I have written columns and blogs through the years about the disturbing trend on U.S. campuses toward free regulation and controls. In the name of diversities and tolerance, college administrators and professors are enforcing greater and greater controls on speech –declaring certain views or terms to be forms of racism or more commonly “microaggressions.” The latter term is gaining support to expand the range of controls over speech and conduct to include things that are indirect or minor forms of perceived intolerance. The crackdown seems most prevalent in California where lists of “micro aggressions” seems to be mounting as a macroaggression on free speech. The new list of verboten terms out of University of California (Berkeley), headed by Janet Napolitano, captures the insatiable appetite for speech regulation. The school has asked faculty to stop using terms like “melting pot” or statements like “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” They are now all microaggressions. Not only are school buying into the concept of microaggressions and speech regulation, but they are shaping a generation of students who seem to look for any possible interpretation of terms to take offensive at.
Ironically, while using the term “melting pot” is now viewed as an unacceptable microaggression, actual aggression in the form of assault by a faculty member on people for using free speech is not considered an offense worthy of termination — indeed it was an act deemed understandable if not heroic by some students and faculty in the case of California Professor Miller-Young.
Napolitano asked UC deans and department chairs to attend seminars “to foster informed conversation about the best way to build and nurture a productive academic climate.” The seminars includes handouts with these terms as part of the program called “Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send.” The manuals were reportedly adapted from a book by Columbia University Psychology Professor Derald Wing Sue. For civil libertarians, the handouts should be entitled “Recognizing Speech Codes and The Speech They Curtail.”
Some points have been previously discussed on this blog. For example, now discouraged is the statement “There is only one race, the human race.” We saw recently how the President of Smith College was forced into a mea culpa for saying “all lives matter.” Such collective valuations of live and humanity is now considered offensive because it denies “the significance of a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience and history.” A microaggression.
Likewise, “America is the land of opportunity” somehow suggests that “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder” while asking an Asian, Latino, or Native American “why are you so quiet?” is trying to force him to “assimilate to dominant culture.” Finding such microaggressions has become a virtual cottage industry (if I can say that without degrading any cultures that do not use — or use — cottages). Even some of the most important social and political debates are now considered racist if one side is spoken directly. For example, the Supreme Court and the nation has continued to debate affirmative action and whether it is a form of racism. However, saying “Affirmative action is racist,” is now deemed a microaggression by default. Thus, you can have the debate — just do not state your position on the ultimate question. Academics supporting such views seem wholly unconcerned that the barring of the expression depends on your first accepting the opposing premise on the issue of affirmative action. Consider the defense of OiYan Poon, an assistant professor of higher education at Loyola University in Chicago: “The statement that ‘affirmative action is racist’ completely ignores the history and purpose of affirmative action, which is to address inequalities resulting from the many ways our government and society have prevented people of color from accessing economic, educational and political opportunities and rights.” That is of course the opposing position in favor of affirmative action. It is worth noting that the Supreme Court has declared affirmative action to be unconstitutional for universities admissions. Recent opinions explore the limited range in which race may be considered for purposes of diversity, not affirmative action. However, the main problem is that the barring of this expression as a microaggression assumes that affirmative action is not racist — the very point under debate. In this sense, one side controls the debate by declaring the opposing view as simply racist to express.
The expanding efforts to curtail speech on college campuses shows how the taste for speech controls can become insatiable for many. Ironically, liberal faculty once rallied whole campuses to fight for free speech. Now, many are leading the fight against the speech of opposing groups as essential to a “tolerant” society. It is a dangerous trend that we are seeing throughout the West. However, the campaign of faculty to deny speech on campuses presents an existential threat to the entire academic mission. We are education a new generation that free speech is a danger to rather than the definition of a free society.
Source: Daily Beast
My pleasure, RWL!
Speaking of Monsanto…
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“Monsanto’s concentrated control over the seed sector in India as well as across the world is very worrying. This is what connects farmers’ suicides in India to Monsanto vs Percy Schmeiser in Canada, to Monsanto vs Bowman in the US, and to farmers in Brazil suing Monsanto for $2.2 billion for unfair collection of royalty.
