Update on the Tyranny of Political Correctness at the University of Delaware

Betrayal of Liberty on Campus

by Jan Blits

Let me briefly explain. This will serve as a warning to those of you who don’t yet have such programs on your campus. You’ll see why the threat to all schools is real.

Until very recently, those who ran college dorms were interested in student housing, dining, safety, study breaks, health, home—sickness and other such matters. However, many of those running dorms, today, have a new, grandiose mission, which they’ve appropriated for themselves. These Residence Life administrators regard themselves as educators—in fact, as their institution’s real educators. While faculty, in their view, do nothing more than fill students with facts, the Residence Life administrators shape the whole human being, they say. Faculty may shape careers, but Residence Life shapes souls. In their view, the college or university has no higher mission than soul-craft, and Residence Life is best prepared to fulfill it.

If you look at the publications of their professional organization (the American College Personnel Association), you’ll see that they proclaim “a shift in thinking.” They say that the traditional distinction between “academic affairs” and “student affairs”is misguided. Residence Life officials must unite the two. They must “create living-learning environments that fully engage students at meeting desired learning outcomes.” The key phrase is “learning outcomes.” It means the administrators’ desired political results. ResLife administrators are to create so-called “education” programs that change students’ opinions, beliefs and actions so they agree with the administrators’ own political views. The aim is to “turn” students, as I quoted, earlier. Success in a traditional Residence Life program used to be measured by the number of students attending an event and how much they liked it. Success in a new “educational” program is measured by how much the (captive) students’ opinions, beliefs and (most of all) actions have changed to meet the desired political outcomes.

Now, some people defended the program by arguing that administrators have the same academic freedom as faculty. ResLife administrators should therefore be as free as faculty to educate students. This argument may sound plausible, especially to those who support academic freedom (as I do), but it overlooks something crucial. No faculty member (at least at my institution) may do what Residence Life attempted. Academic freedom does not mean that anything goes, that I may do whatever I like with my students. Academic freedom permits me to teach, but not to indoctrinate.

Read the whole speech.

Ultra-Politicization of Government Higher Education to Destroy a Political Challenger

Democrats attack Republican candidate's children

By Art Robinson
© 2011 

In an effort to do my part in rescuing our country from the out-of-control Obama administration, last year I ran for Congress in Oregon's 4th District against 12-term incumbent, far-left Democrat Peter DeFazio, co-founder of the House Progressive Caucus.

Although I won the nominations of the Republican, Independent and Constitution Parties and the endorsement of the Libertarian Party, a massive media smear campaign by DeFazio, paid for with money raised by MoveOn.org and from special interests favored by DeFazio in Washington, resulted in a 54.5 percent to 43.6 percent victory for DeFazio in a race that was expected to be much closer.

Although I had never run for public office before, I immediately announced my candidacy for Congress again in 2012.

However, when you take a stand for what's right, sometimes there is retribution.

On Nov. 4, 2010, as soon as the election results were in and they were sure their candidate had won, faculty administrators at Oregon State University gave new meaning to the term "political payback."

They initiated an attack on my three children – Joshua, Bethany and Matthew – for the purpose of throwing them all out of the OSU graduate school, despite their outstanding academic and research accomplishments. OSU is a liberal socialist Democrat stronghold in Oregon that received a reported $27 million in earmark funding from my opponent, Peter DeFazio, and his Democrat colleagues during the last legislative session.

Thus, Democrat activist David Hamby and militant feminist and chairman of the nuclear engineering department Kathryn Higley are expelling four-year Ph.D. student Joshua Robinson from OSU at the end of the current academic quarter and turning over the prompt neutron activation analysis facility Joshua built for his thesis work and all of his work in progress to Higley's husband, Steven Reese. Reese, an instructor in the department, has stated that he will use these things for his own professional gain. Joshua's apparatus, which he built and added to the OSU nuclear reactor with the guidance and ideas of his mentor, Michael Hartman, earned Joshua the award for best Masters of Nuclear Engineering thesis at OSU and has been widely complimented by scientists at prominent U.S. nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile, faculty member Todd Palmer notified four-year Ph.D. student Bethany Robinson (OSU grade point average 3.89) that he was terminating her thesis work and taking all of her work in progress for himself. Some of Bethany's graduate work has already been used, without credit to Bethany, in the thesis of another favored student now recently hired on the department faculty.  

