Bret Weinstein prepares to sue Evergreen State for $3.8 million

July 26, 2017 • 10:00 am

Until early this morning, the only place this item appeared was the right-wing site Campus Reform, but I sincerely doubt that this is a hoax because I have other information substantiating it, and because they produce documents. [Also, several sites now substantiate the story, including The Washington Times.] And those documents (some are below) show that Bret Weinstein, the Evergreen State College biology professor who refused to leave campus on the Day of Departure, and then was demonized by faculty and students alike, is filing a lawsuit against his college for $3.8 million. Joining him in the suit is his wife Heather Heying, also a biology professor who was subject to abuse (see all my posts on the subject here.)

What has been filed is a “tort claim form,” announcing an impending suit and demanding that the College preserve documents that might be relevant to that suit. In the state of Washington, such forms must be filed 60 days before any suit is initiated.

The form asserts that Evergreen State College created “a racially hostile and retaliatory work environment,” and adds that “Through a series of decisions made at the highest levels, including to officially support a day of racial segregation, the College has refused to protect its employees from repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence.”

Here are the two pages reproduced by Campus Reform:

 

I’ve reported a lot more about this, including about a professor who posted with approbation a student document claiming that Weinstein was a white supremacist (he’s a secular Jew). The suit certainly has merit, especially when you consider that the college’s invertebrate President, George Bridges, ordered the campus police to “stand down” during the student riots and that those police said they couldn’t do anything to protect Weinstein and Heying, suggesting that they leave campus (they not only did that, but left town).

It’s pretty clear now that the careers of Weinstein and Heying at Evergreen State are done, much as they loved teaching there. (They both had very high teaching ratings.) The College’s failure to protect them and prevent them from both faculty and student hostility has cost them their jobs and perhaps their future livelihood as teachers.

I absolutely support this lawsuit, and wish it had been for even more money. I hope, in fact, that it bankrupts that intellectually flawed college (it won’t), or at least leads to the firing of Bridges and substantial reforms. This will send a message to all colleges who let Authoritarian Leftism get out of control to the extent that it creates a hostile workplace—something that, of course, violates the law.

Now let’s see if the New York Times reports this. This is, after all, important news by any account, as it bears on the intellectual climate of American colleges and universities.

School named after Lynch family to be renamed because of racial connotations

July 26, 2017 • 9:00 am

Let’s start off today with a short news item from OregonLive. A Portland-area school named after the family who donated the school’s land (as well as two other schools with the family’s name) will be renamed because that name, “Lynch”, has racial connotations:

The national movement to change racially offensive names of buildings, sports teams and landmarks will soon touch a group of schools in southeast Portland. Lynch Meadows, Lynch Wood and Lynch View elementary schools will shed their “Lynch” before the upcoming school year in response to growing concern about the word’s racial connotations.

The schools, part of the Centennial School District, were named for the Lynch family, which donated land over a century ago to build the first of the schools. But Centennial Superintendent Paul Coakley says many newer families coming into the district associate the name with America’s violent racial history.

The upcoming change is a new step in a movement that, in Oregon, has focused primarily on names insensitive to Native Americans. Several geographic landmarks whose names included the term ‘squaw’, now considered a slur against Native American women, have been renamed in recent years. And in 2015, the Oregon Board of Education backed advocates in a controversial move that pushed 14 Oregon high schools to change their Native American-themed mascots.

Now that movement, most prominent on college campuses, with professional sports teams and among state geography boards, has reached the elementary school level.

The News Tribune adds this:

Centennial Superintendent Paul Coakley told reporter Janaki Chadhasays while there is no connection between the Lynch family and the often racially motivated, murderous practice associated with the word, it’s still been, “a disruption for some students.

 “There were an increasing amount of questions and some complaints from families of color around the name,” Coakley said.

While I agree that some mascots are ethnically insensitive and should be ditched, and that the word “squaw” is offensive, I can’t agree that a school named “Lynch” should be renamed because it could offend or disrupt some students.

If we’re going to eliminate some words because they’re homonyms or contain sounds or allusions that resemble, but have nothing to do with, ethnic slurs or terms like “lynch”, then we’ll never stop renaming stuff. Anything named “White,” for instance, could be and probably is disruptive to some.

There are limits to how much we should cater to people’s sensitivities, and this is beyond those limits. Although the word “Hebe” is a slur on Jews,  and I’ve been called that, I have no objection to the word “hebephrenia,” or “hebephrenic”, a form of mental illness. And I can’t be bothered to stop using the word “niggardly”, which antedates the “n-word” by several centuries and has a completely different root.

This is a symptom of the fulminating Offense Culture, and while some complaints are justified, this one isn’t. It’s not our job to cater to the sentiments of the most easily offended, though we should always consider claims that have real merit. Sometimes you just suck it up and move on—or change your reactions.

Photo: Eric Apalategui, Special to the Oregonian)

h/t: Gary

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Dawkins

July 26, 2017 • 8:15 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “police,” came with the note, “Maybe it’s time for Jesus & Mo to no-platform the barmaid?” I suspect those words, and the strip, refers to Richard Dawkins’s no-platforming by the Berkeley radio station KPFA.

It can’t be said too often that criticizing ideas is not the same thing as being a bigot towards adherents to those ideas.

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 26, 2017 • 7:30 am

Reader Colin Franks, whose photography website is here and Facebook page here, sent one of his infrequent but beautiful batches of photos. He promises more soon. The identifications are his:

Female Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna):

Male Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna):

[JAC: These next two are especially adorable!]

