As for this, how interesting it is that there’s no complete copy of the rules at the website of Education Action Group, a website founded by the guy who wrote Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism, and that you neglected to mention this website’s strong agenda. Experience shows us that when rightwing websites report on supposed “PC” behavior, the vast majority of the time they’re misrepresenting things. Maybe this time is the exception, but I doubt it.
Y’know, I apologize: I was too hasty in dismissing this story as an example of political correctness. On careful rereading, there’s some very vicious PC behavior going on. To wit:
In other words, politicians unhappy with efforts at diversity are threatening peoples’ jobs in order to get them to shut up. They’re threatening the boss’s job, knowing that’s the best way of getting underlings to shut up. And it appears to have worked, as ITR is so happy to report.
As I’ve said before, the real PC threat on campus is conservative politicians shutting down speech they don’t approve of.
Indeed, the working world, especially at the level and in the atmosphere that today’s college grads enter it, doesn’t even allow for much challenging and dismantling of thoughts, never mind wishing them away.
And yet, CU-Boulder made him Chair of his Department about a year after the little Eichman comment, and yes, it was public knowledge before his promotion.
It’s fun to play “no true Scottsman”, but Churchill was the darling of CU-Boulder and the Denver/Boulder left in a “Gosh! It’s fun to have Churchill around because he speaks Truth to Power”-way until all sorts of other publicity about his other activities and comments became public–about 5 years after the “little Eichman” crack.
And in any case, he wasn’t fired for his politics which the CU-Boulder people defended for almost 20 years, he was fired for gross plagiarism.
And what of the Dean and the tenure committee? They knew this fraud was a fake. Despite that, they approved his tenure and promotions…knowing full well that they were acting against the best interests of the student body. A disgrace and an indictment of the CU.
Help me out here. As I understand it:
-Churchill was hired by a state institution despite his, er, unorthodox political views. This is a triumph of the doctrine of free speech: had he failed a political test in order to gain an academic position, that would be political correctness run amok.
-In 2001, he said some horrible things. I think it would be fair to characterize these things as the epitome of political incorrectness in the United States, inasmuch as he blamed the victims of terrorism for their own murder by comparing them to the worst sonsofbitches in history. Unless your definition of political incorrectness is that it’s whatever Bold Conservatives like Donald Trump say, you pretty much have to consider his revolting comments as politically incorrect.
-In 2002 he was elected chair of his department. Again, no political test appears to have been applied here. Again, we have a victory of free speech over political correctness.
-In 2005, his comments became widely known, and his government employer faced severe pressure to fire him for his politically incorrect views. For a third time, the first amendment triumphed over the politically correct forces attempting to punish him for his views. The university showed tremendous fortitude in not firing him.
-In 2007, he was fired for academic misconduct. This shows that the university wasn’t merely protecting a favored nutjob, but was instead applying the rules in the manner they should have been applied.
So…what lesson do you want us to take from this? That UC is a hotbed of political correctness? Because that makes no sense: the forces of political correctness, of enforcing politically correct thought, were marshalled entirely against Churchill’s incorrect (and, again, repulsive) thoughts. This story shows us the system resisting politically correct forces from the conservative side.
Are we supposed to see that Churchill is in the mainstream of leftist thought? Because I ain’t seeing that at all in this story.
What’s your proof for any of these claims?
Yes, the school can set its own guidelines but I believe the point is that the guidelines are stupidly PC. I think John Mace is exactly right.
John’s point has been that mistletoe is no more Christmasy than a decorated tree, but decorated trees are allowed. By his reasoning, it’d be equally okay to forbid decorated trees as to forbid mistletoe, at official gatherings. Do you agree that that’d be fine, and that the only problem is superficial inconsistency?
Again: the stupidly PC actions we’ve seen in this thread include legislators threatening college presidents, and great swaths of the American public trying to get a professor fired, for undesirable speech. Next to that, someone mayyybe including an item on the list of too-religious items that didn’t belong there is profoundly trivial.
