The coddling

[Gob]

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities.

A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.


Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.

Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an e-mail to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.”


Continues here....

[dales]

These poor bastards will never survive in the real world.

Millennial Flotsam.

[Joe Guy]

Fuck them sensitive fat lesbos, skinny queers and minority twats!

[RayThom]

So much for the fundamental tenet of diversity of thought on our university campuses.

The age of the cookie-cutter, Stepford student is nigh.

“The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking." ― A.A. Milne

[Lord Jim]

We've gone from the "Free Speech Movement" to the "Safe Space Movement"...

[BoSoxGal]

A couple of weeks ago I was basically called a racist on Facebook.

This happened because in participating in an otherwise civil debate with friends of a friend about whether the A&E program Generation KKK (since cancelled) could be a net positive by educating regular Americans about hate groups, I prefaced a reply to one poster whose opinion was contrary to mine by saying I appreciated his articulate passion re: the subject.

Now mind you, praising another person's articulateness in the context of a debate is something I've done many dozens of times over the years, it's just something I do because I have always felt that respecting someone's rhetorical skills and passion for a position is just good manners.

But apparently if the person is a black Harvard Law graduate, calling him articulate is the moral equivalent nowadays of calling him the N word.

I guess this was one political correctness memo I missed during my liberal indoctrination.

eta - for clarification: Apparently it really is a 'known thing' these days that if a person says to a black person 'you're very well spoken,' the unsaid but necessary follow up is 'for a nigger, that is'. Apparently this racist 'truism', exposed by liberal academia, is at the heart of any person's recognition of a well spoken person who happens to be black - and denying it only means that one's racism is that much more deep-seated that one is oblivious to it. This is, actually, what a group of posters one generation younger than me schooled me about on Facebook. I was told by this black Harvard-educated lawyer that it would probably have been okay to call him eloquent - but not articulate, because 'everyone' knows that basically means 'boy'. (I wanted to ask him if he knew what a synonym was, but I decided against it as that would have surely been the definitive proof of my deep-seated racism.)

The net benefit of the entire episode is that after weeks post-election of feeling totally bereft about the hatefulness that must be hiding in the hearts of so many millions of my fellow Americans, I finally grasped what lies in the middle between the shocked pundits on MSNBC and the gloating ones on FOX - the regular working class AND middle class Americans who feel truly alienated by liberal elitism.

As I told this black Harvard Law graduate, if he could jump immediately to assuming and accusing ME of racism, what hope does a regular good-hearted working Jody/Joe have of conversing with liberal elites about racial dynamics in this country without somehow running astray of the unwritten rules of political correctness that s/he may not have learned in school/life thus far?

And how likely is anyone to have his/her heart/mind changed by people who approach the conversation with only eye-rolling contempt for anyone unfamiliar with the liberal elite rules of conduct/conversation, regardless of the truth of a person's entire life history with regard to interracial friendships, relationships, etc?

I understand much better now how so many people who voted twice for Obama could turn around and vote for Trump; I don't believe those people endorse Trump's racist rhetoric, but I think they ARE sick of the liberal elistism that judges everything they say but appears to care little about their jobs/lives.

It's obviously far more complicated than just that, but overall I would say I'm far less hopeful about racial progress happening in this country now than I was 8 years ago. And I'm more sympathetic to the position of white people who feel that no matter what they say or how they act, they are constantly being held accountable for the words/actions of the worst members of their race, often most vigorously by other (self-righteous) white people who carry around the PC handbook like a personal bible.

Why bother, then? If what is in a person's heart, as evidenced by a lifetime of deeds, is of no importance compared to minor transgressions of speech, then there is no hope. It's no wonder so many folks just throw up their hands in despair.

[Lord Jim]

Excellent post BSG.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Agreed

[Gob]

They are the said to be the founding fathers of Western philosophy, whose ideas underpin civilised society.