Read more.

The Robinson family needs advocacy from NAS and F.I.R.E.

When Bested by Reasoning, Roar!

The recent uproar against Chick-fil-A on campuses illustrates well what has come of reasoned response, of thoughtful engagement, and of logical and dispassionate argument on America's college and university campuses. Peter Wood aptly portrays the typical response in Is Chick-fil-A Anti-Gay?

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Protests like the one aimed at Chick-fil-A are partly or even mostly attempts to exhibit the power of the protesters. That aim has nothing to do with winning the argument—is gay marriage a good social policy or a mistaken one?—and everything to do with controlling the narrative. Only those who agree with the protesters are granted a legitimate voice hereafter. Roar loud enough and you may intimidate the target, but that’s of less importance than pumping up excitement among followers and creating a secondary wave of self-censorship among others who correctly surmise that it is dangerous to disagree.

The ideal of the campus as a place where people debate their differences by means of rational arguments and well-vetted evidence has been on a downward trajectory for decades. Kicking Chick-fil-A off campus is a reductio ad absurdum of the now-common tactic of roaring at your supposed opponents. . . .

Higher education, however, is ill-served by this spirit of censorship. If we want students to learn the principles and arts of governing our republic, for starters they will need to learn the importance of living alongside those who hold views that clash with their own.

Read Wood's whole brief essay.

NAS Opposes Demands for "Reeducation." Bravo!

NAS Supports Freedom of Speech and Conscience in Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley

PRINCETON, NJ (December 2, 2010) - The National Association of Scholars (NAS) filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley.

The NAS calls on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, refusing to enjoin Augusta State University from expelling counseling student Jennifer Keeton, for expressing her religious views on homosexuality.

"A public institution can require professionally competent behavior, but not fidelity to particular moral doctrines or an abdication of the right to free speech," said Steve Balch, chairman of the NAS. "The District Court lost sight of these distinctions. Its decision should be overturned."

After learning that Keeton believes homosexuality is a choice, not a "state of being," the university ordered her to participate in "remediation activities," which included "diversity sensitivity" training and a gay pride parade. When she refused, she was expelled from Augusta State's counseling program.

The amicus brief states in part:

As NAS has learned during its more than twenty years, many public university administrators have a substantial appetite for restricting student speech. So far, that administrator desire has been rightly checked by a solid line of court decisions. But if courts build a doctrine under which university-disfavored speech could be subjected to burdensome "remediation plans," many university administrators will come to embrace it, and use it as a basis for a new generation of speech codes.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has also signed the brief.

The National Association of Scholars works to protect freedom of speech in higher education. To learn more about NAS, visit http://www.nas.org/.

Kindergarten Kommunism Kops

Because America's governing officials have been actually fallen for the foolish notion that scanning airplane passengers by looking for potential terrorists by way of profiling is inherently racist, they have refused to implement the effective security program made famous by El Al and have insisted upon using the really dumb Kindergarten Kommunism style approach to airline security. Instead of spending public tax dollars efficiently with minimal intrusion into individual's privacy, TSA officials, otherwise known to me as Kindergarten Kommunism Kops, under the supervision of Big Sis Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security (newspeak terminology), subject American citizens to Kindergarten Kommunism, the kindergarten teacher's philosophy of punishing everyone for the misbehavior of one. 

Out of stupidity and for fear of being charged with and sued for profiling for real terrorists, instead they terrorize everyone equally by subjecting us all alike to invasive federal government searches as we stand in line waiting for TSA officers, recipients of one of Amerika's largest Public Works Programs (or Pogrom, if you prefer), to wield their tyrannical power over us. These Kindergarten Kommunism Kops, of course, are hardly to blame, for they, like the low level members of the SS, are just doing their jobs as ordered by those above them. Their job is to distribute misery equally to everyone by subjugating everyone alike to suspicion of criminality, to invasive searches and pat-downs, to the loss of liberty, and to being herded like cattle Jews through their extravagantly expensive show of force that is little more than a placebo designed to appease the consciences of our governing officials and to reassure the gullible among us that they are actually effectively protecting us from terrorists.