Through patents on seed, Monsanto has become the “Life Lord” of our planet, collecting rents for life’s renewal from farmers, the original breeders.
Patents on seed are illegitimate because putting a toxic gene into a plant cell is not “creating” or “inventing” a plant. These are seeds of deception — the deception that Monsanto is the creator of seeds and life; the deception that while Monsanto sues farmers and traps them in debt, it pretends to be working for farmers’ welfare, and the deception that GMOs feed the world. GMOs are failing to control pests and weeds, and have instead led to the emergence of superpests and superweeds.
The entry of Monsanto in the Indian seed sector was made possible with a 1988 Seed Policy imposed by the World Bank, requiring the Government of India to deregulate the seed sector. Five things changed with Monsanto’s entry: First, Indian companies were locked into joint-ventures and licensing arrangements, and concentration over the seed sector increased. Second, seed which had been the farmers’ common resource became the “intellectual property” of Monsanto, for which it started collecting royalties, thus raising the costs of seed. Third, open pollinated cotton seeds were displaced by hybrids, including GMO hybrids. A renewable resource became a non-renewable, patented commodity. Fourth, cotton which had earlier been grown as a mixture with food crops now had to be grown as a monoculture, with higher vulnerability to pests, disease, drought and crop failure. Fifth, Monsanto started to subvert India’s regulatory processes and, in fact, started to use public resources to push its non-renewable hybrids and GMOs through so-called public-private partnerships (PPP).
In 1995, Monsanto introduced its Bt technology in India through a joint-venture with the Indian company Mahyco. In 1997-98, Monsanto started open field trials of its GMO Bt cotton illegally and announced that it would be selling the seeds commercially the following year. India has rules for regulating GMOs since 1989, under the Environment Protection Act. It is mandatory to get approval from the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee under the ministry of environment for GMO trials. The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology sued Monsanto in the Supreme Court of India and Monsanto could not start the commercial sales of its Bt cotton seeds until 2002.
And, after the damning report of India’s parliamentary committee on Bt crops in August 2012, the panel of technical experts appointed by the Supreme Court recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all GM food and termination of all ongoing trials of transgenic crops.
But it had changed Indian agriculture already.
Monsanto’s seed monopolies, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of superprofits in the form of royalties, and the increasing vulnerability of monocultures has created a context for debt, suicides and agrarian distress which is driving the farmers’ suicide epidemic in India. This systemic control has been intensified with Bt cotton. That is why most suicides are in the cotton belt.
An internal advisory by the agricultural ministry of India in January 2012 had this to say to the cotton-growing states in India — “Cotton farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt cotton. The spate of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly severe among Bt cotton farmers.”
The highest acreage of Bt cotton is in Maharashtra and this is also where the highest farmer suicides are. Suicides increased after Bt cotton was introduced — Monsanto’s royalty extraction, and the high costs of seed and chemicals have created a debt trap. According to Government of India data, nearly 75 per cent rural debt is due to purchase inputs. As Monsanto’s profits grow, farmers’ debt grows. It is in this systemic sense that Monsanto’s seeds are seeds of suicide.”
Po,
Interesting article. Thanks!
@Po
This is a great article.
I wonder if you think this has any lessons for TPP with, from what we know, seems less about trade that protection of intellectual property?
I forgot to add. The FDA, Monsanto et all also stated that both kinds of tumors are naturally occurring phenomena in the human body even though there is credible research opposing this view.
Karen, nice to see that you are just as knowledgeable about hip hop as you are about Islam.
I know some moms who have complained that their boys strive for “swagger”, which is the appearance of being a tough guy, with the clothes, and the walk, and the flash. Again, it’s emulating the criminal element, and it’s all about style with no substance.
We’re getting our role models askew.
@NickS
Aye!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
RWL – what will this bill do to the Non GMO Project voluntary labelling?
Karen S.
My guess: If Monsanto doesn’t have to label their ‘products’, then why do the other companies of corporate America have to label their products? So far, the bill only applies to GMO products.
