Baylor University Prof’s Tweet About ‘Harry Potter Class’ Causes Uproar
“Today in my Harry Potter class @Baylor, we had a hard and necessary conversation about JK Rowling and her hatred of trans- people.”
This story has lots of people asking why we are even talking about ‘forgiving’ student debt.
The Christian Post reports:
Baylor University’s ‘Harry Potter’ professor goes viral after blasting JK Rowling for ‘hatred of trans people’
An English professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, went viral on X this week for tweeting about how students in his Harry Potter class have been discussing author J.K. Rowling’s alleged “hatred of trans people.”
“Today in my Harry Potter class [at Baylor], we had a hard and necessary conversation about JK Rowling and her hatred of trans- people,” Prof. Greg Garrett, the Carole Ann McDaniel Hanks Chair of Literature & Culture, tweeted on Tuesday.
“We decided novelist Rowling, who wrote with compassion about diversity, equity, and inclusion, is worth our attention. Twitter Rowling? Shame on her.”
Rowling made headlines earlier this week for tweeting out a list of biological men who identify as transgender women while calling them men and daring police in Scotland to arrest her for violating the country’s new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act.
The law, which went into effect April 1 and created a new criminal offense of “stirring up of hatred,” carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison, a £10,000 (about $12,500) fine or both. It defines hate crime as “any crime which is perceived by the victim, or any other person, to be motivated (wholly or partly) by malice and ill-will towards a social group” and enables police to log alleged “hate incidents.”
Today in my Harry Potter class @Baylor, we had a hard and necessary conversation about JK Rowling and her hatred of trans- people. We decided novelist Rowling, who wrote with compassion about diversity, equity, and inclusion, is worth our attention. Twitter Rowling? Shame on her.
— Greg Garrett (@Greg1Garrett) April 2, 2024
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
This is why we can’t get along with the loony left. There is no evidence that J.K. Rowling hates anyone. But she said something they didn’t like and they automatically smear her character with over-the-top lies. And it’s not just one person who does it, it’s become standard lefty rhetoric.
Hopefully she’ll sue this guy and the school into oblivion.
Sue him for what? He expressed his opinion, as is his right. His conclusion that she hates trans people is explicitly (and invalidly) based on what she has written on Twitter, so there’s no implication that it’s based on unstated facts to which he is privy. The tweets are public, and anyone can read them and see whether they agree that they support this conclusion.
In addition, even if he had made false factual statements about her, she’s a public figure so she’d have to prove that he knew the statements were false. As it is, though, it doesn’t even get that far. There are no factual statements, so there’s no case.
Bah. Just laugh at them. They cannot abide ridicule as they have no discernible sense of humor.
“Harry Potter” class brings to mind the reboot of “That ’70s Show” with all the kids married. Eric is now a professor teaching a course in “The Religion of Star Wars.” Truth catches up to fiction.
The Potter series is a perfectly valid topic for an English literature class to discuss. And so are the author’s opinions, and how those opinions are or aren’t reflected in the books.
E.g. it’s valid for a class on Chesterton to discuss what impact his personal antisemitism might have had on his writing.
I’m going to disagree. I’ve taught college English for around 30 years, and I’ve never been fond of these pop culture courses. Mostly they are easy credits for students who want to avoid rigor and guaranteed enrollments for the profs who offer them. The social contract of such courses is that you’ll get an easy A without mastering anything of consequence and I’ll get a full course that guarantees I’ll make my contractual load and have a light prep.
The Harry Potter books are fun for kids (I read some of them to mine) with their imaginary universe and cute characters. But they are all melodrama with no interesting or creative use of language. In Lewis’ terms, we read them for the event but not for the word. Oh, sure, there are things one can dig into like archetypes and narrative strategy, but these books are hardly the best that have been thought or written (per Matthew Arnold). So let’s read Milton or Ralph Ellison or someone where we get that plus the archetypes and the stunning great use of language.
Call me a snob. I don’t care.
The cost per credit hour at Baylor is north of $2,000. So $6-7K of federal financial aid, or mom and dad’s savings, to study … Harry Potter? And to call oneself educated in English Literature? What tripe.
FWIW, yes, if a college course includes Chesterton, all of his personal views should be subject to inquiry/scrutiny.
Boycott the class the bud lite the professor.
I’m going to go ahead and suggest that if you’re spending time and money “studying Harry Potter” then you really have lost the plot.”
Also, shame on Baylor for approving the class.
Also, shame on the relevant accrediting organization.
How can any adult now hear “Baylor” and not think WTF?
———-
Hey kids haven’t you realized yet? At some point in life, if you have nothing to offer except Harry Potter then
(i) you’ll have no friends
(ii) you’ll have no sex
(iii) you’ll have no job
Good heavens where are the grownups?
