LGBTQ

The Battle Over Pronouns Coming to a College Near You

March 29, 2018
By Daphne Patai

Last year, Jordan Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto, made news when he refused to use the invented pronouns of the transgender movement as prescribed by Canadian law (see chart). Pronouns these days are a new battleground, as recommendations admonish us all that the standard English pronouns, which traditionally distinguish she from he, […]

You Will Attend Purdue’s ‘Safe Zone’ Training Session

February 16, 2017
By Gilbert T. Sewall

On January 18, the academic leadership of Purdue University received a letter from Mark Smith, dean of the graduate school. It said: On behalf of the Diversity Leadership Team, I’d like to invite you to attend a special safe zone training session … arranged exclusively for deans, associate deans, and department heads. This, you must understand, […]

Columbia’s Comedy of Errors

A comedy act by a former member of Saturday Night Live was shut down in mid-performance at Columbia University Friday night because students felt the humor was racist and anti-gay and made them feel unsafe. Nimesh Patel was performing for the campus Asian American Alliance’s charity event. One joke referred to being black and gay as a double vulnerability. So, a complaining student wrote in the Columbia Spectator, “If you’re black and gay, you don’t need a straight South Asian guy to point out that your life is hard because you’re black and gay.” You can read more at Reason.com.

Duping Kids With an Easy 'A'

“Only about a third of high school seniors are academically prepared for higher education,” according to the National Assessment on Educational Progress. Yet, their high school GPA scores would make one think they’re shoe-ins for Harvard. The “easy A” is trending in secondary schools, partly because the 10 percent rule has been implemented in many states, like Texas. That rule guarantees the top 10 percent of graduates of all public high schools automatic entry to the state university school system. Sounds good, but inflated numbers can backfire on the very students they’re designed to help. An article in Accuracy in Academy quotes Bailey Cato Czupryk, a partner at The New Teacher Project: “The kids are suffering because they fundamentally believe the signals that we as grownups are sending them about how ready they are (for college).”

No Hiring of Faculty Without Bias Training

The University of Pennsylvania apparently fears that without unconscious bias training, its faculty hiring decisions might be unfair.

An item in the October 15 Daily Pennsylvanian says: “Penn faculty on hiring committees are now required to undergo unconscious bias training.”

The Office of the Provost’s training, which will take place in October, will be run by the New York-based Perception Institute. The Institute is the same research-collaborative that conducted employee training for Starbucks after the coffee chain came under national scrutiny following the arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks.

Angry Georgetown Prof Wants to Castrate Men

The feminist Georgetown professor who tweeted that white male Republicans who voted to confirm Justice Kavanaugh should die miserable deaths and then be castrated has paid a price, but so far, only to Twitter, which suspended her account. Georgetown gave her the rest of the term off, but in a limp statement defending free speech and criticizing unkind remarks, the president of Georgetown didn’t even name the professor—Christine Fair. Fair tweeted this statement: “Look [this] chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”

In response to Loyalty Oaths, Diversity Mandates, Faculty ‘Training’ at San Diego State

The school doesn’t care what the diversity statement says. They care less as to whether the candidate believes what she just wrote. What they care about is that the Faculty-Member-To-Be does what she is told to do. It is the academic equivalent of, “When I tell you to jump…all I want to hear in return is “How High?”.

Of course, it’s a pro forma exercise. It can be nothing else. It is a loyalty oath. And like every loyalty oath, it doesn’t matter what is said, what matters is that you say it (even better if you can memorize it and repeat it at will, as needed or prompted). “Diversity! Sir! Yes, Sir!” It is a profession of subservience, a vow of obedience.

The entire Diversity Mantra is anti-thought, anti-education, anti-truth, for if thought, education, and truth truly mattered, then the color of the booties of the authors of the work we must consider wouldn’t matter at all. Is the magic of Shakespeare somehow less magical (or more!) if we know his skin tone or his sexual predilections? Is DaVinci somehow less a genius (or more) if we know the degree of fluidity associated with his chosen gender-identities? Or should we, in the name of diversity, abandon Shakespeare, abandon Da Vinci, and Rodin, and Dickens, and Einstein entirely and replace them with a much more diverse (but intellectually bereft) Tom, Dick, Harry, and the T-G’d Sally Smith-Jones?

It’s a billion-dollar farce played with life-changing implications. Diversity, Mein Herr? Diversity Sieg Heil! Here is my statement; listen to my heels click!

We would be ashamed if we weren’t so scared.

Tom Horrell, Kansas City, Missouri