But never a population problem.

Anyone who suggested that record immigration levels might be overwhelming Canada’s housing and healthcare systems was treated as if he had committed a moral offense. You were not making a basic supply-and-demand argument. You were “blaming immigrants,” “scapegoating newcomers,” or spreading racist conspiracy theories.

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Liberal ministers said this explicitly.

In 2022, 2023, and 2024, Immigration Minister Marc Miller repeatedly rejected any blame on immigrants/international students for the housing crisis, arguing they were “no more responsible for the housing crunch than they are for rising interest rates,” and warned that public debate would cause “stigmatization of particularly people of diversity that come to this country to make it better, and that includes international students.”

For years, Miller repeated these talking points on a weekly basis.

In 2025, Miller performed an utterly shameless 180. After years of treating immigration-housing skepticism as bigotry or paranoia, he now openly boasts that immigration does, in fact, affect housing.

Miller’s reversal captures the Liberal Party’s broader heel turn: an attempt to distance itself from the stench of Justin Trudeau.

Prime Minister Mark Carney was sworn in in March 2025, and almost overnight, the taboo vanished. Suddenly, it was no longer racist to say in polite company that Canada had imported people faster than it could house them.

Carney immediately began reversing the population shock the Liberals had spent years pretending did not exist:

1. Cut permanent-resident admissions from the Trudeau-era plan of 500,000 per year to 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026, and 365,000 in 2027.

2. Capped temporary residents.

3. Restricted international-student growth through the study-permit cap, tighter rules on designated learning institutions, and stricter post-graduation work-permit eligibility.

4. Restricted the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, including the reinstatement of pre-pandemic restrictions, lower hiring caps, shorter permit durations, and limits on the use of low-wage foreign labour in regions with higher unemployment.

5. Restricted family open-work permits and chain migration.

6. Ended the visitor-to-worker conversion loophole, the temporary policy that allowed visitors already inside Canada to apply for work permits without leaving the country.

7. Tightened asylum eligibility by expanding grounds for refugee-claim ineligibility and restrictions on people who had already been in Canada for more than a year before filing a claim.

8. Targeted immigration fraud and abuse by consultants via new/harsher penalties for paid immigration representatives who break the law.

9. Tripled deportation numbers from the Covid era, and doubled deportation numbers from the pre-Covid baseline.

While the stock of “temporary” foreign workers remains high, the flow has effectively been throttled. In 2025, Carney’s first year in office, Canada saw negative population growth for the first time since Confederation in 1867!

This week, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced:

• 88% drop in new international students

• 78% drop in new international workers

• 80% drop in new asylum claims

The raw numbers are stunning:

To be clear, massive structural loopholes remain. Take Bill C-3, passed into law last year: it amends Canada’s Citizenship Act to extend citizenship by descent beyond the first generation, allowing foreign-born citizens to pass it to unlimited generations abroad with minimal residency requirements.

There is still an incredibly long way to go. But while Carney hasn’t completely shut off the tap—a political impossibility given the institutional momentum—he is at least forcing the ship in the right direction. It doesn’t excuse the years of elite gaslighting that got us here, but it is a stark departure from the Trudeau status quo.

Carney essentially stole Pierre Poilievre’s homework, but kept it quiet, technocratic, and respectable. No cringe slogans. No culture-war theatrics. No obvious permission structure for leftists to accuse him of xenophobia. That reflects a deeper understanding of the Canadian psyche. Many Canadians know the country imported people faster than it could house them, but they are too polite and still recoil from anything that feels cruel, crude, or openly anti-immigrant. Carney gave them a way to support restriction without feeling as though they had crossed a moral line. He did things politely and quietly.

The vibe is shifting.

Even Tim Hortons, Canada’s most prominent importer of mass slave labor, this week announced that they would reduce their reliance on temporary foreign workers and hire 10,000 Canadians…

… although that may be an empty promise, writes :

Without Diminishment

Alexander Brown: No, Tim Hortons isn’t suddenly interested in hiring Canadians

If you believe yesterday’s announcement that Tim Hortons plans to dial back its use (and clear abuse) of the Temporary Foreign Worker Programme (TFWP) to hire “10,000 people locally” out of the goodness of its heart, I have a below-sea-level basement apartment to sell you in Richmond, B.C.’s peat-based Delta soil…

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13 days ago · 43 likes · 2 comments · Without Diminishment Editor and Alexander Brown

Housing Prices

With the most important immigration inflows choked off by up to 88%, the desperate bidding wars that characterized the Canadian rental market have completely disintegrated

Average asking rents across Canada have fallen year-over-year (YoY) for 19 consecutive months as of April 2026, and in April 2026, the national average asking rent for a house dropped by 7.9% YoY:

In many cities, rent is down by double digits YoY:

Hamilton & Toronto are down ~27% from their peak:

My personal favorite is Brampton, Ontario, which has the highest South Asian population in the country, and is in absolute freefall:

The numbers don't lie, even if the politicians do. For a decade, they weaponized the language of tolerance to protect a broken economic model that enriched slumlords, corporate fast-food franchises, and strip-mall colleges at the expense of an entire generation of young Canadians.

These liars and traitors will never apologize. They will never admit that the “racists” and “conspiracy theorists” were simply describing supply and demand.

But the taboo is broken, the numbers are moving, and the old consensus is dead.

The clearest sign that the taboo has shattered is that Liberals are now beginning to outflank Conservatives from the right. Eric Lombardi, a candidate for the Ontario Liberal leadership, is openly running on what amounts to a mass-remigration platform, calling for Canada to unwind its temporary-resident population from roughly five million people nationally to well under one million over the next five to ten years.

That would have been politically unthinkable two years ago. Not from a fringe populist party. Not from a Conservative backbencher. From a Liberal. Yet here we are: the party that spent the Trudeau years treating immigration restraint as a moral crime is now producing candidates who are willing to say, in plain language, that millions of temporary residents must leave.

This is how completely the politics have shifted. The Conservatives spent years trying to make the immigration-housing argument acceptable. Carney quietly absorbed it into government policy. Now Liberals are beginning to run ahead of the Conservative Party itself, using the language of administrative realism rather than nationalist revolt. What was racist in 2023 is Liberal pragmatism in 2026.

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It was the chance of a lifetime.

Rufo had just spent the past five years positioning himself as the face of the anti-woke movement — a champion for meritocracy, a voice for disillusioned young men frustrated by affirmative action and collapsing institutional standards — now, he had the chance to handpick anyone — literally from a pool of thousands of hyper-competent young geniuses — and for months, he bragged non-stop about using this opportunity to assemble a team of ‘‘dangerous’’ “killers” and “assassins” who would “build institutions” and “advance the conservative movement” with dogged precision and intelligence.

So… who did he hire?

Rufo’s first hire, Hannah Grossman, is a self-described ‘‘Holocaust educator.’’

Hannah’s journalism career began in 2017 as a fellow as Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a Jewish supremacist think-tank, where she ground her teeth by lobbing softballs to Jeffrey Epstein associate Alan Dershowitz, in articles such ‘‘Alan Dershowitz on Trump, Israel, and Antisemitism.’’

She then worked as an associate editor at the Daily Caller, where she wrote such classics as ‘‘95-Year-Old World War II Paratrooper Captured By Nazis Describes His Harrowing Experience’’ and ‘‘150 Rockets Rain Down On Israel As Revenge For Palestinian Leader’s Death.’’ She then wrote for Jewish Press, Jewish Star, The Five Towns Jewish Times, Daily Wire, and Legal Insurrection, where she mostly spent her time complaining about anti-Zionism, e.g.: ‘'Important win for Jewish students against anti-Zionist discrimination at Cal State.’’

She was then given a shot in the A-leagues at Fox News, where her corpus of work doubled down on nakedly shilling for the Israel Lobby.

Here is a sample of her Fox News articles:

• Oscar celebrities accused of wearing 'symbol of bloodlust' originating from Palestinians 'lynching' 2 Israelis'

• Hamas defector tells pro-Palestinian activists they belong in 'a mental asylum' in brutal debate

• Black student erupts on anti-Israel 'White libs' for blocking path on campus

• Major 'political shift' among Jewish Cornell students as they question ties to progressive groups

• New York Times' fraught history covering Jews, Israel draws fresh backlash amid report on Hasidic schools

• Father of American held captive by Hamas says hostages 'are dying,' going through 'hell' in Gaza

• Ilhan Omar's daughter suspended from college amid anti-Israel activism

• 'Radical' pro-Palestinian groups increasingly target houses of worship for protests in alarming trend

• ‘Woke Kindergarten’ leader wants US, Israel destroyed

• House reps announce investigation into Harvard, MIT, UPenn after ‘morally bankrupt’ testimony on antisemitism

On Rufo’s team, she focused on “the fight against campus anti-semitism”:

Hard hitting stuff.

Look: I have nothing against Hannah Grossman personally, I have never met her. My focus isn’t on her as an individual but on her career, which is as an overt Israeli attack dog singularly dedicated to promoting Zionism with little nuance. She is an Israeli PR agent, not a journalist. Her Twitter feed is dedicated to retweeting Israeli government accounts and “Mossad Commentary”.

The real issue is what her hiring says about Rufo’s priorities. He swore to avenge the injustice done to disillusioned young conservative men, was given a slush fund to do it, and then promptly gave that slush fund to… a midwit Holocaust educator chick, to write about anti-semitism? Huh?

Since hiring Hannah, Rufo’s focus has conspicuously shifted. Instead of targeting woke absurdities or academic malfeasance, he has spent the past couple of years focused on attacking professors who call for financial divestment from Israel, or attacking other pundits for not being sufficiently Zionist.

The Free Press

Christopher Rufo: The Antisemitic Influencer Problem

In 1991, a motorcade carrying a Jewish rabbi cruised through Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood. After getting separated from the group, one of the cars ran a red light and collided with another vehicle, which swerved onto the curb and hit two black children, leaving one injured and another dead. Within hours, the neighborhood had…

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a year ago · 313 likes · 297 comments · Christopher F. Rufo

His second hire, Christina Buttons, is much more scandalous.

buttonslives

Critical reporting on the evidence base behind biological explanations for transgender identity, gender-transition treatments, and psychiatric models—seeking a better path forward for mental health.

By Christina Buttons

For starters, the least of the problems is that it was a nepotism hire.

Christina Buttons is dating , another senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute… meaning after hiring a holocaust scholar, Chris Rufo promptly hired his buddy’s idiot girlfriend. Put bluntly: everyone knows she wouldn’t have gotten the job at the snobbiest intellectual thinktank in New York if she didn’t sleep her way there. So much for meritocracy.

Secondly, ‘‘Christina Buttons’’ is not her real name.

Her real name is “Christina Berry.”

She uses a nom-de-plume “Buttons” to obfuscate her past as a hardcore porn star.

She stared in at least 25 pornos from 2008-2016 under the stage name ‘‘Rita Lovely,’’ sometimes “Cute Courtney” , including such classics as ‘‘Perky Redhead Hippie Slut,’’ ‘‘Cum Stained Casting Couch 14,’’ ‘‘Only Teen Blowjobs 3,’’ and ‘‘Treat Me Like a Slut 3.’’

Here is her partial filmography:

Her career transition from ‘‘Perky Redhead Hippie Slut’’ to conservative gatekeeper was uncovered after an internet sleuth named Basil ran her face through facial recognition software, which showed R-rated stills from her pornos next to her professional headshots.

Basil gave this info to a drama streamer named Ethan Ralph, he tweeted it out, it went viral, and it’s been a recurring meme for 2 years now.

It was then double-confirmed when users on X cross-verified her moles/freckles with Rita Lovely’s moles/freckles:

Rufo pled ignorance, and besides, it didn’t matter, because she was repentant:

Except: she has always been unrepentantly pro-porn & pro-prostitution. In fact, she explicitly maintain that prostitutes and porn stars are making a completely rational choice because they can easily make more than someone earning minimum wage, so, sex work is good. Sex workers are NOT victims with no agency. It’s a rational choice.

Despite being pro-sex work, she has a habit of bullying other strippers, trafficked women, and CSA survivors, telling them without any irony to “take some responsibility” for “whoring yourself out all over the internet”:

Perhaps Rufo should have read her tweets before hiring her, where she explicitly warned him:

Or perhaps he could have looked at her previous employers, the Daily Wire, where she quit in a blaze of glory because Ben Shapiro was mean to trans people.

Another of her former employers was the “Jewish Institute for Liberal Values”:

buttonslives

A Quick Explainer On Woke Antisemitism

This explainer is adapted from an infographic slideshow created for Instagram and offers an intentionally oversimplified perspective to give a quick overview of the topics. It's not designed to be comprehensive, but the links interspersed within the article will be helpful for those seekin…

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2 years ago · 69 likes · 31 comments · Christina Buttons

Her Jewish liberal values include aggressive support for abortion:

She loves abortion so much that her Etsy page, where she posts doodles of softcore loli porn and sells pro-abortion tank tops, donates 20% of all proceeds to The Lillith Fund to pay for abortions:

I particularly like her art of naked Jewish children:

While she loves Judaism, she hates Christianity…

…so much so that she even hates her own name because it has “Christ” in it:

…this hatred for Christianity is despite the fact that as late as 2025, she has “never opened a Bible before”:

Of course, she would never criticize the Talmud — support for Israel is a prerequisite for working at the Manhattan Institute, whose board of Trustees includes names like Barr, Golub, Hertog, Singer, Kristol, Lefkowitz (Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer), Rosenkranz, Kaufman, Lebovitz, and Greenberg.

They fired their biggest star last year for milqueoast hemming and hawing about “well maybe we shouldn’t carpetbomb women and children in refugee camps”:

Glenn Loury

I Was Fired by the Manhattan Institute. Here's Why.

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a year ago · 111 likes · 60 comments · Glenn Loury

They publish articles claiming that anyone holding up a banner saying “NO US MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL” is a “civil terrorist”…

…and other articles arguing that free speech is “too sacred” and that more people should be “deported” for “anti-Israel speech”:

Here is the Manhattan Institute’s Director of Constitutional Studies, Ilya Shapiro, spreading the lie that Hamas burns babies alive in ovens, calling Palestinians “subhumans” who “must be eradicated”, and repeatedly calling for explicit “ethnic cleansing”:

But I digress.

Upon going viral for being a porn star who works at the most elite conservative thinktank in the world, she wrote an essay justifying it:

buttonslives

Crazy is You or Me, Amplified

In interviews, I’ve often shared how I became a journalist after discovering the stories of detransitioners—stories that deeply resonated with my own struggles with mental health and identity. I’ve been very open about the severe mental health crises I faced in my youth and have frequently…

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a year ago · 654 likes · 106 comments · Christina Buttons

Her reasoning for doing porn is as follows:

I received many diagnoses throughout my life, the most recent being Asperger's syndrom… I eventually agreed to meet with a representative from an agency that had been hounding me, which led to my decision to make adult films to pay off my debt. At the time, and for several months thereafter, I believed I had bipolar disorder. However, I later realized that the instability I felt stemmed from other factors, including heavy drinking

So: BPD, heavy drinking, OCD, autism, and credit card debt.

A tale as old as time.

Then, after years of having “autistic” in her bio and loudly making having autism her entire personality, just last week, she came out and loudly proclaimed that autism is fake, her diagnosis was fake, and launched a whole anti-autism crusade:

As a wise woman once said: You spent over a decade whoring yourself out all over the internet, you have no one to blame but yourself. Take some responsibility for your actions, this perpetual victim act is pathetic.

Now she wants to be a gatekeeper of the conservative movement.

Sorry, but no.

Someone has to be the gatekeeper of the conservative movement.

Today it’s me.

Leave.

You don’t belong.

You are a cancer.

Go back to being who you really are: a mentally ill adventuress bimbo with rainbow hair obsessed with abortion, who’s now only masquerading as a conservative gatekeeper to trick people into advancing the interests of Israel.

She is very explicit in this goal:

How Many Porn Stars Are There in Con Inc.?

Ms. Buttons isn’t the first porn star to infiltrate the conservative movement and rise to become a gatekeeper.

Not by a long shot.

One prominent example is “Jack Murphy”, who spent years pretending to be an Irish alphamale, later revealed as a gay Jewish pornographer whose actual name is John Goldman:

Another good example is conservative freedom warrior Corey DeAngelis, who did his porn under the name “Seth Rose”:

Chris Rufo, of course, defended his friend’s past as a gay porn star and maintained that he should keep his role as a Con Inc. gatekeeper:

Corey DeAngelis / “Seth Rose” headlined CPAC this year.

My favorite example in this genre is Brian Riedl, who joined the Manhattan Institute as a senior fellow in economic policy in 2017.

After working for the Manhattan institute for a decade as their resident tax wonk, in 2025, Brian Reidl, chose to shatter his own family and traumatize his children so that he could put on a skirt, paint his face, and do news hits as a Manhattan Institute expert flaunting his fetish and subverting/destroying the conservative movement:

The Manhattan Institute using female pronouns for “Jessica” Riedl, is, of course, extra funny because Rufo built his entire career on the absurdity of pronouns.

The Real Reason Christina Buttons Was Hired

It turns out that Christina Button’s biggest fan on Twitter is a woman named Suzy Lebovitz-Edelman, who has sycophantically replied to her hundreds of times before Buttons ever worked at the Manhattan Institute:

Suzy Lebovitz-Edelman, Christina’s top reply-guy, is married to hedge-fund manager Joseph Edelman, whose net worth is roughly $2.5–$3 billion. Their interests can be traced by their donations history. This includes the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish World Service, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, The Tikvah Fund, Bari Weiss’s UATX, and Media Matters.

Suzy and Joseph are among Manhattan Institute’s top donors, giving them a $725,000 cash infusion in 2022-2024 for a “gender identity initiative.”

The term “Woke Right” and “Woke Reich” came from Suzy Edelman-Lebovitz and James Lindsay.

Here, Chris Rufo corrects Rod Dreher over his misuse of the term, since he is paid by the Edelman's through their special donation devoted to "transgender issues":

As part of this “Woke Right” psychological operation, Suzy met with Chris Rufo and James Lindsay to coordinate messaging:

Recently, James Lindsay attacked Arby’s as "Woke Right”:

When Chris Rufo stepped out of line and made fun of James Lindsay for this, Suzy put him back into his place. She keeps him on a short leash.

Suzy Edelman-Lebovitz is Christina Button’s biggest fan.

Suzy Edelman-Lebovitz is Chris Rufo’s handler.

She tells him what he is or isn’t allowed to tweet about, and who to hire.

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• https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.411922/gov.uscourts.txnd.411922.1.0.pdf

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Wang’s undergrad degree is from Duke, and he earned Masters degrees from NYU and South Florida, and a PhD from Cornell.

His lawsuit is 18 pages long.

It begins on page 1 by asserting that SMU has a systemic problem with race discrimination and retaliation that violates the Civil Rights Act, and then spends the next 17 pages building that argument.

I reached out to SMU for comment, but did not receive a response.

Clearing the Bar for Tenure

At its core, this case is simple: Sean Wang was denied tenure in 2024.

