A Michigan State student has pled guilty to a misdemeanour charge of harassment for posting an offensive flyer in his dorm. David Powder was offended by the Shaw Hall Black Caucus, which limits membership to black students: he didn't like the double standard and felt the organization was racist. So he made his point by creating a flyer that turned the tables. On January 11, residents of Shaw Hall discovered a flyer inviting all students to a meeting of the "White Caucus." The flyer, which parodied a Black Caucus flyer, depicted a naked pregnant woman and listed the phone numbers of Black Caucus board members as contacts.

It wasn't long before the Shaw Hall director, Tracy Bobertz, found out who posted the flyer. Did she contact Powder about it? Did she attempt to discuss the matter with him? Did she try to help the ruffled students in Shaw Hall resolve their differences quietly and amicably? Of course not. Racial insensitivity--even when it falls within the bounds of free speech--calls for more stringent measures. She met with university officials and then filed a police report.

Powder was arrested (in his dorm room, by MSU police) and spent a night in jail before entering his initial plea of not guilty. He only avoided more serious felony charges of ethnic harassment because the flyer did not target specific individuals or threaten violence. Facing jail time and fines, he told the MSU student paper, The State, that the flyer was meant as political satire, adding the usual painful caveats: "Most of my friends are people of color or people of ethnic minority," he said. "Being arrested really isn't a bad thing, it's just part of the process. Just because you're charged doesn't mean you're guilty. ... People are going to assume I'm guilty and people are going to say I'm a racist. ... I want people to understand just because I'm being charged doesn't mean I'm guilty and also not a racist." Henry Silverman, president of the Lansing ACLU, backed Powder's claim: "He wrote the flier as a political parody and sees it as a political statement and, in that sense, we have looked at this issue."

But fighting the campus thought police can be wearing, particularly when it has decided to treat you as a danger to society. Powder fought back at first, but eventually pled guilty in order to get the ordeal over with. Now he has a criminal record for his trouble. He also has to write letters of apology to each of the students whose numbers were given as contacts. The prosecutor is recommending six months probation. Powder, who turned down ACLU representation in order to get the unpleasant episode over with, is contrite: "I was commenting on the belief that Black Caucus is a racist organization," he said. "I was not using much foresight at the time. In retrospect, I can see how they might be offended."

This is what happens when the untenable ethical double standards of the multicultural campus--where some students have the right not to be offended while others do not; where it's racist to point out that the growing separatism of campus minority groups is itself racist; where white men are fair game for vindictive diversity zealots--meet local law enforcement. Powder overstepped when he included black students' phone numbers on the flyer. But at the same time, if the situation had been reversed, the reaction would have been far different. In fact, that was Powder's point.

UPDATE: John Rosenberg has more. Don't miss his parallel discussion of a Texas Tech student who has created a "United White Persons College Fund"--in an attempt to get sued.

Here it is, in all its glory. Link courtesy of Andrew Sullivan.

The case of Bob Uttl, the Oregon State psych professor who was summarily fired one day after receiving a positive performance evaluation, begins to take on the familiar contours of a departmental witch hunt.

Followers of academic politics will recognize in Uttl's profile a history similar to that of KC Johnson, the Brooklyn College history professor who was denied tenure for lack of collegiality after he criticized some of his senior colleagues for allowing politics to slant their teaching and hiring practices (Johnson won his appeal and was awarded tenure this week). Like Johnson, Uttl apparently works in a department where backbiting and petty politicking are the norm. He has a history of being outspoken; he has not only criticized senior colleagues, but filed complaints against their more egregrious conduct (the nature of those complaints remain unspecified, but Critical Mass trusts the details will emerge in time). Those whom Uttl has alienated happen also to be those who have power over his job.

At a campus hearing Tuesday, retired OSU psychology professor Carol Saslow elaborated:

"He didn't keep a low enough profile," Saslow said of the grievances Uttl filed, adding that the hearings are designed to wear professors out.

Of the psychology department as a whole, she said it's "a pretty miserable place to work," adding that there is a alot of in-fighting.

Saslow said she was appalled at statements made during a promotion and tenure meeting regarding Uttl in 2001. She said that meeting aided in her decision to retire in 2002.

"In our department, the people who vote on you just happen, by and large, to be the same people who were Uttl's downfall," she said.

"Young, smart people can be very threatening," Saslow continued.

OSU policy states that untenured faculty can be fired at any time, without a stated reason. But it also states that retaliatory action cannot be taken against those who file complaints. Uttl does not know why he was fired. But he suspects retaliation.

Uttl has a stellar record of teaching, scholarship, and service. To his knowledge, there is only one negative thing in his personnel file: a four-page screed written by disgruntled former student Jennifer Krebs. Uttl caught Krebs cheating on an assignment and offered her the chance to do it over. Instead, she dropped the course and--encouraged by administrators to whom she had complained--she wrote a letter accusing him of speaking broken English (Uttl is Czech), of discriminating against women, and of committing "atrociously unprofessional acts." Uttl believes Krebs wrote the letter with intent to destroy his career--which it now appears to be in the business of doing. Though Uttl has not been given an objective, clear reason for his dismissal, the letter has been used by his department to justify the decision to fire him.

Uttl has filed a $1.2 million defamation lawsuit against the graduated Krebs, who now does fundraising work for Oregon State. One wonders how long it will be before Uttl sues OSU for more.

The Berkeley College Republicans have followed the lead of their UCLA compeers: yesterday, they held a bake sale to protest affirmative action. Chocolate chip cookies were available on a sliding race-based fee scale: $1.50 for whites, $1.25 for Asians, $1.00 for Latinos, 75 cents for Chicanos, 50 cents for Native Americans, and 25 cents for blacks. Only thirty cookies sold, but the group made its point: it offended strong supporters of racial preferences and amused opponents.

State Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres repeated the condemnation he made when UCLA students held a similar sale, saying that it "is a shame Republican students at Berkeley and UCLA have chosen to mimic the extreme views of their Republican leaders .... Once again we see hard-working students of color subjected to racist Republican rhetoric for simply seeking a good education and equal opportunity."

Anti-affirmative action activist and UC Regent Ward Connerly, most famous at Cal as the man who spearheaded Proposition 209 (which made it illegal to make race a factor in UC admissions), applauded the sale: "I think that it highlights the absurdity of preferences on the basis of race or gender or ethnicity," he said. "I commend them for piercing through the clutter and getting to the heart of what is really wrong with preferences."

The UCLA sale, which took place weeks ago, continues to cause controversy: in today's Daily Bruin, the leaders of the Bruin Democrats denounce the sale as racist, segregationist, and characteristic of the racism built into the Republican Party, closing with the following food for thought: "Events like the Bruin Republicans' bake sale oppose equal opportunity, just like Trent Lott did in 1962 when he opposed the integration of the first black student into the University of Mississippi."

UPDATE: The Daily Californian has more.

The hitherto silent partner in Harvard's snow phallus-breaking dynamic duo has come forward. In today's Crimson, Amy Keel's roommate, Mary Cardinale, explains why she helped tear down the now notorious nine-foot snow penis erected last week in Harvard Yard. Cardinale stresses that unlike Keel, she is not a radical feminist but a social conservative concerned to maintain standards of public decency. When deciding what to do about the offensive snow sculpture, both Keel and Cardinale looked within: "we asked ourselves what someone we respected would do. While I considered what Jesus would think, Amy considered what the reaction of her Womenís Studies professor would be." On the strength of their mutual introspection, the two decided to take a shovel to the snow penis. There was no time to lose: even though it was one in the morning, the towering "symbol of male violence" was attracting an all-too appreciative crowd. "We witnessed the lewd acts that the presence of the sculpture inspired in our peers," Cardinale writes. "There were the typical photos taken of climbers, huggers and lickers, and one young man went so far as to disrobe and mimic a sexual act against the statue as his friends snapped pictures. There were no two ways about it: the display had to go."

Meanwhile, the campus women's group R.U.S (which stands for "Radcliffe Union of Students," and not, as Princess Bride fans might imagine, "rodents of unusual size"), has met to discuss the controversy. Keel reiterated her conceptually challenged argument that "women or men who are walking to class should not be subjected to a penis," and Cardinale stated her view that it was her responsibility to spare sensitive Harvard eyes from the "lewd" and "inappropriate" spectacle (unstated, but implicit in this view, is the related belief that she is specially equipped to adjudicate what is and is not "lewd" and "inappropriate").

