San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival: On the Negative Impact of the Castro’s Culture

Ideological intolerance may not be typically thought of as stemming from a psychological pathology from unresolved emotional problems, especially if the ideology is classified under “political speech.” Even so, the vehemence with which flashes of hostility are unleashed by an intolerant ideologue against people objecting to the person’s ideology and thus to it being imposed as if it were God’s eternal truth is plainly psychological. Volunteering at a film festival in San Francisco in late June, 2026, I was the receiver, or lightening rod, of such vitriol from two attendees and the festival’s manager who oversaw the volunteers because I had unwittingly made statements that violated the dominant ideology not only at the festival, but in San Francisco moreover. In business schools, it is well known (or should be well known) that an organizational culture can reflect a wider culture in the organization’s environment. A toxic local or societal norm, which reflects values, beliefs, and even assumptions held by a sufficient proportion of inhabitants to gain a “critical mass,” can infect organizational cultures within the locality or society. I contend that this dynamic applied to the Frameline (LGBT) film festival in 2026 and the wider the Castro (gay) district of San Francisco then, where the festival was based. The same overreaching ideology and hostile defense mechanism were salient both in the non-profit organization and, extending beyond the Castro neighborhood, in San Francisco itself as well as in at least some of the suburbs.

The full essay is at "San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival."

 

UCLA’s School of Medicine: Practicing Racism?

The matter of having race as a component part of the admissions process of a school in California university in the U.S. came to the fore once again on May 6, 2026 when the U.S. Department of Justice publicly announced its finding that the UCLA School of Medicine “illegally used race as a selection criteria (sic) for candidates and admitted Black and Latino students who had lower academic qualifications than their (W)hite and Asian counterparts.”[1] The racial discrimination was against White students and students from Asia who had higher academic qualification. Accordingly, assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote, “Racism in admissions is both illegal and anti-American, and this Department will not allow it to continue.”[2] In fact, it could be argued that the sheer existence of race in the criteria for the admission of medical students is racist, taking that term to mean “pertaining to race” without the pejorative connotations that racism has. To be sure, the unique historical disadvantage of Black Americans, including when the institution of slavery existed in the antebellum period of the South, arguably justified making up for the legacy of continuing prejudice by preferential treatment in college admissions. It is important to acknowledge that affirmative action programs contained racial prejudice against another race, and in the twenty-first century the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the racial harm over institutional efforts to redress racial prejudice, perhaps because the latter had diminished considerably especially since the 1960s. UCLA may not have caught up with this recognition because ideology tends to lag changes in the world due to emotional investment and the long-standing nature of values. So the justice department’s accusation that the medical school (and thus the university) intentionally violating the relevant court rulings can be viewed as a sort of recalibration as well as an assertion that laws should not be violated.

The full essay is at "UCLA's School of Medicine."

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1. Lauren Trautenberg, “DOJ Alleges School of Medicine Racial Discrimination,” Daily Bruin, May 8, 2026.
2 Ibid.

American Airlines: Caring for People

What is the purpose of a business? According to Aristotle, there are different kinds of purposes. The final cause of a tree seed, for example, is a tree; the material cause is whatever biochemistry went into the seed. The final cause of a human sperm entering a human egg is an adult human being—hence the question of the ethics of abortion. A human embryo is potentially an adult human being. The material cause of an embryo lies in the biochemistry of the seed and the egg. But I digress. As regards a company, we can distinguish different kinds of purposes. Somewhat crudely, the real purpose can be distinguished from the ostensible purpose. The former has to do with what can be thought of as the bottom-line purpose: maximizing revenue or profit. Any ostensible purpose, such as feeding people or transporting them, is functional in nature, and can be viewed as a means of achieving the real purpose. A third kind of purpose can be labeled as a marketing purpose, the promotion of which is merely to serve the real purpose. In terms of Shankara’s Hindu metaphysical framework, the real purpose is in the real, the ostensible purpose is in the realm of appearance, and a marketing purpose is in that of illusion. I contend that business managers, especially in marketing, are accustomed to conflating these three types of purposes in being oriented to the real purpose. Not being transparent about the differences between these three purposes is, I submit, unethical in nature. I have an incident involving American Airlines in mind.

The full essay is at "American Airlines."

Yale's Original Sin

I take it as a matter of divine justice that redemption can elude a convenient, belated atonement, especially if the atoning individual or institution does not really grasp the root of the original sin and thus the sin continues under other manifestations even though admittedly they may be less severe. I contend that when Peter Salovey, Yale University’s president, apologized on behalf of the Yale Corporation for having oppressed two Black men nearly two centuries earlier, he was not aware of the university’s underlying exaggerated fixation on the insider/outsider dichotomy that was still salient in 2023. To be sure, Nietzsche wrote that the strong should maintain a pathos of distance from the weak, lest the latter beguile the former into voluntarily renouncing their innate strength. Kant distinguished intimacy from difference as together making up the dialectic of attraction and distance. When a customer with the strength of having money naturally distances oneself from a rude employee of a retail company who is resentful, such distance is hardly artificial. Yet when a university whose administrators and faculty feel the emotional need to distance themselves qua insiders from outsiders to such an extent that even alumni who return to campus to work on academic projects, such as writing a book, are relegated as outsiders—hence not “members of the community”—then the distancing stems from a rather unnatural pathology. I contend that such a pathology still plagued Yale like an invisible blanket in 2023, almost two-hundred years after that university had refused to allow two black auditors to speak in courses at Yale’s theological seminary (divinity school). That original sin, although atoned for, still ran through Yale’s puffed-up veins in 2023, hence intimacy and strength continued quite naturally to elude that university—the redemption of which would require more of a mirror than an apology to two dead Black auditors could provide. Although Yale appeared in 2023 to be self-confident to external stakeholders and the general public, Nietzsche’s advice applied to people considering coming or giving to Yale nonetheless: The strong should not get too close to weak, resentful birds of prey just as a healthy person should not go to a hospital lest  even such a person becomes sick too.

