Education

Stanford Goes Big Brother With A Newspeak List

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

That’s Isaac Asimov above, expressing his doubts that attempts at vocabulary restriction by totalitarians actually works.

I don’t think the ethical issue is whether efforts to “compress” language are successful. The issue is what the effort tells us about the people and institutions who make those efforts. The latest is Stanford University.

Stanford’s IT department released an list x of “harmful language” that it wants erased from the school’s websites, and, by extension, campus discourse.The list is an outgrowth of the “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative,” which aims to “eliminate” words that may be deemed “racist, violent, and biased.”

The IT department’s censorious document is a mess, a mixture of apples, oranges and passion fruit. Some of the words and phrases marked as unacceptable are rude and archaic. Others are completely innocent as well as useful, condemned because they might have been used somewhere, sometime, by someone in a derogatory context.

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Comment Of The Day: “Comment Of The Day: A Language Ethics Quiz: Regarding ‘Groomer’”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is complicated. Humble Talent’s Comment of The Day, in addition to being sparked by Mrs. Q’s comment, also responded to the comment on Mrs. Q’s Comment of the Day by dekerivers, whose quote begins Humble Talent’s post. All are relevant to the assertions about the term “groomer” made by RL Stroller, which are discussed here.

Got all that? Good…now, as my dad used to say in such situations, explain it to me.

***

“From my perspective as a gay man, teachers and school programs today are designed to foster a child to see themselves as who they are and allow for the expression of their individualism, which includes sexual orientation and identity.”

From my perspective as a gay man, if that actually all they were doing, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. Oh sure, there are legitimately Americans who still hate the fact that gay people exist, so *a* conversation would be going on, but it wouldn’t be this one.

And that, I think, basically encapsulates my disagreement with you: You ignore too much. you accept to much. You have done what so many people who identify with the acronym have done and taken in some awful people who have done shitty things and wrapped them up in the protection of inclusivity.

Just recently, during the Balenciaga SNAFU… There was a contingent of people saying that the moral panic du jour over pedophilia was an attack on LGBTQ people. Now, I believe that was a poorly designed shock campaign gone bad… But no one mentioned gay people. No one mentioned groomers. This is something the LGBTQ community took upon themselves, and I’m left standing at the outside of that, horrified at the implication. I don’t know how much lifting that + does for you, but it apparently does some heavy lifting elsewhere. I make it simple: Pedophiles don’t get to sit at my table. I don’t see an attack on pedophiles as an attack on me. I don’t know what exactly went on in Balenciaga’s office space, but it was fucking dumb, and no skin off my ass if they get called out.

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Comment Of The Day: “A Language Ethics Quiz: Regarding ‘Groomer’”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

And now an important word from Mrs. Q that I wish could be circulated and read far and wide, on the post, A Language Ethics Quiz: Regarding “Groomer.” (I’ve just got to find a way to get more readers here. I’m sorry, Mrs. Q. You deserve better.)

***

Gays Against Groomers is not a conservative group at all. The people in GAG are mostly gay or trans and stand against sexually inappropriate indoctrination of youth as well as against modifying the bodies of kids in the name of gender theory. This group has been denied services from several companies including payment processing and merchandise makers.

GAG’s crime, of course, isn’t that they’re “conservative” but that these renegade gays and trans citizens aren’t going along. In the world of progressivism, not knowing your place as a minority is even worse than being conservative. This is why people call GAG an “anti-gay transphobic hate group”— which of course makes no dang sense.

The Department of Justice has used the word Groomer for years. I read some of the DOJ’s reports on school grooming by teachers and other staff. This has been an unsaid issue for decades. The difference now is that the grooming is more diffuse in schools and done by woke staff who don’t see any issues down the road with exposing kids, including LGBT kids, to sex and gender identity concepts that are not age appropriate and that should be discussed with parents first.

Yes, this is grooming because such exposure seeks to eliminate innocence and circumvent parental moral teaching.

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Ethics Quiz: The Milking Class Gaffe

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The photo above was taken in a Plains state elementary school in the early 1950s, and depicts a cow-milking exercise. It is, obviously, one of those “Oops!” unfortunate—but funny!—shots that ended up in a local newspaper somewhere because nobody noticed the problem until it was too late.

A Facebook friend posted it on the social media platform for “a chuckle”, and it was clear that the reaction was…restrained.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is tougher than it may seem…

Is posting that photo unethical, as it will be legitimately offensive to some, or is it innocently funny, and only objectionable to the political correctness scolds?

