Tag: universities

He Questioned Microaggressions. Then His University Gaslit Him, Claiming He Was A Threat, And Suspended Him From Campus

In one of the most bizarre campus stories in recent memory, a medical student at the University of Virginia posed mildly skeptical questions about microaggressions to a university panel. Afterward, his school claimed he was hostile, implied he was disrespectful to authority and a threat to future patients, and began investigating him. As anyone in this situation would, the student was confused and frustrated by the school’s actions. The school then used that confusion and frustration to further claim the student was unstable.

Impossible to believe? Well, Reason’s Robby Soave has the facts.

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Another Hate Hoax: Black Student Caught Creating Racist KKK Graffiti at College in Michigan

Is there any racist graffiti created that isn’t done by minority students anymore?  It seems every time a racist KKK event is reported, the eventual perpetrators are members of the targeted class.

A small college in Michigan last weekend reported a race crime but after further review, it was just another hoax:

Albion College and the Albion Department of Public Safety say a student is responsible for racist graffiti found in a dorm last weekend.

Albion police brought the 21-year-old Black male in for questioning on April 6, according to Chief Scott Kipp. The student admitted to creating most of the graffiti, and video evidence from Albion’s Campus Safety Department confirms the statements made by the student, Kipp said.

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Law Student’s Instagram Posting Triggers Debate Over Anti-White Speech

The University of Miami Law School is facing a controversy over how to handle racist comments directed against white students – with objections over a double standard at the university. 

It is increasingly common to read anti-white commentary in the media, including a column recently from Elie Mystal writer for Above the Law and The Nation’s justice correspondent who lashed out at “white society” and how he strived to maintain a “whiteness free” life in the pandemic.

Miami Law School has been silent in the face of complaints filed against student Jordan Gary after she posted her comments publicly on Instagram.

Gary publicly declared that she “hate[s] white people,” and noted that “People always tell me like ‘hate is such a strong word. And yes it is, but these are some strong ass stories I heard. And until I can figure out how to reconcile that in my head, and in my heart, I hate white people.”  According to her LinkedIn page, Gary is the president of the Black Law Students Association and also the writing editor for the Race & Social Justice Law Review at the university.

Conservative sites asked Miami’s Dean for a comment but there has been no public statement even after the filing of complaints.

The issue of anti-white commentary raises a subject so sensitive that few universities are willing to openly discuss it. As will come as little surprise to many on this blog, my default remains with free speech, particularly for comments made outside of a school on social media. That does not mean that schools should not denounce intolerant or racist speech.  However, these comments are bound up with an array of personal, social, and political issues for students like Gary. I would rather discuss these views than seek to punish their expression.

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University Of Oregon Paid ‘1619 Project’ Writer Nikole Hannah-Jones $25K To Lecture On ‘Systemic Racism’

The University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication paid New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, the writer behind the anti-historical “1619 Project,” for a Zoom lecture in February on “1619 and the Legacy that Built a Nation,” as first reported by Campus Reform.

Hannah-Jones raked in $25,000, evident by a Freedom of Information Request filed by Campus Reform. The Feb. 19 event was co-sponsored by the university’s Office of the President, Office of the Provost, and Division of Equity and Inclusion, among other groups.

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The ‘Dangerous Speech Project’: The Swamp’s Newest Censorship Project

You’ve heard of “hate speech.” Now introducing a new way to demonize free speech: The Dangerous Speech Project.

Birthed from the bloated bowels of US academia is a cottage industry of speech suppression on behalf of the corporate state.

It rolls out new pseudo-woke virtue-signaling campaigns whenever it gets the chance — the bread and butter of overpaid academics. Mortgages don’t pay themselves.

Enter the Dangerous Speech Project, which ostensibly claims to want to make speech “safer.” It is the brainchild of Susan Benesch, faculty associate at Harvard’s “Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society” and an esteemed Ivy League “Scholar of Speech.”

The project defines “dangerous speech” as “any form of expression (speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or participate in violence against members of another group.” Yet, Benesch and comrades offer no way to objectively measure that increased risk of violence.

