In progressive academia, that blueprint of utopia, it appears there’s some unrest: 

Black and Latino student groups at the University of Florida recently protested a plan to house their organisations in one building, saying it would erase and marginalise their black and brown bodies and their cultures at the predominantly white institution.

The university had revealed plans for a U-shaped building that would accommodate both organisations:

The two groups would each get their own wing of the building and simply share a walkway and elevator. 

Sounds swanky.

But members of the Institute of Black Culture and the Institute of Hispanic-Latino Culture expressed fury at the plan.

You see, being so pious, and so very, very special, they mustn’t endure proximity to the wrong level of melanin, what with the risk of contagion and a loss of specialness. A student organiser of the protests, Daniel Clayton, said,

My main complaint to the University administration… is that we are not taken seriously at all. It is not appropriate to dismiss student concerns as being ludicrous.

However, inevitably, university administrators have been cowed by the usual histrionic rumblings and have agreed to build the immensely tolerant groups two entirely separate buildings. And with equal inevitability, the students are now insisting that the new buildings, the cost of which is unclear, should be “visibly distinct from the rest of campus.”

A University of Tampa professor recently suggested that Texans deserve the fallout from Hurricane Harvey because of their support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. “I don’t believe in instant Karma but this kinda feels like it for Texas,” Professor Ken Storey wrote.

Another ‘progressive’ educator swollen with compassion and floating above us on a higher moral plane. 

One of Storey’s followers responded to the tweet by noting that there are “lots of good people in Texas,” and so he “may want to rethink this one.” “Well, the good people there need to do more to stop the evil their state pushes. I’m only blaming those who support the GOP there,” Storey elaborated, to which the same commenter replied by asking if he thinks the same about Trump supporters in Florida. “Yep, those who voted for him here deserve it as well,” Storey answered, though he later deleted his Twitter account.

Because when you hear of random people trapped and terrified, or learning that their loved ones were swept away and drowned, and when the local police chief is worried about “how many bodies” they’re going to find, the first thing you want to know, the really important thing, is, obviously, how they voted.

Oh. He teaches sociology, before you ask.

Ben Sixsmith on “open borders” posturing:

But what of the proposed merits of open borders? A consistent failure of the Economist’s article is a reluctance to distinguish between different migrants. If one finds the study, it turns out that 54% of the men and women who expressed a desire to migrate came from Africa and the Middle East — with another 20% being from Central America. Yet the most successful immigrants, in terms of launching businesses and earning wealth, have been found to hail from Asia and Europe. A UCL study found that European immigrants to Britain contribute more to the economy than they take from it, while the opposite is true for non-European immigrants. It is senseless, then, to claim, as the author of the Economist article does, that immigrants are “more likely than the native-born to bring new ideas and start their own businesses.” Immigrants do not come from “Immigrantland.” Population differences related to entrepreneurial and earning potential are real, and significant, and difficult to bridge. 

Worth reading in full, I think.

David Rutz on the “woke eight-year-old” manoeuvre: 

The phenomenon came to my attention via @Neontaster, who discovered this trend of eight-year-olds (or children of a similar age, depending on their Woke Quotients) whose opinions, shockingly, seem to perfectly mirror those of their progressive parents… Let’s state the obvious: When pundits tweet out these little stories, all they’re doing is sending out their own opinions, but doing so in a way that (a) makes them look like great parents for raising such emotionally advanced children, and (b) shields them from criticism. Because what kind of jerk is going to attack a child, for God’s sake?

And what kind of person, I wonder, would be that preening and dishonest. And while we ponder that. 

Madeleine Kearns, a young Scottish woman, on a bewildering year at a ‘progressive’ New York university: 

It was soon obvious to my fellow students that I was not quite with the programme. In a class discussion early in my first semester, I made the mistake of mentioning that I believed in objective standards in art. Some art is great, some isn’t, I said; not all artists are equally talented. This was deemed an undemocratic opinion and I was given a nickname: the cultural fascist. I’ve tried to take it affectionately.

Tim Newman on life skills and the lack thereof: 

What isn’t normal is for a kid to run around swearing. Letting slip a swear word indicates the kid has his ears open. Running around swearing indicates his parents don’t care, and if they don’t care about his language you can be absolutely sure they don’t care about other things, some of which are essential to his development. A child who routinely uses bad language, especially in front of adults, is not going to do very well in life.

And again, entirely unrelated, of course, on polyamory and children: 

Were any of these friends shagging either or both of your parents? I ask mainly to understand how you’ve turned out.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Another do-it-yourself, I’m afraid, so by all means share your own links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with a guide to the five stages; why friends don’t let friends write for the Guardian; how to swear in sign language; a real-time map of tracked traffic; and a heart-warming tale of when car-jacking goes awry. 

Oh, and via dicentra: Anyone need a lift?