The full essay is at "Yale's Original Sin."

Starbucks: A Racist Company Against Racism

In June, 2023, Starbucks had to face a unanimous jury decision in favor of a regional manager whom Starbucks' upper management had fired because she had resisted the company's racist policy of punishing innocent Caucasian managers for good public relations, which the CEO felt was needed and appropriate after a store manager had legitimately called the police on two Black people in a Starbucks restaurant who presumed the right not only to sit in a restaurant without ordering anything (before Starbucks allowed this),  but also to ignore the authority of the store's manager. Starbucks cowered to the unjust negative publicity, and thus showed a lack of leadership, and went on to act unethically in wanting to show the world that the company can go after Caucasian employees. This racism is ironic, for several years earlier, Starbucks' CEO had ordered employees at the store level to discuss racism with customers. Interestingly, the anti-racist ideology being preached was partial, and thus contained a blind spot wherein racism such as the company's upper management would exhibit is acceptable. 

The full essay is at "Starbucks"

See also: Bucking Starbucks’ Star

Democracy Held Hostage: The Case of a Street Name

Claims of systemic racism can also be attacks on democracy itself. In fact, if overdone, such claims may themselves be racist. The situation would then be that of racists holding democracy ransom in the mistaken belief that the whole must be consistent with the interests of one of its parts to be legitimate; otherwise, the democratic principle of majority rule is itself presumed to be invalid. The case of the change of a street's name in Kansas City, Missouri, can serve as a case study.

The full essay is at "Democracy as a Mechanism of Racism?"

Airing Ideas at Universities: Beyond the Book-Burning Hype

In May 1933, some Germans in Nazi Germany burnt books authored by Jews so as to sever Jewish influence. So when some students at Georgia Southern University gathered around a grill to burn copies of a novel by a Cuban, the obvious comparison was made by some. I submit that the comparison being made is not so obvious or straightforward. Moreover, the comparison sullies the ideal of universities being impartial to the ideas aired even as opinions.

The full essay is at "Book Burning at a Georgian University."

The U.S. Supreme Court: Too Much Ideology in Jurisprudence?

Should the electorate in a republic be able to remove Supreme Court justices due to their past decisions on particular cases? Can this basis be distinguished from removing a justice for judicial incompetence? One thing is clear: the general public does not have the technical expertise to perform a “supervisor’s evaluation” on a judge. Obviously, anyone can see that someone who skips work on a regular basis is not fit for the job, but this is different than evaluating a job by the technical criteria of the profession. Distinguishing between a particular decision and general judicial approach, for example, is more difficult. Moreover, it can be difficult to balance the rights of popular sovereignty (i.e., rule by the people) against the rule of law without respect to majority opinion.

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012.

The full essay is at "Ideology Twisting Legal Reasoning."

Mass Shootings in the U.S.: Why Are Americans So Angry?

Even though the United States account for less than 5% of the world’s population, 31% of the total number of mass killings worldwide between 1966 and 2012 occurred there.[1] I contend that a rise in passive aggression and the related intolerance accounts for much of the difference. In other words, it could be that Americans generally are getting nastier and more angry at each other.

The full essay is at “Mass Shootings in the U.S.”

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[1] Stan Ziv, “Study: Mass Shootings ‘Exceptionally American Problem’,” Newsweek, August 23, 2015.

Batting Better Than Goldman Sachs on Corporate Governance

Companies differ on how they handle personal and institutional conflicts of interest. This difference may reflect disagreement over whether a conflict of interest is inherently unethical, or whether one must be exploited for any conduct to be unethical. I take the former position: that to be in a conflict of interest is indeed inherently unethical. At the very least, being in a conflict of interest can trigger or spawn additional conflicts of interest. I point to Goldman Sachs’ response to an institutional stockholder’s corporate governance proposal as a case in point. That case can be contrasted with how the BATs board reacted in terms of corporate governance to bad public relations and a failed IPO.


The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Prohibiting Interracial Marriage: Testing the Limits of Tolerance in a Federal Empire

In October, 2009, it was widely publicized in the press that a justice of the peace in Louisiana had been refusing to marry interracial couples (what if both people are multiracial?). He was subsequently fired. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, said it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. "I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children." As astounding as this sounds in the twenty-first century in a modern society, the case demonstrates the thesis that an empire, or Union of many States, is inherently diverse--incredibly diverse in fact. Europeans tend to view the United States as though it were itself akin to a state (i.e., homogeneous). In truth, the United States are indeed as diverse as is the European Union (language is not the only basis of diversity).  A person in Boston reading a newspaper about the justice in the peace in Louisiana could be excused for thinking for a moment that Louisiana is another country. To be sure, the large states in the U.S. are equivalent in size to the large member-states in the E.U. Territory does matter in terms of cultural diversity.

The full essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

Is States' Rights in the E.U. Racist?

Thousands of Romania’s Roma people (also known as Gypsies) headed for the wealthier Western E.U. states, setting off a clash within the European Union over just how open its “open borders” really are. Migration within the 27 states of the E.U. became a combustible issue during the economic downturn. The Union’s expansion that brought in the relatively poor states of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 renewed concern that the poor, traveling far from home in search of work, would become a burden on the state governments of the wealthier states. The migration of the Roma also raised questions about the obligations of Romania and Bulgaria to fulfill promises their governments had made when they joined the Union. Romania, for instance, mapped out a strategy for helping the Roma, but financed little of it.

The full essay is at "States' Rights in the E.U."