Category: authoritarian leftists

Leaders of Women’s March get pushback for osculating anti-Semite and homophobe Louis Farrakhan

March 11, 2018 • 9:30 am

As I’ve mentioned before, three of the leaders of the Women’s March—Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, and Carmen Perez—have sucked up to the vicious anti-Semite and homophobe Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, otherwise known as the Black Muslims. On February 28, Mallory attended a speech Farrakhan gave, and the link above shows some of his of ravings about the Jews at that meeting. These were courtesy of CNN anchor Jake Tapper, one of the few mainstream journalists to call attention to this.

Still, Minister Farrakhan continues with his anti-Semitism, as he has for decades. Here’s a recent tweet:

And yet, after years of spewing such garbage, Farrakhan has the temerity to ask this question! (He’s serious; this isn’t ironic.)

Given that most of the Left-wing media simply won’t report on the connection between the Women’s March and Farrakhan—a connection that shouldn’t exist if Sarsour, Perez, and Mallory are true intersectionalists—you’ll have to read about some of this at the National Review. (Bari Weiss also discussed it at the New York Times, which of course further demonized her in the eyes of the Left).

The NR reports Mallory’s usual gushing over Farrakhan, e.g.:

But also, to defend herself against anti-Semitism after her presence at Farrkhan’s ranting (and her refusal to criticize it), she quoted Mysonne, a New York rapper:

Unfortunately, Mysonne adheres to the anti-Semitic views of Farrakhan, whose name he can’t seem to spell:

Finally, Mysonne uses the old canard, “Some of my best friends are Jews.” I wonder what he’d think of someone who was racist but said, “Some of my best friends are black”?

Mallory damaged herself further by asserting that Farrakhan had credibility as a leader because the Jews hate him!:

Realizing that she screwed up, Mallory tried to walk that statement back the next day. But who were “the enemies of Jesus” but the Jews? Or was Mallory calling out Romans?

Jack Tapper wasn’t fooled:

Let us remember again that both Mallory and Perez posed with Farrkhan, showering him with encomiums (“GOAT” means “greatest of all time”); note that Sarsour chimes in in the third Instagram post with good wishes and blessings for Farrakhan: 

Perez and Mallory:

Sarsour, Perez, and Mallory all give encomiums:

Finally, after enough criticism had accumulated, the Women’s March issued a disclaimer, saying that “Minister Farrakhan’s statements about Jewish, queer, and trans people are not aligned with the Women’s March Unity Principles”, but also asserting that “we love and value our sister and co-President Tamika Mallory” and that both the March and Mallory do not “shy away from the fact that intersectional movement building is difficult and often painful.”  Well, Mallory doesn’t look like she’s in pain when she’s cozying up to Farrakhan!

Too little and too late. Now Planned Parenthood has disassociated itself from Mallory.

Even the Left-leaning Toronto Star is calling out the Women’s March co-Presidents for anti-Semitism (click on screenshot to see article:

An excerpt:

In a sense, this is the left-wing equivalent of Donald Trump condemning anti-Semitism while winking at anti-Semites.

It’s infuriating because Mallory and Sarsour are activists who would argue in any other circumstance that intersectionality demands the condemnation of all forms of bigotry — and that big-tent feminism does not tolerate intolerance.

But it’s clear that when the wronged party in question is Jewish and the wrongdoer is a gentile leader of colour, the opposite is true. Suddenly intersectional feminism demands (as many members of the alt right do) that all perspectives deserve a fair shake, even odious ones. We must tolerate intolerance in the name of togetherness!

This is hypocritical BS at its stinkiest. But it confirms what I’ve suspected for a long time now.

Jews are unwelcome on the feminist left.

But others, including the prestigious Mt. Holyoke College (one of the few all-women schools left in America), will be having all three—Perez, Sarsour, and Mallory—speaking at its 2018 Women of Color Trailblazers Leadership Conference in April. That would be a good time for them to publicly rebuke Louis Farrkhan for his anti-Semitism. For make no mistake about it: Farrakhan is the black equivalent to any white racist like Richard Spencer.  I can’t imagine Mt. Holyoke inviting three speakers who had cozied up to and extolled Richard Spencer, but of course it’s okay to invite speakers who make nice with Jew-haters. This is the hypocrisy of intersectionalism.

As the Washington Examiner reports:

Erika Croxton, vice president of development for Planned Parenthood Northwest and Hawaii, sent an email informing supporters of the abortion provider that Mallory would no longer be the keynote speaker for the annual Seattle luncheon on April 5.

In the email, Croxton said Planned Parenthood rejects all bigotry of those whose intentions are to “undo the progress of the last half century.”

After declaring the nonprofit’s support for the Women’s March, Coxton said the group has decided to “part ways with Tamika Mallory.”

