Annals of political correctness

The phenomenon of political correctness is ubiquitous. Someone could write a good book about it. Dinesh D’Souza devoted his precocious first book — Illiberal Education — to the higher education branch of the subject twenty years ago. To say matters have not improved would be a considerable understatement. Chapter 7 of the book addresses the teaching of race and gender at Harvard.

To say that matters have not improved on campus would be a considerable understatement. Anyone looking to update the book might want to file away John Leo’s list of Harvard freshman reading for what appears to be some form of cultural sensitivity training. The “diversity” in which Harvard students are inculcated is the politically correct, Orwellian kind. Come to think of it, Peter Wood wrote an excellent book about such “diversity.”

While we’re in the neighborhood of Harvard, you might want to check out the Harvard Law Unbound post on “The Anti-Hero of Harvard Law School.” The site is polling the question: Who is the Anti-Kingsfield of Harvard Law School? Results aren’t final, but — spoiler warning — Laurence Tribe has a big lead.

Well, cultural training has even reached the forces of the Afghan Army, and the Washington Post is pretty excited about it.

The Post reporters assert that Afghan soldiers “are still beset by a dangerous lack of cultural awareness, officials say, contributing to a string of insider attacks that have threatened to undermine the military partnership.” They don’t quote a single official who thinks that lack of cultural awareness is contributing to “a string of insider attacks.” It’s a sentence that reflects — how to put it? — the lack of cultural awareness of the Post’s own reporters.

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