I’m a fan of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. They are:
1 - Be Proactive
2 - Begin with the End in Mind
3 - Put First Things First
4 - Think Win-Win
5 - Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
6 - Synergize
7 - Sharpen the Saw
These are some great guide lines but looking at them, I dont see anything about whining over some crap you feel uncomfortable with and I definitely dont see anything about creating zones where only persons of a particular color skin can go to.
So my point is, I dont see anything in the PC crap that will help a student to get ahead or be a success in life. It teaches only victim hood and bad habits.
No, I think the point is that any guidelines on what decorations are ok and which are not is stupidly PC. The trees/mistletoe debate was a side-track: not only are decoration guidelines stupid, the ones in the given example are inanely arbitrary (trees allowed, mistletoe is not).
Seriously? You think it’s PC for an employer to tell its employees, “Please don’t put up nativity scenes in public areas, as it’ll send the wrong message about our official stance on religion”? If that’s what you’re saying, oookay.
Uh, thinking that Christianity shouldn’t suggest how Christmas is celebrated is ridiculous. As far as how Christmas is celebrated, it should reign supreme. Kinda obvious, really. John Mace has it completely right on this whole issue.
If you can’t see the proscription of something as benign as personal holiday displays (mistletoe?!?) as PC I don’t know what else to tell you.
Regarding the OP, I largely think “kids these days” complaints are unfounded. Every generation complains about the next one and while I do believe the examples in this thread are PC run amok, over all I think they’ll be ok.
I am sure plenty of anthropologists (i.e. forensic or physical anthropologists) and some sociologists (especially those who perform statistical analysis or models) would be surprised to find that their field isn’t “technical.” Those two disciplines in particular are very broad and include a lot of very different types of scholarship, some of it very STEM oriented. Even the most “liberal arts” sounding discipline will have scholars who perform very “scientific” work.
I also think that some scholars in the hardest of hard sciences perform arcane research that has little practical value or tangible benefit. Some scholars in the most “impractical” fields really change lives in meaningful ways.
I am a faculty member at a small teaching-oriented campus that I’d hardly call the ivory tower.
I am probably gratingly politically correct to many people, especially outside of academia, when it comes to the language I employ for race, ethnicity, gender, and other terms that describe identity. But I think I simply aim to use the most accurate or precise words. For instance, in scholarly literature (not everyday conversation), I often advise students to avoid using a broad term like “Hispanic” or “Native American” when a more specific group such as “First Generation Mexican American” or “Eastern Band of Cherokee” is the topic of a paper or study. This is not due to political correctness, but the need to be specific and avoid generalizations about very large categories that may or may not be accurate. Some students initially react as if I simply disapprove of the word. However, I have no opinion on what term a person uses in ordinary conversation or class discussion, provided it is not a slur, but when it comes to scholarly work, precision in these terms is important.
Uh, isn’t this entire thread about trying to move victimhood from one group and set of beliefs onto another? Or is it different in this case because THIS TIME, they REALLY are victims?
So then what am I? Should I just go by “white” or “caucasian” or should I say “Euro-American”? I guess one should break it down by European country.
And another, what if the person doesnt want the hyphen? Yes, my grandparents came from Germany and Sweden but I dont identify with those countries or cultures. My black coworker doesnt want to be identified with Africa. He DOES however, have enormous pride in being from Arkansas.
And now in this modern world more people live an online personality and want to be identified with that.
I’m not sure what you mean. My point is to un-teach this “I’m a victim” mentality and push on to better things.
Since I never said that Christianity shouldn’t suggest how Christmas is celebrated, this is a complete non sequitur.
Your point is hopping all over the place. I was responding to this specific incident, in which a non-religious college issued a document with several sets of advice, including advice to employees on how to make their at-work winter holiday celebrations non-religious. You responded that any such advice is PC, and I strongly disagree with that. Now you appear to be saying that only advice about something like mistletoe is PC. So I ask again: You think it’s PC for an employer to tell its employees, “Please don’t put up nativity scenes in public areas, as it’ll send the wrong message about our official stance on religion”?
I had pretty much accepted that all these claims about creeping PC police on college campuses were true. And then I read this thread, and see that there might be two legitimate examples, and can’t help feeling that I’ve been fooled by the media again. Liberal bias indeed.