The provocatively titled course has come in for some criticism and today we see 2 state legislators — threatening to obstruct state funding and approval of a tuition increase — are calling on the University to cancel the course and fire the professor:
One of the lawmakers, Rep. Dave Murphy of Greenville.... said he concluded the professor teaching the course, Damon Sajnani, should be dismissed because of tweets he posted on Twitter after five Dallas police officers were killed by a sniper on July 7.
In one tweet, posted at 10:36 p.m. the day the officers were killed, Sajnani included a photo of news coverage and wrote, “Is the uprising finally starting? Is this style of protest gonna go viral?” Earlier that night, Sajnani had tweeted a link to a song on YouTube called “Officer Down” and wrote, “Watching CNN, this is the song I am currently enjoying in my head.”
Murphy said in a statement Tuesday that he was "extremely concerned that UW-Madison finds it appropriate to teach a course called, ‘The Problem of Whiteness,’ with the premise that white people are racist.” “Even more troubling," Murphy wrote, "the course is taught by a self-described 'international radical' professor whose views are a slap in the face to the taxpayers who are expected to pay for this garbage."
Murphy said he didn't understand "how a University that preaches political correctness can stand by a professor who openly condones violence against law enforcement and compares white voters to the KKK." UW-Madison must drop the class, Murphy said. "If UW-Madison stands with this professor, I don’t know how the University can expect the taxpayers to stand with UW-Madison.”Murphy indicates that he's looking through various "areas of the university" for courses that are not — as he sees it — "legit."
"We will not take a knee-jerk reaction to anything just because it has a word in it that hurts people's sensibilities. I realize college is a place to discuss ideas that aren't necessarily everybody's idea of how things out to be," Murphy said. "But I want to make sure there's legitimate education going on. I'm broken-hearted that this is something I have to be involved in."Yeah? Me too.
Governor Scott Walker has a better attitude, I'd say. He just called the course "goofy" and "unusual" and said he didn't think "the governor should be telling people what classes they should or shouldn't have." Well put!
FIRE takes the principled position we've come to expect: "Wisconsin Lawmakers Once Again Threaten Academic Freedom."
Thankfully... the university offered a robust defense of free speech on campus when “Provost Sarah Mangelsdorf said the university ‘supports the First Amendment rights of its students, faculty and staff, including their use of social media tools to express their views on race, politics or other topics, in their capacity as a private citizen.’”And here's Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic:
It’s good to see the University of Wisconsin–Madison take this principled stance in the face of legislative pressure. Hopefully, the legislature will drop these misguided and even unconstitutional threats.
[C]onservatives, liberals, and libertarians should all be able to agree that consistent, principled defenses of free speech norms are indispensable at institutions of higher education, and that their absence is most damaging to marginalized students. Uniting against illiberalism on the right and left is the best course. Otherwise, political groups will waste their efforts on an interminable fight to censor one another, instead of defending the values that serve them all.Exactly.
Posts
208 comments:
1 – 200 of 208 Newer› Newest»The answer to bad speech is more speech. This hateful clown should be allowed to teach this garbage and his role should be widely publicized. The people writing tuition checks will decide over time how best to reward him: ideally with students giving him low evaluations, other students staying away in droves, lots of customers un-buying his books, masses of non-invitations, and his company avoided by all decent people.
#woke
Is every course a UW-Madison taught via Twitter, or just this one?
At some point in the student's post college life in the real world, that degree in African studies is going to be about as useful as mammary glands on a buffalo bull---but go on fellow, enjoy your detour from the real world.
"At some point in the student's post college life in the real world, that degree in African studies is going to be about as useful as mammary glands on a buffalo bull"
Not if you are going for a law degree. Michelle Obama majored in Black studies.
It's racism as curriculum, describing a person's behavior in terms of what is good and bad about their race. "All white people are racist" comes from the same place as "all Black people like watermelon."
I would be concerned about how this damages the reputation of the institution and the students/graduates. You don't have to be from WI to know this is not a place of free speech.
Trump Executive Order No. 1: no one with a Grievance Studies degree can be hired by the Federal government.
Conservatives, liberals, and libertarians should all be able to agree that consistent, principled defenses of free speech norms are indispensable at institutions of higher education, and that their absence is most damaging to marginalized students. Uniting against illiberalism on the right and left is the best course.
Except, of course, that there is no chance in hell that there will be a "consistent, principled defenses of free speech norms" in the academy for the foreseeable future. Look at Prof. Sajnani's language. It is the exact same language used by white supremacists, except the colors are different.
C'mon, Freidersdorf. C'mon, Prof. Althouse. If that course description had read
In this class, we will ask what an ethical white identity entails, what it means to have an Aryan consciousness, and consider the journal Race Warrior's motto, “Loyalty to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.”
there would be no conversation, no discussion. The professor would be run out of town on a rail. He would be lucky if his possessions weren't vandalized & his family harassed.
The Left will admit that free speech might be a good idea when they pay a price for denying to others. If that's takes some conservative legislators blowing a gasket & threatening to cut off their money, so be it.
Critical Whiteness Studies aims to understand how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy.
Whatever this professor does on his own time, or even research, is one thing. However, the course description linked above seems less about critical thinking and questioning assumptions than about assuming a particular political frame and activism to promote the frame. Thus, less education and more indoctrination. I'm normally with FIRE, but I do think their idea of "intellectual freedom" is over-protective of professors, and under-protective of their students. At a minimum, I expect you'll find a significant chilling effect on them.
Didn't you just post on a prof singing the Beach Boys and why it was fine to punish him? How employers should be able to police the speech of employees? And didn't you post once on why yoga classes were offensive, and maybe needed to be stopped?
I think it is a shame that government would direct a college on what courses it can and cannot teach.
I'm happy to know, that there are suckers born every minute. If someone wants to pay $300 a semester hour for crap courses, or even go to an Indian Casino and blow $300 on crap dice, then I think each sucker is on his own.
Government should just make sure the roads are paved to the colleges and casinos.
Young Hegelian at 5:25 is exactly right. Simply change the language to suggest a positive valence and Althouse, and Friedersdorf would be all over it.
I might quote this in a letter to FIRE. It looks like they blew it this time.
Not one of the comments posted by Althouse went to the heart of the matter.
It's not a free speech question at all. She should know that. I'm sure she DOES know that.
There IS a state role to play, in state universities. UW has a Board of Regents. Since it is a big system, with multiple campuses all clamoring for independence and their own identity and especially a desire not to get overrun by UW-Madison, they all also have their own sub-governance.
This business of African-American Cultural Studies, teaching critical hip-hop theory (radical politics disguised as academics) is indeed a proper matter for department heads, deans and ultimately Regents.
It isn't racism or censorship to say that this is a bogus subject of a university course for credit.
At the Althouse alma mater Michigan, the eight elected (one ex officio) members of the Board of Regents are elected statewide on the partisan section of the ballot. They are nominated at state party conventions.
35 years ago, when you went to college, you were still taught readin' and writin' and rithmatic' -- albeit at an advanced level.
Also, it wasn't that hard to get into great Universities. B+ average in high school would usually do it.
Also, tuition was cheap! I paid $1300/year for tuition at a famous, major, prestigious University, which shall go un-named herein. I could usually make the $1300 tuition during oddball summer work.
Also, the girls were really, really smart and really, really pretty.
How's the modern University system doing? Bullshit classes,$100,000 in debt, speech codes, micro-aggresions and Mattress Girl. Sounds fun! Thanks, Leftists!
I googled this professor and the images that came up are those of a douchey, White man. Is this a Rachel Dolezal situation where a White person is pretending to be Black?
Damon Sajnani, btw, appears to be an Assistant Professor. It would be right to address him as "Professor," but Imma thinkin' he shoulda waited, 'til he got tenure, before doin' this kinda cray shi.
He has a right to speak.
He doesn't have a right to get paid.
"Didn't you just post on a prof singing the Beach Boys and why it was fine to punish him?"
Nope.
LOL, he's exactly what you would expect, and it appears his real name may be "Burchell" -- he's a "hip-hop artist":
http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/damon-burchell-sajnani
Owen
But this isn't about speech. No-one suggests the professor should be denied the right to express his views, only if it is appropriate to make a publicly funded course, and clearly a tendentious one, from such splenetics.
"I googled this professor and the images that came up are those of a douchey, White man. Is this a Rachel Dolezal situation where a White person is pretending to be Black?"
I don't know, but one of the 5 books listed on the course wel page as assignments is about Rachel Dolezalu.
Dolezal
This guy celebrates the slaughter by ambush of policemen in the U.S.
Outside of those steeped in the putrescent waters of current University groupthink, I doubt many of your readers consider this guy somehow interesting/worthy of having and keeping a job paid for by taxpayers.