In April 2025, Wang filed a complaint to the President appealing the tenure decision and claiming discrimination, and in May 2025, the President denied the appeal.

SMU’s own standards are not ambiguous. The Cox School’s Promotion and Tenure Manual sets a clear benchmark: “at least four top-tier publications.”

Wang obliterated that standard… this was not a borderline case.

SMU is a respectable but not elite institution, ranked #88 nationally, and its tenure bar is clearly defined. By those standards, Wang’s record is exceptional. Far from a marginal candidate, his output more closely resembles that of a full professor at a significantly higher-ranked school.

By the time of his tenure review, he had published ten articles in top-tier journals (e.g. Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, and Management Science)—more than double the output of any other faculty member in the department at the time of their tenure decision.

His publications garnered nearly 2,000 citations, exceeding the citation count of all three Indian professors granted tenure in the Accounting department.

• https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fUc4WKwAAAAJ&hl=en

Nevertheless, SMU denied him tenure due to “bad fit” and repeatedly said that he needed “more citations” and “more visibility.” Between the 2023 and 2024 annual reviews, Dr. Wang was called a "bad fit" at least thirteen times by his Chair and Dean. SMU’s Associate Provost, Dr. Paige Ware, acknowledges in the lawsuit that “one of the cautionary alarm bells for anyone who’s looking at DEI is the word fit… that elusive word ‘fit’ that spits in the face of data.”

The “bad fit” contrast becomes sharper when Wang’s case is compared to his colleague, Sorabh Tomar (Indian). At the time of his third-year review, Tomar had ZERO publications, yet received a positive mid-career evaluation from the department chair (Indian). No concerns about “fit” were raised—even though his work, like Wang’s, involved behavioral research using experimental methods and collaboration with the same co-authors.

On its Faculty Permission to Hire Form, SMU recorded Dr. Wang as “White” in its HR and EEO records, erasing his self-identified minority status and treating him as a white man so that they may more easily discriminate against him.

Testimony From 4 SMU Professors

Testimony from the lawsuit:

1. Prof. Robin Pinkley (Janet & Craig Duchossois Endowed Professor of Management & Organizations, SMU)—a 35-year veteran of Cox who has served on numerous P&T committees—wrote to Dean Myers that the Department’s reliance on “fit” is “self-serving” and “does not stand up when compared to the empirical evidence provided by top-tier publications, citation counts, and invitations to speak at Harvard, London Business School, Kellogg, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon.” Prof. Pinkley concluded that “Sean Wang’s case was not treated in an unbiased manner consistent with the P&T document and our commitment to equity,” and warned that the current leadership’s pattern of bias “should not be tolerated.”

2. Prof. Pab Jotikashtira (Full Professor of Finance, SMU; member, Provost’s Advisory Committee on Tenure & Promotion) compared Dr. Wang’s record with the two Indian professors most recently tenured in Accounting. Prof. Jotikashtira found that Dr. Wang is “very significantly more productive than Gauri Bhat” and has “a comparable record to Neil Bhattacharya, who is ten years his senior,” adding that “any reasonable person would deem Sean’s citation count as more than sufficient for tenure.” Prof. Jotikashtira dismissed the Department’s quality and “fit” objections as “personal taste” and “absurd,” noting that the career success of ten top-tier publications “cannot be due to luck” given the less than ten percent acceptance rates in those journals.

3. Prof. Jeff Hales (Charles T. Zlatkovich Centennial Professor of Accounting, University of Texas at Austin) described Dr. Wang as “an outstanding researcher with few comparable peers.” Benchmarking against recent promotions at top-twenty business schools, Prof. Hales wrote that Dr. Wang’s 11 peer-reviewed articles (10 Financial Times Top 50 Journals) and nearly 2,000 citations would already match the average full-professor dossier, and that Dr. Wang has “more citations than I had at a similar point in my career.” He concluded that SMU hired Dr. Wang “to do exactly this kind of research—and he delivered.”

4. Prof. David Wood (Glenn D. Ardis Professor of Accounting, Brigham Young University) noted that SMU’s claim that Dr. Wang did not meet the research standards as “ludicrous” and that Dr. Wang met the research bar for full even for top 20 schools.

Discrimination by Desai

On November 19, 2024, Dr. Hemang Desai, Chair of the Accounting Department, informed Dr. Wang of a negative departmental vote (3–1). All three Indian faculty members voted against tenure, citing a failure to achieve “outstanding” performance, while the sole non-Indian faculty member voted in favor.

Wang’s complaint repeatedly alleges that, from the start of his employment, Desai held him to different and more demanding standards than his Indian colleagues.

Since at least 2006, when Hemang Desai (an Indian-Origin faculty member) became a full professor in SMU’s Cox School of Business, the Accounting Department granted tenure to 100 percent of Indian-origin candidates (two of two) who met the published “four top-tier publications” standard, while denying tenure to 100 percent of non-Indian candidates (zero of five) who met the same standard … This pattern is consistent with an ancestry-based preference for Indian-origin candidates and disfavor toward non-Indian candidates. … Dr. Wang’s research productivity significantly exceeds that of his tenured Indian colleagues in the department when they received tenure.”

The filing also includes a more unusual claim: in Spring 2024, when offices were reassigned in the department’s new building, Wang alleges they were “segregated” along ethnic lines— Indian faculty were handed prime offices with nice views, while East Asian faculty were assigned to a Chinese ghetto down the hall.

When I googled Desai’s name, this was the first review that popped up:

Notably, Desai’s son graduated from SMU in 2024 with a degree in business, and was recommended (I wonder by who?) by the school to receive Poets and Quants’ “Best and Brightest Business Major” award.

In that interview, his son described yet another award from SMU: “The achievement I’m most proud of is being selected as a Don Jackson Fellow for the Alternative Asset Management Center Program here at SMU.”

Gee, I wonder how his son got picked to Don Jackson Fellows for the Alternative Asset Management Center Program at SMU Cox... And how he got such a glowing recommendation from Jim Bryan, the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs at SMU Cox...

Jim Bryan: “The best students in every school are the ones who don’t just succeed in the classroom, but who strive to make the school better when they leave. Mohan Desai is one of the best examples of this concept I’ve ever seen... I can’t think of anyone better to mentor our new students than Mohan. No matter where he goes after graduation, I want Mohan wearing SMU Cox gear—there can be no greater advertisement for SMU Cox’s student body than Mohan Desai.”

While every father is proud of his son, the optics of the Department Chair's child sweeping competitive internal awards while the department's most productive professor is labeled a 'bad fit' are, at best, a conflict of interest.

My point isn’t to attack Desai’s son, it’s to highlight a pattern the lawsuit alleges: nepotism. A fish must swim; a beaver must build dams; a bird must fly; a fresh-off-the-boat Indian must hire and promote their own caste. Indians are famously one of the most nepotistic ethnic group in America, it’s just what they do, it is clearly how their culture operates, as documented in thousands of other lawsuits and articles, e.g.:

• Across India, Nepotism as a Way of Life (New York Times, 2012)

• Tech giant accused of hiring bias in favor of Indian workers (World of Labour, 2017)

• The US says Oracle is encouraging Indians to hire other Indians—and it’s killing diversity (Quartz, 2022)

• ‘Indian students preferred’: Discriminatory rental ads have people shying away from applying (CBC, 2020)

• Punjab Health Foundation’s hiring scandal exposes systemic nepotism epidemic (Samaa, 2023)

• Insiders Tel How IT Giant was intentionally discriminating against non-Indian workers (Bloomberg, 2024)

• The Public Timeline Of The Cisco Caste Discrimination Case (2024)

• ‘Nepotism never fails’: Indian-origin FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam draws flak over H-1B hiring (Times of India, 2025)

• Nepotism: The Silent Killer of Merit in India’s Legal Landscape (Hindu College Gazette, 2025)

• ‘This is why Indians are being hated’, US techies claim Indians taking high-paying jobs, ‘it’s nepotism’ (Financial Express, 2025)

• A White Man in the Indian-Dominated Tech Sector (American Renaissance, 2025)

• Indian nepotism in the software industry explained by an insider, parts I-III (Reddit, 2025)

SMU’s Response

The university’s response filing is sparse, offering little substantive detail or point-by-point rebuttal. SMU denies the allegations in full and asserts that Dr. Wang is not entitled to any relief.

• https://assets2.pacermonitor.com/filings/Wang_v_Southern_Methodist_University/Wang_v_Southern_Methodist_University__txndce-25-03129__0014.0.pdf

Trial is scheduled to begin on February 1, 2027.

Wang is seeking preliminary and permanent injunctive relief requiring SMU to:

1. Grant Dr. Wang tenure and promotion to Associate Professor;

2. Grant Dr. Wang an expedited, conflict-free review for promotion to Full Professor with appropriate retroactive compensation adjustments if the fact-finder determines Dr. Wang's qualifications warranted such promotion at the time tenure was denied;

3. Cease discriminatory practices in tenure and promotion decisions;

4. Implement and enforce written policies prohibiting the use of subjective “fit” criteria in tenure decisions.

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I bought the book solely because it mentions me, so I was curious, and felt obligated to point out the lies and propaganda she is spreading.

You can buy it here:

• https://www.amazon.com/Poisoned-Ivies-Academic-Americas-Universities/dp/1668087537

  

The first thing I noticed is that, ironically, Stefanik plagiarized the title:

• Poisoned Ivy (1981): A Student Witnesses The Origin of the “Woke Mind Virus”

• Poison Ivy (2022): How Elite Colleges Divide Us

• Poisoned Ivies (2026): Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities

Before I even read page 1, I noticed a groan-worthy, blatant lie in the first line of the book jacket where Stefanik claims that the Claudine Gay hearing was "the most-watched congressional hearing in history."