The good news is that there appears to have been a sincere exchange of views at the meeting. One student questioned whether the snow phallus was really such a big deal; another pointed out that destroying the phallus was showing disrespect for those who devoted a great deal of time to creating it; there was a discussion about whether building a snow vagina alongside the penis would have made a more effective statement. More to the point, the status of the phallus, and of the phallus-breaking, as forms of expression were discussed. Keel remains adamant on this point: ìIt wasnít anyoneís private property; it was snow,î she said. ìTaking down a penis...is not impeding anyoneís free speech.î But the co-president of RUS isn't so sure: ìI donít think we have a right to take down things that offend us,î she said. ìWe have to put up posters to the contrary.î

Student journalists at Miami University are not the only ones who aren't allowed to criticize the faculty. The editors of Reed College's student paper Quest have resigned after a satirical send-up of the English department chair's Afrocentric teaching led to accusations of racism and widespread outrage among students and faculty.

According to a column in yesterday's Oregonian, the February 4 issue of Quest (which is not, alas, online as far as I can tell) featured a centerfold spread modelled after hotornot.com, a website dedicated to determining, well, who's hot and who's not. Entitled "Academic or Not?", the centerfold focussed on five Reed professors, inviting readers to judge the quality of their work. Reed English department chair Pancho Savery was one of them: "Incendiary afrocentrist with alarmist concerns? Enlightened intelectual (sic) with informed opinions? He preaches multiculturalism, but is his agenda unscrupulously Black and White?", the Quest spread asked. "You Decide!"

Every year, Savery delivers a lecture entitled "Black Athena" to the students in Humanities 110, a core course all freshmen are required to take. Savery's lecture presents the familiar--and discredited--argument that Greek culture has African origins; it also challenges Reed College to design a more "diverse" curriculum. Savery gets standing ovations for his lecture--but he doesn't convince everyone. One student described it as "more inflammatory rhetoric than earnest scholarship." Another wrote that "While exiting that lecture, I had the same reaction expressed in the satire: Alarmist incendiary afrocentrism . . . I thought his argument lacked merit because it was entirely reactionary, and made significant logical leaps that I believe would be indefensible if challenged."

But the unspoken rule appears to be that students should keep such objections to themselves. Quest's suggestion that Savery's lecture may be more sensationalistic than scholarly, that it smacks of an agenda, and that as such it might not be the most ethical or responsible pedagogical performance Reed has ever seen, caused a collective campus meltdown. There were cries of racism and calls for the resignation of the student editors responsible for the spread. The Reed student senate threatened to withdraw funding for the paper. The poor timing of Quest's unwarranted display of racial insensitivity was loudly lamented: February is Black History Month after all. The communal pain was such that the Multicultural Resource Center held "a meeting for students who need support and a safe place."

The letters poured in, and many made their way into the pages of Quest. Since Quest isn't online, we can't look at all of them. But some select excerpts have made the Oregon papers. Among them were some intellectually dishonest gems from faculty. They accused Quest of ad hominem attack--as if criticizing a professor's pedagogy were the same thing as personally attacking him. They argued that the paper had violated community standards of civility, thus damaging "the trust and respect we share as members of an academic community"--as if the free exchange of ideas were not the lifeblood of an intellectual community; as if trust could be born of hypocritical silence and respect could come from sham displays of tolerance. They argued that Savery was targeted because he is black--as if questioning a professor's extreme ideas is akin to hate crime when the professor happens not to be white. As Jacqueline Dirks, who chairs Reed's American Studies Committee, opined, "It is in the assertion that simply addressing race makes a black professor 'less academic' that the racism lies." Student leaders concurred. The message was clear: Savery was not to be criticized because he is black. And because Savery is black, criticism of his questionable pedagogy is racist.

There were voices of dissent: one student wrote that "What constitutes 'latent racism' ... is the assumption that Pancho Savery, because he is black and teaches about African American-related issues, should be immune from criticism. ... This expression of unacceptable paternalism (often manifested in 'white guilt') holds minorities to a lower standard -- intolerable in an academic community such as ours." And as Quest co-editor Jesse Hoffman wrote before he resigned, "It is this kind of hyperbole and self-fabricated threat that disrupts an intellectual community from engaging in productive debate."

But those dissenting voices are less likely to surface at Reed from now on. Reed elects its student editors; according to the student body president, the editorial board of Quest has an obligation to reflect the values of the student body; its members can be recalled when they fail to live up to that obligation. Quest has a greater duty to conform to campus orthodoxy than to seek the truth;it might more properly be named Mirror.

More disturbing than the prior restraint under which Quest must operate, though, is the failure of Reed faculty to provide a voice of reason and to model how citizens of a free society ought to behave. If events at Reed show nothing else, they show how invested faculty (not just at Reed, but across the country) can be in creating and maintaining an illiberal, anti-intellectual campus atmosphere (all in the name of inclusion and tolerance, of course). They show how willing faculty can be to encourage their students in the ways and means of censorious ignorance. Levelling spurious charges of racism rather than teaching students how to dissect ideas, assemble cogent argument, debate fairly, and give and receive criticism, the professors who condemned Quest's satirical spread as racist without, apparently, addressing the substance of its critique--that Savery is disseminating ideology as history--are themselves guilty of the very racism they are so eager to decry in others: after all, to suggest that a professor's ideas should not be challenged because he is black is to suggest that this professor can't handle criticism and that his work cannot stand up to scrutiny. It is to suggest that the chair of Reed's English department is a second-class citizen, one who cannot be held to the same standards as everyone else because he cannot measure up to them.

Last night, the trustees of the City University of New York overturned the decision of Brooklyn College to deny tenure to history professor KC Johnson for "lack of collegiality." Matthew Goldstein, chancellor of the CUNY system, read one of Johnson's books and interviewed him personally in order to arrive at his decision. His statement, as reported in today's Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription only, or see the shorter column in The New York Post) is a remarkable and much-deserved vindication of Johnson: "Although collegiality is a factor that may be considered in connection with promotion and tenure decisions, I did not find compelling and objective evidence of a major problem in that regard sufficient to trump a truly outstanding record of scholarship, teaching, and other aspects of service." Johnson's own comment is worth remarking as well: "I hope this will be a lesson to college administrators to respect academic freedom and make tenure decisions based on scholarship and teaching."

Here's hoping the Brooklyn College vigilantes reconsider the case of philosophy professor Michael Cholbi, which bears a striking resemblance to Johnson's. Here's hoping, too, that this is not the end of Johnson's case: he was persecuted by departmental colleagues who disliked his politics; the campaign to deny him tenure for "lack of collegiality" was engineered by the department chair; and Brooklyn College administrators--most notably Provost Roberta Matthews--backed up the departmental vendetta by refusing to take Johnson's charges of malfeasance seriously. There are some who should be fired at CUNY--but Johnson and Cholbi are not among them.

UPDATE: The New York Times has more.

Here's an example of how a single letter--of dubious veracity--written by a single disgruntled student--encouraged by administrators with suspect motives--can cost a professor his job.

One day after receiving a positive annual review, Oregon State psychology professor Bob Uttl was sacked. The smoking gun? A four-page letter of complaint written by a former student who dropped his course after eight weeks. Uttl, who faces deportation now that he is no longer employed, says he is being discriminated against and has filed a $1.2 million lawsuit against the now-graduated Jennifer Krebs for placing what he claims is a "defamatory" letter in his personnel file. Krebs' letter accused Uttl of discriminating against women, of speaking in "broken English" (he has Czech and Canadian citizenship), and of engaging in "atrociously unprofessional acts."

Punchline: the official reason for the fourth-year assistant professor's termination was lack of collegiality: according to his dean, "he has not shown himself to be a good citizen of the department or the university." Uttl is in good company: in recent months, Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson, Brooklyn College philosophy professor Michael Cholbi, and Simpson College English professor Dan Bauer have all lost their jobs for their alleged uncollegiality.

UPDATE: This story reports that the trouble between Krebs and Uttl began when Krebs worked together with another student on an assignment they were supposed to do on their own. When he confronted them and asked them to do the assignment over, Krebs dropped the class.

In other words, Krebs got caught cheating. Uttl seems to have offered to let her off lightly--but instead she dropped the course and pursued a vendetta.

Uttl's lawsuit grows out of his conviction that Krebs wrote her letter in a deliberate attempt to destroy his career. Krebs' lawyer claims that Krebs' comments are constitutionally protected, since they are statements of opinion.

The real issue here seems to be why Oregon State gave such weight to what appears to be one outlying negative evaluation whose motivations look cloudy at best.

