Evergreen State professors and staff sign “statement of solidarity” with the entitled and racist students

June 3, 2017 • 12:00 pm

About 55 Evergreen State College faculty and 23 College Staff have signed a “statement of solidarity” with the student protestors, which you can find here. (That’s more than a quarter of the faculty).

I reproduce the statement in its entirety (indented). It is an implicit criticism of biology professor Bret Weinstein as a racist, which he is not. He is being punished and ostracized for writing an email refusing to leave campus at the “request” of students of color on Evegreen’s “Day of Departure.” If you want to see the email that got Weinstein demonized, go here. The bolding is mine, and my comments are flush left.

[For distribution to the All Staff & Faculty DL, Greener Commons, and the Cooper Point Journal, with the expectation that it is a public document.]

June 2, 2017

As Evergreen faculty members:

We acknowledge that all of us who have power within the institution share responsibility for the racist actions of others. Furthermore, those of us who are white bear a particularly large share of that responsibility.

What are the racist actions and who committed them? Is it Weinstein? If not, who else? And why do the white faculty and staff bear the lion’s share of his actions? This reminds me of the “confessions” during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

We acknowledge that we have a great deal of work to do in order to honor and live up to the demands made by student leaders during last week’s protests. (http://cooperpointjournal.com/2017/05/27/complete-list-of-student-demands).

We acknowledge that students of color and others who are underrepresented and underserved have been voicing their demands to us for some time (through the Students of Color Focus Groups of 2014, through their participation in authoring the Strategic Equity Plan from November, in Cooper Point Journal coverage, for example) and we have not yet truly listened and acted.

We acknowledge students’ right to protest, and affirm President Bridges’ recent decision not to use the misguided language of the current Student Conduct Code to punish the protestors.

“Misguided language”? Those students cursed and terrorized Weinstein and the college President, though we don’t know if any of them were involved in the threats that forced Weinstein off campus and made him and his family hid in an undisclosed location.

We vehemently reject the claim that students have been violent simply because they have been loud and emphatic. There is a difference between exercising the right to freely voice an opinion and inciting violence—and that difference has nothing to do with volume or forcefulness. We support the demands made by students and honor the positive institutional change they have already achieved through their protests.

They’ve also been racist in their demands that white faculty and staff leave campus, an act that Weinstein called “a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.”

Our most urgent demands (below) center on the safety of those individuals who are currently most at risk. At the same time, we acknowledge that in the weeks and months to come our attention will need to turn to the larger structural issues students have identified.

You’d think that the individuals most “at risk” are Bret Weinstein and his family, who not only can’t be on campus because of the threats (his wife is also on the biology faculty), but have had to leave their home and go into hiding because of threats. But NOOOO . .  the individuals at risk are the students! For the “urgent demands” have nothing to do with Weinstein’s safety:

In solidarity with students, we commit ourselves to:

* Participating actively and self-critically in the annual mandatory trainings specified in the Memorandum of Understanding recently signed by the UFE and management bargaining teams.

* Holding each other accountable when we act in racist ways against our colleagues or our students, according to shared language and understanding developed in the trainings.

* Holding President Bridges accountable to the promises he made at the all-campus forum on May 26, 2017, and to the process of ongoing dialogue with student leaders.

I wonder if that includes the gumbo Bridge promised the students at his Humiliation Session (see 2:04 at this video).

* Actively supporting the Strategic Plan put forward by the Equity and Inclusion Council, including providing substantive support to the Vice President & Vice Provost of Equity and Inclusion tasked with implementing and extending their work.

I omit the names of the signers (see the document linked to above), but I am guessing that the faculty are almost all humanities professors and that there are few or no science professors. The College Fix (I can’t verify their assertion) says that “The statement is being circulated by Julie Russo, whose expertise is “media studies, gender & women’s studies, sexuality and queer studies,” and Elizabeth Williamson, whose expertise is English literature and theater studies, according to a Friday listserv email from Russo obtained by The College Fix.

Now there’s another “solidarity statement“, mentioned by the right-wing College Fix, one that explicitly calls for punishment of Weinstein, but it differs a bit from the one above, adding this:

* Demonstrate accountability by pursuing a disciplinary investigation against Bret Weinstein according to guidelines in the Social Contract and Faculty Handbook. Weinstein has endangered faculty, staff, and students, making them targets of white supremacist backlash by promulgating misinformation in public emails, on national television, in news outlets, and on social media.

Right now I’m investigating the situation and veracity of the second statement. Regardless, if either version is true, it is a shameful capitulation of the Evergreen faculty (and some staff) to the complaints of entitled students. Those students may indeed have grievances, but I have heard nothing tangible so far. As as far as I’m concerned, Evergreen State is a toxic cesspool of regressive leftism. No sane parent would send their student there—not if they wanted them to have a peaceful but rewarding college experience in which they hear and weigh diverse viewpoints.

h/t: BJ

INR, Evening 1

June 3, 2017 • 11:00 am

Yesterday was check-in and an evening social for the Imagine No Religion meeting in Toronto; it’s in the Airport Sheraton, so I doubt I’ll see anything of this lovely city.

The speakers did get nice rooms, though:

. . .with nice bathrooms. I LOVE hotels and have never gotten over the luxury of staying in one:

A kindly reader came up to me and gave me two bottles of Riesling in a wooden box, with the bottles shaped like cats! What a treat!

Self portrait with Hawaiian shirt:

Robyn Blumner, president and CEO of the the U.S. Center for Inquiry, with Leonard Tramiel, a physicist on the CfI board of directors.

The evening social had a poutine station, so my trip for dinner poutine was unnecessary. Here’s Richard Dawkins helping himself to poutine. The talks start in earnest today; the schedule is here. I speak Sunday at 2 pm.

Open thread: Kathy Griffin resorts to the Old White Guys canard

June 3, 2017 • 10:00 am

by Grania

I think by now everybody is familiar with the event of the week where comedian Kathy Griffin decided that holding a prop of a bloody severed head of Donald Trump was a fine moment of political commentary and comedy.

Regardless of political persuasion, people generally reacted with distaste and revulsion, the image perhaps a little too close a reminder of the mindless savagery of ISIS and those of a similar ilk, and CNN fired her within 24 hours.

I find it hard to believe that she did not think that people would react to her stunt with outrage or distaste. If a right-wing comedian (is there such a thing in the US?) had done the same with a severed prop head of Barack Obama there would have been nation-wide outrage and op eds about systemic racism, charges of white supremacy and doubtless, demands that the perpetrator lose their job. That’s guaranteed. After all, there are plenty of people on the political left calling for professor Bret Weinstein to lose his job on charges of imaginary racism.

At her most recent appearance with her lawyer Lisa Bloom, Kathy Griffin broke down but maintained that she was the one being bullied and that she was being silenced by a bunch of old white guys.

In my opinion, if your very public behaviour is such that your employer no longer wishes to tolerate you, that is not censorship. Griffin does feminism no favour at all when she tries to absolve herself of the consequences of her actions and blame it all on the patriarchy.  At least Milo Yiannopoulos had sufficient dignity to apologise and move on when he found he had trespassed over the bounds of what his employer was prepared to tolerate.

Is Kathy Griffin the perpetrator or the victim?

Caturday felid trifecta: Simon’s Cat: “Off to the vet”; Porter the Toronto Police Marine Cat; Otter and Bengal cat pals

June 3, 2017 • 9:30 am

There’s a new “full length” color film of Simon’s Cat called “Off to the Vet”. Somehow I’ve seen a bit of this, but I can’t remember where, and it’s no longer on the Internet. It was hilarious. At any rate, there are several “making of” videos featuring Simon Tofield and his assistants. Here are three: one featuring a preview of the longer video, another (featuring Nicky Trevarrow of Cats Protection) telling you how to take your cat to the vet, and the third shows how the sound effects are made (nearly all by Simon himself). Here’s some information about the longer video (I don’t know how long it is):

Watch this preview to get a sneaky look at our first full colour film that features Simon, the cat and of course the internet’s cutest animated kitten in a series of cat fails and funny gags for the first time in a special length of 12 minutes.