She doesn’t make an attempt to quantify or prove this claim, because there is zero chance it’s true. For example, 85% of American households saw at least part of the Watergate hearings… do you really think even 5% of of American households saw the Claudine Gay hearing?

The rest of the book was much of the same.

Introduction

Typical slop about how society-is-losing-trust in universities because of DEI and wokeness, mixed with plenty of bragging about how historic her hearing was.

• “the world heard [me]”

• “it would become a historic earthquake that instantly reshaped the debate on higher education overnight”

• “the hearing changed the trajectory of higher education”

• “as a result of [my question], elite campuses are in the midst of a generational upheaval”

• “nothing is the same”

• “our hearing reset the course of American higher education”

Readers quickly learn that the entire purpose of the book is to brag about, promote, and re-live this 1-minute long clip:

She re-plays this clip hundreds of times in the book.

Except, Stefanik is histrionically overstating what she actually means.

When she refers to “calls for genocide,” she is actually just referring to students chanting “from the river to the sea,” a slogan that featured prominently in the DOJ’s antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard.

Stefanik was part of a concerted effort by the Israel lobby and to characterize the phrase as an explicit call for genocide. For example:

• Combat Antisemitism Movement: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free is a violent call to genocide that should be banned from the social media platform.”

• Senator John Kennedy: “The phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ is a call for genocide against Jewish people. It’s a call to annihilate Israel.”

• Senate Resolution 497: “This resolution expresses the sense that the slogan from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free and its derivations are anti-Semitic and a call for genocide and destruction of the Jewish state.”

What makes the charge of genocide especially strange is that this slogan has deep roots in Revisionist Zionism itself. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, wrote a 1929 song titled “The East Bank of the Jordan,” which became one of Betar’s (an Israeli terrorist movement) best-known anthems:

“The Jordan has two banks; this one is ours, and the other one too.”

The Likud Party’s 1977 platform then stated:

“Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”

So, if “from the river to the sea” is treated as inherently genocidal when Palestinians use it, then the same standard has to be applied consistently. Either the phrase is not genocidal, or Israel is founded on the same calls for genocide.

During her book tour, she was brutally exposed by Jake Tapper for this hypocrisy:

Chapter 1: The Hearing Heard Around the World

This chapter begins by tediously whining about Hamas and Hitler for several pages, then whines about Hamas and Hitler for several more pages, then whines about university students having the nerve to sign petitions and open letters.

Stefanik then name-drops several of her colleagues and profusely praises each one. The prose is as sloppy as it is sycophantic:

“A dear friend and mentor, Dr. Virginia Foxx has a spine of steel and a heart of pure gold. Virginia Foxx is a no-nonsense, legendary member of Congress not just among Republicans, but across the aisle. Sh’e just a bull, and she just charges in every day, non-stop, from sun up until way after the sun goes down. At age 82, Virginia put many fellow members of Congress to shame with her dogged work ethic and determination. She keeps a packed schedule that would tire out even the spriteliest Gen-Z movers and shakers.

Stefanik then spends a few pages describing how she prepared for the hearing:

• “I stayed up late working through reams of research”

• “I pre-drafted several rounds of questions “

• “I thought to myself, how can I ask this in a very moral way, that will force them to answer YES?”

What’s fraudulent about this narrative is that she conspicuously omits any mention of Shabbos Kestenbaum and “a small gathering of Jewish students” working “behind the scenes” to “help write” her now-infamous genocide question, also writing her follow-up questions:

Kestenbaum is only mentioned briefly in Stefanik's book, where she says he was threatened by a man waving a machete:

The line about a Harvard employee waving a machete at Kestenbaum leaves out that the "machete" was a toy.

The video with the toy machete is about the false exoneration of Jeffrey Epstein’s close friend, Alan Dershowitz, not even about Kestenbaum. You be the judge:

In April 2026, Stefanik then goes on Kestenbaum's show to promote her book, and neither mentions it to their audience that he was actually the one who wrote her “question heard around the world”:

I watched the entire 22 minutes.

There is 1 minute worth clipping:

To start the clip, Shabbos lies about not knowing that her not-a-trick question was coming:

Of course, he was the one that wrote it, and specifically wrote it to not be a trick question:

She then makes a hilarious slip up, almost saying that he was there to write it for her, before catching and correcting herself:

She then repeats several times how she came up with the question herself, and how she wrote follow up questions:

Of course, a year earlier, Shabbos framed it as HE WAS THE ONE who was writing the question and follow up questions:

Chapter 2: Harvard

This chapter is dedicated to explaining that Elise Stefanik is a humble, hardworking genius because she got into Harvard. She wants you to know that she thrived around other geniuses, because she is a genius, and she enjoyed her time as an undergrad. She was very popular and used her time there to become friends with many famous, powerful people.

Did I mention that she’s a hardworking genius, and very popular?

Chapter 3: Harvard Exposed

Complaining about Harvard going woke interspersed with complaining about Hamas and Hitler. Then complaining length about how Claudine Gay was insufficiently loyal to Israel. Then complaining about Qatar.

Then bragging about how she was featured on Saturday Night Live.

Chapter 4: University of Pennsylvania

Complained about anti-semitism at UPenn for 12 pages.

Chapter 5: Columbia

Complained about anti-semitism at Columbia for 26 pages.

Chapter 6: Other Ivies and Beyond

Complained about anti-semitism at other schools for 39 pages, including screeching about several obviously staged, fake, false-flag hate crimes, such as a Yale student who blatantly lied about a Palestine flag hitting her eye which she described as being “stabbed.”

Chapter 7: What Went Wrong?

Complaining about DEI, Hamas, Qatar, and the communist infiltration of the Chinese Communist party, and concludes that to counter China’s influence on American campuses, TikTok must be sold to a Zionist.

Chapter 8: How We Fix It

She talks about what role the government can play in reforming American higher education. Her primary solution is to arrest, suspend, and expel all anti-Israel “agitators” on campus.

Another solution is to pass laws IHRA laws, including two pieces of legislation called “Combatting Anti-Semitism” and “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” to direct federal agencies to use “all available and appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”

Visas should be revoked.

Oh, and please support Bari Weiss’ University of Austin, and support Peter Thiel.

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Many of these result in comments from billionaires like Elon Musk, Chamath, or Paul Graham:

Many, like my most recent one about Memorial University, result in international mainstream news coverage:

This has been a terrific way to go viral and farm engagement and outrage, but has been disheartening since nothing in Canada ever changes.

Canada is simply not going to abolish affirmative action. In fact, Affirmative Action is enshrined in Section 15(2) of the Canadian Constitution:

More recently, since immigrating to America — I have taken to referring to myself as a first-generation immigrant — I have switched to tweeting out H-1B job postings, e.g.:

After tweeting out dozens of these, my most recent one about Missouri University was finally picked up by the DOJ Civil Rights Division:

And then it was picked up by the Lt. Governor of Missouri, who said “I am going to check into this”:

Today, a spokesperson for Missouri University confirmed the school is “conducting a review of its H-1B program.” Wasinger said “he had spoken with the school’s president, Mun Choi, about the issue shortly after he posted on X.”

Wasinger also confirmed “he has spoken with the principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, about potential investigations into visa fraud in the state.”

My sources tell me that the Missouri legislature is now looking at introducing legislation prohibiting H-1Bs from being hired by any government entity, including State universities. This legislation is hinted at in a tweet tonight by the Missouri GOP:

Let this be a tale of autistic determination and the power of citizen journalism.

We are seeing a real-time shift where social media exposure is no longer just about farming clicks; it is becoming a mechanism for oversight. For years, universities have hidden behind bureaucratic language, HR euphemisms, and a compliant media class that treats every discriminatory hiring scheme as morally self-evident. But the internet has changed the incentive structure. A job posting that once would have disappeared into an institutional careers page can now be seen by millions of people, scrutinized by lawyers, amplified by lawmakers, and placed directly in front of federal investigators.

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RIBAF’s previous Editor-in-Chief, John Goodell—a Professor of Finance at the University of Akron—was not due to have his term expire until 2027.

So, what happened?

I reached out to Goodell and Elsevier for comment, but did not receive a reply.

According to my sources, Goodell’s departure is directly due to the citation cartel I exposed 2 months ago that resulted in Elsevier firing of 2 other finance professors, Brian Lucey and Samuel Vigne—both are co-authors of Goodell.

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Goodell has been a professor since 2008.

For the first decade, his publication output was steady and within the normal range: 2, 2, 6, 7, 8, 13, 11, 4, 3, 3, 3, 6 papers per year.

Then something changed.

From 2021 to 2025, his annual output exploded: 16, 34, 53, 58, and 32 papers.

How did he accomplish this amazing feat?

Simple: he was gifted 100+ papers by the now-fired Brian Lucey and Sam Vigne.

Lucey, as I described in my earlier articles, was fired as an editor or editor-in-chief at 5 journals: International Review of Financial Analysis, the International Review of Economics & Finance, Finance Research Letters, Financial Management, & Energy Finance.

Samuel Vigne was fired as the editor-in-chief of International Review of Financial Analysis and Finance Research Letters.

John Goodell published:

• 47 papers in International Review of Financial Analysis

• 12 papers in International Review of Economics & Finance

• 66 papers in Finance Research Letters alone

For a total of 125 papers in their corrupt journals!

If each of these 125 papers contains a modest 50 references, this generates roughly 6,250 citations to spread around his cronies. This obviously isn’t legitimate research; it is a citation-farming operation—a practice that has already prompted Elsevier to retract dozens of his cronies’ papers for “citation stacking.”