Seriously, Althouse? If, say, a distinguished tenured scholar wanted to offer a class on outcome differences among human populations that explored the evidence and theories for these differences that were not based on the assumption that these differences were the product of "racism" or "culture", you'd be defending him, and defending him on the same grounds, that you're defending the monument to the human intellect that is Damon Sajnani?
Yeah, right.
Actually, yep. You argued that it might be just fine to punish a prof for singing the Beach Boys, and why restricting what and how a prof teaches can be perfectly fine. But here you want the principle of the thing!
The answer to bad speech is more speech.
Sure, but not on the public dime. If it were a private university that didn't accept public money? Knock yourself out. But if Wisconsin legislators don't put a stop to taxpayer support for this kind of thing they aren't doing their jobs.
Where is Dr. Renfro Jeffries course?
Why no taxpayers pay him to spread violence and death?
Madison is bigotry. If you spread violence and death, you ought to do it equally and without discrimination.
This "professor" and every "student" who signs up for his "course" should be named & shamed on the interwebs forever, so all Americans can know them for the bigots they are.
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being would be a better name for this course.
States and the federal government should get out of the higher education business.
Who will take this course? The already
convinced without a doubt.
Most students would learn more from Zombie 3-D Hologram Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot than this bigoted racist guy could ever hope to hope.
#WhyProfitFromWhiteBloodMoneyProf
Governor Scott Walker has a better attitude, I'd say. He just called the course "goofy" and "unusual" and said he didn't think "the governor should be telling people what classes they should or shouldn't have." Well put!
No it's not. The course title isn't "goofy" -- it's hateful. That David Duke, what a card. Such a goof!
Evil ways beget evil end-days ablaze.
Blogger David said...
Who will take this course? The already
convinced without a doubt.
12/21/16, 5:57 PM
Everyone once they make it mandatory.
Having true out and out proud professor bigots is actual diversity, so congrats to UW for honoring that commitment, however much bullshit underlying it.
Think about it. If you had to design a system to create an army of young, broke, indebted, ignorant and unemployable morons-- you could not do much better than give trillions in loans to 18-year olds and have them taught by fools like Dr. Sajnani.
They'd be better off NOT going to college, and instead walking to the local library each day for 4 years, and reading Shakespeare
Great course, time well spent learning about whiteness from the point of view of whites taught by a black. I wonder if there is any time spent on Western art, music, literature or whether the focus is on colonialism and the smushing of peoples of color.
The Grievance Studies majors mostly are useless. The professors beg the administrators to make their courses mandatory and the grievance consultants lobby for mandatory training of students on grievance issues. It's a racket
Balfegor said...
Governor Scott Walker has a better attitude, I'd say. He just called the course "goofy" and "unusual" and said he didn't think "the governor should be telling people what classes they should or shouldn't have." Well put!
No it's not. The course title isn't "goofy" -- it's hateful. That David Duke, what a card. Such a goof!
Right. And while it's okay for Governor Walker -- the state's Chief Executive -- to say that he isn't going to police university syllabi, it is just as okay -- indeed, MANDATORY -- for the Regents to say whether or not it is an acceptable endeavor in the University's name.
mccullough said...
The Grievance Studies majors mostly are useless. The professors beg the administrators to make their courses mandatory and the grievance consultants lobby for mandatory training of students on grievance issues. It's a racket
Exactly. A large payoff, to the activists in the Racial Grievance Industry.
The left's idea of ethical white identity involves far more shaming and guilt than most are willing to submit to. As a general rule shaming people creates resentment and backlash. The left does not like resentment and backlash and tries to shame the backlashers. With inevitable counterproductive (from their point of view) effect. They may want to reconsider this approach.
Any enterprising white student would file complaint after complaint after complaint alleging this racist has discriminated and created a "hostile educational environment" because this bullshit class and his retarded ideas. Make this dipshit defend it. Make him hire lawyers. Use the PC system against him. Make the left live by its own rules.
"Right. And while it's okay for Governor Walker -- the state's Chief Executive -- to say that he isn't going to police university syllabi, it is just as okay -- indeed, MANDATORY -- for the Regents to say whether or not it is an acceptable endeavor in the University's name."
Like everyone else, the Regents need to pick their battles. This isn't it.
He is right. There is a problem with whiteness. The blonde/red headed,pink skinned SOBs upon hearing his announcement that he is raising armed groups to come and kill them have the same reaction that yellow-jacket hornets have when their hive is threatened. They beat them to it.
Hopefully his University benefits include medical and life insurance.
Defund the "African Cultural Studies" department. It is useless and has nothing to do with Africa, as is evident.
If there ever is a serious white identity movement in this country, it will be because of shitheads like this. One look at that syllabus and I'm more positively inclined toward skinheads.
Free speech is fine, but a university is not a rent free soap box with a captive audience. If the course isn't educational there is no reason for the state to fund it and no reason for students to attend it. If some private university wants to teach this crap, that is fine with me. But public money is for the public good, and while we once trusted educators to make responsible decisions in their area of supposed expertise, that trust has been betrayed. I don't have a problem with a little pushback from the state government.
David said...
"Right. And while it's okay for Governor Walker -- the state's Chief Executive -- to say that he isn't going to police university syllabi, it is just as okay -- indeed, MANDATORY -- for the Regents to say whether or not it is an acceptable endeavor in the University's name."
Like everyone else, the Regents need to pick their battles. This isn't it.
I accept that, as an interesting and provocative point of view. Now I have to ask; which battles should the UW-M Regents be choosing?
doucey white man - AA trying to be Rachel Dolezal.
IF he were doucy looking black man would
you say doucy black man?
AA would it be ok if they were offering a course on White supremacy?
You talk about freedom but it is only one way, so stop the BS.
I'm not quite seeing this as a free speech issue. This is workplace speech supported by taxpayer dollars. Dismissing it as simply "free speech," necessarily asserting that the people have no right to set standards for their universities, is one of those arguments that not even the people making it believe. Nobody, not FIRE, not Conor Friedersdorf, not nobody, thinks the government has no right to set standards for its own university system.
Now that Althouse is gone from the faculty, the UW Madison should shut its doors and open later under new management.
Chuck @ 6:11: "mccullough said...
The Grievance Studies majors mostly are useless. The professors beg the administrators to make their courses mandatory and the grievance consultants lobby for mandatory training of students on grievance issues. It's a racket
Exactly. A large payoff, to the activists in the Racial Grievance Industry."
Exactly. Thus all the strident demands by feral children this year on campuses everywhere, that #BlackTantrumsMatter and the only solution to the white hegemonic oppression was Moar Faculty and Deans of Color, right down to the fields of math and physics and so on. Because black professors are necessary to ensure the correct experience of partial differential equations and statistics.
It's just grifters doing their thing. It will continue until somebody finds the stones to stop it. If this were seen in terms of inflation, the Higher Education industry is well along the trajectory toward Venezuela.
"I'm not quite seeing this as a free speech issue."
Maybe that was push back against the con pols who decided to use off-the-clock tweets as justification for going after this class.
I dunno.
"Now that Althouse is gone from the faculty, the UW Madison should shut its doors and open later under new management."
WI --> Liberty U North
It's a right wing false flag operation designed to demonstrate that blacks are really really stupid.
There would be great value in a course covering unintentional racism in Amerika. As I've pointed out many times on this blog, our national parks, forests and other public lands are thoroughly racist. My latest survey throughout Western lands showed only 0.1% of the visitors' faces to be African American. Similar stats hold for our Hispanics. Indeed, those percentages hold even for documentaries by Nature, Natural Geographic, Discovery and Ken Burns that cover those public lands.
The racism doesn't necessary follow from any deliberate exclusion of people of color. But it is clearly racist to hold their patrimony and to tax them to purchase and maintain White Country Clubs. Especially when it comes to cheating our poorest Amerikans, who often struggle to put food on the table and send their kids to a good school.
The fact that the White commenters on this blog have been, still are and will no doubt continue to be, however blindly and unintentionally, racist in this and other matters would seem to render a course like this not only advisable, but totally necessary.
I'm sure that WI will be a success in the 21st century if they, w/ con gov, can make themselves more like Mississippi.
Got it.
Hmm....blacks commit around 50% of all homicides; more than 70% of black children are born to single mothers; more than 30% of black teens do not graduate high school. The problem? Too much white privilege.
Couldn't a student with a background in law enforcement or who has a family with such a background claim that such language creates a hostile environment. I'd be more sympathetic to the university administrators if they had expressed some amount of abhorrence towards his views while they were expressing support for his free speech rights. Shouldn't someone somewhere in the university system be using their free speech rights to call this guy a jerk.
tim maguire: Dismissing it as simply "free speech," necessarily asserting that the people have no right to set standards for their universities, is one of those arguments that not even the people making it believe. Nobody, not FIRE, not Conor Friedersdorf, not nobody, thinks the government has no right to set standards for its own university system.