Well, I’m not a big fan of deplatforming, but, in line with what Authoritatarian Leftists do, I’ll issue a set of DEMANDS:

I DEMAND that Perez, Sarsour, and Mallory personally condemn anti-Semitism and disassociate themselves from the anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan.

I DEMAND that if these women don’t do that, they be replaced as leaders of the Women’s March

I DEMAND that Women refuse to participate in future Women’s Marches unless their leaders explicitly repudiate Farrakhan’s anti-gay and anti-Semitic views, and cut their ties to him. Women who march are otherwise endorsing anti-Semitism.

I DEMAND that Sarsour, Perez, and Sarsour be given mandatory sensitivity training, with special emphasis on the oppression of gays and Jews

In fact, it’s a sign of the times that the Women’s March chose as leaders three women who have either overtly or covertly expressed anti-Semitic views. Although Jews should be pretty high on the oppression scale based on their historical treatment and their status as the main American target of hate crimes, I’ve realized that historical treatment does not overcome the fact that Jews have largely been successful in their vocations, and so can be seen as oppressors rather than the oppressed. But, of course, Asians have also been successful, yet they still get to claim oppression in America.

It’s all a big mess, and one of the problems with identity politics. Exactly who has been oppressed, what is their ranking, and are there individuals among the oppressed (e.g., Ben Carson) who are rejected by Intersectionalists despite their status as people of color? As for the Jews, well, they’ll have to rely on themselves and people like Jake Tapper and Bari Weiss to push back against anti-Semitic bigotry.

h/t: Diana MacPherson

Leisure fascism: Vegan says that a carnivore can’t eat tofu because it’s “cultural appropriation”

January 15, 2018 • 4:00 pm

Well, yes, this is from The Sun, but it does give names and I suspect it’s true (it’s reported at multiple places, including msn) .  Click on the screenshot for the LOLs:

The relevant bit of their exchange (in case you didn’t know, “tofurkey” is a turkey substitute made out of tofu, intended for consumption at Thanksgiving):


How well the termites have dined—or have not dined! I’m crying and shaking now. I can’t even. . .

Read the original article for more fun, including to see how the carnivorous tofu-eater was temporarily banned from her Facebook group.

h/t: Cindy

Surprise! Pinker smeared again by those who distort his words

January 10, 2018 • 11:30 am

There is no end of the kind of cherry-picking people will go to if they want to smear New Atheists. This post gives a prime example, with the target being Steve Pinker. (It’s always either Pinker, Sam Harris, or Richard Dawkins.)

On November 6, Spiked Magazine held one of its “Unsafe Space” events at Harvard, called “Is political correctness why Trump won?”

Here’s the event description, the participants, and, below that, an 8-minute clip of Pinker giving his take on the issue.

The shock election of Donald Trump has sent many looking for answers. Why didn’t his outlandish statements, his ‘locker-room talk’ and his out-there views sink his candidacy in the way it would have sunk others? While many have chalked his win up to racism, xenophobia and misogyny – others suggest it was a revolt precisely against those who so casually throw around those labels. In short, the election was a referendum on political correctness, a choice between the immaculately focus-grouped Clinton and the from-the-hip Trump. Did PC culture get Trump elected? Will his presidency serve as an antidote to offence culture? Or is the thin-skinned Trump, who rankles at any criticism, just a different kind of ‘snowflake’?

SPEAKERS:

Wendy Kaminer is a lawyer and social critic. She has written about law, liberty and feminism for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of eight books, including Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today.

Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He has written for the New York Times, Time and The Atlantic, and is the author of 10 books, including The Better Angels of Our Nature. His forthcoming book, Enlightenment Now, will be published in February 2018. @sapinker

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked and a regular columnist for Reason and the Spectator. He has also written for the LA Times, the Telegraph, the Australian, and more. This year, he was named best online columnist at the Maggie Awards. He is the author, most recently, of A Duty to Offend.

Robby Soave is associate editor at Reason and a columnist for the Daily Beast. He has also written for the New York Times, New York Post, CNN,USA Today, and more. He is currently on sabbatical, writing a book on activism in the age of Trump.@robbysoave

Watch the first 8-minute video below (ignore the title, which is part of the smear), in which Pinker describes several “politically incorrect” assertions that, while true, may have driven people to the Right because those truths are denied or censored by the Authoritarian Left. These issues, which Pinker says are raised largely by the “often highly literate, highly intelligent people who gravitate to the alt-right”, are those that appear in the conservative press but not in the Left-wing press. I’ve often mentioned how the political missteps of the Authoritarian Left are often ignored by the Leftist or mainstream media but highlighted by right-wing sites like The Daily Wire, Campus Reform, or The College Fix.

