Does anyone recall anything like this happening in previous crazy times, like the mid-Sixties? If you somehow missed this episode, “listen my children and you will hear…”
Shellyne Rodriguez was an adjunct art professor at CUNY Hunter College in New York City. When she saw a group of pro-life students, members of Students for Life, distributing anti-abortion materials on campus earlier this month, she attacked, throwing their pamphlets in the air and screaming at them, saying,
“You’re not educating shit! This is fucking propaganda! What are you going to do like anti-trans next? This is bullshit! This is violent. You’re triggering my students!”
After a shaken student tried to babble and apology (for existing?)Rodriguez responded, “No, you’re not! Because you can’t even have a fucking baby. So you don’t even know what that is…Get this shit out of here, fuck this shit!” Then she threw the group’s pamphlets off their table.
Hunter’s pro-choice student group, CUNY for Abortion Rights, tried to defend the indefensible, thus destroying their own credibility, stating (falsely)
“Hunter College adjunct educator Shellyne Rodriguez approached the display, constructively critiqued the group members, and eventually physically took down items from the table. Her actions to shut down the tabling were fully justified, and are part of a long and celebrated CUNY legacy of confronting groups such as military recruiters who disseminate misleading information. Anti-abortion groups are in collusion with anti-queer and trans, anti-labor, anti-Palestinian campaigns, in a larger [sense] violate people’s bodily autonomy, economic well-being, and collective determination.”
The statement was co-signed by the Palestine Solidarity Alliance.
But wait! There’s more!
After Rodriguez’s rampage made national headlines, Reuben Fenton, a New York Post reporter, knocked on Rodriguez’s door to request an interview. She threatened him with a machete, screaming, “Get the fuck away from my door, or I’m gonna chop you up with this machete! Get the fuck away from my door! Get the fuck away from my door!” Then she chased the reporter outside, waving the weapon and screaming, “Get the fuck off the block! Get the fuck out of here, yo!”
All righty then! Some pertinent observations…
- I know that adjuncts are hired without the rigor applied to full-time staff (after all, I was hired as an adjunct), but doesn’t a school have some obligation to do minima vetting? Her “statement” on her website is signature significance for a whacko:
My practice is expressed through multiple mediums, such as drawing, painting, collage, sculpture and text to depict or archive spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation. My work is rooted in hip hop culture, and thinks through hip hop’s ability to reinvent itself, in its malleability, and in the way it pulls from a variety of sources to create something new. The terrain the work navigates is a psychic space and is hinged to the baroque. My work engages with the emotive devices of the Baroque, and pairs itself with hip hop culture to sample and remix its machinations in order to depict the contemporary conditions of despair and alienation or perseverance and subversion of power. The ongoing inquiry in the work is how to sway and bend and duck and run and scream and mend and scratch and break and heal and push forward, utilizing a variety of sources and mediums. To sample and remix. To think and to make. And what does that look like in an object? As a narrative? As an action? As a gesture or a sound? On paper or on canvas?
Who would read that Authentic Frontier gibberish and think, “Wow, we need to hire her to teach our students!”?
- What in CUNY’s culture an environment would lead an adult to conclude that interfering with a student group’s peaceful distribution of advocacy information is ethical, reasonable, justifiable or even legal? Whatever it is, the school needs to get rid of it, or New York needs to get rid of CUNY Hunter,
- “What are you going to do like anti-trans next?” That’s interesting. These people, whatever you call them, attach all of their woke agenda items in a single bundle. Apparently it’s inconceivable that someone might, say, oppose abortion, but be happy to let biological men win female sports events. I guess political and social positions are like cable TV packages. No thought, nuance or choice allowed.
- It’s refreshing to know that the Left’s “it isn’t what it is” reflex is being passed on the the young: that CUNY for Abortion Rights statement is a masterpiece of the form. Shellyne “constructively critiqued the group” by saying, “You’re not educating shit! This is fucking propaganda!” Now that’s constructive! “Her actions to shut down the tabling were fully justified” only to those who believe shutting down speech and intimidating those you disagree with is justified.
- At least Rodriguez was fired; whether she would have been absent the machete interlude is a rich area for speculation.
- Who would want to be on the same side as people who behave and talk like this? Aren’t such episodes of woke-fueled fury strong symptoms of a movement leaping it’s tracks?
Ethics Alarms 
Who would read that Authentic Frontier gibberish and think, “Wow, we need to hire her to teach our students!”?
I’m not defending her or the practice, but fluency in Authentic Frontier Gibberish has been the primary qualification to be an art professor for a while now.
I believe it.
If you cannot dazzle them with brilliance baffle em with bullshit.
No academic will ever point out that this rhetoric is just that – polysyllabic linguistic BS. I have met plenty of mediocre faculty who rely on using archaic or rarely used words to make themselves appear erudite.
It appears Rodriguez has not integrated the instruction, nor derived any benefit from the group therapy provided during her anger management classes and now she is out of a job. This may not end well.
Mothers don’t let your children grow up to be wokesters. They are a danger to other living life forms.
Isn’t being rational an evidence of white supremacy and systemic racism?? But on the serious side, yes, fluency in Authentic Frontier Gibberish is quickly becoming a basic requirement in academic hiring, not just in the Arts.
This woman is not symptomatic of the movement jumping the tracks. She is symptomatic of the movement’s complete control of the American academy. The inmates have been running the asylum for decades. If this were the ‘sixties, that sort of behavior would have been unacceptable from a student, and she would have been disciplined by the adults running the place. But there are no adults running universities and colleges anymore. They abandoned the academy to the radicals coming of age in the ‘sixties. Prof. Turley’s piece on this catalogues all the professors going wild on campuses. https://jonathanturley.org/2023/05/25/the-machete-standard-the-firing-of-an-activist-professor-leaves-more-questions-than-answers/#more-205459
And when is this woman going to arrested by the Bronx DA for assault with a deadly weapon? Wait! She’s been arrested! https://nypost.com/2023/05/25/nyc-professor-shellyne-rodriguez-surrenders-after-threatening-post-reporter/
All that being said, I have to admit the machete is a nice touch. She’s really raised the bar on faculty insanity.
It can’t be a deadly weapon. Brown people in Central and South America and Africa use it. QED.
It is lightweight and consists of a strong, sharp steel blade with a convenient hand grip, making in a very useful tool in agriculture and genocide. The name derives either from the Spanish “macho” (a diminutive) as in a sledgehammer, or from the Romans in “falcata”. The English-speaking world screwed up the pronunciation and started calling it a “matchet.” Then, the New World, primarily Central and South America, got in on the game and utilized it for gardening, sowing and harvesting crops, and trimming tree branches, along with lopping the heads off of Spanish colonizers during the “conquista.” Now, you can get them from Home Depot, but Lowes sells a better quality blade made in Brazil.
jvb
Given the surname of the faculty wielder, I’m going to guess she’s of Puerto Rican origin. I think every Cuban and Puerto Rican of a certain economic class has one and knows how to use it from birth. Much as it seems Mexicans all know their way around a shovel almost genetically. Great implement for cutting sugar cane. And doubtless popular in the Philippines and Southeast Asia for hacking through the jungle. In the fall of 1969 when I was approached by a guy in my college dorm to go to Cuba and help with the sugar cane harvest, I just laughed in his face and said, “Do you even know what a machete is? Do you know how tall sugar cane grows?”
Yes, she has been arrested and charged.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/25/shellyne-rodriguez-released-after-bronx-arraignment-over-post-machete-threat/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_conversation&spot_im_redirect_source=notifications&spot_im_comment_id=sp_Sx8YukwE_27219319_c_2QJYCiBMyOwmVnxKVjuzX1PzDlu_r_2QKGtSCGbbrH0fxRNBuXEhX6rP9&spot_im_highlight_immediate=true
“Shellyne Rodriguez, 45, made her first court appearance in Bronx Criminal Court, where she was arraigned on charges of menacing and harassment over the frightening confrontation with a veteran Post scribe inside her Bronx apartment building earlier in the week.”
