Last fall at the University of Tennessee,several members of the Kappa Sigma fraternity attended a Halloween party dressed as the Jackson Five. They darkened their faces as part of their costumes--and promptly became embroiled in what has now become known as the "Black Face Incident." Much ink and many pixels were spent in the media and the blogosphere reporting on UT's response to the incident (UT's own Glenn Reynolds weighed in here; Eugene Volokh commented here [keep scrolling]; and I wrote about the incident here, here, and here).

When the incident was fresh in people's minds, many people demanded that the students and the fraternity they belong to be punished (among them were a group of UT faculty); others warned that the courts have already clearly determined black face costumes to be protected speech, and that UT would be violating these students' First Amendment rights if it punished them in any way (Kappa Sigma, as a private organization, was, conversely, free to suspend the chapter, which it did, and to impose sanctions if it so chose).

Now UT has finalized its disciplinary plans for Kappa Sigma, and it appears to have done so entirely without regard for the law. Eugene Volokh reprints the UT administration's elaborate list of recommended sanctions and explains in eloquent detail how they are unconstitutional several times over. He doesn't leave much to be said, so be sure to read his post. But I will simply note that in sentencing Kappa Sigma not only to diversity training but also to participating in this coming year's freshman reading project (all incoming students will read The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother and discuss it in small seminars as part of their orientation), UT has effectively acknowledged that it regards its freshman reading project as a form of diversity training in its own right.

I wrote a series of blogs last fall about how many colleges and universities are using the concept of the freshman reading project to smuggle diversity training into freshman orientation, and discussed at length the nature of the thought reform involved in using an ostensibly academic exercise to teach new students the "proper" way to think about race, gender, and sexuality. You can read part one here, part two here, part three here, and part four here.

Your comments are true enough--freshman reading projects--like freshman writing courses--have increasingly been shanghaied so that they can be used to indoctrinate incoming students.

Given the current situation in academia, it's not likely that this will change any time soon, either. Students will go on being forced to submit to what's fashionably correct.

However, I'm not sure the situation is all that serious a problem. I've noticed a consistent thread in students who've gone through women's studies courses, for instance, to react very negatively to what they realize is intellectually deficient agitprop (and to value the substantive).

Then too, it's no accident--as Stalin used to say--that the 60s radicals mostly had to endure a compulsory six week course in "anti-communism" taight during high school. These were the same people who by and large embraced communism, socialism, and every crazed dictator they met.

My guess is that we'll see a similar backlash here, because the whole concept is based on two fallacies.

1. students are blank sheets of paper, you can get them to believe anything--simply by exposing them to it. Particularly if it's a written text.

2. once the truth is thus revealed, everyone will believe: those who disbelieve do so only out of ignorance.

Yeah, right.

The kid and I have read The Color of Water. It's actually a very thought-provoking, moving, uplifting book. They could actually do worse.

That list of sanctions is simply outrageous. I can't imagine submitting my organization to that level of intrusive, politically-charged moralizing.

Good thing it's only a chimera. (Sorry, that just slays me.)

Does recommendation now mean requirement?

"The Color of Water" is a worthwhile read, but Laura's comments highlight one of the problems with forced freshman readings that focus on diversity and cultural issues.

Students view even books that would be able to stand on their own merit as thinly veiled propaganda.

At my own college I had the misfortune of being assigned Jamaica Kincaid's atrocity "My Brother", a sloppy, poorly written exploitation of Ms. Kincaid's dead brother. This led me to look back over the list of books my college had assigned since the beginning of the freshmen reading program and I was shocked, SHOCKED, to find that only one of the dozen or so books had been written by a non-minority, though thankfully the single Caucasian submission addressed the issue of diversity.

A project becomes suspect in my mind (and those of most students) when the number of Inuit writers (2) outnumbers the number of Caucasians (1).

"Students view even books that would be able to stand on their own merit as thinly veiled propaganda."

You know what, you're right. If my daughter had been assigned that book in school she would have had a very different opinion of it than she does, our having merely run across it at the bookstore and thought it looked interesting. She feels that she's constantly being accused of racism in her readings for school. I know she's sick and tired of the "I Have a Dream" speech. They go over it every February. We never studied that in school, so it was never crammed down my throat, and when I read it now I invariable get tears in my eyes. I doubt she'll ever be able to really appreciate it. I think some things like sensitivity training can be overdone, even by well-meaning people.

*invariably*

Sick and Tired of Dreary PC?

Try A Bridge Too Far.

White Men in action against the Waffen SS.

I went to the University of Akron when I was a senior in high school part-time. The year I went the mandatory reading was some PC book by a black author, who "happened" to be a speaker at the end of orientation. I never got an answer as to how much the author was paid to speak. My current university does not have any of that indoctrination orientation reading garbage. Also, I think my brother at his school had to read "Endurance", the book about the doomed Shackleton expedition. Damn fine book, with no political agenda. Well, that's my two cents.

Jordan

Why not "Colored Folk" by Skip Gates--2 parent family, no welfare, no KKK, and only a few white people, who aren't even evil.

Books by and about African Americans are definitely worth reading by all Americans. It's the assumption that all incoming whites (particularly young men) need to be re-educated that is infuriating. A lot of us already respect and accept African Americans as our fellow citizens. We already know from first hand experience that African Americans are no different than any other humans; they are just as smart and just as dumb; they are just as noble and just as venal; they are just as honest and just as deceptive; they are just as generous and just as stingy; they are just as loving and just as hateful. Give us a break and stick to academics!

Questioning the value of what is called diversity (or immigration, which nowadays is predominantly non-white) has been successfully tarred as "racism", "xenophobia", etc by the mainstream media and various ethnic grievance/advocacy groups. (Even conservatism is somewhat suspect in this regard -- see Erin's other recent piece on the University of Miami.) Until the spell cast by these ugly scarewords is broken, there is little hope of countering this sort of thing.

EH--little hope of countering people speaking out against "xenophobia" and "racism?" Shame, that.

Yes, that's exactly what EH meant. We need to stop people from speaking out against "racism" and "xenophobia."

I'm glad you're not distorting the plain meaning of what EH said for the sake of scoring non-existent rhetorical points. That would really make you look either petty or obtuse, if that's what you were doing. So I'm glad you're not.

Yes, Sage, railing against the evils of "non-white immigration" isn't "xenophobic" or "racist" in the least.

It's interesting to note the paleo vs. neo divide of the right on this issue.

"Questioning the value" is "railing against"?

By all means, let's not question anything. The zeitgeist can't bear to have light shone on it.

Well, Polo, it's a good thing EH WASN'T railing against the evils of non-white immigration.

What he was railing against was people like yourself who label anyone who questiones A) the "diversity" rationale, or B) immigration, an ipso facto racist or xenophobe. Got it? Railing against namecalling, Polo.

The fact that immingration is predominantly non-white was an incidental clause in his post, meant to shed light on WHY it is critics of immigration are maligned in this way. OK?

What's amazing is that you're so geared up to do exactly what he's complaining about, you can't stop pointing fingers long enough to understand the plain meaning of his words. You're obviously a true believer, hunting like a hound for racists and xenophobes (and homophobes, and sexists, no doubt) under every bed. Someone is actually writing about this phenomenon, and you're so steeped in it yourself that the only response you can muster is to cry "Racist! Xenophobe!" It's just pathetic. Thanks for proving his point, though.

Sheesh.

Let me be more clear: anyone who questions the value of immigration, esp. "non-white," immigration, is, by definition, a xenophobe. Again, I refer you to the paleo-neo debate on this issue.

Laura--I love the metaphor. I always picture the "zeitgeist" as a creepy ghost going "tick-tock, tick-tock" in the middle of the night; but, when you finally manage to shine the flashlight on him, he disappears. Besides, I believe the term was coined by Goethe, an illiberal German, who, if he could be asked about the matter, would very likely agree with Pat Buchanan that the British would integrate better in Virginia than the Zulus.

Anyone who questions the value of anything is an independent thinker. I don't believe in sacred cows. Apparently you do, and you think it's morally wrong to question them. Whatever.

My idea of the zeitgeist was formed by the Spirit of the Age in C.S. Lewis's "Pilgrim's Regress". I've never read Goethe. The creativity of your attempts to cast guilt by association is impressive.

Irrational fear and hatred need not enter into a person's calculations of the benefits of unlimited immigration at any given time, and the fact that you think that it must is a true failure of your imagination and intellect. The debate over immigration isn't some Manichean conflict between hateful racist morons and enlightened philosophers with hearts full of love. The fact that you would pathologize everyone on the other side, and assume ignorant, hateful motives on their part, only demonstrates that you're incapable of reasoning with them--it reveals much more about you than it does them. It also explains why you so breezily dismiss their rights to association and speech.

Refer me to the paleo-neo debate on immigration all you want, but I'm not a paleo and you're not a neo, and this thread is about freedom of expression and not immigration, so it's irrelevant.

Laura--I take it you haven't read Pullman on Lewis. I hope that you do.

Sage--I'm sure that the burden of proof is on you to prove that those who want to ban immigration are not "hateful racist morons." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I've dismissed no one's right to associate or speak, though I think that the MLA should have the final say on the limits of such rights within academia. I would nominate Judith Butler as a worthy thought-czarina.

Why do you take it that I haven't read Pullman on Lewis? Do you think that anyone who reads and appreciates Lewis thinks he had no flaws? I promise I am not that naive.

Once again, in your response to Sage, you jump from EH's "question the value" to "ban". Maybe you don't understand what "question the value" means. It means considering whether something is worthwhile, whether it delivers what's promised, whether it costs too much to maintain. One might question the value of something, and conclude that it is in fact valuable. Maybe nonwhite immigration is a good thing, maybe not. Why is it xenophobic to ask that question?

Again, the Pullman piece on Lewis is well-worth reading. Lewis would "question the value" of "non-white" immigration, alright.

Within a dominant subjectivity, the phrase "question the value" is not by itself distinguishable from "ban," because it's always already the case that increased diversity will decrease the "value" of said subjectivity. I'd attribute this mainly to eurologophallocentrism.

Housekeeping note to commentators on this thread: Probably not a good use of your time responding to Polo - those posts automatically produced via Postmodern Generator.

Laitrec--your post ignores the negation of the negation in its urge to mediate its own performativity.

the phrase "question the value" is not by itself distinguishable from "ban,"

Sure it is. "question the value" = 18 bytes, "ban" = 3 bytes. Must be the "dominant subjectivity" of my computer background dictating that to me.

You seem to have a serious problem with intellectual diversity. Perhaps you've internalized your own struggle with the national will to the extent that you feel a need to exert your own will on us?

Jeff--you don't have to be a humanist to appreciate that there are several encodings which store more than a byte per character, just as there are multiple ideological encodings which produce dominant subjectivities.

I appreciate intellectual diversity, which is I am one of the very few people who post here who does not follow the "dittohead" principle.

there are several encodings which store more than a byte per character...

Hmm, another pattern: citing true, but irrelevant facts in a subtle attempt to discredit. Are we a bit shy of reality now? Or, perhaps, we have a mental block regarding conceding truth value to a perceived inferior?

I appreciate intellectual diversity, which is I am one of the very few people who post here who does not follow the "dittohead" principle.

Wow. I don't think I could have written a more ironic statement, on so many levels. Insulting, too, with a touch of elitism. You truly have talent.

If you feel surrounded by such idiots, why do you continue to post here?

Polo,

I quote from my stated guidelines to posters:

"Readers are invited to post their thoughts, ideas, questions, and reactions in the comment section of Critical Mass. Rules of engagement: no profanity, no ad hominem attack, no trolling, no flaming. Reasoned discourse and principled argument are always welcome. I reserve the right to edit or delete any post that does not meet these guidelines."

You've been trolling this site for some time now. Your mission seems consistently not to be to discuss or debate the issues raised by me and by other posters, but to hijack discussion threads through a combination of snide, insincere commentary and ad hominem attack. While the good faith exchange of ideas is welcome on Critical Mass, bad faith attempts to derail discussion and to provoke other commenters are not. I am asking you to remember your manners and to treat the other posters on this site with courtesy and respect. You need not agree with them, but if you want to continue to post comments on Critical Mass, you are going to have to register your disagreement in a more constructive and civil manner. If you can't do that, you will lose your commenting privileges on this site.

Dr. O'Connor--you have no means of judging my sincerity or lack thereof, unless you feel that anyone who expresses a contrary opinion couldn't possibly believe it. Furthermore, I have treated corrrespondents here with far more courtesy than they have me. My education level, maturity, intellect, diction, rationality, masculinity, and Southern heritage have all been insulted by your posters at one time or another; but I somehow have endured.

I have resorted to absurdity on occasion--perhaps in exasperation at the uncommon groupthink--but I doubt it justifies your "trolling" allegations or your amusingly hypocritical threats of censure. NB: after a perfectly "constructive" attempt to apply some theoretical insight to a semantic problem under discussion in this thread, a poster advises the audience that I am indistinguishable from a computer program and best ignored.

Of course, if by "constructive," you mean posts that remain within your permissible range of opinion, then I have been destructive; but it would do you (and your readership) quite a bit of good to in the destructive element immerse.