The College That Wants to Ban ‘History’

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

You can't make this sh*t up if you tried. http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...n-history.html


The College That Wants to Ban ‘History’

The history department might someday become the hxstory department, if the students in the Assembly for Power and Liberation have their way.

Students at Western Washington University have reached a turning point in their campus’s hxstory. (For one thing, they’re now spelling it with an X—more on that later.) Activists are demanding the creation of a new college dedicated to social justice activism, a student committee to police offensive speech, and culturally segregated living arrangements at the school, which is in Bellingham, up in the very northwest corner of the state.
Students have the right to push for robust changes to campus conditions, of course. But if administrators care about free speech at all, they will ignore these calls to create an almost cartoonishly autocratic liberal thought police on campus.

WWU’s student-activist community—the frightening-sounding Assembly for Power and Liberation—made their demands public last week. The document begins by noting that the activists crashed a Feb. 12 Board of Trustees meeting in order to demand “accountability for the violence enacted on this campus,” and were subsequently surprised that none of the trustees accepted an invitation to come to an assembly meeting to “take accountability.” Pro-tip, students: If you ruin other people’s meetings, don’t be surprised when they skip out on yours.

The most substantial of the activists’ demands is a call for a new college that would essentially train students to become social justice warriors (a term often applied derogatorily by critics of leftism that nevertheless seems appropriate here). WWU must meet the needs of this new “College of Power and Liberation” by immediately hiring 10 faculty members—subject to the approval of student-activists. Finding the money to do all this is solely the responsibility of WWU’s administration, “whose accountability to students should be expressed through their fervent advocacy for students’ needs at both the local and state levels,” according to the activists, who want an extra $50,000 to throw a kick-off party for the new college. Another $45,000 will go toward paying students to do “de-colonial work on campus,” whatever that means.

Activists have also demanded the creation of an Office for Social Transformation, which would employ 15 students—young Robespierres in training—for the purposes of monitoring “racist, anti-black, transphobic, cissexist, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and otherwise oppressive behavior on campus.” (Anti-Semitism, one notes, is curiously omitted.) These students will be granted terrifying powers to discipline faculty members who commit microaggressions. Professors—even tenured professors—can and will be placed under investigation if they are accused of maintaining insufficiently safe spaces within their classrooms.

These measures are hailed as “progressive” by the activists—because what could be more progressive than committees of liberal extremists conducting thoughtcrime investigations?

The third serious demand is for the creation of new residence halls geared around specific cultural identities. Students claim the goal is for people from different backgrounds to live together and make new connections. But if this were true, no new dorm arrangements would be necessary—different people living together is what happens at college by default. Reading between the lines, it sounds like student-activists actually want the opposite: They want to create residential safe spaces built around certain exclusive group identities.

The result of such arrangements would be a form of de facto cultural segregation that one might expect students would oppose if they were actual progressives. In any case, these communities will be policed by residential advisors tasked with the specific goal of creating social justice activism programs. As with the proposal for “oppression studies” in the dorms at American University, it seems like the idea is to turn the campus into a zone of liberal ideological conformity from which there is no escape.
Keep in mind that WWU is already an extremely liberal campus with a number of social justice-oriented activities: it has a department of Education and Social Justice, a Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, a Queer Resource Center, a Social Issues Resource Center, and an Ethnic Student Center.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. These programs undoubtedly have much to offer, and contribute to the rich intellectual culture of the university. But there must come a point at which adding more and more far-left instructional options actually detracts from the campus’s intellectual diversity. Besides, the student-activists don’t want to just add more options—they want to push them on everybody.

At the heart of this effort lies a bizarrely totalitarian ideology: Student-activists think they have all the answers—everything is settled, and people who dissent are not merely wrong, but actually guilty of something approaching a crime. If they persist in this wrongness, they are perpetuating violence, activists will claim.

The list of demands ends with a lengthy denunciation of WWU’s marginalization of “hxstorically oppressed students.” The misspelling is intentional: “hxstory,” I presume, was judged to be more PC than “history,” which is gendered, triggering, and perhaps violent. It’s easy for me to laugh at these clumsy attempts to make language obey the dictates of political correctness—but I laugh from a position of relative safety, since I am not a WWU professor.

On the other hand, if a member of campus were to insist on the proper spelling of the word, would he or she (or xe) have to answer to the Committee for Social Transformation?

[grump]

Leftie, please don't tell me you're surprised. This is the America of Obama, Hillary, Sanders and the rest of the whack jobs and dangerous psychotics. We're rapidly approaching the point where the entire educational establishment from K through college is nothing more that the plaything of Nazis of every stripe. Within a generation it will be necessary to create a complete independent and perhaps secret educational system to transfer real learning.

[FisherRd]

http://campusreform.org/?ID=7977

I love the irony of minorities claiming it's not racist to only want minority roommates.
These fruitcakes are too stupid for words.

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

http://campusreform.org/?ID=7977

I love the irony of minorities claiming it's not racist to only want minority roommates.
These fruitcakes are too stupid for words.

Post Obama America.

[300miles]

To be fair, this is all about an "activist group" that doesn't actually represent the college, or even its student body. The college itself doesn't want to ban anything as the title implies, and that's proven by the board of trustees completely ignoring the demands of the activist group.

[grump]

To be fair, they're Nazis.

[Linda_D]

To be fair, this is all about an "activist group" that doesn't actually represent the college, or even its student body. The college itself doesn't want to ban anything as the title implies, and that's proven by the board of trustees completely ignoring the demands of the activist group.

Exactly! Furthermore, there's no indication that this "activist group" is actually a "group" at all; it might be only a single individual. I don't know what the enrollment is at Western Washington, but I'd be surprised if this "activist group" actually had even 100 members.

[Linda_D]

To be fair, they're Nazis.

It doesn't matter. They can want whatever they want but that doesn't mean that they're going to get it.

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

To be fair, this is all about an "activist group" that doesn't actually represent the college, or even its student body. The college itself doesn't want to ban anything as the title implies, and that's proven by the board of trustees completely ignoring the demands of the activist group.

It's an activist group that represents students at the college.

The point of it all is that there is a problem on college campuses today where a group of students can come together and have the audacity to think making such requests is reasonable. The reason why this happens is there is precedent of snowflakes on other campuses making demands of a similar nature that actually gained traction.

Some examples are below. Notice the tense of each....

The University of New Hampshire used a “Bias-Free Language Guide” that said the word “American” is offensive and should not be used. Why? Because it “fails to recognize South America” and “assumes the U.S. is the only country inside these two continents”

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee had a “Just Words” campaign and declared the phrase “politically correct” to be politically incorrect. Why? Because PC is offensive because it “has become a way to deflect, say that people are being too ‘sensitive.’”

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign published a report that said just “walking into or sitting in” a room full of white people is in itself a microaggression on the part of the white people.

Kansas University’s student senate voted to totally ban gender-specific pronouns such as “his/her” from its Rules and Regulations document because they’re “microaggressions” against the students who don’t use them.

Modesto Junior College stopped a student from distributing copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day. Two professors have been punished for defending the student.

Marquette University suspended a professor and is trying to revoke his tenure after he criticized a graduate instructor for telling students that they could not express support for traditional marriage in her class.

The University of Iowa censored the art of Serhat Tanyolacar, professor of art. The art piece had an anti-racism message, but the collage of images featuring racial violence was deemed too offensive and upsetting to students.

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign rescinded a job offer to a professor after he posted controversial statements about Israel to his personal Twitter account.

We ALL know how we got here. We ALL know how these snowflakes have been raised, both at home and in the classroom, and it's not difficult to see why they are like this. The challenge is some people can't seem to accept the damage that has been created.

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

It doesn't matter. They can want whatever they want but that doesn't mean that they're going to get it.

The problem is they are not always being told NO. In fact, too often they are being encourage by faculty on campus who share the same thinking.

Many in this generation have been coddled their entire life to the point where they do not have any skills to deal with challenges. They don't know how to react or deal with opinions that are different from their own. They have little to no coping mechanisms to deal with any social situation that is outside of their bubble.

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

Exactly! Furthermore, there's no indication that this "activist group" is actually a "group" at all; it might be only a single individual. I don't know what the enrollment is at Western Washington, but I'd be surprised if this "activist group" actually had even 100 members.

Why did you pick the number 100? Do you think less than 100 students can't bring change to a campus?

It took only 17 students of the Black Justice League at Princeton to hold a 32 hour sit in at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs to get the President of Princeton University, Christopher Eisgruber, to agree to the following:

Stipulations that the university would expand “cultural competency training,”
Designate four rooms for “cultural affinity groups,”
Pursue the creation of special “Affinity Housing” reserved for students of color.


In case you are unable to understand, the idea of Affinity Housing is really segregation and racism. It's not called this because you can't call blacks racist...even when they are. 17 students got the President of one the premier Universities in the United States to explore the idea of segregation on campus. Think about that for a minute.

Is anything going to happen with this 'hxstory' issue? Probably not but would you honestly be shocked if they eventually came to some form of a compromise. One that is much less than these absolutely absurd requests but still absurd in their own right?

[grump]

What's important to understand is that most college faculty and administration have all the moral backbone of your average jellyfish. They spend their entire lives in a "postmodern" world where all thoughts and ideas are equally valid and they're all just made up of words which are really nothing more than political constructs anyway and therefore we can have them mean anything we want them to so it really doesn't matter. And besides, opposing this crap would be to much like real work. But being that they are likely supporters of this kind of crap I wouldn't expect Linda or 300 to recognize it for what it is. Leftie, in the idealized world of Linda and 300 no one would be allowed to criticize anything about the City of Buffalo. That's why they almost immediately resort to ad hominem attacks on people who do criticize it.

[300miles]

What's important to understand is that most college faculty and administration have all the moral backbone of your average jellyfish. They spend their entire lives in a "postmodern" world where all thoughts and ideas are equally valid and they're all just made up of words which are really nothing more than political constructs anyway and therefore we can have them mean anything we want them to so it really doesn't matter. And besides, opposing this crap would be to much like real work. But being that they are likely supporters of this kind of crap I wouldn't expect Linda or 300 to recognize it for what it is. Leftie, in the idealized world of Linda and 300 no one would be allowed to criticize anything about the City of Buffalo. That's why they almost immediately resort to ad hominem attacks on people who do criticize it.

As usual, you're not making any sense. I'm not defending the demands of this small activist group and I'm not denying their freedom to protest. I'm simply saying that their wacked-out beliefs do not represent the college or the other students, and that the title of the article was misleading by implying "the college" is behind them on their demands. You keep saying the college supports the activists but there is zero evidence that they do. Just the opposite, the article explains how the college is basically ignoring them. Of course you will jump on any chance to generalize based on the actions of a couple kids, because it gives you something easy to whine about, which apparently is your main occupation.

[WNYresident]

that the title of the article was misleading by implying "the college" is behind them on their demands.

Exactly. I see this practice on many face book articles and other "news outlets".

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

As usual, you're not making any sense. I'm not defending the demands of this small activist group and I'm not denying their freedom to protest. I'm simply saying that their wacked-out beliefs do not represent the college or the other students, and that the title of the article was misleading by implying "the college" is behind them on their demands. You keep saying the college supports the activists but there is zero evidence that they do. Just the opposite, the article explains how the college is basically ignoring them. Of course you will jump on any chance to generalize based on the actions of a couple kids, because it gives you something easy to whine about, which apparently is your main occupation.

It's a click bait title for sure. Didn't edit on my own and took the conversation off track. Sorry for that.

That said, it's disingenuous at best to shrug off the topic at hand as just a couple of college kids. If you don't realize the this type of mindset is infecting colleges and universities all over the US than your ignorant on the subject and naive.