While Johnny Mandel sang “suicide is painless,” it is apparently also ethical. Duquesne University Psychology professor Derek Hook is under fire this week after arguing in class that white people may find that the ethical option for the dismantling of white culture is suicide. As will likely come as little surprise to many on this blog, I oppose calls for Hook’s termination as a matter of academic freedom.
In a class to Baltimore-based American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work in June available on Twitter, Hook used a quote by South African philosophy professor, Terblanche Delport, that “White people should commit suicide as an ethical act.” Delport was discussing the movement for equality in South Africa. Delport stated:
“If the goal is to dismantle white supremacy, and white supremacy is white culture … then the goal has to be to dismantle white culture and ultimately white people themselves. The total integration into Africa by white people will also automatically then mean the death of white people as white as a concept would not exist anymore.”
Hook stated “there was something ethical in Delport’s statements” since, as Delport argued, “The only way then for white people to become part of Africa is to not exist as white people anymore.” Hook then added I want to suggest that psychoanalytically we could even make the argument that there was something ethical in Delport’s statements.” While noting that Delport wanted to stir up passions as a “fighter academic,” “nevertheless, I want to make the argument that there is some kind of ethical dimension to his, his provocations.”
Hook praised Delport taking “his White audience to the threshold of a type of symbolic extinction … he took them to a proposed end of whiteness” and “offered his White audience the opportunity to” contemplate “the castration of whiteness.”
The University has insisted that Hook did not endorse a call for white suicide and is being misrepresented in his use of the material.
The controversy in my view is a classic fight over academic freedom. Hook was introducing a radical and controversial theory in discussing the underlying issues. Professors often try to provoke emotions in classes, even pushing students into uncomfortable positions on the extremes of social or political issues. Many of us try to force students out of their comfort zones to get them to defend core principles or force them to consider opposing views.
Professors need to be able to challenge and even provoke their students without fear of being terminated or suspended. My concern is the lack of consistency in the application of academic freedom and free speech principles, including a recent case at St. Joseph’s University. It is doubtful that the university would be equally supportive if Hook discussed the value of other races committing suicide, even as a hypothetical.
Notably, Pennsylvania is a state that makes even the encouragement of suicide a crime under 18 U.S.C. 2505:
(a) Causing suicide as criminal homicide.–A person may be convicted of criminal homicide for causing another to commit suicide only if he intentionally causes such suicide by force, duress or deception.
(b) Aiding or soliciting suicide as an independent offense.–A person who intentionally aids or solicits another to commit suicide is guilty of a felony of the second degree if his conduct causes such suicide or an attempted suicide, and otherwise of a misdemeanor of the second degree.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline
1-800-273-8255
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org
“. . . as a matter of academic freedom.”
There is no such thing as “academic freedom.” It is a phony, made-up “right” (by John Dewey and his ilk) that is intended to insulate professors from employer oversight, from criticism, and from the consequences of their irrational ideas.
As per usual for those who are unprincipled, that “right” rides the coattails of hypocrisy. When a professor spouts an academically acceptable opinion, those coattails are long. When not, they’re nonexistent.
Is it possibe that all of this anti-white crap may backfire?
It is certain that it will.
See Newton – For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
As someone who works with young adults and college students, the last year has created a tremendous crisis in mental health that will affect them for decades. It is actually a clear danger that this man is teaching in a college. College students have suffered, especially due to the unrelenting fear mongering and covid-rabidity of the university professors. This type of discourse is evil and he belongs with his comrades – Stalin, Chavez, Mao.
Who hires these people? I must be lucky. I managed to slog through years of university education unscathed by fringe professors.
I also agree that a professor or instructor should be given a certain level of academic freedom but the frequency of bizarre stories hitting the news cycle is increasing and alarming. Perhaps it would be wise to teach a course in freshman orientation on how to detect B.S., how to spot the rabid, radicalized professors and how to stand up to them.
There is one certainty in universities throughout this nation. They are cash starved. If alumni, donors and parents footing the bill for these institutions stood up to this lunacy, they would realize they realize. Have some of our institutions become radical madrasas?
Latitude? Yes. Insanity? No!
They would realize they have the power to stop this madness.
They are NOT cash starved. No matter how much cash they get they’ll always say they need more. Look at the money spent on education over the past 50-60 years and the results of U.S. students in the global rankings and you will see a reverse correlation. The more money they get the worse the results. If we follow the science we should be cutting spending.