The Elites are finding or uncovering new methods of population control.
Their was a study consisting of rats and GMO products. After months of giving the rats GMO foods, all of the rats developed malignant and non malignant tumors.
Response from companies like Monsanto, the FDA, politicians, etc: no proof that this will occur in humans, since our bodies are different from rats.
Nick – hope you recover quickly from your surgery.
RWL – so is that it, then, for GMO labelling? It’s dead unless this bill is repealed? Special interests on display in Washington again. I can’t even find non-GMO hay for my horses now, and I hate financially supporting Monsanto’s thuggish tactics, planting GMO fields and then shaking down the neighbors with threats of lawsuits. (See my segue?)
Ken – Please see my comment with the link at 2:42 for more information on “thug” in rap music. They genre glorifies being a criminal and making money illegally, and usually dying young. It certainly doesn’t refer to the guy who studies really hard, stays completely out of trouble, gets a scholarship and an internship and becomes a doctor. Tupac’s tattoo was prophetic, if you recall the East/West coast war that cost us Tupac and Biggie Small. What a waste to lose talented people so young and to a stupid gang rivalry.
I have also stated on the thread that the media should use the term correctly, regardless of race, in order to desensitize us to the word.
I recall going home from the Staples Center after the Lakers won their first championship in years. They were rolling cars and setting fires. People tried to get on my car, too. I just kept rolling and prayed everyone kept their toes out of the way.
Hooligan is the only sports-specific term for destructive rowdies, but I believe it refers to soccer only. That is an infamous lot, globally. We just don’t get as excited about soccer here. A thug is a violent criminal but I do’t know that I would apply it to people who riot after their team either wins or loses. I just called them rioters. Idiots. And a few unprintable things. And they were a mixed bunch.
WWOD. What Would Orwell Do?
Linotype machines had a melting pot for the metal. I guess we need to rename it if ever it came up in a journalism class.
@KenRogers
I would probably call the white kids whooping it up after a game, ruffians, hooligans, a mob, an out of control bunch of drunk idiots… Under that same scenario I would call black kids the same. Black or white, I would expect them to be arrested
However, if white kids were looting liquor stores, robbing, committing mayhem, beating up on people just cuz, starting fights sua sponte, and engaging in general criminality, then I would call them thugs, just like I do the black kids. IMHO, the Banditos are thugs, the Ayran Brotherhood are thugs, the Mafia are thugs, Bonnie and Clyde were thugs, people busting up peaceful union protests are thugs, union members busting up scabs are thugs.
But I still think “Democrats” was pretty clever!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@KenRogers
Thank you for asking him that! I was wondering the same thing, but I thought it might be my fault, and my third glass of wine!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter
1, June 23, 2015 at 9:14 pm
@Ken Rogers
Kewl link! You asked, “but what word do you use to describe contemporary “whites” who riot and destroy property after athletic agons, Girl Reporter? “Revelers”? “Scamps”? “People I’d Like to Party With”?
Uh, er, uh, . . . . Democrats???”
The dishonesty of that little bit of cute is exceeded only by its banality. This is only the latest example of why you’re increasingly difficult to take seriously.
TJustice
1, June 23, 2015 at 10:07 pm
“But someone who graduates from this same school JT immediately cites as evidence as credibility, intellect, and accomplishment… So fraudulent this system is.”
What are you trying to say with this incoherent little outburst? It’s completely unintelligible.
Karen S,
I agree. However, the Senate passed the bill. Now, only President Obama (or a lawsuit) can hinder the law. 99% chance that Obama will sign the legislation. We are living in a new era where you will not know what you are eating, and cannot sue if you harm by what you’re eating. The price of organic foods have been increasing while the GMO byproducts will not increase as much as their counterpart.
BFM, No whiskey for 24 hours. Have to let the versed leave the system.
But someone who graduates from this same school JT immediately cites as evidence as credibility, intellect, and accomplishment… So fraudulent this system is.
Tony Sidway @ June 23, 2015 at 1:53 pm.
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