I'd guess it's not so much a matter of not believing it, but of preferring to avoid thinking about standards in the first place. So they're very careful to keep this squeezed into the "free speech" and "academic freedom" frame, because "standards" is a huge can of worms. What percentage of the the faculty and administrative staff of American universities would be looking for new jobs if there were a "goofy test" to set the minimum standard for intellectual and scholarly rigor?
If Wisconsin wanted to be like Mississippi, it would need to deport the 22% of the state that is German American and increase its percentage of blacks from 6% to 38%.
White identity discovery for today
The number of different n X k (0,1) arrays with no element equal to more than one of its neighbors is F(n+1) + F(k+1) - 1, where F(x) is the xth Fibonacci number, and the upper left element is 0.
This should be in the course somewhere.
It would be simpler if they would lose their Pro-Choice quasi-religion, reject class diversity and other forms of institutional racism, then embrace a principled religious/moral philosophy, and diversity discerned through character.
While they're at it, they could analyze the progressive slope and prejudice born of capital punishment of wholly innocent human lives, the sanction of Planned Parenthood corporate charter's inclusion of clinical cannibalism, and characterizing people as colorful clumps of cells in class diversity schemes, interchangeable and disposable.
I've been saying for a while that the left will come to regret its attacks on the first amendment and freedom of expression. There was never any chance that the taxpayers' representatives would accept the Marcusian claim that it's OK to suppress the speech of conservatives only. If it becomes OK to suppress conservative speech, then it's also going to be OK, and lot more common, to suppress leftist speech.
"My Name Is ROCK"
Fly with new blast, get gas
Kid Rock some folks thought i'd flew right past
Faded fast, ran outta gas
Here i come again, all back in that ass
No questions, i tell no lies
Rely Kid Rock is on the rise
Like a sky scraper
I'm back like smack, and so are the vapors
And the papers, cause i'm gonna rhyme
Right, jump right back up into the lime light
And i'm rackin my brain where the pain was
No i got more soul than the train does
Mid western funkin, car pumpin from the amps in the trunkin
Ya cant stop this boy, this time
I'm the real macoy
And you know My name is Rock
You know My name is Rock [7x]
So hey punk, feel the funk
Feel the wrath of the rock
Non stop, i got a glock in my pants
I don't dance, i sit around
I don't sip 40's, i pound
I been around too long, commin too strong
Kid Rock got it goin on
See me, see you, see through, emcee's who knew
Fly like the wind, i hang like a hinge
Been gone like rhymes on a drinkin binge
So don't cringe at the sight of Rock
Ya wanna fight the rock, ya gotta fight this glock
And you can say my beats are fake
But it don't mean shit when your gettin paid
Hip-Hop, the jam don't stop
You know My name is Rock [7x]
I'm the D to the O, P to the D
O to the straight up G see
I been around like Jesus layin tracks
But i had to come back, i had to come back
Back from the dead, enough said
Still trippin like Fred
Be red, ya got a head full of holes
I got a head full of bowls
I'm the K-I straight from the D, punk
From the home of the B funk
Aint no frontin here, i wont disapear
I'll be around next year
I'm the Jiffymack
In the rack, writin off for some ify crack
Last year, this year it's all the same
But you know my name is Rock
You know My name is Rock [8x]
K-I-D's the name
"Not if you are going for a law degree. Michelle Obama majored in Black studies."
What's the Bar pass rate ?
UC Boalt Hall is less than 50%
Correlation?
Odd how as the United States has become more ethnically diverse over the last 50 years, we've become increasingly fractured, ghettoized, and plagued by ethnic conflict. Who would've guessed it? I mean, beside people with even a passing familiarity of the history of the last century. Just close your eyes and keep repeating "diversity is our strength." Whatever you do, don't let empirical reality intrude.
@Michael K:
"UC Boalt Hall is less than 50%
Correlation?"
Get into an undergrad program based on affirmative action, get admitted to law school with less competitive LSAT scores, and then disproportionately fail the bar. Hmm....who cares?! The important thing is Charles Murray is an evil racist.
Re: Michael K:
What's the Bar pass rate ?
UC Boalt Hall is less than 50%
Correlation?
What?? Cite please -- I thought it was like 90%, and searching online, I'm seeing 85%. Did it drop precipitously since?
Oh, was that the passage rate for Black Studies Majors who go to UC Berkeley law? Is there a dataset?
I think I just got #woke.
“Is the uprising finally starting? Is this style of protest gonna go viral?”
My dear Prof. Sajnani, back in the early 1970s Black people used to glower at us honkies and mutter "Come the Revolution ..." Well, we honkies just staged a Revolution, a peaceful one, back on November 8th. The Revolution came, Prof. Sajnani, and you were on the wrong side.
The point is actually to keep blacks angry, lest they make something of their lives.
Otherwise they might vote differently, or stop providing news entertainment for millions of women.
He who pays the piper calls the tune, and he should. You can't demand money from the taxpayer and act shocked when he tells you what you can teach. Privatize University of Wisconsin and the problem disappears. If you want to subsidize education, give vouchers.
Odd how as the United States has become more ethnically diverse over the last 50 years, we've become increasingly fractured, ghettoized, and plagued by ethnic conflict.
That's not odd at all. It is, in fact, inevitable. Here's a quote from Lee Kuan Yew, a guy who knew something about running a multiracial society:
"Why should I be against democracy? The British came here, never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave. But I cannot run my system based on their rules. I have to amend it to fit my people's position. In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I'd run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them."
Say hello to the future.
NotquiteunBuckley said...
Ain't no frontin' here, she'll be around next year.
She's the Jiffy Mac. - Kid Rock appropriated to Ernst.
8/8/14, 9:03 AM
Fuck yeah, freedom of speech, free expression, right on!
It's not like this son of a bitch sang some Beach Boys lyrics and possibly made some women feel moderately uncomfortable, right?
Who was it that just a while ago was telling us a school punishing a teacher (w/o much transparency nor due process, in fact) were perfectly within their rights to do so because after all an employer can restrict the kinds of thing an employee can say?? My memory is so bad, but it sure seems like someone made that argument.
But yeah, now we should all cheer for the porincipled stand and punishing someone for expressing a truly bike POV is unthinkable.
I mean, its a total coincidence that the POV in this particular case is one the Left supports...I am 100% sure all of these same people would take the same position if a professor was saying terrible things against minorities, or homosexuals, etc. For sure.
(Well, shoot, I see others made the Beach Boys lyrics connection first. Serves me right for not reading down first; sorry.)
He just called the course "goofy" and "unusual" and said he didn't think "the governor should be telling people what classes they should or shouldn't have." Well put!
So everyone would be fine with a course called a course called "The Problems of Blackness" that stated "In this class, we will ask what an ethical Black identity entails, what it means to be on the liberal plantation, and consider the phrase, "Acting White"" ?
Boalt Hall was higher. The overall was 48% but Boalt Hall might have been lower for first time takers.
I saw it the other day but all I can find is 2014.
cal bar logoResults from the July 2014 administration of the California bar exam were released on November 21, 2014. Ever since, people have been wondering about the pass rates by law school.
The only information we’ve had until now has been the overall, shockingly low pass rate of 48.6 percent (down a woeful 7.2 percentage points from July 2013’s results). We also knew about the overall pass rates for first-time takers who attended ABA-accredited law schools, both in-state (69.4 percent) and out-of-state (59.9 percent).
@Bob Loblaw:
"That's not odd at all. It is, in fact, inevitable."
Yes, I was being sarcastic. I have said repeatedly for years that multiethnic societies tend towards either authoritarianism (e.g. Hussein's Iraq) or ethnic conflict (e.g. post-Tito Yugoslavia). Singapore manages a kind of soft authoritarianism because its institutions are dominated by ethnic Chinese. Lee Kwan Yew was PM for over 30 years, and since 2004, the post has been filled by his eldest son, Lee Hsien Loong.
The question is, "How far can the universities go, in terms of shitting in the faces of the people who pay for them, before they stop paying for them?". And the answer is clearly, "Pretty damn far!". But how far?
Sorry. While I usually lean toward more free speech, I have to disagree with this one. If there were a class proposed that talked about the "problem of blackness" and the instructor was on record as getting joy out of police shootings of black men, my guess is Ann would not be all understanding and free-speechy. Legislators have a responsibility to their constituents to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used prudently and I think a case can be made that this course would not meet that test.
If you want to do critical studies, aka deconstruction as invented and not as it has become, you have to like the system you're deconstructing.
Odd how as the United States has become more ethnically diverse over the last 50 years, we've become increasingly fractured, ghettoized, and plagued by ethnic conflict.
I think the media fans the flames without shame nor consequence.
"Michelle Obama majored in Black studies."
Actually, Sociology. I read her thesis when it was in the news during the 2008 election. It was a competent paper, obviously undergraduate work. One ironic and now laughable detail was her conclusion that because of her race she would never be able to move in the top echelons of American society.
