Academia, Bizarre, Politics

University of California Tells Students “Do Not Allow Others” To Refer To “Chinese Virus”

The Council of Chief Diversity Officers at the University of California has issued a “guidance document” to reject racism, sexism, xenophobia and all hateful or intolerant speech, both in person and online” during this crisis. Specifically, it tells students to stop others from referring to the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus.” The guideline raises renewed questions over the use of diversity rules to restrict or regulate free speech, particularly terms that have strong political or social meaning for students.

UC tells students to “Be an ‘up-stander,’ and discourage others from engaging in such behavior.” It then goes further and states: “Do not use terms such as ‘Chinese Virus’ or other terms which cast either intentional or unintentional projections of hatred toward Asian communities, and do not allow the use of these terms by others.”

I refer to “COVID-19” OR “coronavirus” but it is chilling to see a public university encouraging students to stop others from referring to the “Chinese” or “Wuhan” virus. This remains a point of political debate. Many, including members of Congress continue to use this term because of its origins. Moreover, many object that China has lied about the origins of the virus and arrested scientists who tried to tell the world about its dangers. It is political speech.

We have been discussing the erosion of free speech on campuses with rising speech codes and ambiguous rules barring “microaggressions.”  A small percentage of students and faculty often push for such speech codes and regulation.  However, it is often difficult for students and faculty to object at the risk of being called intolerant or microaggressors.  We discussed previously a Gallup poll confirming that most students feel that they are no longer able to speak freely at college due to this minority of speech intolerant students and faculty. Ninety percent of Pomona students said that they did not feel free to speak openly or freely. It is an indictment of not just Pomona but many of our colleges. Nine out of ten students said that “the campus climate prevents them from saying something others might find offensive.” Nearly two-thirds of faculty feel the same.  Seventy-five percent of conservative and moderate students strongly agree that the school climate hinders their free expression.  Notably, that is “nearly 2.5 times higher than very liberal students.”

The guidelines issued by UC reflects a view that diversity allows for the silencing of others who hold opposing political views. Many view the reference to the Chinese virus as a statement of its origins and no more prejudicial than the Spanish Flu. I have previously stated that I find the use of the Chinese virus to be gratuitous and unscientific. Yet, while I use coronavirus as the term, I agree with others that we need to resist the global effort of China to bury its responsibility in concealing the facts of the outbreak, including barring disclosure during the early critical months of the outbreak.

123 thoughts on “University of California Tells Students “Do Not Allow Others” To Refer To “Chinese Virus””

  1. Whats left of the USSR failed leadership preaching to a captive audience. of willing slaves.

  2. Why the hell not? Wuhan is where it started, isn’t it? Wuhan is in China, isn’t it? We are at least geographically if not politically correct are we not? I am against racism, but facts are fact. The virus having arisen in Wuhan is factual and only racist if one chooses to make it so. Of course Tump did, but only those who can’t spell approve of him.

    1. Call it what you feel the need to call it, but its name (and the correct term) — whether you like it or not — is Covid-19.

    2. Chuck, there is no advantage in calling it the Wuhan flu and much disadvantage. Your insistence on a political name is by definition political correctness, a standard practiced by those on the right and left.

    3. Exactly Chuck. The Left would want you to believe it’s forbidden to identify a virus that originated in Wuhan, China because that is somehow racist, but they will have no problem pandering to the Chinese community as if it’s not racist. Case in point:

      It’s exciting to be here, especially at this time, to be able to be unified with our community,” Pelosi said on Feb. 24. “We want to be vigilant about what is out there in other places. We want to be careful about how we deal with it, but we do want to say to people ‘Come to Chinatown, here we are — we’re, again, careful, safe — and come join us.
      https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/pelosi-encouraged-public-gatherings-in-late-february-weeks-after-trumps-china-travel-ban

      1. It’s not forbidden Olly, it’s a free country. It’s just stupid political correctness begun by he who must dodge responsibility. and you suckers took it and ran.

        1. LOL! So those that express that freedom by calling this virus whatever their heart desires, are the suckers? And those that dutifully conform to the politically-correct terminology are acting out of freedom?

          Kant understood your idea of freedom:

          Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless gladly remain immature for life. For the same reasons, it is all too easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians.
          https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/439/what-is-enlightenment.htm

          1. So, a functional, scientific name for a biological event is politically correct while a name chosen by a politician now picked up by his stooges is not? Is that what you are trying to say Olly?

            1. im not sure what is a bigger waste of energy,. criticizing people for calling it the chinese-wuhan virus, or arguing that it’s an accurate description. this is the sort of conversation that is a mutual waste of energy.

              it’s why i call the virus sars-cov-2, which is what the doctors call it, and the disease it generates is called covid-19. because i am tired and too busy to fence over it. see, in my thinking, there’s a lot of work to be done and it would be wise for both sides who want to either call it something else, or to criticize people for calling it something else, to mutually just drop it

              I am a big Trump fan, and still a supporter, and he should drop it too. it’s not racist, it’s geographically accurate in terms of origin, but its also a massive waste of energy to debate. just call it what the doctors do is the simplest way to describe it.

              however, i am not a trump advisor. and the advisor i most liked, steve bannon, who at end of january was sounding the alarm over the covid-19 disaster unfolding, was ignored by the geniuses in the White house

              the same geniuses who keep telling people they dont need to wear masks! unbelievable

              1. Mr Kurtz – I think Steve Bannon still has the President’s ear, just not as much influence.

              1. well, folks can argue about whatever they like, i am just saying that I find it pointless to debate this subject.

                i think they are trolling you Olly, trolling you and Trump and you guys are falling for the bait.

                rather than be trolled and wrestle with the tar baby, like brer rabbit, how about just go around the tar baby?

