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Social Justice Tag

Last month, the city council in Charlotte, North Carolina passed an ordinance that included allowing transgendered persons to use bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, etc. for the gender with which they identify. This did not sit well with North Carolinians, nor with their state legislature, and in a special session, the state passed a bill that would make it state law--thus over-turning the Charlotte ordinance--that people can use such facilities only for the gender with which they were born, not the one they identify with or claim to be.  North Carolina governor (and former mayor of Charlotte) Pat McCrory signed the bill into law late Wednesday. https://twitter.com/PatMcCroryNC/status/712825004312829952 Watch the report:

The University of Iowa has an interesting take on Disney's latest animated feature. Evidently, Zootopia is laced with racist, coded language.
Zootopia is a film about a young rabbit, Judy Hopps, and her dream to join the police force in the world populated by anthropomorphic mammals. Judy is denied a high position in the police force and is assigned meter-maid duty. All animals are bipedal regardless of their species. The animals that are usually prey in the animal kingdom are the dominant force and look down upon the predators. Throughout the whole world of Zootopia, the predators are bullied by the prey, and this is an amazing shift from reality. There is a strange occurrence happening in the film that involves many predators disappearing and going “savage.” Going savage includes going back to their natural state, which means going back on all fours and attacking prey. I believe the message present in the film is an allegory to the current status of the white population in contemporary society. The majority of the people who were involved in the writing of this film were white. This aligns with my idea of the allegory present in the movie. The prey are akin to minorities of the world, in the way that they get preyed on by the predators, which are white people.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) serves as a de facto authority on academic freedom, having published the guidelines by which most higher education institutions agree to abide, at least in principle if not legally. AAUP, however, has no legal power to enforce its guidelines. The most it can do is put an institution on a "Censure List," which supposedly impacts the ability to recruit top faculty. I don't know whether it actually has that impact, but that's what's claimed. The University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign (UIUC) was put on AAUP's Censure List after it refused to give a tenured position to controversial hate-tweeting Prof. Seven Salaita. There was a lawsuit by Salaita that was settled for less than the cost of defense without any job. AAUP now is considering whether to remove UIUC from its Censure List. AAUP is jumping to the defense of Melissa Click, the world-famous "muscle prof" who recently was terminated by the University of Missouri after she was caught on video bullying a student journalist and calling for some "muscle" from the crowd to deal with him.

Melissa Click, the Missouri professor who famously advocated for "using muscle" against student journalists at a campus protest has lost her termination appeal. Following the encounter that was captured on tape, Click was charged with third-degree assault and suspended with pay before being canned. The Wall Street Journal reports:
The board of curators said the appeal, which Melissa Click filed shortly after her Feb. 24 firing, “brought no new relevant information.” Ms. Click’s job paid $58,000, and she was up for tenure this year.

I was a Russian Studies Major in college. It involved the study of Russian language, literature and culture, as well as the Soviet State. Among other things, I studied in Moscow. It was an academic endeavor, not political activism. That was old school "ethnic" studies. New school ethnic studies is social justice warfare. Student's at San Francisco State University's College of Ethnic Studies are upset that there might be some programming cuts as a result of overall budget problems. And true to their curriculum, they took up protest. Golden Gate Express reports on a meeting hosted by SFSU President Leslie E. Wong, Potential Cuts Loom for Ethnic Studies:
Within an hour, the courtyard in front of Ethnic Studies was flooded with students, faculty and other members of the community, many wearing black with red accessories in solidarity with the potential faculty strike in April. Peppered among the sea of black and red were white signs and banners with messages of unity....

The University of Missouri canned the professor captured on video confronting student journalists during a protest last year, the Washington Post reported. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune:
Assistant Professor Melissa Click, captured on video calling for “some muscle” to remove reporters from a campus protest site, was fired Wednesday by the University of Missouri Board of Curators, Chairwoman Pam Henrickson said in a prepared statement. The board voted 4-2 in favor of termination during a closed session in Kansas City, with Henrickson and curator John Phillips opposing the move, UM System spokesman John Fougere wrote in an email Thursday. Curators David Steelman, Donald Cupps, Maurice Graham and Phil Snowden voted in favor of firing Click.

You remember Mizzou Prof. Melissa Click, don't you? She's the world's most famous red-headed social warrior professor who gained internet fame for seeking "some muscle" to keep a student journalist away from a Black Lives Matter protest. https://youtu.be/xRlRAyulN4o?t=6m19s Click claimed this was an aberration and that she's not really the wacko she appears to be on the video. The Columbian Missourian reports on the consequences, or lack thereof:
She acknowledged that ordering Schierbecker away from inside a human wall around the camp and calling for “some muscle” was poor judgment.
But Click, who also had joined student protesters during MU's Homecoming parade, didn't rule out protesting with them again; nor did she rule out filing a lawsuit against the UM System Board of Curators, MU or Schierbecker. She said she would not join students in protest if she felt it would endanger others or disrupt an event.

"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.