So it looked to her at the time.
jimbino: There would be great value in a course covering unintentional racism in Amerika. As I've pointed out many times on this blog, our national parks, forests and other public lands are thoroughly racist.
Examining how jimbino's beliefs about national parks are wall-to-wall bullshit would be an excellent exercise for an in-depth college statistics course focusing on demographics, taxation, and government programs,. It could be one of the case studies in a course titled something like "Critical Quantitative Analysis of Anti-White Propaganda".
Though life-long obsessions about "white people and 'country clubs'" might be more suitable material for psychiatry courses covering intense, deep-seated grizzly bear phobias that manifest as delusional racist ideation.
Remember when all these people took a principled stand for free speech, free expression, and free inquiry when Larry Summers got shitcanned after saying that it might be possible that women are less represented in some professions because of a different distribution of traits (between men and women)? Yeah, the Leftist Academy is allll about principle, baby.
I highly doubt that a White Supremacist (who has tweeted how much vicarious joy he experiences at public reports of Blacks being murdered) teaching an equivalent course would be tolerated at UW-Madison. "More speech" is not always the answer to extreme racism, regardless of which race it is deployed against. (A 2x4 upside the head, on the other hand....)
College classes are subject to market forces. If this course is the stinker that it has potential to be, it will get a narrow audience of people who will within a few years get preoccupied with some other cause. The course won't do much harm, because it will mostly be taken by people who think they already know the answers to the questions posed by the subject matter.
There is also always the possibility that it will be taught in a thought provoking and interesting manner. Certainly "white identity" is a worthy and interesting topic. I do not intend to bet more than $10 at favorable odds on this outcome, but it's possible.
The Justice defamed of/by/for/and Social.
This is what happens when a Scientific Progressive is allowed to become an Assistant Professor of African Cultural Studies.
So...is hate speech free speech again?
Does free speech outweigh the need to protect people from trauma and/or having to deal with a hostile environment, again?
Do you guys put out some sort of newsletter to publicize these changes, or what? I gotta sign up--shit changes so quickly!
Hey, remember when all these campuses refused to allow non-Leftists as guest speakers, or charged big "security" fees, and/or allowed/tacitly approved of hecklers shutting guest lectures down?
Commitment to free speech! Starting...now, and only for me.
Side question: are this guy's comments (about cops etc) ugly, Professor?
I disagree with FIRE on this. This isn't free speech, it's very much paid speech. Why should the residents of Wisconsin have their tax dollars paying for a racist class? The notion that holding state universities accountable for how they spend money, including what they teach, is an absolutely proper function of government and one that is too little used.
I'd argue that saying "We ain't paying for it" isn't the same as "you are not permitted to teach the class". If it is truly vital, the university will sacrifice to make it happen.
They'd also not allow a similar class targeting any other group.
Like everyone else, the Regents need to pick their battles. This isn't it.
A racist, non-academic course taught on their campus isn't a battle worth fighting?
"That's not odd at all. It is, in fact, inevitable. Here's a quote from Lee Kuan Yew, a guy who knew something about running a multiracial society:
"Why should I be against democracy? The British came here, never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave. But I cannot run my system based on their rules. I have to amend it to fit my people's position. In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I'd run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them."
Say hello to the future."
Anyone with any concept of what history is supposed to empart, actionable knowledge consequently acted up/down/all-around upon, of course agrees with me that America determines daily what is:
History.
Law.
Important.
Washingtonesque.
God cannot be impressed of course, but early America, considering the mass suffering suffered herethenfored on this "Gaia" of sorts, must have Americaed.
I will verb America as if 'twere God.
Tupac knew.
It doesn't help that "Professor D" is a Canadian white guy pretending to be black.
If you want to go after him in a vindictive way, find out if he ever lied about his ethnicity and benefited from Affirmative Action.
This is absolutely ridiculous and intellectually dishonest speech. Nonetheless, the government should play no role in regulating or punishing it.
I may be naive, but people will eventually figure out this race hustle. The game gets more absurd over time because most Whites are close to maxing out on their racial guilt credit cards.
Let's publicize this absurdity as much as possible.
I wonder what the professor of this course would have to say about an officially sanctioned KKK organization at UW in the 20s? The alumni association says that they were shocked, shocked! I tells ya! to find out that the KKK had a bad reputation.
The alumni association article, from 2008 is a hoot.
http://www.uwalumni.com/askabe/1924-badger/
Here's a picture of the 1924 UW yearbook with a list of members. Yearbook says it is a "Junior Interfraternity Social Society"
Anyone see any relatives there?
http://i1.wp.com/www.cluewagon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Ku-Klux-Klan-at-University-of-Wisconsin-1923.jpg
John Henry
"Sometimes your employer can limit your speech" said Professor Althouse 2 days ago.
"A teacher doing a segment of a ceremony for institution isn't free to just say anything he wants" said Professor Althouse 2 days ago.
But, you know, that was about a creepy guy (allegedly) saying creepy things about women, not some righteous woke guy spewing hatred against oppressive white people for an entire course (not to mention saying things supportive of murdering cops on his own twitter, etc).
So, yeah, free speech, the school and legislature ought to butt out--as his employer they can't limit his speech and as a teacher he ought to be free to say just anything he wants.
UNLESS he says something sexist or creepy. That's different. Obviously.
http://takimag.com/article/right_wingers_please_stop_saying_this_one_stupid_thing_kathy_shaidle/print#axzz4TWozocoj
Maybe that darn Buckley (and those darn idiot readers, writers, donators too now never forget to Buckley, as he hasn't and shan't from Heaven) are the real problem.
A sober afraid of everyone else but mostly himself, Chuck has done us all the service of showing colors he thinks we will envision as his version of truth, catholic.
Remarkable.
Below is a summary of what the Internet says about this man.
A summary of the summary: a white Canadian political science academic who led a hip hop band from high school on, who studied at University of Toronto (BA) and Northwestern University (MA, PhD.) He merged Senegalese hip hop and poli sci for his PhD based on a study period in Senegal. The question is: is what he is doing racism or cultural appropriation or does he have something to say? He could definitely teach a course called Cultural Appropriation: From Blackface Minstrels to White Hip Hop. What he is actually doing appears to me to be slanted and he is not being what he is. He is another Rachel Dolezal.
Damon Sajnani is a Canadian from an white Ontario Canadian family named Burchell. Other family members were named Kathleen Marie Palmer of Scarvborough Ontario, his grandmother and Glenn, Monica (Jim), Sandra (Ken), Teresa (Gary), Doug (Sheryl), Donald (Paola), Heather (Ron), Bruce (Sophia), Damon, Lindsay, Ashley; Mia, Kayla and Gabrielle. He graduatied from CW Jeffreys Collegiate (High School) in Toronto in 1995. While in high school he became interested in hip-hop : "I first learned of griots, along with maroons, and their connection and theoretical link to HipHop in the early 1990s through mentors". In 2008 he graduated from the University of Toronto Univeristy with a BSc, a double major in Political Science and Biology. In the 13 years between high school graduation and college graduation 1995-2008 he spent time pursueing a career as a hip-hip musician. His band was called the Dope Poets Band. He also became a supporter of the Palestianians and signed a statement opposing the Geneva Accords. When he graduated from The University of Toronto in Political Science he won an Arab-Israeli Studies Scholarship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2009). In 2010 he got an M A in Political Science (Comparative Politics and Political Theory) from Northwestern University in Illinois.
He then became an authority in African-American studies. He got an MA in African american studies at Northwestern University in 20111. He got a PhD in African-American studies at Northwestern in 2014. His African American expertise was developed by a period of study at Harvard in 2014 as the holder of the Inaugural Nasir Jones HipHop Fellowship at the DuBois Institute, Harvard. Sometime between 2011 and 2014 Burchell went to Senegal where hip hop is more serious than it is here. He used this experience and his knowledge of hip hop as basis for his PhD dissertation: “HipHop Galsen: Hiphop activism and notions of the democratic in Senegal” "The dissertation explores how HipHop has impacted local understandings of, and participation in, politics in a national context where two presidential elections have been decisively swayed by the HipHop movement. I demonstrate how Senegalese HipHoppers organically deploy an indigenous notion of democracy that is articulated in key ways with an anticolonial critique of liberal democracy, thereby challenging orthodox democratic theory’s framing of possibilities."
In this same period when he became an African-American expert he married and added his wife's name Sanjani to his own. Sanjani is a Pakistani name. By 2016 he had dropped Burchell and now calls himself Damon Sanjani.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thestar/obituary.aspx?n=katherine-marie-palmer&pid=164025316&fhid=11036
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thestar/obituary.aspx?n=katherine-marie-palmer&pid=164025316&fhid=11036#sthash.l6j6AZIz.dpuf
www.academia.edu/.../Troubling_the_Trope_of_Rapper_as_Modern_Griot_
www.dar-al-janub.net/aidun/realitygenevaaccord.htm
https://beta.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/eFreePalestine/conversations/messages/11925
http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/damon-burchell-sajnani
There arent really any values involved, thats an illusion. None of this has anything to do with knowledge or scholarship. This is simply tribal war, and there are no rules, just what you can get away with.
