University of Chicago

the poison of identity politics

What Diversity Officers All Believe

Those of you who wonder what diversity officials do all day must listen to Sheree Marlowe, the new chief diversity officer at Clark University. During first-year orientation, a baffled and tense freshperson asked if she could sing along with a carful of other white people when a song containing the N-word filled the air. “No,” […]

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Finally, One Major Campus Condemns Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces

Now that the University of Chicago announced that it does not condone “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces”—apparently the first major American university to do so—it is time for other institutions of higher learning to get behind this basic and rather obvious educational idea and create a genuine trend. For some 30 years now, the idea […]

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Should Scholarly Associations Take Political Positions?

Richard A. Shweder, the University of Chicago anthropologist, who is speaking tonight  in Denver at the annual American Anthropological Association convention, is recommending a “no-action” option on Israel/Palestine, meaning that he considers it inappropriate for the Association, as an entity, to support either side of the dispute. An AAA task force has come down on the […]

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Free speech

The U. of Chicago’s Flawed Support for Freedom of Expression

In January 2015 the University of Chicago Committee on Freedom of Expression issued a brief report which eloquently made a case for the importance of free speech as “an essential element of the University’s culture.”  I commented at the time in an approving manner.  Over the ensuing months, the Chicago statement has gathered more and […]

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