xrayzebra
02-25-2006, 10:27 AM
The following two articles I found today really did point out what is
going on in our colleges/universities where our young people are suppose
to be getting a quality education, not brainwashed in political correctness.
The first about a liberal from the Clinton administration that got booted from
Harvard. The second about a speaker at UTSA, a black speaker who a
professor who teaches Black Studies (why do we even need such a course)
who said it was inappropriate to have him speak during Black History month,
how come we don't have a White History month, because he didn't espouse
the Professors views.
Feminist Victory
By Carrie Lukas
Feb 24, 2006
Lawrence H. Summers is stepping down as president of Harvard University. His critics cite a number of missteps - from challenging the eminent African-American professor Cornell West to expressing support for the U.S. military - that contributed to his demise. But those were minor scrapes; he's leaving because he never recovered from a wound inflicted by the Harvard gender police.
At an academic conference last January, Summers made the mistake of speculating that innate differences between men and women may in part explain why more men than women reach the upper echelons of science and math. Radical feminists were aghast and called for his removal. More than a year later, they finally got their man.
It's testament to the bizarre world of academia. Leftist feminists are increasingly misfits in American politics (each election feminist groups promise that women are going to vote in mass for a liberal revolution-it has yet to happen), but they are big men on campus. In academia's ivory tower, they can instill their world view on impressionable youngsters and make or break aspiring academics.
In this bubble, a self-proclaimed feminist like MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins can with a straight face describe nearly fainting after hearing Summers suggest there are gender differences: "I felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath shallow. I was extremely upset." Her over-reaction is itself evidence of gender differences (can anyone imagining a male professor reacting like that?), but it would be taboo to say so on a politically correct campus.
Conservatives have spent years trying to raise awareness that true academic inquiry has been sacrificed to political correctness. Summers ousting may mark an important turning point in this effort. After all, Summers was the Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton-hardly a right-wing ideologue. His failure to pass the campus liberal litmus test may convince many that the problem is real.
Summers himself seems not to have understood the power and standard operating procedure of campus leftists. When he spoke at the fateful conference that purported to consider potential explanations for the gender disparate in hard sciences, he thought attendees were actually interested in answering that question. Under this mistaken logic, he listed numerous potential causes and committed the heresy of including innate aptitude among them.
Had he been more familiar with gender studies, he would have known that there is really only one acceptable explanation to the radical left: discrimination. The gender warriors may wish to ponder what kind of discrimination - is it our discriminatory socialization process that begins when we dress our baby girls in pink or garden variety sexism in the hiring process? - but our sexist society is undoubtedly the culprit.
Everyone recognizes that discrimination is bad, which allows gender warriors to think up programs and legislation to root it out. If women's preferences and choices are responsible for the differences in outcomes between men and women, gender warriors' reason for existence begins to disappear.
It's through this lens that the good news that women aren't being discriminated against becomes bad news for feminists. Liberal women's groups seize on the statistic showing that a full-time working woman makes less than a full-time working man as evidence of systematic discrimination against women. Data showing that the wage gap is primarily caused by factors other than discrimination (such as women's preference for jobs offering greater flexibility, physical comfort, and personal fulfillment instead of higher pay) is ignored.
Feminist groups envision a "genderless" society where men and women are equally represented in all facets of life. It frustrates them that women keep thwarting this ideal by making choices that are different then men's. Their only hope is that women are making these choices under a false consciousness. Alternative explanations cannot be considered or their dream vanishes.
Summers' mistake was not recognizing the rules of the gender victimology game. Now he has paid the price, and Harvard is worse for it. Gender warriors celebrating this should be wary that their victory came with a cost: their extremism was exposed to new eyes. For the sake of the next generation of students who are passing through these institutions, let's hope that greater awareness of just how intolerant colleges have become is impetuous for change.
Carrie Lukas is the director of policy at the Independent Women's Forum. She is also a graduate of Harvard University.
Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com
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Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/CarrieLukas/2006/02/24/187776.html
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UTSA getting schooled in politics
Web Posted: 02/25/2006 12:00 AM CST
Melissa Ludwig
Express-News Staff Writer
It may seem surprising that a black speaker would provoke an enraged reception from a student audience during Black History Month, as the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson did this week at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
That is, until you hear what Peterson had to say.
"Most blacks are incapable of thinking for themselves," the conservative commentator from Los Angeles told a racially and ethnically diverse crowd of about 200 students gathered in a campus auditorium Thursday.
He added that black men are also lazy and irresponsible and that whites have done enough to help blacks.
The speech was met with shouts and protests — an uproar that is being repeated more and more on college campuses experiencing a growing trend of political polarization.
Conservatives, who have for years felt outnumbered by liberals in higher education, are hiring speakers guaranteed to create controversy — and generate new audiences. Debates over whether professors should express their political views in the classroom are raging.
Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles say an ongoing survey of college freshmen, begun in 1966, indicates a growing trend toward polarization and increased student conservatism.
Peterson spoke at the invitation of a campus conservative group called Movement for the Future. He was paid $3,500, and the appearance was sponsored, in part, by the Young America's Foundation , a national conservative outreach program.
Peterson, a television talk show host and frequent visitor to conservative talk shows, runs a Los Angeles organization called Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny that is dedicated to teaching young men to "stop being so angry and blaming others."
In 2002, he made headlines when he sued Jesse Jackson and his son, Jonathan, claiming he was hit and verbally abused during an encounter with the two men. A jury dismissed most of his claims last month.
Frederick Williams, a professor of African-American studies at UTSA, said he was offended by the timing of Peterson's appearance.
"None of us oppose him coming in March or April, bring him any other time, but not during (Black History Month), said Williams, who gave his students extra credit for attending the speech and handed out buttons to audience members that said: "We support legitimate black leadership."
Matthew Gates, the 23-year-old president of Movement for the Future, defended the timing.
"We were told, 'How dare we bring a black speaker during black history month as white people,'" Gates said.
"But the point was to bring in a different perspective than was offered on campus," he said. "Before we came here, there wasn't much going on, the occasional protest but nothing on a broader scale. We have raised the level of discourse on campus."
Rosalie Ambrosino , interim provost for student affairs, said the kind of heated political debate that broke out this week is new for UTSA, which is booming with enrollment.
"We are getting a lot more students with diversity of thought and ideas," she said. "It's part of the growth."
Since Movement began in August 2005, group members have brought conservative thinkers such as Dinesh D'Souza, a former analyst in the Reagan administration, to campus and have spurred back-and-forth editorials in the student newspaper with liberal groups such as the Progressive Student Organization.
In December, a new student club, Atheist Agenda, set up a booth on campus and invited passers-by to trade Bibles for pornography — a stunt designed to spark debate over organized religion.
Campus conservatives also are using shock tactics, said Scott Jaschik, co-founder of the online publication Inside Higher Ed, who has noticed a trend among conservative groups bringing firebrands such as conservative commentator Ann Coulter to campus.
"If someone gave a conservative critique of black society in a low-key, polite way, no one would show up," Jaschik said. "There is spectacle with this."
Though many conservatives, Gates included, feel dwarfed by liberals on college campuses, a national freshman survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA showed that the number of conservatives on college campuses has significantly increased since 1970.
Last year, about 23 percent of students on college campuses said they were conservative, compared with 17 percent in 1970. Liberals made up 27 percent of students in 2005, compared with 36 percent in 1970.
About 45 percent said they were middle-of-the-road, the study said.
The percentages of students who identified themselves as politically extreme — 3.4 percent far left and 1.9 percent far right — are small but have increased over the years, the study showed.
Diane Abdo, who teaches writing at UTSA and serves as adviser for the student newspaper, the Paisano, said over the years she has noticed students employ less critical thinking in their essays and more hardened political rhetoric.
"I require that my students listen to really good news reporting and give a report on a controversial issue," Abdo said. "I want them to sharpen their listening skills. Generally people don't listen."
After Peterson spoke, students lingered and debated in groups with a mix of races and politics.
"I thought that the guy was a shock jock," said 18-year Amarro Nelson, who is black.
"He didn't really bring any intellectualism to the table. I may agree with some of his views, but I don't agree with the way he brought it upon the audience."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[email protected]
going on in our colleges/universities where our young people are suppose
to be getting a quality education, not brainwashed in political correctness.
The first about a liberal from the Clinton administration that got booted from
Harvard. The second about a speaker at UTSA, a black speaker who a
professor who teaches Black Studies (why do we even need such a course)
who said it was inappropriate to have him speak during Black History month,
how come we don't have a White History month, because he didn't espouse
the Professors views.
Feminist Victory
By Carrie Lukas
Feb 24, 2006
Lawrence H. Summers is stepping down as president of Harvard University. His critics cite a number of missteps - from challenging the eminent African-American professor Cornell West to expressing support for the U.S. military - that contributed to his demise. But those were minor scrapes; he's leaving because he never recovered from a wound inflicted by the Harvard gender police.
At an academic conference last January, Summers made the mistake of speculating that innate differences between men and women may in part explain why more men than women reach the upper echelons of science and math. Radical feminists were aghast and called for his removal. More than a year later, they finally got their man.
It's testament to the bizarre world of academia. Leftist feminists are increasingly misfits in American politics (each election feminist groups promise that women are going to vote in mass for a liberal revolution-it has yet to happen), but they are big men on campus. In academia's ivory tower, they can instill their world view on impressionable youngsters and make or break aspiring academics.
In this bubble, a self-proclaimed feminist like MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins can with a straight face describe nearly fainting after hearing Summers suggest there are gender differences: "I felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath shallow. I was extremely upset." Her over-reaction is itself evidence of gender differences (can anyone imagining a male professor reacting like that?), but it would be taboo to say so on a politically correct campus.
Conservatives have spent years trying to raise awareness that true academic inquiry has been sacrificed to political correctness. Summers ousting may mark an important turning point in this effort. After all, Summers was the Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton-hardly a right-wing ideologue. His failure to pass the campus liberal litmus test may convince many that the problem is real.
Summers himself seems not to have understood the power and standard operating procedure of campus leftists. When he spoke at the fateful conference that purported to consider potential explanations for the gender disparate in hard sciences, he thought attendees were actually interested in answering that question. Under this mistaken logic, he listed numerous potential causes and committed the heresy of including innate aptitude among them.
Had he been more familiar with gender studies, he would have known that there is really only one acceptable explanation to the radical left: discrimination. The gender warriors may wish to ponder what kind of discrimination - is it our discriminatory socialization process that begins when we dress our baby girls in pink or garden variety sexism in the hiring process? - but our sexist society is undoubtedly the culprit.
Everyone recognizes that discrimination is bad, which allows gender warriors to think up programs and legislation to root it out. If women's preferences and choices are responsible for the differences in outcomes between men and women, gender warriors' reason for existence begins to disappear.
It's through this lens that the good news that women aren't being discriminated against becomes bad news for feminists. Liberal women's groups seize on the statistic showing that a full-time working woman makes less than a full-time working man as evidence of systematic discrimination against women. Data showing that the wage gap is primarily caused by factors other than discrimination (such as women's preference for jobs offering greater flexibility, physical comfort, and personal fulfillment instead of higher pay) is ignored.
Feminist groups envision a "genderless" society where men and women are equally represented in all facets of life. It frustrates them that women keep thwarting this ideal by making choices that are different then men's. Their only hope is that women are making these choices under a false consciousness. Alternative explanations cannot be considered or their dream vanishes.
Summers' mistake was not recognizing the rules of the gender victimology game. Now he has paid the price, and Harvard is worse for it. Gender warriors celebrating this should be wary that their victory came with a cost: their extremism was exposed to new eyes. For the sake of the next generation of students who are passing through these institutions, let's hope that greater awareness of just how intolerant colleges have become is impetuous for change.
Carrie Lukas is the director of policy at the Independent Women's Forum. She is also a graduate of Harvard University.
Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/CarrieLukas/2006/02/24/187776.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------
UTSA getting schooled in politics
Web Posted: 02/25/2006 12:00 AM CST
Melissa Ludwig
Express-News Staff Writer
It may seem surprising that a black speaker would provoke an enraged reception from a student audience during Black History Month, as the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson did this week at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
That is, until you hear what Peterson had to say.
"Most blacks are incapable of thinking for themselves," the conservative commentator from Los Angeles told a racially and ethnically diverse crowd of about 200 students gathered in a campus auditorium Thursday.
He added that black men are also lazy and irresponsible and that whites have done enough to help blacks.
The speech was met with shouts and protests — an uproar that is being repeated more and more on college campuses experiencing a growing trend of political polarization.
Conservatives, who have for years felt outnumbered by liberals in higher education, are hiring speakers guaranteed to create controversy — and generate new audiences. Debates over whether professors should express their political views in the classroom are raging.
Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles say an ongoing survey of college freshmen, begun in 1966, indicates a growing trend toward polarization and increased student conservatism.
Peterson spoke at the invitation of a campus conservative group called Movement for the Future. He was paid $3,500, and the appearance was sponsored, in part, by the Young America's Foundation , a national conservative outreach program.
Peterson, a television talk show host and frequent visitor to conservative talk shows, runs a Los Angeles organization called Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny that is dedicated to teaching young men to "stop being so angry and blaming others."
In 2002, he made headlines when he sued Jesse Jackson and his son, Jonathan, claiming he was hit and verbally abused during an encounter with the two men. A jury dismissed most of his claims last month.
Frederick Williams, a professor of African-American studies at UTSA, said he was offended by the timing of Peterson's appearance.
"None of us oppose him coming in March or April, bring him any other time, but not during (Black History Month), said Williams, who gave his students extra credit for attending the speech and handed out buttons to audience members that said: "We support legitimate black leadership."
Matthew Gates, the 23-year-old president of Movement for the Future, defended the timing.
"We were told, 'How dare we bring a black speaker during black history month as white people,'" Gates said.
"But the point was to bring in a different perspective than was offered on campus," he said. "Before we came here, there wasn't much going on, the occasional protest but nothing on a broader scale. We have raised the level of discourse on campus."
Rosalie Ambrosino , interim provost for student affairs, said the kind of heated political debate that broke out this week is new for UTSA, which is booming with enrollment.
"We are getting a lot more students with diversity of thought and ideas," she said. "It's part of the growth."
Since Movement began in August 2005, group members have brought conservative thinkers such as Dinesh D'Souza, a former analyst in the Reagan administration, to campus and have spurred back-and-forth editorials in the student newspaper with liberal groups such as the Progressive Student Organization.
In December, a new student club, Atheist Agenda, set up a booth on campus and invited passers-by to trade Bibles for pornography — a stunt designed to spark debate over organized religion.
Campus conservatives also are using shock tactics, said Scott Jaschik, co-founder of the online publication Inside Higher Ed, who has noticed a trend among conservative groups bringing firebrands such as conservative commentator Ann Coulter to campus.
"If someone gave a conservative critique of black society in a low-key, polite way, no one would show up," Jaschik said. "There is spectacle with this."
Though many conservatives, Gates included, feel dwarfed by liberals on college campuses, a national freshman survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA showed that the number of conservatives on college campuses has significantly increased since 1970.
Last year, about 23 percent of students on college campuses said they were conservative, compared with 17 percent in 1970. Liberals made up 27 percent of students in 2005, compared with 36 percent in 1970.
About 45 percent said they were middle-of-the-road, the study said.
The percentages of students who identified themselves as politically extreme — 3.4 percent far left and 1.9 percent far right — are small but have increased over the years, the study showed.
Diane Abdo, who teaches writing at UTSA and serves as adviser for the student newspaper, the Paisano, said over the years she has noticed students employ less critical thinking in their essays and more hardened political rhetoric.
"I require that my students listen to really good news reporting and give a report on a controversial issue," Abdo said. "I want them to sharpen their listening skills. Generally people don't listen."
After Peterson spoke, students lingered and debated in groups with a mix of races and politics.
"I thought that the guy was a shock jock," said 18-year Amarro Nelson, who is black.
"He didn't really bring any intellectualism to the table. I may agree with some of his views, but I don't agree with the way he brought it upon the audience."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[email protected]