I intended to create a conversation about inequity, racism and our white blindness to them. Regrettably, I became an example of it. This has been a remarkable learning experience for me. I hope that all who are hurt or angered by my costume will accept my apology. I meant no harm to them or others.The professor — who is 68 years old and has taught at the University of Oregon since 1982 — was put on leave while she is being investigated. There's a petition demanding that she resign. (I guess that would mean retire.) And there's a petition on the other side (premised on academic freedom, not the idea that it's okay for a professor to wear blackface or okay as long as she had positive racial values).
I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment. Whatever happened to mercy and forgiveness? And what about our shared interest in living in a culture where people aren't fearful that their lives could be ruined if they said one thing wrong — even when they were trying to say something quite bland (like why can't we all get along)?
By the way, the professor, Nancy Shurtz, was not just a white person dressing up as a black person, she was also a woman dressing as a man, and a law professor dressing as a doctor. Why is the one crossover an outrage when the other 2 are not? How about some actual intellectual exploration of the subject of inhabiting alternate identities?
There must be some significance to the adult involvement in Halloween in present-day American culture. I don't think I've dressed up as a character for Halloween or any other occasion since I was a child, but I see my fellow adult Americans going in big for Halloween year after year. Why are we doing that?
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102 comments:
I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment.
It's sad, but the reality of modern colleges. Radical professors have churned out students who SEEK offense and want to lash out at anybody convenient.
I'll note that if anybody else did it, this professor would likely be leading the charge to punish that person, so my empathy is pretty low --- but she shouldn't be punished.
This is what "zero tolerance to racial offense" leads to.
Firing is how the outraged show they're serious people.
Showing you're serious people takes precedence.
I never understood blackface, but maybe because I did't care for the music.
Racial lynching of the falsely accused is a tribal custom being appropriate with Regalia and Title 9 sinecures. That's All they need in place of white sheets and hoods.
Demanding that someone lose their livelihood based on a single instance of political incorrectness is what the enlightened among us refer to as "tolerance". If you do not understand this, you will have to undergo tolerance and diversity training, and if that doesn't work you are irredeemable and back in the basket of deplorables you go.
I don't buy that it's bad judgment.
It's a temptation just to draw the outrage, in fact, to prove the point.
We will not be intimidated by morons like you.
If administrators knew anything, they'd be teachers, not administrators.
Try that line in defense.
You never see Trump in blackface.
Hillary's gone that route.
Imitation should only be undertaken by mortal gods, their selected leaders, and contracted members of protected classes.
That said, [class] diversity that denies individual dignity, and judges individuals by the "color of their skin", not the content of their character, is an insidious realization of institutional racism, sexism, etc.
Trump always talks like a white guy.
Tom Wolfe — 'The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.'
Make that the Progressives and academia.
They are so unforgiving because it is about power, only and always, power. The message being delivered isn't to the professor, it's to everyone else. If you actually think it is about protecting people's feelings or whatever their excuse of the day is, you're a complete rube.
Bling makes the man.
I think we need to push back against the outrage culture: "Someone did something, and IT IS NOT OK!" There's a diminishing circle of things that no one, anywhere, will take offense to, and an expanding circle of things that aren't anyone's business that people will take offense to anyway.
A Halloween costume is a private matter, or at most semi public. There's a small intended audience, and the professor can reasonably expect to explain her meaning or apologize in person for any offense. For anyone who wasn't at the party: "SHUT UP! IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!"
Something to do with physics. If you act with an equal and corresponding amount of prejudice, then you can correct past imbalances. If the professor and her children for the next five or six generations were sold into slavery, then equilibrium can be restored and we can all live together in peace. This is a welcome first step, but it is not sufficient.
"A photograph showing a woman in blackface and a man dressed as a hillbilly is not a picture of Bill and Hillary Clinton."
I dressed as an Indian chief once, as a tiny kid. Very complicated costume, with the feathers and beads.
Manhattan had already been sold.
"I think we need to push back against the outrage culture:."
Someone is doing that. You can vote for him for President.
A woman pretending to be a man? Sounds like sexual appropriation to me. That alone should be grounds to terminate her career.
Some people will do anything to make their pitiful life as an assistant administrator for administrative assistance seem important. On the other hand if Missy is 68 she's a boomer and is probably getting exactly what she has coming.