So my opening bid for free speech has caught righteous flak because the taxpayer is funding this crap. Fair enough. I see two solutions and there may be more. (1) Let the named (or other) politicians pass a measure to de-fund the University if this course is held; or (2) have the guy give up the ratable portion of his salary (and benefits) for giving the course.
The problem I foresee with both these solutions is political. Legislators may talk tough but when they are represented (and boy, will they ever be) as censorious bullies with a secret agenda of bigotry (silencing the voiceless, etc) they may run away. Likewise, if Sanjani is told to take a 40% haircut in the term he offers this garbage, he will mos def call a presser because white punishment and him defiantly delivering truth at great personal cost.
So I end up back at a least-bad categorization of this as free speech, bad speech, and market forces that allow him to make a total fool of himself.
Here we see the typical fraud and hypocrisy of university professors, who stand squarely for the proposition that waitresses and truck drivers should pay higher taxes to support their political posturing, while other tax dollars are deployed to bankrupt cake makers and wedding photographers who have the wrong political views. What a disgusting bunch!
You should be made to pay a price for your values, not be paid to have your values.
What's more important, freedom of expression and speech, or money you get from the government?
Let's do an experiment. Let's start canceling funding for one course at a time. Let's start with this course. If you insist, UW, on having this course, then you'll get no public funds.
Do they scratch the course? If yes, move on to the next.
Eventually you'll find out which courses are really important and have value. Eventually the people will take a stand.
But I seriously doubt enough people will take a stand for underwater basket weaving.
White folks can do some crazy stuff, alright...
If you created this individual as a fictional character and published a story about him with no knowledge of this case, would that story be considered racist in the same academy that welcomes and empowers Professor Sanjani?
The issue is not whether he should be allowed to speak or if outsiders can stop him. The issue is how did such a crank get a professorship in the first place, and what does this say about the department that hired him and the leadership which created such a department?
UW must be proud of the hate it fosters.
It's not a required course. Whether or not it runs depends on student demand. Therefore the need for a provocative title, to drive up enrollment. If the class doesn't run, or enough of his classes don't run, tenure is harder to get.
As I told you silly fucks before, politics is Jim Carey telling the girl who stabbed his stomach she did it wrong because when you stab someone you walk as Frankenstein can't-bend-knees/elbows.
I told you this and other shit too you shoulda remembered.
What the me?
UW must be proud of the hate it fosters.
As a UW-Madison grad (BS-Chemistry, '83) I do think it's appropriate that the UW's reputation takes a hit. i'm sure Dr. Dope would agree.
I feel as if I let you down, but I didn't know that was possible beyond extreme circumstances possible implication, movie-wise or other, percolation's paths exonerate.
Which multicultural nation do the SJW's want us to emulate?
Citizens of Canada and Great Britain have no gun rights and free speech is viciously curtailed. Russia is multi-cultural, but the ethnic Russians control the government.
Ukraine and several other Eastern European and Baltic countries have multicultural populations, but the Russian minorities are restive and lack political rights.
African countries which are multi-cultural tend to have the occasional blood bath and civil war. Ditto multi-cultural nations in the Indian and Pacific oceans.
Australia is in southern hemisphere, and is bordered by poor, heavily populated Indonesian and melanesian nations, yet it remains about 90% white.
It's not a required course. Whether or not it runs depends on student demand. Therefore the need for a provocative title, to drive up enrollment. If the class doesn't run, or enough of his classes don't run, tenure is harder to get.
Yes, but suppose the course is a "hit" and becomes just a bitch session for black on white racism, just as a hypothetical course called "The Problem with Blackness" could become a favorite for white supremacysts. I predict nothing good coming out of this.
Look I got 82 times the aiQ of a
L you.
But I oathswore grammar and..,.or spell errors to "preclude defensiveness."
Genius ain't easy, but we ain't having to be no Pimpin neither no, dig.
the solution to racist attacks is not racist attacks
the solution to identity politics is not identity politics, or
maybe there is no solution
i don't see whitey volunteering for scapegoat duty much longer - as christian+spiritual as it can feel, it's not appreciated.
I don't see this as a free speech issue, but rather an academic freedom issue. Faculty should be given broad latitude when it comes to what is or is not protected by academic freedom. This is necessary if the ever-popular "free exchange of ideas" is to occur.
But.........non-tenured faculty would be well-advised to be judicious in applying their academic freedom (i.e., you need to shut up and do what you're told in order that you might get tenure so you can then really speak your mind; not fair, I know, but a simple fact). More importantly, the protections afforded by academic freedom should end where the student's right to fair and equal treatment begins. A course description that leaves anyone with any doubts about whether the instructor will treat all students in the course fairly is not wise, at best.
I suppose academic freedom dictates that the faculty member be given the chance to prove they can treat all students fairly. However, the course description includes "It explores how they [white people] consciously and unconsciously perpetuate institutional racism and how this not only devastates communities of color but also perpetuates the oppression of most white folks along the lines of class and gender." So the course description itself assumes all white people are racists. I don't see how that's defensible. Suppose I had a course description that explicitly assumes all black people are criminals, all Latinos are illegal aliens, etc. Think that'll fly? I would hope not.
Suppose aq course were named, "The problem with blacks". That would obviously be racist. So is this actual course.
Well to all who wonder what 'White Privilege' is, it's sacrifice, hard work, working long hours, studying, trying to make something of themselves, leaving things better for their children...
Yes Whites have what is called a work ethic. Asians have it to (maybe more so than whites!)
Unfortunately due to institutionalized welfare, loss of the work ethic, bigotry of low expectations, and destruction of the family unit, blacks have had it hard. Spanish SOMETIMES are in the same boat but I've seen some very hard working Spanish people (and a few blacks.)
Whites have their 'privilege' cause they earned it.
The main culprit is WELFARE. Welfare and the destruction of their work ethic.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: I did not leave the University, the University left me.
It takes a special kind of stupid to believe this balderdash. I'm embarrassed to be an alumni.
BSEE, class of '79
I might be murdered for writing this, in deed autofil seems to know already.
"Don't Mess Wit The Zohar" or whatever the name of the movie, degraded Adam Sandler and The Great Coen Fav John zTuturo on fire lmmforever always.
These were and are not bad men.
They want us all to forget all but the work and I will, but I will never forget what they did to Farley, the Gleasonest comedian of them all.
Chris made and makes the king laugh in Heaven.
BTW, why isn't Althouse liveblogging the Crowder waterboarding?
@EMD:
"I think the media fans the flames without shame nor consequence."
I don't doubt that, and it has certainly exacerbated the situation. But it isn't even necessary. Ethnic conflict is a perfectly predictable result of multi-ethnicity. Unfortunately, the demographics speak for themselves, and we aren't likely to put that genie back in the bottle. America is doomed.
Lyin'PB_Ombudsman
BTW, why isn't Althouse liveblogging the Crowder waterboarding?
Ugh, don't remind me. Steven Crowder is such a douche. Volunteering for waterboarding...so original. Like when Fox News demonstrated it back in 2006 or Christopher Hitchens did it for Vanity Fair in 2008 or goofy Chicago shock jock Mancow did it in 2009. Where's Sean Hannity to tell us that it's just a little water on your face but yet it's an essential tool for the "worst of the worst."
@Paul:
"The main culprit is WELFARE. Welfare and the destruction of their work ethic."
So why is it you think that 97% black Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The nation they share an island with, Dominican Republic, has five times the GDP per capita. What do you think explains sub-Saharan Africa's significant lag behind most of the rest of the world?
In all his life Catholic and other, I cannot imagine Buckley's influence being any greater than with, save maybe his pal Reagan's, Trump's NewYork Elite Brash Knowing enablement of being.
Could someone clarify for me -- the University of Wisconsin isn't really offering credit hours for this silly abomination of a course are they? I mean don't they care about their academic reputation?
Well Wisconsin used to be a good school. Years ago.
"The Problem of Whiteness".
Because math and science are just too hard.
A prof was reprimanded for singing a tasteless (maybe) song in China, but you can have an openly racist and hateful course and tweet like that and still be a prof? Really?
If anybody decides to assassinate him, please don't get caught.
I don't know why people say violence never solves anything.
My rather smart HS senior has narrowed his engineering education search to UW and U of MN.
This kind of story really sours my attitude towards supporting my home state flagship.
The white Sajnani is teaching African Cultural Studies at a University where only 2% of the student population is black. Sanjnani wearing dreads and taking a faculty spot traditionally held by a person of color may not be appreciated in the larger black community. It would be pretty funny if he faces a black-lash to his cultural appropriation.
