Libertarian Walter Block (who is all wrong on immigration) is the subject of a fuss at Baltimore’s Loyola University.

An apology has been issued by Baltimore Loyola’s Economics Department but they don’t exacly say what they’re apologizing for

Apology from Economics Department: Remarks by lecturer not representative of department’s views

To the Loyola Community:

The officials and members of the Adam Smith Society and the Economics faculty wish to apologize for the insensitive and incorrect remarks made Thursday, November 6 by invited speaker Professor Walter Block of Loyola University New Orleans.

Professor Block’s response to a question about the differences between average earnings of African-Americans and whites in America, which maintained that the disparity could be explained by differences in average productivity, was offensive, and we are sincerely sorry for it.

It is important to note that the remark was offensive not just because it was racially insensitive, but because it was erroneous and indicated poor-quality scholarship. There is ample scholarly evidence that, after adjusting for productivity-related characteristics (e.g., years of schooling, work experience, union and industry status, etc.) a considerable wage gap remains. This gap is likely explained by employment discrimination. For a fuller discussion of this issue, see J. Gwartney and R. Stroup, Microeconomics, 12th Edition (2009), pp. 292-4.

Professor Block’s remarks also included offensive comments regarding the source of wage disparities between men and women. We are deeply sorry for these remarks and the harm they have caused.

In short, economists are well aware of the existing gender and racial injustice in America and are conducting much useful research to help overcome it. Furthermore, we are united as a department in refusing to tolerate or sympathize with gender or racial prejudice in any form.

We appreciate the thoughtful questions and responses we’ve received from members of the Loyola community, particularly its students, and we look forward to continued dialogue on topics of great importance such as this one.

But they don’t say what he said! A story in the Baltimore Sun explains what the problem is. Block is an economist, and was asked the following economics questions: why do African-Americans earn less than whites? Why do women earn less than men?

And he told them. In a November 12 story called Those delicate Jesuit sensibilities , Laura Vozzella writes

But on the phone with me, Block filled in the hot-button blank: “Sociobiology.”

He said he’d told the audience that differences in IQ might account for why blacks and women earn about 30 percent less than their white, male counterparts.

Yikes! What in the name of Larry Summers was he thinking?

Block said there’s research to back up that theory, noting the controversial book The Bell Curve. He offered a little consolation for women, saying they aggregate in the middle of the IQ scale, while men are the outliers. That’s why, he said, men dominate the ranks of both prisoners and Nobel laureates. “Nobel Prize winners in hard sciences,” he added, “not the wussy stuff like poetry.”

Block said no one pulled him aside after the lecture to express dismay. He said he’d gotten applause. But days later, a student forwarded the e-mailed apology from President Linnane.[Email Fr. Linnane]

“We are a Jesuit institution, and as such, a respect for diversity is one of our defining values,” it said.

Said Block: “They respect diversity but not diversity of opinion.”

So is it ever safe for an academic to answer this question honestly? You could ask James Watson, or Andrew Fraser, or Richard Herrnstein. The answer seems to be “no.”

I’m giving the Friday night keynote addess at the inaugural conference of the H.L. Mencken Club, November 21-3 in Baltimore.

A reader pointed this article out to me.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. writes in the San Jose Mercury News:

In July, during an address to the annual meeting of the National Council of La Raza, Barack Obama promised to make comprehensive immigration reform “a top priority in my first year as president.”

Don’t hold your breath.

Just a few days before the election, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Obama to rank in order of priority five issues — tax cuts, health care, energy, education and immigration. Obama made up his own list, appropriately adding the economy as his No. 1 priority and dropping immigration altogether.

It’s true that President-elect Obama owes Latinos an enormous debt for giving him two-thirds of their votes. But Obama and congressional Democrats also owe a lot to labor. Those IOUs are headed for a collision. I’m betting on labor to win. I expect immigration reform to be off the agenda for the next four years, especially since Obama will be looking to placate the unions while backing off the loony idea of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. That was never a serious proposal anyway, only something that Obama embraced during the Democratic primary to win votes from defeatists convinced that American products can’t compete with foreign ones.

Expect Latinos to get shortchanged — again. They may get bought off with a couple of high profile appointments

I don’t think  Navarette quite gets the immigration issue. There is a lot more involved here than union members and right wing ideologues. Unions and the anti-immigration right are competing for a block of voter who are increasingly alienated from both political parties and deeply skeptical of immigration. Republicans typically run well with the pro-immigration independents. The key to Democrats winning a national elections is appealing to those independents most likely to be deeply skeptical on trade and immigration.

Latino voters don’t need to get short-changed here. They need to consider instead what their key interests are beyond immigration, develop some understanding of the real costs immigration has for potential political allies, and appreciate just what the signal their votes send.

No major presidential candidate in either party has been openly skeptical of expansion of immigration for some time. John McCain devote much of his political capital to expansion of immigration–and it failed to get him much in the way of Latino votes. Instead, many Latinos switched their votes to a man who presents a very different image than Bush, and who is going have a lot of immunity from criticism on racial grounds. If Obama really wants re-election, he really could dramatically reform affirmative action and curtail immigration and be assured of lot independent votes.

What Obama must do to get re-elected is deliver somewhat better jobs and living standards for Latino, black and poorer white voters. If those voters wanted more immigration even if it mean worse jobs, medical care and education-they could have gotten that with John McCain. What he also must do is convince significant numbers of white independents that he really is “their president too” and not just the less evil alternative to George Bush. It is highly possible the next time Obama runs for president, he will not be facing an opponent closely associated with a president with the worse approval ratings in recorded history.

Also, recent union leaders really have tried to be accommodating to high immigration levels–for more accommodating than more successful union organizers like Cesar Chavez. What that practice has meant in a practical sense is that unions have lost most of the clout they have had in their heyday when other political interests helped force containment of immigration. Much of the traditional core constituency of unions includes skilled workers who are likely to be independent voters skeptical of both major parties, immigration-and union leadership that fails to openly support their interests. We aren’t at the point where union leaders are openly skeptical of immigration-but they are moving in that direction.

I don’t expect Obama to support the kinds of policies folks here at VDARE.com would like. What I expect from him is a modestly more active  workplace enforcement than we saw under Bush and modestly lower levels of illegal immigration than we saw under Bush. I expect Obama will try to increase legal immigration a bit to compensate–and will face substantial resistance in his party if he tries to expand H-1b and other skilled guest worker visas unless he really is increasing jobs growth for Americans too.

A married Mormon who gave $1000 to the Proposition 8 anti-gay marriage campaign has resigned as director of a Sacramento musical theater company after being nationally targeted in the ongoing Big Gay Hissy Fit of 2008.

According to the exit poll, for whatever it’s worth, the key to the passage of Prop. 8 was the huge black turnout in California in support of Barack Obama. Blacks voted 70% in favor of the ban on gay marriage, if the exit poll can be trusted. (Supposedly, Hispanics were split almost evenly, but I suspect that has to do with confusion over the wording of the ballot, since it was hard to remember that you were supposed to be for Prop. 8 if you were against gay marriage. Back in 2000, Hispanics voted 65% for Prop. 22, which banned gay marriage, and I can’t imagine they’ve changed much since then.)

Of course, the Stuff White People Like crowd aren’t going after blacks for voting against gay marriage. After all, they’re, well, black. No, they’re denouncing … Mormons, who are white. The whole point of this exercise is for one set of white people to feel superior to another set of white people. That blacks have their own opinions of gay marriage is an unwelcome complication that the SWPLs are trying hard to ignore in order to fully indulge in their hatred of Mormons.

It’s good to see a very liberal fellow like Andy Ostroy get serious about immigration law enforcement. It is tragic that he had to learn in the hardest way imaginable that illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.
He lost his wife, filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, when she was murdered by an illegal alien because he feared being deported.

The husband of murdered actress Adrienne Shelly is suing the contractor who employed her murderer, contending she’d still be alive if the company hadn’t looked the other way while hiring illegal immigrants.

The Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed on behalf of Andrew Ostroy also seeks to hold the owners and management of the building where she was killed accountable, calling them “vicariously liable” for her death.

The indie actress, who also directed the acclaimed movie “Waitress,” was working at her office in 15 Abingdon Square on Nov. 1, 2006, when Diego Pillco, who was doing renovation work on the apartment downstairs from her, attacked and killed her during a robbery gone wrong.
[Kin Sues Firm in Actress Murder, New York Post, November 4, 2008]

This case was disturbing for many reasons, including how at least one blogger blamed the victim, accepting the killer’s story that Shelly smacked him and called him an SOB out of feminist pique. Why anyone would believe the fabrications concocted by an admitted illegal alien murderer is beyond me. Pilco lied up a story to his own advantage, period.

The New York Times also accepted killer Diego Pilco’s original falsehood as reasonable: In Guilty Plea, Actress’s Killer Changes Story to Robbery [Feb 15, 2008].

His original confession had the ring of truth: He was an illegal immigrant working on a renovation job in a Greenwich Village building when the imperious woman upstairs confronted him over construction noise.

The killer’s original confession didn’t have the “ring of truth” to me — far from it. Women’s rights and safety routinely get thrown under the bus at the New York Times when weighed against the all-important concerns of illegal aliens. Continuing…

They argued. She scratched him. Panicked that she would call the police and that he would be deported, he punched her and pushed her to the floor. Mistakenly thinking he had killed her, he hanged her from the shower rod of her bathroom, in a staged suicide.

At least the abominably weak plea deal (25 years for manslaughter) brought out the true story from the cold-blooded killer.

In fact, Pilco broke into Adrienne Shelly’s office where she caught him stealing her purse. He killed her to protect himself and staged the crime scene to make it appear a suicide. The medical examiner reported that Shelly was alive when Pilco hanged her. He wanted her dead so she couldn’t report his thievery to the police.

Andy Ostroy is to be congratulated for challenging the cheap-labor employers who attract immoral and dangerous foreigners like Diego Pilco into our communities.