I felt no affinity for Indians. If anything, I was on the side of the cowboys.
But parents pick the costume.
So her response was not to recognize and push back against the insanity, but rather to abase herself, like a good little Soviet citizen.
"I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment. Whatever happened to mercy and forgiveness?"
I admit, I can't tell when Althouse is being naive as part of her scholarly Socratic method, and when she's just being naive.
Nobody dressed as Japanese when I was a kid.
No candy for you.
"I felt no affinity for Indians. If anything, I was on the side of the cowboys."
Should have gone with the Cubs.
Yellowface might not have been available.
There's an expectation that anything you encounter in real life is in some sense intended for you to see that is totally wrong in the age of the internet.
I have never heard of Nancy Shurtz before. I had to look up the spelling of her name. I've never been to the University of Oregon, or to their law school. I wasn't invited to the party.
I haven't even read the book she's dressing up as!
Why do I get to be outraged?
This communication was not intended for me, and the only sensible reaction is to avert my eyes. Let her friends at the party complain, if they want to. Let her black coworkers drop a word about blackface, if they feel the need. Don't let random people on the internet howl for blood, and don't feed the mob's expectations that it will get what it wants.
I'm so old, I remember when the Internet was going to increase people's freedom.
We had plenty of wax buck teeth, though.
Speaking of cultural appropriation, why do black men wear pants and sometime a coat and tie? Isn't that culturally oppressive costuming force on black slaves in the South by their racist owners? ;-)
I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment
You should consider getting better information brokers.
Legal Insurrection has a "College Insurrection" sub-blog(?) that documents these kind of SJW attacks. Almost daily:
http://legalinsurrection.com/tag/college-insurrection/
AceOfSpadesHQ has similar coverage:
http://www.ace.mu.nu/
Just adding those two sites to your daily reading list get you back in touch with what is really happening on campuses around America. The Red Brigade is out in force. You should arm yourself with information, as I am sure you are on their hit list.
Liberals created this Frankenstein. Now they don't know what to do when it inevitably turns on them.
"I think we need to push back against the outrage culture:."
Someone is doing that. You can vote for him for President.
He isn't, though. His supporters are every bit the same howling mob, they just have different priorities.
I want to push back against the mob getting to decide everything.
I'm so old, I remember when the Internet was going to increase people's freedom.
I think it was actually to share pictures of women, anyway that's how they tested it.
Nor do I understand the adults-at-Halloween nonsense. I work in an office with three or four others and was the only non-costumed one there Monday. Have presumed that it has to do with the de-christianisation of the major traditional holidays somehow (but my co-workers are AME and Baptists who are troubled by the vague suspicion that Catholics, bless their hearts, aren't quite Christian): so I don't know. Maybe it's just an instance of the power of marketing.
And I really don't understand your blind spot here. You were at ground zero during the Walker protests, these people even threatened you. Its the same crowd.
Basically, her defense is "I love Comrade Stalin too".
Sorry, I don't have any sympathy for Trotsky or Radek and I don't have any sympathy for the SJW professor who made a "mistake".
It's ironic that a medium designed to share pictures of women winds up enforcing blackface Halloween prohibitions.
That's what digital computers can do for you.
So long as soap opera women support MSM soap opera news shows, the only stories that matter are SJW stories, and the message doesn't get out that this stuff is ridiculous.
Your ridicule of it doesn't make it into the national news, and disappears like an evanescent wave right at the antenna.
Dispersion relation metaphors are not used nearly enough.
She has tenure and is age 68. They can't touch her.
Someone is doing that. You can vote for him for President.
Trump is also a public figure, speaking publicly, for public consumption. It's reasonable to react to speech when you're the intended audience. I'm saying that the Internet gives people an utterly unrealistic view of when they're the intended audience, and that has a chilling effect on speech.
Costume parties for adults have been a thing since at least the Roman empire. I think this was deliberately revived in the late middle ages and has been popular since. It was extremely common in royal courts for hundreds of years, and ubiquitous in the early 20th century.
Whats new in US society is the extreme taboo behavior. This should be countered with extreme counter-taboo behavior.
Voting for Trump perhaps.
