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.
Having earned degrees from Duquesne University in 1965 (BA) and 1969 (JD), I am beyond embarrassed by Hook. All the nonsensical concerns about academic “freedom” do not excuse this sorry excuse for a professor. The page about him on the University’s website identifies his “specialty” as the Psychology of Racism. That says it all: he must assert that there is enough racism, especially racism practiced by “white” people, to make his “specialty” worthwhile. He looks for it where it does not exist, especially in the USA; otherwise what would he do for a living if he cannot investigate and preach about racism. I was able to read comments about him on a site called ratemyprofessor – sprinkled with chaotic, lacking constructive feedback, arbitrary, confusingly worded multiple choice questions, etc SHAME on Duquesne!
So European-Americans who subscribe to CRT have a moral obligation to commit suicide? What is he waiting for?
Instead, these lost souls are committing Suicide-by-Proxy through infanticide of their own unborn children.
Shameless cowards.
Socialism incubates self-hatred, nihilism, hopelessness.
It is a crime that taxpayers are forced to subsidize the corruption of the nation’s young people by these soulless zombies.
Or, quit being me to please you. Why don’t the non-whites quit being non-white?
Ok. Let’s start with HIM. If he really believes his own tripe, let him start the process.
I now completely understand why there has been so many school shootings. The Teachers are absolute rot.
Is suicide still a mortal sin in Catholicism I don’t know? white supremacy is of course a concept not a physical thing . Rabbit Antlers should be banned.
At what point does Academic freedom transform from an issue regarding the right to free speech to the destruction of education ?
What is too stupid to allow a professor to teach it in a college ?
We improve our lives by creating value, and by trading value for value.
This is as true in academia as elsewhere.
If you are hired to flip burgers and you do not produce any hamburgers – you will be justifiably fired.
Colleges exist to improve students such that they can create greater value for themselves and the rest of us.
Colleges hire professors to perform parts of that task.
Free speech includes the right to advocate for ideas with no value.
in the real world bad ideas die because they have no value – not because they can not be expressed.
Being unable to fire a teacher for teaching ideas with no or negative value impoverishes us all.
The non-white world demands of the white man; “Lay down, for we cannot bear to stand in your shadow!”
Someone should ask South African philosophy professor Terblanche Delport how is that provocative form of thinking working out for whites in South Africa?
I don’t CARE about damn academic freedom anymore, they’re all subversive agents, and he’s now calling for the genocide of MY people. He can be tarred and feathered for all I care at this point.
These ‘academics’ want a race war it seems, and if they keep acting like this, they’ll soon get one.
That’s their goal. The destruction of the United States.
I wonder how many of you actually have had to offer human rights and legal campaigns to challenge the hate of white supremacy. Because if you did, and if you understood the problem, then you would recognize that the incendiary and hate-filled remarks by Duquesne University Psychology professor Derek Hook will only accomplish ONE thing: it will help to spread and normalize white supremacist thinking. That is what this does. It does not improve mercy. It does not improve dignity. It does not improve respect. It does spread equality. It does not encourage compassion. It only waters and fosters the weed of hate and division.
I’m no supremacist, but I sure as hell think it’s nigh time that I have a right to the future self determination of my people and culture, because it’s pretty damn obvious that this rainbow nation BS isn’t going to work, and I will NOT raise children who are ashamed of their heritage, or are confused with a mixed ancestry.
Scrap the universities, end the Civil Rights Act, and let my people go already. I’m tired of playing babysitter for an entire ethnic group in this country.
No! Hook’s accomplishment is to identify himself as a FOOLish academic. I and so many other “people of NO color” simply recognize him and others like him as the racists; they are the ones who have and income and get their jollies trying to paint others as racists – especially if they are “white.”
He’s more than welcome to lead by example. Oh, what’s that? He’s a typical leftist/marxist and won’t do what he wants others else to do? I’m shocked.
Leftism is probably the biggest cancer humanity has ever dealt with. They’re a plague on humanity and I absolutely despise these cretins because they want me dead simply because I refuse to join their mentally ill cult. They also want to destroy the planet and all life on it while trying to claim they want to save it. Just worthless pieces of garbage.
I think you just didn’t understand it.
Paging Michelle Carter,
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michelle-carter-convicted-texting-suicide-case-released-jail-n1120411
Self-abortion is a Choice. Normalizing the Choice is genocide. Then add a diversitist (e.g. racist) twist. There is precedent, from Jew privilege to White privilege, and, of course, the baby “burden” by her Choice in lieu of Her Choice and choices. A wicked solution, a progressive path and grade. Demos-cracy is aborted at the Twilight fringe (e.g. privacy, darkness) with collateral damage.
n.n.
I have no idea what you said, but I’d say you may have a future in academia.
Hear, hear!
“A COMMON NATIONAL SENTIMENT” – “LOVE OF COUNTRY” – “FREE WHITE PERSONS”
_______________________________________________________________________
Assimilation is difficult, if not impossible. The American Founders passed the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798 and 1802 (i.e. four iterations) requiring citizens to be “…free white person(s)…” in order to facilitate absolute assimilation, entirely bereft of “discordant intermixture,” in America.
Hamilton was likewise unconvinced that diversity was a strength. The safety of a republic, according to him, depended “essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment, on a uniformity of principles and habits, on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice, and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.”
He then drew out the implications of this point:
“The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
All tobacco smokers are committing suicide. Guns are quicker. Vaccine refusers are suiciders.
And so is about 80% of the American lifestyle.
From eating ultra processed food stuff, to sitting for 8+ hours a day, staring at a screen.
Excuse me now, I have to tend to livestock, outside, in the fresh air and sun.
Then stack 100 55lbs hay bales. The first of 400.
Upstate Farmer:
There is a new workout equipment that is essentially a durable canvas bag you can fill with sand to the desired weight. Then you can deadlift it, throw it over your shoulder, carry it, etc.
These people are paying money to approximate 15 minutes working at a hay and feed store.
Do you think we could get them to pay us for the privilege of stacking hay or unloading sacks of feed into the goody bucket room?
They could skip the gym and instead volunteer at a large animal rescue facility, a farm…heck the next time they pass someone doing manual labor for a living, they could help them out. These people might benefit from learning what hard work really is.