. I’m sorry, but if I am hiring an instructor I want to know what they are going to be teaching. If there is no state mandated curriculum (as you would find in elementary through high school) then a review of the texts that will be assigned is in order. In this case, she was being hired to present a workshop.
• Oh yeah. She was listed in the “Very Special Thanks” portion of credits for Making ‘Nemo’
This is all info that I found in a few minutes online. I would certainly hope that UD would dig a little deeper, and review what her course material is.
Imagine this scenario: University of California, Berkeley hires a professor to teach Sex, Reproduction and the Law (currently listed as Legal Studies 168). The course description says:
But suppose the professor pushes an abstinence agenda or is strictly anti-abortion? Should the university have already seen what kind of course work she has done and what materials she distributes? If they haven’t, then they are incompetent in their hiring. If they have, however, then they have apparently agreed to some extent with what she is teaching.
Maybe calling it “gross” incompetence is a little strong. Laziness might be a better term.
As a faculty member at a large state university, and as a former residence life professional, I think this “controversy” is somewhat overblown. Kimstu has done an excellent job of explaining the trainer’s definition of racist - it’s possible that the trainer used this definition to spark controversy and debate. While I personally disagree with the definition, I think it is more of an issue of terminology rather than intent. White privilege is real; one cannot opt out of a privileged status. At the same time, it is very possible to experience the pain of prejudicial and racist behaviors, regardless of one’s ethnicity. And privilege is contextual: if a White male wants to gain acceptance in a group of Black males, for instance, the White male may find that other Black males have advantages in gaining acceptance in that context. (One could argue that these circumstances are few and far between, but that’s another discussion.) Last, privilege is not only the domain of White people - there is native English speaker privilege, male privilege, high- and middle SES privilege, and so forth. It’s possible to be privileged in some aspect of identity and not in others.
It’s not unusual to bring in speakers or trainers who will make controversial or challenging statements. A more apt criticism would come from someone who participated in the training - did the speaker invite comments and answer questions about this particular definition? Did participants walk away feeling as if they learned from the experience? I don’t know enough about this speaker to completely condemn her work, though I can certainly critique what I feel is an intellectually lazy definition of an inflammatory word.
Ann Coulter’s been not only shouted off stage, but physically attacked.
Jim Gilchrist, head of the “Minutemen” group that’s been supplementing the Border Patrol efforts by tracking Mexican illegal immigrants and holding them for removal, has been shouted off stage. So have other memebrs of the Minutemen group.
Stephane Dion, a Liberal MP in Ottawa, was booed off the stage in the days following his support of an anti-union measure.
Richard Hofstadter was shouted off stage at San Francisco University by leftists.
Willaim Shockley was shouted off stage at Yale after suggesting support for eugenics.
Michelle Malkin has been attacked by students throwing pies to derail her speeches on campus.
Could you give dates (even something general, like “in the past year”) for these? It makes a difference, I think, if you’re talking about stuff that’s happened in the past year or two, or in the past decade or two. (I note, for instance, that Richard Hofstadter died in 1970, and William Shockley in 1989.)
Richard Hofstadter has been dead for 37 years. Are his experiences really germane to the current issue of free speech on campus?
Ann Coulter came to speak at my university a few years ago. I attended, and wrote a report about it on these Boards.
There was a small group of vocal protesters who attempted to drown out her speech by yelling and screaming, and it really annoyed the hell out me. That sort of behavior really accomplishes nothing; it doesn’t change Coulter’s views, nor those of her supporters (indeed, it probably helps confirm them), and nor does it actually accomplish anything for those of us who can’t stand her.
Try to shout down someone like that, and you end up looking more crazy than she does. It’s better to listen to her (generally completely ridiculous) arguments, and rebut them. It’s rare that anyone’s mind is changed because the other person just yells more loudly.
Feel guilty for your family equity! Getting ahead is all about inequality. Inequality is the entire point of capitalism, it’s what drives it. No one wants equality, they want to be on the winning side of inequality. I’m sorry if your ancestors were not on the winning side.
So here’s to being a racist even if you have no animosity whatsoever against people because they are of a certain race. My cultural equity makes me a racist!
I’ve already said that I think it’s a bad idea to use the word “racism” to designate the idea described by the definition. But the concept of a racially based power structure did certainly at one point exist in the USA, as recently as in my lifetime. You can argue with the word used but we can’t say that the concept never existed.
You know, I think I’m coming to realize how brilliant Dr. Shakti Brown really is. At long last, we’re all victims. All of us. It’s a fucking masterpiece of social theory, and I for one salute Dr. Brown for her breakthrough work in disempowering absolutely everyone while simultaneously accomplishing jack fucking shit in terms of constructively improving race relations.
Ann Coulter’s been not only shouted off stage, but physically attacked, in October 2004.
Jim Gilchrist, head of the “Minutemen” group that’s been supplementing the Border Patrol efforts by tracking Mexican illegal immigrants and holding them for removal, has been shouted off stage. So have other memebrs of the Minutemen group, within the past two years.