We no longer have freedom of speech. Today being fired from your job for political speech is common place and expected. The average person cannot risk political expression when to do so puts your job in jeopardy.
Surprised they haven't arrested her for pretending to be a doctor
"I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment."
I don't consider paying homage to your favorite author as being bad jugement. However I consider the lack of tolerance not very hard to believe.
So, the beast turns on one of its own. Dog bites man, I suppose.
It is only a matter of time before you can get fired from any job for expressing the wrong opinion.
I think it is hilarious. Leftist idiots bring these savages home and are surprised when they get scalped.
"He isn't, though. His supporters are every bit the same howling mob, they just have different priorities."
Another Hillary supporter self identifies. Thank you.
"Fallout from the Halloween incident in which a University of Oregon law professor wore blackface has left many on the campus angry, befuddled and afraid." That's how the Register-Guard's article this morning begins.
"A new headline on top of the Oregon Law website proclaims, “Bigotry and racism have no place here,” but there is no particular set of dos and don’ts."
There are several gems.
Whatever happened to mercy and forgiveness?
Those are Christian virtues, & in a post-Christian world they may go by-the-by. We're all very sorry if you were attached to them, but they're done now, out the door in a culture that no longer feels the need for God's grace lest they face an eternity of hell fire.
And don't go saying "But, moralities other than Christian value mercy & forgiveness". Naw, not so much. Seriously, is there a bunch of writing on mercy & forgiveness in Aristotle or the Stoics? They're really more into if you do stupid shit you get what's coming to you, so be prudent & don't do stupid shit.
Whatever happened to mercy and forgiveness?
I don't know...why don't we ask some Christian bakers or photographers?
when they came for the bakers I was silent.
When they came for the professors........
Adults at Halloween: I think it has something to do with celebrating our supposed freedom from old fears: fears of certain grim kinds of after-life, or being near-dead or undead; fear of people who might come after us from the after-life; maybe even fear of death. We have modern science now, no need to fear these things. For one night a year, we kind of remember what it must have been like to fear them--things coming at us out of the dark.
The Church probably used to celebrate al hallows eve in order to remind people of the absolute necessity of fearing all the pre-Christian or pagan gods, spirits, and wizards. Death and the after-life were frightening. Only the Christian God could give you real hope.
My little joke about the huge growth of the zombie phenomenon is that this expresses the fear that younger people might feel when faced with aging boomers: human-like creatures, not quite dead, consumed with an overwhelming selfish passion, thinking only of that passion, willing to destroy healthy living people to satisfy themselves, gruesome looking, almost impossible to kill.
Dressing up like celebrities etc., Pierrot, is probably just fun. Given the element of "fear" around Halloween, it might be an opportunity to flirt with terrible historical episodes--show which side one is on, or whatever. When Wednesday leads a First Nations Thanksgiving in Addams Family Values (a violent uprising against the Pilgrims), is this cultural appropriation or a morally satisfying vindication of the side that actually lost the war?
Frankenstein's monster: do we fear what science is going to cook up--how it will screw with human nature--or do we think that after the initial panic, we will take whatever science dishes out quite cheerfully? Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, one of my favourite movies, suggests the latter.
I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment.
Vengeful, spiteful people in academia? Who would've thought?
But I feel no sympathy for this silly woman. What's the point of getting to old age if you still have no more sense or wisdom than to earnestly spout cant that would be embarrassing coming from an 18 year old? ("I intended to create a conversation about inequity, racism and our white blindness to them"? Good grief.) Or to remain so uninformed and unobservant about the world you live in that you're surprised when your stale cant gets you an utterly predictable kick in the teeth? And so lacking in dignity that you grovel in response? Silly bint. Bad influence on the impressionable young.
"Black Man in a White Coat."
Maybe it was the other part of the costume that turned heads?
Another Hillary supporter self identifies. Thank you.
There are two (or more!) unacceptable candidates running for president this year. Hillary's flaws do not make Trump any better, and vice versa.
"I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment. Whatever happened to mercy and forgiveness? And what about our shared interest in living in a culture where people aren't fearful that their lives could be ruined if they said one thing wrong — even when they were trying to say something quite bland (like why can't we all get along)?"
