Last month, I remarked on the notion of there being a “politically correct” versus a “politically incorrect way of interpreting American history. Much of the time, I observed, when people talk about this purported force called “political correctness,” they are inconsistent as to what, exactly, they mean. They will start by defining it with anecdotes of someone getting silenced, censured, or punished for expressing a socially conservative opinion or for engaging in a totally innocent action that others unfairly interpret as racist, sexist, homophobic, or insensitive. The principle at that point seems to be freedom of speech, or freedom from being unjustly called a bigot. Then, however, they will throw in some other examples, where what they are complaining about is merely the existence of opinions that they themselves disagree with.
In the blog post that followed, I proceeded to make the point that many of the people who use the term see themselves as being under siege by this sinister force, but that the sinister force is largely an imaginary one, kept alive in a portion of the public mind by certain news outlets and individuals determined to keep it alive, with repetition of the term and with incredibly promiscuous applications of it. I embarked accordingly upon a critique of the work of a writer for National Review, Katherine Timpf, who in a long string of online articles spanning several years has paid particular attention to so-called “PC” occurrences on the college campuses. I want to make clear that what got Ms. Timpf singled out for this attention is not that she’s doing anything more egregious than scores of other published authors and bloggers. Rather, what earned her that dubious honor is the combination of the prominence and prestige of the news organ she writes for (the National Review is, after all, the late William F. Buckley Jr.’s magazine) and the neatness with which she organizes her material, making it easy to find and respond to systematically.
Ms. Timpf makes it especially easy by posting an annual roundup of her “campus PC” stories for the year ending. It is her 2016 roundup that I am in the midst of going through now. Of the 16 cases of “political correctness” on campus that she included for 2016–what passes for proof that “political correctness” is still really bad on the college campuses–I have dealt so far with five. Those five cases, I hope I successfully showed, represented complete and utter non-incidents. None of them involved anybody being unfairly silenced or accused of anything; none of them involved anybody’s freedom of speech being violated; none of them involved action of any kind, or even pronouncements of any kind, made by persons of authority or influence. They were, rather, instances in which somebody expressed an opinion that Ms. Timpf strongly disagreed with. One of those non-incidents in her 2016 roundup was that a professor in Canada published an article in an obscure Canadian-based academic journal–in 2010!
The remaining selections are a mixed bag. In a few cases, Ms. Timpf has a point when it comes to legitimately objecting to how something was handled. Even there, however, the fact that she lumps these incidents together with complete non-incidents and packages the whole thing as representing a coherent, cohesive, and sinister movement, and oversimplifies even what would make some sense to write about, makes the National Review Online not the place you want to look if you want to find out what’s really happening on the campuses. (I would say the same, by the way, about Campus Reform, which seems to have supplied Ms. Timpf with much of her material)
I’ve grouped the remaining items together loosely. The next two involve student-run activities, where little if any controversy appears even to have existed until the busybodies from the outside got wind of them and decided to make some.
Item 13. “A school canceled a performance of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ because a white lady wrote it.”
In her original story, the headline is “University Cancels ‘Vagina Monologues’ Because a White Lady Wrote It.” Ms. Timpf then writes, in her typical manner with these articles of hers, “Makes sense–being white is pretty bad.” She proceeds to inform readers that “Southwestern University in Texas has canceled its annual production of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ because its author, Eve Ensler, is white–and featuring a performance written by a white lady would just not be inclusive to women of other races.”
How is this story inaccurate? Let me count the ways. First off, there was never any “annual” performance of Eve Ensler’s play at Southwestern, though there had been a production of it there two years prior. Second, there was no performance of it scheduled or planned for the spring of 2016, so there was nothing to cancel. Third, the event that did take place in the spring of 2016 (which I’ll get to in a moment) was all the work of one student, 20-year-old sophomore Rachel Arco, not the university administration or any formal department of it, so “the university” didn’t do anything. Finally, when Rachel Arco discussed at the time why she considered her own project idea more suitable for the campus than doing The Vagina Monologues again that year, the fact that Eve Ensler is white did not come up as a factor.
