Volokh blog writes..
In context, it seems clear that the post’s reference to “Chinese” is indeed a reference to the Chinese government, not to people of Chinese extraction.
Here is the post, by Prof. Tom Smith (The Right Coast):
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Wuhan Lab Theory a Dark Cloud on China—WSJ
By Tom Smith
Alas, the World Health Organization mission is turning into a case of disaster foretold. A credible inquiry requires China’s full cooperation, not just cooperation with those lines of inquiry that are consistent with its own propaganda. And couldn’t somebody have put Peter Daszak, team member from New York City’s EcoHealth Alliance, under permanent mouth quarantine?
To insist that human encroachment on nature is the great risk tells us nothing about what happened in this particular case. To insist, as he did on NPR, that China’s manhandling of the delegation with greeters in full hazmat garb, its forcing of the visitors into 14-day quarantine, was merely testament to China’s Covid rigor overlooks another possibility: China was seeking to intimidate and dominate the investigators because of the colossal importance it places on controlling the virus narrative.
via www.wsj.com
If you believe that the coronavirus did not escape from the lab in Wuhan, you have to at least consider that you are an idiot who is swallowing whole a lot of Chinese cock swaddle. At least Peter Daszak has good personal and financial reasons, not to mention reasons of career preservation, for advancing what he must know is a facially implausible thesis. But whatever. Go Science!
UPDATE: It appears that some people are interpreting my reference to “Chinese cock swaddle,” as a reference to an ethnic group. That is a misinterpretation. To be clear, I was referring to the Chinese government.
Even without the UPDATE, it’s clear that the reference to “Chinese cock swaddle” must be a reference to the government of China, not to Chinese-Americans or to people of Chinese extraction. The title of the post is about China, and the quote refers four times to China (“China’s full cooperation,” “China’s manhandling of the delegation,” “China’s Covid rigor,” “China was seeking”). Though “Chinese” sometimes refers to the government, sometimes to the nation, and sometimes to the ethnic group, here the referent is clear, and it isn’t to Chinese-Americans or to USD law students from China or anything like that.
And yet Prof. Smith is now being investigated by the law school, and the “Asian Pacific American Law Student Association (APALSA) and the USD School of Law Student Bar Association are calling on law school and university officials to fire the professor who they say used racist language when talking about the coronavirus and China.” (Abbie Alford, CBS8). [UPDATE: Prof. William Jacobson (Legal Insurrection) has much more, though he suggests that APALSA didn’t expressly call for the firing of Prof. Smith.] The law school has published the following response:
