Author Archives: James A. Bacon

Jeanine’s Memes

Posted on January 21, 2024 | 11 comments

From Jeanine’s Memes

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Bacon Meme of the week

Posted on January 20, 2024 | 3 comments

3 Comments

Posted in Bacon and pigs

Covid vs. Religious Freedom at UVA

Posted on January 17, 2024 | 72 comments

by James A. Bacon

The University of Virginia has paid more than $1.8 million in legal fees fighting a lawsuit filed by UVA Health employees who were fired, despite religious objections, for refusing to take the Covid vaccine. And that’s just through November. Given the continuing litigation, billing has likely passed the $2 million mark.

Eleven former employees filed a lawsuit a year ago, claiming that the $3 billion-a-year-in-revenues health system arbitrarily declined to grant them religious exemptions from the vaccine mandate.

Hunton Andrews Kurth is the lead law firm for UVA, charging between $600 and $900 per hour for legal services and racking up $1.52 million in charges through November, according to documents The Jefferson Council has acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. Eckert Seamons has charged $240,000, and IslerDare $70,000. Continue reading →

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Posted in Health Care, Individual liberties

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Morals, Coddling, Mental Illness, and Wokeness

Posted on January 16, 2024 | 53 comments

*** sponsored content ***

Jonathan Haidt

by James A. Bacon

Jonathan Haidt is one of the most important public intellectuals in America today. If you’re not familiar with his work, you need to be. You’ll get a chance to hear him when he comes to the University of Virginia February 8 as a guest of The Jefferson Council.

The social psychologist (and former UVA professor) gained national attention in 2012 with the publication of his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, which asks the question, why can’t we all get along? In America, liberals and conservatives hew to different sides of six fundamental moral realms such as Fairness/Cheating and Liberty/Oppression, he argues. Differing moral sentiments translate into different worldviews, which inform different political positions. Moral intuitions are the primary driver, and reason follows mainly as a means to justify those intuitions. Though an old-fashioned liberal who has confessed to having never voted for a Republican for president, Haidt eschewed demonizing those who think differently. Liberals and conservatives alike, he said, are prone to group thinking, rationalizing their intuitions, and confirmation bias (seeking data that confirms their worldviews while ignoring data that doesn’t). 

Jonathan Haidt
February 8, 2024, 6:30 p.m.
Nau Hall Auditorium
Register here

Continue reading →

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Birth Dearth Portends Continued Public School Enrollment Losses

Posted on January 16, 2024 | 14 comments


The Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia Projects significant erosion in public school enrollment in Virginia through 2030 — the effect of a seemingly permanent Covid-prompted loss of some 40,000 students to private schools and home schooling, combined with a shrinking birthrate that was evident before the Covid epidemic. Hamilton Lombard has the story here.

To see a map showing gainers and losers, read on…. Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Demographics, Education (K-12)

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Jeanine’s Memes

Posted on January 14, 2024 | 35 comments

From The Bull Elephant

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Bacon Meme of the Week

Posted on January 13, 2024 | 1 comment

1 Comment

Posted in Bacon and pigs

The War Over Robert E. Lee Never Ends

Posted on January 12, 2024 | 78 comments

by James A. Bacon

First they came for the equestrian statues of Robert E. Lee.

Then they removed his name from Lee Chapel at Washington & Lee University, where he is buried.

Then they came for the memorial to his horse Traveller.

Now they want to remove him from Virginia license plates.

A bill introduced by Del. Candi King, D-Woodbridge would direct the Department of Motor Vehicles to prohibit the issuance of license plates that make reference to the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, or any other prominent Confederate leader. Continue reading →

78 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Virginia history

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Congratulations, Virginia, You’re Now a High Tax State.

Posted on January 9, 2024 | 95 comments

States with the highest state-local tax burdens in calendar year 2022.

As the debate plays out over Governor Glenn Youngkin’s tax restructuring plan, which includes $1 billion in tax relief over the next budget biennium, rest assured that the opposition party will attack it as a heartless attack on poor and marginalized Virginians with their illimitable unmet needs. In that context, it is worth remembering Virginia’s slow drift from a lower tax/high-growth state into a high tax/slower growth state over the past three decades, and asking if the higher taxes have made life any better.

According to the Tax Foundation, state and local taxes took 12.5% of Virginia’s net product in calendar year 2022 — the eighth-highest percentage among the 50 states. Within living memory, Virginia’s tax burden was in the second-to-bottom quintile. Today we’re in the top quintile. We’re now officially a high-tax state. Continue reading →

95 Comments

Posted in Economic development, Taxes

Jeanine’s Memes

Posted on January 7, 2024 | 38 comments

From The Bull Elephant

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Pleasure Activism at JMU’s Queer Teach-In

Posted on January 6, 2024 | 9 comments

by Stu Smith

On October 4th 2023, Adrienne Maree Brown presented her work on Pleasure Activism at JMU as part of a Queer Teach-in. This Teach-in was hosted by JMU’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department. As you will soon hear from JMU’s Coordinator for Cultural and Affinity Spaces, Kwyn Riley, “This conversation serves as the nucleus of the Queer resistance teach-in.” But first, how about we hear from the keynote speaker, Adrienne Maree Brown?