A white Canadian is teaching a course in African-American studies. His chief creds are he played in a hip hop band and spent a year at Harvard but his PhD is from Northwestern. He didn't get interested in black studies till 2011. Only a fool would think he had something real to say. I think we have to wait till the market takes him down but he is a waste of tax-payer dollars and anyone going into debt for a class by him is burning money. Speaking of check your privilege.
May all your Christmases be white.
This course, and ones like it, are the result of a long process which started when I was in college in the 60s. There really has been a planned and thought out "long march through the institutions." It's goal was to bring about the left slanted mind set of a majority of those who received the higher degrees.
They would be the people who would be hired to run all the other institutions, the companies, the foundations, the government agencies. They would create the air that everyone working there, everyone who hoped to work there, everyone who needed the support of any of these places, would breathe, everyday.
And it worked. It came very close to a complete victory this November and still might pull victory from the smoldering ashes of this "defeat" (it's not a real defeat unless they say it is and believe it).
The polling of the election if looked at by educational status shows what the "long march" has made. An easier visual is in this piece from 2009.
Not the writing, though that is interesting, but they couldn't see then what lengths an administration would go to to weaponize the executive to stay in power. How feckless the professional political opposition would be. It is the chart which shows the slow but steadily accelerating "progress" that has been made to the dream that the New Left had back in '68.
That course and others the result, but also the means by which that graph line is made to accelerate and more closely approach vertical.
What the CUNT?
Was Joe Biden precocious after 9/11 saying "hey fuck it let's write a $100,000,000,000 check to Iraq!"
How.
HOW HOW HOW HOW.
How.
I FUCKING hate me.
How. How. How. How. How. How. How. How. How. How. How. How.
The University is perfectly free to offer a course like this, just as I am free to consider that by offering such a course UW-Madison in 2016-17 is not a serious academic institution and discount the value of degrees from the time period accordingly (I already have a low opinion of college degrees in general in spite of having an MA that took a lot of hard work to get).
Just because the University can offer a course like this doesn't mean that it should. They can and should laugh off the legislators, but they should keep in mind that the business world will be keeping track of how their graduates perform. If too many of them end up as unproductive trigger-happy HR nightmares thanks to SJW-heavy courses, word will get around both among those doing the hiring and among prospective future students and their parents.
People are foolish to not realize the threat it is to indoctrinate kids from an early age to this neo marxist thought. People should be challenged to define their definition of racism. That will pull the rug away from the ugly cockroaches that scurry to hide in college campuses.
I believe that people other than the one (or those, if applicable) teaching the course and those who are taking it are paying for this course to be provided.
That isn't "free speech" by any definition, is it?
geoffB wrote: "There really has been a planned and thought out "long march through the institutions." It's goal was to bring about the left slanted mind set of a majority of those who received the higher degrees."
I believe Althouse has expressed the opinion (or maybe she knows this for certain) that the various "studies" programs created in the 60s and 70s were an attempt to populate faculty with women and minorities. Faculty was overwhelmingly white and male at the time. Jewish, too, I suppose, but I am never certain under which circumstances Jews are counted as minorities and when they are counted as white.
@Farmer,
I don't have a clue about outside the USA! BUT in the USA before LBJ's "Great Society" and all it's welfare, blacks had families with fathers, blacks worked like anyone else, blacks didn't join gangs, and blacks didn't do drugs.
At that period some blacks became very good doctors, lawyers, scientist. They were slowly rising in stature. But then the call of 'free stuff' was to tempting for many of them to ignore.
In addition to informing citizens, she said: “We cannot allow ourselves to be unsettled by this. We must simply know that this exists, and learn to live with it.”
Not exactly Churchill material.
"We shall learn to live with it on the beaches, we shall learn to live with it on the landing grounds, we shall learn to live with it in the fields and in the streets, we shall learn to live with it in the hills; we shall never object to this."
"Like everyone else, the Regents need to pick their battles. This isn't it."
Which means they'll never fight. This "course" is plain race-hatred; if they can't bring themselves to say that's not acceptable, then they'll never be bothered to find ANYTHING unacceptable.
And, frankly, the line "this isn't the battle to fight" is always trotted out by people who had no intention of fighting *any* battle. It's disguising acquiescence -- or support -- for what they supposedly oppose with high-minded empty rhetoric.
Or they're just cowards.
That's the second time in a week I've encountered that word "woke" as an adjective. Interesting.
I believe Althouse has expressed the opinion (or maybe she knows this for certain) that the various "studies" programs created in the 60s and 70s were an attempt to populate faculty with women and minorities.
Can I say I find it incredibly racist and sexist that the left felt it necessary to create pseudo-scholarly fields just for women and minorities? It's like the left didn't think those groups could actually follow real subjects.
Ann I have been reading your posts for 8 years. It would have been life changing to have been a student of yours. Please continue this space for your insights in retirement. Your analysis of topics, how you are so succinct, is treasured to me. Not that it matters but I appreciate it.
@Paul:
"BUT in the USA before LBJ's "Great Society" and all it's welfare, blacks had families with fathers, blacks worked like anyone else, blacks didn't join gangs, and blacks didn't do drugs."
Every single one of those claims is false, though I should hasten to add that I don't disagree that the welfare programs of the Great Society greatly exacerbated the problems of the black underclass. I just reject the notion that they are the cause.
I used to think that the answer to bad speech is more speech. Not so sure any more. Leftists are immune to reason, shame and accountability. I don't think a few bad teacher evaluations are going to do it. Boycotts and the like are effective only so far as there is a market mechanism for it. The only logical mechanism for ending taxpayer funded indoctrination is to shut it all down, fire the professors, and make them earn their way in the real world.
I get that having state politicians attack the course is a free speech issue. I just get so freaking tired of one half of the political spectrum getting a pass on speech that the other side would never be granted.
Crimso said...
I don't see this as a free speech issue, but rather an academic freedom issue. Faculty should be given broad latitude when it comes to what is or is not protected by academic freedom. This is necessary if the ever-popular "free exchange of ideas" is to occur.
&&&&&&&&&&&&
My previous comment applies to you too. When there's NO downside to fomenting discord, no allowable pushback with real consequences, when students PAY MONEY and are forced to listen to this kind of bullshit and be dinged grade-wise when they disagree with it, "free speech" turns into one-way totalitarian propaganda.
Where's the "marketplace" when people are not able to refuse to buy?
I'm all for free speech and as long as he's teaching the course for free, I say "knock yourself out."
Otherwise, taxpayers should have a say through the regents or the government, as to whether this is speech that they want to subsidize.
Yeah, because publicly funded universities should be allowed to get as goofy as they want.
Assistant Professor Damon Sajnani will teach a course titled "Global HipHop & Social Justice":
Can HipHop culture help make the world more just? If so, what theory and praxis best advance this aim? These are the questions that drive this conceptual course. Our critical interrogation of the relationship between HipHop and social justice considers the culture from its U.S. Black Power era underpinnings to its disparate contemporary “glocal” manifestations. We begin by asking what is "HipHop," what is "social justice," and what is their relationship, and proceed to consider how HipHop can be an effective force for social justice and what obstacles are in the way. We’ll check out HipHop songs and videos from around the world, including North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere, and we will compare and contrast them in their respective social and cultural contexts. Our discussions will develop familiarity with important concepts in Black studies and social theory such as race and colonialism, imperialism and hegemony, structure and agency, identity and strategic essentialism. Weekly readings will typically pair writings specifically on HipHop with theory from across the humanities and social sciences including philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, and political economy. We will endeavor to consider the race/class/gender dimensions of our weekly topics. Students will acquire a broader familiarity with HipHop activism, and develop new conceptual tools and critical thinking skills.
This course satisfies the ethnic studies requirement.
Who says Studies disciplines aren't academically rigorous?
I'm all for free speech and as long as he's teaching the course for free, I say "knock yourself out."
UWM must create a tenured chair with an equal salary for a department of white supremacy studies.
It's only fair...
"UWM must create a tenured chair with an equal salary for a department of white supremacy studies"
Now that's fucking funny!
How does this course look on your transcript when you are applying for a real job?
If I were hiring, this course would scream, "This person will sue you for discrimination at some point in the future!!"
The only thing that's worse than being Not Woke is being Fake Woke.
[Hoodlum Doodlum:] Hey, remember when all these campuses refused to allow non-Leftists as guest speakers, or charged big "security" fees, and/or allowed/tacitly approved of hecklers shutting guest lectures down?
Commitment to free speech! Starting...now, and only for me.
Ben Shapiro might find UoW's unwavering commitment to free speech conditional.
"Any enterprising white student would file complaint after complaint after complaint alleging this racist has discriminated and created a "hostile educational environment" because this bullshit class and his retarded ideas."
In which case one or both of the following will happen: he will be framed for something that gets him expelled, or he will become a victim of "random off campus crime".
First, "woke" is not a thing, to use the parlance of the times. Enough with "woke"!