Now, here is what I’ve been able to learn. Rachel Arco, entirely on her own initiative, organized a stage production titled We Are Women in which a cast of women students, some of whom were white, delivered renditions of poems and monologues that somehow spoke personally to them. They actually included selections from The Vagina Monologues (with permission obtained and royalties paid). As she organized the event, Arco told the campus paper why she felt that We Are Women accomplished some goals that were missing from The Vagina Monologues, including the opinion that her project promoted racial inclusiveness better than the Ensler piece.
Yes, that’s right: she expressed an opinion. When the parts of the Timpf story that don’t hold up to verification are stripped away, that is essentially what we’re left with: yet another entry that would fit beautifully if Katherine Timpf wanted to do an annual roundup titled “Instances Where People Expressed Opinions I Disagree with on College Campuses.”
The first online organ to break this non-story was Campus Reform. Although Ms. Timpf does not post a link to this article, it is probably where she got the story (or maybe she got it from one of several other websites that got it from there). Though Campus Reform writer Anthony Gockowski makes the claim (which again is inaccurate) that an annual performance got canceled, there is no suggestion there that Eve Ensler’s white skin was the reason. Thus, your guess is as good as mine as to where Ms. Timpf got that idea from. I think it may have been something akin to the game of Telephone, where each time a story gets retold some aspect of it gets changed. But Ms. Timpf’s headline certainly fits the larger narrative that comes through in many of her articles: that being white is evil on today’s college campuses. (These distorted stories, by the way, resulted in online death threats for Ms. Arco and some of the cast members.)
(I consulted with Rachel Arco for this segment, and want to thank her for her kind cooperation. The Communications office at Southwestern confirmed Ms. Arco’s information for me on every point.)
Ms. Timpf then mentions this other story involving The Vagina Monologues, in which she posts a link to this article on the Campus Reform site, also by Anthony Gockowski. At American University in Washington, DC, unlike at Southwestern, there actually was an annual student-initiated performance of The Vagina Monologues. In 2016 the student government group Women’s Initiative decided to do something else instead, a collection of original pieces titled Breaking Ground Monologues. A student organizer was quoted as saying that Eve Ensler’s play was antiquated and that it put too much emphasis on body parts for female identity. I think that’s called expressing an opinion, and I would expect student organizers to be influenced by their opinions when they make student programming decisions. If their opinions and decisions displease fellow students, I would expect fellow students to speak up for themselves and act accordingly in the next elections. I’m not sure why they need to be second-guessed by outside commentators, or that colleges have any obligation to revere The Vagina Monologues and to keep on doing it year after year, just because they’ve done it before. With that in mind, the title of that site that Ms. Timpf gets so much of her information from, Campus Reform, raises a question. What is their definition of reform–telling student organizers that from now on they have to clear all their programming changes with Anthony Gockowski and Katherine Timpf?
This next item also involves a purely student-driven initiative, a choice to do one thing instead of another, and tortuous efforts by Katherine Timpf to fit this into the paradigm of “political correctness on campus.”
Item 14. “A college outdoors club canceled an event over concerns that it was not inclusive enough to people who do not like to go outdoors.”
Okay, so a student social/recreational club which for several years had run a particular kind of annual activity, connected with bringing in new members, decided to do something else instead this time around. Some people agreed with the decision and the reasons for it; others disagreed. From the story I see on those links, I see nothing stopping any other student activity group from filling the void by organizing the kind of event that the first group had decided not to hold. It’s essentially the story of one student group’s marketing decision. But, because the marketing decision was packaged with the theme of inclusiveness, it apparently fits the narrative of “political correctness,” and thus Ms. Timpf’s readers miles away from the campus need to feel under siege by it.
* * *
None of the items dealt with so far (including the five in the preceding blog post) involve administrative action. A number of the others do, and in these instances, the answer is not necessarily to dismiss them as non-incidents and non-stories, but rather, to deal case-by-case with whether Ms. Timpf has a point in seeing a problem (which sometimes she does), while also critiquing her determination to fit such stories into that larger patchwork of “campus PC.” I turn next to a story where I can only fault Ms. Timpf in part for the approach that she took.