                1. Love that movie. I haven’t seen it in years.

                  i think they are trolling you Olly, trolling you and Trump and you guys are falling for the bait.

                  ICYMI: The headline of this post is: University of California Tells Students “Do Not Allow Others” To Refer To “Chinese Virus”. Is this Turley, trolling his own blog? Would you not expect to find comments within such a headline to be a response to the subject? Using your logic, anyone posting under this headline is falling for the bait.

                  1. well olly that’s a good point
                    ‘
                    at the same time i think they have been trolling all along about this topic

                    it’s a whole lot of vain posturing. they’re exaggerating the problem of “hate” allegedly aimed at Asian Americans.

                    I know some white people who aren’t afraid to say or publish “hate” words. But if there is any group that gets the least hate from them, it’s Asians.

                    Asian Americans are generally very well loved by other Americans as a group. You never see Asian Americans en masse doing the bad stuff certain other um demographic groups are well known for doing. Such as rioting.

                    Californians especially, it seems to me, are very welcoming to Asian Americans. And Asian visitors. Asian people make fine fellow Americans! People know that quite well by now. The supposed problem, isn’t one.

                    This is not to say that some bad people won’t justify their violence towards Asian people due to this virus event. That has happened. I had posted a clip of a bunch of black kids tormenting an old vietnamese guy collecting cans for recycling. For example. But those crimes are crimes, and whether they are socalled hate crimes or not is a secondary and perhaps not-useful observation.

                    Unless you are in the business of counting hate incidents and so forth. then, you have to raise the count, to justify your budgets.

                    See, the diversity and inclusion czar for the Cal University system should be fired as useless. They are exaggerating this to justify their own existence on the payroll. Which is about $165,000 a year if I recall the figure. Fire them and hire more janitors to disinfect the premises from sars-cov-2 virus is my recommendation.

                    Trump does not help the project of eliminating these useless bureaucrats, when he doubles down on calling it China virus. He could just drop it and then these useless apparatchiks would have to fabricate some other false problem which would even more expose them as the conflict-exaggerating parasites that they are. I’m sure the frauds over at SPLC are blabbering about this socalled problem too. They’re trying to gin up donations since their founder sleaze dees was exposed as a harasser of women and people of color, himself, for a very long time, as people in house at SPLC turned a blind eye. But they’re still out there trying to scare up donations based on a whole lot of nothing.

                    It’s my thesis that the useless diversity and inclusion bureaucrats, are the ones making a mountain out of a molehill over this, and they need to be ignored. That strategy is called “don’t feed the trolls.”

                    1. Trump does not help…

                      I have a different take and it is not intended as an endorsement of President Trump.

                      Kant’s article regarding What is Enlightenment? highlights the problem we currently face when we remain silent. We now have generations of Americans that lack the ability to think critically. They rely on their political masters to tell them what to think. When confronted with evidence that conflicts with what they ignorantly believe, their first reaction is to become hostile to that source and then dutifully echo the talking points published by their masters. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. President Trump has interrupted that cycle.

                      Everything that has been going on in the Trump era reflects the truth of that. Silence is what has enabled this Master/Slave relationship to grow. Speaking out against it is the only thing we can do peacefully to expose it and bring about a new age of enlightenment. This is not going to be easy. After all, look what it took for the founding generation to see the light.

                    2. Kurtz, the trolling here is by Trump and his willing stooges. The name used and accepted internationally and by scientists are the corona virus and covid-19. No reason to suddenly try to play word games with it except Trump promoted China virus as part of his usual divisive and blame shifting tactics and suddenly we have useful idiots repeating and wanting to to fight about it.

                      For a guy who wants to just drop it, I think you’re leading the word count on the subject, with Olly a close 2nd.it.

                    3. Take a pill Olly. Don’t you have something more important to do than imagining a high drama with you as the queen?

  3. Does “The Council of Chief Diversity” = “The Ministry of Truth”? Sure looks that way.

  4. Just curious, how is sleepy joe Biden referring to this. This is a convienient time to keep joe quiet. Maybe he’ll self quarantine till November.

  5. The president’s earliest comments regarding the virus resulted from the fact that the Chinese government and the W.H.O. both lied when they said that there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission. Several Chinese doctors who put out statements about the severity of the virus have disappeared.

    But here’s something to keep you up at night…………

    We’ve heard a lot about what we have learned from this virus crisis. But what have the Chinese learned? The entire world has been brought to a screeching halt and what did it cost the Chinese — a few thousand people. Hold that thought.

    When Deng Xiaoping visited the United States in 1979, he was asked if he would allow Chinese citizens to emigrate. His response was, “How many do you want? 10 million? 20 million?” So why release the dogs of war when all you have to do to destroy your adversary is release a bug?

    Sleep well.

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