Beach morning glory: white

Botanists know the white-flowering beach morning glory as Ipomoea imperati. At Port Aransas on June 3rd the white flowers significantly outnumbered the purple ones produced by Ipomoea pes-caprae. Here are broader and closer views of the white flowers, with a tiny spider on one in the second picture. Everywhere we looked, practically all the leaves had beach sand on them. These plants have apparently learned to cope with lesser amounts of sunshine making it through to the leaves.

  

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Title IX is a section of the American legal code that “protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. Title IX states: ‘No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.'”

As has too often been the case in recent years, many universities have taken to enforcing Title IX in ideological ways that deny due process and a presumption of innocence to people accused of violating it. In one such case, reported Reuters on June 2nd:

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled a former assistant professor of physics can sue Cornell University for gender discrimination over claims it disciplined him following a “skewed” investigation into a female student’s sexual harassment claims.

The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ revival of Mukund Vengalattore’s Title IX claims came in a case that one judge said was an example of a “disturbing trend” of threats to due process for university faculty accused of misconduct.

That judge was José Cabranes of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In his concurrence he wrote:

This growing “law” of university disciplinary procedures, often promulgated in response to the regulatory diktats of government, is controversial and thus far largely beyond the reach of the courts because of, among other things, the presumed absence of “state action” by so-called private universities. Thus insulated from review, it is no wonder that, in some cases, these procedures have been compared unfavorably to those of the infamous English Star Chamber.

As alleged, Cornell’s investigation of Vengalattore denied him access to counsel; failed to provide him with a statement of the nature of the accusations against him; denied him the ability to question witnesses; drew adverse inferences from the absence of evidence; and failed to employ an appropriate burden of proof or standard of evidence. In other cases and other universities the catalogue of offenses can include continuing surveillance and the imposition of double jeopardy for long-ago grievances.

You can read more from Judge Cabranes’s concurrence in a “Notable and Quotable” item from the Wall Street Journal.

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman