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

Jodi Shaw Describes the Racially Hostile Environment of Smith College

Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster invited Jodi Show onto their show to describe her experiences at Smith College. The details show the extent to which Critical Race Theory and Woke ideas have infected the culture of Smith College.

An excerpt of Jodi Shaw's discussion from the 18 min mark:

I started sending emails and asking for definitions because clearly we were using different dictionaries at this point I well understood that my definition of racism was not consistent with um smith college's definition and nor was my definition of what i think of with equity and inclusion, so I started asking for definitions and I wasn't able to get those. Instead I got referred to Ibram X. Kendi’s book. I got sent an essay called Me and White Supremacy . . .

Continue ReadingJodi Shaw Describes the Racially Hostile Environment of Smith College

MLK: You Die When You Fail to Speak Up for What is Right and True

Martin Luther King spoke from the pulpit at Selma on March 8, 1965:

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

I am thinking of MLK's words, week by week, as I watch the moral rot of Critical Race Theory (CRT) spread through our sense-making institutions:  our colleges, media outlets and government bodies.  And more recently, we can see this at Amazon and Ebay and in the censorship policies of huge social media corporations that attempt to control what we share with each other.

The sad irony is that what is now passing as a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement is the opposite of the Civil Rights Movement.  The Woke movement demands that we judge each other's character and legal rights by irrelevant characteristics, not by the content of our character.

It's time to stand up and publicly declare that this Woke ideology, this Woke religion, is a fraud. Critical Race Theory divides us and spreads suspicion and hatred.  Critical Race Theory attacks the central teachings of Martin Luther King.

It might be uncomfortable for you to stand up to state these obvious things publicly, but there are many important reasons to summon the courage to speak up. Who do you want to see when you look in the mirror in the morning?  Do you see a person who is courageous or do you see a person who is afraid to speak truth to a misguided mob?  Are you willing to sit in silence while that mob smears the teachings of Martin Luther King, a man whose ideas are so treasured that we set aside a national holiday in his honor?

It's time to speak up, even (and especially) if you are the only person in the room willing to speak up.

Continue ReadingMLK: You Die When You Fail to Speak Up for What is Right and True