A few thoughts:
1. Is it really hard to believe that people are willing to be vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment? People routinely reduce those who don't toe the cultural line to kindling. Consider Larry Summers at Harvard. It doesn't even have to be bad judgment. Think Brendan Eich. Consider the Kostakises at Yale.
2. What ever happened to mercy and forgiveness? They went out the window when people stopped sending the kids to Sunday school. I was struck when you described young Althouse as being animated by ideas from Bob Dylan, the hippy culture and the Sermon on the Mount. My friend the humanities prof tells me the kids show up at elite universities not knowing what the Sermon on the Mount is. He has to tell them the parable of the Good Samaritan. Ethical humanism is a poor substitute for having learned the basic tenets of the Western tradition, with all their attendant stories, rules and parables.
3.Where is our shared interest...? These fearless warriors for social justice don't think we have a shared interest. They think there is only one right way--centered on third-rate Marxism and dubious cultural and racial theories-- and they intend to enforce it.
Althouse, I admire you for your independence of mind, but the university culture seems pretty toxic. Congrats for surviving 25 years in Madison.
I see your son has voted for Gary Johnson. Under normal circumstances, I would expect that you would do the same, with full acknowledgement that it is a protest vote. Doesn't the idea of HRC commanding the DOJ with little or no check from the press give you the creeps? Vote Trump. They all hate him.
Voting for Trump as a blow against outrage culture is just wishful thinking. When has he made any public speeches on the matter? What has he said about the Oregon law professor, the Harvard soccer team, or any of a dozen controversies that gave him the chance to wade in?
Trump is a pig who has shot his mouth off for decades. He might benefit at times from diminished scrutiny. He might benefit at times from fanning up outrage about things other people have done. The fact that he generates more outrage than he stirs up doesn't make him a friend to free speech.
What makes me laugh more?
1.) "I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment."
2.) "She has tenure and is age 68. They can't touch her."
Damn. It keeps coming up the last one I read.
Althouse said and asked: I don't think I've dressed up as a character for Halloween or any other occasion since I was a child, but I see my fellow adult Americans going in big for Halloween year after year. Why are we doing that?
There is also pressure in the work place to dress-up. I've seen it first hand in a Big Law and in retail. My theory is that managers are just trying to encourage fun. Also, so many people don't have kids these days that they have to pretend a little. Take Madison for example -- it's a Halloween destination but demographically, kids are on the decline.
"David Begley said...
She has tenure and is age 68. They can't touch her."
Google
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/stripping-a-professor-of-tenure-over-a-blog-post/385280/
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"I think we need to push back against the outrage culture:."
Someone is doing that. You can vote for him for President.
It is not enough. These people are enemies of freedom in every sense. They are bad people and nothing will change until they are defeated pariahs.
Filipinas in Japanese costume - a lesson in the complexities of costume parties, and their costumes. These were, then as now, often topical and subtly political.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSvZuljdEoc
There was a huge Euro-American costume party fad in the 1920's, and Manila was not immune of course!
The Filipino twist is that there were nearby sources of exotic costumes, and Japanese was extremely popular, so the real authentic stuff was readily available. Another point in their favor is that Japan had long favored Philippine independence, and was the chosen refuge and exile for nationalists who ran into difficulties with the Americans. Japanophilia was in some circles a form of concealed nationalism.
Much, much less popular later, of course, a bitter irony.
The tune is a period music hall piece, back when Manila largely spoke Spanish or a pidgin of it.
This is what happens when Scientific Progressives are allowed to become law-school deans.
Maybe she was the SAE sweetheart.
You find it hard to believe people would be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgement, Professor?
What the fuck? Is this some kind of Rip Van Winkle joke? Where the hell have you been?
If the bad judgement is something that the Left dislikes one I stance is enough. Hell, less than one--you don't actually have to DO anything (being insufficiently supportive of a cause us enough). Their FIRST resort is to try and get you fired. They are happy to use the law and the State to fine you, close you down, etc. They do that shit because they are all about love!
These are the rules the nice liberal people you like have made. This is the culture they built. When people object to it you and your nice friends often accuse the objectors of whining.
Related: Ace of Spades' tweets on Jake Tapper's complaints about hostility toward Media
Gramsci, Adorno, and Althusser are whooping it up in hell!