“Dangerous speech” as a social science concept conveniently lacks any way to objectively measure its applicability in any given real-world situation. This leaves the interpreting to the whims of the censor – perfect for Silicon Valley technocrats (more on that later).

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University researcher: ‘Intelligence is a White man’s mythology’

A University of Cincinnati graduate assistant wrote that “intelligence is a White man’s mythology.”

“Stop calling your female colleagues ‘smart,’ or ‘clever,’ or ‘brilliant,’” wrote Mel Andrews, who studies cognition and evolution. “It’s sexist and infantilising… it shouldn’t be surprising to you in 2021 that women are capable of thought.”

“You’re doing the same thing when you describe your Black and Latino students as ‘very bright,’” added Andrews. 

“Intelligence is a White man’s mythology. A phantasmal concept. A non-referring term. Syncategorematic,” she wrote.

Indicating that her post was entirely serious, Andrews posted an excerpt from a chapter that she wrote for a book entitled Handbook of Parenting. She cited works claiming that “more than a century of wanton reductionism and definitional vagueness in the study of intelligence and human potential has perpetuated a stratified social order and obscured the true dynamic complexity and diversity of human cognitive development.”

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University of Oxford considers scrapping sheet music for being ‘too colonial’ after staff raise concerns about music curriculums’ ‘complicity in white supremacy’ after Black Lives Matter movement

The University of Oxford is considering scrapping sheet music for being ‘too colonial’ after staff raised concerns about the ‘complicity in white supremacy’ in music curriculums.

Professors are set to reform their music courses to move away from the classic repertoire, which includes the likes of Beethoven and Mozart, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

University staff have argued that the current curriculum focuses on ‘white European music from the slave period’, according to The Telegraph.  

Documents seen by the publication indicate proposed reforms to target undergraduate courses.

It claimed that teaching musical notation had ‘not shaken off its connection to its colonial past’ and would be ‘a slap in the face’ to some students.

And it added that musical skills should no longer be compulsory because the current repertoire’s focus on ‘white European music’ causes ‘students of colour great distress’. 

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UCLA Student Government Passes Stipend To Compensate Undocumented Students

The student government at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) passed legislation that will provide council members who are undocumented immigrants a financial stipend. 

UCLA’s Student Association Council unanimously passed a $23,000 fund called the “UndocuCouncil Member Stipend” on March 2, according to The College Fix. The stipend allows undocumented students, who cannot obtain legal work, to be financially compensated for their work on the student council. 

“The University of California’s payroll system cannot hire students without work authorization, undocumented students without Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status cannot receive stipends as wage,” The Daily Bruin reported. 

The Daily Bruin claims that the $23,000 stipend is equivalent to two council members’ yearly pay. The money comes from the student council’s so-called “surplus fund,” which is taken from student tax dollars.  

The stipend legislation came after the council’s External Vice President lost her status as a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Johana Guerra Martinez was unable to receive financial compensation for seven weeks for her vice presidential role after she lost her DACA status and work permit. 

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Students demand firing of liberal Vermont professor for opposing wrong kind of racism

On March 8, a University of Vermont (UVM) professor joined the growing chorus of brave souls willing to risk their careers and public scorn to stand for what is right.  Professor Aaron Kindsvatter, a self-declared liberal, claims that the university is embracing dubious ideological racial policies.  The intolerant backlash against this professor was fast and fierce, but so too have been the expressions of support.

Americans once regarded themselves as sharing agreement on most goals, just differing in desired means.  But “social justice ideology” does not broach dissent: it negates traditional liberalism and free speech protections.  Thus, “liberal” professors will be silenced as readily as conservative speakers such as those at Middlebury College.  “Social justice” ideology behaves much like an institutionalized cult. 

Professor Kindsvatter titled his latest video “Racism and the Secular Religion at the University of Vermont” as an allusion to that religiosity, warning that this ideology will seed future hate and division:

[W]hiteness falls under the umbrella, in the derogatory meaning of the word, of critical social justice.  And whiteness, the thinking that informs it is so crude, and so lacking in falsifiability, and it speaks so eloquently to our tribal impulses that the same logic that informs what’s currently being called whiteness right now can easily find its way to desperate persons who need a group to hate and who will adopt the suppositions that inform whiteness towards their own ends.

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