Item 15. “A professor was accused of sexual harassment for saying that effort would count for 10 percent of the grade in his class.”
Let me start with what Ms. Timpf and I agree on 100%: David Seidemann, professor of geology at Brooklyn College, did not deserve to be accused of any kind of “prelude to sexual harassment” for the line in his syllabus that said that the breakdown of grading in his class, alongside exams, would include “Class deportment, effort etc…….10% (applied only to select students when appropriate).” And that does appear to be what happened. A great deal of inter-office dialogue apparently took place on the subject without the inclusion of Prof. Seidemann, after which Prof. Seidemann was told that he had to change his syllabus because that line was a “prelude to sexual harassment” (as opposed to merely saying that some persons might wrongly interpret it as such). From his account, which I believe, he was not at any time asked for his point of view, given a chance to express it, or afforded an opportunity to meet directly with the administrators who had brought up the concerns.
That said, the wording of that line on his syllabus strikes me as a bit open-ended, more so than I would expect students necessarily to feel comfortable with. No, I would not expect a reasonable person to interpret it as a prelude to sexual harassment. I would, however, expect a reasonable person to envision that an unreasonable person–say, a vengeful student dissatisfied with a grade–might put that spin on it with the help of a creative lawyer. I could also expect a reasonable person to want the criteria made clearer, and I’ve found that students generally like grading criteria spelled out precisely. In our correspondence, Prof. Seidemann has told me that the line merely means that he gives extra points to those who conspicuously make effort, rather than imposing penalties on those who conspicuously don’t, and I believe that, but I only know this from our correspondence. Thus, I can see why administrators might ask him to define “effort” more precisely and remove the “select students” reference, so as not to have anything that could be interpreted as allowing for arbitrary favoritism. They could have done so, however, while making clear that they were not accusing him of any wrongdoing, just soliciting his cooperation as a colleague to avoid problems down the road. The fact that they did not see fit to do that is the problem, and both he and Ms. Timpf make a convincing case that college administrations can be unfair in the way they deal with professional employees.
With that in mind, Ms. Timpf’s initial headline–even for the sake of brevity–is still misleading. The actual story has the relevant information, but in the roundup, she oversimplifies it–which she really does not need to do if she wants to make the point that an incident of unfairness occurred. While sexual harassment is a real problem, so is the unfair use of the term in instances when it is clearly far removed from anything that is going on. It is just unfortunate that she feels the need to incorporate it into this larger tapestry that is bound together by such an untenable premise.
(I want to thank David Seidemann for graciously corresponding with me on the subject. There’s a little more in the syllabus that gets mentioned in the story, but I’m going to skip it, other than to say in passing that my reaction would be fairly consistent with what I’ve already written. I trust that nobody will fault this blog post for not being long enough as it is.)
* * *
The next few items that I want to address involve student-to-student interaction and some form of intervention, either by administrators or by student leaders. In several of these instances, what is most clear is the ambiguity of what actually happened. In a number of the instances that follow, if the full story were available (which it’s not), it could make good material for discussion of how administrators and student leaders should respond to conflicts and potential conflicts, with there being no absolutely right answer but rather different ways of looking at it. The problem is that Ms. Timpf sees no ambiguity. Her behavior is pretty much equivalent to walking by where two people are having a quarrel, listening in on a portion of it, then interrupting and turning to one of the disputants to say, “He’s right–you need to get over it.”
The items that follow also involve some key terms that tend to come up in the general discourse on diversity, inclusiveness, and sensitivity: safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions, and cultural appropriation. What I want to make clear before I proceed is that discrediting the use of the term “political correctness,” and the way that commentators like Katheine Timpf lump all these episodes together to add up to it, does not necessarily mean feeling the need to show that every action by any college administration that emphasizes these concepts is right. But any treatment of campus issues that passes for serious journalism needs to show some awareness of why safe spaces get created, why trigger warnings get used, why students are counseled on how to avoid engaging in unintentional microaggressions, and why some students will feel insulted by seeing elements of their cultural heritage used in particular ways that whey will call cultural appropriation. Realistically, one would find some responses more justified and sensible than others, and would welcome serious journalistic treatment of such issues with emphasis on the case-by-case ambiguity of what the right answer is. As noted, the problem with Ms. Timpf’s roundup is her determination to see, not dilemmas and ambiguities worthy of intelligent discussion, but examples of a sinister force to feel under siege by. And, as noted, her readership undoubtedly includes many who thought last November that they needed Donald Trump to rescue them from that state of siege.
Item 1. “A college had to provide counseling and a ‘safe space’ because some students were so upset that a couple of their classmates were drinking tequila and wearing sombreros at the same time.”
KT’s linked source
Ironically, if Ms. Timpf had spent a little more time on this story, she would have gotten herself an even bigger one that could have fit her narrative even better. Not only was there a “safe space” provided for students who were upset, but there were almost impeachment proceedings against two members of the student government who attended it. (The impeachment was aborted on a technicality: student government officers realized that the by-laws, while mentioning impeachment in a general sense, provided no procedure for an impeachment trial, and drawing up that procedure while preparing to implement it in a specific trial was legally shaky.) There was also at least some talk of the possibility of administrative disciplinary sanctions. (See Portland Press Herald, March 4, 2016 and Bowdoin Orient, March 10, 2016.)
What Ms. Timpf does report is that the school offered “safe space” discussion forums and counseling “to help them deal” (these are Ms. Timpf’s words now) “with the fact that their classmates were drinking a kind of booze with a kind of hat on.” This is after she quotes from the initial announcement of the tequila party (a fiesta) and characterizes it as “aiming to poke fun at the way the PC police often lose their minds over pretty much any party where tequila is present.”
Now, I was not at that party, neither was Ms. Timpf, and the information available about it now is quite limited. Thus, I am in no position to say that anything took place there that constituted a racist incident worthy of punitive action. But Ms. Timpf clearly has her mind made up that it was all about “the PC police” objecting to the combination of the drinking of tequila and the wearing of sombreros. Clearly, there were students of Mexican descent who felt that their culture was being mocked. The articles linked above also make clear that there had been a larger problem on campus of non-white students being susceptible to feeling like second-class citizens on campus, due to a wide range of little incidents that had accumulated. But what actually happened at that party is an unanswered question, and Ms. Timpf’s certainty that it was purely a matter of drinking tequilas while wearing sombreros, rather than seeing any ambiguity in the matter, is consistent with a determination to play to readers who want to feel under siege.
Although Ms. Timpf posts a link to this article in the campus newspaper, she does not see fit to engage with any of its substance. We learn from that article that, in fall of 2015, the sailing team had had a “gangster party” in which white students had gone costumed as African Americans of that stereotypical image, and that in the fall semester of 2014 the lacrosse team had had a “Cracksgiving” party with Native American costumes. Disciplinary action did result from at least that one. Indeed, on many campuses in the last few years, the message from a number of student ethnic clubs has been “My culture is not a costume.” Does any of this prove that the participants at that tequila party were all a bunch of evil white racists? No. It does, however, prove that there was too much complexity and ambiguity to the situation to justify Ms. Timpf’s sardonic treatment of the affair, and it is unfortunate that she sees fit to reduce college-age individuals who are fighting against practices that they perceive as bestowing second-class citizenship on them to being “the PC police.”
Item 12. “A football coach at Cornell University apologized for posting a photo of some of his players wearing sombreros.”
Unlike Timpf’s “ski slopes are sexist” nonsense, at least there is a genuinely newsworthy story here. As a matter of fact, it can legitimately be included in a roundup of incidents at college campuses where Ms. Timpf’s opinion–the opinion that the sombrero picture was harmless and no apology was owed for it–could be considered one of the viable points of view. The conflict involves the idea of cultural appropriation and, believe it or not, I actually agree with the general spirit of a comment by Ms. Timpf where, in a much more recent article, she writes, “we live in a country where people from many different cultures are interacting with each other, which means that some elements from one culture are inevitably going to influence the people of another. And do you know what? That’s not bad.” (I’m not endorsing anything in that linked article other than those quoted words.) Moreover, it is made clear in this Cornell story that here, while some Chicano students and a campus advocacy group found a picture of two white football players wearing sombreros as trophies for good performance offensive, other students of similar heritage did not. One student whose family members live in Mexico felt sure that they would feel honored by the picture.
