With expectations of competent spelling:

[Professor Inoue] will lecture about “language standards that just kill our students” by subjecting them to “single standards,” which perpetuate “White language supremacy.”

You see, those composition classes you’re paying for, or that some poor sap is paying for, shouldn’t teach students how to write clearly. Instead, “compassionate” classrooms should be grounded in “dimension-based rubrics” and “labour-based contracts,” which presumably reward the length of time a student spends getting something wrong, repeatedly, irrespective of whether they actually, eventually, get it right; thereby avoiding “white racial habits of language.” It’s the path to “a socially just future,” apparently. And not, as one might suppose, somewhat narrowed hopes of employment. Because an “anti-racist” education, at a university, should ideally leave its beneficiaries sounding uneducated. With mangled conjugation, missing verbs, and saying axe instead of ask.

Professor Inoue has, of course, been mentioned here before.

Very much related, this. In which, fellow “social justice” enthusiast Dr A W Strouse informs us that correcting errors of spelling and basic grammar can “make students feel bewildered, hurt, or angry,” and should therefore be avoided. We’re also told that job applicants who, as graduates, struggle with even elementary spelling, should bristle at any acknowledgement of this shortcoming, telling potential employers – and I quote – “Fuck you.”  

Update, via the comments: 

Christopher Rufo on excusing habitual crime, in the name of “intersectionality”: 

The latest fad in criminal-justice activism is the concept of “survival crime.” The theory holds that the homeless, the poor, and people of colour commit property crimes and low-level infractions in order to secure their basic survival. Any enforcement of these laws is thus a violation of their basic human rights… Survival-crime theory argues that local governments should decriminalise [property crime, drug possession, and public nuisance] offences because vulnerable individuals have been compelled by social conditions to commit them… Over the past five years, the classification of survival crime has expanded well beyond stealing the proverbial loaf of bread. In California, for instance, Proposition 47 downgraded theft of property valued at less than $950 to a misdemeanour, meaning that the police are unlikely to pursue even habitual shoplifters and thieves. The predictable result: a state-wide rise in petty theft. 

Exempting favoured identity groups from the normal consequences of predatory and antisocial behaviour is the Hot New Fairness, apparently, at least among the enlightened. And if someone steals your phone or laptop, it would be wrong of you to protest, especially if the thief happens to be “of colour” and therefore, obviously, entitled to your stuff. Mugging, it turns out, is a form of “social justice.” We’ve been here before, of course. As when the Harvard-educated sociology professor Crystal Fleming championed the recreational looting of trainers, in bulk, and other fashion items, on grounds that the law-abiding are “hoarding resources.” 

Somewhat related, Heather Mac Donald on school indiscipline and so-called “disparate impact” policies:

When I became an anarchist, I was 18, depressed, anxious, and ready to save the world. I moved in with other anarchists and worked at a vegetarian co-op cafe. I protested against student tuition, prison privatisation, and pipeline extensions. I had lawyer’s numbers sharpied on my ankle and I assisted friends who were pepper-sprayed at demos. I tabled zines, lived with my “chosen family,” and performed slam poems about the end of the world. 

In the pages of Quillette, Conor Barnes, a woke apostate, recounts his time among sad radicals: 

Radical communities select for particular personality types… They attract hurt people, looking for an explanation for the pain they’ve endured… However, radical communities also attract people looking for an excuse to be violent illegalists. And the surplus of vulnerable people attracts sadists and abusers ready to exploit them. The only gate-keeping that goes on in radical communities is that of language and passion—if you can rail against capitalism in woke language, you’re in…

Abusers thrive in radical communities because radical norms are fragile and exploitable. A culture of freewheeling drug and alcohol use creates situations predators are waiting to exploit. A cultural fetishization of violence provides cover for violent and unstable people. The practice of public “call-outs” is used for power-plays far more often than for constructive feedback… Having somebody yell at me that if I didn’t admit to being a white supremacist her friends might beat me up, and that I should pay her for her emotional labour, was too much for my ideology to spin.

You can imagine my surprise.

Update, via the comments: 

Lower voting age to six to tackle bias against young, says academic. 

It’s a Guardian headline, since you ask. 

The head of politics at Cambridge University has called for children as young as six to be given the vote in an attempt to tackle the age bias in modern democracy. Prof David Runciman said the ageing population meant young people were now “massively outnumbered,” creating a democratic crisis and an inbuilt bias against governments that plan for the future.

Children and teenagers are of course renowned for their conscientious forethought.

In the latest episode of his podcast, Talking Politics, he said lowering the voting age to 16 was not radical enough to address the problem. He said: “I would lower the voting age to six, not 16. And I’m serious about that. I would want people who vote to be able to read, so I would exclude reception [age-children].”

Ah, a voice of moderation.

“What’s the worst that could happen? At least it would be exciting.”

Professor Runciman has, we’re told, pondered other options, such as giving extra weight to votes cast by the adolescent – in effect, allowing them to vote twice or one-and-some-fraction – but has dismissed these suggestions as, and I quote, “insane.” Given the professor’s desire to enlist an army of the credulous and hormonal, allegedly to save the world from the elderly and middle-aged, readers may be raising eyebrows as to his motives. And indeed, an alternative explanation does in fact present itself:  

Runciman suggested the Brexit vote might not have happened with a radically lower voting age.

And,

“If 16- or 17-year-olds voted in the 2017 general election, there is a chance that Jeremy Corbyn would now be prime minister.”

And then, quite suddenly, all became clear. Well, when we’ve done fretting about the catastrophic unfairness of primary-school children being unable to vote in general elections, perhaps we might turn our attention to the number of leftist educators who wish to exploit the unworldliness of your children in order to further their own socialist preferences.

The Wizard of Oz is a grotesque predictor of Trump’s America.

It says so here, in the Guardian. Specifically,

Oz is first wondrous and revelatory, then sinister and suspect, a good trip that goes wrong… It’s this lurking inner wrongness, the darkness at its edges and the emptiness at its core, that speaks to me now. 

The author of the above is Bidisha, a mono-named entity who may be familiar to long-term readers, and who describes herself, unironically, as a “non-white angry political female.” One who seems determined to find yet another staple of Christmas both ghastly and problematic:

It’s impossible to watch the newly crowned ‘most influential film ever’ without seeing the parallels to the sickly US of today.

Oh, ye doubters. Madame Bidisha has her reasons.

We can read the catastrophic effects of climate change into the tornado that sets the narrative off,

I didn’t say they would be convincing.

see the opioid crisis in the characters’ drugged sleep in Oz’s Powell and Pressburger-esque poppy field, and empathise with the mangy Lion, rusty Tin Man and under-stuffed Scarecrow’s search for organ donors and reliable medical support in an Oz without a solid welfare state.

If you think our Guardian columnist is perhaps overreaching a tad, I feel I should point out nothing that follows is likely to disabuse you.