When I first read the book, I had a hard time tracing Hanania's source for the "great view" and "walk-up" claims you quoted. As far as I can tell, it goes back to a 1995 memo by Roberta Achtenberg, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (pages 33 to 36, https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2012/07/10/miamivalleybrief.pdf) that specifically gives these phrases as examples of information that "does not violate the Act". Sine then, they have consistently been cited as examples of acceptable language in various sources. Hanania's description might not be strictly false — maybe Achtenberg was referring to some earlier example where somebody cited those phrases as exclusionary — but it is definitely misleading.
EDIT: It looks like I goofed on this. There is a correct citation in the book. See Hanania's response below.
"But every now and then a claim goes by rather quickly that I wasn’t sure about. For instance, the book cites a statistic that Yale now has as many administrators as it does students; but this is because many employees at Yale’s hospital count as administrators for bookkeeping purposes."
I remember spot-checking a few other claims and finding them all to be exaggerated or distorted.
> "But every now and then a claim goes by rather quickly that I wasn’t sure about. For instance, the book cites a statistic that Yale now has as many administrators as it does students; but this is because many employees at Yale’s hospital count as administrators for bookkeeping purposes."
This could be true, but at the same time it's kind of telling. There are over 15,000 students at Yale. If a few hundred hospital employees (staff of a typical hospital) is what tips it over from "not quite more administrators than students" to "technically more administrators than students," that's still a massive number of school-staff administrators, and far more than the school should need for any legitimate administrative purposes!
I looked into this briefly. The actual claim is "more administrators than undergrads", and there are only 6600 undergrads. Yale New Haven hospital has 14000 employees. I don't know how many are admins, but it could be a pretty sizeable fraction.
What the heck?!? How in the world does a hospital, even a big one, need that many employees? I just looked it up, and YNH has about 1500 beds. Do they *really* need 10 people for every patient, particularly given that most hospitals don't run at full capacity most of the time anyway?
The largest employer in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Despite what the name may suggest, UPMC is a massive healthcare network that controls some 40 hospitals and 800 or so medical offices throughout the US and provides research and consultation services worldwide.
Point being that yes, don't put too much stock in a name for something like this.
> Do they *really* need 10 people for every patient, particularly given that most hospitals don't run at full capacity most of the time anyway?
Remember that hospitals also have outpatient clinics and emergency rooms and the like, they're not just treating the people who are admitted to hospital at any given time.
I looked up a few other hospitals I know and 10-1 is a pretty normal staff-to-bed ratio for a big prestigious hospital.
The citation is right there. It's from David Bernstein, "You Can't Say That." I even cited the chapter, which is in the introduction. Here's his quote:
"There are a number of other phrases that did not make the Oregon list, but that some realtors avoid nonetheless for fear of liability, including the following: master bedroom (either sexist or purportedly evocative of slavery and therefore insulting to African Americans), great view (allegedly expresses preference for the nonblind), and walk-up (supposedly discourages the disabled)."
I didn't say that they violated the law. My exact quote was "even terms like 'great view' and 'walk-up' have been cited as potentially trying to exclude blind people and those in wheelchairs." I didn't say that these terms were ever found to violate the law. It's in keeping with one of the main arguments from the book, which is that stuff that is technically legal might still be thought to be problematic, creating a chilling effect. So what realtors think you're allowed to say or not say is relevant to the discussion. And the fact that government has to cite them as ok tells you far the restrictions on speech go. If these are your border cases, the civil rights regime is a massive infringement on liberty.
As for the Yale claim, Traldi doesn't provide a link, so I don't know how much the hospital staff affects things. But this article says that there's a 45% increase in administrators in less than two decades, and it doesn't appear to count hospital staff. It pegs number of administrators as about 80% of the number of students without counting the hospital.
So the statement ends up technically true, and also not very misleading unless you think that hospital administrators shouldn't count (which is arguable) and you think there's some massive difference between a huge increase in administrators that leads to them being 80% as large as the student body or 101%. Hospital staff are also doing a lot of DEI stuff too, so I don't know why you should exclude them if they're part of a larger story of bureaucratic bloat.
Do you know if these laws have ever been upheld against a First Amendment challenge by the SCOTUS? They don't fall into any well-known exceptions. If not, somebody should try to challenge them.
Thanks for clarifying: I think I had looked at the US News article in the same footnote, but you are correct. My apologies, I shouldn't have commented without checking again.
For the Yale issue, it looks like the article you cite does count hospital staff: See the quote from President Salovey ("He reiterated that the growth in the Yale School of Medicine’s clinical practice has been a significant and worthwhile cause of the administration’s increased size"). Since there's nowhere that they break it out by hospital vs. non-hospital, it's hard to say.
When I first read the book, I had a hard time tracing Hanania's source for the "great view" and "walk-up" claims you quoted. As far as I can tell, it goes back to a 1995 memo by Roberta Achtenberg, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (pages 33 to 36, https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2012/07/10/miamivalleybrief.pdf) that specifically gives these phrases as examples of information that "does not violate the Act". Sine then, they have consistently been cited as examples of acceptable language in various sources. Hanania's description might not be strictly false — maybe Achtenberg was referring to some earlier example where somebody cited those phrases as exclusionary — but it is definitely misleading.
EDIT: It looks like I goofed on this. There is a correct citation in the book. See Hanania's response below.
Oliver Traldi's review (https://quillette.com/2023/09/23/civil-rights-and-wrongs/) points some more misrepresented anecdotes . For example:
"But every now and then a claim goes by rather quickly that I wasn’t sure about. For instance, the book cites a statistic that Yale now has as many administrators as it does students; but this is because many employees at Yale’s hospital count as administrators for bookkeeping purposes."
I remember spot-checking a few other claims and finding them all to be exaggerated or distorted.
> "But every now and then a claim goes by rather quickly that I wasn’t sure about. For instance, the book cites a statistic that Yale now has as many administrators as it does students; but this is because many employees at Yale’s hospital count as administrators for bookkeeping purposes."
This could be true, but at the same time it's kind of telling. There are over 15,000 students at Yale. If a few hundred hospital employees (staff of a typical hospital) is what tips it over from "not quite more administrators than students" to "technically more administrators than students," that's still a massive number of school-staff administrators, and far more than the school should need for any legitimate administrative purposes!
I looked into this briefly. The actual claim is "more administrators than undergrads", and there are only 6600 undergrads. Yale New Haven hospital has 14000 employees. I don't know how many are admins, but it could be a pretty sizeable fraction.
> Yale New Haven hospital has 14000 employees.
What the heck?!? How in the world does a hospital, even a big one, need that many employees? I just looked it up, and YNH has about 1500 beds. Do they *really* need 10 people for every patient, particularly given that most hospitals don't run at full capacity most of the time anyway?
Probably we're somehow comparing apples to oranges - maybe the "hospital" is a medical system including lots of outpatient clinics?
Sounds like Yale is a hospital with a minor attached education department.
The largest employer in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Despite what the name may suggest, UPMC is a massive healthcare network that controls some 40 hospitals and 800 or so medical offices throughout the US and provides research and consultation services worldwide.
Point being that yes, don't put too much stock in a name for something like this.
> Do they *really* need 10 people for every patient, particularly given that most hospitals don't run at full capacity most of the time anyway?
Remember that hospitals also have outpatient clinics and emergency rooms and the like, they're not just treating the people who are admitted to hospital at any given time.
I looked up a few other hospitals I know and 10-1 is a pretty normal staff-to-bed ratio for a big prestigious hospital.
The citation is right there. It's from David Bernstein, "You Can't Say That." I even cited the chapter, which is in the introduction. Here's his quote:
"There are a number of other phrases that did not make the Oregon list, but that some realtors avoid nonetheless for fear of liability, including the following: master bedroom (either sexist or purportedly evocative of slavery and therefore insulting to African Americans), great view (allegedly expresses preference for the nonblind), and walk-up (supposedly discourages the disabled)."
I didn't say that they violated the law. My exact quote was "even terms like 'great view' and 'walk-up' have been cited as potentially trying to exclude blind people and those in wheelchairs." I didn't say that these terms were ever found to violate the law. It's in keeping with one of the main arguments from the book, which is that stuff that is technically legal might still be thought to be problematic, creating a chilling effect. So what realtors think you're allowed to say or not say is relevant to the discussion. And the fact that government has to cite them as ok tells you far the restrictions on speech go. If these are your border cases, the civil rights regime is a massive infringement on liberty.
As for the Yale claim, Traldi doesn't provide a link, so I don't know how much the hospital staff affects things. But this article says that there's a 45% increase in administrators in less than two decades, and it doesn't appear to count hospital staff. It pegs number of administrators as about 80% of the number of students without counting the hospital.
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-part-of-its-leadership-to-lead-yales-administration-increases-by-nearly-50-percent/
So the statement ends up technically true, and also not very misleading unless you think that hospital administrators shouldn't count (which is arguable) and you think there's some massive difference between a huge increase in administrators that leads to them being 80% as large as the student body or 101%. Hospital staff are also doing a lot of DEI stuff too, so I don't know why you should exclude them if they're part of a larger story of bureaucratic bloat.
Do you know if these laws have ever been upheld against a First Amendment challenge by the SCOTUS? They don't fall into any well-known exceptions. If not, somebody should try to challenge them.
Thanks for clarifying: I think I had looked at the US News article in the same footnote, but you are correct. My apologies, I shouldn't have commented without checking again.
For the Yale issue, it looks like the article you cite does count hospital staff: See the quote from President Salovey ("He reiterated that the growth in the Yale School of Medicine’s clinical practice has been a significant and worthwhile cause of the administration’s increased size"). Since there's nowhere that they break it out by hospital vs. non-hospital, it's hard to say.