Political correctness
May 24, 2013 — Steven Hayward
If memory serves, Irving Kristol once remarked that the term “peace,” as it was used by the left, “is a Stalinist concept,” since the intent of the so-called “peace movement” was the unilateral disarmament of the West and the triumph of Communism. Today the term “diversity” works the same way: it has become a term meaning the opposite of its dictionary meaning, and is a vehicle for racial division and
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May 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
At the moment I am listening to the ostentatiously liberal Judge Mark Bennett of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa summarize the Supreme Court’s employment law decisions of the past year. Judge Bennett wants us to know that he has got his mind right (i.e., left), and how. I understood that from his disparagement of the conservative Supreme Court justices as “the usual suspects.” That
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May 1, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Steve’s post about the controversy over the Washington Redskins’ name made me think about the nicknames of European soccer teams and their supporters. Followers of Dundee United, a decent team in a poor league, call themselves the Arabs. The name has no political content, although in recent times Scotland turned strongly against Israel. Supporters of Ajax, a Dutch superpower and until about 15 years ago a European superpower too, are
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April 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Scott has done an outstanding job of covering the story arising from the NAS report by Peter Wood and Michael Toscano on Bowdoin College called What Does Bowdoin Teach? In his most recent post, for example, Scott provides valuable links and commentary. I agree with Stanley Kurtz that there is nothing quite like What Does Bowdoin Teach? Why? Because, as Kurtz says, (1) no one until now has exposed the
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April 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Have left-liberals killed liberal education? I’ve come to think so, and recent developments at Vassar and Bowdoin help confirm my fear. The indispensable Stanley Kurtz is on top of both stories. At Vassar, the subject of this post, he reports on attempts to block a speech by Alex Epstein, a proponent and defender of America’s conventional energy industries. Epstein was invited to speak by Vassar’s Moderate, Independent, Conservative Alliance (MICA).
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April 3, 2013 — Steven Hayward
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity,” George Orwell reminds us in his classic essay “Politics and the English Language.” (By the way, I typically assign students to read this essay in every course I teach, regardless of the subject. Not only is it a good aid to writing, but it also indirectly undermines a lot of political correctness.) This is preface to noting Jay Leno’s observation last night
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March 27, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Many of you probably have heard about the shocking case of Ryan Rotela, a devout Mormon student at Florida Atlantic University, who along with his classmates, was assigned by his professor to write the name JESUS in big letters on a piece of paper and then step on the paper. When Rotela complained about the assignment, the college charged him with violating the student code of conduct and ordered not
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February 9, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Introduced by Senator Jeff Sessions, Dr. Benjamin Carson spoke on Thursday this week at the National Prayer Breakfast to an audience that included President and Mrs. Obama up on the dais. Dr. Carson is a pediatric neurosurgeon who has lived a life of incredible accomplishment defying seemingly impossible odds. Watching the video, however, I couldn’t help but wonder if Dr. Carson might not have a greater contribution to make outside
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February 8, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
From Joe Asch comes word that the Dartmouth campus police are, in the words of the College’s Media Relations department, “on the hunt for a student who allegedly verbally harassed two students.” The object of this manhunt stands accused of speaking faux-Chinese to two Chinese students. If captured, what will happen to the lout? According to the Media Relations Department, he could face expulsion. Other penalties could “include a mandatory
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September 30, 2012 — Scott Johnson
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
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