We have been discussing the worrisome trend of professors being subjected to investigations and discipline for “micro aggressions” or hostile environment in classrooms. These actions raise serious concerns over academic freedom. One such case involves University of Kansas Assistant communication studies professor Andrea Quenette. Quenette was subjected to a four-month investigation after using a racial slur in class as part of her lecture. Now, she has been cleared of the offense but she is still being asked to comply with special training and remedial actions.
Quenette was put on paid leave in November after eight graduate students filed a discrimination complaint against her. Quenette explained that the n-word was used in the course of retelling a factual event that occurred at another campus. The discussion followed a heated, campus-wide town hall forum on race and she was responding to a student’s question about how to best talk about the event and racial issues with other students. She said that it was difficult to address such issues as a white woman but said that KU was better than other schools where she had seen racial slurs written on the walls including the n-word. The graduate students proceeded to file a complaint that object that “Dr. Quenette’s deployment of racially violent rhetoric not only creates a non-inclusive environment in opposition to one of the University of Kansas’ core tenets, but actively destroys the very possibility of realizing those values and goals.” So a teacher discussing historic racism cannot use the terms deemed offensive in class? Her comments were clearly not meant with racial animus but the opposite. Yet, Jyleesa Hampton, a first-year communications graduate student insisted that the important thing is not how such words are intended but how they are received.
Now here is the unclear element in the KU investigation. Quenette was cleared of racism and harassment. She was found to have used the word as part of an educational purpose. Yet, the university recommended that Quenette undergo cultural competency training, re-evaluate orientation curriculum to include more diversity support and pair up with a faculty member. The school also recommended possibly reassigning duties within the communications department. That is the response to an complaint that was rejected in terms of a violation of the school rules.
What is particularly disturbing is that Quenette was subject to such a long investigation after a letter was issued that clearly objected to her views as an academic. The open letter included the following objections:
“As you can imagine, this utterance caused shock and disbelief. Her comments that followed were even more disparaging as they articulated not only her lack of awareness of racial discrimination and violence on this campus and elsewhere but an active denial of institutional, structural and individual racism. This denial perpetuates racism in and of itself. After Ph.D. student Ian Beier presented strong evidence about low retention and graduation rates among black students as being related to racism and a lack of institutional support, Dr. Quenette responded with, ‘Those students are not leaving school because they are physically threatened every day but because of academic performance.’ This statement reinforces several negative ideas: that violence against students of color is only physical, that students of color are less academically inclined and able, and that structural and institutional cultures, policies and support systems have no role in shaping academic outcomes. Dr. Quenette’s discourse was uncomfortable, unhelpful and blatantly discriminatory.”
I have no problem with students challenging the view that black students are being forced out of school due to their race as opposed to their academic performance. However, the students appear unwilling to accept that anyone could hold any opposing view or that such views can be voiced in the context of a class committed to discussing the issue. That is both troubling in terms of the views of these students but also the trend on college and universities campuses.
What do I know? I am just a Norwegian who eats turnips.
The JT article says she was advised to pair up with another faculty member. Did they say “male” or “female” or “transgender” or “African American” or “White” or “Asian” or “Missourian” or “Kansan”?
Was she supposed to “pair up” with “Dorothy”. This is not Kansas anymore. No. I hope Jesse James has an offspring or two who will shoot the place up.
So these are graduate students? These universities have backed themselves into a corner. To afford the overhead they raise tuition and they need EVERY student they can get. Even when they discover no wrong-doing they have to appease the students for fear those students will take their tuition dollars somewhere else.
If there isn’t already, some college rating site needs to add a category for social justice. The higher the rating the more the graduates are being indoctrinated to become social justice warriors. This way future employers will be able to knowingly hire the character they want to infect the culture of their organization.
PhillyT,
Even if what you wrote is true, do you have any examples of the CIA forcing people to use crack? Many beer companies funnel alcohol into stores and yet I don’t drink any of it. Hmm…. Maybe AA is just another vast conspiracy?
Jim22 – crack is fairly specialized, takes equipment, etc. I think the CIA were more into coke.
Philly T: When was that story about Erlichmann in Harpers Magazine? I want to read it. Thanks for the insight.
I have a nephew who is a senior in high school in Kansas City, KS. He is moving to Kansas City, MO because of this incident. He wishes to qualify for state subsidy for state resident at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. UMKC. He told me this before this incident came up. I sent him the Turleyblog article and comments. He replied with some phrase about Dorothy and this is not Kansas anymore. Does anyone know some reference in history about “Dorothy” and Kansas?