Here are the claims that Pinker says are true but unpalatable to many on the Left:

  1. Capitalist societies are better than Communist ones.
  2. Men and women are not identical in their life priorities, in their sexuality, in their tastes and interests. The Harvard person Pinker describes as having been excoriated for suggesting such a thing is ex-president Larry Summers (see here).  Note though, that Summers’s statement was about “intrinsic aptitude”, not interests, and Pinker doesn’t mention aptitude. Nevertheless, it’s likely that men and women differ in some average “aptitudes”. At any rate, any differences in aptitude are irrelevant to the moral claim that everyone should have equality of opportunity and be treated as equal under the law, which is Pinker’s point (see below).
  3. Different ethnic groups commit violent crimes at different rates.
  4. The overwhelming majority of terrorist suicide acts are committed by Islamist extremist groups.

But here’s the important part. After reciting these Leftist taboos, Pinker, at 3:49, begins to explain how these that these facts do not license unequal treatment of women or ethnic groups—that opposition to racism and sexism is a political and moral commitment and does not rest on any observed differences between groups. This is a point I’ve made often: moral and political equality should not depend on observed group differences, be they be cultural or genetic. For if you rest your claim for moral equality on spurious claims that all groups are equal in every way, you make your moral claims vulnerable to future empirical observation of differences.

Pinker adds that the bulk of domestic terrorism (i.e., in the US) is committed by right-wing and not Islamist groups, and that every successful capitalist society has “socialistic” social safety nets.

At 6:28, he finally explains why if you’ve never heard these facts—i.e., if they’ve been “censored” because they’re considered politically incorrect—you’ll first feel that universities and mainstream media have withheld the truth from you, and that those venues simply can’t handle the truth. More important, you’ll suffer from not having had the facts put into context. That is, you won’t have heard the progressive argument that, “Yes, these may be true, but here are the reasons why these truths don’t constitute a defense of the right, the alt-right or of any bigotry.” As he says, “The politically correct left is doing itself an enormous disservice when it renders certain topics undiscussable, because then people don’t get the proper context in which they can fit into progressivism.”

In toto, then, Pinker’s statement is liberal and progressivist, and its tenor is that true progressives must deal with empirical truths rather than censor or dismiss them. If they don’t do so—and they often don’t—this just enables the alt-right or the right in general. This is Pinker’s answer to why “political correctness” may have contributed to Trump’s election. (I don’t know if he addressed that explicitly).

Now what have people done with this clearly progressive spiel? They’ve taken it out of context to make Pinker appear to be conservative or even alt-right!  The most odious: the Nazi publication The Daily Stormer ran this piece (click on screenshot to see it):

Then right-winger Alex Witoslawski posted a 55-second excerpt just using Pinker’s opening. It makes Pinker look like an alt-righter, for it omits his important take on why we have to absorb the truths into Progressivism without altering our moral commitments:

https://twitter.com/alexwitoslawski/status/950608890852454400

Finally, P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula has posted a 3-minute clip of Pinker’s words, totally omitting Pinker’s important conclusions and just taking issue with the four facts adduced at the beginning. That excerpt is below. Myers links to the whole clip later on in his post, but I believe he added that link later (I may be wrong). At any rate, the title of Myers’s post is “If you ever doubted that Pinker’s sympathies lie with the alt-Right.” I can’t believe that anyone could watch the full eight-minute clip and come to that conclusion. Pinker’s sympathies clearly do not lie with the alt-right, as is palpably evident from his conclusion.  He’s a classical liberal and progressive. He just doesn’t gloss over truths inconvenient to the Authoritarian Left, which is why people go after him. But inconvenient truths are not the same thing as truths that must create bigotry. It’s time that Authoritarian Leftists like Myers took this on board.

Here’s the truncated clip shown on Pharyngula:

One example of how Myers distorts Pinker’s words, and why I think he heard the full clip only later, is what P. Z. wrote on Pharyngula about capitalism vs. communism:

  • Capitalist societies are better than communist ones. How odd. I don’t see anyone insisting on that: instead, I see a lot of academics who point out the flaws in capitalism, which, apparently, are lies and don’t exist. Then he makes it worse by using as more specific examples the difference between North and South Korea (I’ve never met anyone who thinks North Korea is a better place to live than South Korea.) or between East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall. You will rarely encounter a more pure and absolutely dishonest straw man.How about if the comparison is between, say, a ragingly capitalist country like the USA, and a socialist democracy like Sweden? It gets a bit less obvious.

But, as you see above, Pinker actually makes this point at 5:50 of the full video!

Nevertheless, Myers, like many others, ignores the inconvenient last half of the video, so determined is he to smear Pinker. This is from Myers’s public Facebook page,  touting his post and adding a few pungent (and false) words:

But one issue remains: Who are the “highly literate, highly intelligent” people who gravitate to the alt-right, as Pinker describes them? I know of none—at least not if you characterize the alt-right as those Rightists who are infused with white supremacy. I haven’t asked Pinker who he meant here, but I assume that, since the definition of “alt-right” is a bit nebulous, Pinker is using the conception of “alt-right” that I used to have: the extreme right. Under that notion, there are smart and literate people on the extreme right. I can’t think of many, because I don’t know many hyperconservatives, but Ben Shapiro comes to mind.

Since most people think “alt-right” means “white supremacists on the right”, Pinker may have made a tactical error here. But so what? The main point of his spiel is that there are facts about the world that are being censored or dismissed by the Authoritarian Left and many colleges; that those facts and their denial, if not properly put into context, could lead people toward the right or even the alt-right; and that progressives have to face those facts and show the world how they don’t erode progressive liberalism one bit. To concentrate on one awkward statement about the “alt right” is to deliberately ignore Pinker’s message in order to smear him. It’s no surprise that the clips used to tar him cut off after three minutes.

Here’s another take on Twitter:

 

UPDATE: Grania called my attention to a new article at Concrete Milkshake that analyzes misrepresentation of both Pinker’s and Sam Harris’s views, including the Harvard video: “Playing dumb: The masochism of misrepresentation.”

And there’s a new short piece by Pinker in Time Magazine: “Harvard professor Steven Pinker on why we refuse to see the bright side, even though we should.” It’s his explanation about why people remain pessimistic in a world of progress. (h/t: Enrico)

Zinnia Jones: The dangers of Regressivism

December 8, 2017 • 11:00 am

Zinnia Jones is a transgender woman who nominally posts at The Orbit, a series of blogs that were once part of Freethought Blogs but separated from that site for reasons that were never explicit. I rarely read her site, and rarely look at The Orbit itself because postings at the 22 constituent blogs are rare; in fact, Zinnia’s last post was December 2 of last year, and here are the dates of the last posts from some other people whose sites I’d sometimes read when they were at Freethought Blogs:

Dana Hunter: May 18, 2017
Alex Gabriel: January 3, 2017
Aoife O’Riordan: January 22, 2017
Greta Christina: December 6 of this year, but last post before that was on September 27, 2017
Ashley Miller: May 3, 2016
Heina Dadabhoy: December 31, 2016
Jason Thibeault: September 17, 2016

Of the remaining 15 sites, eleven haven’t had a post since October of this year. It’s clear that The Orbit is dying a slow death, and probably for the same reason that the Atheism Plus site went under: off-putting authoritarianism and, in the case of Atheism Plus, horrible internecine squabbles over completely trivial matters.

Zinnia Jones, however, seems to be on Twitter almost constantly (I don’t look at many people’s accounts, but just checked), and one of her tweets from this year demonstrates in a nutshell the reason why The Orbit has put so many people off. It’s from July, and seems to have been removed, but was saved (nothing disappears for good on the Internet):

The tweet:

But of course it’s clear that ISIS in Syria and Iraq does indeed throw gay people off of buildings to their deaths. Here’s a CNN video documenting it (some of the images might be disturbing). You can find videos rather than still pictures elsewhere on the Internet, but I’ll let you suss them out yourself.

Why did Jones say that these are “suicide photos”? It’s clear: she’s trying to defend Islam from the charge of homophobia, a regular pasttime of Regressive Leftists. But the accusation won’t stand, and Ngo attributes it to “intersectionality”:

The principle of intersectionality—that people can be oppressed on the basis of several different characteristics (e.g., ethnicity and religion)—is not problematic, but what it’s done is foster each group’s defense of all the others. So, for example—as in this case—Muslims, who occupy one “axis”, must be defended by a transgender woman against any of the religion’s own oppressions. In the end, intersectionality seems to poison everything, as every “oppressed” group becomes immune to all charges of racism or bigotry, which become solely the purview of heterosexual white men. And what that does is erode basic principles of liberalism.

Let me assure you that Zinnia Jones wouldn’t last a day under ISIS, or, as a blogger, in several Middle Eastern countries.

h/t: Grania

The Cultural Revolution hits a Canadian university: grad student teacher bullied for promoting free discussion in her class

November 22, 2017 • 9:30 am

Wilfred Laurier University is a public university in Waterloo, Ontario, and has just become the target of international opprobrium after its persecution of a graduate teaching assistant became public this week. The teaching assistant, 22 year old Lindsay Shepherd, is now one of my heroes for standing up for the principles of free speech and pushing back against the bullying of her professors and the University who want Suppressed Speech.  Here she is:

Lindsay Shepherd. Photo by David Bebee

What happened? Well, as reported by several sources, including the Globe and Mail, Shepherd, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in cultural analysis and social theory, was teaching a tutorial on language to first year students when the subject of personal pronouns arose. As you may have heard, this year Canada passed a federal law that added “gender identity and gender expression” to the Canadian Human Rights Act (“Bill C-16″).  It’s not completely clear whether this law criminalizes those who refuse to use a person’s chosen pronoun—”him”, “her”, “zir”, “it”, “they”, and so on—but the paper reports that this seems likely, at least in one province:

 The Ontario Human Rights Commission states clearly on its website that refusing to refer to a person by their preferred name and pronoun “will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education.”