Zach said...
Another Hillary supporter self identifies. Thank you.
There are two (or more!) unacceptable candidates running for president this year. Hillary's flaws do not make Trump any better, and vice versa.
11/5/16, 1:42 PM
You could have just said, "You're welcome," Zach. If you are not capable of distinguishing between the two, maybe better you just stay home Nov 8 and love yourself.
"I think we need to push back against the outrage culture:."
Someone is doing that. You can vote for him for President.
This reminds me of precisely what frightens me about the possible forthcoming election of Donald Trump. I think he'll be generally harmless, but what I'm really afraid of is how extra batshit crazy the outrage culture is going to get as a result of his election. Think of how universities and corporations at least sensitive to if not run by the progressives are going to react. They will be like David Koresh or Jim Jones, convinced the end times are upon us. They're going to conclude that America really truly is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc and their social justice services are really truly totally extra needed. It's going to get so much worse out there.
Also, adults dressing up: I'm an old fuddy duddy, but I find it completely ridiculous. It's a children's holiday, for chrissakes. Grow up.
Because blackface refers back to Jim Crow, minstrel shows where stereotypical features were exaggerated in an effort to confirm that Blacks were sub-human and/or closer to simians. This is perceived as salt in the wounds of slavery which have not yet healed.
Being from the apex predator viking white male culture and immune from cultural criticism, it is easy for me to see that the preyed upon African American culture is sensitive to archetypes of past eras of enslavement, lynchings, segregation and general back-of-the-bus scorn.
As for adult Halloween, people are social animals and like to party. It's not my thing, but it's great folks want to get together and have a good time. Perhaps some would prefer people stay inside and play facebook instead?
"I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment." Back to faux surprise? Progs are not being "vengeful." They're just laying down their law.
"Whatever happened to mercy and forgiveness?" Whaddaya mean? We're talking social justice here and you wanna talk mercy? Don't give us that pseudo-Christian BS.
"And what about our shared interest in living in a culture where people aren't fearful that their lives could be ruined if they said one thing wrong — even when they were trying to say something quite bland (like why can't we all get along)?" We can get along perfectly well when everyone shares the right progressive culture. You, a UW professor! Surely you know by now.
And what Kevin said. It's about power. You did teach that in con law, right?
That said, the calls for resignation, firing, imprisonment, shunning, etc. are just silly.
Its an ancient and honorable, if somewhat raffish tradition, the masked ball.
This sort of thing is all over our literary and cultural canon. This was typical of the European Carnival and harvest festivals, etc.
Consider Poe's Masque of the Red Death - that was a takeoff of the classical masked ball.
"Un Ballo en Maschera" - Verdi - and you will find plenty more in opera.
You will find them in Froissart, Cervantes, Rabelais, Lope de Vega, Shakespeare, Balzac,
And etc. all over.
From OP link:The comedian wasn’t feeling so much love for women’s rights, gay rights, and transgender rights activists, saying, “They should not be having that conversation in front of black people. You go ahead and feel something about your rights. But if you’re putting sexism and homophobia and transphobia in front of racism, you should be ashamed of yourself.” Chappelle still slammed North Carolina legislation stating that transgender people must use the public restroom that aligns with the sex stated on their respective birth certificates. “If you need to show your birth certificate to take a dump at a Wal-Mart in North Carolina, that’s insane.” Chappelle noted he would rather not have “a woman with a dick” stand next to him at a urinal. He also said he wasn’t happy about rumors that Caitlyn Jenner would pose nude for Sports Illustrated. “Sometimes I just want to read some stats.”
Sebastian is 100% correct. Whites are piggy-backing onto black outrage for power and stealing the limelight for themselves.
Trump tried to reverse this trend and separate out blacks from white liberal guilt whores.
Nothing is more enjoyable that stories like this where arronant liberals get Robespierred for thinking rules that they force on others don't apply to them.
We could call the phenomenon Fen's Revenge.
Not too long ago, Professor, you were egging on the online pack of jackals as they set out to destroy the owners of a Minneapolis pizza restaurant and mom and pop cupcake baker in Portland. You even encouraged other Christian business owners to come forward so they could get destroyed, too. Rather than make a stand for individual liberty and First Amendment freedoms and Jeffersonian religious liberty you didn't raise a peep of protest. You just let those people dangle in the wind.
