Peter Boghossian: Portland State Censors Censorship Video. What to Expect Now . . .

Portland State University Professor Peter Boghossian has linked to a video that warns of actions by Portland State University to hide a public PSU video in which outrageous actions of censorship are being proposed by employees of PSU, including professors. Those proposed outrageous actions are described here in writing. Here's an excerpt from this written report:

The resolution then makes a series of sleights of hand, describing the sharing and commentary on the course slides in various dark tones, using words like “intimidation.” For example: “When faculty become active in, or even endorse or tacitly support, public campaigns calling for the intimidation of individual colleagues they disagree with, or with an entire faculty they disagree with, they are undermining academic freedom.” Thus, in a single sentence, the resolution imposes a gag order on criticisms of a university’s professors, programs, teaching, and research - - criticism which is itself the heart of academic freedom -- as an abuse of academic freedom. The resolution then affirms the new description of normal criticism as “bullying” and “cynical abuse” stating: “As Faculty, we must be thoughtful in our exercise of academic freedom and guard against its cynical abuse that can take the form of bullying and intimidation.”

The resolution, in redefining normal debate and criticism, as acts of “intimidation” and “bullying”, falls afoul not just of common sense but of constitutional protections and normal workplace employment law, especially for a public university where faculty governance and academic freedom are core principles subject to state laws. Nor does it contemplate the implications the resolution would have if applied to Woke Studies professors who regularly engage in such “intimidation” of their unWoke colleagues.

The resolution was presented for discussion and approval at a Portland State faculty senate meeting of March 1, 2021. Even by the standards of the contemporary academy, the live- streaming faculty senate “debate” on the resolution was notable in making painfully clear the disappearance of viewpoint diversity on campus and the emergence of a new racial justice activism animating taxpayer-funded universities. The meeting was live-streamed and then uploaded for public viewing on YouTube (the relevant half-hour section is from minutes 34:25 to 1:03:25).

PSU has now taken down the above video, so we can no longer see this public meeting of a public university.

Boghossian ends his Tweet by pointing to yesterday's video created by Aaron Kindsvatter, the most recent college professor to blow the whistle on oppressive Woke policies imposed by an American university (University of Vermont).  It is impossible to overlook the similarity of Kindsvatter's complaints to the complaints of Jodi Shaw, who has been forced out of Smith College due to the hostile work environment Shaw experienced at Smith.

Boghossian ends his Tweet thread with this comment: "Soon there will be dozens of these, then hundreds, then thousands."

I agree. The tide is starting to turn.

Continue ReadingPeter Boghossian: Portland State Censors Censorship Video. What to Expect Now . . .

Nervous University of Vermont Professor Speaks Out, Concerned About Critical Race Theory on Campus.

Professor Aaron Kindsvatter created this YouTube video to share his concerns about Woke ideology spreading across campus at the University of Vermont, where he works. He is not convinced that the way to fight racism is with more racism. Making this video was outside of Kindsvatter's comfort zone, as you can see when you watch the video.  The points he is raising are common sense, however, which is why critical race advocates refuse to expose their ideology to public debate.

Have you had enough of this Woke bullshit yet? Where are you going to draw your line? When will you stop giving ground and announce "Enough"? We're starting to turn this ship around. It's time for all kind-hearted thoughtful people to stand up and be counted.

Continue ReadingNervous University of Vermont Professor Speaks Out, Concerned About Critical Race Theory on Campus.

Bari Weiss: Affluent Parents Who are Afraid to Speak Out When Their Kids’ Private Schools Turn Woke

Here's a short excerpt from a long detailed article by Bari Weiss. She does not name her sources because they told her they are afraid of being named. They also told her that these stories need to be told. Weiss titled her article "The Miseducation of America's Elites Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children’s private schools, organize in secret."

These are two-career couples who credit their own success not to family connections or inherited wealth but to their own education. So it strikes them as something more than ironic that a school that costs more than $40,000 a year — a school with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right hand, and Sarah Murdoch, wife of Lachlan and Rupert’s daughter-in-law, on its board — is teaching students that capitalism is evil.

For most parents, the demonization of capitalism is the least of it. They say that their children tell them they’re afraid to speak up in class. Most of all, they worry that the school’s new plan to become an “anti-racist institution” — unveiled this July, in a 20-page document — is making their kids fixate on race and attach importance to it in ways that strike them as grotesque.

. . .

But physics looks different these days. “We don’t call them Newton’s laws anymore,” an upperclassman at the school informs me. “We call them the three fundamental laws of physics. They say we need to ‘decenter whiteness,’ and we need to acknowledge that there’s more than just Newton in physics.”