I think it’s a matter of civility to use whatever pronoun a student wants.  But should one be forced to do that? Isn’t that a violation of freedom of speech? Well, repeated refusal to use a preferred pronoun seems to me to be harassment, and that shouldn’t be tolerated. Others may differ, and at any rate this matter is not an open and shut case.

The most famous opponent of the forced use of preferred pronouns is Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. As I’ve said before, he’s all over the Internet, but I haven’t had time to examine his views carefully; and what I have seen suggests that he’s both very smart and somewhat unhinged. Be that as it may, he engaged in a debate about pronoun usage and transgender people on Steve Paikin’s  “The Agenda” show last October.  Here’s the 54-minute video in which Peterson debates other people, including another professor from UT, Nicholas Matte from the Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. You needn’t watch the whole show (I did soon after it aired), but if you have time I’d recommend it:

Shepherd apparently showed her students a three-minute clip from this show, featuring Peterson vs. Matte, to demonstrate the controversy about pronoun use. She herself claims that she’s on Matte’s side, but wanted to inspire discussion in her class. That seems fair enough.

But several students (who, of course, remained anonymous) complained to the University, and Shepherd was called in for a private shaming and criticism session by faculty and University officials. Fortunately, she was savvy enough to record the whole 43-minute interrogation on her computer rather than taking notes. You can find the full recording and some of the transcript at The National Post, but below is a 10-minute excerpt that gives an idea of what was going on. Shepherd’s interrogators/shamers were her own supervisor, professor Nathan Rambukkana; another professor, Herbert Pimlott; and Adria Joel, Laurer University’s manager of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support. Do listen to this ten minutes. Here’s a brief summary from the G&M:

During the interrogation, Ms. Shepherd is told repeatedly that she is guilty of spreading transphobia – in violation of the university’s policy and also, most likely, of Ontario’s human-rights code. At one point her supervisor, Nathan Rambukkana, compares her actions to endorsing white supremacy. “This is like neutrally playing a speech by Hitler,” he tells her.

What did Ms. Shepherd do? She played a three-minute video clip from a TV program that had been broadcast on TVO. It featured a debate over transgender pronouns. The role of Hitler was played by Jordan Peterson, the notorious University of Toronto professor who has thrown the entire academic world into conniption fits with his alleged hate thoughts. Among other things, Prof. Peterson argues that Ontario’s human-rights code could compel people to use non-gendered artificial pronouns – a position that Ms. Shepherd’s superiors at WLU evidently share. [JAC: Shepherd apparently agrees with them, too!]

Ms. Shepherd attempted to explain that she doesn’t even agree with Prof. Peterson. She simply used the clip to help frame a class discussion – an explanation that her interrogators ignored. When she asked which students had complained and how many, she was told that information was confidential. When she pointed out that the pronoun controversy has already been widely aired in public, she was told that some ideas are too “problematic” to be introduced into the classroom. When she voiced her opinion that universities should be places for debate, she was told that she’s created a toxic environment for students. When she said she had remained neutral and not tried to impose her own views, her supervisor, Prof. Rambukkana, told her, “That’s kind of part of the problem.”

You can hear this below.What a bunch of sanctimonious twits and bullies those three interrogators are! I’m so proud of Shepherd for standing up for herself in the face of these head-thumpers, even though she was brought to tears several times.

Here are the two professors who went after her:

Wilfrid Laurier University professors Nathan Rambukkana, left, and Herbert Pimlott, right. From National Post.

And here’s Adria Joel:

Now had Shepherd not recorded this session, and then decided to release it to the news, she undoubtedly would have been sanctioned, or even removed from teaching that class. But her interrogation was so nasty, so insensitive, so oblivious to the purposes of free discussion in a college education, that its release proved completely embarrassing for the university. There was a public uproar, and President and Vice-Chancellor Deborah MacLatchy was forced to issue a public apology to Shepherd. Fine, but the apology was hedged, for it includes this (my emphasis):

Through the media, we have now had the opportunity to hear the full recording of the meeting that took place at Wilfrid Laurier University.

After listening to this recording, an apology is in order. The conversation I heard does not reflect the values and practices to which Laurier aspires. I am sorry it occurred in the way that it did and I regret the impact it had on Lindsay Shepherd. I will convey my apology to her directly. Professor Rambukkana has also chosen to apologize to Lindsay Shepherd about the way the meeting was conducted.

I remain troubled by the way faculty, staff and students involved in this situation have been targeted with extreme vitriol. Supports are in place at the university to support them through this situation.

She’s troubled not just by how Shepherd was treated, but by the way “the faculty, staff, and students involved in this situation” were “targeted with extreme vitriol”. Well, they should have been! So long as they were criticized for their sniveling cowardice and snowflake-ness, as well for bullying Shepherd, and not threatened personally, vitriol is the appropriate response. What MacLatchy is trying to do is apologize to everybody so she doesn’t have to take a stand. Her cowardice is also reflected in what she’s doing to “fix” the situation:

The university has engaged an independent party to assess the facts of the matter including a review of related processes going forward. The review is intended to support improvement in our processes. The university is committed to ensuring that the vitally important role of Teaching Assistant supports an enriched learning environment for all students.