I’m sure most of y’all are at a total loss for words. This is who James Madison University parades out to speak to young and impressionable minds. I think the footage speaks for itself and I frankly don’t have too much to say. To me it is clear that Pleasure Activism is just Hedonism under a Social Justice lens. As a history lover, I always wonder what the namesakes and founders of these universities would think of situations like this. I can’t recall any of Madison’s thoughts on pleasure, but his ol’ pal, Thomas Jefferson said this…

“Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.” Continue reading →

9 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), LGBQT

Bacon Meme of the Week

Posted on January 6, 2024 | 3 comments

3 Comments

Posted in Bacon and pigs

Look What UVA Is Hiding

Posted on January 5, 2024 | 18 comments

by James A. Bacon

Acting on behalf of The Jefferson Council, Walter Smith has filed a complaint in Henrico County against the University of Virginia, seeking a remedy for its refusal to supply documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Smith serves in a volunteer capacity as chair of the Council’s research committee.

The suit alleges 14 instances in which the University’s FOIA staff improperly denied emails and other documents to the Council. Smith’s FOIA requests asked for documents that would shed light on the inner workings of the University’s administrative decision-making process.

The cases highlighted in the complaint illustrate two main themes. First, UVA’s FOIA lawyers have stretched the presidential “working papers” exemption beyond its original intent of protecting the university president’s personal deliberations. Second, the lawyers did not apply privacy protections to Bert Ellis, a Board of Visitors member who was widely perceived as a threat to the university status quo.

“UVa’s FOIA process seems designed to delay and discourage and deny inquiries that may be embarrassing to the Ryan administration,” said Smith. “The administration says it’s all for open inquiry. These are matters of legitimate interest to the public. It seems hypocritical to hide so much.” Continue reading →

18 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed), Governance, Transparency

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What Does UVA Need in a University President?

Posted on January 4, 2024 | 65 comments

by James A. Bacon

For anyone following governance issues at the University of Virginia, Bill Ackman’s Twitter broadside against Harvard’s now- dethroned president Claudine Gay and its governing board is must reading. Ackman, the hedge-fund manager-turned-activist who spearheaded Gay’s overthrow, identifies serious systemic problems at Harvard, from its ponderous DEI bureaucracy to a tuition policy that prices out the middle class.

Every one of the pathologies he describes at Harvard plays out at UVA (although, one can argue, in diluted form). Little of this is new to readers of The Jefferson Council blog, for we have been documenting the problems for two years. But Ackman raises one point that we have not considered: what qualifications should a governing board look for in a university president?

The question might seem academic, but UVa President Jim Ryan is surely feeling nervous these days. As dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education before ascending to his position at UVA, he is a product of the same hyper-progressive Harvard culture as Gay. And Liz Magill, the University of Pennsylvania president who was sacked after her abysmal testimony before Congress, was Ryan’s hand-picked provost for UVa before she moved on to the Ivy League. Ryan is less politically tone deaf, to be sure. He is popular among UVA students and faculty, and he has said all the right things regarding free speech and institutional neutrality. No one in authority has publicly called for his resignation. Even The Jefferson Council, as critical as it has been of UVA under Ryan’s tenure, has taken no position on whether he should stay or go.

Nevertheless, it is worth asking the question, in light of the presidential de-fenestrations at Harvard and Penn: what should an elite university look for in a president? Continue reading →

65 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed), Governance

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Nooses, Masks and Double Standards

Posted on January 3, 2024 | 52 comments

by James A. Bacon

In the fall of 2022 a furtive figure was caught on videotape draping a noose around the Homer statue on the Grounds of the University of Virginia. The university administration immediately declared the act a hate crime. University police launched an investigation, enlisting the FBI to help in the search for the perpetrator. A $10,000 award was offered to anyone who could provide more information.

“The facts available indicate that this was an act intended to intimidate members of this community,” said President Jim Ryan in a letter to the community. “A noose is a recognizable and well-known symbol of violence, most closely associated with the racially motivated lynching of African Americans.”

A noose hung from a tree branch is indeed a recognizable symbol of lynching. The meaning when hung around the neck of a statue of an ancient Greek poet, however, was not self-evident (as we noted at the time). Indeed, when the offender was discovered, it turned out he hadn’t been targeting African Americans at all. Irate at how the Homer statue placed a hand on the head of a naked youth, the Albemarle County man declared that it “glorified pedophilia.” Local authorities charged him with intimidation anyway.

That was then.

Photo credit: WUVAnews.com

The day after Hamas’ October 7 terrorist assault on Israel, the Students for Justice in Palestine at UVA issued a statement  declaring that “colonized people” had the right to resist oppression “by whatever means they deem necessary.” A poster promoting the October 12 march showed a Hamas bulldozer plowing through an Israeli security fence. “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” the poster said. Later that month, SJP held two rallies on the Grounds. Marchers waved Palestinian flags and chanted, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.” Some insisted that the slogan was just a call for solidarity with oppressed Palestinians, but many Jews interpreted it as advocating the eradication of the Israeli state and, in the context of the Hamas massacres, the slaughter of the Jewish population.
Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Uncategorized

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