As I commented in the post “Curiously she was not arraigned on any criminal weapons charges. I would think the video would make the case very easy to win. I guess the laws apply to some people but not all people. ”
Or as Orwell stated in Animal Farm,
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
In high school, three of our required reading texts were Mien Kampf, 1984, and Animal Farm. I recall we discussed these works not for their literary style but for the messages they sent.
As an undergrad at Columbia University in the early 70’s. In a sociology class, the term paper was a commentary on Kafka’s The Trial. There was a time when the role of education was to teach students to think. And yes there it was not devoid of a healthy dose of propaganda. For me, the ultimate stupidity was the Duck and Cover Drills. We were encouraged to think, to question, to use logic to reach conclusions and opinions. I can’t imagine my experience was unique.
It is so incredibly discouraging that the educational establishment from elementary through graduate training sees their role as agents of indoctrination. As it relates to the Hunter’s pro-choice student group, CUNY for Abortion Rights, the educators appear to have achieved their goal.
Note to self when commenting on education be extra carful to eliminate typos.
Who would read that Authentic Frontier gibberish and think, “Wow, we need to hire her to teach our students!”?
I am not sure. I was able to get through Ms. Gorman’s poem twice.
I could not get though this once without losing focus.
-Jut
Well, she is an adjunct art teacher, so there’s that . . .
I am kind of surprise CUNY doesn’t have a zero machete tolerance policy. Really. I am. After all, it is obviously foreseeable that an adjunct art professor would use one to chase a reporter out of her office. Check out her resume. It specifically states she reserves the right to chase reporters around with a machete if the mood fits.
jvb
PS: By the way, those babies are frickin’ sharp! I used one this weekend to chop so overgrown trees and with just two whacks I was severing thick branches and my left thumb. Dumb luck, that.
Jesus, John. Anglos don’t let Anglos use machetes. You can hurt yourself. Did you really cut your thumb? Badly?
Nah. Artistic (autistic?) license. It did slice through a three inch branch like butter, which was magnificently terrifying.
jvb
Whew. I remember as a twenty something using a chain saw while climbing around in a tree. Once I was back on the ground, I had a serious talk with myself along the lines of “What the fuck were you thinking, Bill?” John, hire a guy.
The Hunter pro-abortion group’s statement seems to reflect a logical fallacy rampant on the left. They seem to believe that because they’ve declared words are violence, therefore violence is words and therefore merely speech that needs to be free. Ta Dah! Something so stupid only an intellectual could believe it.
What happened to Brittney Cooper, Associate Professor at Rutgers University, that was spewing so much hate against white people and going as far as to push the ideal “we got to take these mother F**ers out”? My understanding Professor Cooper is still there. These are dangerous ideas being taught to our students, and the sad part is that a large majority of students are taking such actions toward anyone white. These are dangerous people teaching our children. The other sad part, the parents of these students seem to keep supporting the ideals to further these dangerous ideas
I’m going to my 50th college reunion in early June. They want me to give money to the college. I told them I would not use any of my money to support the college’s current project of destroying the nation and the economy that allowed my wife and me to acquire our net worth. Graduates who do are useful idiots. I just don’t see why anyone gives any money to their alma maters. Our dear mothers have turned into Hydras.
To paraphrase Crocodile Dundee: That’s not a machete…THIS is a machete.
Bequeathed to his 2nd son by my Dear late Father (a 2nd son, himself) who served as a USN Signalman.
It came in an exceedingly well made canvas Army Flag Kit sleeve, replete with caked dirt from Lord knows where; seems they used Signalmen back in the day as well.
She’s very fortunate that the reporter didn’t prove the adage about taking a knife to a gunfight.
My machete is a Vietnam-era US military model made by Ontario Knife Company. It resides in a sheath made by a friend from a tough-as-nails piece of fire hose. I have owned and used this machete since 1978, but never accosted anyone with it.
Will we soon be hearing the Left call for some commonsense laws to reduce machete violence?