Harvard's self-appointed feminist thought police(wo)men, sophomore Amy Keel and her unnamed room-mate, may be disappointed to learn that their destruction of the nine-foot-tall, anatomically precise snow phallus erected recently in Harvard Yard has not rid the earth of offensive ice sculpture. Obscene snow scuptures are busting out all over: in Kent, Ohio, Crystal Lynn was contacted by police after they received an anonymous complaint about her "inappropriate snow sculpture" (thanks to reader William D. for the link). Lynn had crafted a snow-woman replete with celery eyes, carrot nose, and two blobs of snow for breasts. A policeman showed up at Lynn's door minutes after she finished sculpting. "He said that I should cut off her breasts, but I said no woman wants that," Lynn reported. Worried that she might be charged with disorderly conduct if she left the statue au naturel, Lynn draped a tablecloth around her shoulders to create a cape-like effect: "She looked really good, like she was getting ready to go to a party," she said. But when she learned that the officer was simply passing on an anonymous complaint, she restored her snow-woman to all her original full-breasted glory. A similar case occurred in Salt Lake City, where Kevin Dille and Dawn Napples collaborated on his and hers snowpeople. Ironically, what inflamed the sensibilities of the neighbors was their attempt to be sensitive: they covered their snowpeople's privates (jingle bells for him, three well-placed maple leaves for her) in an attempt to honor the modesty of their creations. But a prude's work is never done, and the police received complaints about the "offensive" manner in which, in covering the snowpeople's genital areas, the sculptors drew attention to them.

Meanwhile, in a clear violation of internet standards of decency, treehuggercreations.com displays this smutty photograph of a snow sculpture entitled, "Snowblower." Treehuggercreations is not alone in its propagation of snow porn, as this image suggests. It is not titled, but I like to call it "The Ice Man Cometh."

Truly, a feminist censor's work is never done. Perhaps Keel can get a travel grant to go knock down Lynn's boobalicious snow woman. Maybe she could get some course credit for launching a campaign to ban all pornographic snow photos from the web. The possibilities are endless. She might even be able to get an honors thesis out of her censorious ice capade: as every proper academic feminist knows, resistance is meaningless unless it is properly theorized.

Or, Keel could do the more difficult thing: commence the slow, hard process of shedding the protective ideological skin of radical feminist claptrap and grow up. One concerned blog reader has taken it upon herself to give Keel some guidance on this point, should she choose to accept it. Here are excerpts from the letter she sent to Keel (italicized lines are from Keel's explanation for why she destroyed the snow phallus):

Dear Amy,

People like you make me embarrassed to call myself a feminist. Do you realize what a parody of a radical women's studies major you sound like? No, probably you don't, because everyone else at Radcliffe is as far out in left field as you are, and nobody who could breathe some fresh air and common sense into the debate is allowed to speak up without being punished.

The penis "sculpture" was not an official Harvard installation, and the men who put it up had no permission to do so. It was perfectly within my rights to take down this object which was incredibly offensive to me.

Uh-huh. You know, I thought going to college meant being exposed to the points of view of other people, not being sheltered from the sight or sound of anything you might deem "offensive." Does your viewpoint mean if, say, the gay students' organization puts up a display on proper condom use without university permission, conservative and/or religious students who are offended by it have the right to take it down? And I mean a logical right, not a right or lack thereof according to your double standards (i.e., "womyn" and "gender minorities" and "people of color" have the right, whereas "oppressive white males" don't).

As a student of Harvard University, neither I, nor any other woman, should have to see this obscene and grossly inappropriate thing on my way to class. No one should have to be subjected to an erect penis without his or her express permission or consent.

Sweetie, you weren't subjected to an erect penis. You were subjected to a snow sculpture. I realize all you post-modernist types think that words, thoughts or representations are the literal equivalents of actions, but understand that most rational, intelligent human beings can tell the difference.

And not all women would find a snow penis offensive. I, for one, would have laughed long and loud. So would many other women of my acquaintance.

Many women and men, including myself, are the victims of sexual assault, child sexual abuse and rape.

Oh, I see. The entire world has to change to cater to your collective traumata. You know what? I know quite a few men and women who were sexually abused or assaulted, and they were able to get on with their lives and deal with human sexuality in its myriad and often impolite forms, rather than turn into professional victims and bitter enemies of any form of masculinity.

The unwanted image of an erect penis is an implied threat; it means that we, as women, must be subject to erect penises whether we like it or not.

Of course. It couldn't just be a tasteless joke, could it? Especially to those who have no sense of humor. Or perspective.

There was nothing "challenging" or "subversive" about the penis. The only thing it did was create an uncomfortable environment for the women of Harvard University.

And, again, Ghoddess FORBID we make anyone uncomfortable, even if it means we have to destroy things that others have taken great time and effort to make. I mean, feelings are more important than respect for other people's property, right?

Once again--what my roommate and I did was not cowardly, but instead quite brave.

And war is peace. And freedom is slavery. And ignorance is bliss. That reminds me, I gotta order me some George Orwell books from Amazon.com. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

These men felt that it was their right to build this pornographic sculpture whose only purpose could be to assert male dominance.

Right, because again, jokes don't exist in your universe.

I am dismayed that The Crimson chose to both publish the picture of the snow penis and Esensten's commentary, both of which were extremely offensive.

Yep, "anyone's opinion who differs from mine" = "offensive." Amy, as much as I wince at the thought of you indoctrinating future students with your wild-eyed and ultimately poisonous ideology, I think you should definitely seek out a career in academia. You wouldn't last very long in the real world.

I am so grateful I graduated college before political correctness took over completely. Otherwise, I never would have discovered that there are better systems of political thought out there than leftism in all its incarnations, including radical feminism.

Last week I reported the case of a Miami University student who was fired from his job at the student paper (variously known as the Miami Student and, to locals, as the Miami Stupid) for writing a column that criticized French department faculty's use of sexually explicit material in their courses. French department chairman Jonathan Strauss objected strongly to Aaron Sanders' criticisms, and complained to Cheryl Heckler, the student paper's faculty advisor. Heckler promptly directed Jill Inkrott, the student editor of the paper, to fire Sanders. And that's when all hell broke loose. The Cincinnati Enquirer got hold of the story and reported it as a classic case of discrimination, arguing that Sanders was fired for expressing his views. Critical Mass picked up the story from the Enquirer, which drew a reply from Jonathan Strauss himself, which in turn sparked a debate about the nature of free expression and the responsibilities of faculty members to demonstrate a commitment to it (scroll down here). The Miami Student Senate put together a resolution defending Sanders and condemning campus censorship. Now the Enquirer is following up: yesterday it reported that the campus civil liberties group FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is "eager" to take up Sanders' case. "This is an astonishing case," FIRE's CEO Thor Halvorssen said. "It shows utter contempt for freedom of speech." FIRE doesn't make such comments casually. If Miami administrators don't want their local scandal to become national news, they should start taking seriously the charge that free speech is compromised on their campus.

UPDATE: You can read a March 10 follow-up piece in the Cincinnati Enquirer here.

Columnist Walter Williams argues that the debates about the use of affirmative action--or,if you prefer, racial preferences--in college admission are smokescreens that work to distract us from the real issue at hand: the "fraudulent education" delivered by predominantly black high schools.

Williams quotes damning numbers:

At 12 of [Washington, D.C.'s] 19 high schools, more than 50 percent of the students test below basic in reading, and at some of those schools the percentages approached 80 percent. At 15 of these schools, more than 50 percent tests below basic in math. And in 12 of them, 70 percent to 99 percent do so. Each year, more than 80 percent ó and up to 96 percent ó of high-school students are fraudulently promoted to the next grade.
ÝÝÝÝ
...In Philadelphia's predominantly black high schools, combined SAT scores of its seniors average between 590 to 800 out of a possible 1600. I suspect there's little difference between these education outcomes and those in other predominantly black school districts. Indeed, nationally there's more than a 200 SAT score gap between blacks and Hispanics on the one hand, and whites and Asians on the other.

For Williams, affirmative action is a belated and inadequate non-solution to a problem that only gets worse the longer it is ignored. Worse, affirmative action and the debates around it operate to distract us from the real issues at hand: the failure of public schools to provide proper training to underprivileged kids. In this logic, affirmative action emerges not as a means of redressing oppression (as its defenders would have it) but as a tool of oppression; likewise, supporters of affirmative action come off not as progressive, but as deludedly complicit with the system they want to change.

The good news: Williams profiles a predominantly black school in Harlem that really is doing a good job preparing kids for college and beyond. 98% of kids who attend the Frederick Douglass Academy graduate, and 95% go to college. The school was listed by Newsweek as one of the top schools in the country. The secret? High expectations and no pandering. As the school principal explained, "You have to demand more of your students, while providing them with the structure to meet those demands. The more difficult the curriculum, the greater the likelihood your students will be successful."

And the more successful students there are, the more "diversity"--that demographic holy grail of college admissions offices--will take care of itself. Williams' column offers more than just a fascinating angle on the problem of black underachievement and the ongoing debates about affirmative action; it also shows how advocates of "diversity" may also be defenders of merit-based admissions and hiring systems. In other words, Williams' column punctures one of the central arguments in the Michigan case (an argument echoed by the many universities that have lately filed amicus briefs), and in so doing recasts the issue in crucial ways. The question is not whether we need racial preferences to create and maintain diversity, as Michigan and many other schools would have it, but why we want to engineer a false diversity rather than create the conditions for an authentic one.

Last week, a nine-foot-tall snow phallus was erected in Harvard Yard. It was anatomically precise, a labor of love, if you will. But to some it was also offensive, and shortly after the sculpture was completed, it was crushed. Controversy raged: in a letter to the editor of The Harvard Crimson, one student angrily decried the sexual double standard embodied in the snow penis, criticizing the Crimson for running a picture of the icy member ("complete with testicles and vein") and opining that the Crimson would never be so immature as to run a photo of a vast vagina sculpture (the offending phallus photo, entitled "Winter Wonder," has been removed).

On Wednesday, Jonathan Esenstein, an executive editor at the Crimson, answered this criticism and more with an erudite, tongue-in-cheek defense of the snow phallus, condemning the anonymous crushers for their "cowardly act of vandalism," meditating on the "long and distinguished history of phallic imagery in art," pointing out that the phallus is often a symbol of peace, and speculating about the motives of the self-appointed snow police: "Perhaps the phallus-breakers of Harvard Yard were reacting with bourgeois conventionality in labeling challenging art as subversive. Or maybe they were acting on some radical womenís liberation agenda that requires the destruction of visible symbols of male virility."

Now the mystery is solved. The culprit has come forward. And she is every inch the deluded radical feminist Esenstein so presciently skewered in his column. In today's Crimson, sophomore Amy Keel proudly announces that she and her room-mate were the ones who "dismantled the obscene snow penis 'sculpture'", defending her actions thus:

As a student of Harvard University, neither I, nor any other woman, should have to see this obscene and grossly inappropriate thing on my way to class. No one should have to be subjected to an erect penis without his or her express permission or consent.

Keel offers the following explanation for treating the snow phallus like a real one:

Many women and men, including myself, are the victims of sexual assault, child sexual abuse and rape. The unwanted image of an erect penis is an implied threat; it means that we, as women, must be subject to erect penises whether we like it or not. There was nothing ìchallengingî or ìsubversiveî about the penis. The only thing it did was create an uncomfortable environment for the women of Harvard University.

Lest there be any confusion on this point, I will clarify: Keel is not a victim of the snow phallus; she is a victim of sensitivity training.

Crystal Thompson's soft voice quavered as she stood at a microphone in a packed auditorium and faced the University of Texas president.

"What are you going to do to keep me here? What are you going to do so I should convince my brother to go here?" the college senior, who is black, asked UT President Larry Faulkner.

I've written at length about the individual events, none of which are as clear-cut as offended UT students would have them. I've also commented on Faulkner's extremely problematic response to outraged students: light on reason and heavy on appeasement, his is a classic instance of administrative toadying that patronizes students while pretending to respect them.

What I want to note now: the unbridled and uncritical sentimentalism of Linda Wertheimer's Dallas Morning News piece. It begins with the quavering voice of the helpless victim, moves from that opening tableau of trembling emotion through a summary of recent events at UT and a recap of the Monday meeting, and closes on a tearful note by returning, dramatically, to the figure of the wounded innocent with which it began:

Ms. Thompson, the young woman who wanted to know what to tell her brother about UT, praised the administrator for trying. "I do commend you on your efforts," she said. "I just want you to see the big picture."

Dr. Faulkner replied: "I just want you to be proud of UT."

Ms. Thompson walked away from the microphone, her eyes wet.

Wertheimer wants to promote the cause of UT students--and their claim that UT is a racist environment--not by closely examining facts, but by playing on the reader's sympathy. In so doing, she abandons journalistic standards. There are people at UT who would dispute the claim that it is a racist environment, and there are others who would argue that pandering to the sensitivities of minority students (by, for example, seeking to suppress and punish racially insensitive speech) will only exacerbate racial tensions. But the writer of the piece does not acknowledge this. Her aim is emotional, not intellectual. She does not want to explore, or even report, the complexity of the issues. She wants, rather, to short circuit argument through emotional appeal: by getting readers' feelings involved, she solicits their cooperation in treating a complex, extraordinarily fraught philosophical, historical, and ethical situation as if it were an obvious problem with--it follows--an obvious solution. And as such, she compromises her own project by casting UT students' quest for tolerance as simply another chapter in the long rhetorical history of blacks' abject subordination to whites.

Crystal Thompson is shown in a posture of helpless dependence before the white master of the school. She wants to know what he is going to do to make her feel better, and to make her brother feel welcome. She is in his hands, he holds the power to determine her fate. He stands strong and silent; she quivers and weeps and pleads. The image of the abject slave on her knees before her master, begging for mercy, hovers unpleasantly behind Wertheimer's rhetoric. It's every bit as problematic as wearing blackface to a party or egging a statue of a black leader. And as such it should give us pause.

The chair of Miami University's French department has had a student reporter canned for writing an opinion piece that criticized him and a colleague for assigning sexually explicit material to students.

Aaron Sanders wrote a column for the January 17 edition of the Miami Student entitled, "Hold MU Professors Accountable." In that column, he singled out French professor Claire Goldstein for criticism because she shows the French film Ridicule to her students. Ridicule opens with a graphic close-up of one man urinating on another man's head. Sanders wrote that the film was "bordering on pure pornography," citing students in the class who had found the film offensive and adding that too many MU professors confused shocking students with educating them. "Time and again professors will try to pass along nonsense for what they believe is education," he wrote, noting that Jonathan Strauss, the French department chair, "consistently subjects [students] to books and films that contain lewd, sexual content, rape and incest -- many seemingly condoning it." Strauss, who is currently writing a book entitled The Filthy Longing: Dirtiness and Identity in Post-Revolutionary France, didn't appreciate Sanders' criticism--so he contacted Cheryl Heckler, the paper's faculty advisor and arranged to have Sanders fired. "Your thoughtless determination to remain ignorant on getting the fuller picture ... has caused greater pain to a dedicated, careful, VALUABLE professor than you can possibly comprehend," the advisor wrote to Sanders.

Sanders believes he was fired for his conservative beliefs. Goldstein says she does not think he should have been fired. Strauss has responded to Sanders' criticisms in the Miami Student by insinuating that Sanders, and not he, is the one with sexual hangups.

Regardless of your feelings about the pedagogical value of sexually explicit material, you have to admit that Strauss and Heckler have badly bungled their jobs. In pedagogical parlance, Sanders' column was a "teachable moment," an opportunity for Goldstein, Strauss, and others to explain why they bring controversial material into the classroom and how, in their view, that material enhances, rather than harms, the educational value of their courses. This was also an opportunity for the premises underwriting that pedagogical stance--that you cannot learn unless you are stretched past your comfort zone, that students need to be "shocked" out of their complacency, and so on--to be publicly debated by students and faculty alike. Instead, it became an exercise in authoritarian suppression of unwelcome viewpoints and a gross display of what Dinesh D'Souza has memorably called "illiberal education."

So much for liberte, egalite, fraternite.

UPDATE: Jonathan Strauss responds in the comments. According to Strauss, he was misrepresented by the Cincinnati Enquirer article I summarize above. Strauss did not actually call for Sanders' job (to my knowledge, he is not calling for Sanders' reinstatement, either). But Sanders was fired for writing the article, and the firing was done at the behest of a Miami faculty member--journalism professor Cheryl Heckler instructed the paper's student editor to terminate Sanders after Strauss complained to her about the article. Read Strauss's comment, follow the link to his response to Sanders, and judge for yourself what's going on at Miami.

UPDATE UPDATE: You can read a March 10 follow-up piece in the Cincinnati Enquirer here.

Tenure, like socialism, sounds good in theory. But in practice, it is about as flawed and corrupt an institution as you can find. Dan Bauer, an assistant professor of English at Iowa's Simpson College, is a case in point. Bauer received a glowingly positive third-year review from his departmental chair last year (Simpson's personnel policies state that a positive third-year review may be read as a statement of intent to grant tenure). Eight months later, the same chair turned in such a negative evaluation of Bauer that the Faculty Personnel Committee voted unanimously to deny Bauer tenure for unprofessional conduct and failure to demonstrate adequate professional growth. Students and non-implicated faculty are up in arms; the English departmental chair, meanwhile, has coolly informed the student paper that it can "cast [her] as a villain" if it wants to.

In Bauer's third-year review, English department chair Nancy St. Clair wrote that "Dan is a hard-working, deeply committed teacher. ... In the two years he has been here the strong teaching skills he brought with him have become stronger yet. He cares deeply about Simpson and is committed to educating the whole student and partakes in all aspects of student life in order to do so. I see no reason why his progress toward tenure shouldn't continue on course." Eight months later, she was citing him for lack of "initiative" and for talking with students about how "other faculty members were grading their senior essays." One of the "other faculy members" in question was St. Clair herself. Bauer has refuted the one claim and clarified the other: as far as he is concerned, there is nothing to the rationale for firing him, but there is a great deal of personal animus against him on the part of his chairman.

Connoisseurs of corrupted promotion procedures will recognize in Bauer's case a pattern that has manifested itself at CUNY's Brooklyn College twice in the last several months: junior faculty who cross their departmental chairs stand a good chance of getting crucified come reappointment season, particularly when the chair is a woman and the assistant professor is male. At CUNY, history professor KC Johnson was denied tenure for "uncollegiality" after clashing with his department chair and other senior faculty about hiring ethics and pedagogical standards; philosophy professor Michael Cholbi was denied reappointment for no stated reason after he, too, had clashed with his departmental chair about hiring ethics. And now Bauer, who describes the English department atmosphere as "toxic," has lost his job after clashing with his chair about teaching philosophies. In case after case, we see the confidential tenure process, in which careers are made and destroyed at the will of colleagues who are often capricious and almost wholly unaccountable for their decisions, used not as a means of rewarding dedicated and accomplished teaching, scholarship, and service, but as a means of exorcising those whose presence is inconvenient to resident ideologues and incompetents.

For campus feminists, Valentine's Day is now "V-Day," and "V" stands for "valentine," "violence," and "vagina." The brainchild of Eve Ensler, feminist activist and author of the award-winning "The Vagina Monologues," V-Day was celebrated nationwide last Friday as 1053 cities and 660 campuses put on performances of Ensler's play. Ensler herself appeared at the University of Michigan. Her visit coincided with the Midwest premiere of her latest play, "Necessary Targets," at Ann Arbor's Performance Network--but that isn't why Ensler was there. "I can't think of a place I would rather be on V-Day than here," Ensler told her audience Friday afternoon. "I'm in total awe of the women and vagina-loving men on this campus." Whether Ensler is also in total awe of the ticket-buying power of the women and vagina-loving men at UM must remain a matter of speculation.

The Michigan Daily has published excerpts from Ensler's V-Day talk, which centered on raising awareness about violence against women. Telling her audience that "You're part of a world-wide movement," Ensler elaborated on her theory of how becoming a "vagina-loving" individual can make the world a kinder, gentler place:

"My entire life was shaped by violence," Ensler said. "I had never become anything other than a reaction to what had happened to me. My own relationship with my vagina was very dissociated."

Ensler began the V-Day movement and wrote "The Vagina Monologues" to make women aware their vaginas belong to themselves. She also criticized current practices females use to enhance their looks, including liposuction and leg waxing.

"If every woman in this room were living in their full power, we'd be living in another world," Ensler said. "Practices (of beauty) are so time-consuming, it's clear why we're not running the world.

Ensler calls her world of women and "vagina-loving men" V-World, a world that is "creative, sexy, delicious and fabulous."

[...]

In addition to speaking about her own projects, Ensler spoke in opposition of President Bush's campaign against Iraq.

"We're on the verge of doing the most suicidal thing we can do, which is bomb Iraq," Ensler said. "The most radical thing you can do is not be afraid of these testosterone-driven warriors."

Ensler wants to stop violence against women, and I'm all for that. But the way to do that is not to engage in adolescent word play ("ooooh, I said 'vagina': that makes me shocking and transgressive!") that then becomes the basis for a pathetically simplistic politics ("if we all hold hands and say 'vagina' over and over, we will grow to love vaginas, and in loving vaginas, we will love one another, and then there will not only be no more violence against women, but there will be no war, only peace, and women will run the world and the world will be creative, sexy, delicious and fabulous!"). Ensler's gratuitous male-bashing only enhances the hysterical quality of her rhetoric. In emphasizing feeling ("vagina-loving") over thought, that rhetoric not only directs at men the kinds of conceptual slurs that Ensler finds so damaging when they are aimed at women, but imagines either that no one will notice the double standard or that despising men is a necessary component of empowering women.

The "V" in V-Day apparently also stands for vacuous.

Harvard has sentenced its student-athletes to mandatory diversity training. Last Tuesday, every athlete from Harvard's 41 different teams was required to attend a session entitled ìCommunity Building and Diversity for Athletes" as part of its ongoing bid to be recertified by the NCAA in 2007. The session was led by Elaine Penn, a motivational speaker and ex-college athlete whose promotional web site touts her as one who can "reach your audience in a way that will help plant that seed for lasting change." Penn's presentation at Harvard covered questions of tolerance, focussing especially on racism and sexism.

Athletes told the Crimson that they were offended by the assumption that as athletes, they needed special help learning to be considerate of people from different backgrounds:

ìI think the speaker vastly overestimated the level of prejudice that was present in her audience,î rower Jeremy N. King í04 said. ìThe content of the event was unnecessary and, at times, insulting to Harvard athletes.î

At one point, Penn proposed a scenarioówhich she dubbed ìsubtle racismîóin which a biracial couple sitting in a restaurant is confronted by another patron who uses a racial slur.

King said that he and his teammates were alarmed at what he called Pennís ìabsurd assumptionî that athletes might have trouble identifying the use of a derogatory epithet as racist.

Other athletes also said they were perplexed as to why they were mandated to attend the session. They said they felt they are exposed to a broader spectrum of racial backgrounds than most other Harvard students.

ìIn general sports break down stereotypes,î football player John F. X. Connors í06 said. ìWeíre exposed to a very diverse mix of people. The meeting wouldíve been better geared toward the rest of the student body, who are exposed to much less diversity than we are.î

Harvard's Assistant Director of Athletics Sheri Norred insists that student-athletes were not compelled to attend the session because they are less sensitive than other students, but because they could be compelled to attend. Attendance at last year's inaugural athletic diversity training session was voluntary--and was, in Norred's word, "pathetic." So this year it was required. Norred stressed that the athletic department was not singling out athletes as especially insensitive: ìQuite honestly, if we could have a conference for the whole school that would be great,î she said. In other words, Harvard athletes are no more or less in need of diversity training than the rest of the Harvard student body--which is very much in need of diversity training. Despite student complaints, the Student Athlete Advisory Committee is recommending that the program be mandatory next year, too.

It's common for college athletes to be subjected to sensitivity training. And despite Norred's protests, the offended Harvard students read things right: the rationale is that jocks are less refined and intelligent than non-jocks; that as inhabitants of a muscular, competitive world they are less cerebral and more visceral, more likely to act than think, more likely to use force than reason, more apt to descend to interactive ugliness than to demonstrate tolerance and self-restraint.

The NCAA encourages this stereotype, ironically, by trying so hard to shatter it: it runs a number of diversity programs, including training workshops, as well as a Gender Equity Resource Center for women in sports. The message is double-edged: on the one hand, the NCAA wants to represent college athletics as an enlightened and progressive enterprise; on the other hand, the emphasis it places on diversity training and programming suggests that left to its own devices, college athletics is rife with racism and sexism, that athletes and coaches need guided re-education to cure them of their intolerant, loutish ways. The winners are people like Penn, who peddle instant thought reform--or, in Penn's words, "help plant that seed for lasting change"--for a tidy fee.

John Rosenberg's Discriminations remains down, and John consequently remains a blogger without a home. He's paid another visit to Critical Mass, however, where he's always welcome. His latest is posted below.

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There was a revealing demonstration at the University of Pennsylvania on February 13 protesting Justice Antonin Scalia and his views on affirmative action. (Link via Howard Bashman)

Although demonstrations are not the best places to observe reasoned, thoughtful arguments, this demonstration at Penn was particularly striking because of the level of Ivy League preferentialist analysis that it put on display. Even for demonstration-thought, that level was quite low.

Quotations follow, in italics, with any comments of mine following in plain text.

Bush says Jim Crow/We say hell no!

These Ivy Leaguers must be quite smart to have plumbed the depths of Bush's mind and heart to discover that his opposition on principle to discrimination based on race is really a call to return to officially imposed segregation.

"We're headed backwards, and that's insanity," History graduate student Kyle Farley said.

"America's historical memory is way too short," Farley continued, explaining his participation in the demonstration. "I study American history, so I don't forget what's happened."

Translation: if you knew as much as I do, you'd agree with me.

Does [Penn] have a problem?" asked Classical Studies Professor Keith DeVries, who happened to walk by the protest.

When told that the signs and chanting were directed at Scalia, DeVries response was to the point.

"What a horrible person," he said. "Who invited him?"

Exactly whose point was that to? Classical studies always did induce humility and modesty, and it's nice to see those virtues thriving at Penn.