However, as with the Bowdoin story, one learns that there were deeper tensions and greater causes for sensitivity and anger. In particular, there were memories of a football pep rally in 2013 titled “Cinco de Octubre” which mimicked the actual Cinco de Mayo festivities and, alongside an abundance of tacos and sombreros, had a contest for the “best Mexican costume.” Put that together with the long history of prejudice against, and labor exploitation of, Mexican Americans and the fact that certain emotional vulnerabilities come from being at a college miles away from familiar surroundings in the 18-22 age range even in the best of circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the “Cinco de Octubre” affair left a lasting impact–articles about the sombrero incident of 2016 include references to the Cinco de Octubre incident of 2013–and that lesser instances of what some call “cultural appropriation” could spark outcry and anger.
Controversial issues like this are worthy of news coverage, and the difference of opinion between different Mexican American students would make a particularly good angle for serious journalists to spotlight, but what is not needed is a story that says here’s what the PC police are up to now.
Item 2. Students created a “healing space” to recover from a speech that they didn’t even attend.
KT’s linked source (plus a Facebook page announcing the “safe space” event, no longer available)
Without even reading past the headline, one should take immediate notice of the fact that she is writing about an initiative taken by students to express a sentiment. In a nutshell, in February of 2016, the Young America’s Foundation (aka Young Americans for Freedom) chapter at California State University—Los Angeles (where the majority of students are African American) hosted conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, an outspoken critic of the Black Lives Matter movement, to give a talk, and members of the Black Student Union held an event two months later titled “Debrief on Anti-Blackness; Threats of Violence.” In the piece that she wrote at the time of the planned BSU event, Timpf goes totally into lecture mode:
I mean, really, kids? You’re suffering “immense hurt and trauma” and dealing with “emotional, mental, and physical effects” from a speech that happened sort of near you three months ago that you didn’t even attend? You need “healing” from that? Oh boy. I’ve got to say, good luck. If you are suffering from “trauma” from that, then there is no way you are going to handle the real world.
If one really wants to examine the events that transpired from February to April at CSU-LA, and some other events both before and after, what become clear is that the college has had ongoing racial tensions. The night that Ben Shapiro visited that campus, there were some violent confrontations, with conflicting versions reported as to who started what. If Timpf were to make a project out of examining the whole picture of the racial tensions on that campus, it would not be fair to demand that she consider the BSU to be always right–it may well not be. But the approach that she has taken here is not to examine the situation and form a sober analysis, but rather, to take a portion of it out of context, spin it as an incident of “political correctness,” and to deliver a condescending “get over it” lecture to one set of people who are unhappy. (For more, see University Times, February 2, 2016, February 25, 2016, and this op-ed piece, March 2, 2016.)
Item 4. “The ‘War on Harambe'”
University of Massachusetts
KT’s original story KT’s linked source
Clemson University
KT’s original story KT’s linked source
Florida State University
KT’s original story KT’s linked source
First, a quick review: Harambe was the gorilla shot to death at the Cincinnati Zoo when a boy fell into his cage. There was much outcry at the time, questioning whether that action was necessary to save the life of the boy. Not long after the incident, a student at the University of Wisconsin created a meme with the phrase “Dicks Out for Harambe,” and not long after that a song got recorded by that title.
At the University of Massachusetts, the dormitories have floors for residential learning communities that include some whose resident members are bound together by ethnic heritage, including an African American community called Harambe. When the phrase “Dicks Out for Harambe” began appearing on whiteboards at U-Mass, an email got sent out by two dormitory resident assistants (RAs), Colleen and Ryan, admonishing students in the dorm not to post “negative remarks regarding ‘Harambe'” or “phrases/hashtags which encourage the exposition of body parts,” as the former could be seen as “a direct attack to our campus’s African-American community” and the latter as “sexual assault incidences.”