Shellyn is fortunate the reporter wasn’t carrying because otherwise our fine unstable wokester may have been ventilated.
Clearly, the problem is there are too many machetes on the street. They need to be taken off the streets. And the machete manufacturers need to be sued into the ground. And the National Machete Association needs to be prevented from giving money to Republican Senators and representatives. These are weapons of mass destruction. They are military grade weapons. Only the military should be allowed to use them.
Doesn’t this Hunter College adjunct qualify as a domestic terrorist?
No. She’s s freedom fighter. No machetes, no peas. Know machetes, know peas. Tomato, potato.
jvb
All I am saying is give peas a chance….
Nicely done.
Nobody needs a machete. Machetes are weapons of war. Think of the children.
jvb
I was banned from a committee because I wouldn’t approve some of research proposala. I wanted to know what they were going to do. I was asked if I read the proposals, which I had. I told them that they were just a bunch of buzzwords and I had no idea what the proposals planned to do or why. When I was accused of just being to stupid to understand the proposals, I asked if anyone on the committee could tell me what the current proposal was supposed to do. No one could. I pointed this out and was thrown off the committee.
The peer review process in this country has been destroyed because of all the third-rate people who are afraid to stand up to this nonsense because they are afraid it ISN’T nonsense and they will be exposed as third-rate people. They arrogantly tell people they are stupid despite the fact that they, themselves, are the ones who don’t understand.
As to when has this happened before? This has been pretty common for at least 30 years. It doesn’t take much to find an incident where the leftist faculty have destroyed or physically ‘intervened’ when a conservative group tries to do something on campus. Remember the professor at Missou who called for ‘muscle’ to remove a student reporter? This has been perfectly acceptable to the left since at least the 1980’s.
What shocks me here isn’t that this person accosted pro-lifers and tried to destroy their display, because that’s been done a bunch of times and no one ever does anything about it unless it’s out on the public street. It also doesn’t shock me that this person then told a reporter to get lost. I’m not even that shocked that this person told the reporter to get lost at the point of a sharp blade, I’ve run a couple of trespassers off our property in Pennsylvania, but I was never armed with anything more dangerous than a quarterstaff. The real shock for me is that this person pursued the reporter and his cameraman into the street, threatening to chop them up.
Just for the record, I dislike reporters, and I usually won’t engage with them. I am also all for defending your home and curtilage from those who would intrude. However, that defense doesn’t extend to pursuing someone off your property with the intent of wreaking grave bodily harm on him or killing him. That’s a criminal act and you deserve to go to jail.
I’m surprised this woman was even looked at for hiring leave alone hired. She’s just an undistinguished, hyper-angry wokester thug. Yet the more surprising thing here is not that they hired her in the first place, but that they actually fired her after this incident, when they would have looked the other way if there hadn’t been incontrovertible video evidence staring them in the face.
As for the pro-abortion students lending her their unqualified support, are you really surprised? Clashes, sometimes violent ones, between student groups are nothing new and have just gotten worse, not better, as time has progressed. They are just a residual problem left over from 50 or 60 years ago when higher education stopped being about education and started being about tearing society apart. They used to send 18-year-olds to college in the hopes of transforming them into responsible adults and productive members of society. Now they send them to college to undo all of the wrong headed thinking that community and church and family may have taught and turn them into militiamen for the left. In 2 years, my niece is going to go off to college, and her parents are trying to persuade her to go somewhere nearby so she can live at home. This is partially so they can save on room and board, and partially so we the family can keep an eye on her and make sure she does not do something that she is going to regret for the rest of her life. I know that sounds controlling. However, I do not see why my brother and sister-in-law should have to see their hard-earned money squandered, leave alone worry that they are going to get phone calls that their daughter has been the victim of date rape, or arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct or DWI, or arrested during a violent protest that is really just an excuse for a riot. What is more, they shouldn’t blame themselves for slipping up in teaching their daughter right from wrong if something like that happens. I know damn well they have done their best to teach her right from wrong, and if she doesn’t get it at this point, that’s on her. Education is as much about learning what to say no to as what to do.
Truth.