Anthony Teelucksingh

Born in Trinidad. Retired cybercrime federal prosecutor. Fencing referee, proud dad of a talented son and daughter, and granddad to the cutest baby boy ever.

[Robert P. George @McCormickProf]

I'll probably get clobbered for this, but here goes: Please, can everyone, right or left, MAGA or anti-MAGA, Republican or Democrat, stop catastrophizing and trying to get everyone on your side worked up into a rage? It's not Flight 93. We're not on the verge of fascism. We do not need to take desperate measures. Our fellow citizens with whom we disagree are not devils incarnate or personifications of evil. We need to argue with our political adversaries--passionately perhaps--but with respect for their humanity and dignity. We don't need to destroy them. That mustn't be our aim. We all say we believe in democracy. Good! But democracy is all about persuading, giving reasons, engaging one another as fellow citizens, despite our disagreements. Let's rebuild civic friendship. We can do this. (Thank you for your attention to this matter.)

[Anthony Teelucksingh @teeluca]

@MeganTStevenson In Baltimore your high school (usually meaning which private school) is more important socially than where you went to college. If you are asked about which school you attended, they mean high school. For some, this translates into referrals which turn into very good jobs.

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

Any attempt in the U.S. to teach AI “morality” risks freezing in place the same dogmatic upper-class assumptions that did so much damage to discourse on American college campuses. Part of being a civil libertarian is refusing to let someone else decide our morality for us.

Help us understand the world as it is, as best you can—that’s the greatest challenge of all. But kindly refrain from telling me what you think I should think, let alone what I should feel.

[FIRE @TheFIREorg]

After Charlie Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University, FIRE’s @glukianoff went to the shocked campus with a powerful message for the UVU community and America:

In the face of political violence, free speech is the only way forward.

[Jacob Calvin Meyer @jcalvinmeyer]

The Orioles lost 24-2 and 19-5 and blew an 8-0 lead and fired their manager and traded nine players at the deadline in perhaps the most disappointing season in franchise history.

Somehow, the Ravens might be even worse.

[Anthony Teelucksingh @teeluca]

@MsMelChen I heard “inshallah” on an Egypt Air flight from Cairo to Luxor, and it also threw me a bit. Egyptians say it routinely for nearly anything related to the future. For example, with four of us I asked our guide if we could all fit in a tiny elevator. His response? Inshallah.

[Chris Krebs @C_C_Krebs]

👇

[Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz]

The Dow Jones just had its biggest single-day gain in history, putting its total back to where it was roughly 5 days ago.

[Anthony Teelucksingh @teeluca]

@wil_da_beast630 Indeed we are.

[Anthony Teelucksingh @teeluca]

@OrinKerr Congratulations!

[Baseball King @BasebaIlKing]

Everyone take 2 minutes out of your day to watch the Yankees 5th inning.

[Super 70s Sports @Super70sSports]

Sure, 4K is nice, but there was nothing like sitting two inches away from one of these sweet bastards while your mother predicted you’d be as blind as Ray Charles by the following Thursday.

[MLB @MLB]

A special moment in Colorado 🥹

Rockies legend Matt Holliday throws out the first pitch to his son Jackson Holliday

[Orin Kerr @OrinKerr]

"The Fifth Circuit Shuts Down Geofence Warrants—And Maybe A Lot More." New from me at Volokh, a deep dive for the law nerds. (This time, really really deep.) https://t.co/4XAU0u5jWo

[Caitlin Flanagan @CaitlinPacific]

Putting two spaces after a period says, "I've been around. I've seen dark things. I take my whisky neat, and wear my progressive sunglasses to bed."

One space says, "I don't count words; I count characters. It's a more efficient metric and in line with machine thinking.

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

OMG amazing team!
They are like the daughters of the wind!

[The Philadelphia Inquirer @PhillyInquirer]

#BREAKING: Penn President Liz Magill has resigned amid growing bipartisan backlash against her Capitol Hill testimony on antisemitism earlier this week and a semester marked by protests and controversy. https://t.co/h72RfkAeju

[FIRE @TheFIREorg]

Tonight, @Penn President Liz Magill signaled that one of our nation's most prestigious institutions is willing to abandon its commitment to freedom of expression.

“For decades, under multiple Penn presidents and consistent with most universities, Penn’s policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law,” explained Magill in a video posted to X.

But now, she continued, the university “must initiate a serious and careful look at our policies,” a process to start “immediately.”

This is a deeply troubling, profoundly counterproductive response to yesterday's congressional hearing on “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.”

Were Penn to retreat from the robust protection of expressive rights, university administrators would make inevitably political decisions about who may speak and what may be said on campus.

Such a result would undoubtedly compromise the knowledge-generating process free expression enables and for which universities exist.

To be clear: Universities will not enforce a rule against "calls for genocide" in the way elected officials calling for President Magill's resignation think they will.

Dissenting and unpopular speech — whether pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian, conservative or liberal — will be silenced.

Conservatives like Rep. Elise Stefanik should ask themselves:

Do you honestly believe this rule won’t be weaponized to ban an Israeli cabinet official from speaking at Penn? An Israeli Defense Force soldier?

The power to censor always invites abuse and never stays cabined.

FIRE was founded in the wake of the infamous 1993 “Water Buffalo” incident at Penn.

In that case, Israeli-born Jewish student Eden Jacobowitz was charged with harassment for shouting “Shut up, you water buffalo” at a group of rowdy sorority students outside his dorm room window.

The sorority students were black, and the argument was that “water buffalo” was a racial epithet.

But it was not.

Jacobowitz, who speaks Hebrew, explained that water buffalo is a rough English translation of “behema,” a Hebrew slang term for a loud, rowdy person.

The story captured headlines, and Penn was widely condemned for its persecution of Jacobowitz.

FIRE co-founder Alan Charles Kors, a history professor at Penn, helped advise Jacobowitz.

The charges were eventually dropped and the story would go on to serve as the opening chapter of “The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America's Campuses” — the book that launched FIRE.

Over the years, Kors and FIRE helped Penn get past the water buffalo debacle.

The school reformed all of its speech codes and was one of the first universities to earn FIRE’s highest, “green light” rating for speech-protective policies.

But in recent years, Penn has backtracked.

It’s no longer a green light school.

It adopted new harassment policies that are ripe for abuse.

And what free speech and academic freedom protections remain, it doesn’t consistently follow.

Now President Magill suggests an institutional willingness to abandon free expression altogether.

This will not end well.

Vesting administrators like Magill with more power to police speech will result in more Jacobowitzes.

The intended targets for these codes will not be the actual casualties — and Penn students, faculty, alumni, and donors will come to regret the day they ever entrusted campus bureaucrats with the power to police speech on campus.

[Anthony Teelucksingh @teeluca]

@C_Painter Congratulations Chris!

[Darren Johnson @DarrenJohnson66]

That article about having books in the house being smug and middle class attracted a lot of comment and derision. But it comes from a long line of "Love something? This is why it is bad" school of journalism. Thread: