Education

Ethics Quiz: “Professor Nalo”

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Nalo twwet

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day…

What’s the ethical way to deal with “Professor Nalo”?

(Or is there one?)

Stipulated: a grade school teacher’s sexual orientation, identity, habits and proclivities are not a proper topic for instruction or discussion with students. Prof. Nalo also raises the question of whether it is competent or responsible for a school to hire a screaming narcissist as a teacher at any level.

[Full disclosure: One of my favorite teachers growing up was, in fact, a screaming narcissist, though I didn’t realize it at the time. But boy, did she do a lot of damage to some of my classmates.]

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Pointer: The Daily Wire

A “Hard Cases Make Bad Law” Classic: The School Board President’s Kid’s Social Media “Hate Speech”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Cullman City

I’d make this an ethics quiz, but I think it’s too potentially important to treat as a jump ball. This is the kind of extreme mess that threatens free speech, especially when on entire political party is searching for an excuse to ban “hate speech,” once they have defined it just well enough to constrain political opponents.

In Cullman City, Alabama, the school board’s president’s son, who attends the school district’s high school, posted a video to SnapChat in which he could be seen and heard chanting “White power!” and “Kill all the niggers!” The video has been widely circulated among students. The parent of a black student who saw the video has demanded the resignation of Amy Carter (no, not THAT Amy Carter; don’t be silly), the school board’s president. The parent is also demanding that the school take action against the student. “Cullman City Schools would clearly punish our son if he made a video threatening the white students of Cullman High School,” she wrote in an email. “My son is one of a handful of black children in the school. Tell me how he wouldn’t be threatened by KILL ALL THE Ns?! Explain to me how this is not a threat.”

Well, I can answer that last part. Under First Amendment case law, the “true threats” doctrine holds that allegedly threatening speech cannot be punished unless the government can prove that the speaker meant to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual. A chant on a video posted on social media that mentions no specific student will not qualify as an actionable threat. Her previous question is tougher. The school and the town itself has a reputation for racial hostility toward blacks. The mother of the black student says her son has repeatedly been subjected to racist remarks during his four years as a student in the district. I see good reason for the video to be unsettling in that context.

On the other hand, I’m getting awfully tired of the “they wouldn’t treat a black adult/child this way if he/she did X” argument, which is almost never challenged even when it’s bigoted nonsense, as in the race-based attacks on the Rittenhouse verdict. It’s more presumed racism, and a cheat, a device to avoid making a solid argument.

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Monday Morning Ethics Warm-Up 1: Rittenhouse-Free Zone Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

JFK assassination

President Kennedy was assassinated on this date in 1963, easily my most vivid memory of any national event in my lifetime. I am not an admirer of Jack Kennedy as a President or a human being, but it is hard to imagine a more wrenching disruption of the nation’s course, spirit, fate and future than what occurred that day in Dallas.

We watched everything unfold for the rest of the week on our black and white TVs, from Walter Cronkite’s somber announcement that the President of the United States was dead, to the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, through to the D.C. funeral procession and John-John’s salute.

The day still represents traumafor me, and I am sure to many others of my generation: when Grace and I were planning our wedding in 1980 and November 22 was suggested as the most convenient date, I insisted on the 23rd instead. This is also the date that kicks off the dreaded holiday season, stuffed with milestones good and bad (I count seven between now and New Years), periods of anxiety, nostalgia and anticipation in between, and too much longing and memories of loss to bear.

I hate it.

1. Yes, it’s an unethical Christmas tree. In the town of Grimsby in North East Lincolnshire, the official Christmas tree has been taken down from the town center after a local uproar declaring the 10 foot, conical artificial tree a “national embarrassment.” It also cost a thousand pounds. The town’s explanation was, shall we say, confusing, with Councillor Callum Procter claiming,

There are great plans for celebrating the start of the Christmas period next week. Unfortunately, the Christmas Market tree was installed too early, and we understand that people were confused and thought this was our civic tree. The tree has been removed temporarily today and our contractors are reinstalling again, for free, ahead of the market next week. I’m looking forward to seeing people enjoying the illuminations, the market, and the revamped St James’ Square with the civic tree and the special lighting on the Minster as part of the Christmas experience.

Wait…the town is going to put the same tree back up, and everyone will like it because it won’t be “too early”? I am dubious. Here’s the tree:

bsd tree

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On Fairness To Kyle Rittenhouse

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

accept reject

There will be various ethics matters to consider in coming days regarding the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, but for now I am occupied with a hypothetical ethical dilemma.. Ready to board the Kyle Rittenhouse Ethics Train Wreck?

I heard a member of Rittenhouse’s family speaking about how Kyle could now get on with his life. He’s going to college, or intends to. Hmmmmm….

If you were involved in the admissions process of a relatively competitive college with a national reputation, would you favor admitting Kyle Rittenhouse? Let’s assume that he has good enough grades and test scores to be admitted to your school, but neither such outstanding credentials that he is a lock, nor a dearth of qualifications that would normally justify rejecting him even if he wasn’t a divisive and controversial figure.

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Ethics Dunce, Weenie Of The Month, And, To Be Blunt, An Incompetent Teacher: Lewis & Clark College Professor William Pritchard

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

grovel3

There is no excuse for this. It is simply abject cowardice and an abdication of duty.

Professor Pritchard was teaching his class about the use of blackface in theater and film, and showed a clip of Laurence Olivier iportraying the tragic hero in “Othello.” (Pritchard called Olivier’s facial covering “blackface,” apparently. I do not. It is called “make-up.”) Some students who are apparently fully-indoctrinated social justice warriors incapable of examining any issue from multiple perspectives—college is supposed to remedy that deficiency—were offended by the topic, and demanded that their instructor write “a well written apology, two pages in length or longer,” and that he read it aloud.

Seldom has “Bite me!” been more appropriate as a response in an academic setting. You might want to take a Dramamine before reading on.

Mentioning the Olivier film (which was discussed on Ethics Alarms here), the letter, composed by one student and signed by eleven others, states,

…After this was shown to us, our professor asked if Othello being played by a white man took away from the performance. Our answer was yes, because the actor was in blackface, an inherently racist performance from its origins. Blackface – and any other practice that alters one’s appearance, poise, and vernacular to the stereotype of a group of people, especially of race – dehumanizes the identity of marginalized people into a stereotype one can wear as a costume. Whitewashing (which includes blackface and yellowface) profits off a group’s oppression, but never has to experience the consequences of living that identity. Makeup can be washed off, but POC have to live with the violence that comes with being part of a marginalized group….[The professor] then facilitated an argument as to whether or not whitewashing was acceptable, and this made the students – especially students of color – very uncomfortable. When we said that Lawrence Olivier in blackface was not acceptable, our professor played devil’s advocate, and this made the students of color incredibly uncomfortable because it was shocking and felt aggressive that our professor was making room to excuse blackface …Some students were shaken for the rest of the day, and days to follow. Our professor asked us to compare two hypothetical actors – a Black man and a white man – both in the role of Othello. He asked, if the Black man had a poorer performance than the white man in this role, wouldn’t it be acceptable for the white man to play Othello? He was asking us if a white man could do a better job of playing a Black character than a Black man,”

For the record, the position here, as an ethicist, lawyer but mostly as a stage director with some reputation for being innovative, any race and any gender can play any role, and if he or she is the artist with the talents to ensure the best performance, in the sole judgment of the director, should. Going on…

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A Second Introduction To “Thoughts On What An Ethical Solution To The Abortion Ethics Conflict Might Look Like, Part 2: A Solution”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

ViewsOnAbortion_v02_KA_1637005673621_hpEmbed_1x1_608

I decided that it was finally time to complete and post Part 2, having promised it way back in September. The impetus is two polls on the subject released today and yesterday. But having read the polls, I feel like a second introduction to Part 2 is necessary. (The first introduction, posted a day after Part I, is here.)

The first introduction closed, “Absent something that causes a tipping point in public opinion on the same level of influence as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” [on the public’s perception of slavery] the approach to abortion I offer in Part 2 is, and will ever be, impossible.” The two polls purport to tell us what the public’s current perception of abortion is. At least, that’s how they are being presented in the news media, which, as we all know, is completely unbiased on this topic as well as others.

I’m joking. Most of the media is ignoring the second poll, by Marquette, which makes the Washington Post-ABC poll that is more positive toward abortion incoherent. The Marquette poll found that more of those polled favored a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy than opposed it. Survey respondents were asked if they would favor or oppose a ruling to “uphold a state law that (except in cases of medical emergencies or fetal abnormalities) bans abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.” This is a direct reference to to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which SCOTUS will hear oral argument regarding on December 1. The case turns on the constitutionally of a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after….. 15 weeks of pregnancy. Allowing the law would, if not overrule Roe v. Wade, significantly limit it. Yet 37% of those polled approved of a decision upholding such a law, while 32% opposed such a result. The remaining 30% said they didn’t know enough to make a decision.

