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.
Scott Quenette, I’m sorry your family is going through a tough time because of the complaint, but I stand by my comments which were mostly intended for some of the commenters who have a history of bigotry. I don’t know your wife. I suspect that she had no ill intent with her comments, same as the man’s “atta boy” or the other man’s “even she”. And the Kennedy’s thought they had already done well but found out otherwise when they had a frank dialog with African-American activists. The result of the investigation, no bad intentions but some additional education is appropriate, suggests that a bit more sensitivity on what she says is appropriate.
As Spinelli’s comments about me: he doesn’t know me or my life experiences. He’s one of the more bigoted in his own comments and a self-proclaimed expert on just about everything.
I got “atta boys” at work until I asked them to stop. I wasn’t a “boy”. It was a very white male dominated environment and everyone else was “boy”.
bettykath – well, we know who is not a team player.
Paul C.- I work at a Pontiac Buick dealership…….my friend and classmate’s family owned the Ford dealership acrossed the street from the Pontiac-Buick dealership.
Lots of friendly trash talking about GTOs and Firebirds, v. Mustangs, etc.
That really was the golden era of cars, IMO.
PG-12
Well, this illustrates the entire problem with PC. Intent does, in fact, matter. And this hyper sensitivity essentially smothers free speech and academic discussion.
You cannot discuss historical racism without talking about the racist terms and behavior. These students need to grow up. We talked about the “b”, “p”, and “c” word in cultural anthropology class. Part of being a grown up at a university is you talk about all sorts of thought provoking, disturbing, and even offensive topics.
Honestly, do these people faint when a rap song comes on?
I wonder if sensitivity training would have cured JFK of being a lying womanizer who humiliated his wife on a daily basis.
Seriously, college students have a plethora of really important issues to address – global malnutrition, access to clean drinking water, air pollution, deforestation, plus the ever pressing issue of what job they’re going to get once they graduate. To go after a professor for discussing a racial issue in which she repeated the “N” word, in an academic setting, when the word is used in music every single day on the radio is ridiculous.
Karen – I wonder if these kids only go to PC-12 movies.
@PaulCS and TNash
Paul, I think maybe they call them hermaphrodites??? Or independents. I’m cool with either. 🙂
TNash, I had to use Ramblers because I don’t know much about 1960’s cars. I know they had Plymouths, but who knows what kind??? I didn’t come here until 1984, and my first vehicle was a Barbie Princessmobile, that I used to try to run other kids down with. I got a few! 🙂
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky,
I’ll let it go this time😊. I worked at a dealership in high schoolnin the ’60s…..that ‘s 1960s.
Just got my license, too. So I was kinda car crazy.
I enjoy going to the “oldies” car shows…..I’m pretty good at guessing year, make and model before looking at the descriptions of the cars.
Anything after about 1980, it’s harder for me to tell. The “newer” cars all look alike to me.( not a racist statement),
Tom – once they took the fins off Caddys, you see one car you’ve seen them all.
@PhillyT
My GUESS is that you think that you have been having an honest conversation because you are used to being around liberals and fellow travelers. I keep trying to tell you( and other liberals) that you guys have forgotten how to have either honest conversations, or reasonable arguments. The reason is that you guys have substituted sanctimonious posing for real discussion. Your arguments tend to follow the form of “we’re right because we are good and smart people, and you (the Conservatives) are wrong because you don’t agree with us!”
That is why you rely on some sort of “states rights” charge to smear Reagan. “Oh, la di da, Reagan gave a speech about “state’s rights” sooo he’s sooo obviously a Racissss!—Jeeves, bring the cah around will you! I must be off to modern art exhibit!” All of us on the other end are just supposed to roll over, and never ask the high and mighty liberals to do a little ‘splaining. Well, how dare we! We’re just supposed to worship your wisdom.
Hah! Them days is over! There is this whole new thing called the Internet, and people “on the right” don’t have to toe some liberal line like the poor professor above. We can say what we like, and we can start calling out you liberal fascists!
Instead of running, you need to sit down and start trying to figure out why it is that you and so many of your ilk are sooo indignant these days. If you are honest, you will admit that you are simply intellectually impotent, and therefore raging about it to cover up your lack of decent arguments.
If you’re dishonest, you can keep on pretending that it is 1963, and you are a Freedom Rider, in the backseat of your Nash Rambler, pulled off the side of the road somewhere in Mississippi, listening to Pete Seeger and smoking pot and making out with some brunette chick you picked up from Bryn Mawr, while a dead Negro is swaying in the breeze off a tree limb a few yards away.
And yes, I did break into your psychiatrist’s office and read his notes!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – I do like most modern art and support states’ rights. Not sure what that makes me. 😉
Squeeky….do not take the name of Nash in vain.- Tom Nash
PhillyT….I saw a number of interviews with John Erlichman…he was articulate, had a sense of humor, and provided additional insight into the workings and mindset of the Nixon administration.
I never heard about the alleged motive for the war on drugs, to target Blacks and others.
This comes about 15? years after Erlichman’s death, by a writer who said Erlichman said that Nixon said this.
I think the better way to decimate a target group is to SUPPLY them with all the drugs they want, not declare a war on drugs.
Absent confirmation of this allegation, I regard it as 2nd hand hearsay, and take it with a grain of salt.v
PhillyT….I saw a number of interviews with John Erlichman…he was articulate, had a sense of humor, and provided additional insight into the workings and mindset of the Nixon administration.
I never heard about the alleged motive for the war on drugs, to target Blacks and others.
This comes about 15? years after Erlichman’s death, by a writer who said Erlichman said that Nixon said this.
I think the better way to decimate a target group is to SUPPLY them with all the drugs they want, not declare a war on drugs.
Absent confirmation of this allegation, I regard it as 2nd hand hearsay, and take it with a grain of salt.
Nice work Squeeks,
Deny, deflect, shuffle, bob, weave. Send your opponent on a quest to redefine his terms because you have NO IDEA what anything means. Stall, delay, insult. Make as racist a statement as you think you can get away with and then DARE anyone to call it racist. Avoid, deflect some more, duck and cover. Why sir, I have NO IDEA what you might be implying with the term “states rights”. Could you provide me with several definitions and some historic references I might use to further deflect your point? That confederate flag? Why Sir! That’s my Heritage! It has nothing to do with slavery or racism and I resent the implication.
Throw Ronald Reagan under the bus for his dog whistle racism? I have no idea what a dog whistle is. Could you go look that up and gather a few references, definitions and historic citations? Oh, and if you pick a source I find too liberal, I will send you back out with a good scolding you silly person you. IF all else fails, make a few “prissy” “sissy” mom-jeans, big-boy pants kind of insults because every good troll knows that gets people roiled.
Guess I’m done trying to have any kind of honest conversation with you.
phillyT – you clearly have not come to grips with you “white privilege” yet. Better get to work.
I just read the text of what was described as Reagan’s first campaign speech in Mississippi.
It actually was the first speech he gave after he was nominated……he had been campaigning for some time.
I saw nothing in that speech that even hinted at racism, or that it was designed to appeal to a racist audience.
That’s a real stretch, “discovering” racist motives from the location and content and timing of that speech.
The students who used free speech in the 60’s on campus took over the Education Industry and became good Communists, controlling speech and thoughts.
G. Mason and Mike Appleton……I graduated from college over 40 years ago.
The professors tended to be fairly liberal, but the “groupthink” and extreme, phony political correctness I see example of today was not ingrained way back when.
I have a very conservative friend who went to U/C Berkley. It’s funny to think about him functioning, maybe “agitating”, back in the late 1960s-early @1970s.
Bruce Dern shot John Wayne in the back…..killed him….I think the movie was The Cowboys, about 1970.
Wayne said to Dern “You know, America will hate you for that”.
Dern said “yeah, but they’re gonna love me at Berkley”.
I don’t think I would survive as a student at some of these campuses today, let alone as a teacher.
I could consider myself a liberal as well. I am especially disappointed with the “liberal media” and those sites who seem to be far more interested in identity politics than the truth. This story is very simple and it has been pollluted beyond belief
Scott, Welcome to the jungle. I, and all normal people support you and your family in the fight to preserve and protect the Constitution. We have some insufferable hand wringers here. Bettykath is a longtime black guilt person who does not associate w/ black people, just worships them from afar. I had occasion to discuss this case w/ a black buddy of mine. He totally supports you and your family and will be reaching out to you via Twitter.
Mike Appleton, who wrote a comment in support of your wife, is as liberal as they come, but a free speech purist. He is currently on the Endangered Species list.
Some all black university or college should offer Prof. Quenette a good paying job to teach the students correctly.
When evaluating the mentally deranged students who complained in KU about the talk in class they need to be evaluated on both sides of the mental health aisle. Psychotic or retarded. There is a huge difference. Electro shock treatment will not do a retarded person any good. Tom Eagleton had ECT way back in the days. The shrinks then at Renard in Saint Louis were the Organic School of Psychiatry. They were too radical. On the lessor end of mental illness people can be talked to by a psychologist. Yo Bro…
The fact that the university spent months “investigating” Professor Quenette of this baseless accusation is the punishment the university intended to levy against her; at a minimum. Months required to investigate a few spoken words? There is no cause for an investigation to last more than a few hours. But, instead, the university prolonged the issue deliberately. I have written on several occasions how the investigation itself is often used as a form of punishment, knowing all to well to the accusers no possible conviction will occur.
I suspect the required diversity training suggested by the university is merely a face saving device for the faculty administration, some continuing to cling to the mistaken belief Professor Quenette was in the wrong.
As most of you know, I oppose all speech codes as blatant violations of the First Amendment. This case is a perfect example. It is increasingly apparent to me that even were I academically qualified to teach, I wouldn’t survive five minutes on most college campuses.
“If you want to know about oppression, ask the one who is being oppressed, not the oppressor.”
Bettykath,
Pretty much the same thinking that has given us a living constitution. Forget the “intent” of those that uttered the words and apply your own meaning. NO, the “listener” has as much responsibility to get clarity of intent as the “speaker” has on providing it. If in your example the roles were reversed, should the white guy have any less cause to be offended? The words are identical but each listener brings in their bias, their worldview. Using your logic then EVERYONE would be justified in claiming EVERYTHING is offensive. Our society would come to a screeching halt while everything winds its way through the courts.
@Betty Kath
The jig is almost up. Your type of whiny race pandering is being called out by more and more blacks themselves, who are finally seeing white liberals for what they are —-more dangerous to blacks than the KKK! Perhaps the black dude who wrote this needs some sensitivity training???
https://pansiesforplato.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/the-manifesto-of-ascendancy-for-the-modern-american-
nigger.pdf
Perhaps you can teach this black man how “White Privilege” has confused him, or teach him how maybe he just isn’t black enough. Here is the first 25 pages of his book:
https://pansiesforplato.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/the-un-civil-war-blacks-vs-niggers-by-taleeb-starkes.pdf
Squeeky Frommn
Girl Reporter
@PhillyT
Thank you for giving me a perfect example of how Liberals attempt to “argue”, and how that same argument is usually nothing but a disguised ad hominem attack. You just said:
– – – Do you know why Reagan began his campaign for the White House in Philadelphia, Mississippi giving a speech on “states rights”?- – –
Is that an argument, or does your statement even try to make a cogent point? No. You simply lay out “Reagan” in a sentence near the term “states rights”, with the implication being that somehow makes a Reagan what, a Racissss! maybe???
How about providing the actual speech, and the parts of it where Reagan said something Racissss! ??? Nope, we don’t get that from you. We are simply left to “imagine” that you have made an argument, when all you have done is just mutter some more inanities and we are just supposed to somehow arrive at a negative impression of Reagan.
You could have actually laid out the source of “states rights” [the Constitution], and given some reason why you think the Constitution was wrong. You could have even tried to distinguish the “states rights” issues of certain states granting gays the right to marry years before the SCOTUS ruling, and how “state rights” were just spiffy for those states, and yet not spiffy for other states who exercise their “rights.”.
But no. Liberals seldom fail to disappoint. They just come out, launch a senseles,s smeary-y canard, and then priss around like they have just thrown pearls to all of us ignorant swine. Why don’t you go back and really study your remark and try to understand why it is nothing but a thinly disguised and really dumb ad hominem attack.
See this as a “learnable moment.”
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“If you want to know about oppression, ask the one who is being oppressed, not the oppressor. Many of those participating in the oppression are well intentioned and not aware of how their words or actions are received as acts of oppression.”
So we’re just to accept on face whenever someone is “oppressed”? Tell me, using some critical thinking skills, where the oppression takes place?
Do you know what oppression is? 120 days of fearing you will no longer have an income, having to put off buying a house, wondering if your kid has to change schools. Searching everywhere in the country for another job and having your name blown up all over the media as a “racist” That’s pretty oppressing.
Squeeky,
Do you know why Regan began his campaign for the White House in Philadelphia, Mississippi giving a speech on “states rights”?