Continue ReadingBari Weiss: Affluent Parents Who are Afraid to Speak Out When Their Kids’ Private Schools Turn Woke

Woke Mob Smears Glenn Greenwald for Asking Obvious Questions About Gallop Poll Offering New LGBT Data

It's a sad day when it is no longer acceptable to publicly ask the same good faith questions that any reasonable person would (and should) ask in private when fascinating new data becomes available on the topic of LGBT.  Glenn Greenwald explains exactly why he was interested new Gallop Polling data. The backlash against him for asking his common-sense questions is baffling.  Greenwald introduces his video: 

To explore the dynamics of this strain of mob conduct, address some of the good faith criticisms from yesterday, examine the substantive questions I believe are raised by this new polling data, and emphasize what I did and did not say about these questions yesterday, I recorded the video below, roughly 40 minutes in length.

Continue ReadingWoke Mob Smears Glenn Greenwald for Asking Obvious Questions About Gallop Poll Offering New LGBT Data

Jodi Shaw Resigns from Smith College After College Administrators Fail to Buy Her Silence

Back in October 2020, I watched Jodi Shaw go public to explain a problem with the hostile work environment at Smith College, her then-employer and her alma mater. I'll never forget the earnestness in her voice, the determined look on her face and her intense emotions as she carefully described the situation. She knew she was about jump off the high dive and there would be no turning back. As I watched her video, I didn't sense any attempt at advocacy or showmanship. Shaw made her video to say some things that were factually straightforward, but socially dangerous for the many Smith adherents of the new religion of Critical Race Theory. She called out that the Emperor had no clothes.

Shaw was concerned that Smith College was attempting to fight racism with what has come to be known as neoracism, a pernicious new version of racism. At Smith College, Martin Luther King's great dream is dead. At the urging of the leadership of Smith College, complex human beings are proudly categorized and judged by the color of their skin, not by the content of their character.

I've followed Shaw's postings and videos carefully since October. Shaw has expanded on her concerns in subsequent videos and tweets: Reducing people to "colors" undermines moral agency, reduces people to "racial objects," and needlessly creates antagonistic in-groups and out-groups. She knew that breaking her silence would threaten her loss of income and perhaps her personal safety and it now has, as explained below.

Bari Weiss is also following Jodi Shaw's story, most recently in an article she titles "Whistleblower at Smith College Resigns Over Racism." Weiss writes:

Jodi Shaw was, until this afternoon, a staffer at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She made $45,000 a year — less than the yearly tuition at the school. She is a divorced mother of two children. She is a lifelong liberal and an alumna of the college. And she has had a front-row seat to the illiberal, neo-racist ideology masquerading as progress.

As part of her article, Weiss has reprinted Shaw's resignation letter in full. Here is an excerpt from Shaw's letter:

I can no longer work in this environment, nor can I remain silent about a matter so central to basic human dignity and freedom. . . . Under the guise of racial progress, Smith College has created a racially hostile environment in which individual acts of discrimination and hostility flourish. In this environment, people’s worth as human beings, and the degree to which they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, is determined by the color of their skin. It is an environment in which dissenting from the new critical race orthodoxy — or even failing to swear fealty to it like some kind of McCarthy-era loyalty oath — is grounds for public humiliation and professional retaliation. . . . Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. . . .

What passes for “progressive” today at Smith and at so many other institutions is regressive. It taps into humanity’s worst instincts to break down into warring factions, and I fear this is rapidly leading us to a very twisted place. It terrifies me that others don’t seem to see that racial segregation and demonization are wrong and dangerous no matter what its victims look like. Being told that any disagreement or feelings of discomfort somehow upholds “white supremacy” is not just morally wrong. It is psychologically abusive.

Jodi Shaw is no longer working as an employee of Smith College, but she is continuing to actively help Smith College find its way out of the Critical Race Theory thicket. You can follow her tweets here.  She has set up a GoFundMe to help with her living expense and her legal fees.

Bari Weiss concludes her article:

What is happening is wrong. Any ideology that asks people to judge others based on their skin color is wrong. Any ideology that asks us to reduce ourselves and others to racial stereotypes is wrong. Any ideology that treats dissent as evidence of bigotry is wrong. Any ideology that denies our common humanity is wrong. You should say so. Just like Jodi Shaw has.

Continue ReadingJodi Shaw Resigns from Smith College After College Administrators Fail to Buy Her Silence