FAQs:

Q. Why isn’t ‘Off to the Vet’ available in full on YouTube?
A. ‘Off to the Vet’ film production and crowdfunding campaign was a huge undertaking for the Simon’s Cat Team. Our hope is to produce more long form, full colour content for our fans but without having to turn to them through crowdfunding again. The film was completed in 2015 and submitted it to a selection of international film festivals over the following months. During this time it was exclusively available to all funders that contributed via our private production blog. The feedback we have received from our funders has been overwhelming positive and we hope they are extremely proud of making the film a possibility. If you are a funder and have any questions regarding the campaign please contact us at igg@simonscat.com

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It’s appropriate, since I’m now in Toronto, to report (via the Toronto Star) that the Toronto Police Marine Unit has a new mascot (read “boss”) named Porter;

Meet Porter, a green-eyed black feline who began prowling the unit’s docks on the Toronto Harbour last September. Or, as Const. Rick Gomez, his black shirt covered in cat hair, calls him: Honorary Officer-in-Charge.

“He’s more of a boss than a colleague,” says Crewhand Steve Bode, a civilian who works at the unit, and who is known as the cat whisperer by the officers.

And although housing is hard to come by, and expensive in Toronto, Porter has a rather enviable room complete with blue paint, and his name tacked to the entrance, Porter’s Cat House, should anyone be in doubt. His blue and white polka-dotted water bowl sits by the entrance, and his brown, soft bed sits atop the house.

Here’s his house (all photos from the Star by Hina Alam); it is silly, though, as Porter can’t read!

It’s his house — he can have his bed wherever he likes it.

In early September, the unit rescued a “wet, cold, shivering, and frightened” cat near Billy Bishop Airport. When he was found, Porter had health issues, and was undernourished, says Const. Rich Baker, a community service officer with the unit. Notices were put up about him but no one came for Porter, so the unit officially adopted him.

Porter with Constable Rick Gomez. The cat does not look happy.

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And here’s an adorable short video of an otter and a Bengal cat (my future breed of cat):

BONUS FELID: Over at her website A Classicist Writes, reader Laurie’s new post “. . . On London. A thunderstorm. And a cat.”, features several photos of one of several cats named Jerry Coyne. This one is a tuxedo cat:

(Laurie’s caption): “The lovely Jerry Coyne”

 

h/t: Taskin

Saturday: Hili dialogue

June 3, 2017 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning everyone!

It’s a Saturday, so we are going to content ourselves with two songs from birthday girl Suzi Quatro (1950) Stumblin’ In and Can The Can.

Hili is lost in thought again.

Hili: Malgorzata and I are brainstorming.
A: What about?
Hili: She about one thing and I about another.

In Polish:

Hili: Zastanawiamy się z Małgorzatą…
Ja: Nad czym?
Hili: Ona nad jednym, a ja nad drugim.

And she’s not the only felid with a cunning plan today.

Leon: I went into hiding here otherwise they would find some work for me.

And because you can never have too many cats; here’s a tweet that Jerry found hilarious:

https://twitter.com/AndyCole84/status/870756118493937664

And last, an educational lagniappe on the mating rituals of the damselfly comes from Matthew Cobb on Twitter. He explains:

The male is the one on the left, holding the female behind the head. There’s a lot of sperm scraping going on in their bits.

Cue “specially shaped penis” at 2:21

H/t: Charleen

I got poutine!

June 2, 2017 • 5:26 pm

Thanks to Larry Moran, I found poutine–right across the street from my hotel. It’s the first food I had all day, and boy, was it good! (This one had short ribs added to the fries, cheese curds, and gravy.) That’s a margarita in front of me: cultural appropriation!

Photo by Larry: