under Trump v. CASA, as such an injunction exceeded the district court's remedial authority. Note, however, that as a consequence of the D.C. Circuit's decision, the government is effectively precluded from barring anyone from demonstrating on the Eastern Steps under existing regulations. This is because the D.C. Circuit's decision (unlike that of the district court) has precedential effect and dictates an equivalent outcome in any and all future suits brought against the Capitol Police challenging the enforcement of the existing rules. As with most challenges brought against agency regulations, the practical effect of a victory against the federal government in the D.C. Circuit is nearly always universal (a point I expanded on here).
Senior Judge Rogers dissented from Judge Rao's opinion, largely on the reasoning, as her opinion would also bar the Capitol Police from enforcing its regulations against Mahoney. Judge Rogers would have affirmed the district court's conclusions that the Eastern Steps are a traditional public forum (as opposed to a nonpublic forum) and that the regulations in question are not narrowly tailored to serve the government's asserted security interests.
[1.] First, the backstory: In December, I posted an item about a decision by Judge Jeannette Vargas (S.D.N.Y.) in Finley v. Przybylowski:
Plaintiff and Defendant are attorneys who met seven years ago as summer associates at different prominent law firms in New York City…. [Plaintiff] alleges that Defendant violently raped and sexually assaulted her on the night they met, causing her physical, professional, and psychological damage. Defendant denies all allegations of nonconsensual conduct…. Defendant claims that he and Plaintiff engaged in consensual sexual activity in May 2018. Defendant attests that he was "terminated from [his] employment with a top law firm on October 13, 2025 as a result of the Plaintiff's Complaint and false allegations," and that he fears that it would be "nearly impossible" to obtain employment with his name attached to this lawsuit, He also claims to fear that his physical safety could be placed at risk….
Defendant sought to proceed under a pseudonym, but the court said no:
[T]he economic and reputational harms that Defendant has faced and may face as a party to this action, substantial though they may be, are outweighed by the public interest in access to judicial proceedings….
I excerpted more of the opinion, which you can read here. Naturally, one can agree or disagree with the court's decision to deny pseudonymity, but in any event, my post passed along that decision.
[2.] Then, on July 22, Przybylowski's lawyer (a partner at a small but prominent law firm) sent a letter to Reason, with a "demand" that the post be removed:
In Mormino v. Lomb Inc., filed Aug. 31 in Missouri state court, plaintiff—General Manager for one of defendant's restaurants—posted this post on his personal Facebook page after the Charlie Kirk murder:
The restaurant fired him, and now plaintiff is suing. Missouri is one of a significant minority of states that forbids even private employers from firing employees based on their "political activity":
A very interesting forthcoming article by noted media lawyer Steve Zansberg in the Fall 2026 issue of the Communications Lawyer; the Summary:
AI prompts and outputs used by government officials to conduct public business should generally be treated as public or agency records subject to state public records laws and FOIA.
While courts have not yet resolved how these laws apply to AI chatbot conversations, existing legal principles strongly support disclosure when the records relate to official functions.
Practical barriers such as poor retention, high costs, and asserted privileges will likely shape future disputes over access.
And an excerpt from the Introduction:
In 2025, a combined reporting project between Cascade Public Broadcasting and KNKX-TV exposed that city workers, including the mayor's staff, in two Washington cities utilized ChatGPT to write mayoral letters, generate grant applications, draft policy documents, synthesize public comments, and compose replies to citizens and the media. The joint reporting effort revealed alleged bid-rigging performed through AI prompts and responses, and that half of a letter the mayor of Bellingham sent to state authorities seeking funds for a Native American tribe was actually copied, verbatim, from ChatGPT. That reporting was enabled by the successful use of the Washington Public Records Act. Similarly, in 2025, the Texas Department of Transportation produced numerous conversations between its employees and ChatGPT in response to a records request under that state's public records law.
In the mid-1960s, the idea of legal restrictions on hate speech was one whose time seemed to have come and gone. Yet only a decade later, the public's interest in hate speech laws surged.
This renewed interest can be attributed, in part, to changing attitudes toward freedom of speech. By the 1970s, many Americans had come to believe that freedom of speech had not secured the just and humane society that liberals of the 1960s envisioned. The 1970s saw economic hardship and what President Jimmy Carter famously described as national "malaise." Pornography proliferated, crime wracked the nation, and racism continued to flourish. Waning confidence in freedom of speech coincided with an unexpected series of events that produced one of American history's most important dialogues on freedom of speech and hate speech.
In 1977, a small group of uniformed Nazis attempted to march into a Chicago suburb populated by Holocaust survivors. The "Nazi–Skokie affair" generated a firestorm that altered the terms of the hate speech debate.
The Skokie incident set off an unprecedented conversation about hate speech and legal limitations on hate speech. For the first time, ordinary Americans learned that the First Amendment protected most forms of hate speech. In dining rooms, community centers, and schools, people debated: Why should Nazis be allowed to march in Skokie? Should freedom of speech have limits? Should a nation that is committed to racial and religious equality tolerate the speech of racists and fascists?
