Ah, Lowell House! I lived right under that damn bell tower. Never dreamed that the House Master was a slaveholder….

I had been waiting with trepidation to see how Harvard would embarrass itself in the current college campus political correctness/ black student extortion/ free speech rejection meltdown. The result is an anti-climax, but, yes, still embarrassing.

Apparently some students have been making a classic “niggardly” complaint, like the infamous D.C. government employees who believed that good old Anglo-Saxon word for cheap was the racial slur it resembles. In the case of Harvard students, the beef was that the term “House Master,” used to describe the Harvard faculty member who oversees, manages and hosts one of the many residential “houses” that serve as mini-campuses for Harvard sophomores, juniors and seniors, was racially insensitive and offensive to black students. Never mind that the word “master” has dozens of applications, almost all of which have nothing to do with slavery. The theory appears to be that if a word has ever been used in a context offensive to blacks, all uses of the word in the future, whatever the context, must be assumed to have racially oppressive intent.

Huh. It’s funny: I attended Harvard with black students, and it was during a period when civil rights protests and upheaval were everywhere, including on campus. Yet somehow, this blatantly racist use of “master” never came up. Why? Well…

1. It would have been considered ridiculous then, as it is ridiculous now.

2. Nobody thought of it, because in those halcyon days, people weren’t searching for ways to claim offense.

3. Black students hadn’t learned how much power and publicity minorities could get as a result of making such specious complaints (See: Washington Redskins and…

4. College administrators hadn’t yet sunk into a permanent state of pathetic weenieness.

In the wake of the first “niggardly” episode, which occurred only a few miles from where I type this, I created the First Niggardly Principle (there are now three):

“No one should be criticized or penalized because someone takes racial, ethnic, religious or other offense at their conduct or speech due to the ignorance, bias or misunderstanding by the offended party.”

It follows from the First Niggardly Principle that the most appropriate response to such criticism is to ignore it, and perhaps to explain, nicely, why it is based on bias, ignorance or misunderstanding. In the case of the ridiculous “master” complaint, a rebuke is mandatory. Language doesn’t work like that, fairness doesn’t work like that, and logic doesn’t work like that, unless we let it, and Harvard, by god, should be the last place that lets it. House Master is descriptive and unambiguous. Master denotes control; the large, mostly brick complexes called “houses” at Harvard have nothing to do with slavery, and obviously so. If they remind African-Americans students of slavery, well, Harvard has excellent psychiatric services. It’s as simple as that.

But nooooooo. Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana announced in an email that the term “house master” is out:

“I write on behalf of myself and my fellow residential House leaders to let you know that the House Masters have unanimously expressed desire to change their title. In the coming weeks, the College will launch a process in which members of the House leaders’ docket committee, working with senior College team members and the House leadership community as a whole, will suggest a new title that reflects the current realities of the role.”

We know what this is. This is the time-honored, misguided, kinder, gentler, foolish and destructive modern tendency of educators to reflexively yield to the inmates on minor matters, even when they are agreeing to a silly demand, in order to avoid a confrontation that risks escalating or causing the alleged administrators  to show character. The reasoning is, “Oh, who cares. Let’s give them what they want; maybe they’ll be grateful [Fools. They are never grateful. Giving into one demand just makes those demanding more ambitious.]. Okay, we call House Masters something else. How about “Persons of Residence Mastery”? If they like “people of color,” they should like that.”

Thus Harvard chose to adopt the Second Niggardly Principle instead of the First:

“When an individual or group can accomplish its legitimate objectives without engaging in speech or conduct that will offend individuals whose basis for the supposed offense is emotional, mistaken or ignorant, but is not malicious and is based on well-established impulses of human nature, it is unethical to intentionally engage in such speech or conduct.”

Wrong. The Second Niggardly Principle doesn’t apply. Harvard cannot accomplish its legitimate objectives if it is going to allow its students to succeed while using poor and or intellectually dishonest reasoning to find a term racially offensive when it objectively isn’t. Rewarding sloppy thinking and political correctness imbues students with both bad character and bad habits. In addition, the basis for this supposed offense in  is malicious. Its objective is to wield power and to assert control over language and expression for political advantage. Not only that, but the surrender,  as well as the claim prompting it, diminishes Harvard’s reputation by being so brain-blowing stupid. Making fun of the story is too easy: just list all the common phrases and titles with “master” in them. Are they all offensive? Must Harvard now jettison its Masters program? What about the word “master”? I guess it’s the new “niggardly.” When the niggardly episode occurred, the nearly universal reaction was that the complainers were simply illiterate dolts. Why is Harvard admitting similarly handicapped students, who can’t distinguish between headmaster, House Master, chess master, Masterpiece Theater, masterworks, master class, quartermaster, master of ceremonies and the rest, and “slave master”?

And if it is admitting such dummies, why isn’t the nation’s most prestigious college trying to help them rather than emulating them?