A question regarding this, and many others like it:
I wonder whether this absurdity is going to continue indefinitely, stretching into the future, beyond my lifetime. Or will it peter out, like any fad, and then be remembered with some embarrassment?
Via Karl.
Consider this an open thread.
The university became aware of the post Monday morning, Wilson said in his email. The professor, whose identity was not revealed, works in the university’s English department… “The post stated that rather than ‘shouting down’ those with whom we disagree, one would be justified to commit murder to silence them,” Wilson wrote.
According to the educator in question, Steven Shaviro, “It is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.” What unfailing criteria might be used to determine such things, and how those gorged on indignation might avoid error, prior to any murder attempt, isn’t made clear.
The professor goes on to blame “right wing” student groups for inviting speakers who “provoke” leftist students – who mustn’t be expected to have any kind of self-possession – making them behave in ways that are threatening and delinquent, even sociopathic. Behaviour illustrated here many, many times – as, for instance, at Middlebury College, where the 74-year-old scholar Charles Murray, a contender for the title of World’s Most Polite Man, was physically chased off campus.
Says our educator,
Or put another way, “How dare you try to discredit leftist Mao-lings by even briefly existing in their proximity and thus making them want to murder you.” I paraphrase, of course, but not enormously.
Update, via the comments:
Given sufficient squinting, readers may have noticed the professor’s tiny rhetorical fig leaf. We’re told that he doesn’t advocate breaking the law – by murdering someone for shits and giggles – he merely admires it, a lot. And so, if, for example, a woman says that she doesn’t think a mentally ill man should be using the women’s changing rooms and toilets – and is then murdered for her “transphobia” – this would be a good thing and “far more admirable” than merely ganging up on her and preventing her from speaking.
He’s an intellectual, you know. A terribly caring intellectual.
Update 2:
In the comments, Pete R adds,
No, not really. This, remember, is a man for whom demurral on a wide range of contentious topics is by definition “reprehensible” and, in his mind, could only exist in order to “provoke” the righteous and good-hearted, i.e., people much like himself, who fantasise about menacing and killing those who disagree with them. Note the implication at the end of his post – that after murdering someone – say, someone who doesn’t think that dysmorphic men and autogynephile perverts are actually women – one should be acquitted, as one’s actions would have been “justified.”
These sentiments don’t suggest a detached thought experiment or some devil’s advocacy. More a sociopathic urge. Maybe inside our professor’s head, there’s a loud, relentless buzzing noise.
This shaper of young minds, a self-styled “Kitsch Marxist,” has been suspended with pay.
Previously in the world of totally balanced educators.
Via Tom Joyce.
From the pages of the Guardian:
“More than 400 hairdressers have attended workshops” to “role-play how conversations might go.”
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
As old as time, the awkward threesome. || You want one and you know it. || Broad daylight heist. || Happy ending. || Today her name is Horus. || “Emily is a woman,” says Dr Fielding. || Fatty Fatgirl and other fashion brands. || Because you demanded it, the thrill of women’s basketball. || On concept cars. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || A compendium of CT scans. || Cocaine cat and other tales. || Shuttlecock calibration. || Today’s word is predation. || She’s not driving, she’s travelling. || Temple of note. || Fresh milk with bits. || Bit much, really. || Nommy nommy nom. || That’s not what I was expecting. || Trampoline 2.0 || And finally, because you deserve it, a project for the weekend.
Should you be tempted, you can follow me on Twitter.
Heather Mac Donald on the feminised university and its pathologies:
Female dominance of the campus population is intimately tied to the rhetoric of unsafety and victimhood. Females on average score higher than males on the personality trait of neuroticism, defined as anxiety, emotional volatility, and susceptibility to depression. (Mentioning this long-accepted psychological fact got James Damore fired from Google.) Victorian neurasthenia has been reborn on campuses today as alleged trauma inflicted by such monuments of Western literature as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Hearing an argument that chromosomes, not whim, make males male and females female is another source of alleged existential threat.
When students claim to be felled by ideas that they disagree with, the feminised bureaucracy does not tell them to grow up and get a grip. It validates their self-pity… The most far-reaching effects of the feminised university are the intolerance of dissent from political orthodoxy and the attempt to require conformity to that orthodoxy. This intolerance is justified in the name of safety and “inclusivity.”
Christopher Rufo has some related thoughts:
Apparently, the way to entrance others and to suddenly become fascinating is to make yourself your own go-to subject.