Second, there are two issues with the course--first, is this really something that public education dollars should subsidize? Not because "oh no, something offensive!" but because public education money is necessarily limited and money for a course about how bad white people are is money not being used to train engineers and doctors.
As for whether there's anything "offensive" about teaching this stuff, I guess the real issue is how the course is taught. If the professor uses blind grading and actually encourages free discussion and will not penalize students with differing points of view (provided they're informed POVs and well argued) then there's nothing wrong with it per se. But when we hear about something like this our first thought is "more preaching to kids who just want good grades and filling their minds with more garbage".
I'm broken-hearted that this is something I have to be involved in.
Our hostess’s response?
Yeah? Me too.
This is why academia has suffered and will continue to suffer the same lack of credibility that currently plagues politicians and the Mainstream Media. And it’s part of the reason Trump won.
Shouting “academic freedom” every time a Social Justice Warrior shits out another fucked up “course” in a university and when the folks who pay the bills object to these scholastic turds - mostly mum if conservative students are run off campuses, conservative speakers shouted down and conservative professors are never hired except by accident or as a token.
Bubbles are fucking hard to break out of. Academia and one of its products, the “intelligentsia,” went south in the sixties and never came back. Since then if you don’t play the game you don’t get tenure and don’t get to retire on a comfortable income. But it’s alright, folks. We have to cut her some slack. She offers thought-provoking posts and the freedom to post sincere comments. She tolerates Laslo Spatula. These and other endearments make her better than 99.99% of her class.
If I were hiring, this course would scream, "This person will sue you for discrimination at some point in the future!!"
BINGO!
"I just reject the notion that they are the cause."
What are the cause (is the cause?)
I suppose "racism?"
It is a fact that black illegitimacy was low, black families were largely intact in 1950. What changed ?
Walter Willaims does not agree with you.
Today's black illegitimacy rate of nearly 75 percent is also entirely new. In 1940, black illegitimacy stood at 14 percent. It had risen to 25 percent by 1965, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" and was widely condemned as a racist. By 1980, the black illegitimacy rate had more than doubled, to 56 percent, and it has been growing since. Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks.
Much of today's pathology seen among many blacks is an outgrowth of the welfare state that has made self-destructive behavior less costly for the individual.
Would you agree there was more racism in 1940 ? What happened ?
Contemporary "progressivism" combines two of the worst features of Communism and Nazism - Marxist economics and poisonous racial obsessions, with a soupcon of Gnosticism tossed into this vile brew.
It's often overlooked just how popular Nazism was on German university campuses in the 1930's among both the students and the professors. Within a few short years, German universities, long considered the best in the world, were offering spurious courses which celebrated the superiority of the Aryan race and "scientifically" proved that Jews and Slavs were subhumans. (Yes, I know I'll be accused of "Godwining" the thread. But of what use is Godwin's Law when people are, you know, actually behaving like Nazis?) Soviet universities were also corrupted. My point is that universities, rather than providing a bulwark against authoritarian nonsense, have very frequently aided and abetted that nonsense.
In the case of Germany and the USSR, those pernicious ideologies and psuedo-scientific nonsense stopped being taught in universities when Germany was defeated in war and the USSR fell. I don't know how you are going to get rid of these toxic mediocrities here in the States, because of what Jay Elink said. How do bad ideas get driven out of the marketplace of ideas when good ones are not allowed?
@Jon Ryan
Thanks. It does matter to me. And I do plan to keep it up.
It's incredibly encouraging — and really fun — to know I have readers here to write to every day.
One of the reasons I'm retiring is that I want to be completely free to put as much time and energy into this blog as feels good to me and not to be distracted into preparing things for students who are under obligation to read what I tell them and to listen to me.
Students have other goals than to read and listen for the intrinsic value of the experience, and I've come to believe that it's better for me to be a free-range blogger.
"In this class, we will ask what an ethical white identity entails . . ."
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
I dream of a world where people are woke to the injustice, bigotry and falsehoods spewed forth by people in SJW courses.
"This is absolutely ridiculous and intellectually dishonest speech. Nonetheless, the government should play no role in regulating or punishing it."
But the government should fund it? I think not.
My personal opinion is that student loans should only be available for STEM and similar courses that are likely to provide a career capable of repaying the loan. Student loans have become like welfare, a device the Democrats use to troll for votes.
When I went back to school to do premed, I was turned down for a student loan the first year (1960) the program was available.
I was told pre-med was not a useful major because many such students did not get into medical school.
mccullough said...
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being would be a better name for this course.
Shouldn't that be The Unbearable Being of Whiteness?
I guess I agree with most of the comments here, not with Althouse: this person has the first to free speech, but there's no reason to expect me to pay for it.
I'm not sure, though, that it's my place or the state government's place to fine-tune the courses at the university - we'll pay for this and this, but not for that. However, state government should do an overview: "Why would we support a university where the overall attitude is so wrongheaded?" If it is. "Can we insist on supervision by sensible competent people instead of clowns?" If they are. "We want to see diversity of thought in the professors and the courses, not just diversity of color. What are you doing to create that and how soon will it happen?"
Why are universities such a hotbed of racism?
Teaching that racism exists where it doesn't is not education.
Teaching that skin color is a cause of anything other than things like skin cancer is not science. You might as well have a state sponsored class on the science of a flat Earth or phrenology. If there is any racial phenomenon that is deserving of study it would be how the white race has accomplished so much in the world. That, at least, has some basis in correlation.
The problem is two fold: the premise of the class is not factual, and it's designed to foment hate which reduces the society. Isn't that the opposite of the role of a university? Is truth and progress too high a standard for today's educators?
Teaching a student this stuff for money is simple fraud, but a successful con job always has a sales pitch that appeals to some imagined need or deficit in the mark. Watch them on late night TV. They always start by convincing you that you have a problem, then they sell something that may or may not help, but you always have to pay to find out. Or do you?
Would those defending this "class" also be OK with a course designed to discuss the inherent inferiority of people of color compared to whites?
Controversial, to be sure, but the logical extension of the argument that under no circumstances can we censor lines of inquiry.
You professors and your colleagues are smart people, some of our smartest. You can do better. Why not try?
Rather than defunding specific courses, simply "privatize" the University. No more government support, no more state grants, no student loans, no anything.
People can still be free to provide their own private donations, or sponsor scholarships and fund chairs (the traditional model of University funding), but it would be interesting to see just "who" would be providing sponsorship for this garbage (and make no mistake, the big money progressives would do just that).
Best flush them out into the open for everyone to see.
Truth wins out in the end. I loved the video of the police officer tying the young student's tie. Let them offer their ridiculous classes. When perverted and going astray, it only hurts them.
You know all universities should hold themselves to the standards Hillsdale college does. Hopefully Trump will attack college campuses--NO more government support for political entities. Prove you can make it in the real world if you want to be taken serious. I say truth wins out in the end, yet also a battle must be engaged.
Thucydides said...
Rather than defunding specific courses, simply "privatize" the University. No more government support, no more state grants, no student loans, no anything.
Probably wouldn't fly. A voucher model probably would though, with almost all the benefits.
@Michael K:
"Would you agree there was more racism in 1940 ? What happened ?"
I challenge you to find a single thing I ever wrote about the black underclass where I posit "racism" as the primary cause.
Also, I wrote before the sentence you quoted:
"...I should hasten to add that I don't disagree that the welfare programs of the Great Society greatly exacerbated the problems of the black underclass."
And as the Walter Williams quote makes clear (and as I am well aware), the black community had a huge problem with illegitimacy before the Great Society programs were initiated. For whites it was still just 7% in 1975. So, exactly as I said, the Great Society programs exacerbated a preexisting problem. That's quite different than causing the problem, which is what I rejected.
As for my personal opinion, I think that there are differences in averages between blacks and whites cognitively (African Americans have a mean IQ of 85) and in personality disposition (I believe blacks tend to be, on average, more aggressive, more impulsive, and less future-oriented (i.e. less able to delay gratification for some future benefit).
J. Farmer said...
@Paul:
"BUT in the USA before LBJ's "Great Society" and all it's welfare, blacks had families with fathers, blacks worked like anyone else, blacks didn't join gangs, and blacks didn't do drugs."
Every single one of those claims is false, though I should hasten to add that I don't disagree that the welfare programs of the Great Society greatly exacerbated the problems of the black underclass. I just reject the notion that they are the cause.
You are correct. Historical crime and social statistics are difficult to come up with, pre-1980 or so, murder being an exception. WEB DuBois came up with black murder rate 3-6 times as high as white in 1904 and problems with "jobless" black gangs at the time, and the black murder rate in the 1940s and 1950s many multiples of the white rate (12 times as high in 1950). The black murder rate is lower now than it was before 1950. I posted all the stats here before.
Black/white murder ratios:
1940 11.1 times as high.
1950 12.4
1960 10.9
1970 10.9
1920s: about 7.