Prominent journalist, academic, and anti-racism activist Nikole Hannah-Jones recently wrote a controversial New York Times article, in which she expresses regret for her and her husband's decision to place her daughter in underperforming majority-Black public schools in New York City. Hannah-Jones hoped that putting her daughter there would help improve education for disadvantaged minority children, as her family's wealth and skills as political activists might stimulate reforms. Instead, her daughter ended up bitterly bemoaning the poor quality of the education she got, and Hannah-Jones' well-meaning efforts to improve the public schools she attended accomplished very little. Eventually, at her daughter's request, Hannah-Jones acknowledged error, and sent her daughter to a higher-quality selective high school.
Hannah-Jones' story is a testament to the value of exit rights and choice. Although she does not seem to recognize it, the best way to help students from less advantaged families than her own is to expand exit and choice opportunities for them. That is what social science shows. Her story also resonated with me because of my own experience as both a struggling student and (later) a parent. That experience also highlights the value of exit rights and choice, even if in a slightly different way.
While I think Hannah-Jones hasn't fully drawn the right lessons from her experience, I commend her for her willingness to acknowledge error. Few public intellectuals do that, and especially not on issues close to the heart of their ideological and personal commitments, as this one is for her.
Exit vs. Voice
Hannah-Jones' initial decision to send her daughter to a poorly performing public school was motivated by an argument associated with the great economist Albert Hirschman (though I don't know if that's where she got the idea). In his classic work, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Hirschman argued that exit rights can be harmful if it leads people to leave a flawed institution that they could instead stay and successfully reform using "voice." He specifically applied this to the issue of school choice, arguing that the most savvy and politically influential parents might take their kids out of badly-performing schools, instead of staying and successfully reforming them.
It is important to recognize that Hirschman's argument applies only in a narrow range of circumstances. In order for it to hold true, a subset of participants in a political institution must 1) be able to force through effective reforms where the others could not impose the reforms in their absence; 2) prefer to exit rather than exercise voice despite the likelihood that their use of voice will be successful; and 3) possess exit options that are not available to the others. If 1 holds true, it is hard to see why 2 would, since these individuals could instead get what they want without moving. The more foot voting opportunities become available to everyone, the more the third precondition is weakened.
Even if all three preconditions are met, foot voting by even some participants could give policymakers an incentive to enact needed reforms of their own accord in order to retain tax revenue from those who might exit. This seems to have occurred when it comes to the paradigm case that gave rise to Hirschman's theory: school vouchers that give parents funds to transfer their kids to better-performing schools…. Peer-reviewed studies of the effects of vouchers find that they actually improve the quality of public schools "left behind" by those who exit. By contrast, simply increasing funds for traditional public schools without expanding exit rights has little or no educational benefit.
Point 1 above is of special relevance to Hannah-Jones' experience. It turns out that she and others like here were not actually in a position to effectively promote beneficial reforms in the failing schools in which she enrolled her daughter. More fundamentally, the main problems besetting those schools are not lack of resources or lack of activism, but poor incentives. As economist Alex Tabarrok points out, New York City public schools spend over $40,000 per student per year (one of the highest averages in the nations), and P.S. 307 (the school where she initially sent her daughter) spends over $52,000. And NYC doesn't lack for motivated political activists. The problem is that school officials and employees have little incentive to use those resources in ways that actually facilitate quality education. To put it crudely, they get paid the same, regardless of how well the kids do. If the latter perform poorly, that might even be a justification for increasing spending further. This is a large part of the cause of what Hannah-Jones calls "the callous disregard" for children's needs of the faculty and staff at her daughter's elementary school. Parental "voice" is unlikely to fix that.
By contrast, when parents can choose their schools (as Hannah-Jones eventually did), they can seek out ones that fit their kids' needs better. And schools that rely on choice for their funding have strong incentives to actually educate the kids effectively. And, as noted in my book, studies indicate that expanding exit rights and choice particularly benefits the poor and disadvantaged - including minorities.
Hannah-Jones rightly laments that such options are often only available to the relatively affluent (most of whom are white). But there is much we can do to expand exit options for others.
As I explain in a series of articles coauthored with Josh Braver (see here and here), one way to do so is to break down exclusionary zoning, which - among other things - keeps poor and minority parents from moving their children to areas with better schools. Exclusionary zoning also has a horrible racist history.
We can also expand choice and exit rights by instituting universal school choice, which can - at least to a large extent - break the connection between residency and schooling, thereby particularly benefiting poor and disadvantaged students. In another recent article, I explain how this (along with other measures to expand "foot voting" opportunities) can help us more fully realize the promise of Brown v. Board of Education.
By contrast, New York City has only a very limited school choice system, which does not include private schools, and has various other constraints. Even the limited available choice still creates important gains for poor Black and Hispanic students. But expanded choice and competition could make the system better.
One Student's - And Parent's - Experience
Some parts of Hannah-Jones' story reminded me of aspects of my own, as both student and parent. I was far from an ideal student, and - later - far from an ideal parent. But those shortcomings accentuated the value of exit rights and choice, without which I (and later, my daughter) would have been far worse off.
