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Political Correctness Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 19, 2016 37 Comments
Elizabeth Warren is not Native American, but she played one for the law professor directory used for hiring in the 1980s as she was climbing the ladder to Harvard Law School. After she got tenure at HLS, she stopped filling out her forms that way. In 2014, Warren signed a letter to the NFL Commissions, along with dozens of other Democratic Senators, calling on the league to take action against the Washington Redskins for using the name "Redskins":
The NFL can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur. We urge the NFL to formally support and push for a name change for the Washington football team.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/225634644/Letter-to-NFL-commissioner I understand why some people may view the name as offensive. But according to a Washington Post poll just released, almost all actual Native Americans don't oppose the use of the name:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 18, 2016 37 Comments
We have seen this picture many times before. Zero tolerance insanity taking political correctness out on school children: The latest is from Brighton, Colorado, Kindergartner suspended for bringing bubble gun to class:

Posted by Howard S. Schwartz on May 03, 2016 29 Comments
Political correctness gets crazier and crazier, but it does so in a way that seems to  represent the development of something that was there right at the beginning. I've been trying to make sense of it, from a psychoanalytic point of view, and the theory has, gratifyingly, developed apace with what it is trying to explain. The current edge of the theory is what I call the "pristine self," which is a self touched by nothing but love, and I am pleased to suggest that it gives us some insight into the current edge of political correctness, which is built around the concept of "microaggression.' In this post, I'd like to lay out that connection. Microaggression is a key element of what has been called the "new pc," whose newness Megan McArdle renders this way:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 25, 2016 27 Comments
Earlier today I asked Kemberlee if we were all Melissa-Clicked out. She said we were. I disagree. The most famous redheaded muscle prof in the world is the blog post gift that keeps on giving. Slow news day? Click. Scrambling to fill blog post time slot? Click. Want people to click? Click. The latest screaming clickbait (actually, it's double clickbait because if you are seeing this near the top of the homepage, you have to Click a second time to see what the story is about -- see what I did there?):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 24, 2016 21 Comments
She's not redheaded, and she didn't demand some "muscle" to help her out. But this American University official (not clear if administrator or Prof., or both) decided to play the role of Melissa Click, threatening to call the police on Washington Examiner reporter Ashe Schow and others who were covering the progressive outrage over the appearance of Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos. Reason reports, At Milo Yiannopoulos Protest, Prof's Hassling of Journalists Backfires After She Calls Cops:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 22, 2016 23 Comments
In a world in which universities apologize for serving Mexican food because doing so smacks of cultural appropriation and is deemed culturally insensitive, the student-organized "Wear a Hijab Day" at a Paris university was bound to cause controversy. Although February 1st is the "official" World Hijab Day, these students were apparently not interested in waiting until early next year to express their "solidarity" with women who "choose" to wear the hijab; unfortunately for them, their gesture backfired. The Telegraph reports:
Students at an elite Paris university sparked fierce debate on Wednesday by inviting classmates to wear the Muslim veil for a day in a bid to "demystify" a practice that is highly divisive in France. Students at Sciences Po urged women to take part in Hijab Day "if you too think all women should have the right to dress as they wish and have their choice respected". A dozen students handed out flyers at the university by a table covered in colourful headscarves with a sign reading: "France got 99 problems but Hijab ain't one", adapted from a hit by US rapper Jay Z.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 20, 2016 18 Comments
Tuesday, Tennessee's General Assembly passed a bill that would defund the University of Tennesee's Office For Diversity and Inclusion. The bill has been passed to the state Senate. Legislators would divert funds currently allocated to the Office of Diversity, "to minority scholarships for engineering students. It would also bar the university from using state funds to support the annual Sex Week programming or gender-neutral pronouns," reports The Tennessean. This year's Sex Week agenda:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 20, 2016 38 Comments
Earlier this week, I blogged about the ongoing $10 bill saga and what looked to be its conclusion -- the Treasury would leave Alexander Hamilton alone, or at least on the $10 bill. Wednesday, that was confirmed. Tremendous backlash, and the assistance of a widely popular musical about Alexander Hamilton caused the Treasury to reconsider their original plans. Hamilton will stay on the front of the $10, but changes will be made to the back of the bill. While Jackson is getting booted off the front of the $20 bill, he'll likely be sticking around on its flipped.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 15, 2016 26 Comments
Student protesters at Ohio State University recently learned a valuable lesson. Mainly because the administration drew a line in the sand and told them calmly that if they persisted, they would be arrested and possibly expelled. The way it was handled was brilliant. An administrator explained to the students that the people who work in the building they were occupying deserve to feel safe too, a concept which blew their minds. The Atlantic reported:
Ohio State Turns the Concept of 'Safe Space' Against Student Protesters At Ohio State last week, a sit-in and protest inside a university building was cut short when students were warned that they would be forcibly removed by police, arrested, and possibly expelled if they did not vacate the premises within a few hours, by 5 a.m.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 04, 2016 18 Comments
Monday morning, the Associated Press reported that despite his segregationist views, President Woodrow Wilson's name would stay on the public policy school building at Princeton University.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 31, 2016 25 Comments
An award-winning news anchor lost her job after a Facebook post she made concerning a local murder in which no arrests were made. A WTAE-TV anchor for 18 years, Bell won 21 regional Emmy Awards. Bell wrote on her public Facebook page:
You needn't be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday. I will tell you they live within 5 miles of Franklin Avenue and Ardmore Boulevard and have been hiding out since in a home likely much closer to that backyard patio than anyone thinks. They are young black men, likely teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They've grown up there. They know the police. They've been arrested. They've made the circuit and nothing has scared them enough. Now they are lost. Once you kill a neighbor's three children, two nieces and her unborn grandson, there's no coming back. There's nothing nice to say about that.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 31, 2016 21 Comments
Intersectionality is all the rage these days, but what is it? The Factual Feminist, Christina Hoff Sommers explains. "If you have wondered why there are so many millennials on campus telling people to check their privilege, demanding trigger warnings, calling people out for micro aggressions, and retreating to safe spaces, the Factual Feminist has the answer: Intersectional feminism," writes AEI. Are safe spaces part of one massive conspiracy theory? Is intersectionality a cult?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 21, 2016 43 Comments
The other day we showed the full Rebel Pundit video of the anti-Trump protest on the streets of Chicago. It was not hard to guess which segment would go viral. It is this woman demanding that the videographer (I think it was Andrew Marcus for that segment) either leave or dismantle his white male privilege. Now it is viral on Twitter: https://youtu.be/Vat_w4QV_uM https://twitter.com/PotluckPolitico/status/711327502371831809 Language Warning

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 19, 2016 9 Comments
Happy Human Achievement Hour! The good folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute organize the hour-long event each year.
What is Human Achievement Hour? Human Achievement Hour is CEI's annual celebration of human progress! During this hour, people around the world pay tribute to human innovations that allows us to live better, fuller lives, and defend our basic human right to use energy to improve the quality of life of all people.
  • Human Achievement Hour is the counter argument to the World Wide Fund for Nature's Earth Hour, where participants symbolically renounce the environmental impacts of modern technology by turning off their lights for an hour.
  • Symbolically or not, Earth Hour does little to protect the environment and is a misguided effort that completely ignores how modern technology allows societies to develop new and more sustainable practices, helping people around the world be more eco-friendly and better conserve our natural resources.
  • Instead of looking to the “dark ages,” like Earth Hour, Human Achievement Hour promotes the idea that we should be looking to technology and innovation to help solve environmental challenges and problems.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 14, 2016 37 Comments
I haven't covered this before, but there was a movement at Harvard Law School to remove three sheaths of wheat from its shield, because the sheaths of wheat represent the family crest of the slave-owning Royall Family. I've probably seen the shield a million times, and never once until this controversy associated it with the Royall Family, much less slavery. They were just sheaths of wheat. Background music at most. But nothing is non-political anymore. After research revealed the origins of the symbol, a movement arose calling itself Royall Must Fall. HLS Dean Martha Minow announced the decision in an email today (and an announcement), which reads in part:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 28, 2016 11 Comments
One question I frequently get is something along the lines of "How did college campuses get this way?" And by "this way" people refer to the leftist intolerance of opposing viewpoints, now expressed through the misnomered "social justice" movement and Social Justice Warriors. My response is pretty consistent, that we abandoned the campuses and what you are seeing now was one or two generations in the making. What you are seeing play out now in the intolerance at Vassar related to Israel -- and many other campuses such as Oberlin College -- is just a variation on a theme that has been growing for decades. A reader, who is a Vassar alum, send me an interesting historical anecdote. William F. Buckley, Jr.'s was invitated to be commencement speaker at Vassar in 1980.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 24, 2016 17 Comments
Conservative author and speaker Ben Shapiro has been banned from making an appearance at California State University Los Angeles by the school's president. Shapiro would apparently present too great a threat to the safe spaces of CSULA's sensitive snowflake students. Christine Rousselle reported at Townhall:
Conservative Writer Ben Shapiro Banned from CSULA Early Tuesday morning, conservative writer Ben Shapiro revealed on Twitter that his planned speech on February 25 at California State University-Los Angeles had been canceled by the university's president.
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