1930s: about 8.
'My previous comment applies to you too. When there's NO downside to fomenting discord, no allowable pushback with real consequences, when students PAY MONEY and are forced to listen to this kind of bullshit and be dinged grade-wise when they disagree with it, "free speech" turns into one-way totalitarian propaganda.
Where's the "marketplace" when people are not able to refuse to buy?'
You seem to think I'm defending this bigot. I believe the rest of my comment touches on what would happen at my institution if a course with the description of this one contained students who were dinged for disagreeing with the instructor. A grade appeals committee (which I have chaired) would likely uphold the appeal. Such committees at my university consider two criteria: 1) was the grading rubric made clear in the syllabus, and 2) was the grading done uniformly and fairly. Having direct evidence of bigotry on the part of the instructor would go a long ways towards addressing criterion #2.
Believe it or not, academic freedom helps those on the right more than the left (though it applies equally to all), given how hostile the average university is to opinions of the right.
This is not a legitimate field of study. It offers no value to society and the public should not subsidize it. No one has a right to public employment. This bigot should peddle his wares elsewhere.
Believe it or not, academic freedom helps those on the right more than the left …
Or would, if it existed …
The arrogance in the over educated, those educated beyond their means of usefulness. In Catholicism, there is a saying of being educated into imbecility. In street terms, some people are just begging for a serious ass whooping. Speaking of Catholicism, putting all of these posts together, I felt the need to point out the relevance of what I am convinced is a powerful social justice document. Pope Leo XIII, during the turn of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century, wrote an incredible social justice document, Rerum Noverum. I wonder, is this document being explored on college campuses? It carries immense consideration, especially when put alongside such ridiculous classes. I wanted to point out an idea he touched upon that conniving individuals will always socially latch onto ideas that allow them to attain power--maybe Nietzschean in regards to the pursuit of power being the ultimate motivating factor. The exploitation of race issues has evolved into a power grabbing means, a source of income for those who could never honestly attain the derived wealth from proper means. Anyway, I was going to search for the specific sentence, yet I could not get past the introduction paragraph. It said so much I will post it.
That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising. The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvellous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals,and the utter poverty of the masses; the increased self reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it - actually there is no question which has taken deeper hold on the public mind."
http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html
If the answer to bad speech is good speech, the University should require Mr. Sajnani, once every two weeks, to turn his class over to a speaker who will lecture on why "The Problem of Whiteness" is nothing but vile racist propaganda that may well have as its goal the start of a race war.
I linked to Hillsdale college. Beautiful website. This is a college unafraid to embrace Christmas.
https://www.hillsdale.edu/
"Like everyone else, the Regents need to pick their battles. This isn't it."
"A racist, non-academic course taught on their campus isn't a battle worth fighting?"
Probably not, unless the Regents are willing to take on the entire "studies" establishment, which they probably are not. This course is perhaps more "in your face" than most others, and thus generates an emotional backlash. But that doesn't mean it's a good target.
What distinguishes these "studies" courses is not their grievances but their dogmatism: they start with (political) answers and therefore have no need for inquiry but just segue into how to implement their Truths. This makes them fundamentally different from other academic disciplines, which focus more on inquiry, and encourage questioning/testing of what is currently (if provisionally) accepted.
The larger question is, how does one reform a university system that seems to have gone badly astray in becoming ever more politicized and and with a continuing long-term decline in teaching productivity ($/credit)? And if it can't be reformed, how might one replace its core functions of teaching, research, and credentialling?
The course title is meant to attract, but the course content that includes essays by W.E.B DuBois, which I read in a UW History class in the sixties, and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, interviewed on every tv news channel,seems sound and hardly merits criticism. His tweets, I agree, were not wise.
"The people writing tuition checks will decide over time how best to reward him: "
Given that the University is heavily subsidized by the legislature, isn't this pretty much what the lawmaker is doing?
I don't know that it's a good idea. I'm just sayin'.
You wonder why academia has relegated itself to such a lowly position, prospering on ruining the future of young people with debt and an inability to mature into adulthood, squandering and living off public funds, just read roesch/voltaire's thoughts. Ponder his words and look at his attached image. It all speaks volumes.
Look, I don't have a problem with the concept of academic freedom. I don't have a problem with a rule that gives deference and latitude to people within a University to say and think and even do all sorts of things that might offend people. If we lived in a world where the Academy actually had and followed such a rule, for everyone, then I'd be happy to defend this particular asshole and his Twitter statements & teachings on the grounds of academic freedom. No problem.
BUT. We absolutely do not live in such a world. The Academy is strongly Left and not shy about showing it--non-Left instructors aren't hired/permitted, non-Left ideas and expressions aren't allowed (they're often punished, in fact), and non-Left speakers/events are usually neither encouraged nor tolerated.
A core principle like "academic freedom" isn't some argument of convenience the Left can take up when it's convenient and discard when it might mean not being able to oppose the non-Left. I'm not talking about Professor Althouse here--she's definitely more principled than most academics (not to damn with faint praise)--but it's absolutely fair to reject shrieks of "what about academic freedom" when the people so shrieking don't give a damn about academic freedom when it might prevent them from attacking their ideological opponents.
I am honestly stunned at the response to this.
This isn't about speech - whether or not an individual can say unpopular things. This flaming racist is teaching this to students. How many? Dozens? Hundreds? Multiply that for each year. How many bitter racists is this guy creating? He's actually creating resentful, racist citizens. And our response is, 'Golly, we can't say an institution of higher learning should not be doing that.'Screw that. My kids are going to have live with the monsters this fraud is creating.
Have we lost our minds? And while you're tabulating the number of racists this guy is creating, go ahead and consider all of the other Blacks Studies departments at hundreds of other universities, and all of the students in each class. We're talking the creation of thousands of resentful racists each year. And we're paying for it, with money and a fractured culture. And we'll defend it under the banner of "academic freedom." Sorry, that's an excuse for cowardice.
"non-Left instructors aren't hired/permitted, non-Left ideas and expressions aren't allowed (they're often punished, in fact), and non-Left speakers/events are usually neither encouraged nor tolerated"
As to this and other claims that academic freedom doesn't apply to those on the right, I'm proof that is incorrect. And there are more than a few other faculty at my institution who openly hold ideas that are badthink. I don't get much chance to get into politics in my field (I prefer to stick to the subject, though I do tend to throw in some amusing or interesting anecdotes). If politics comes up in the context of science (usually as a result of a question), I speak my mind. As I am respectful and responsible in doing so, anybody who doesn't like my opinion can fuck off.
As General Rosecrans put it: "To threats of removal or the like I must be permitted to say that I am insensible."
Courses that say they help develop "critical thinking skills" always sound like they are actually an attempt to stifle just exactly that.
"Where's the "marketplace" when people are not able to refuse to buy?"
****************
Exactly. Same as with Obamacare.
Markets mandated by the force of law are nothing but socialism, straight up.
So the taxpayers of Wisconsin just have to keep paying?
It is the right of the University and its faculty to say whatever, but it surely is also the right of the taxpayers, through their elected legislators, to refuse to pay for it.
That is not censorship or abrogating free speech--the professor is free to say whatever he or she wants. But there is no inherent right to get paid for it.
This won't go away, and as the academics get more insane the response will get more serious.
As to this and other claims that academic freedom doesn't apply to those on the right, I'm proof that is incorrect.
Spare us O Great God of Blog Commentors from anecdotal bullshit. Deliver us from irrelevant and suspicious comments invented to “prove” a point.
Rightwing speakers are hounded, demonstrated against and shouted down IF they ever make it to a university speakers’ podium. You cannot fail to have noticed this if you have paid any attention at all to current events for the last 30 years.
Faculties are 95% Leftwing in any university except perhaps Podunk U. in Nowhere, USA. That’s not by accident and it has been documented extensively over the years.
http://tinyurl.com/grvkwys
Apply for a job at Harvard or any other top-rated university, any job including janitor, casually mention you sure are glad you voted for Trump and see what happens to your “academic freedom.”
'Spare us O Great God of Blog Commentors from anecdotal bullshit. Deliver us from irrelevant and suspicious comments invented to “prove” a point.'
Don't presume to tell me what I do or don't know. My presence here goes back a very long time, and I seriously doubt anyone who reads my comments (which is evidently no one but you, but feel free to search the archives for the ones you've missed) would think that I'm trying to justify the wrong side of this.
And having just chaired two faculty search committees for our department, I can assure you that the political views of the candidates was never even remotely discussed. I can't say the same for other departments, as many of them appear to be pretty monolithic. But knowing the people in my department quite well, and I can tell you with certainty there are people on the right. Probably not 50/50, but certainly not 2/98. Honestly, most people in my department are reluctant to discuss politics, and I strongly suspect it's because each person isn't too sure who is on what side. If you draw them into discussions, you can figure out roughly where they stand, though.
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