But students at a prestigious London university are demanding that figures such as Plato, Descartes and Immanuel Kant should be largely dropped from the curriculum because they are white.

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)'s student union is insisting that when studying philosophy “the majority of philosophers on our courses” should be from Africa and Asia.

They say it is part of wider campaign to “decolonise” the university, as the seek to “address the structural and epistemological legacy of colonialism”.

It comes after education leaders warned that universities will be forced to pander to the demands of “snowflake” students, however unreasonable they might be.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/20 ... lato-kant/

[BoSoxGal]

Seriously? A philosophy curriculum not including Plato's Republic? Ridiculous!

I'm not going to wake up any day as a Republican, I'm sure of that. But I am more and more firmly convinced that there is an element of modern liberalism that has gone off the rails entirely.

For good or ill, Caucasians have shaped the canon in every discipline and while the canon should be stretched to include voices that were historically ignored, it should not come at the cost of kicking out the voices whose works have shaped human thought for many generations since.

[wesw]

I m glad that you all are finally catching up ......

[oldr_n_wsr]

One cannot be shielded from "triggers". To do so only makes the result of coming face to face with a "trigger" worse.
When I first started in AA, I was told about "triggers" that may cause me to pick up a drink. While it is wise to avoid them early in sobriety, I have since learned how to deal with so called "triggers" to the point that they are no longer triggers. Same can be applied here.

Bubble wrap, it's not just for packages.

[Lord Jim]

Seriously? A philosophy curriculum not including Plato's Republic? Ridiculous!

I'm not going to wake up any day as a Republican, I'm sure of that. But I am more and more firmly convinced that there is an element of modern liberalism that has gone off the rails entirely.

For good or ill, Caucasians have shaped the canon in every discipline and while the canon should be stretched to include voices that were historically ignored, it should not come at the cost of kicking out the voices whose works have shaped human thought for many generations since.

Excellent post II.

I'm not going to wake up any day as a Republican

Based on the great points you've made in your last two posts in this thread, I'm holding out hope for you...

[BoSoxGal]

Only if you could transport me back to 1860 and somehow give me the right to vote would it happen. Or Roosevelt, I could vote for him - except again, I couldn't.

I'm very sad to say it Jim, but I'm not certain I'll live to see the Republican Party returned to something I could even respect, much less join.

[dales]

[Scooter]

I don't suppose that anyone else noticed that none of the supposed proponents of this alleged "reform" are actually quoted as saying that "Plato, Descartes and Immanuel Kant should be ... dropped from the curriculum because they are white".

Nah, of course not. Where would manufactured outraged come from then?

[Gob]

While you may be right there Scoot, the statement form them does actually read thus;

To make sure that the majority of the philosophers on our courses are from the Global South or it’s diaspora. SOAS’s focus is on Asia and Africa and therefore the foundations of its theories should be presented by Asian or African philosophers (or the diaspora).

If white philosophers are required, then to teach their work from a critical standpoint. For example, acknowledging the colonial context in which so called “Enlightenment” philosophers wrote within.

[Scooter]

Well yes, it's the School of Oriental and African Studies. If it were the School of French Studies, I would imagine that its courses would focus on the works of French philosophers.

What next, do we consider it controversial if students of Russian literature say they should be studying the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky rather that those by William Shakespeare and Mark Twain?

[Gob]

Not at all. But philosophy, as a discipline, has always transcended national barriers and ethnicities has it not?

If they want a sub standard education, I'm good to go with that.

[Scooter]

philosophy, as a discipline, has always transcended national barriers and ethnicities has it not?

Yes. And saying that Asian and African philosophers should be the majority, not the entirety, of those studied in courses of the SOAS is, I would imagine, a recognition of that.

It would be impossible to gain a full appreciation of European history of the 20th century without studying related events occurring in Asia, Africa and the Americas as well. But I could not imagine a European history course in which the majority of the content was not focused on what happened in Europe.