Petition for release of young female Iranian prisoner of conscience

 

I have just signed a petition of Amnesty International for the release of 24-year-old Yasaman Aryani (shown in the photo). Like many other valiant Iranian women, Yasaman has been imprisoned for protesting against the laws mandating headscarves, and refusing to wear one. She was first arrested in August 2018, sentenced to one year, released in February 2019, then arrested again next month and sentenced to 16 years, together with her mother.

 

University admission must be merit-based

 The US Department of Justice has found what has been common knowledge for decades, namely, that US universities discriminate against white and especially Asian-American candidate students, holding them to a higher standard. Because of the consistently higher academic achievements of these two groups, to prevent them from becoming over-represented in the student body, higher test scores are required from them than from students coming from groups with traditionally lower academic performance. To motivate the rejection of academically excellent Asian-American applicants, they are given lower scores in the "personality" assessment. To me, all this is textbook racism, yet it is defended as struggle against "systemic racism", whatever this is to mean.

 

I find this system mind-boggling. In my country, elite universities recruit their students by anonymous written examinations (high school grades are also taken into account, but are given less importance, because it is known that many bad schools grade their students generously). Gender quotas are used for all prestigeous study fields that would otherwise become feminized, but there are no racial or ethnic quotas. So we have proportionally fewer minority students, but the ones that make it into (and out of) the university are as good as those from the majority. My experience shows that this system works well. I'd recommend it to everyone (and I think it would be even better without the gender quotas). At least public universities, and also private ones if they use public funds, should not be allowed to discriminate based on race, ethnicity, personality traits, or any other non-academic criteria.

Ten years

Ten years ago, my brother died. I still miss him terribly. You cannot stop loving someone just because he has died. I still do not feel at home in the world devoid of him. Because it is a damaged version of what it had to be. My brother was of those people who make the world better. And there is still a void at the place of the life he had to live, the love he had to give in the years to come, and of all the nice things he would do.