These hundreds of fraudulent publications have resulted in an explosion of Goodell’s citations, now at 15,663. In 2025 alone, he earned 4,203 citations, resulting in his citation profile exhibiting an exponential “J-curve”, a hallmark of citation rings.

According to an analysis published at PubPeer mapping the 500 top Finance Professors in the Elsevier ecosystem, the biggest blue dot in the middle of this graph of influence (below) is John Goodell. Despite working at a terrible school and producing terrible research, through corruption, he has made himself the single most influential researcher at the biggest academic publisher in the world.

He is the gatekeeper through whom the entire network must pass.

According to my sources, Goodell was widely-known to be running a gift-authorship and citation cartel with RIBAF for years in which he makes junior scholars work for him and he adds his name — “you add me on your paper - I get you a few guaranteed RIBAFs” deal, which is a retraction reason at Elsevier.

Elsevier’s guidelines are clear: if an editor receives a manuscript from a co-author and no independent editor is available at the journal, the paper is supposed to be transferred to another journal.

Because John Goodell handled some hundreds of such papers at his journal, Elsevier seems more interested in containing the scandal than confronting it directly. A full mea culpa would likely require retracting a vast number of articles, which would turn this into a major and deeply embarrassing story.

In an honest world, this journal should be shut down altogether, not reformed.

In RIBAF’s case, we are talking about hundreds of compromised papers. By my rough estimate, the number is around 200 retractable papers if you count active co-authors alone, and well above 350 if former collaborators are included.

Please share my article widely to hold Elsevier to account:

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Here is a straightforward example of how this paper trading scheme could work.

In January 2025 and March 2025, Emmanuel Abakah, Senior Lecturer in Finance at the University of Ghana, published two papers at Goodell’s RIBAF:

While these papers was under review by John Goodell, Emmanuel Abakah added Goodell as a co-author to 2 publication in Brian Lucey’s other journal, where Goodell was credited with “Supervision” co-author credits.

This pattern repeats hundreds of times:

1. Goodell receives a submission for review at RIBAF

2. Goodell is added as a co-author to that submitter’s paper at a different journal

3. The submitter’s RIBAF submission is accepted

Perhaps the most prolific example in this scheme is Dr. Anna Min Du, a Professor of Finance at Edinburgh Napier University and a fellow at both the University of Cambridge and Peking University.

She is an editor at 6 Elsevier journals:

She published at least 22 RIBAFs (!!) in 2024-2025:

- 4 in Volume 70, Part B, June 2024, 102386
- 3 in Volume 71, August 2024, 102436
- 2 in Volume 72, Part B, October 2024, 102544
- 6 in Volume 73, Part A, January 2025, 102541
- 2 in Volume 75, March 2025, 102755
- 2 in Volume 76, April 2025, 102819
- 2 in Volume 77, Part A, May 2025, 102886
- 1 in Volume 79, July 2025, 103029

1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102386

2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102394

3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102405

4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102406

5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102436

6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102459

7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102475

8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102544

9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102545

10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102541

11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102557

12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102624

13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102633

14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102634

15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102585

16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102755

17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102764

18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102819

19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102878

20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102886

21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.103029

22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102912

While Du painstakingly lists all of her other publications on her personal website, she conspicuously omits any mention of RIBAF:

She allegedly had all her RIBAFs listed on her Google Scholar at one point, but then removed them all. When I checked, they were not there.

Sadly, I made the amateur mistake of not archiving it, so I can’t prove it.

I emailed her to ask about these papers scrubbed from her Google Scholar.

She denied ever removing them:

Thank you for your email. My Google Scholar remains the same. I didn’t scrub any of my publications or add them back. I didn’t check messages on LinkedIn either. I believe you can tell whether messages were read or not on LinkedIn. You might want to check it carefully.

Then, after emailing her, when I checked her Google Scholar again, most of them magically reappeared. However, these 4 are still not listed on her Google Scholar:

• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102624

• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102755

• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102878

• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102886

But then when I emailed her again to press her on how she published at least 22 papers in 2024-2025 all in one journal, she stopped responding.

Sure, she could just be a really productive and well-connected author who submitted 22 papers to this journal that year.

Or……. it’s possible that John Goodell gifted her 20+ RIBAF publications in one year, and she returned the favor by adding his name to 14 of her papers at other journals that same year:

1. Artificial intelligence as a catalyst for sustainable tourism growth and economic cycles AB Siddik, MS Forid, L Yong, AM Du, JW Goodell - Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2025

2. Internal business process governance and external regulation: How does AI technology empower financial performance? X Cheng, AM Du, C Yan, JW Goodell - International Review of Financial Analysis, 2025

3. Ecological risk and corporate sustainability: Examining ESG performance, risk management, and productivity Q Du, Z Sun, JW Goodell, AM Du, T Yang - International Review of Financial Analysis, 2024

4. Ecological risk management: Effects of carbon risk on firm innovation investment F Li, JW Goodell, AM Du, T Yang - International Review of Financial Analysis, 2024

5. Modeling climate policy uncertainty into cryptocurrency volatilities S Ding, X Wu, T Cui, JW Goodell, AM Du - International Review of Financial Analysis, 2025

6. Vulnerability of energy firms to climate risk: Does fintech development help?

   K Abbasi, A Alam, JW Goodell, AM Du, NA Brohi - Energy Economics, 2025

7. Carbon emission trading policies and energy transition: Perspective from natural gas consumption in China L Cai, AM Du, Q Du, JW Goodell, Z Li - Energy Economics, 2025

8. Exploring AI-driven digital banking platforms: Implications for Business model innovation and sustainability in the financial sector AB Siddik, L Yong, AM Du, JW Goodell - IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 2025

9. Digital credit and insurance: Improving economic well-being for rural households J Zhang, S Chen, JW Goodell, AM Du - International Review of Economics & Finance, 2025

10. Disentangling and hedging global warming risk: A machine learning approach S Ding, T Cui, AM Du, JW Goodell, N Du - Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 2025

11. Innovating towards a sustainable future: decarbonization strategies and energy economics in lesser-developed economies JW Goodell, AM Du - Energy Economics, 2024

12. Impact of bank-affiliation on liquidity seeking of foreign mutual funds during adverse shocks: Evidence from China J Zhang, R Mao, JW Goodell, AM Du, Y Xu - International Review of Financial Analysis, 2024

13. Impact of Chinese foreign direct investment on energy demand and stability: The Belt-Road Initiative as conditioner R Shinwari, AM Du, JW Goodell - Journal of Environmental Management, 2025

14. Internal business process governance and external regulation: How does AI technology empower financial performance? JW Goodell, X Cheng, AM Du, C Yan International Review of Financial Analysis 99, 1

This is blatantly a reciprocal exchange where Goodell provides the platform (RIBAF) and Du provides the co-authorship credits to boost Goodell’s H-index.

Also, it’s worth noting 6 of these 14 publications were in the International Review of Financial Analysis, a journal ran by the now-fired Brian Lucey and Samuel Vigne.

Again, this pattern repeats hundreds of times, with hundreds of authors.

In the extensive sample of his 100+ papers I analyzed, I found a perfect correlation between co-authorship on Goodell’s CV and subsequent publication in his journal, RIBAF. This is not a series of coincidences; it is a blatant, industrial-scale quid pro quo. Goodell has effectively turned the peer-review process into a private brokerage.

Elsevier has replaced the man, but they haven’t addressed the rot. If hundreds of authors participated in this scheme, why are their papers still standing? Someone is still protecting the house. The only question left is: Who, and why?

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Last month I wrote a story about Brian Lucey getting 13 papers retracted:

Chris Brunet

Elsevier Shuts Down Its Finance Journal Citation Cartel

On Christmas Eve, 9 “peer-reviewed” economics papers were quietly retracted by Elsevier, the world’s largest academic publisher…

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4 months ago · 82 likes · 6 comments · Christopher Brunet

My article hit #1 on Hacker News:

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47119530

Today’s update involves professor Samuel Vigne, Lucey’s protégé, and former PhD student, who has now had yet another paper retracted:

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059056023001764

The stated reason for this new retraction is fraudulent citations:

The journal, with guidance from an impartial field expert acting in the role of an independent Publishing Ethics Advisor, found that 22 citations were added to this paper at the article revision stage without justification to the handling editor. Additional 8 citations were added to this paper at author proof stage without the approval of the Editor. The new citations were inserted generically without being thoughtfully integrated into the paper’s narrative, thus lacking direct relevance to the specific points being made. The new citations mainly benefit the authors Muhammad A. Naeem and Sitara Karim.

#2: MIT Fraud Update

Another popular article I wrote was about a PhD student at MIT named Aidan Toner-Rodgers, who was kicked out of school for fabulously fabricating data.

Chris Brunet

MIT Econ PhD Student Kicked Out for Massive Fraud

This is undoubtedly the most blatant and brazen econ fraud of 2025…

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10 months ago · 156 likes · 4 comments · Christopher Brunet

Another paper by Aidan Toner-Rogers (MIT) was just retracted a few days ago, this time in the top journal in the world for Development Economics:

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387826000714

  

The stated reason for this new retraction is because his co-author requested it:

This article has been retracted at the request of the corresponding author (FLF).

The corresponding author has indicated that key results in the paper cannot be independently verified and that the reliability of the underlying analyses cannot be confirmed. In light of these concerns, the Editors have concluded that the findings cannot be relied upon and have therefore retracted the article. This retraction is issued to maintain the integrity of the scientific record.

#3: Florian Ederer Update

Long-time readers will remember that I gave a seminar at Stanford University in 2023 about a hacked economics forum:

Here we are 3 years later, and the resulting paper from the hacked data is still not published, stuck in R&R limbo. Last week, I asked the authors for an update:

I am guessing it is held up due to legal issues.

#4: Faculty Leaks

This week I came across , an “anonymous dispatch from inside higher education”. It’s a brand-new account—just launched this week—and they’ve already published their first 2 pieces. I’m always glad to support new writers, and this one looks promising. If you’re interested in academia, this Substack is worth checking out and subscribing to.

Faculty Leaks

The Last Dinosaurs: Why Academia Keeps Protecting Its Worst Senior Faculty

Faculty Leak is an anonymous dispatch from inside higher education. Some details have been changed. The dysfunction has not…

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2 months ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Faculty Leaks

Faculty Leaks

The Academic Conference Grift: How Professors Turn a Two-Sentence Abstract Into a Paid Vacation in Greece

Faculty Leaks is an anonymous dispatch from inside higher education. Some details have been changed. The dysfunction has not…

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2 months ago · 1 like · Faculty Leaks

#5: Plagiarized Poison Ivy

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Emigration from Canada has doubled since the Liberals took office in 2015. This trend continued through 2025, marking the fourth consecutive year of Emigration growth, with a record 120,016 people leaving the country.

The primary demographic leaving Canada is educated young people.

According to Statistics Canada, 67% of emigrants are between the age of 20-44…

… and 31% have a masters degree or higher.

Canada's youngest, most talented, most educated and wealthiest are giving up.

The question is: why?

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#2: Happiness

Over the past decade Canada has dropped from one of the world’s happiest countries to 25th.

Of the 3 countries that experienced a greater drop in happiness among young people than Canada, one is Malawi (with a poverty rate of 70%), and the other is Afghanistan.

This decline is not consistent across age brackets...

Canadians over 60 still rank in the global top 10 for life satisfaction.

Canadians under 25 rank 71st.

#3: Money Supply

While every other G7 nation has moved to rein in monetary expansion, Canada doubled down on the money printer. By 2025, Canada’s rate of money printing outpaced every other major economy on Earth.

#4: Gold Supply

Did you know Canada is the only G7 nation with zero gold reserves? The Bank of Canada used to have 1,023 tonnes of gold, but sold it for an average of just $1200 an ounce.

As of March 28, 2026, 1,023 tonnes of gold is worth ~$205.5 billion CAD.

#5: Loonie

Fifteen years ago, one American dollar was worth one Canadian dollar.

Today, one Canadian dollar is worth ~70 American cents.

#6: White Population

In 1971, 96% of the Canadian population was white.

Today, it is approaching 50%.

#7: Indian Immigration

Over the past 20 years, Indian Immigration has dwarfed all other forms.

Most Indian immigrants are from the state of Punjab.

#8: Asylum Claims

#9: Temporary Foreign Workers

Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program is a government-run guest worker program that lets employers hire foreign workers to fill labor shortages.

The TFW gets lots of heat, but if you look at who is actually coming into the country, TFWs are a relatively small part. Most newcomers are students and “International Mobility Program” migrants.

#10: International Mobility Program

Canada’s International Mobility Program lets employers hire foreign workers without proving a labor shortage.

Just like every other program, the IMP has been primarily abused by India.

#10: Study Permits

Again, most international students are Indian.

They aren’t coming here to learn. They are mostly coming to scam the immigration system via third-rate colleges, not top universities.

For example, Conestoga College has become almost a billion dollar institution in under 6 years because of international student tuition.

#11: Productivity

Largely as a result of importing millions of low-wage, low-skilled, low-human-capital immigrants, Canada’s productivity has lagged behind the United States.

#12: Foreign Direct Investment & Capital Stock

One input in measuring productivity is labor.

The other is capital.

#13: Aging Population

Older Canadians have gotten wealthier, younger Canadians have gotten poorer.

Boomers have captured virtually all economic gains of the last 50 years.

#14: Healthcare

#15: Mental Health

#16: Wait Times

#17: Housing

#18: Fertility and Marriage

#19: Trade & Current Account Deficit

#20: GDP

#21: National Debt

#22: Provincial Debt

#23: Household Debt

#24: Tax rate

#25: R&D Spending

#26: Venture Capital

#27: Private vs. Public Sector employment

#28: Unemployment

#29: Equalization Payments

#30: Food Insecurity and Food bank Usage

#31: Inflation

#32: Car Theft

#33: Violent Crime

#34: Overdose Deaths

#35: Religion

#36: MAID

What does this all add up to?

100,000 Canadians have now been Murdered by MAID.

96% of those euthanized were white.

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Wisconsin is now the 38th state. Governor Tony Evers signed AB 446 into law on March 27, 2026, enacting it as Wisconsin Act 143.

I would wager that 99.9% of my readers have no idea this is happening. Major politicians aren’t talking about it. Headlines aren’t being written about it. But the IHRA speech codes march forward, state by state, without resistance. That’s the point: these speech codes are being rolled out quietly, with almost no coverage, no public debate, and no sustained attention from the mainstream press… the Fond du Lac Reporter doesn’t count:

I asked Jenin Younes, National Legal Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, how such a plainly unconstitutional law could be enacted. She told me:

So the trap is set. By the time the first student is jailed or the first professor is fired for daring to lecture on what constitutes ethnic cleansing, the ink will be dry and the law will be entrenched. While the public is distracted by Clavicular getting framemogged or by watching Green Bay Packers training camp, the very boundaries of what you are allowed to say about a foreign government are being redrawn by a pen-stroke in a quiet room in Madison.

As a refresher, these are 11 deliberately broad, vague, and contradictory IHRA examples of speech that can now be treated as discriminatory under Wisconsin law:

1. Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

   1. If a professor suggests that decades of blockade or occupation are a "root cause" of a specific violent outburst, a litigious student can now claim that the professor is an “extremist” who is illegally "justifying" harm.

2. Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

   1. If a reporter tracks millions of dollars in campaign contributions or lobbying efforts from groups like AIPAC or individuals who happen to be Jewish, a clever prosecutor can argue that the very act of highlighting that "collective power" is an illegal violation of the code. It doesn't matter if the spreadsheet is accurate; truth doesn’t matter; the law is designed to make the topic radioactive.

3. Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.

   1. This forces you to treat every political action as a series of disconnected, random coincidences by "isolated individuals." By banning the concept of "collective responsibility" or even "collective action," the state is effectively saying: You can see the lobby, you can see the money, and you can see the result—but the moment you connect the dots, you’re a criminal.

   2. We don't apply this to any other group. If a group of Evangelical lobbyists pushes for a specific law, we talk about the "Evangelical Vote" and "Christian Nationalism" as a collective political force. If a group of Silicon Valley VCs coordinates on a tech policy, we talk about "Big Tech’s" collective agenda. But under the IHRA definition, if a group of Jewish donors or activists coordinates on a policy, any attempt to describe that coordination as a "group" effort is suddenly a "discriminatory allegation."

4. Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).

   1. Historians routinely debate numbers, logistics, and evidentiary questions within established scholarship. This is the first time in modern Western law that a state legislature has attempted to codify the "correct" results of historical research.

5. Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

   1. This is a unique "Infallibility Clause" that exists for no other historical event in human memory. You can argue that the casualties of the Great Leap Forward were exaggerated by the West; you can argue that the casualties of the Vietnam War were minimized by the Pentagon. We call that "revisionist history," and it is a standard part of the academic process.

6. Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

   1. Meanwhile, top Zionist thinker Melanie Phillips has told Jewish audiences "first and foremost you're Jews, and everything else is secondary."

7. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

   1. You can’t question Zionism or Israel’s founding at all.

8. Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

   1. It effectively mandates that you cannot criticize an Israeli policy unless you simultaneously provide a PowerPoint presentation on similar failings in Norway, Japan, or Canada. Imagine applying this logic to any other facet of American life: you can’t complain about your local DMV unless you first acknowledge the inefficiency of the post office in Lyon, France.

9. Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

   1. You can’t accuse Jewish people of killing Jesus (you legally have to blame his death on Pontius Pilate).

10. Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

    1. This would criminalize a 2024 essay from historian and Israel Defense Forces veteran Omer Bartov outlining how his research of Nazi Germany informed his concerns about Israel. It is policing historical analysis.

11. Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

    1. Over 90% of Jewish Israelis support the war with Iran. "Collective responsibility" is often a reflection of collective support.

When you strip away the administrative jargon and the “illustrative examples,” the intent of this speech code becomes transparent. This is a coordinated, state-level attempt to ensure that a specific foreign power—and the domestic lobby that fuels it—is the only entity on earth exempt from the First Amendment. You can critique your own history, you can audit your own churches, and you can protest your own president—but the moment you turn that lens toward Israel, you are a criminal.

To the legislators in Madison and the lobbyists in the wings: We aren’t asking for your permission to speak. We are exercising a God-given right that no lobby group can ever take away. This is America. In this country, there is no “Geopolitical Exception” to the Bill of Rights. There is no “Foreign Power Clause” that allows a governor to edit a journalist’s spreadsheet, a historian’s archive, or a citizen’s conscience. By attempting to carve out a protected sanctuary for a foreign state, you’ve declared war on the foundational mechanics of American dissent.

We must remember the standard set at the very birth of the Republic:

“Any law repugnant to the Constitution is null and void.”

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Ohio

Ohio Senate Bill 87 (SB 87) was introduced in 2025, but stalled for a while, before finally advancing on February 18, 2026, when it reached the floor for debate.

SB 87 sailed through the Ohio Senate on March 4, 2026, by a vote of 27-4.

The 4 votes against it were Ohio Democratic Senators: Catherine Ingram, Kent Smith, Paula Hicks-Hudson, and Nickie Antonio.

“This bill elevates hate speech not to individuals, but to nations because within the language and within the definition, it clearly identifies the state of Israel,” said Senator Paula Hick-Hudson. “It will definitely cause professors and other instructors to determine whether or not they can even raise the issue that’s happening right now in this world between the war that’s going on with Israel, the U.S. and Iran, and that is what I’m most concerned about.”

The Ohio Senate is overwhelmingly Republican.

SB 87 next will move to the House, which is also heavily Republican.

SB 87 is expected to move through the House in the coming days/weeks, leaving only the governor’s signature before it becomes law.

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I can’t foot the bill for everyone’s dinner, but I promise the first round of beers is on me.

You are all invited if you are in town! The restaurant isn’t secret, but I’m keeping the exact location off the public post so I can manage the reservation headcount. Please reach out directly for the restaurant name if you plan to come.

• Email: chrisbrunet@protonmail.com

• Text: 239-201-7405

Also, feel free to send me a message if you just want to chat, especially if you have top secret documents to leak to me or if you have any cool, explosive, or underreported stories you think deserve scrutiny. Historically, I haven't been the best at responding to all my subscriber emails, sorry, but I’m making a concerted effort to change that.

Looking forward to catching up in person.

Feel free to bring a friend, colleague, or your spouse.

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I try to avoid paywalls whenever possible. If I write something valuable, I want as many people as possible to read it. As a result, only about 2% of my readership is paid. If I went paywalled I could easily raise that number to the 5%-10% range, but that is something I am really trying to avoid.

So, please indulge me in one sponsored post, to keep this newsletter free.

On March 19th, 2026, I’ll be attending the Catholic Prayer for America Gala in Washington, D.C. Tickets are pricey, but the organizers gave me a $100 discount code for readers. If you use code BRUNET at checkout, you’ll get the discount.

Tickets here:

• https://cforc.com/event/catholicprayerforamerica2026/

And please follow Catholics for Catholics, host of the event, on X:

• https://x.com/CforCatholics

I am not speaking at the event, I am just going to be wandering around in a snazzy tuxedo. The event is being held at the Waldorf Astoria, the swankiest hotel in D.C.

The speakers are Candace Owens, Matt Walsh, Gen. Michael Flynn, Fr. Chris Alar, John Yep, and Sister Dede Byrne.

The program will also include an award presented to Carrie Prejean Boller following her dismissal from the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission.

Since I will be in D.C. for the 18th, 19th, or 20th, if you want to grab a beer, please email me and I will try my best to make it happen. If enough people are interested maybe we can have a meetup dinner on the 18th.

• chrisbrunet@protonmail.com

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#1: 10,000 graduate jobs for 900,000 graduates in the UK

Bloomberg put out a report last week concluding that there are only 10,000 new graduate jobs each year in the UK, and, well, the math isn’t great.

#2: 38% of Stanford students are disabled

The Atlantic recently published an article with some amazing statistics:

• At Brown and Harvard, more than 20% of undergraduates are registered as disabled

• At Amherst: more than 30 percent

• At Stanford: nearly 40 percent

• At the University of Chicago, the number has more than tripled over the past eight years; at UC Berkeley, it has nearly quintupled over the past 15 years.

Much of this rise in “disabilities” stems from students strategically seeking accommodations—particularly extra time on exams—because of how universities currently define and incentivize disability status.

At Berkeley, psychological/emotional distress is now the top reason for an accommodation. Second is ADD/ADHD.

Professor Eric Kaufman has measured which kinds of university student have high anxiety… the answer may not surprise you:

#3: UC San Diego Students Can’t Do basic Math

This was a big story a couple of months ago when it broke:

Steve Sailer

UCSD Admissions Fiasco Like Subprime Mortgage Crash

Jelani Nelson is the chairman of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at UC Berkeley. He is half Ethiopian, half African-American, and grew up in the Virgin Islands…

Read more

6 months ago · 37 likes · 38 comments · Steve Sailer

UCSD’s “Math 2” course teaches grade-school math (grades 1–8) to freshmen.

From page 49 of the university’s new report:

• 25% of students got 7 + 2 = ___ + 6 wrong
• 61% of students, a large majority, couldn’t round 374,518 to the nearest hundred
• 37% of students couldn't subtract fractions

Hilariously, there are 5 mathematics students at USCD who have to take this remedial math class, 15 electrical & aerospace university students, and 14 Computer Science Students:

UCSD is ranked as the nation’s 5th best public university.

#4: Mega-journal Heliyon retracts hundreds of papers after internal audit

• https://retractionwatch.com/2026/02/03/mega-journal-heliyon-retracts-hundreds-of-papers-after-internal-audit/

Heliyon has published fewer papers and ramped up its retractions since a major indexing service put the journal on hold and the publisher launched an audit of all papers published in the journal since its launch in 2016.

…

Heliyon published over 11,000 papers in 2023 and more than 17,000 in 2024, issuing around two dozen retractions in each year. Last year, the journal published 3,168 articles and retracted 392 others.

So far this year, 37 papers have been retracted, and 144 have been published. The retraction notices cite reference issues, citation stacking, suspicious affiliations and areas of research, authorship changes, ethical approval, among others.

#5: Indiana University just posted a notice of intent to hire two H1B employees

No Americans were qualified for these jobs.

This follows an announcement 2 days ago from Ron DeSantis that all Florida public Universities will pause hiring new H-1B workers.

#6: Oklahoma Professor alleges his work was plagiarized

#7: Harvard is allegedly hiring 2 conservative professors

After I wrote this article about Harvard:

Chris Brunet

Harvard's PhD Bloodbath

Just after midnight last night, the Harvard Crimson quietly published a bombshell. Citing “financial pressure,” the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) announced drastic cuts to dozens of Harvard’s doctoral programs — a restructuring so deep that many graduate programs will effectively cease to exist…

Read more

8 months ago · 183 likes · 3 comments · Christopher Brunet

I was contacted by a Harvard-connected source who told me that Harvard is now trying to hire at least two Conservative/Republicans/Trumpists, meaning two tenured professors who will make the Trump Administration more likely to be lenient in the final deal. The problem, I am told, is that the faculty are making it difficult to do so.

My evidence starts with Harvard’s job openings for faculty positions:

• academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/search

Harvard, as reported, has a hiring freeze because of all the financial pressure. So, how does it have 150 openings? The vast majority are post-doc positions which are already funded and so don’t “count” against the freeze. Let’s restrict the search to job postings mentioning “tenure”:

• academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=tenure

Now, there are just 6 jobs, which is much more reasonable, given the hiring freeze. One of these is actually for a non-tenured role in housing, and so doesn’t count. Three others are in SEAS (school of engineering and applied sciences) which might have special funding. But, in all of FAS (faculty of arts and sciences), there are exactly two job postings:

• https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15390

• https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15389

Why are these two FAS positions hiring, given the FAS hiring freeze?

Both of these postings look dramatically different from any other Harvard faculty job posting I have ever seen. A normal posting looks like this one, for Applied Math:

• https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15608

In particular, it requires the following:

Totally standard stuff: teaching statements, research statements, service statements: The two FAS positions, in contrast, only require a CV, despte being tenured posts:

I have never seen this sparse requirement—only a CV—to apply for a tenured Harvard job posting, or indeed, the job posting for any senior academic position. Of course, if you are President Garber, you want to make this search as quick and easy as possible.

Another weirdness is that, in the typical Harvard posting, you see what we see in the Math posting, that is, the contact information is just some secretary. They do not release the head (or any members) of the search committee, nor does that person want to be bothered by direct enquiries.

However, for the two FAS positions, the contact info is for two senior faculty members, almost surely the ones in charge of the search. Note that, while neither is “conservative,” both are old and white and male, and exactly who you would pick, if you were Garber, if you needed to hire a couple of conservatives.

However, I have heard --- this is very much second hand --- that the problem is that the faculty committees on these searches are not playing ball. They are refusing to hire someone right wing enough, at least by Garber’s lights, so he keeps telling them to keep searching.

#8: Plagiarizing Harvard professor of the practice

Last year, I wrote an article about Harvard professor of the practice Ricardo Hausmann and his serial plagiarism.

Chris Brunet

Professor at Toulouse School of Economics Writes Open Letter Accusing Harvard Professor of Plagiarism

Today's Substack is not by me. Instead, I reprinted this open letter from X with permission from the author, César Hidalgo of the Toulouse School of Economics…

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2 years ago · 56 likes · 12 comments · Christopher Brunet

Someone who read that article sent me this:

There’s another case of a Harvard professor of the practice whose intro stats textbook (co-authored with an undergrad) is a rip-off of several previously written textbooks. He and his student co-author copy dozens of derivations, proofs, problems, solutions, illustrations etc. with some lazy paraphrasing and trivial notation changes. They never explicitly credit the original textbooks or include them in the bibliography. This professor published nothing else over the past ten years, so plagiarism aside, he didn’t meet the criteria for re-appointment.

A professor at another university sent a document showing side-by-side comparisons to Harvard officials months ago. As has been par for the course, Harvard continues to sit on complaints and evidence for months or years on end, and the plagiarists keep stealing with impunity. Unlike Claudine Gay, who submitted a bunch of corrections In January this year, he wasn’t even asked to request corrections crediting the original textbooks.

I’m attaching the document in case you want to publish it on your substack.

Here is that document:

Hfas Complaint

18.5MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

I sent this PDF to the authors, the plagiarizee, Harvard, and the textbook publishing company with polite questions about whether they ever looked into it, but nobody responded.

It seems fairly damning: 74 examples of blatantly copy-pasting questions.

That said, I’m not entirely sure how unusual it is for instructors to recycle introductory statistics problems. There are only so many ways to rephrase a word problem about rolling dice, coin flips, or sports betting odds.

The author of the allegedly plagiarized textbook, Joe Blitzstein, has this as his pinned tweet:

And he seems to have made quiet a bit of profit from it, since it has 137 reviews on Amazon:

#9: Indiana Econ Professor Arrested for Child Solicitation; UGA Math professor exposed

#10: Econ Profession Death Spiral Confirmed by MSM

5 months ago, I wrote this article:

Chris Brunet

The Collapse of the Econ PhD Job Market

For decades, a doctorate in economics was a golden ticket. It promised a path to tenure, or at worst, a lucrative role at a central bank, think tank, or tech firm…

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8 months ago · 104 likes · 23 comments · Christopher Brunet

Initially, it was paywalled (sorry!), but it gained so much momentum that I unpaywalled it, and it became one of my more popular articles with 45k reads:

The Tiktok I turned it into went viral too, wasting 283 hours of society’s valuable time:

The article was generally well-received, but Chris Blattman, an econ professor at UChicago, took issue with my Microsoft Paint projections:

Well, Chris, now that 2025 is over, and we have the final data, we can see my early projections were perfect.

This was the worst job market ever for economists:

Last month, the Wall Street Journal wrote almost the exact same article as mine, except much worse:

Two weeks ago, had a nice write-up on the economics profession discrediting itself.

Lorenzo from Oz

Why we should stop listening to economists on immigration

If economists were intellectually serious about immigration, they would analyse it like they do monetary policy. Monetary policy can be done well; it can be done badly; it can be done disastrously…

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4 months ago · 75 likes · 26 comments · Lorenzo Warby

#11: MIT Sloan quietly shelves AI ransomware study after researcher calls BS

7 Months ago I reported on an MIT PhD student kicked out of school for falsifying an AI paper:

Chris Brunet

MIT Econ PhD Student Kicked Out for Massive Fraud

This is undoubtedly the most blatant and brazen econ fraud of 2025…

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10 months ago · 156 likes · 4 comments · Christopher Brunet

Now, MIT has a second AI paper retraction.

• https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/03/mit_sloan_updates_ai_ransomware_paper/

Do 80 percent of ransomware attacks really come from AI? MIT Sloan has now withdrawn a working paper that made that eyebrow-raising claim after criticism from security researcher Kevin Beaumont.

The withdrawn paper [PDF], co-authored by researchers from MIT Sloan and Safe Security, claimed, “Our recent analysis of over 2800 ransomware incidents has revealed an alarming trend: AI plays an increasingly significant role in these attacks. In 2024, 80.83 percent of recorded ransomware events were attributed to threat actors utilizing AI.”

Completed in April, the paper was cited in an MIT Sloan blog post last month titled “80 percent of ransomware attacks now use artificial intelligence.” It has since been echoed elsewhere.

“The paper is absolutely ridiculous,” Beaumont wrote in a Mastodon thread last week. “It describes almost every major ransomware group as using AI – without any evidence (it’s also not true, I monitor many of them). It even talks about Emotet (which hasn’t existed for many years) as being AI driven.”

#12: Brett Matsumoto to head Bureau of Labor Statistics

Following EJ Antoni’s failure last year to secure the support required for confirmation as head of the BLS:

Robert Reich

Trump’s political hack nominee for the Bureau of Labor Statistics is already monkeying with the data.

Friends…

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10 months ago · 2042 likes · 320 comments · Robert Reich

Last month, Trump nominated Brett Matsumoto to that role, a much more boring, less partisan, more technocratic pick. Whereas Antoni had no research record to speak of (his PhD was from “Norhtern Illionis University, an objectively terrible school, and his thesis on Austrian economics looked like an undergrad thesis riddled with errors), Brett’s PhD in economics is from UNC Chapel Hill and his research is on serious economic measurement.

Brett is a beloved folk hero in the economics profession (more specifically, in the EJMR community) because he is best known for bravely standing up to fight against research misconduct in the “Family Ruptures” scandal.

Brett is a much better choice in every dimension than EJ Antoni.

#13: College for Sale

Since Green Mountain College in rural Vermont went bankrupt in 2019, its 155-acre campus has been sitting empty.

If anyone here has a spare few million dollars in your pocket, they are now fielding proposals to revive it in some capacity.

#14: Canada Establishes Inuit-led University

#15: Climate Change Economics Paper Retracted

Last year, the Review of Financial Studies (the #2 academic finance journal in the world) issued an “expression of concern” for a 2022 paper about the impact of climate change on the mortgage industry.

Now, the paper has been retracted:

This retraction followed a response by M. LaCour-Little, A. Pavlov and S. Wachter, published in the Review of Financial Studies, which identified two main issues with the original article: the use of incorrect Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) conforming loan limits and the misclassification of loans due to rounding of loan amounts around this limit.

The committee subsequently concluded that correcting the issues would invalidate the main results reported in Table 2 of the original article; rectifying the coding error of the publicly available conforming loan limits alone would invalidate the results reported. Moreover, in the process of examining the results, the committee determined that the methodology described in the original paper does not generate the results reported. The editorial team are retracting this article because the original findings cannot be replicated given these issues.

#16: University of Alberta becomes first Canadian University to Abandon Affirmative Action

• https://nationalpost.com/opinion/university-of-alberta-to-become-first-to-abandon-race-centric-hiring https://nationalpost.com/opinion/university-of-alberta-to-become-first-to-abandon-race-centric-hiring

#17: Shanghai University of Finance and Economics: A Playground for Academic Corruption

I was blown away by the investigation because I didn’t really think that investigative journalism / blogging / whistleblowing could exist in China:

• https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/hVosUoiIoWFJvqUByzOh9w

Shortly after it was posted, it was deleted from Chinese social media:

But I have archived it here on the Western internet:

• https://archive.is/DaoAi

Professor Yao Yang is currently trending:

“In over 40 years, I have never fallen in love with Beijing.”

So, we are very curious—what could Professor Yao Yang possibly fall in love with?

The answer is revealed: Professor Yao Yang voted with his feet, leaving Beijing for Shanghai.

It turns out that the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics’ Dishui Lake Advanced Institute of Finance (DIIJF) is actually a playground for a group of academic corruption and collusion!

Despite this, Professor Yao Yang still tries to maintain appearances and shout slogans:

“DIIJF, standing tall and upright!”

Unfortunately, beneath this facade, there is already a stain.

Yao Yang: Dishui Lake DIIJF aims to be “standing tall and upright,” cultivating scholars who can solve real-world problems.

DIIJF has never been a place to cultivate scholars who can solve China’s real-world problems. On the contrary, it is only good at dealing with “people” rather than “problems”—any scholar who dares to speak the truth and refuses to conform will be treated as a “problem” to be solved.

Despite this, we urge Dean Yao Yang to investigate how many charlatans he has under his command.

We are providing a list for Dean Yao Yang to verify; these professors are all involved in multiple publications of the same paper.

Bao Xiaohua: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/2f/86/c12600a208774/page.htm

Cao Dongbo: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/2f/a8/c12600a208808/page.htm

Ding Xiaoqin: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/2f/9a/c12600a208794/page.htm

Jin Qinglu: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/ 2f/84/c12600a208772/page.htm

Jin Yuying: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/2f/84/c12600a208772/page.htm

Liu Zhiyang: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/2f/75/c12600a208757/page.htm

Luo Yuding: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/90/be/c12600a233662/page.htm

Wang Fang: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/2f/a2/c12600a208802/page.htm

Yan Hongzhong: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/2f/7d/c12600a208765/page.htm

Zhu Xiaoneng: https://dafi.sufe.edu.cn/2f/7f/c12600a208767/page.htm

#18: Canadian Mathematician Goes Missing

, one of the best journalists in Canada, has published a detailed write-up on a mathematician and outspoken critic of the Iranian regime who warned that the regime had infiltrated a Canadian university engineering program at Simon Fraser University.

He went missing earlier this month under suspicious circumstances.

The Bureau

Mathematician Who Warned of Regime Infiltration of Canadian University Engineering Program Missing in Suspicious Disappearance

VANCOUVER – An outspoken Iranian dissident who publicly warned Canadian authorities in 2021 about alleged Iranian regime infiltration of engineering programs at Simon Fraser University has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, prompting an investigation by the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team…

Read more

4 months ago · 106 likes · 7 comments

The RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) is still investigating.

#19: Rachael Meager is now officially Rafe Meager

If you are active on EconTwitter, you will know that one of the most popular accounts is Rachel Meager, she is one of the cool kids. Previously she was an assistant professor at LSE Department of Economics, but has recently returned home to be a professor in Australia.

She is also on Substack:

The Universal and the Vacuous Events

Either rotten or good, or both rotten and good

By Rafe Meager

Breaking news: Rachael is now going by “Rafe,” and says she is a man.

This is very very sad. You can see the pain and confusion in her tortured eyes.

#20: Marco Di Maggio update

Do Kwon has now pled guilty in a New York court to two U.S. fraud charges, conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud, under a plea deal that requires him to forfeit over $19 million but carries a maximum prison sentence of 25 years.

• https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/do-kwon-pleads-guilty-us-fraud-charges-40-billion-crypto-collapse-2025-08-12/

Kwon was a software engineer who built Terra, which wiped out investors worldwide when it imploded in 2022.

Kwon has nothing to do with economics or academia directly—but his chief economic consultant at the time was Marco Di Maggio, then a finance professor at Harvard Business School.

I wrote about Marco Di Maggio three years ago, in one of my first articles: