Tag: universities

University of Wisconsin Declares Large Rock to be Racist; Votes to Remove

The University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to remove a large rock from campus after students complained that it is a symbol of racism because it was referred to in a local newspaper in 1925 using a word regarded as a racial slur.

The Wisconsin State Journal reported Wednesday:

UW-Madison is moving forward on a plan to remove a boulder from Observatory Hill after calls from students of color who see the rock as a painful reminder of the history of racism on campus.

The 70-ton boulder is officially known as Chamberlin Rock in honor of Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, a geologist and former university president. But the rock was referred to at least once after it was dug out of the hill as a “n***erhead,” a commonly used expression in the 1920s to describe any large dark rock.

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The Wisconsin Black Student Union called for the rock’s removal over the summer. President Nalah McWhorter said the rock is a symbol of the daily injustices that students of color face on a predominantly white campus.

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McWhorter also faulted the Wisconsin State Journal for printing the vulgarity in a 1925 news article.

According to the State Journal, the 1925 news article is the only known instance of the offensive term being used.

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Another Professor Resigns Following Accusations She Pretended To Be Non-White

Kelly Kean Sharp resigned Tuesday from her assistant professorship at Furman University following accusations that she pretended to be non-white, a university spokesman said.

An anonymous person outed the African American history scholar through a Medium post, InsideHigherEd reported. The anonymous writer said that he or she “distantly” knew Sharp when Sharp was in graduate school at the University of California, Davis, and that Sharp only recently began identifying as Chicana.

Sharp reportedly formerly identified herself as Chicana in her Twitter profile, which has since been removed. The Medium post includes screenshots of Sharp’s tweets showing Sharp referring to her grandmother, who she calls her abuela, and describing how her abuela “came to the U.S. during WWII” and “worked hard so I could become a teacher.”

The Medium post writer said that Sharp had never spoken about being Mexican before, and the writer reportedly spoke with other colleagues who were also “confused” and asked Sharp about her “newfound identity.”

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Professors Call Out Beer And Beethoven As Latest Examples Of Racist Bias

In column in Slate, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Christopher White declared that referring to composers like Beethoven and Mozart by one name is a form of white supremacy. After all, White explained, it creates a “habitual, two-tiered” method where white composers are referenced by one name while women and minority composers are referred to by their first and last names:

“These canonized demigods became so ensconced in elite musical society’s collective consciousness that only one word was needed to evoke their awesome specter.”

White calls for an end to such “mononyms of music history.” I guess I will have to research the full names of Beyonce, Madonna, Sting, Cher, Bono, Pink, Seal, Adele and others.

For many, messing with Beethoven is still better than messing with beer. However, Virginia Tech sociology professor David L. Brunsma, has declared that beer also reinforces white supremacy. His co-authored book, Beer and Racism: How Beer Became White, Why It Matters, and the Movements to Change It, is marketed as a game changer: 

 “From the racist marketing of malt liquor to the bearded-white-dude culture of craft beer, readers will never look at a frothy pint the same after reading Beer and Racism.”

Craft beers are singled out as examples of racism. As explained by University of New Mexico professor Eli Wilson, it is long overdue to call out such beer lovers:

 “maybe a little bit of guilt: after the 10th beer festival you’ve been to where it is a bunch of pretzel-necklaced white dudes with beards and potbellies, it gets kind of old, you know?”

The ultimate racism recreation is presumably having an actual “Beethoven Beer.” 

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New York Colleges Are Forcing Students to Test Negative for COVID-19 Before Going Home for the Holidays. Is It Legal?

We’ve all seen the reports: college students are especially to blame for spreading coronavirus. Well, the State University of New York (SUNY) college system has taken its role of in loco parentis very seriously.

New York’s public university system is requiring students to test negative for the coronavirus before they can leave to spend Thanksgiving break with their families. Obviously, the measure is being undertaken in hopes of containing the spread of COVID-19 from the college campus to the community at large.

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The First Thing Sold On The Internet Was A Bag Of Weed

Several researchers have pointed to a drug deal that took place in 1971 or 1972 as the first online transaction made on the internet. As the legend goes, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, used the network to sell some cannabis to other tech students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The historic event was detailed in two books, “What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry”, which was released in 2005 by John Markoff, and “The Dark Net,” which was released more recently by Jamie Bartlett.