Let me be clear by stating that Laurier is committed to the abiding principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

Yeah, right! They surely weren’t espousing those principles in the meeting with Shepherd. MacLatchy has also convened a “task force” to “delve into these issues.” Seriously? Why can’t she just adopt the University of Chicago’s free speech principles and be done with it?

Professor Rambukkana has also issued an apology to Shepherd, and it’s more or less the craven, insincere document you’d expect. All of a sudden he’s backed off hectoring of his own student and has completely rethought his principles—in only a few days. What really happened is that he’s simply embarrassed at being the butt of public anger.

I suppose all this has ended well, though I’m not keen on President MacLatchy’s blanket apology to everyone. What we see here, though, is what happens all the time in American and Canadian universities; we simply don’t know about it because it isn’t recorded. This is what happens in Title IX inquiries, where accusations and accusers remain anonymous and those accused aren’t allowed to confront the accusers or even have a lawyer. While the U.S. is succumbing to a lunatic, right-wing President, our universities are succumbing to a Regressive Leftism that gives lip service to free speech but suppresses it when such speech becomes ideologically inconvenient.

I’ll give the last word to Ms. Shepherd, and I wish her well. We have here a brave young woman who stands up for her principles under enormous pressure, and I hope she achieves great things. She seems to know more about what education is about than either of the bullying professors or the University President herself.

h/t: Merilee, Diana

Internal emails at Evergreen State reveal climate of racial hostility

September 22, 2017 • 1:00 pm

An article by Jillian Kay Meolchior in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “Inside the madness at Evergreen State” (behind a paywall, but I thank a kind reader for sending me the text), reveals that, contrary to the college’s claims, The Evergreen State College (TESC) had a toxic atmosphere of authoritarianism, so that accusations of racism were leveled on the thinnest of evidence—or no evidence at all.

The problems at TESC came to light when biology professor Bret Weinstein refused to leave campus last spring during the “Day of Departure”, as he was white and considered a demand to leave as an oppressive act. As you’ll know if you read this site, Weinstein had a history of anti-racist activism, so he was hardly someone to demonize. Yet demonized he was, to the point that he and Heather Heying, another biology professor and Weinstein’s spouse, were called racists, hounded, threatened, and eventually forced to leave the town of Olympia, Washington, for their own safety. Weinstein and Heather just settled with TESC for $500,000—only two years’ salary for the pair—and resigned from the college yesterday.

Meolchior managed to get hundreds of pages of internal TESC correspondence through the state’s public records act, and says this:

 The emails show that some students and faculty were quick to levy accusations of racism with neither evidence nor consideration of the reputational harm they could cause. The emails also reveal Mr. Weinstein and Ms. Heying were not the only ones concerned about a hostile and dangerous campus.

I’ve already commented about how dysfunctional and regressive TESC is, so I’ll put some of Ms. Meolchior’s findings in bullet points for the record—to make them available to those misguided souls who think that everything’s hunky dory at TESC. The bullet points are direct quotes from the WSJ piece. The bolding, though, is mine:

  • Consider a February exchange, in which Mr. Weinstein — a progressive who is skeptical of identity politics — faulted what he called Evergreen administrators’ “reckless, top-down reorganization around new structures and principles.” Within minutes, a student named Mike Penhallegon fired back an email denouncing Mr. Weinstein and his “racist colleagues.”

  • Another student, Steve Coffman, responded by asking for proof of racism within the science faculty. Mr. Coffman cited Christopher Hitchens’s variation of Occam’s razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” Jacqueline McClenny, an office assistant for the First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services — a campus office that helped organize the Day of Absence — observed that because Hitchens’s razor is an “Englishman’s popularization of a Latin proverb,” it “would seem to itself be the product of at least two traditionally hierarchical, imperialist societies with an interest in disposing of inconvenient questions.”

That’s how insane people are acting there.

  • Media professor Naima Lowe [JAC: one of the big instigators of student unrest] urged one of Mr. Weinstein’s defenders to read about how calls for civility are “often used to silence and/or dismiss concerns about racism.” She also said that the “white people making changes in their white supremacist attitudes and behaviors” were those “who do not immediately balk and become defensive,” instead acknowledging that “white supremacy is literally ingrained in everything.” In other words, merely defending oneself against the accusation of “white supremacy” is evidence of guilt.