"He's an evil man," said Anthony Monteiro, a lecturer in Afro-American Studies. "He's a throwback to Dred Scott."

This shows historical understanding at Penn is on a par with Classical wisdom. Let's see, Dred Scott held that the territories could not exclude slaves and offered as dicta that blacks had no rights whites were bound to respect. Thus it's easy to see how Mr. Monteiro, lecturer, would think that identical with Justice Scalia's view that blacks and whites have exactly the same rights, based on the principle that every person must treated without regard to race, creed, or national origin.

Second-year Graduate School of Education student Kelley Evans expressed fears that Scalia represented "a return to education where diversity is not represented."

"That's going backwards," she continued. "That's the world of my parents."

"I'm going forward," she concluded, as she walked back into the circular ranks of the picketers.

Well, as a parent I feel qualified to say that Ms. Evans is indeed going somewhere, but I don't think it's forward.

Academic Program chair of the Black Student League and a resident in DuBois College House, [College sophomore Carl] Foreman described the possibility that programs such as DuBois itself might be rendered unconstitutional as "scary for me, personally."

It's hard to see how Michigan losing would close down the Black Student League or, even assuming it is a black only residence, DuBois College House at Penn. (Racially segregated housing might be under more pressure at a public university, and I repeat that I'm only guessing here as to what DuBois College House is.) But let's say that Foreman's worst fears were realized: it sounds like the worst that would happen is that he might haveÝto experience more diversity than he does now.

Harvard government professor Harvey C. Mansfield--who has famously resolved the grade inflation conundrum by giving his students two grades, an inflated one for their transcript and a real one for their private consideration--has written a searingly smart piece on American higher education's transformation into a self-esteem-building industry. Focussing on Harvard's position as America's leading university, Mansfield details how Harvard's easy A's, overspecialized course offerings, overblown letters of recommendation, overall lack of accountability, overdone displays of sensitivity, and overly self-serving professors combine to create an environment where students are at once constantly coddled and utterly neglected, fiercely proud and deeply unsure of themselves, drivingly ambitious and deeply suspicious of work, eager to do good but unable to reconcile that urge with the acquisition of knowledge and skills.

Some choice quotes:

Harvard is afraid to look ambition in the face. To Harvard, ambition and the responsibility that accompanies it look elitist and selfish. ("Elitist" is the fancy, political version of "selfish.") Harvard gives its students to understand that the only alternative to selfishness is selflessness. Morality is held to be sheer altruism; it is service to the needy and the oppressed. A typical Harvard student spends many, many hours in volunteer work on behalf of those less fortunate. But what he or she plans for his own life --Ýa career --Ýseems to have no moral standing. To prepare for a career is nothing but to make a selection under the regime of choice. It is careerism --Ýa form of elitism and selfishness --Ýthat seems unattractive even to those contemplating it.

Selfless morality is fragile and suspicious: Who believes a person who claims to be unconcerned with himself? Yet mere selfishness is beneath one's pride. Harvard is caught between these two extremes; it has lost sight of its virtue. It cannot come to terms with the high ambition that everyone outside Harvard sees to be its most prominent feature.

The notion of self-esteem rampant in American education today is a debased version of pride. It is pride that shies away from any standard of good education, fearing that to apply a standard will hurt someone's pride. But true pride requires a standard above itself in which to take pride. True pride is neither selfish nor selfless, but both. It is not afraid of a test --Ýand would rather lose than flinch.

John Rosenberg's Discriminations has been down with technical difficulties for the last couple of days. But the indomitable John is still blogging. Check out his latest below, and cross your fingers for the speedy recovery of the Discriminations blog.

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MIT is very good at taking race into account. Just ask it. Actually, someone did, in the form of an interview with Charles Vest, MIT's president. Yesterday, Vest was the featured speaker at a press conference in Washington, representing a number of universities who will be filing amicus briefs in support of Michigan's use of racial preferences.

At MIT race may well be only "one of many factors" taken into account by the admissions office, as Vest claims. But his comments nevertheless reveal the extent to which the establishment now regards race as a privileged category, due government deference, as opposed to a protected category, walled off from government favor or disfavor.

We don't want to rob people of their identities, and race and culture and economic status and whether you're from a big city or a little town -- all these things are important components of who these students are and what they have to offer and what advantages they’ve had or obstacles they've overcome ... Risk-taking and demonstrable passion for particular intellectual pursuits, all of these things we try to take into account as we read the cases and decide who we’ll actually offer admissions to.

One of the other points that we will make in our brief is that one of the most fundamental academic decisions a faculty makes is who should study in their university, and we don't believe that it's appropriate for the federal government to take all of these important factors that define people and remove one of them and say "you can consider everything, but you can't consider this."

The fact is that when you array this whole pool of thousands of young men and women who apply to [colleges], you are really trying to judge them as individuals and consider all of these characteristics. Now if you want to build a class that has reasonable [geographic] representation ... and you want to have some reasonable distribution of race in the pool, then by definition, the probability that an individual who meets one of those criteria will be admitted is going to be higher than the probability of an individual who does not meet that criteria -- just because you have a large pool defining some of those sets and smaller pools defining the other sets.... The real point is that [admissions are] subjective. We don’t have a quota, we don’t have a formula, we don’t assign points, but these are factors that we think about and I think if you were to look at the whole structure of a class, you would see that they are very diverse in this broad set of things.

I think to some extent, self segregation goes on in every group -- at MIT and in the country. We just hope that in general people do a lot of mixing and get to know each other and learn from each other and value each other, but I don't think it's up to me to say that one group can't spend most of its time socializing with the other or what have you. ... [Self-segregation] is not something you enforce -- you create opportunity....

Mary Ann Swissler, an adjunct professor of communications at Seton Hall University, had some choice words to say to her fall students after she discovered their write-up of her on myprofessorsucks.com:

All I can say is that the comments confirmed to me what I had to keep to myself all semester: that most of you mental midgets are the most immature, sheltered, homophobic, sexist, racist, lying sacks of sót I have ever met in my life. ... Seton Hall may be kissing you're aóes now, but out here in the real world, brats like you will be eaten for breakfast.

"No student wants to go into a class and hate a professor, but Swissler's complete lack of teaching skill and negative attitude made us turn on her."

"I truly believe that I am dumber because of this class."

"I just received an email from this orangutan that stated not to "send homeword through email because it don't work." It DON'T work??? How about that! A professor with the grammar of a Rahway inmate! Who'd a thunk it!?"

"swissler is a geek- if im not busy participating in class chatroom activitie i find myself mesmerized by her skunkdefied roots..Word of advice: DYE THAT SHIT!- her wardrobe is horrible-- straight from the Salvations Army reject pile...And we cant forget about her YELLOW THERMOS-..and her red moped.. But she loves me- and gives me A's on everything..so things could be worse-- "

"The class is called Promotional Writing, and let me start by saying that there is more sleeping going on in this class than writing. No homework. No tests. The occassional press release or ad is due. The teacher makes me sick to look at, and her handwriting is worse than my lil bros (age 9). Her grey roots are gagging, and her outfits are blinding to the eye. Yes the class is easy, and thank god for the easy A, but there has to be some education that comes from class...I do pay $1500 for this damn class. Thank you Seton Hall for giving nothing but the best! Swissler is the #1 reason not to come, and the #1 reason to leave. Oh yeah--why do we have a teacher that doesn't know how to spell lead? She spells it LEDE?! wtf!! Pure crap...and I leave you with this thought--she is wearing my clothes I donated to the salvation army! (its sad-really.)"

"If there was ever a reason NOT to support human cloning, than this is it."

"I do not know where they found this "woman" but I think the Salvation Army is a good start. She never has any idea what is going on, she assigns stuff that she dosen't understand, she is a writing teacher who can't spell. Also she gets excited over the dumest things"

"This amish pilgrim needs to go back to whereever she came from!!"

As for the Seton Hall administrators, they've taken the easy road, apologizing to offended students on behalf of Swissler and asking them to consider her comments as the work of someone who is not entirely mentally balanced:

"I am an advocate of free speech and believe that we have the freedom to express our opinion as long as it is respectful to others," said Communication department chairman Peter Reader in a bulk e-mail. "Unfortunately, professor Swissler was not. I am sure that many of you feel hurt by her words, as was I. You would think that someone who works professionally as she does would behave more responsibly and set a better example. However, please set aside her e-mail as a bad example of someone not thinking clearly and [do] not take it personally."

The consumerist mentality of Swissler's students is palpable in their comments. They speak as readily of how much money they have wasted on the course as they do of how offensive she is to look at--as if she had an obligation to please them visually with her person, as if her clothing and hairstyle had anything to do with the quality of her instruction, as if her red moped and yellow thermos materially damaged students' abilities to learn. This is the rudeness of entitlement, the hostility of students who labor under the mistaken idea that education should entertain them, and that teachers are performers whose job it is to play to their audience.