I traveled last week to Atlanta, Georgia. Fortunately, in Atlanta I did not encounter the Strip-Search Beast operated by the Kindergarten Kommunism Kops. I saw the Beast, but the report I heard was that they decided not to implement the Beast because of the public outcry. If I were traveling this Wednesday, I would eagerly participate in the protest against the KKK Beast and compel a KKK officer to pat me down in search of those notoriously evasive weapons that I allegedly carry on my person and which again, allegedly I have so surreptitiously concealed.

The Authoritarian Roots of Corporate [and Educational Institution] Diversity Training

Find a PDF copy of "The Authoritarian Roots of Corporate Diversity Training" here or here. It's an excellent and enlightening read. Carl Horowitz, the author, introduces readers to the origins of a human experiment exercise widely used in "diversity training sessions."
The pull-quotes are superb reading, even if you can't take time to read the whole document. Save the PDF for future use and reference.

Diversity training, even when imposed with a smiling face, tends to resemble a sadistic elementary-school group exercise. There’s a good reason for this: That’s exactly how it began nearly 40 years ago and operated until the Eighties, when the pillars of corporate governance began to be convinced of its necessity. More than anyone else, we have a retired rural Midwest school teacher, Jane Elliott, to thank for this state of affairs.

Here are a few pull-quotes.

Do CEOs really believe the diversity claptrap or do they put on a happy face to avoid legal and other problems? Either way, they are acting in a manner contrary to the best interests of their companies, shareholders and the public at large.

Jane Elliott herself, ironically, knows her training methods carry an ugly power. She once told an interviewer, “It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were.”

Elliott’s exercises originally began, literally, as child abuse. They have evolved to reducing adults to the level of abused children—fearful, whimpering and apologetic for nonexistent offenses.

Anyone who still has one's critical faculties, after having endured the berating and belittling accusations of racism by diversiphiles in "diversity training" sessions who simply presume guilt of racism by all who bear light skin coloration, surely will resonate with this assessment of "diversity training" that employs the methods of Jane Elliott. "Who is Jane Elliott?" you may ask. Well, I asked the same question. Jane Elliott was an elementary school teacher in Riceville, Iowa in the 1960s. Perhaps more influential than anyone else, she adapted what was then called "sensitivity training" into "diversity training," which has become a cash cow for herself and for other diversiphiles. Jane Elliott is the one who concocted what has come to be known as the "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise." In 1968, after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, Elliott divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and then proceeded to demean the one group and praise the other with such assertions as,

Blue-eyed people are better than brown-eyed people. Oh yes they are! Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people. Is your dad brown-eyed? One day you came to school and you told us that he kicked you. Do you think a blue-eyed father would kick his son? . . . This is a fact. Blue-eyed people are better than brown-eyed people. . . . The blue-eyed people get five extra minutes of recess while the brown-eyed people have to stay in. The brown-eyed people do not get to use the drinking fountain. You have to use the paper cups. You brown-eyed people are not to play with the blue-eyed people on the playground, because you are not as good as blue-eyed people. The brown-eyed people today will wear collars so that we call tell from a distance what color your eyes are. . . .  You begin to notice today that we have spent a great deal of time waiting for brown-eyed people. . . . Who goes first for lunch today? Blue-eyed people. No brown-eyed people go back for seconds. Blue-eyed people may go back for seconds. Brown-eyed people do not.

The following day, Elliott reversed the roles of the children in her human experiment.

Yesterday, I told you that brown-eyed people aren't as good as blue-eyed people. That wasn't true. I lied to you yesterday. The truth is that brown-eyed people are better than blued-eyed people. . . . The brown-eyed people get an extra five minutes of recess. You blue-eyed people are not allowed to be on the playground equipment at any time. You blue-eyed people are not to play with the brown-eyed people. Brown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people. They're smarter than blue-eyed people. And if you don't believe it, look at Brian. Do blue-eyed people know how to sit in a chair? Very sad! Very, very sad! . . . Brown-eyed people learn fast. Boy, do brown-eyed people learn fast! . . . Blue-eyed people are wasteful.

Watch the video below. Elliott's human experiment incited hostilities between children, including a fight on the playground during recess.