In “What The Dormouse Said,” Markoff Writes: “In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of mariju**a.“

Bartlett gives a nearly identical description in his book ‘The Dark Net’, which discusses online marketplaces that have made headlines in recent years.

The Silk Road, which launched in 2011, was the first truly anonymous online marketplace, and it quickly became a target for politicians and law enforcement because of the large volume of drugs that were being sold through the site. On the Silk Road, drug users and vendors were able to trade anonymously using Bitcoin, making it one of the first major commerce platforms to adopt the cryptocurrency. The website’s alleged creator, Ross Ulbricht, is currently serving a double life sentence with no possibility of parole for operating the online marketplace.

One important point that was heavily overlooked by the media during the Ulbricht trial was the fact that the Silk Road actually made the world a safer place by undermining prohibition. Even though drugs are illegal, large numbers of people still use them on a regular basis and these people are often put in dangerous situations because of these prohibitions.

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Philosophy Is Being Hijacked by Woke Twitter Mobs

Philosophers tend to be highly influenced by their environment, and can often be found rationalizing instead of critically examining the conventional views of the people around them. But if anything warrants philosophical scrutiny, surely it is our national taboos. As a philosopher of biology, one taboo is of particular interest to me: the taboo on considering the possibility that genes play a role in group differences in psychological traits. So I wrote a paper arguing that, while nothing can be definitively proved, there is strongly suggestive evidence that genes are involved in group differences, and we should stop suppressing and censoring research into this topic.

I submitted the paper to Philosophical Psychology—a respected journal that publishes work on the connection between philosophy and psychology, which at the time was co-edited by Mitchell Herschbach (a philosopher) and ‪Cees van Leeuwen (a psychologist). To my pleasant surprise, I received two positive referee reports along with a request for revisions. After two rounds of review, the paper was accepted and published in the January 2020 issue of the journal.

The paper was accompanied by an Editors’ Note written by van Leeuwen and Herschbach, saying:

The decision to publish an article in Philosophical Psychology is based on criteria of philosophical and scientific merit, rather than ideological conformity… In sum, Cofnas’ paper certainly adopts provocative positions on a host of issues related to race, genetics, and IQ. However, none of these positions are to be excluded from the current scientific and philosophical debates as long as they are backed up with logical argumentation and empirical evidence, and they deserve to be disputed rather than disparaged.

Needless to say, heterodoxy about politically sensitive issues is not always well received in academia, so it was gratifying to see the editors of an important journal taking a stand for free inquiry. “2020 is gearing up to be the best year ever,” I thought to myself.

It didn’t take long for the paper and Editors’ Note to come to the attention of the wokerati on Twitter. Macquarie University philosophy professor Mark Alfano deemed my paper “shit” and announced his plan to “ruin [my] reputation permanently and deservedly.” He started a petition on change.org demanding an “apology, retraction, or resignation (or some combination of these three)” from the journal editors. A number of philosophers—many of whom did not even read the paper—joined the campaign to get it retracted and/or smear me. University of South Carolina professor Justin Weinberg promoted Alfano’s petition on his widely read philosophy blog, Daily Nous. He also published a guest post that falsely and preposterously claimed that I defended “segregation” and “apartheid schemes.”

But the editors of Philosophical Psychology stood firm. Van Leeuwen and Herschbach wrote a statement on Facebook reiterating that the review process had been carried out properly, and declaring, “Efforts to silence unwelcome opinion… are doing a disservice to the community.”

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Nearly 1 In 4 College Students Say They’ll ‘Likely’ Protest If Trump Wins Election, Survey Says

Around 40% of college students said they will likely or certainly protest if President Donald Trump wins the election, according to an Axios poll released Friday.

Exactly 22% of students surveyed said they are likely to protest and 17% said they will protest should Trump win the 2020 election, the College Reaction/Axios survey found. More students, 30%, said they would not protest if Trump won and 31% said they are not likely to protest a Trump victory.

“The dissatisfaction with the status quo is also reflected by the number of students who are willing to protest Trump reelection with 40% of college students saying they will likely or certainly participate in protests,” the survey said.

Only 1% said they are “absolutely certain” to protest if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wins the election, according to the survey. Almost three quarters, 70%, said they “absolutely will not” protest if Biden wins the 2020 election.

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