This aspect of the situation is lost on Reader, whose pandering apology to Swissler's students only rewards them for the very sort of incivility and disrespectfulness that he condemns in Swissler. Yes, teachers who get attacked by immature and hostile students should take the high road. But that does not mean students who behave as Swissler's did should get a free pass for their own descent into the gutter. They deserve as much condemnation from Reader as Swissler does. His failure to recognize this, and his subsequent tacit admission that a double standard of conduct is in place at Seton Hall, simply empowers angry students to do unto other unpopular professors what they did unto Swissler. And as such, Reader's apology invites the inmates to run the asylum.

University of Texas President Larry Faulkner is forming a President's Committee on Racial Respect and Fairness in response to a string of "racially insensitive" events on campus. A statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. was egged on MLK Day; a fraternity-sponsored "gin-and juice" party on January 31 saw students donning blackface and wearing "potentially offensive" t-shirts; in the wake of outrage about the party, one black student claimed that he had been "racially profiled" by campus security officers; this week, the American Civil Rights Institute placed an ad in the student newspaper expressing "anti-affirmative action sentiments": "If you are white, you may be a victim of illegal discrimination," it read, encouraging white engineering students to challenge a Texas Department of Transportation program that allocates grants exclusively to minority and women students.

It is not known who egged the statue; the costumes are constitutionally protected forms of expression; campus officials deny profiling anyone; and the ad simply apprises students of the law: as recent events at Princeton and MIT have made eminently clear, government-funded entities cannot discriminate on the basis of race or gender--even if that discrimination is directed against white men and done in the name of diversity.

These facts pale in comparison to the hysteria generated by failure to acknowledge them, however, and so UT's president has joined the chorus of the outraged, decrying racism on his campus and vowing to do what must be done to ferret it out and expel it. In a letter addressed to "Members of the UT Community," Faulkner personally apologized to students, faculty, and staff "for any action by (the) University itself that may have contributed to the issues we are now confronting." He offered his "public, personal condemnation of offending individual behavior outside the official control of the University." He spoke of the importance of community "standards of civility and decency," noting that "our community has an obligation to adopt and to uphold the highest standards of respect for others." In order to preserve those standards, he wrote, "we must reject, and take steps to eradicate, behavior that casts disrespect on any person because of ethnic or racial identity."

The rhetoric is a disturbing combination of diversity-ese and puritanical intolerance. In the name of showing respect for each individual, it advocates rejecting--and, chillingly--"eradicating"--those who do not conform to an externally imposed norm of conscience. In the name of tolerance and inclusion, it preaches ritual expulsion. In the name of fairness, it seeks to subject each member of the UT community to an intrusive ideological litmus test. Those who fail it must go: all in the name of civility and decency, of course.

What Faulkner does not mention: UT's legal obligation to the First Amendment; UT's ethical obligation as an academic institution to foster debate and inquiry rather than censorship and surveillance; the liberal value of meeting offensive expression with principled expression; the importance, in this difficult day and age, of learning to live with the knowledge that the world is not a womb; and the crucial facts that 1) ignorance, insensitivity, and even hate are not crimes, 2) that very few people we encounter in life will give a damn about our fragile egos and delicate sensibilities, and 3) that it is a rank waste of time and energy to insist that they do.

Faulkner is trying to cast himself as a good guy--and he is employing every patronizing and illiberal tactic available to him to do it. The piece de resistance? Faulkner's suggestion that the problems on his campus are the fault of the lawsuits against the University of Michigan: According to the Austin American-Statesman, "Faulkner said the problems seemed to begin with news reports of the pending Supreme Court case on affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan." Perhaps--just perhaps--the problems on UT's campus are the products not of the "attack" on affirmative action, but of the intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt rationale for racial preferences themselves.

Thanks to reader Chuck H. for the link.

Yesterday I noted that the University of Texas looks as if it is about to join the growing ranks of universities that violate the civil rights of students in order to punish them for wearing blackface to parties. Today's Daily Texan reports that UT is advancing steadily along that path. A group of offended students is filing a formal complaint about the costumes, and the Dean of Students, Teresa Graham Brett, has vowed to punish the offenders. She "found the costumes highly offensive," the article notes, and "is looking into actions that can be taken against the fraternity":

"I feel like this has really harmed the entire University community," Brett said. "There is already a lot of tension on campus right now around a number of issues, and I think this just adds to that tension. We are going to look at all possible avenues trying to hold them accountable."

Usually in such cases very few people actually get to see the offending costumes. There is often no photographic record of them, and if there are pictures, they don't make it into the press. Outrage feeds on ignorance, and the anger of the community sustains itself on imagined visions of what the costumes must have been like. The Daily Texan, however, is letting readers see for themselves what all the fuss is about by running a picture of some of the offending costumes. Faces are blurred, but you can get a pretty good idea of what all the fuss is about if you look closely. One of the more heinous costumes reported is of a white man covered in black paint, wearing a chain and padlock around his neck. You can see him in the picture. I had originally pictured the chain as tight around his neck, the lock as close to his face, and the impression one of the abject slave. But the chain is worn loosely, as jewelry, and the impression given is much more that of the rapper than the slave, much more that of a humorous homage to black music than a bigoted celebration of slavery. See what you think.

UPDATE: For more pictures of students in blackface, and for a wider historical perspective, check out Captain Yips' recent scanning efforts.

The University of Texas looks like it is about to join the growing list of schools where frat boys wear blackface to parties, offended students complain, and administrators take unlawful disciplinary action in order to prove the school's commitment to tolerance. UT is investigating Kappa Alpha and Phi Gamma Delta for throwing parties where members and guests were photographed wearing "racially offensive" costumes. Such parties took place last Halloween, and, more recently, at the end of January. There are photos of students dressed as rappers with exaggerated lips, and another of a white man covered in black paint, with a chain and padlock around his neck. UT has not announced what disciplinary action it is considering, but the fact that it is investigating a constitutionally protected--if offensive--form of expression as if it were a crime does not bode well.

FIRE has put together a fascinating collection of stories of campus blackface incidents. Their archive demonstrates in stark terms not simply the rote quality of fraternity racial pranks, but the equally rote character of adminstrative reactions to them. These reactions routinely involve violations of the fraternity members' individual rights; on some occasions, they also involve fraternity members suing their universities--and winning. Check out the Auburn and George Mason cases, and then watch to see whether UT admins have learned from their peer instititions' mistakes.

Thanks to reader Chuck H. for the link.

Princeton's decision to nix its summer program for minorities interested in doing graduate work in public policy has been all over the news and the blogosphere. Coverage of that decision has included the tantalizing information that Princeton acted as it did because it knew of another, unnamed university that had ignored the Center for Equal Opportunity's warnings and had subsequently gotten itself reported the the Department of Education. Now we know the name of the school: MIT.

As John Rosenberg noted earlier this week, MIT also runs elite summer programs that exclude whites. Today, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that MIT has decided to open two summer programs to whites and Asians in response to the investigation the Office of Civil Rights has been conducting on that campus since last spring. MIT's programs were brought to the OCR's attention by the Center for Equal Opportunity and the American Civil Rights Institute after MIT ignored their attempt to convince the university to bring its exclusionary programs into line with the law. One of the programs was for minority high school students interested in science and engineering (John Rosenberg's co-blogging daugher Jessie was not allowed to apply to it because she is white); the other was designed to help entering freshmen adjust to college life.

Though MIT has shown a slower learning curve than Princeton, it has reached a similar conclusion about the legality of its programs. "We are not aware of any racially exclusive programs that have been successfully legally defended," said Robert P. Redwine, MIT's dean for undergraduate education. Jamie Lewis Keith, the university's senior counsel, was equally blunt, saying that "from a legal perspective, we did not have a lot of choice."
Lester Monts, the University of Michigan's senior vice provost for academic affairs, has called Princeton's decision "irrational" and has proudly announced that Michigan runs "many" such programs. But as MIT joins Princeton in acknowledging the indefensibility of their past procedures, it's Michigan that is beginning to look irrational.

Princeton's decision to scrap its minority-only summer institute at the Woodrow Wilson school "sounds irrational," says Lester Monts, the University of Michigan's senior vice provost for academic affairs. Princeton junked the program after the Center for Equal Opportunity pointed out that such racially exclusive programs are discriminatory and not legally defensible by schools receiving federal funding. Fearing a lawsuit like those Michigan presently faces, Princeton chose to terminate the program afer this year, stating unequivocally that the summer institute was not legitimately structured: "This program is race-exclusive in its admissions and most certainly could be challenged," said Princeton's vice president for communications, Robert Durkee. "It was not a good strategy to offer a program that is not defensible. ... We didn't want to be in a position that put other programs at risk." The irony: now UM is inviting even more scrutiny than it is already under. Monts told the Michigan Daily that "We have many of these programs on the University campus and they are working very well to bring minority students and students of color into the fold for graduate study and professional study."

