1. Chelsea Clinton running NYU's "multifaith" institute. 2. The Harvard Kennedy School granting a PhD for a dissertation about the IQ of Hispanic immigrants.

1. We learn today that Chelsea Clinton will take on "a 'multifaith' role as co-founder and co-chair of [NYU's] brand-new Of Many Institute, a program to "develop multifaith dialogue and train multifaith leaders." It should be noted, in this context, that Chelsea Clinton's degree is a Master's of Public Health, and that she has been teaching at the graduate level at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health.

2. Yesterday, we were talking about the Harvard students who are petitioning for an investigation into how the Harvard Kennedy School accepted a dissertation that reached conclusions that the students regarded as unethical, because it supported discrimination against persons of a particular ethnicity on the ground of purported lower intelligence.

Let's talk about these 2 stories together. Here are 3 highly prestigious institutions — NYU, Columbia, and Harvard — and schools/institutes within them that most of us would assume have a political slant in the liberal direction:  NYU's Of Many Institute, Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, and Harvard's Kennedy School.

Both stories make the institutions look weak — NYU and Columbia for taking in the Clintons' daughter — and Harvard for awarding degrees for weak dissertations.

Be clear what I'm saying about Harvard. I mean to express no opinion about Jason Richwine's "IQ and Immigration Policy" dissertation. I haven't read it, and I'm not an expert in the field. I can't believe the professors at the Kennedy School liked where Richwine was going with his research, but I suspect that they went forward, approving his dissertation, because it wasn't any worse than the many  left/liberal dissertations they've approved over the years.

ADDED: Why is NYU's multifaith institute called "Of Many"? Is it based on "Out of many, one" — E pluribus unum?



AND: Do students at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health take courses with Chelsea because of the value of networking the Clintons? That's pretty valuable! Inference: you're a chump if you're paying high tuition and not buying access to power.