I thought it was funny when I saw it. I also thought my friend would get a fair amount of flack. But the more I think about the factors involved, the more uncertain I am of the answer to the quiz question…

  • Is posting the photo in a public forum a Golden Rule breach? Obviously the photo embarrasses the teacher who, as my freind wrote, “probably wishes she had been standing for the photo.” My friend, however, was a professional performer, in a field where being able to laugh at moments that would humiliate normal people is essential.
  • Based on the period of the photo, it is certain that the teacher by now must be either dead or too old to care about an old newspaper clipping. Does that take the Golden Rule off the table.
  • It is more likely that the children shown might be embarrassed by the photo, or were when it was originally published. Does that matter? Was showing it more unethical then than now, when parents (unethically, even though “everybody does it”) post videos of their children in embarrassing (but funny!) situations constantly?
  • Some people thought  the photo was very funny, and appreciated seeing it. It brightened their day! Is that enough to make showing the picture ethical? What formula should we use to determine whether utilitarian analysis justifies an action where the benefits are tangible and the “harm” is ephemeral? If the photo brightened one viewer’s day, isn’t that enough?
  • One critic of the photo sniffed, “Photoshopped!” If so, and I note that there is always someone who will try to discredit any photo they object to as photoshopped whether it was or not, does it matter to the question at hand. If it’s funny, it’s funny. Or, since it is theoretically funnier if genuine, does being photoshopped change the utilitarian analysis? Should it?
  • Can showing the photo be justified as a social statement and attempt at a course correction, echoing the common lament that the culture is becoming humor adverse thanks to woke-poisoning, and it is a serious problem?

A Hammacher Schlemmer Exclusive: Historical Ignorance For Christmas!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The up-scale retailer Hammacher Schlemmer is battling it out with The Sharper Image in the high-priced Chritsmas gifts, toys food items and decorations market for people who literally have money to burn. I’m especially impressed with the golf ball-locating glasses, the Belgian Chocolate Hot Cocoa Bombs that “explode with flavor” in a cup of hot milk, at only $5 a bomb, and the “first marble run with a track that is suspended in mid-air for only $199.95. However, what caught the ethicist’s eye was the “Your Year to Remember” wall art, which commemorates a birthday or anniversary with coins minted in that year, plus bold graphics that list “major news events” along with pop culture and sports happenings.

For some strange reason, the catalogue designers chose 1968 as the year to display. You can’t make it out from the graphic above, but the major news events listed are…

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From EA’s “When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring” Files: The Stanford Marching Band’s Religious Mockery

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Nice.

At halftime in the Brigham Young University (BYU) and Stanford University’s (Stanford) football game in California, Stanford’s band devoted its halftime show to insulting the Mormon faith The skit was called “Gay Chicken,” and featured a mock wedding ceremony of two women,using the words of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints marriage ceremony that declares a man and woman united “for time and all eternity.” In the skit, the wedding   officiant quoted Genesis 1:28 and directed both women to “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.”

Gee, that sounds so hilarious I can’t imagine why the many Mormons in the crowd would feel attacked! They should have been laughing their heads off! Well, some people just have no sense of humor….

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“The Ethicist” Had A Long Answer To This Question. I Have A Short One…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the New York Time’s advice column ethicist who really is an ethicist, was atsked with this query from “Name Withheld”:

I am a Black woman and I signed up as a mentor for a law-student-mentoring program at my alma mater. I made a request for a Black mentee, but I was paired with a white woman. Now I’m second-guessing participating in the program. Black attorneys make up less than 5 percent of all attorneys and continue to face horrific experiences in law school and in the legal community.

This is whom I envisioned myself supporting when I registered for the program as a recent graduate. I imagined deep conversations about law professors and law-firm culture, and sharing how I’ve learned to navigate them as a Black woman. Not only will these conversations not apply to my mentee the same way, but I can’t help wondering if assisting them will ultimately contribute to my own oppression.

There are so many factors in her favor that I don’t really want to help give her even more of a leg up in my free time. On the other hand, I don’t have anything against her, and law school is universally scary during the first year. Should I be thinking about this differently? Is it wrong to bow out?

