Brandeis University

Small Victories: Relentless Ridicule Beats Back Ludicrous Wokeness At Brandeis

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There is hope!

Brandeis University in Massachusetts published one of those “Oppressive Language” lists, telling students that phrases and words like “ladies and gentlemen,” “policeman,” “picnic,” “people of color,” “rule of thumb” (don’t ask me!) were offensive to somebody, and should be avoided. Also “Take a stab at it,” “trigger warning,” and “beating a dead horse” (Too violent!), and “African-American,” “long time no see,” “lending a deaf ear,” and “handicapped space”.”” (Identity based!) Other examples include “Homeless person, “powwow,” “picnic,” “freshman,”and “mentally ill.”Once the list was publicized, the mockery sent Brandeis’s way was relentless, as well as deserved, even though the taboo list eventually had a disclaimer that the web page “is not a university expectation, requirement or reflection of policy.”

That didn’t help. Making the university look especially silly as well as hypocritical was Campus Reform’s report in June 2021 that Brandeis was still using many of the phrases and terms on the BadSpeak list. “Freshman” and “picnic,” for example, were still turning up in articles, blogs, and department materials. The Brandeis University Teacher Education Program Handbook also used the term “rule of thumb!”

Campus Reform reported last week that Brandeis quietly took down the list.

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/29/2021…Down The Rabbit Hole! An Unethical Ghost, A Stupid Newsreader, And A White-Hating Dean Walk Into A Bar….

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Rabbit

Ghost Ethics! I just watched an Amanda Seyfried Netflix movie called “Things Heard And Seen,” which I recommend neither seeing nor hearing. What I got out of it—spoiler alert, if indeed a crummy movie can be spoiled—is that ghost ethics are a little bit “problematic” as Prof. Turley would say. The spooks don’t quite get the “Fix the problem before it’s too late” obligation. In this movie, the benign ghost of a murdered woman who had been the original owner of an old house bought by an ambitious, sociopathic college professor takes the professor’s victimized wife under her spectral wing, knows that the husband is up to no good, but only does anything proactive to get rid of the husband after the monster has killed F. Murray Abraham (who still looks like Salieri!), run a woman who was on to him off the road, putting her in a coma, and finally chopped up lovely Amanda, who plays the wife, with an ax. THEN the ghost drags the husband to Hell, which we know the ghost knew was going to be his fate before Amanda got the Lizzy Borden treatment.

Talk about locking the barn door after the horse is gone…

1. Isn’t it good to know that news readers all over the world are just as ignorant and incompetent as ours are? Bill Shakespeare, the first man to get a pandemic vaccine, died last week of non-virus causes. A Spanish newscaster, Noelia Novillo, as photos of the Bard’s namesake flashed on the screen, announced the story this way:

‘We’ve got news that has stunned all of us given the greatness of this man. We’re talking about William Shakespeare and his death. We’ll let you know how and why it happened.As we all know, he’s one of the most important writers in the English language – for me the master. Here he is. He was the first man to get the coronavirus vaccine. He’s died in England at the age of 81.”

No word yet regarding whether the station fired this ignoramus. Why bother? She’ll just get a job at CNN…

2. Speaking of locking barn doors…actually more like locking the cellar door after the horse has escaped from the barn…Southwest Airlines announced yesterday that it will not resume alcohol service in June as previously announced, because a woman attacked a flight attendant on a recent Southwest flight in an incident that had nothing to do with alcohol consumption.

Ethics Alarms is so fond of the practice of punishing innocent members of the public for the isolated conduct of a single wrong-doer (Should I call it “The Chauvin Solution”?) and this is even worse. There is no nexus between the incident and Southwest’s response at all, except the unproven theory that if passengers have become unusually cranky during the pandemic (with Southwest insisting that passengers re-mask between sips of Coke), they’ll be even crankier once they’ve had a few little bottles.

Continue reading →

KABOOM! Brandeis Cancels A Play About Political Correctness Because Students And Faculty Protested That It Wasn’t Politically Correct

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I do want to thank Curmie, our esteemed drop-in commenter who is a drama teacher and chronicler of ethics outrages from the world of education, for ambushing me with this head-exploding story from Brandeis University. And my head had been doing so well.

Playwright Michael Weller had received a Creative Arts Award from Brandeis, and when he wrote a  a play, “Buyer Beware,” that satirized the political climate on U.S. campuses the University scheduled it to make its premiere there. The satire concerns a student who discovers the works of  iconic 50s era comedian Lenny Bruce, and attempts to stage a  production in the spirit of the taboo-challenging comic. The production offends  students affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the Brandeis-like university, which worries that the controversy will offend a crucial donor. The script, channeling Bruce (think George Carlin but more abrasive, and not as funny) called for a white character to use “nigger” in several instances. The play quotes Bruce’s famous manifesto against strictures against mere words: “Imagine if we just kept saying these words over and over again, sooner or later they’d become meaningless noise.”

Without reading the script, it appears, so many students protested that Brandeis administrators, proving that their spines and principles were noodle-flexible, capitulated and cancelled the production, when the statements of the protesters should have made it obvious that such a play was desperately needed. For example, Andrew Childs is an Undergraduate Department Representative for the Theater Arts Department and a member of the season’s play selection committee, told the student newspaper,

“The issue we all have with it is that [Weller] is an older, straight…, able-bodied and white man. [ Wait! Isn’t it okay to be white?] It isn’t his place to be stirring the pot.”

What are they teaching at Brandeis? Only certain genders and races can “stir the pot”? Continue reading →