Berkeley English graduate student Snehal Shingavi made a name for himself last spring when he discouraged conservative students from taking his composition course. Entitled "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance," Shingavi's course description advised prospective students that "This class takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination. Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections." Shingavi had done the same thing with a prior composition course entitled "Why the Modernists hated wars, and why you should, too," stating in the course description that "This class has an anti-war emphasis; most of the literature that we read and essays that will we [sic] examine will take as their starting point the claim that wars are not the solutions that they claim to be, that they in fact destroy the lives of the people who lose and those who win. ... If ideological conflists [sic]will make it difficult for you to engage in the discussion, please select another course." Shingavi's suggestion that a student's ability to succeed in his course would depend on whether that student shared his political beliefs made national news after blogger Angry Clam broke the story. Organizations like the ACLU and FIRE also made statements condemning his actions.

Yesterday, the L. A. Times ran a piece entitled "Protest Central Needs a Few Good Recruits" that amounted to a sympathetic--and woefully partial--profile of Shingavi (or Shingabi, as the article inexplicably misspells his name). Opening with a description of the activist gauntlet that is Cal's Sproul Plaza, the article centers on Shingavi, who was handing out black anti-war armbands to passing students on the day the reporter visited campus. Shingavi--who supplemented his illegitimate pedagogical antics last spring with a variety of disruptive protest activities carried out in the name of Students for Justice in Palestine--appears in the article as a mild, respectful, and modest man, a "patient proselytizer" who was "unfailingly polite and would bounce with enthusiasm toward every extended arm." The image that emerges is vaguely saintly; Shingavi comes across almost like a martyr, a peace activist radiating humble, unobtrusive confidence in his cause: "'Wear a black armband to show your opposition to the war?' he would ask, offering a cloth strip with both hands and slightly bowing his head. 'Would you like to help build the student antiwar movement?'"

No mention is made of Shingavi's less-than-tolerant career as a Berkeley activist. His known abuse of his authority as a teacher and his well-known record as a leader of SJP, which was suspended last year after it stormed Wheeler Hall, disrupting classes and resulting in a number of arrests, are completely suppressed in the Times' puff piece for the campus anti-war movement. It's not reasonable, informed, or fair reporting. It's not even a decent profile. What it is, is shameless pandering dressed up to look like responsible journalism.

Thanks to reader David W. for the link.

In today's Herald-Sun, an article entitled "Professor Quits Over Racist Remarks" tells the story of how a lecturer at UNC-Chapel Hill resigned after the students in her graduate course on social work took offense to something she said in class. On the first day of "Social Work and Practice with Couples," Martha Lamb discussed her own experiences as a student in North Carolina during the 1960s, noting that back then, some people liked to joke that the NAACP stood for "Niggers Ain't Acting Like Colored People" and observing that such comments are rare today. Her point appears to have been that times have changed, and that this is good; that while Carolina was a hotbed of racism thirty-odd years ago, things have improved a great deal. But that isn't how her students took it (or, apparently, how the person who titled the article sees it).

Lamb is white; six of her sixteen students were not; after that comment, ten of her students dropped her class. The six remaining students dropped the course a month later, after meetings with administrators and a mediated conversation among Lamb and her students. Lamb resigned shortly after.

According to the Dean, Lamb "used some insensitive, hurtful, disparaging words. ... During the hour-and-a-half, I had hoped they would be able to come to some understanding that she was trying to do something pedagogical that went awry." Noting that the University's racial harassment policy requires teachers to provide a comfortable learning environment, Richman went on to say that Lamb's "wasnít adequate teaching ... (The students) got so uncomfortable they couldnít (understand) anything past the statement."

Lamb sent a contrite apology to her former students: "I have respect for each of you and the work you have done to address sensitive issues. I realize a quotation was used the first day of my class that contained offensive words, and I certainly apologize for its use. I expect we shall all be devoting additional energy to ëgetting it rightí in addressing cultural differences openly and celebrating our rich diversity in the future."

The Dean plans to use this episode as an opportunity to perform a "diversity audit" on his school. "I want them to take the pulse of the school," the Dean said. "Are there issues here at the school that are under the surface, and this ignited the concerns? Clearly, these were very hurtful statements." At Dean Richman's behest, professional diversity experts will be hired to assess the racial climate of the school (this will most likely cost upwards of $30,000). These experts will then make recommendations for improvement based on their assessments (diversity audits typically end in recommendations for--you guessed it--plenty of diversity training and programming, much of it expensively supplied by the diversity consultants themselves). In other words, an episode of gross misunderstanding--and, arguably, bad faith on the part of hostile and immature students and careerist administrators--has resulted not only in the termination of one lecturer's contract, but also in the creation of a new social contract at UNC's School of Social Work. Under the guise of thoroughness and proactive care, the Dean plans to buy for his school an official diagnosis of racism and then to implement the policies, procedures, and cultural shifts that foregone diagnosis demands.

Worth noting: If UNC's racial harassment policy does require teachers to provide a "comfortable" classroom environment, then UNC Chapel Hill's racial harassment policy is almost certainly in direct conflict with its obligation to the First Amendment (not to mention its obligation, as an educational institution, to free and honest inquiry). Lamb was within her constitutional rights to speak as she did, and she was also well within the bounds of civility: she is basically being called a racist for pointing out that the atmosphere at UNC used to be racist.

I could find nothing in UNC's racial harassment policy specifying that it is a teacher's duty to provide a comfortable classroom environment--but it is clear, too, that empowering students to bring claims of racial harassment whenever they feel "uncomfortable" does create an illiberal and intolerant atmosphere, and does in turn compromise the educational enterprise by making teachers' livelihoods, reputations, and authority totally dependent on the subjective assessment and emotional whims of their students. UNC does post a Teaching for Inclusion handbook with guidelines on course design and classroom management. The emphasis is on racial sensitivity, with nods to the special needs of women students, disabled students, and students with "diverse religious and political beliefs." The handbook stresses the importance of "establishing a safe classroom atmosphere," notes that turning the classroom into a safe "zone" is the key to "increasing everyone's comfort level," and even recommends that teachers lay out groundrules for class discussion--Lynn Weber's controversial and intrusive ideological guidelines for class discussion are singled out for special praise (FIRE took up Weber's guidelines last year). What are the odds that the diversity audit will conclude that UNC's problem is that it has swallowed the problematic logic of diversity hook, line, and sinker?

Lamb's case is a classic instance of how a carefully cultivated climate of racial sensitivity can produce intolerance, illiberalism, and the gross miscarriages of communication and justice that come with them. In this case, UNC's "sensitivity" to racial harassment created the conditions for utterly spurious accusations that in turn have damaged and perhaps ruined a career. The students who could not cope with Lamb's anecdote are the products of an anti-intellectual educational culture that encourages thin skin and closed minds; they are part of a new generation whose members cannot differentiate between a harmless anecdotal use of an ugly word and the calculated delivery of a racial slur, who are so "sensitized" that they are more likely to react than to think, who believe that they have the right not to be offended, who spend inordinate amounts of time looking for ways to be offended, and who think that taking offense somehow ennobles or anoints them. Bear in mind that the sensitive souls in Lamb's course are the social workers and shrinks of tomorrow: they already possess the wounded intolerance they will eventually be cultivating in their clients.

One last note: the University's racial harassment policy stipulates that "This Policy shall not be used to bring frivolous or malicious charges against students, employees, or agents." It looks like Dean Richman forgot about that part of the policy when he took student complaints against Lamb seriously.

UPDATE: Reader Fred R. sends this link to a Daily Tar Heel editorial deploring Lamb's racism, lauding UNC's racial harassment policy, and calling for Lamb's prompt resignation. The editorial misrepresents Lamb's comment, failing to provide the context of her utterance and making it sound as though she was herself making a racist joke instead of recounting how such jokes were once common at Carolina. It also treats a perfectly civil and proper statement of hers as an example of her racism: when a student complained to her about her comment, she allegedly replied, "I will try not to treat you as an African American. I will try to treat you like a person." Reading between the lines: she was trying to say that she runs a colorblind class, but she was understood as saying that blacks are subhuman. Take one part inarticulate speech and one part bad faith, add hysterical institutional climate and stir til done. Result: a handy opportunity for students, faculty, and administrators to stage their racial righteousness for themselves and one another. How clever of the offended students to recognize in their teacher a true sacrificial Lamb.