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Ethics Hero: Florida Catholic School Principal Tonya Peters, No Weenie She

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In a seventh grade English class at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic School in Port Charlotte, Florida, the teacher was presenting Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer,” using an uncensored version, which is to say, “Tom Sawyer.” The classic novel, like its larger, more ambitious cousin “Huckleberry Finn,” uses the now taboo “n-word” in a society today that should be too sophisticated and wise by now not to know that declaring words taboo is ethically and intellectually indefensible. One African-American community website’s news report on the incident states, “Anyone who has read an unedited version of those books know how racially insensitive they were.” Well:

  • Any one who has only read an “unedited”, meaning bowldlerized, version of “Tom Sawyer” hasn’t read “Tom Sawyer,” and
  • Great literature isn’t supposed to be “racially sensitive”; it’s supposed to be enlightening.
  • The issue of watering down language that some may find offensive in literature is well-considered in this essay.

As described in the letter above, when members of the class read the book out loud and the word “nigger” was uttered, the students began “acting up,” laughing, making comments, and generally acting like undisciplined 7th graders, which they were. When the teacher could not calm them down, she improvised a creative but risky solution: having the children repeat the word over and over again. The idea, obviously (though not sufficiently obvious for any of the media reports to figure out) was to rob the “taboo” word of power by repetition. It’s an old linguistic trick that kids should be familiar with (i know I was): when any word is repeated enough, it becomes just a sound, which is all any word is. (This device becomes the climax of the excellent horror film “Pontypool,” in which something causes the English language to become deadly, destroying everyone’s brains.) Continue reading →

‘HA! You Fell For The Trap, White Boy!’

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I almost made this an Ethics Quiz, but then decided that there is only one ethical answer.

Star high school quarterback Marcus Stokes posted a video of himself in a car singing a rap song that used the term “niggas.” Or maybe it was “niggers.” We can’t find out, you see, because our infantile, unethical news media will only write  that he said the “N-word,” and the video has been deleted. Journalism!

Stokes’ video caused the University of Florida to rescind its scholarship offer. Stokes is white; there is little question that if he were the right color, singing the song and posting it would not have raised any issues at all. But as Yahoo!’s Murjani Rawls observes, “Saying the N-word as a white person goes into another territory,” at least in the hypocritical, race-obsessed worlds of sports and academia. Continue reading →

I Just Signed An Open Letter. This is Why:

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Last week, professors, lecturers and academics across the country began signing the “Stanford Academic Freedom Declaration.” It is an open letter that calls on universities to restore free speech, academic freedom and institutional neutrality. The open letter asks universities and professors to adopt and implement the “Chicago Trifecta” — the Chicago Principles on unilateral free speech, the Kalven report that requires institutional neutrality on political and social topics, and the Shils report, making “academic contribution the sole basis for hiring and promotion.”  It is picking up metaphorical steam: several hundred new signatures have been entered since I first saw the document last night. One of them is mine: I qualify as a former adjunct professor of legal ethics.

Stanford economist and co-author John Cochrane is the first name on the list and presumably launched the letter. He told College Fix:

The larger hope is to bring back academic freedom on campus and in the academic enterprise more generally. Only with robust academic freedom, the ability to investigate ideas and bring out uncomfortable facts, does scholarship bring about new and reliable knowledge, especially on crucial issues to our society.

Who knows if this will have any impact or persuasive power? I am dubious about the use of such protest tools, but at least this one causes no harm even if it like the lonely tree falling in a forest. Trying to ensure that the letter has no effect is, of course, the mainstream media, which so far, at least, hasn’t deemed the effort newsworthy for a week. In the meantime, several news sources have devoted space to the fact that in China, a massive flock of sheep has been walking in a circle for 12 days straight. Priorities!

I’m grateful for the opportunity to do something proactive about this problem, which I view as an existential threat to American culture and society. Boycotting the recent class reunions of my college and law school was mandatory for me but also the equivalent of Grandpa Simpson shouting at clouds. My  Harvard reunion book essay explaining my position did attract a few kudos in the mail, all of which opined that there were many other class members who felt as I do but were afraid to make their views public.

Wow. Harvard apparently has graduated a lot of weenies. But I knew that.

I’ll be circulating the letter to my friends and associates who can sign it. It’s awfully open, which mean that if someone wanted to muck it up with fake names, gag names and other graffiti, they could. Right now, I’m the last name on the list, number 1,241. It will take about a hundred times that to make a ripple, I know.

It’s worth a shot.