Except for the fact that what Elliott launched on that day in 1968 has become mainstream practice in America's schools and corporations, today, such hostile and divisive human experimentation would be condemned as "child abuse." As shown within a larger quote, Elliott, herself, admits, "I think you could damage a child with this exercise very, very easily." But alas! Instead of averting the potential damage, Jane Elliott has mainstreamed her human experiment exercise. For this she is highly praised by all who have been duped to embrace her human experimentation that actually authorizes and exploits insulting, demeaning, degrading, disgusting, and divisive behavior purposefully to incite hostilities in order to effectuate the experiment. Watch the video provided below and see abuse of individuals in action, abuse of both children and adults.

This exercise entails far more than role-playing. What goes on in these human experimentation sessions is not confined to these sessions. Group identity political power emerges from these sessions, for, despite protests to the contrary, these human experimentations sessions embolden many individuals who find their identity with alleged oppressed groups, now protected classes, carry their voiced grievances out of the sessions to inflict them regularly against anyone who dares to object to the immoral nature of the experiment or points out its counterproductive effects. Individuals who register any objection against the methods and divisive consequences of "diversity training" sessions quickly discover that the human experiment session never ends precisely because it is far more than an experiment or exercise. It is a "brainwashing session," a "re-education session." The animus exhibited against objectors during these sessions persists interminably, or at least until the objector finally succumbs to re-education, sometimes even costing individuals their employment.

Where division, hostility, and racial animosity did not formerly exist, whenever any variety of the "blue-eyed/brown-eyed"  human experiment is imposed, following such sessions, real divisions, hostilities, and racial animosities now exist. Diversiphiles incite hostilities against anyone who dares to disagree not only with their imposed experiments but also with the imposition of their ideology and practices that biases their thinking so that they impose an experiment that breeds the very divisions they allegedly intend to avert. That they do not recognize the unintended consequences renders them diversiphiles.

Reasonable people surely ought to recognize the damage, destruction, and grave injury Elliott's human experimentation has upon human relations in general and upon inter-racial human relations in particular. Elliott herself admits that on that day in 1968, "I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third-graders in the space of fifteen minutes."

Carl Horowitz rightly concludes,

This, in a nutshell, is the essence of totalitarianism in all contexts—warfare against happy, confident people in the hopes of transforming them into timid “almost-people.” The question therefore should arise: If Elliott is fully aware of such consequences, why has she continuously pursued them for nearly four decades? And why have corporations, supposedly repositories of money and power, meekly acceded to her demands and those of her proxy allies? Diversity enthusiasts, despite their occasional feints toward reasonableness, are fanatic in their goal of rooting out racial bias. In that, they have learned well the lessons of their original mentor.

Near the close of the video Elliott admits,

I think the necessity for this exercise is a crime. No, I don't want to see it used more widely. I want to see the necessity for it wiped out. And I think that if educators were determined, that we could be very instrumental in wiping out the necessity for this exercise. But I want to see something used. I'd like to see this exercise used with all teachers, all administrators, but certainly not with all students, unless, unless it's done by people who are doing it for the right reasons and in the right way. I think you could damage a child with this exercise very, very easily. And I would never suggest that everybody should use it.

If any college professor were to accost verbally college students the way Jane Elliott verbally accosts her third-grade students, as seen repeatedly in the video below, such a professor ought to be fired promptly.

The following includes actual video of Elliott's human experiment imposed on her third-grade class the third time around.

Ideological Allegiance Required by Cultural Marxists Fascists

Teeth-Bared Teachers' Edfrom NAS

by Peter Wood

In January 2010, “planners” at the flagship campus of the University of Minnesota will make a fateful decision. The College of Education and Human Development will decide whether to adopt the recommendations of the Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group to make race, class, and gender politics the “overarching framework” for teacher education.

We know about this thanks to a heads-up article in the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune by NAS member Katherine Kersten. We’ve worked with Kersten before; she has been an admirable thorn in the side of the Minnesota education establishment. In this case, Kersten has snagged some mischief-in-the-making while there may still be time to stop it.

The Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group, which is apparently too sensitive to call itself a task force, calls for a form of teacher education that tries to make would-be teachers into exemplars of alienation from American cultural norms. They would like to ensure that every student on track to become a teacher in Minnesota public schools has worked through and rejected “white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression.” If the task group has its way, Lake Wobegon won’t be the only town in Minnesota where all the children are above average. The task group calls for future teachers to understand that meritocracy is just a “myth.”

The task group’s recommendations, strange as they sound, sound familiar to us. Several years ago, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the nation’s leading accreditor of schools of education, cobbled together new standards that included rules for future teachers to have the right “disposition” to teach. Among the dispositions NCATE thought desirable was “social justice.” In 2006, NAS challenged the use of “social justice” as a disposition, arguing that it was tantamount to mandating an ideological viewpoint. Art Wise, then NCATE’s president, backed down and removed the rule. Under its new president, however, NCATE appears to have reverted to an approach that puts ideological indoctrination at the center of teacher education. Glenn Ricketts wrote about this in January.

We hope that the citizens of Minnesota will scotch this particular descent into educational malpractice. But our alert goes out to the other 49 states as well. A substantial number of people in responsible positions in our nation’s schools of education see nothing amiss and a great deal to gain by attempting to turn teacher training into hard-core leftist political agitation. The time to act is before a task force group is convened to bring agitprop to your state.

See also Katherine Kersten's "At U, future teachers may be reeducated. They must denounce exclusionary biases and embrace the vision. (Or else.)"

Update: Read the vacuous response by Jean Quam, Dean of the College of Education, published in the Star Tribune opinion section.

In her Nov. 22 column, Katherine Kersten suggested that the future of teacher preparation at the University of Minnesota will be a process of ideological indoctrination denouncing "the American Dream." Just the opposite is true. The American Dream lives and thrives in the College of Education and Human Development.

The college is engaged in a significant rethinking of its teacher education programs, and its main focus is on improving student learning across Minnesota. The Teacher Education Redesign Initiative, with support from education partners throughout the state, will be a national model for preparing teachers for the real challenges of a 21st-century classroom.

Read the whole opinion piece.

Political Correctness Will Destroy Our Nation. It already is.

Within the past two weeks I have taken two airline flights. When I was being processed by TSA agents in the Minneapolis airport I noticed that the agent viewing bags via the x-ray machine flagged a bag to be hand inspected. It was not my bag, fortunately this time. It turned out to be a bag belonging to a Middle Eastern man. Before he arrived at the inspection desk, the TSA agent put on her gloves in preparation to give the bag a thorough inspection. However, as the man approached the desk her entire demeanor suddenly changed. Had it been my bag (I speak from much experience.), she would have rifled through the bag, removing numerous items for close inspection, even probably with chemicals. However, she adopted a demeanor of deference, even an obsequious posture, stumbling all over herself as she tried extra hard to be as nice and sweet as possible. I watched as she began to unzip the bag but suddenly stopped and zipped the bag closed again as the gentleman stepped to the inspection table. Instead, she spoke apologetically to him as if she were inconveniencing him needlessly. Thus, the gentleman went on his way entirely unencombered or delayed by the inconvenience of a thorough bag search. For the TSA agent merely handed the bag to the man after failing to inspect it after it had been flagged by the x-ray machine operator. This is not at all reassuring. Thanks to PC.

So, with this fresh upon my mind, the following brief essay is very apropos.


Diversity: An Ideology

George Seaver Web Exclusive

Most reasonable people have now recognized that Major Nidal Malik Hasan's actions in the Fort Hood massacre were not caused by pre-post-traumatic stress, by bullying, or by mental troubles, but were in accordance with his religious beliefs. Yet too many commentators resorted to the inadequate terms of political correctness to try and explain the event. What gives PC its pervasiveness, persistence, and power to influence behavior?

The influence of politically correct ideology was demonstrated by the senior Army General and Army Chief of Staff George Casey, when he stated that "as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse." He then ordered his commanders to be alert for anti-Muslim actions in their troops, as did the secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. This attitude is larger than this event, and so deserves a comprehensive investigation.

It is well known that political correctness has pervaded the academic world, as documented in literature and demonstrated by well-publicized speech codes, harassment policies, and postmodern curricula. What is not well known is that the same attitude also permeates the military, the FBI, and the CIA.

Read the whole essay.

Also, read "National Security Threatened by Devotion to Diversity."