U. Wisconsin Oshkosh Prof to Students: Drop This Class if You’re Triggered by Free Speech
“In this course, we study literature from cultures that existed before you were born.”
Can we make this a national policy, somehow?
The Blaze reports:
Professor’s contract with students: ‘Drop the class immediately if you are triggered by free speech’
A professor has taken a novel approach when it comes to dealing with the increasing number of students railing against and even shutting down academic ideas they don’t agree with: a contract.
James “Duke” Pesta, an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, presents a two-page contract to his students on the first day of class that asks them to drop the course if they are “triggered” or offended by certain ideas or beliefs.
What does the contract say?
“In this course, we study literature from cultures that existed before you were born. Their world is not our world. Their beliefs may not be our beliefs. No one asks you to believe or endorse any premise, attitude, precept, theology, political system, or ideology contained in these books or expressed in class. Nor will you ever lose points or be docked grades because of your opinion (written, oral, or otherwise),” the contract’s Statement of Purpose reads, the College Fix said.
“We will not malign or trivialize these texts because they do not always parrot our values. We will not assume these books are racist, sexist, or homophobic because of the period in which they were written, or because of the race, class, gender, or religion of the authors,” the contract also says, the outlet reported. “People who approach alien cultures with such preconceived notions are bigots masquerading as critically sophisticated advocates, often in the name of ‘social justice.’ Persons who so diminish the past are neither social nor just, especially when they compel students to adopt their biases.”
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Comments
If you’re triggered by free speech you belong in the original safe space … Mommy’s house. Don’t come out until you grow up.
Excellent! May others follow suit.
Enough of this pandering to the snowflakes/sjw crowd.
Sadly far too many of the Professors/Associate Professors are part of the “SJW crowd”. If not an actual part of the crowd (I believe the majority), then they are afraid to confront the crowd and the inmates are running the asylum.
I often read columns by conservative writer Mike Adams, a professor of criminology at University of North Carolina, who has frequently butted heads with the misguided SJW Liberal administration and their student minions.
Awhile back he started the first day of each semester with a shot across the bow of every aspiring SJW snowflake who might be attending his class. In part it includes the following:
“You have a right to be offended with regularity,” he told the class. “It is the price you pay for living in a free society. If you don’t understand that you are confused and dangerously so.”
Right up front — and regularly thereafter — he unashamedly “reads” the quasi-Miranda right to “be offended” with the counterpart of encouraging the free exchange and debate of ideas.
These professors are examples who hopefully will inspire others to stand up to the Terrible Twos Temper Tantrums and Tirades that the Left has embraced as their go-to M.O.
What would Mario Savio think?
Go, Professor Pesta! When I taught Constitutional Argument & Research, I did something similar. In ten years of teaching, I only had one student who dropped the class on the first day because she said she couldn’t take hearing opposing views. (Oh, and one guy dropped the class because he said there was too much work in the syllabus. Then, he trashed me on RateMyProfessors.com for demanding too much of my students.)
Anyone want the over/under on when he’s fired?