FAIR Sends Letter of Inquiry to University of Colorado at Denver

FAIR is the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. FAIR often speaks up when organizations exhibit illiberal tendencies, even when this is done with good intentions. A recent example, a letter FAIR sent to the University of Colorado. Here's an excerpt from FAIR's letter of concern:

To summarize the information provided to FAIR: The University is emphasizing a particular ideological viewpoint and concomitant intolerance of dissenting viewpoints. It has held events where individuals are physically segregated based on skin color. A chilling effect has resulted on campus, leaving some employees and students feeling they cannot express their beliefs without fear of retribution.

We have significant concerns if that information is accurate. As an advocate for pro-human antiracism, FAIR respects educators who undertake efforts to create positive change and greater fairness. There can be no question of past and present injustices committed in this nation. However, institutional policies and practices that attempt to remedy prejudice should not themselves further prejudice or intolerance. It is unconstitutional for a public institution to segregate individuals by skin color, even if the purpose is benign. Johnson v. California, 543 U.S. 499, 506 (2005). Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 22 (1948); Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899, 908 (1996).

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Bari Weiss Invites All of Us to Become “Founders”

Bari Weiss is one of my heroes. She was forced off the staff of New York Times a few years ago because she refused to be muzzled on important issues of the day. She is now building her own media institution. I don't agree with her on everything, but I do see eye to eye with her on most of the topics of this podcast, an address she recently gave to a brand new college. One of her themes is that we need to bravely tell the truth, even when it causes people to dislike us. Even when they call us names. And we should never feel compelled to say things we don't believe to placate the mob. She invites each of us to avoid cynicism and to become "Founders."

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The New York Times Has Finally Acknowledged the Problem with Women

The NYT has finally crawled out of its cave to acknowledge a festering problem: The Political Left is shitting on women. Members of the Political Left are doing this through their words but also though their silence.

Why now, NYT? Is it because there are more and more of us creeping out into public to ask obvious questions and to state the problems we are seeing and hearing? Is it because Matt Walsh recently released his hard-hitting documentary (with which I find much merit, though I have my disagreements too): "What is a Woman?" Is it because one of the main missions of the NYT is to elect democrats and they have decided that NOW is the time to save the democrats from themselves by calling out bullshit on gender ideology? Maybe all of the above? Whatever the reason, an article like this was long overdue. I'm glad the NYT has published Pamela Paul's article. Maybe we can now have more real conversations on this topic of the mistreatment of women by the Political Left.

Here's an excerpt from "The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count.":

[T]he far right and the far left have found the one thing they can agree on: Women don’t count.

The right’s position here is the better known, the movement having aggressively dedicated itself to stripping women of fundamental rights for decades. . . .

Far more bewildering has been the fringe left jumping in with its own perhaps unintentionally but effectively misogynist agenda. There was a time when campus groups and activist organizations advocated strenuously on behalf of women. . . .But today, a number of academics, uber-progressives, transgender activists, civil liberties organizations and medical organizations are working toward an opposite end: to deny women their humanity, reducing them to a mix of body parts and gender stereotypes.

As reported by my colleague Michael Powell, even the word “women” has become verboten. Previously a commonly understood term for half the world’s population, the word had a specific meaning tied to genetics, biology, history, politics and culture. No longer. In its place are unwieldy terms like “pregnant people,” “menstruators” and “bodies with vaginas.”

Planned Parenthood, once a stalwart defender of women’s rights, omits the word “women” from its home page. NARAL Pro-Choice America has used “birthing people” in lieu of “women.” The American Civil Liberties Union, a longtime defender of women’s rights, last month tweeted its outrage over the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade as a threat to several groups: “Black, Indigenous and other people of color, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, immigrants, young people.” It left out those threatened most of all: women.

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