Baby Wood Duck (Aix sponsa):

Baby Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos):

Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus):

Black-necked Stilt (Himantopus mexicanus):

American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana):

Pacific-slope Flycatcher (Empidonax difficilis):

White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys):

Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii):

 

Wedneday: Hili dialogue

July 26, 2017 • 6:35 am

It is, as we vulgar Americans call it, “Hump Day”, referring to the peak of the work week, after which the days are downhill till the weekend. It’s Wednesday, July 26, 2017. It’s also “National Bagelfest,” so if you can, have a bagel with a schmear and some nice lox. Sadly, the small, chewy bagels of yore have been greatly debased. Now one gets donut-shaped Wonder Bread: giant squishy pillows of floury fluff lacking the density and bite of a proper bagel. Things fall apart; the center is a hole.

Political news: at a rally in Ohio, Trump defended his odd style of governing with his characteristic hubris, saying this:

“It is much easier to act presidential than what we are doing here tonight, believe me,” Trump said. “With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that’s ever held this office.”

Oy!

Finally, many religious and right-wing websites have gone after me for suggesting in a post that we should consider euthanizing newborn children who are doomed to a short and painful existence due to disease and deformity. I am following philosopher Peter Singer here, but there are those who think the suffering of terminally afflicted or severely deformed children should be prolonged because, after all, humans have souls, unlike the dogs and cats we euthanize to end their sufferings. I’ll write more on this later, as it’s a complex topic, but here’s Breitbart‘s attack on me (this is one of about a dozen I’ve seen).  Am I famous now?

On this day in 1745, the very first women’s cricket match was played near Guildford, England. In 1882, Wagner’s opera Parsifal premiered in Bayreuth, and in 1908, the agency that was the forerunner of the FBI, the “Office of the Chief Examiner,” was founded.  On July 26, 1945, the results of the July 5 British General Election were announced: it was a big victory for Labour and meant that PM Winston Churchill was removed from power. (He later became PM again.) How could they do that to a man who had done so much for England in wartime? On this day in 1948, Harry Truman signed an Executive Order that desegregated the U.S. armed forces, and in 1953, Castro’s first attack of the Cuban Revolution took place. On July 25, 1977, the National Assembly of Quebec made French the official language of the provincial government. And exactly one year ago today, Hillary Clinton became the first female Presidential candidate of any major party when she was nominated in Philadelphia. What a great pity she lost!

Notables born on this day include George Bernard Shaw (1856), Carl Jung (1875), George Grosz (1893), Aldous Huxley (1894), James “Gaia” Lovelock (1919; he’s 98 today), Mick Jagger (1943), Helen Mirren (1945), Dorothy Hamill (1956), Kevin Spacey (1959), Sandra Bullock (1964), and Kate Beckensale (1973). Here’s a nice Grosz:

George Grosz, Daum marries her pedantic automaton George in May 1920, John Heartfield is very glad of it, Berlinische Galerie

Those who died on July 26 include Sam Houston (1863), the great cartoonist Winsor McCay (1934), Eva Perón (1952), Diane Arbus (1971), and Merce Cunningham (2009). McCay produced one of the greatest comic strips of all time, Little Nemo, and it’s worth getting a book of these colored and surrealistic dream fantasies (I have one). They’re too detailed to reproduce here, but check this link.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili appears to be talking about gods, but since she’s an Atheist Cat, she really means “the laws of physics”:

Hili: I’m watching.
A: Watching what?
Hili: What Providence has up its sleeve.
In Polish:
Hili: Przyglądam się.
Ja: Czemu?
Hili: Co opatrzność ma w zanadrzu.

Finally, here is Bongo, one of Gus’s predecessors and a beloved cat of Taskin. Sadly, Bongo is long gone, but she was a lovely moggie:

 

My duck

July 25, 2017 • 3:45 pm

My baby girl is all alone in the pond, but every day we spend quality time communing. She’ll eat vegetables and mealworms, but now eschews oatmeal and Cheerios. Here she is nomming some defrosted frozen peas:

I’m worried that if I keep feeding her, she’ll stay when she should be flying away and doing Duck Stuff. But I can’t bear to cut off her rations.

Isn’t she lovely?

TrumpCare revived in close Senate vote

July 25, 2017 • 2:47 pm

Our relief at the failure of the Republican Senate to kill ObamaCare was short lived. With terminally ill John McCain returning to D.C. to shame himself one last time, and with Vice-President Pence casting the deciding vote on a 50-50 tie, the Senate voted to proceed with debating the issue. As CNN reports:

The next step is floor debate on the legislation to overhaul the Affordable Care Act even though there aren’t any guarantees the votes are there to eventually pass it — and it’s unclear what a final bill will look like.

The vote was up in the air until the last moments, when Several Republican holdouts announced their support, including Sens. Rand Paul, Dean Heller, Rob Portman and Shelley Moore Capito.

Trump, who has repeatedly said he’s ready to sign any repeal legislation, celebrated the vote, which creates a path to give him the major congressional victory that’s eluded the White House thus far.

“I’m very happy to announce that with zero of the Democrats’ votes, the motion to proceed on health care has moved past and now we move forward toward truly great health care for the American people. We look forward to that. This was a big step,” Trump said at a White House news conference.

There’s not even a bill to debate, and Lord knows what kind of dog’s breakfast will come from this “debate.” Shame on the Republicans who said they would vote to quash debate—and then caved.

(h/t JSP for the meme)