Campus watch: Responsibility Isn’t Racist

Tuskegee University’s recent request for “its mostly Black students to stop wearing revealing clothes to class” and “dressing down by wearing durags,” is a welcome bid “to end habits that hurt any Black youngster’s chances for success,” cheers Juan Williams in The Hill. These days, “any call for personal responsibility in Black America gets confused with partisan politics and ideological purity,” but: “Standards are not racist. Discipline is not disrespectful of Black culture.” Note that former President Barack Obama agreed that “too Black men were under the influence of negative stereotypes.” Tuskegee is doing its part to counteract the lie that “ ‘authentic’ Black life” should replicate “jailtime.” Instead of “surrendering to popular stereotypes,” the school is “preparing young people to win.”

Eye on education: What’s New York Hiding?

“Parents deserve to know how well high schools are preparing their students for college-level work,” roars Eva Moskowitz at The Washington Post after the New York State Education Department blocked US News & World Report “from accessing data” on “students’ performance on Advanced Placement exams as part of its widely followed national high school rankings.” “The state has censored AP reporting on the grounds of privacy,” claiming “U.S. News shouldn’t be allowed to use student data for a ‘commercial product.’ ” By that bogus standard, SED “could restrict any number of stories based on student data.” Success Academy has sued Education Commissioner Betty Rosa, warning, “Parents can’t demand excellence if government prevents them from seeing it.”

Libertarian: Free Our Weight-Loss Drugs!

Eli Lilly and the FDA “begin oral arguments before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals” this month over whether the “experimental weight loss treatment retatrutide” is a “biologic product or a conventional drug,” notes Jen Basile at Reason. In trial, retatrutide “produced an average weight loss of 28.3 percent in 80 weeks.” But it’s caught in a Byzantine regulatory fight over the definitions of “drug,” “protein,” and more — as “patients wait in limbo.” The “system that is supposedly designed to promote safety, affordability, and availability of the latest medicines is making it harder to develop them.” Forget courts: The legislature must “balance incentives and protections for both consumers and producers. The current system isn’t working for companies or consumers or even the regulators themselves.”

Foreign desk: UK Lacks Will To Keep Falklands

“Argentine president Javier Milei finally went there,” observes Spiked’s Tim Black, reasserting “Argentina’s claim on Las Malvinas” — a k a, the Falkland Islands. Milei wasn’t threatening war; “he was threatening sanctions against any companies engaged in ‘oil-extraction initiatives’ in the North Falkland Basin,” acting in response to Washington casting “doubt on the UK’s claim on the Falkland Islands” after Britain failed to help against Iran. Polls show “a profound indifference among the British public towards the status of a set of islands that are thousands of miles away,” especially among the young who have “grown up in a cultural and educational climate dominated by anti-Westernism and the ideology of decolonisation.” Thanks to recent “Western fragmentation and Britain’s weakness,” the “future” of the Falklands “has rarely been as uncertain.”

Trade expert: China Overplayed Rare-Earth Hand

“China’s leverage” on its supply of rare earth minerals to the global market is “becoming increasingly perishable by the day,” reports Scott Morrison at The Wall Street Journal. Relying on China for “critical minerals” has long been a “national-security vulnerability” for trading partners, but now Beijing’s exploitation of its “chokepoint” has led others to “create alternative supply chains.” China’s “advantage” lay in its willingness to “increase the supply and depress the price” to “keep other suppliers out of the market” by “absorbing the loss” of selling below cost. Beijing overstepped by “asserting licensing control” over any product using Chinese rare earths. Trump rapidly expanded US production, taking measures that “can’t be easily reversed by China’s market manipulation,” thus “changing the economics” and “enabling Western competitors to challenge China’s dominance.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board