In most polls on other topics, that group that pleads ignorance are apathetic slugs, but on this topic, maybe they are the wise ones. How many Americans really know what Dobbs is about, or even what Roe v. Wade really says? My guess is considerably less than 50%. Maybe less than 25%. 10%?

The Post-ABC poll that is being waved triumphantly in the public’s face is the one summarized in the diagram above (the data is here) and claims that large majorities of Americans “support maintaining Roe v. Wade, oppose states making it harder for abortion clinics to operate and see abortion primarily as a decision to be made by a woman and her doctor, not lawmakers.” How can that be the case if a majority also believes that woman and doctors should not be able to decide to abort an unborn baby after only 15 weeks?

It can’t.

What’s going on here?

Americans, except for small numbers of activists on both sides, haven’t thought carefully about the issues in abortion sufficiently to have an informed opinion about it. That’s what.

I would like to have the groups polled by Marquette and ABC/Washington Post pollsters asked if they have read Roe. What’s your guess: how many would say they have? 5%? Less? How many have thought about when a fetus should have the right to live? If they were shown a photo of a fetus at 8 months, would they support aborting it? Six months? Three?

Of those who say they support abortions in the case of rape or incest, and were asked why how a human is conceived should change its right to live, how many could answer intelligently? How many have thought about it? How many have the education and critical thinking skills to analyze the problem competently?

If you asked if a man who killed a woman who was three months pregnant should be prosecuted for killing one human being or two, what would the majority answer? If they answered “two” and then they were asked, “How can it be murder if an unborn child is killed by anyone else, but no crime if the killer is the mother?,” how many would mutter “Huminahumina”?

The vast, vast majority of Americans thinks about abortion so shallowly as to be ethically useless, simply following their peer groups, or joining one team of the other who band together under deliberately misleading labels: “pro-life,” which ignores on of the crucial interests in involved in abortion policy, and “pro-choice,” which ignores the other. Or they don’t think about abortion at all.

No political, legal or societal acceptable solution to the abortion ethics conflict is possible when the public remains this ignorant and apathetic. A condition precedent to any solution, therefore, is to bring about a dramatic shift in public consciousness and commitment—that tipping point I mentioned before. That’s what “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did: it forced people who had never thought seriously about slavery and what it meant to think, and once they did, they opposed it.

Polls are easily manipulated and generally do more harm than good, but these two, taken together, show us a way out. The public needs something or someone who will make its members think about abortion and its issues, honestly and without the spin, obfuscation, emotionalism and bullshit. If a metaphorical slap in the face could be found for slavery, one can be made for abortion.

So getting to that slap is the first part of any solution.

Got it.

Now I’m finally ready to finish Part 2…

Comment Of The Day: “PEN America’s Ignorant And Sinister Support For School Indoctrination”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Pen

I have a lot to say in response to Curmie’s excellent comment regarding the large writers association somehow deciding the the government threatens free speech by regulating itself. For once, however, I think I’ll take my issues up in a separate post, and perhaps in the comments.

Meanwhile, here is Curmie’s Comment of the Day on the post, “PEN America’s Ignorant And Sinister Support For School Indoctrination…”

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There Is Hope: They Stopped Complaining About The US’s Broken Higher Education System, And Did Something About It…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

U of Austin

A group of distinguished scholars, iconoclasts and activists, alarmed “by the illiberalism and censoriousness prevalent in America’s most prestigious universities,”will establish a new university dedicated to free speech.”

It will be called the University of Austin, or UATX. Next summer the project will begin modestly with “Forbidden Courses,” a noncredit program designed to offer a “spirited discussion about the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.” The next phase will be masters programs and if all goes well, undergraduate degrees will follow.

The campus, a real one, not a virtual campus, will be set in the Austin, Texas, area. The new university’s president is Pano Kanelos, the former president of St. John’s College in Annapolis. Several famous dissenters from the current culture of woke conformity and campus censorship that has poisoned the university experience in the U.S. led him to this point. Bari Weiss, the exiled Opinion editor for The New York Times; historian Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution; Heather Heying, an evolutionary biologist; Joe Lonsdale, a technology entrepreneur and co-founder of Palantir Technologies, the data analytics firm; Lawrence H. Summers, the former Harvard president; Steven Pinker, a Harvard linguist and psychologist; David Mamet, the playwright; and Glenn Loury, an economist at Brown are among those involved.

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Ethics Quiz: Indoctrination On Sesame Street

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Seseme St Covid

I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming.

Big Bird tweeted a few days ago, “I got the COVID-19 vaccine today! My wing is feeling a little sore, but it’ll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy. Ms. Hill even said I’ve been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea!” Naturally, President Biden, who watches Sesame Street religiously (yes, it’s a cheap shot, but I’m in a bad mood) tweeted back, “Good on ya, @BigBird. Getting vaccinated is the best way to keep your whole neighborhood safe.”

This set off an immediate partisan and ideological debate, with conservative hone-schooling mother, blogger and pundit Bethany Mandel taking a leadership role. She wrote in part,

Just as “Sesame Street” isn’t content with allowing parents the freedom to guide their children’s own moral compass, so too are they uncomfortable with the idea of parents making individual risk assessments for their children’s health and safety. There is a moral absolutism necessary to be part of the left, which is where “Sesame Street’s” writers appear to fall. The messaging on COVID-19 vaccination has become yet another absolutist position. Big Bird’s tweet doesn’t exist just on Twitter. It’s part of a larger campaign from the series to “educate” parents on the vaccine.

Earlier this year, she wrote about the iconic children’s educational show shifting from ABCs and vocabulary into the culture wars:

Those in charge of messaging and programming children’s media have positioned themselves as arbiters of our children’s moral compass. And that Soviet-style demand for a universal, well-curated set of beliefs from a particular coastal lens should concern all parents — not just those with religious or personal beliefs that make them uncomfortable with a particular episode of “Sesame Street” aired during Pride Month.

Parents should take note: The aim of children’s media is no longer just to provide free, education-minded babysitting while you get ready for work.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

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No, Parental And Conservative Complaints About Teaching Critical Race Theory In The Schools Are Not “Dog Whistles”And Based In Racism [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Here is a supercut of the spin the left-biased media and its commentators were putting on the Republican victory in Virginia, where Loudoun County was Graund Zero for parent-school board battles over the teaching of “critical race theory, or CRT:

CRT is a generalization, allowing progressives who desperately want to have our rising generations indoctrinated into the useful (well, to them) construct that the United States was founded on racism, that its institutions and laws are poisoned by racist beliefs and intentions, that whites are all complicit in a perpetual effort to obstruct the progress and rights of black citizens, and that blacks have been and are perpetual victims requiring permanent and ongoing remedial benefits, standards and advantages. This is being dishonestly called ‘teaching history,” when it is not. It is, instead, teaching a narrow, activist-centered interpretation of history that is no more “factual” than Marxist theory, libertarianism, or Islam. It is also, by its very nature, not anti-racism, but anti-white and anti-American.

Like so many other public debates over culture and policy, the progressive trick that worked so well during the Obama administration has been re-loaded, aimed and fired at criticism of the CRT push. All criticism of black politicians and leaders was (and still is) declared “racist.” It worked, too. Criticism of Barack Obama and others was muted, as potential critics shrank from being stigmatized. Opposing policies that were proposed by black activists or existing policies, like affirmative action, on rational and legitimate grounds also risked being called racist. Oppose the removal of a Thomas Jefferson statue? That’s racist. Point out that Black Lives Matter is an anti-white, anti-police, Marxist con? You believe black lives don’t matter! Racist!

This has been so effective that it was only natural that the same strategy would be employed to make parents wary of opposing public school lessons that were designed to make all children detest their own nation, while encouraging black children to abandon the concept of personal accountability for the acceptance of group grievance and permanent government stewardship. Whites are expected to regard themselves as unjust beneficiaries of a racist society, requiring them to be permanently penitent and submissive. Teaching “white privilege” is based in critical race theory, though it is not technically part of the theory. So is arguing for the elimination of certain laws, like shoplifting, refusing to incarcerate “non-violent” criminals, “defunding the police,” “reparations,” airbrushing away the nation’s honors to its Founders, and so much more.

On his excelled newsletter on substack, Ethics Alarms commenter Humble Talent does a superb job explaining the rhetorical and conceptual slight of hand underway, as he writes in part,

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