Hey professor,
Instead of one more microagression story that leaves us all guffawing about how sensitive and PC the libruls have become, how about something fresh?
From Harpers, a little story about John Erlichman admitting to Dan Baum that the war on drugs was 100% concocted to disrupt war protesters and black civil rights protesters. From Mr. Baum:
” At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
I must have looked shocked. Ehrlichman just shrugged. Then he looked at his watch, handed me a signed copy of his steamy spy novel, The Company, and led me to the door.”
Let’s talk about the generations of ruin wrought by the hands of Nixon and Reagan (whose CIA funneled crack into the inner cities). Leave the hand-wringers for another day.
Too many college students have been taught that being good citizens requires constant vigilance for any possible offense, accompanied by quick and hyperbolic reaction to same. It’s as though being a brittle person is now considered to be some sort of badge of honor or sign of moral rectitude. (Not just college students, of course. But, they are the group that seems most likely to take the notion seriously and least likely to be laughed off the stage for acting on it.)
This is one of many areas where people need to toughen up. Constantly looking for things that *might* be offensive and then reacting as though they *are* offensive is a prescription for being a miserable person. It chills free expression and only encourages those who deliberately look to cause offense and who now know just how easy it is to get under the brittle people’s skin.
Meanwhile, referring to the non-offensive use of offensive words as “violence” can’t help but cheapen what violence means. People who use the same term to characterize the act of referring to a person by a bad word as they do to characterize (literally) assaulting that person are displaying a gross lack of perspective. It would be comical if we didn’t stop to wonder about the impact on families with loved ones who are now dead or eating through a tube after an act of real violence.
I don’t think that the left is necessarily more willing than the right to view censorship favorably when it serves to shut down the other side of the debate. But, there is more of a hypocritical element to the self-righteousness of such attitudes when they come from folks who traditionally see themselves as paragons of tolerance. For people who like to think, “We support people’s right to express alternative viewpoints” to spend so much time wailing that, “People who say things we don’t approve of should shut the @*%#$! up” comes across as more than a little rich.
When the teacher gets her “guidance” the guidance counselors need to sing the following song to her, and to the student body over a loudspeaker at Commencement this year. This is a song sung by a group called Pink Floyd. When asked how he got that name Floyd responded that: “my finger dont stink.” He was reprimanded for that statement at his alma mater.
“Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)”
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
[chorus at end by pupils from the Fourth Form Music Class Islington Green School, London]
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave us kids alone
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
I agree with Tin in his/her comment above. The students who are offended by what she had to say were not “offended”. They were mentally ill and need treatment, guidance counseling, and perhaps a back door. The main issue seems to be that they were offended by someone who referenced the drop out rate for black students. Did they drop out because someone in life said the N word?
Kansas does not need a racial discussion because there is one set of mentally ill students who can not deal with one.
Call the men in the white suits! No pun intended. Fire me for saying it.
There’s a LGBT group in England that recently rejected gay men for leadership positions and representation because gay men aren’t marginalized enough. And are part of the structure holding back LBT. Apparently.
Pretty much sums up the progressive movement today.
https://www.gofundme.com/helpdrq
For her legal defense
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ku-grad-students-professor-firing-quenette/
Just about sums it up:
http://youtu.be/mUvdXxhLPa8
KU’s demand for the professor to submit to reeducation is a micro-aggression. She deserves a safe space and isn’t getting one. She should definitely sue. We’ll see you in court, along with everyone else. Who says there are too many lawyers?
I find the fact that the woman must now go to a re-education camp to be brainwashed and then taught how to think with racial sensitive to be horrifying.
Or….by writing where one walks, it is a means for people’s boots to do the Nancy song on Trump? Or do the Trump stomp? On steps(stairs) one climbs over the Trump or descends on Trump? Write it on hydrants or commodes or urinals? Verbal judo.
Look for silver lining in a sow’s ear?…mixed metaphor…yeah..horribly mixed.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid
I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me
by Edward Schlosser on June 3, 2015
If she is cleared of the charges, she should not have to do the remediation, etc. She is innocent, but guilty.
Why is anybody surprised? The Liberal chickens are simply coming home to roost. That is one reason why all the Democratic Party race-baiting and race-pandering is so horrible. A few years ago it was the poor little Trayvon nonsense, and now its open ended attacks on free speech.
Another current story would this one from Emory:
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Pol Pot is on the Board of Directors @ KU, specializing in re-education.