My parents brought me to the United States from the Soviet Union when I was six. Obviously, pretty much everything I have managed to accomplish since them was the result of that choice - the difference between the opportunities offered by a relatively free society and those of a socialist dictatorship (which later became an only modestly less awful nationalist dictatorship).
More immediately relevant was my parents' further use of exit rights in the US. I was no great student, and did not learn to read till the age of eight - a consequence of some combination of lack of motivation and what may have been undiagnosed dyslexia. When I was 11, my parents moved to the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, largely because it had better schools than the one where we lived previously, and their strengths were particularly well-suited to my needs. Like Hannah-Jones' daughter, after she went to a stronger high school, I initially struggled in the new environment. But, eventually, I did much better. This move did not make as big a difference as that from Russia to the US. But it was significant, nonetheless. I recounted these experiences in my 2010 immigration memoir, written for HIAS.
As a student at Lexington High School, I witnessed another benefit of school choice. The Boston area has a program called METCO, which allows inner-city students (mostly Black and Hispanic) to voluntarily apply to attend much stronger schools in the suburbs, such as LHS. Studies show that participants make major educational gains, and are more likely to attend college.
Many METCO students initially struggle in their new environments (as I did myself after we first moved to Lexington). And there is sometimes a gap between their grades and test scores, and those of the suburban kids in their new schools. When I was a high school junior, I wrote an article about this gap for the school newspaper, thereby unexpectedly causing something of a local controversy. Nonetheless, the program creates real progress for disadvantaged kids. And, unlike mandatory school busing - which led to outbreaks of violence and racism in the Boston area in the 1970s - METCO has met with little opposition.
Many years later, my own daughter Lydia, had educational issues of her own. When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, my wife and I saw that remote education in the Arlington, Virginia public schools would be a terrible fit for Lydia, given her need for occupational therapy, and what we later learned was a fairly serious case of dyslexia (likely worse than what I had). We made the decision to send her to a private school which - among other things - kept on with in-person education throughout the pandemic. Lydia did better, as a result (including after the pandemic). Had we instead worked to use "voice" to reform the local public schools, it's unlikely we would have achieved much. Lydia would have suffered for nothing.
Nonetheless, progress was still uneven. Like me before her, Lydia still did not know how to read at the age of eight. After extensive consultation with specialists at her school and elsewhere, we finally hit upon the idea of teaching her to read by helping her memorize "sight word" flashcards. Like me, Lydia has trouble with visual learning, but is very good at learning through memorization and repetition.
For several months, Lydia and I spend 15-30 minutes every night memorizing sight words. We went from kindergarten sight words, all the way to fifth-grade ones. At the end of this not-always-fun process, Lydia could read at grade level, and the first book she read on her own was classic science fiction novel Ender's Game, which is intended for adults. Today (at age 11), Lydia is an "academic superstar," as her school's principal put it.
In retrospect, I should have hit upon this fairly simple and cheap idea much earlier, especially given my own experiences. I am to blame for that oversight. The episode shows that even high-quality schools and teachers cannot fully substitute for parental judgment of their kids' specific needs. But the school was invaluable in maintaining a measure of progress in the meantime. And discussions with their and other specialists helped us eventually figure out the right path.
In sum, no school is perfect, and parents need to be attentive to their kids' individual situations. This reality creates difficulties for poor parents, single parents, and others less advantaged than Hannah-Jones or myself. But exit rights, choice, and competition can do much to improve the lot of poor and minority students.
From today's decision by Judge Loren AliKhan (D.D.C.) in Passantino v. Weissmann(for an earlier decision in the case, see here):
Plaintiff Stefan Passantino brings this action against Defendant Andrew Weissmann, alleging defamation stemming from a September 2023 social media post. In the post, Mr. Weissmann referred to Mr. Passantino—a lawyer—as someone "who coached [a witness appearing before Congress] to lie." …
In 2021, the House of Representatives established a Select Committee to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. As part of its investigation, the Select Committee interviewed numerous witnesses, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to President Trump who had been serving under the direction of White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6, 2021.
Mr. Passantino [a former Trump administration senior lawyer] represented Ms. Hutchinson at her first three closed-door Select Committee depositions on February 23, March 7, and May 17, 2022. In early June 2022, after the third deposition, Ms. Hutchinson fired Mr. Passantino and retained new counsel. She subsequently gave a fourth, televised deposition on June 28, which received substantial media coverage.
After her fourth deposition, Ms. Hutchinson sent a letter to the Select Committee stating that she intended to "waive [her] attorney-client privilege [with Mr. Passantino] in order to share information with the [C]ommittee that[] [was] relevant to [her] prior testimony." The Select Committee scheduled her for a fifth, closed-door deposition for September 14, 2022. According to Ms. Hutchinson, she had asked a friend to "back channel to the committee and say that there [were] a few things that [she] want[ed] to talk about." … [She also said] that she did "not [want to] let Stefan [Passantino] know that [she was] back channeling for this interview" ….