And Anna Slatz on “inclusivity” and questionable role models:
I have, of late, been starving you of artistic sustenance. Here, let me fix that with a big dollop of the stuff. Specifically, some “performance documentation” from Manhattan’s Grace Exhibition Space. The mighty talent featured in the following video is artist, educator and “community organiser” Alex Romania, whose work teeters on the edge of profundity, as will doubtless become clear, via juddering and convulsion, and the strategic deployment of 25 pounds of powdered cheese.
Come, sup ye at the teats of creativity.
Via Mr Muldoon, a tale of what sounds like mid-life contrivance:
Imagine the fun.
The contriver in question is Amanda Elend, a scrupulously progressive woman whose list of causes is extensive, if somewhat predictable. She tells us,
Ah, the basis of any sound marriage.
Coinciding, oddly enough, with the big four-oh:
The idea of having an identity – one with boutique status and complications that have to be danced around in an affirming manner – is terribly important to Ms Elend. And as we’ve seen, self-definition is very in right now, and quite competitive. Plus, there’s so much potential for chiding and rituals of atonement:
Ms Elend’s children, aged six and nine, were also informed of their mother’s elevation to the role of Fascinating Being:
The word husband is used intermittently. Sometimes it’s partner.
“Can we still call you mom?” my 9-year-old asked.
You see, every small child wants a mom whose new pronouns have to be memorised, and who reveals that their family is suddenly conditional, one option among many. A mom who, in middle-age, is still on a journey of self-absorption – sorry, self-discovery – and who could at any moment become a radically different, and altogether more fashionable, kind of entity. Quite what a six-year-old is supposed to do with such information, beyond feeling confused or insecure, is unclear.
I don’t want to rush you, but the ground is approaching. || Dissonant vibes. || Gritty crime drama. || Suboptimal scenario. (h/t, pst314) || A soap manufacturer speaks. || For those who dislike dusting. || Today’s word is inadvisable. || Throws like a girl. || How menfolk pass the time. || Crashing into the Moon. || With 47,000 amps and quite a big magnet. || You know, I’m not entirely sure what the plan was. || I didn’t know this was a job. || Also a job, it seems. || This is more of a hobby, possibly a sport. || Attention, all landlords, the tenant of your dreams. || Attention, all black men, a tempting offer. || Seen from inside. || Assorted rotating sandwiches. || And finally, good news for the big-footed transsexual.
Should you be tempted, you can follow me on Twitter.
From the University of Oxford’s Department of Biology, a new opportunity for ostentatious fretting:
A suitably concerned survey of the scientific names of African vertebrates revealed – presumably, to gasps and much rending of garments – that,
The rewards, I would guess, of doing the actual leg work, and of funding said leg work, resulting in, well, knowledge.
However, all this whiteness and maleness is, for some, terribly troubling. Among them, Associate Professor of Conservation Science, Ricardo Rocha:
Actually, and while I can claim no expertise, I’d guess that rewriting the entire scientific literature, in any number of countries, to alter thousands of obscure Latin names, which very few people know or remotely care about, in order to accommodate modern political fashion – which is what this is – might be rather impractical, somewhat confusing, and perhaps not the best use of limited resources.
Undeterred, our associate professor continues his tearful trajectory:
To ruminate deeply on the issues of the day:
Stanford Law School Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Tirien Steinbach then intervened – not to admonish the students, but to spend several minutes berating the Judge for having the audacity to appear at Stanford Law School, which was traumatic to the students given his conservative judicial decisions.
Among the Judge’s supposedly harmful and traumatising views are his belief that dysmorphic men and autogynephile perverts should not venture into ladies’ toilets and changing rooms, and a refusal to use the preferred pronouns of a transgender sex offender, an enthusiast of pornography featuring children.
Other screamed objections to this “cis-het white man” included the outrage of his being brought “into the classroom building where our students have to go every day to be able to get this degree and participate in this community.” Apparently, mere proximity – even sought-out proximity – to a person with whom they disagree causes students of law, would-be intellectuals, to “feel unsafe.” Demurral, it seems, results in “tearing the fabric of this community.” This, from students and staff who accused the Judge of “wanting an echo chamber.”
Video of this performative, self-applauding wankery – by students and Ms Steinbach, a supposedly grown woman – can be found at the link above, with a longer version here. Of the four university administrators present at the event – acting dean of student affairs Jeanne Merino, associate director of student affairs Holly Parish, student affairs coordinator Megan Brown, and Ms Steinbach – none saw fit to ask that the invited guest be allowed to actually speak.
Stanford, since you ask, is ranked the second most prestigious law school in the United States, with annual tuition a mere $66,000.
Update, via the comments:
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