You could say the same about Lewis and Tolkien, and you would be just as wrong.
I suppose — if one has secure access to tens of thousands of dollars of discretionary spending
And if one has no particular need to think about how one will be able to support oneself through adulthood
then fine — go for it. Read and chat, discuss and debate to your heart’s content.
But if you’re ever going to have to pay your own way in life, I can think of 100s of better ways to invest that kind of time and that kind of money.
Maybe I am misunderstanding the gist of your post, but it’s inconceivable to me that anyone would advocate prioritizing Harry Potter over real job/career skills for any teenager.
gibbie you don’t have to enroll at Baylor in order to read any one who’s ever published any thing. And you can become quite expert.
Victor Davis Hanson has acknowledged that there are a lot more self-taught classicists out there than he had ever realized as a younger man.
Jimi Hendrix, Glen Campbell, Paul McCartney many others no formal music schooling.
Lebron James, Derek Jeter , Mark Twain, Steve Jobs , Tom Hanks, Marisa Tomei, many others —no college degrees. They’ve done ok.
I am horrified that you would put Harry Potter in the same category as Tolkein’s LOTR. One is a charming children’s story that catches a child;’s imagination and encourages that child to read. The other is the lifetime work of a serious academic, who incorporated ancient Anglo-Saxon and Nordic elements into his story of the fight between good and evil. In Harry Potter’s conclusion, it is a mother’s love that protects her child. The whole of LOTR is a demonstration of the value of the common, ordinary man, who remains incorruptible simply because his interests do not extend much past five good meals a day, a full pipe, and friends to gossip with. It is the love of power that leads men astray.
This is so ludicrous, it defies any descriptor beyond that save for “surreal”. These morons are living in a world designed by Salvador Dali, or maybe Pablo Picasso, in his “LSD trip” period.
Rowling is correct when she says men who have sex reassignment surgery are not women. They still have a Y chromosome, which is something they can’t get rid of without gene therapy—an unproven and likely catastrophic potential treatment considering their natural biological processes are dependent around that particular genetic arrangement. Men who had sex reassignment surgery can’t get pregnant, they can’t menstruate, and they certainly can’t go through female menopause. I went to medical school and served residency and fellowship, and practiced. Nothing has changed. My grandpa trained and practiced for over 60+ years, same thing—rules of biology didn’t change. Same for the 11 other physicians in my immediate family. Sorry, I don’t need a biologist—I am one, and so are the other dozen. We know what women are—and they’re not men who decide to get appendages cut off, start hormone therapy and wearing dresses.
Fiction writer cancelled for telling truth. You can’t make this shit up..
This is true, but not for the reasons you give.
There exist (a very very few) actual women with Y chromosomes. That doesn’t stop them being women.
And there are many many women who can’t get pregnant, as well as many who can’t menstruate or go through menopause (mostly those who’ve already done so). None of this stops them being women.
So those are typical but not defining characteristics.
I am well aware of those exceptions. However, you will note that Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) is considered very rare, ~2 per 100K births, This is on the order of those born with such rare neurological conditions like Friedrich’s Ataxia, etc. They present as women, and are sterile with no reproductive capacity obviously. Most studies, including the benchmark studies from 2014 forward do not indicate that gender dysphoria is common in CAIS-positive patients, though reliable updates are difficult largely because it oflen goes unreported or unaddressed for privacy reasons. You are about 40% correct. Medicine and biology don’t follow exact points at every given turn, the epidemiology we have about CAIS is based only on reported cases, which may over= or under-estimate.
Milhouse, I suspect you enjoy being the Devil’s Advocate, picking through minutiae to prove a point The good doctor was refering to the most egregious trans claims – that they can menustrate, etc. etc. Surely your considerable intellect could come up with a better argument.
I see this article is several days old, but I read this and notice that the professor seems to think that Rowling is the odd person in this. Since the whole trans issue started becoming more open some years ago, I thought it was just a small minority of people with psychiatric issues. I recall hearing comments some years ago from the trans community claiming they were discriminated against and subjected to violence often. I actually did some research and found that was patently false and documented it. Since then, this issue has come to the forefront, and is now affecting children, etc., there is an attempt to normalize it. Initially, I thought these people were kooks, a small portion of the population. Since then, I realize they are more than kooks; they are the teachers, professors, activists, etc. that have been putting this information into our kids’ heads. They honestly think it’s normal, and it’s not. We should no longer ignore this or even try to humor these people. We should all speak out as Rowling has and show that it is not normal. While there are children who are born with birth defects, that occasionally may make their gender questionable, that is very rare. But we need to recognize that it can happen and be supportive of those rare occasions. I don’t know how we go about fixing this, since our leaders and even many medical professionals seem to accept it now. We should all speak out against this and let’s not humor these people anymore.