Correction: Johnny Mandel did not sing the song “Suicide is Painless.” Johnny Mandel wrote the music and Michael Altman wrote the lyrics. The original version was sung by uncredited session singers John Bahler, Tom Bahler, Ron Hicklin, and Ian Freebairn-Smith, who were also talented musicians. Johnny Mandel has composed and/or arranged scores of great songs. Among the many performers he’s worked with were Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Anita O’Day, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Diane Schuur and Shirley Horn. He won 5 Grammy Awards.
Here’s another great song composed and arranged by Johnny Mandel:
Maybe the real problem is Whites are actually superior?
We have been watching is horror the leadership of the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Media gurus like Joy Reid, and Don Lemon.
We have the history of the African Continent. Black rule comes to power and people start starving.
Iowa 2: “Black rule comes to power and people start starving.”
***
And dying.
Interesting that a prof at a Catholic University would take that position.
Suicide has touched my family and I take offense to the statement and the defense of it.
I have to wonder what outrageous statements made by or ideas pushed by professors will Prof. Turley say “basta” to the academic freedom argument. If this guy was lecturing to a group of first graders, telling them that because they are white they should kill themselves, would Prof. Turley argue that he should not be fired in the interest of academic freedom? If there is an unstable white student in his class to whom all the “white hate” rhetoric has been taken to heart and decides now is the time to kill himself, would Prof. Turley argue the professor should not be fired in the interest of academic freedom? As time passes and the pronouncements from professors and teachers become more outrageous, I can’t help but wonder where this is all headed as each call for violence is defended.
So they want to wipe out “whiteness” and everything having to do with white people. Does that mean we get to take all our inventions and scientific discoveries with us? I mean, wouldn’t it be hypocritical of the “woke” mob to denounce whites, science and math, yet continue to benefit from them? They want it all, yet they give so little back.
I think that no law should punish this professor, but that the limits of his “academic freedom” should be determined by the institution that employs him. I recognize that these days almost every university is dependent on federal money, which complicates the question, but generally there is no duty on anyone’s part to subsidize any particular professor or any particular sort of speech. Let universities that want to be woke be woke, and let those who want their children indoctrinated go to them. Surely there will be others left over for people with their heads screwed on right.
The use of the word “castration” is an interesting one. It implies that the toxicity of “whiteness” lies in the male of the species. Interesting, very interesting.
Is Mr. Hook going to lead by example? I hope so.
If he wants to kill himself I say go right ahead. He won’t be missed.
I agree that the professor should be allowed to use material of his choosing to provoke critical thinking. Duquesne University’s defense of the professor is somewhat hollow given its treatment of Professor Gary Shank who committed the unpardonable sin of using the “N word” in a Zoom lecture to illustrate a point about racism. Shank was fired. Hook is defended. This is not an academic freedom issue; instead, it is yet one more example of the blatant double standard that infects so much of academia and our society at large.
Turley focus on another micro-news story sure to gin up his base, while pretending to be for free speech.
I’ve been kicked off this board more times than I can count, presumably for telling a regular here I would “kick his ass” well over a year ago, the clear context indicating i would do this in an argument. Given threats from right wing regulars here in general or in specifics, including references to their armaments, that was an excuse to get rid of me. But in any case, you can’t argue that you are a free speech purists while screening your own page for picayune “violations”.
I’m calling bull sss.t.
As the mother of a white boy who committed suicide at 16, I find this professor’s comments DISGUSTING and SHAMEFUL. That people like this are allowed to teach in a university or any school for that matter is unacceptable. Mr. Turley, he does deserve to be fired. He can spout his thoughts elsewhere.
If the professor was a good professor he would first show us how it’s done, after all he is white.
You take the scalpel in one hand. You take your neck in the other. You bray to Stork and you pull it forward and around. That’s how self-aborton is done.
Adding diversity to the mix is purely genocidal as in braying Jew privilege, and now White privilege.
That’s not an opinion, it’s a prescription and non-sequitur for a problem that largely exists only in the teacher’s mind, and if it is happening in a classroom, at the least it is beyond infantile and gauche. Wouldn’t be any different if he were trying to convince the class that Jesus were their savior. Stop giving them your money, parents, and don’t vote to let the government give them your money.
The former prescription is genocidal with diversitist (e.g. racist) directive, while the latter is your faith, your choice thereafter. Politically congruent (“=”) but not equal. Either way, a separation of logical domains in context is advisable.
Mr. Hook certainly has the right to urge whites to commit suicide.
I urge him to lead the way.