Consider this a follow-up to our prior reporting on the Regressive Left: https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/690402640929411073 The concept of masochists defending sadists came from this article, The Masochists Who Defend Sadists: The Regressive Left in Theory and Practice:
I think they hated the idea of the West and of Empire, so they made a practical and intellectual alliance with people who shared their hatred. It must be remembered, too, that the resistance and its fighters and ideas served as the forerunner of the Islamic State. The Western Left’s solidarity with Islamism and fascism is, I would argue, the Western Left’s greatest shame, at least in my lifetime….

A subcommittee of Portland Community College's Cascade Campus Diversity Council has declared April 2016 Whiteness History Month. They hope to, "inspire innovative and practical solutions to community issues and social problems that stem from racism." According to Oregon Live, Whiteness History Month is the brainchild of PCC faculty and staff. Different from other heritage months, Whiteness History Month is not a celebration though. It's all about social constructs, racism, and multiculturalism. Or something:
The Project seeks to challenge the master narrative of race and racism through an exploration of the social construction of whiteness. Challenging the master narrative of traditional curriculum is a strategy within higher education that promotes multicultural education and equity.
The event's Statement of Purpose could've been penned by Rachel Dolezal. "Whiteness is a state of consciousness," and not about the color of skin, they contend. Skin color? That's just plain ol' "white."

Professor Click, Missouri Communication Professor, has been charged with class C assault for her actions during campus protests last year, according to local news. Click appears to swat a reporter wanting to interview her during a student protest last year:

Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza visited Amherst College in October and engaged in some voluntary debate with a small audience. One student asked two very long questions which, combined with D'Souza's responses, make up the bulk of the video below. The first question is about American foreign policy in the Middle East and D'Souza dispenses that issue fairly quickly. The second question has to do with social justice and racial privilege.

At a White House forum on criminal justice reform Thursday, President Obama offered an unsolicited defense of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Janell Ross of the Washington Post:
President Obama defended ‘Black Lives Matter.’ But why did he have to? Obama chose to weigh in on the simmering controversy over the phrase "Black Lives Matter." More specifically, he gave his take on the idea that the phrase is a threat, a verbal affront or some kind of intentional effort to devalue the lives of others. This idea seems to have started with a few not-exactly disinterested police union heads and law enforcement officials, boiled over on a number of conservative blogs and has reverberated with a certain share of the white American public...

[Depending on where you work, some images in this post may be NSFW.] Are you or is someone you know a victim of the ravages of breast cancer? Never fear---the League of Extraordinary Social Justice Warriors has resurrected a hashtag to help you deal. Welcome to National No Bra Day---it's exactly what it sounds like. Here's how No Bra Day was originally described by, ostensibly, whoever conceived it:
Boobies are Fantastic… We all think so. And what better way to express the way we feel than to support a full day of boobie freedom?? Women are magnificent creatures, and so are their breasts. Let us spend the day unleashing boobies from their boobie zoos.

Matt Damon has a big new movie coming out but he's not winning any new fans from his fellow travelers on the left. Damon has long been a favorite on the left for his progressive politics but two recent high profile incidents have put him at odds with the social justice crowd. The Daily Beast's culture reporter Kevin Fallon took Damon to the woodshed yesterday:
Shut Up, Matt Damon: The Actor Argues Gay Actors Should Stay in the Closet In The Martian, Matt Damon plays an astronaut who is left behind on Mars. The entire world rallies around an effort to retrieve him and bring him safely back to Earth. Lately, we’d be just as happy to send Damon back. The Oscar-winning actor’s career-long charm offensive came to a screeching halt this past week with two incredibly tone-deaf and woefully retrograde mini-scandals surrounding comments he’s made that were ill-advised at best—and bigoted at worst. First was the ignorant dialogue about diversity in film on Project Greenlight. And now the most recent symptom of the most severe case of foot-in-mouth to plague an actor in years: an interview with The Guardian in which Damon posits that gay actors should stay in the closet if they want their careers to thrive. Shut up, Matt Damon.

The failure of the Occupy movement was epic in its crash-and-burn in the wake of "occupiers" pooping on cop cars, establishing rape safety tents, displaying food privilege, and being infested with rats and disease.  As amusing as the "up and down twinkles" and mindless, robotic repetition of speakers were, the failure of the Occupy movement is worth revisiting in light of its offshoot the #BlackLivesMatter movement. One of the reasons the left was so incensed by the TEA Party, and worried enough to come after us by any means necessary, is that we are a genuine grassroots, populist movement.  While they publicly railed against our successes and worked to ridicule and bully us into submission, they were always working away at trying to duplicate (i.e. manufacture) our efforts.

Occupy is still touted as "populist," an astonishing claim that is easily refuted in that it was a clearly top-down movement funded and organized by the usual suspects.  Likewise, we know that Ferguson was another crisis the left couldn't let go to waste, so the usual suspects hired and bused in race agitators, union members, communists, anarchists, et al.   These are all the same big players in the background, pulling the strings, and they have one goal in mind, a goal that Andrew Breitbart saw for what it was:

https://twitter.com/AndrewBreitbart/status/120953881818701824

The rapid expansion of "social justice" is completely out of control. Imagine for a moment what life might be like if we were subjected to every whim of the social justice mob. Enter College Humor, who has done that for us: