Yes, that’s a real wedding invitation that has “gone viral” on social media.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Education
Update: The Rutgers Grammar Letter. What’s Going On Here?
Yesterday, I wrote about Rebecca Walkowitz, the English Department chair at Rutgers University, sending an email to the Rutgers community titled “Department actions in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.” In order to “contribute to the eradication of systemic inequities facing black, indigenous, and people of color,” she announced, the English Department will begin “incorporating ‘critical grammar’ into our pedagogy.” “Critical grammar” pedagogy “challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage,” her email states. “Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them w/ regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”
This, I concluded, was one more example of the solution to “systemic racism” being rammed down our metaphorical throats by the World’s Woke consisting of removing any standards that any segment of black America found the lest bit inconvenient or challenging—you know, like competing for jobs, SAT scores and having to obey lawful directives from police officers. I wasn’t the only one, though the report on this initiative came from the College Fix, a conservative site that reports on the leftist nonsense in our institutions of higher learning. There has been literally nothing about this episode in the mainstream news media. The New York Post—but that’s a Murdoch publication, so thus presumptively eeeevil—did have a brief editorial note about the matter:
“….Rebecca Walkowitz, vowed to incorporate “ ‘critical grammar’ into our pedagogy,” which will challenge “the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues,” so as not to put students with poor “academic” English backgrounds “at a disadvantage.” Another goal: “decolonizing the Writing Center.” How does lowering standards serve justice? Executive dean Peter March and spokeswoman Dory Devlin didn’t respond to request[s] for comment.”
Two esteemed Ethics Alarms readers, however, argued that I, as well as the College Fix and others, got her intent backwards. Heeere’s commenter Here’s Johnny (emphasis mine):
[I]n saying “Critical grammar pedagogy challenges the familiar dogma”, they are doing the right thing. The familiar dogma being challenged is that proper grammar is not important. That dogma came into play to cut some slack to students whose grammar was not perfect, for cultural, or native language, or other reasons. In challenging that dogma, Rutgers is saying that the phrasing of a message must be looked at critically. It may be that slang, or cultural ways of speaking are appropriate, or it may be that standard grammar is necessary. Students must know the difference and use what is right for the message and the audience.
“The Great Stupid” Rampages On: Rutgers Decides That Allowing Bad English Will Help Cure Systemic Racism.
You know, when I was being sued for defamation by He Who Must Not be Named, the plaintiff told the Massachusetts judge in our hearing that (I’m paraphrasing here, just in case he’s lurking and wants to sue me again) Ethics Alarms was an insane, far-right blog with robotic followers who would march into the sea if I so instructed. This was right before he went on a rant that I was sure would end with him taking out two small metal balls and start rolling them in his hand. This is not a far-right blog, and calling it such is like calling someone who opposes Black Lives Matter a racist. I can’t help it if almost all the ethical breaches are emanating from progressives lately, but it should not require a conservative orientation to condemn them for what they are.
A case in point: The Rutgers University English Department recently announced a list of “anti-racist” directives and initiatives, including an pledge to de-emphasize correct grammar. Rebecca Walkowitz, the English Department chair at Rutgers University, sent the email on “Juneteenth” —she’s so woke!“—titled “Department actions in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.”
[I shouldn’t have to point this out, but I will pause to do so anyway: no department of any institution should develop policies in “solidarity” with any organization or movement. That is not their job or function.]
In order to “contribute to the eradication of systemic inequities facing black, indigenous, and people of color,” among other steps, she wrote, the English Department will begin “incorporating ‘critical grammar’ into our pedagogy.”
“Critical grammar” pedagogy “challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage,” her email states. “Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them w/ regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”
They have no “choices.” They have to learn to communicate clearly, or they will not succeed. Continue reading
Tales Of The Great Stupid, Niggardly Principles Chapter
I am most grateful—I think—to Ethics Bob Stone for bringing this story to my attention. It gives me hope, it really does, that we are quickly arriving at the point where the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck will be revealed to all as being driven and enabled by people so silly and stupid, that there will be an ear-splitting slapping sound across the land, as Americans of sense and perspective bring their palms to their foreheads in the humbling realization that they have been taking seriously the blathering of fools and ignoramuses.
And with a ripple of embarrassed laughter, the suddenly enlightened will immediately begin going about life as they once did, devoid of self-flagellating guilt for believing in a land and a system where people are, or should be, judged by their talents, enterprise, accomplishments and the content of their character, and not, whether black, Black, white or other hues and shades, the color of their skin, their ancestors, or what their ancestors did or didn’t do. Thereafter this period of unrestrained hate and statue-toppling, the cancel culture, fear, groveling, virtue-signaling and grandstanding will come to be known as “The Great Stupid,” and we will collectively wonder, as with the Dutch Tulip Mania of the 17th Century and Disco, how the Hell something so mad could have happened, and for so long. Continue reading
Ethics Catch-Up, 7/23/2020: Waiting For Baseball Edition [Corrected]
This moment in “Field of Dreams” was how I started off my baseball and culture presentation this week. Ironically, the speech has always irritated me, because of its stagey blocking, and because it is a speech that sounds like a speech, and is essentially right out of the book the film was based on. In the novel, “Shoeless Joe,”,the “Terrence Mann” character played by James Earl Jones was real life (and then, still living) recluse author J.D. Salinger. I dislike the speech, but the scene always moves me, for a personal reason.
As Terrance Mann stands, giving his speech, the ghostly players of the past silently assemble behind him in Ray Kinsella’s (Kevin Costner, of course) magic corn field. One of the players behind him has been identified in the film as Smokey Joe Wood, a 30 game winner with the World Champion 1912 Boston Red Sox. Just a few years before the film was made, I had been in the Fenway Park grandstands as Smoky Joe, feeble, in his mid-nineties and in a wheel chair shortly before his death, barely threw out—more like dropped—the first pitch at a Red Sox Old Timer’s game, to a standing ovation. And here he was, in that corn field, but young and vital again.
Gets me every time….
1. Ethics query: is it ethical to perform “Piggies”? I just caught an old concert clip in which George Harrison and Eric Clapton performed the obnoxious pseudo-Marxist ditty “Piggies” (from the White Album) to thunderous applause.
[Notice of correction: I originally wrote that “Piggies” was a Lennon composition. All these years I assumed it was, heavy-handed and juvenile politics that it was. I am stunned that the song was George Harrison’s doing; I thought better of him.]
This was well after the Manson murders: I had never heard anyone perform the song in decades. Admittedly, it is just moral luck that a madman seized upon the White Album Beatles songs as his inspiration to mastermind the slaughters of Sharon Tate, her unborn child, and her house guests, as well as supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary the following night. However, “Piggies” was the one song referenced directly in both murders. It is not inconceivable that if the White Album had omitted that song—no great loss, either–at least the LaBianca murders might not have taken place. I know I can’t hear the song without picturing carnage, and it seems to me singing the song is like a celebration of Manson’s work. I wouldn’t ban it; I don’t believe in banning anything. I just think it’s bad taste to play it or perform it.
Is that inconsistent with my objection to “canceling” “Dixie,” “My Mammy,” “Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “Oh Susanna!” and other songs that are redolent of the Old South? I would argue that those songs have the virtue of being great tunes and important cultural touchpoints…in other words, works of musical art that justify themselves. “Piggies,” in contrast, is musical junk, like about 20% of the White Album filler. Continue reading
More Speech Suppression And Intimidation On The Campus: The Juniata Affair
The “Concerned Juniatian” was a student named Colin Daly. This was the very end of a much longer screed (You can read the whole, very long letter here) that the Juniatia College student sent to his campus community anonymously. Juniata is a small Pennsylvania liberal arts college affiliated with the Church of the Brethren, a Christian denomination. It is also apparently devoid of respect for such values as free speech, individuality, and dissent.
Daly, a senior, wrote the email without including his name but accidentally “left identifying information on the system he used to distribute his post to all of Juniata’s email accounts,” according to PennLive.
Before it identified Daly as the author, the college’s President James Troha wrote in a statement that the email contained “slurs, hateful language, and intimations of violence directed at members of our community on the basis of their identity.” There is no threat of any kind in the letter, and the “slurs” are words referred to as slurs, not used as slurs. Here’s the section of the letter I assume Troha is referring to:
I’d like to see Daly sue Troha for libel; I think he’d have a strong case.
The next day, after it was determined that Daly was the author, the college released a new statement. claiming that “law enforcement agencies are continuing their own investigations of the matter,” and suggesting that the letter’s author student may have broken state and federal laws.
That’s some education students at Juniata are getting. Continue reading
Colleges Have Become An Existential Threat To Free Speech, Thought, And Democracy. They Have To Be Opposed And Reformed [CORRECTED]
From the cover of Ben Shapiro’s book. Of course, most campuses won’t allow Shapiro to speak there, and explain how students are being brainwashed…
And that will take determination, character, and guts.
Two horrifying stories from our campuses illustrate the urgency of concerted, relentless opposition. Warning: the second is even worse than the first:
1.University of Connecticut
The president and vice president of the University of Connecticut’s Undergraduate Student Government rejected the will of the students who voted them them into their positions four months ago, and announced that they were resigning. The reason, they said, was that it was inherently racist for white people to lead. Of course, it is racist by definition to claim that one race or another is more qualified to do anything, but this is the apparent quality of a UConn education on display.
VP Alex Ose , according to The Daily Campus, quit while citing “the climate and incidents of racial injustice across the country and at the university,” and added,
I feel that it is my duty to step down from my position to make space for BIPOC (black, indigineous and people of color) voices to truly rise and be heard. It is my responsibility to make space, not to create an echo.
Fascinating. The fact that she is so devoid of critical thinking skills as to state something like this publicly is, ironically, a good reason for her to resign, but wanting to “make space” for “black, indigineous and people of color”—she misspelled indigenous—regardless of their qualifications, intelligence, judgment ability and experience is not.
As noted here earlier, this is the emerging “answer” to Question 13 (“What is the “systemic reform regarding race in America” that the George Floyd protests purport to be seeking?“): installing a color-based system that excludes merit, and designating whites as a subordinate class. UConn has apparently done an excellent job indoctrinating white students into accepting that second-class status. Go Huskies!
President Joshua Crow’s explanation for his resignation was slightly less idiotic, but still entirely based on race rather than any rational distinction. He said, “It is important in this time to ensure that marginalized groups have the platforms they need.”
Whatever that means. Need to do what? President of the student government isn’t a platform, it’s a job. What does “ensure” mean? Apparently it means ignoring the votes of students, and deciding what is “needed” by edict. If white people are marginalizing themselves, does that still make marginalizing unethical?
To be fair, college students have the excuse that they are young, inexperienced, prone to being influenced by emotion and peer pressure, and, as this nauseating display of virtue-signaling shows, badly educated. College administrators and faculty, however, have no such excuse, which is why the next account is even worse. Continue reading
Ethics Observations On The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Retreat
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) endured only a day of searing criticism before it removed its racist chart on “whiteness” from its website. The site replaced the graphic, which Ethics Alarms reproduced here and here and never wants to see again, with this statement:
At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, we believe that any productive conversation on race must start with honesty, respect for others, and an openness to ideas and information that provide new perspectives. In that context, we recently unveiled “Talking About Race,” an online portal providing research, studies, and other academic materials from the fields of history, education, psychology, and human development.Our goal in doing so was to contribute to a discussion on this vitally important subject that millions of Americans are grappling with. Since yesterday, certain content in the “Talking About Race” portal has been the subject of questions that we have taken seriously. We have listened to public sentiment and have removed a chart that does not contribute to the productive discussion we had intended. The site’s intent and purpose are to foster and cultivate conversations that are respectful and constructive and provide increased understanding. As an educational institution, we value meaningful dialogue and believe that we are stronger when we can pause, listen, and reflect—even when it challenges us to reconsider our approach. We hope that this portal will be an ever-evolving place that will continue to grow, develop, and ensure that we listen to one another in a spirit of civility and common cause.
Observations: Continue reading
My Georgetown Diploma Joins My Harvard Diploma In Facing The Wall In Shame
Georgetown has apparently programmed its victims of a liberal education to not only believe in the suppression of free speech and dissent from the majority, but to engage in it. Nice.
By the way, Georgetown, the backs of Harvard’s diplomas are much more attractive than the backs of yours.
Georgetown University junior Billy Torgerson received a formal condemnation from the Georgetown University Student Association as well as a call for the college to investigate him for “bias” based on a column, “A Nation Of Virtuous Individuals,” that he authored and posted on his own website.
That’s all you need to know, really. It is none of the Student Association’s business what a Georgetown student posts online on his own forum. The principle articulated in the recent Supreme Court case B.L v. Mahanoy Area School District holds even if the action of a student group doesn’t strictly constitute what the opinion prohibits. This is chilling free speech.
Torgerson’s primary “crime” seems to be that he opposes another recent SCOTUS ruling, Bostock v. Clayton County, which extended protections under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to transgender individuals. I think he’s wrong, but Torgerson’s position is similar to that of the three dissenting judges and many conservative analysts. And it doesn’t matter if he’s wrong. He has every right to state his opinion without being punished. Continue reading
Has The Freakout Reached Peak Insanity Yet? Based On the Following, Evidently Not…
What’s going on here?
Robin Broshi a member of the NYC Community Education Council, told a colleague during a meeting: “It hurts people when they see a white man bouncing a brown baby on their lap!”
He responds, “I would like to know how having my friend’s nephew on my lap was racist.”
She replies: “Read a book! Read ‘White Fragility’!”
Imagine: this is a woman who has input into the education of New York City children.
Well, one utter lunatic is still less problematical than this: the United Teachers Los Angeles, a 35,000 member union in the Los Angeles Unified School District issued a policy paper that called called on local authorities to “keep school campuses closed when the semester begins on August 18, and outlined provisions it says will be necessary to reopen schools again, including sequestering students in small groups throughout the school day, providing students with masks and other forms of protective equipment, and re-designing school layouts in order to facilitate “social distancing.”
Okay. Teachers have legitimate input in these decisions. However, the union has other demands. Continue reading
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