Weird how you finally discover a pang of empathy when the mob turns on a 68-year-old law professor.
All the personalities are raking leaves right now, please hold.
IHMMP: They're going to conclude that America really truly is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc and their social justice services are really truly totally extra needed. It's going to get so much worse out there.
Not as bad as it'll get after 4-8 more years of Hillary.
The crazies are beyond reach, but there are plenty of nice, non-insane liberals out there whose only real character defect is the gullibility that makes them believe anything they hear on NPR or read in the NYT. There's a chance they'll get a grip if Trump is elected and it becomes apparent that no Fourth Reich is forthcoming.
If Clinton wins, God preserve us all from the vindictive reign of Diana Moon Glompers and her minions.
These are the rules the left chose for us to live under. The right has been against this sort of destruction of individuals for minor infractions for awhile now. It was the left that destroyed Joe the Plumber and others like him.
I feel bad that this women's life is probably going to be made miserable, and if she is treated as a more conservative person would be, she may in fact lose her ability to work in her chosen profession.
But, the right has already lost the battle on enforcing these rules. We are left with shrugging our shoulders and saying, "Yeah. That's terrible for her."
The best way to change a bad rule is to enforce it, vigorously. Maybe once the left eats a few more of their own, they'll come back to the right and negotiate new rules. It is much the same way I have no pity on the wounds the left is suffering from WikiLeaks. Remember when the right was aghast at WikiLeaks? When it released private individuals information years ago, including those of American sources and known homosexuals in countries where that was a crime punishable by death -- when the left shrugged their shoulders because they got grainy footage that they could use to harm Republicans in an election?
Well, now that they are desperately trying to de-legitimize the monster they unleashed, all the right can do is shrug. They chose these rules, not us.
The only bad judgment was underestimating the free flowing vengefulness that is the essence of outrage culture. She did nothing blameworthy, except trust in the common sense of progressives.
buwaya puti: Its an ancient and honorable, if somewhat raffish tradition, the masked ball.
This sort of thing is all over our literary and cultural canon. This was typical of the European Carnival and harvest festivals, etc.
In recent times the southern European tradition seems to have maintained and managed the spirit of carnival better than the Northern one. In my American Catholic childhood, Halloween was magical, and Mardi Gras, if not quite the blow-out that Latin carnival is, was a damned good costume-y time. (I wonder how much of that was the Celtic influence in American Catholicism, at least as far as Halloween was concerned.)
I think it was Winston Churchill's mother who complained about the English not being able to enter into the spirit of a masked ball, and that may be a modern Anglo thing. At least, it's my (WASPy) husband's theory that northern types just can't get carnival (and Halloween is of the carnival genre) right these days - they've lost the understanding of how to exit chronos the right way, and why there are ordered seasons for reversing the rules and letting loose, which is not at all the same thing as random drunk-in-the-gutter binges in response to stress. Though that may be more a malaise of late modernity than an Anglo/Latin thing.
Halloween remains kid-centered and a lot of fun in many parts of the country, but I have lived in certain more Northern, Protestant influenced areas where I've been very put-out by what complete Halloween buzz-kills the people are. They go out of their way to regulate the magic out of the holiday for the children, and the spirits of the dead sure as hell aren't going to want to party with the living in that tight-ass, overly-structured environment. (And it's not a matter of safety. This is Leave it to Beaver territory.) De-sacralizing the holiday does seem to correlate with porn-ing it up, and making it adult-centric and sleazy, not a magical feast-day.
Consider this: Ayers, Dorhn, and Ward Churchill were all professors and as far as I know respected and defended by most if their fellow professors. Literal terrorists and cheerleaders for anti-American terrorism don't offend the professor set, but a fellow professor doing something (one time) they consider racist does.
Values!
"I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment. Whatever happened to mercy and forgiveness?"
Welcome to Fuddy Duddy Land, Senior Division. You are longing for a vanished time when proportionality and humility had some sway. It's not even clear that the woman exercised Bad Judgment, other than misjudging the vicious censoriousness of contemporary conformity. We are in a repressive era, where freedom must bend to a rigid and mindless mob of fools and knaves.