  • After a mob occupied the library, the college’s facilities engineer, Richard Davis, wrote in an email that he believed “the students are testing how much lawlessness will be tolerated,” and “they have not found a boundary yet.” He described how two students stalked him and screamed at him, adding that he was disturbed by the lack of police. “Many of us are stating that as long as the students are not violent, their behavior is acceptable,” Mr. Davis continued. “Apparently, violence in this context is bloodshed.” (Mr. Davis retired in June.)

  • The protests were “loud and at times intimidating,” wrote John Hurley, Evergreen’s vice president for finance and administration. “Unfortunately some members of our community were stopped as they tried to leave campus and that was scary and others felt barricaded in their office.”

JAC: I suspect that in the “new” version of TESC, the role of the campus police will be minimized. Most of the humanities students hate them anyway, and they weren’t called out by President George “Invertebrate” Bridges to quell disturbances. It’ll be a tough job to be a campus cop at TESC!

Finally, there’s this:

  • Nancy Koppelman, an American studies and humanities professor, described being “followed by white students who yelled and cursed at me, accused me of not caring about black and brown bodies, and claimed that if I did care I would follow their orders.” Ms. Koppelman, who is 5-foot-1 [JAC: she appears to be white], said the students towered over her, and “the only thing they would accept was my obedience.” She reported that the encounter so unnerved her that she was left physically shaking.   Ms. Koppelman wrote that she was worried about “features of the current protest strategy that violate the social contract, and possibly the law.” Tolerating such tactics, she argued, “may create a working environment which is too hostile for some of us to continue our employment at the college.” Her email concluded: “I have not decided whether or how to share these thoughts more widely. If I do, I will very likely be tagged as ‘a racist’ by some of my colleagues and the students they teach.”

Clearly the students now think they’re running the place, and now that they’ve had their Pyrrhic victory by driving two great teachers away from the school, they’re going to feel more empowered. I can’t even imagine teaching there, much less being a student who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid. It’s a sad day when people like Professor Koppelman can’t even write about being intimidated by students without fear of being called a racist.

A postmodern academic signals her virtue: Why Pilates is white and racist

July 11, 2016 • 9:00 am

Last March I wrote about a dreadful paper on feminist glaciology, whose intent was to bring a feminist viewpoint to the study of glaciers. It failed to do that, but succeeded in signaling the virtue of the authors, all from the University of Oregon. Moreover, the authors’ work was supported by the National Science Foundation—yes, American tax dollars at work—although I doubt the authors proposed this “research” in their grant.  Later on, Mark Carey, one of the authors and a dean at his University, defended the paper, arguing that the pushback against the paper, and there was a lot, was evidence of its value! Of course the paper sank into the stratum of worthless research, having made no contribution to human understanding of anything.

At first I thought the glacier paper was a Sokal-like hoax, but it wasn’t. And neither is this 2014 paper by Sarah W. Holmes in Dance Research Journal (reference and free download below): “The Pilates pelvis: Racial implications of the immobile hips.” Although it doesn’t appear to contain an abstract, there is one published at 3rd Solution, apparently by the author. Here it is:

This article examines the treatment of the pelvis in the Pilates exercises “Single Leg Stretch” and “Leg Circles.” The teaching practices of the hips, as commonly explained in Pilates educational manuals, reinforce behaviors of a noble-class and racially “white” aesthetic. Central to this article is the troubling notion of white racial superiority and, specifically, the colonizing, prejudicial, and denigrating mentality found in the superiority of whiteness and its embodied behaviors. Using the two Pilates exercises, I illuminate how perceived kinesthetic understandings of race in the body may be normalized and privileged. By examining the intersections between dance and Pilates history, this article reveals the ways embodied discourses in Pilates are “white” in nature, and situates Pilates as a product of historically constructed social behaviors of dominant Anglo-European culture.

The author proceeds to demonstrate that Pilates is “the embodiment of whiteness,” using just the two Pilates exercises named in the abstract. These exercises, she claims, “purposely train the body to stabilize the pelvis”, which she considers racist. I have no idea whether other Pilates exercises share the features of these two (immobilzation of the butt, hips, and pelvis, which, to Holmes, instantiates a denigration of black culture), so if you’ve done Pilates, weigh in below.

I am not making this stuff up, and will give an ample selection of quotes to prove it. Remember, the author got a Ph.D. from the University of California at Riverside for this. (That, of course, is also the academic home of Resa Aslan.) To wit:

The stillness of the pelvis, and the racial implications surrounding its lack of movement, are just as important in understanding the embodiment of racial stereotypes. I therefore illustrate how Pilates deliberately trains the pelvis into stillness by examining the movements, teaching practice, and rhetoric surrounding the pelvis in two exercises: “Single-Leg Stretch” and “Leg Circles with Loops” (Leg Circles). These exercises train the body in a deliberate and specific way, and teach the pelvis to conceal, restrict, and control movements that perpetuate behaviors normalized as “white.”

. . . I argue that Pilates works to distance the behaviors of the “white body” from racially marginalized bodies. Through the act of restricting the movement of the hips, Pilates racially marks the body as white and creates, through the universalized and normalized aspect of it, an invisible racialized kinesthetic knowledge, or in this case, the performance of the superiority of whiteness.

We’ve read about how cornrows are cultural appropriation, and that General Tso’s chicken, when cooked wrongly (even though it’s not a Chinese dish) marginalizes Asians, but this may be the most ludicrous claim of all. It’s as if Holmes were desperately trawling the dance literature, searching for something she could consider racist and then turn into a Ph.D.

It goes on:

As I will demonstrate, the movements of the hips/butt/pelvis have been traditionally and problematically stereotyped as racialized behaviors of the “Other.” I propose the un-accentuated pelvis, commonly associated with “white,” or Anglo-American or Anglo-European aesthetics, marks Pilates in a racially specific way.

. . . The embodiment of whiteness has represented both perceived and realized moral and social capital and power (Dyer 1997; Wheeler 2000). Ruth Frankenberg states, “Whiteness refers to a set of loca- tions that are historically, socially, politically, and culturally produced and, moreover, are intrinsic- ally linked to unfolding relations of domination” (1993). I suggest, quite literally, the location of domination is kinesthetically represented in the movement of the pelvis. The embodiment of white- ness and its social privilege and power are inextricably linked. Whiteness, and the power that has come to be associated with it, is rooted in colonization, religion, and the body (Dyer 1997; Gottschild 1998).

And in fact the author demonstrates this oppression in photographs. Look at that privilege! I can’t even. . .

Screen Shot 2016-07-11 at 7.57.05 AM

Note that Dr. Holmes is white, which means this paper is an exercise in virtue signaling. Here’s another example of her actually participating in that bigoted immobilization:

Screen Shot 2016-07-11 at 8.30.57 AM

Of course if Holmes wants to maintain that the immobility of the hip area is white, she has to show that the movement of those areas is somehow characteristic of black culture. So she says this:

If pelvic movement, and its description, are lacking or absent from Europeanist aesthetics, then what does its movement infer? Racial and ethnic studies scholars have recovered negative racial stereotypes surrounding the movement of the African and Latino hips. As Gottschild states, the pelvis acts as a site where the “dominant culture projects its collective fantasies” (1998, 9). The Europeanist categorization of the Africanist dancing body’s movement is “vulgar, comic, uncontrolled, undisciplined, and most of all, promiscuous” (Gottschild 1998, 9). The Europeanist aesthetic denigrates movements of the hips, which implies that the converse, stable or stationary hips, is preferable.

Perhaps there’s a wee grain of truth here, but only if it’s the case that African and Latino dancing exaggerates hip movement more than do dances of other cultures.  But even if that’s the case, it doesn’t show that such movements are denigrated by European culture (viz., Shakira’s “Hips don’t lie“, which was wildly popular in the U.S.), nor that Pilates is somehow racist. And she fails to consider tap dancing, largely an innovation of black dancers, which pretty much immobilizes much of the body above the legs.

You can read this piffle for yourself, but let me add one paragraph in which Holmes admits that the Pilates manuals don’t really tell you to keep that pelvis immobile, but it’s implied:

Neither Peak Pilates nor Polestar Pilates gives specific instructions on the actual physical placement of the pelvis in this exercise in their descriptions. From my training experience, the implied position of the pelvis is generally thought to be in either a “neutral pelvis” or a posterior pelvic tilt, meaning that, lying supine, the pelvis tips towards the person’s navel. This action works to elongate the lumbar curve, and is accomplished by “scooping” or “drawing in” the abdominals. Polestar Pilates states that the body should be in the supine position in this exercise, but does not indicate the position of the pelvis (2002d). Similarly, with the exception of “sacrum on the mat,” Peak Pilates recommends to “lie on your back . . . and keep your lower back on the Mat” (2009). While description of the pelvis is absent from these scenarios (although it is inferred [sic]), both manuals maintain that control and stability of the pelvis is important to perform it “correctly.” If the embodiment of whiteness, and rhetoric surrounding the behavior of whiteness, denies or negates movement of the pelvis, and instead accentuates the verticality of the spine, then the Pilates exercise of “Single Leg Stretch” fosters this behavior. Further, this exercise promotes a racialized configuration of the body through its aesthetic values, anatomical principles, and pedagogical practice. Yet, all the while, it invisibilizes its preference toward whiteness by never mentioning race and privileging scientific discourse.

This is what we experts call a “stretch”: a cooked-up claim that demonstrates confirmation bias. I could give you more quotes but don’t want to ruin your morning. Just let it be known that this kind of “cry wolf” exercise, looking everywhere for signs of racism, dilutes the valid claims of oppression made by others.

And, to get the bad taste out of your brain, enjoy this video by Shakira and Wyclef Jean:

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Holmes, S. W. 2014. The Pilates pelvis: Racial implications of the immbole hips. Dance Research Journal 46:57-72.