I recently read an article somewhere, I don’t remember where, because I wasn’t paying much attention. Anyway, I didn’t read the whole thing, but in there somewhere it quoted a York University Student, one Sarah Grunfeld, as saying: 'Jews should be sterilized’
Now I don’t know if she was quoting someone, or what the context was (because I didn’t read the whole article, and I was looking out the window at the time), but I think her comments were offensive. She said these words.
I think you should issue a press release trying to get her thrown out of the University. Of course, you don’t need to look into this further - just take my word for it, since I think I saw this quote somewhere. Anyway, she’s probably not even really Jewish.
While that’s fine so far as it avoids offending anyone, it also fails to accomplish the intended goal. I mean, the point is to distinguish between dangerous statements and offensive statements, and I doubt anyone in your classes is overly protective of Martian reproductive rights…
The intended goal is to get the point across to the students, which will not be accomplished if the students get too distracted by the inflammatory words.
I get that, i guess, but it seems to me that being part of an intellectual environment should involve learning how to think critically and logically even when the words or the ideas themselves are offensive or inflammatory.
For example, i think it’s worth taking some effort to make sure students understand that, as offensive as the word might be, there are incredibly important differences between using the word “nigger” in a discussion of, say, Mark Twain’s writing, and using it to actually describe a black person. Similarly, there’s an important difference between offering “All Jews should be sterilized” as a personal opinion, and offering it as an example of a historical idea that has had incredibly destructive results.
If students can’t or won’t make these distinctions, then we might as well close down the universities, because this is precisely the sort of critical and contextual thinking that institutions of higher education should be teaching.
Oh, Christ, take a look at the student’s media statement about the whole event. I’m quoting the whole thing because a media release is, by definition, designed to be circulated, and because the release itself says that it is only to be used in its entirety:
I sure hope this ignorant moron never visits the Holocaust museum in DC. Their displays of anti Semitic propaganda will make her head explode!
I’m seriously caught up in this story, especially reading the follow up statements that she and some Jewish organizations have put out. I have this terrible need to find out that this girl has suffered some real consequences for her actions, especially after doubling and tripling down as she has.
I guess I really abhor aggressive stupidity, the kind of stupid that not only starts out stupid, but attacks the non-stupid, is incapable of monitoring or checking the stupid when red flags should be going up, and which runs the very real risk of causing havoc and doing harm.
Oh, HELL no. I could see her firing off a civil suit the first time someone refers to a boiler as “she,” because it would marginalize all women, everywhere, throughout history.
And yes I do research every person I interview to see what they say. It’s stunning what they’ll put in their blogs or facebook accounts - thinking no one will ever find out that they “hate niggers” or “OMFG i say a ghey get kicked it was rotflll!” or “girl, you KNOWZ I likes to do some BLOW at lunch!” :rolleyes: I found one person who posted in their facebook account the day before they interviewed that they thought a) my company sucked but they might “settle” for a job here, and b) they hoped no one checked their personal references because one of them was fake. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Okay, I took some solace in reading Twitter comments on the matter. Some are suggesting that Grunfeld should be turned into a verb, meaning something like “to dramatically over-react to one’s own stupid misunderstanding.”
For instance, Emily Littella was a character on SNL who, when confronted with the fact that she had once again grunfelded, would simply say, “Never mind.”
Sometimes what people say or do on the internet is not really indicative of how they act in real life, or on the job. Of course, if someone is openly bashing your company before interviewing, that’s another thing alltogether, heheh.
She seems to enjoy being a git. So, she’s saying she’s been improperly ridiculed by the media only because she thought University officials had told her the professor had erred. So, she adds no argument to the cluelessness of her reporting but hides behind “Authorities” that showed how cowardly they can be, a first time for her benefit, and a second time, against her.
Some people should be sterilized. Her folks, presumably.
Baby steps. Kids fresh out of high school need to be weened into critical thinking.
That the woman who made the complaint was a senior undergraduate speaks volumes about the critical thinking skills that she did not develop during university.
This idiocy reminds me of the 2008 case in which an employee of Indiana University was accused of racial harassment because he was reading a book about how Notre Dame students successfully overcame the local KKK in 1924.
The 50ish campus janitor was an avid reader who read books on his break time. One day he was reading the critically acclaimed Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. A shop steward told Sampson that reading a book about the KKK was like bringing pornography to work and then another co-worker remarked that she found the KKK offensive. Sampson, the janitor, tried to explain what the book was really about but they refused to listen.
A racial harassment charge was filed and the university reprimanded Sampson, saying “You demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your coworkers who repeatedly requested that you refrain from reading the book which has such an inflammatory and offensive topic in their presence…you used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black coworkers.”