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Political Correctness Tag

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 22, 2016 43 Comments
On Saturday morning we posted a brief compilation of recent events suggesting Twitter might be targeting conservatives, Is Twitter Silencing Conservatives? The impetus Saturday was the suspension of Robert Stacy McCain's account (@rsmccain).  McCain blogs at TheOtherMcCain.com and last February published a book, Sex Trouble: Essays on Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature.  That followed de-verification of Milo Yiannopoulos's account (@Nero).  Like McCain, Yiannopoulos is a prominent critic of modern feminism and the Gordian Knot of accusations and recriminations known as "Gamergate."  Oversimplified, Gamergate involves issues about the poor treatment of women in the gaming community.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 20, 2016 51 Comments
Twitter, an invaluable news aggregator when properly run and used, has seemingly taken aim at conservatives and those advocating conservative causes. In early January, Twitter stripped Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero on Twitter) of his "verification," saying he violated the anti-harassment Terms of Service. https://twitter.com/Nero/status/685601754654871552

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 14, 2016 23 Comments
"Social justice" activism at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, is becoming self-parody, and not in a good way. We have covered extensively the anti-Israel activism that has led to anti-Semitic incidents in 2014 and 2016. Among other things, in 2014 Jewish students who stood up at a campus-wide forum were mocked and jeered by a raucous crowd of students and faculty, a class was picketed and a professor forced to cross a picket line of ululating students because the course involved a trip to Israel (and the West Bank), Students for Justice in Palestine posted a Nazi cartoon on social media, and pro-Israel displays were vandalized. Just recently, a Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution campaign kick-off by SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace, followed by a faculty-sponsored event at which Israel was accused of engaging in an experiment to "stunt" Palestinian bodies, led to anti-Semitic messages on campus Yik-Yak. As if that were not bad enough, the social justice warriors at Vassar now have turned their sights on a feminist professor who allegedly did not use proper pronouns for transgender students.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 14, 2016 12 Comments
The unexpected news that Antonin Scalia died was a punch in the gut. It reminded me of when I first heard that Andrew Breitbart had died -- my wife saw it on Twitter and asked whether it was true. Her comment about Breitbart applies equally to Scalia, A personal note on the death of Andrew Breitbart:
Since my wife called this morning to let me know of Andrew’s death, it has been hard to focus on anything else.  In her words, we don’t have that many bright media lights, and to lose him hurts.
Scalia was more than just a Justice. He was the embodiment of resistance to liberal political correctness and social justice war perpetrated through the judiciary rather than the electorate. I never met Scalia, but I heard him speak once at the Justinian Society in Providence, Rhode Island. He was larger than life, had total command of the room packed with 150 or more lawyers, and was incredibly self-deprecating. And we all laughed so hard at times it's a miracle no one choked on lunch.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 31, 2016 22 Comments
An eight-year Marine Corps veteran his wife have filed suit against their daughter’s high school principal, vice-principal, school district and board of education for violating her First Amendment rights by indoctrinating her in Islamic thought. The case filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland is captioned Wood v. Charles County Public Schools, et al. The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Their daughter and her fellow students were instructed to write out the Islamic creed “Shahada,” which says, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” When recited by non-Muslims, the creed amounts to conversion to Islam. Students were also required to memorize and recite the Five Pillars of Islam and were subjected to disparaging teachings about Christianity. “Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian,” one worksheet read.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 26, 2016 26 Comments
While Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had many well-known speeches and quotes, I think it's fair to say that his "I Have a Dream" speech is his most famous. And in that most famous speech, the following line may be the most famous:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
In a campus world of affirmative action based in part on the color of one's skin, and a hyper-sensitive microaggression mania, I've wondered how long it would take for Dr. King's most famous line to be repudiated. There is an irreconcilable tension between Dr.King's call to not base the evaluation of people on the color of their skin, and the modern progressive demand that skin color (and other immutable characteristics) be a central focus of everything.

Posted by Anne Segal on December 19, 2015 19 Comments
Three weeks ago the Huffington Post published an article detailing the distress of transgendered parents who breastfeed, "The Troubling Erasure of Trans Parents Who Breastfeed." The article describes the way gendered pronouns and attitudes are excluding men who nurse, and the legalities associated with challenging the heretofore female-centric endeavor of breastfeeding. In particular, women who have had chest surgery and now identify as men, described how they are made to feel unwelcome in breastfeeding circles. Here is one example from Canada:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 17, 2015 74 Comments
Does this go too far? Of course it does. Comments by Donald Trump about a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, which almost certainly never will happen even if there were to be a President Trump, hardly compare to round-up for extermination. There is no equivalent -- fortunately -- of Kristallnacht against Muslims in the U.S. The few instances of violence are being prosecuted, and one is still far more likely to be the victim of religious hate crimes for being Jewish. The Times of San Diego reports, USD Professor Leads Silent Protest Against Anti-Muslim Rhetoric:
A religious studies professor at the University of San Diego who is concerned about growing anti-Muslim rhetoric has started a silent protest, with students and faculty wearing yellow stars marked “Muslim.” Bahar Davary, associate professor of theology and religious studies, came up with the idea during her class “Islamic Faith and Practice,” an introduction to Islam, and her students suggested several designs.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 16, 2015 11 Comments
William F. Buckley Jr. had a great disdain for entrenched, self-perpetuating elites epitomized by thefaculty of Harvard:
I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.
In light of our prior reporting on the "Demands" and protests at Yale, and considering this new video, I'd like to expand on Buckley's theme:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 15, 2015 35 Comments
Many college campuses are seeing sets of “Demands” issued by students to administrations, often seeking to suppress speech the students deem offensive and to increase faculty and student affirmative action policies and programs. Hamilton College students using the name "The Movement" recently set what was believed to be a record 83 Demands. At least one of the Demands, for a "President of Color," was promptly ignored by the college when it named its new President recently. Oberlin College students, however, may be about to set a new record for length if not number of Demands. Oberlin, a self-proclaimed progressive institution, has seen racial strife on campus in recent years, including The Great Oberlin College Racism Hoax of 2013 perpetrated primarily by a progressive white student trying to get the campus talking about race. Even after the hoax was exposed, the resulting campus conflict was exploited to advance “even more extreme policies.” (You can listen to my explanation of the hoax and result here.) More recent strife on campus involved protests by the Black Student Union over the quality of food in the Afrikan Heritage House. Oberlin also is known for non-racial activism, such at the "trigger warning" protests against the appearance of Christina Hoff Sommers. A student tipped us off that starting last night students began circulating and signing a 14-page list of 50 separate demands, in the name of the Black Students Union (BSU).

Posted by Jonathan Levin on December 11, 2015 12 Comments
Notwithstanding a modest consensus that affirmative action is doomed after Wednesday's arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, there are hints the Court might delay a substantive decision, dissatisfying all parties. For background on the case, see Legal Insurrection's preview, here.  The full transcript of Wednesday's oral arguments is here. There were a number of tense and emotional moments both between the Justices and the parties' attorneys and among the Justices themselves.  From the tenor of the questioning, it is likely the University of Texas's ("UT") admissions system will be struck down despite its minimal reliance on race, if the case is decided on its merits.  If so, the result may explicitly or implicitly ban affirmative action on the basis of race in public university admissions. But the Court, including presumptive deciding vote Justice Kennedy, repeatedly returned to procedural issues.

Posted by Mike Adamo on December 09, 2015 7 Comments
Last week, the group of Hamilton College activists known as “the Movement” released a lengthy list of demands to almost universal ridicule. Few Hamilton students respect the Movement’s childish and arrogant calls for public apologies, special attention, and, of course, money. Our college administrators, meanwhile, rushed to validate the protesters’ demands and feelings. “Fwd: Demands,” read the subject line of the email President Joan Hinde Stewart sent out to the campus, though she referred us benignly to the “attached message” the young scholars of the Movement had so humbly submitted for her consideration. “Certainly,” she wrote, “we always want to do better as a community and encourage discussion.” She could start by learning what a discussion is, because it sure doesn’t involve “demands.”

Posted by Mike LaChance on December 05, 2015 6 Comments
In the aftermath of the Clock Boy incident, Ahmed and many new allies on the left claimed that his arrest was proof of anti-Islam bigotry in a racist country. This year's valedictorian at Ahmed's old high school disagrees. From the FOX News Insider:
Claims of Intolerance at ‘Clock Kid’s’ School Disputed by Muslim Valedictorian Critics around the country cried Islamophobia when 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested this year for bringing a homemade clock to school and prompting fears of a bomb. Now, the Muslim valedictorian of that school is coming to its defense, saying that her experience at MacArthur High was nothing but respectful.

Posted by Anne Segal on December 04, 2015 10 Comments
Over the past few weeks, Americans have had provided to them two new and diverse sets of emojis to reflect, more precisely, their exact physical characteristics: Latino emojis and curly-haired emojis. Zubi Advertising released the Latino-culture emoji keyboard and Unilever's Dove crafted the "curly-haired" emojis, both available to download for free. If I was feeling generous, I would say this is quite the triumph of the free market: companies, sensing a consumer need, responded to than need and, voila, a gap was filled in the emoji market. It seems that this may be less of a "demand" issue than a desire to be a "first-mover" in the race to find the next empty overture to appease the gods of condemnation and political correctness.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 04, 2015 12 Comments
My alma mater Hamilton College has been in turmoil for years. Over the course of two dedaces, hard-driving leftist professors effectively drove the study of Western Civilization off campus. The multi-cultural academic agenda was so strong that in in 2013 Hamilton's multi-cultural center segregated a diversity program by race, though it later cancelled that event after publicity. But not before a desegregated campus-wide forum devolved into racial recriminations:
It soon became clear that for many people the problem had became an “us against them” battle, separate groups vs. integrated, whites vs. blacks. Though ‘The Movement’, which is a student group that hung fliers and wrote in chalk on Martin’s Way, the main path through campus, in favor of minorities on campus, said that it wasn’t a black and white issue, multiple accounts during the meeting made it clear that many people had felt it was.
The recent revelation that "The Movement" issued a list of 83 Demands has caused more racial turmoil on campus. http://hamiltonunscrolled.tumblr.com/

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 02, 2015 42 Comments
Many campuses are seeing sets of "Demands" issued by students to administrations, often seeking to suppress speech the students deem offensive and to increase faculty and student affirmative action policies and programs. It's not surprising that the Demand movement has come to my alma mater, Hamilton College, in upstate New York. Hamilton at one time focused on the study of core subjects and Western Civilization. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, multiculturalism took hold of the curriculum as leftist faculty from Kirkland College (which merged with Hamilton when I was a sophomore in the late 1970s) maneuvered into positions of power. The story of how Hamilton was transformed was detailed in my post in December 2012, Western Civilization driven off campus at Hamilton College:
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