Stephane Dion, a Liberal MP in Ottawa, was booed off the stage in the days following his support of an anti-union measure this year.
Richard Hofstadter was shouted off stage at San Francisco University by leftists in 1969.
Willaim Shockley was shouted off stage at Yale after suggesting support for eugenics in 1974.
Michelle Malkin has been attacked by students throwing pies to derail her speeches on campus several times in the past two years.
If it were just instances from the late sixties and 1970s-era events, I’d certainly agree that it was old news. But it’s not. And here’s a few to replace the two you’ve apparently disqualified based on age:
In 2005, Howard Dean debated former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle at Pacific University. Perle’s ability to engage in debate was hampered not only by the jeering and booing from the crowd but by a protestor throwing a shoe at him.
In 2005, Pat Bucahan was attacked by a student protestor during his speech at Western Michigan University who screamed “Stop the bigotry” at Buchanan and then threw salad dressing on the man.
And I won’t count Pim Fortuyn, who was hit by urine-laced pies in 2002. He wasn’t speaking at a university.
I agree. I was responding to the inference offered by Bridget Burke that such incidents don’t really exist. They do, and they are obviously not representative of liberalism as a whole, nor are they particularly effective. But they happen, which she seemed to deny.
This seems to contradict the OP’s contention that institutional anti-conservative bias is preventing conservative ideas from gaining a fair hearing on campus (“why don’t they just rename their stupid school the Ministry of Truth”, etc.).
All of these seem to be incidents where the university in question officially invited a conservative or non-leftist speaker to proclaim his/her views on its campus, or made its facilities available to a campus group who invited him/her. It wasn’t the institutions themselves that denied conservatives a fair hearing; on the contrary, it was the institutions who invited the conservatives (in some cases at significant expense, too) to make their views known on campus. What interfered with the speakers’ getting a fair hearing was the actions of a certain subset of the campus community.
I agree that boorish hostile students should not be shouting down the remarks of an invited speaker or attempting to disrupt their speech, much less physically attacking them. But the actions of some boorish hostile students should not be confused with the institution’s attitude toward diversity of ideas and freedom of speech and transcendence of “liberal orthodoxy”. The institutions seem to have clearly shown their support for those concepts by inviting conservative speakers in the first place.
Kimstu, oftentimes, conservative speakers are invited by independent student organizations, not by the universities themselves. And sometimes the protesters receive tacit support fronm the universities when their actions are not punished or held up as examples of students exercising free speech.
Hmm, I’d like to see some evidence of that. And I definitely think that students merely protesting about the presence or remarks of an invited speaker they disagree with are fully entitled to do so. That is indeed a valid exercise of free speech.
Where I draw the line is at students using violence or riotous disturbance in attempting to prevent a legitimately invited speaker from being heard by the legitimately participating attendees who want to hear him/her.
Sorry I didn’t address that…I was actually typing on my blackberry and had to make it brief! Of course, a campus has to make their facilities available to all groups equally. I can’t imagine how a school would get away with anything different.
I will try to dig up some cites when I get a chance. You might try FIRE’s website, which I think was already linked to.
Well, of course. Student protests of ANY speaker should not only be tolerated but encouraged. Would you think I would say anything different?
Unfortunately, students do a lot of dumb things all the time. Students scrawl graffiti including anti-gay slurs and the N-word, for example (I’ve seen it several times at schools where I’ve taught). I wouldn’t interpret that tendency as an indication that the schools are trying to indoctrinate students with anti-black and homophobic prejudices. By the same token, I wouldn’t interpret assholish student behavior at controversial lectures as an indication that the schools are trying to indoctrinate students with disrespect for diverse viewpoints and freedom of speech.
As if I care, since I’m not the OP. I was responding to Bridget Burke, who expressed skepticism that such incidents exist, likening the claim to the fake moon landing claims.
As it happens, though, this doesn’t prove what you think it proves. If the speaker is invited by the University apparatus, it does; if the speaker is invited by a group affiliated with the University, then it proves nothing.
In other words, if the University of South Liberalism invites Ann Coulter to speak, we may fairly assume that (at a minimum) they are making the effort to offer students a rounded view of the various positions out there. If Coulter is invited by the Young Bigots Club, though, it means nothing.
You lump these two cases together, and they should not be. The University may well be virulently anti-conservative but realize it would look bad to deny the Young Bigots their ability to invite guest speakers while at the same time permitting the Students for the Ethical Treatment of Global Warming Anthropomorphic Transgendered Animals to invite guests.
But even if you were to show that each and every case was of a University extending the invitation directly, it’s irrelevant to my point, which was that Bridget Burke was so far off base that to her, the base is a little tiny point.
This seems to contradict the OP’s contention that institutional anti-conservative bias is preventing conservative ideas from gaining a fair hearing on campus (“why don’t they just rename their stupid school the Ministry of Truth”, etc.).