I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment. Whatever happened to mercy and forgiveness?
Are you new here? These people are leftists, Democrats, La Raza, BLM ad nauseum.We see it everywhere on campus, in the cities, etc. They are why Trump's events are packed.
She says she "intended to provoke a thoughtful discussion on racism in our society"
Stunts like this never end well. Ever.
From Instapundit.
THIS AGGRESSIVENESS IS ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED: FIRE to ‘Red Light’ Public Universities: Revise Your Unconstitutional Speech Codes.
Yesterday, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) sent a national certified mailing to 111 of the country’s largest and most prestigious public colleges and universities. The colleges receiving the mailing earn FIRE’s poorest, “red light” rating for clearly and substantially restricting student and faculty speech on campus. The list of letter recipients includes Clemson University, the University of Oregon, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Georgia, and the University of Kansas.
FIRE’s mailing reminds recipient institutions of U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Representative Bob Goodlatte’s August 2015 letter urging administrators at red light schools to revise policies that violate the First Amendment. Further, as yesterday’s mailing warns, university administrators who continue to violate clearly established law with respect to expressive rights risk losing their “qualified immunity”—meaning they could be held personally liable for monetary damages in a student or faculty member’s lawsuit.
Personally liable. Who wants to be the academic world’s version of Gawker?
You know, I'm really getting sick of the left's insistence on conversations.
The Puritans are back!
The left destroyed Joe the Plumber, women, men, transgender/homosexuals, and babies, too. It seems that they can only ever conceive of one solution.
Cultural appropriation is always wrong and it's not meshuganah to kevetch when some yenta mocks your ways. I approve of people going on the warpath and claiming their scalp in the name of championing the oppressed. So I have no sympathy for thot.
When the someone says, "We need to have a conversation about XYZ," tell them, "OK, why don't we start by you asking me what I think about XYZ?"
Forgiveness is more of a Christian virtue, and it seems we're approaching a post Christian world, I guess.
She violated one of the vague tenants of her lefty "religion". She must be punished. The Universities have gone to hell.
I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment.
IMAO all of the bad judgment is on the side of the people signing petitions for her ouster. If I was Oregon President Michael Schill had the moral courage of a field mouse he would tell those who signed the petitions that they have the choice of either attending a class on tolerance or being immediately dismissed from the university (faculty and staff every bit as much as students, even star football players). The undergraduate classes on tolerance are to be taught on Saturday night.
It's about time that liberals in academia develop an understanding about what the words "liberal" and "tolerance" mean.
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
"when they came for the bakers I was silent.
When they came for the professors........", I laughed.
"I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment."
Then you haven't been paying attention.
This is the world that leftist academia worked for and wanted since they began their long march into the institutions back in the 1960s. So I really cannot get worked up about it.
Revolutions always eat their own (except our Revolution that is). So when left wing academics complain that they are being attacked, I cannot not get motivated to care. They remind me of the Trotskyites in the 1930s, complaining about Stalin in Russia and his supporters in Western parties. They were not complaining that Stalin was repressing people, only that he was repressing Trotsky.
Quote: "I don't think I've dressed up as a character for Halloween or any other occasion since I was a child, but I see my fellow adult Americans going in big for Halloween year after year. Why are we doing that?"
That makes perfect sense if you see our nation as increasing filled with adults who behave like two-year-olds throwing a temper tantrum.
I never cared much for Halloween as a child. On the first Halloween I remember, my mother wanted to take me Trick or Treating in the middle of a snow storm. Then as an young adult, people were showing up for work on Halloween in costumes, dressed as Elvira or the Incredible Hulk and I thought that was stupid. And, the idea of wearing t-shirts with slogans seems juvenile to me.
That said, I do not think college education can be fixed. Affirmative action was the first step into the abyss. It established the idea that rewards were "deserved" rather than earned. The next step was the whole "Studies" fad where very little studying went on but a lot of people earned bachelors of bullshit degrees. In that atmosphere, bad ideas caught on like a virus and its been one virus after another ever since the 1960's.
"I find it hard to believe that people are willing to be so vengeful over a single instance of bad judgment."
After decades of dealing with leftists, including leftists in academia, I find it easy to believe. Very easy.
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