As with Bowdoin, I’m in no position to speak with authority on what was actually going on and what connotations phrases actually had in the atmosphere in which it was taking place, but not only does Ms. Timpf have her mind made up that Colleen and Ryan were totally wrong to send out that email, but she opines,
[A]s time passes on, we are living more and more in a Ryan-and-Colleen culture, where nothing can be seen as “just a joke”…. People, particularly people on college campuses, are encouraged to find ways to be offended at everything around them, in order to prove how much smarter and more culturally conscious they are than everyone around them.
She thus elevates an email written by two RAs in one dorm to the level of a constant state of affairs.
But indeed, that is just one of three Harambe stories. When it comes to the other two, I’ve been unsuccessful in getting any inside information from the campuses in question, but with the information that I do have (the exact same information as Ms. Timpf does), let me see what I can do. The FSU story is fairly easy to dispose of: a bulletin board display on one floor of one dormitory included Harambe on a list of costumes to be discouraged for Halloween on the basis of “cultural appropriation.” Bulletin board displays hardly seem newsworthy at the national level; they are generally the work of student leaders, and since I don’t think I’m in a position to find out who made that display and try to solicit an interview about why Harambe costumes come in that category, there’s little I can say beyond the fact that I don’t know what was really going on there and neither does Ms. Timpf. At Clemson, the thing that’s most obvious is that some kind of incident caused an administrator to call for the removal of public displays related to Harambe in the dorms. What was the incident? I have no idea. What was it that gave Harambe connotations of racism and rape culture? I have no idea. Was there a reason for the administrator to act as she did? I have no idea. Clearly, there was some kind of problem, and clearly, the administrator acted in response to it. I’m in no position to praise her judgment, but what some people fail to realize is that the most intelligent comment that they can make on a situation is frequently “I don’t know.” A variant on that is, “I don’t know, and neither do you.”
Item 9. “Materials distributed by the University of Missouri declared that it is a microaggression to call a disabled person ‘inspiring.’”
(She also originally posted a link to the pamphlet itself, on the University of Missouri’s website, but it is no longer accessible and I was unsuccessful in my efforts to obtain a copy. Related material from that department, however, can be found here.)
First, let me share what comes to mind before I even click any links. I can only think of two contexts when it would seem appropriate to me to tell a person with a disability that I find him or her inspiring. One is if we are very close friends, and I have to assume that best friends rarely need campus diversity offices to teach them how to talk to each other. The other is if, either in a private conversation or a public presentation, the other person makes his or her own disability a central conversation topic. Otherwise, my first assumption tends to be that the person with a disability would prefer not to make the disability the focus of attention, even for its inspiring qualities. So I can certainly picture lots of scenarios where being called “inspiring,” even with the best of intentions, would seem patronizing.
Diversity offices and student support divisions at colleges nationwide make efforts to educate students on how they can bet help each other feel comfortable, and part of that involves the vocabulary word microaggressions: little incidents that seem innocuous to one party but are demeaning to another. Now, the actual pamphlet that Ms. Timpf originally linked is no longer up, but a screen shot of one page of it appears in the Campus Reform story. In a list of mistakes that some people might make when addressing persons with disabilities, that pamphlet includes, among others, infantilization–“Let me do that for you”–and patronization: “You people are so inspiring.” Now, there are actually two different parts of that latter quotation, and what’s at least as patronizing as “inspiring” is the “you people” opening.
When reading pamphlets on “microaggressions” that college support units print up, one is not necessarily going to agree with everything. And nobody is asking Ms. Timpf to. However, like her kindred allies over at the Campus Reform site, she seems to feel the need to caricature and ridicule such initiatives rather than engage intelligently with them. She uses her usual sarcasm in her initial article, where she writes:
Personally, I always considered it pretty normal to be inspired by people who are able to overcome difficulties of any kind—be they physical, mental, socioeconomic, or anything else—but I guess not. Thanks to Mizzou, I can see that this is actually very wrong, and that I am in fact a big jerk.
I am reminded of an episode of the TV crime drama “Cagney and Lacey” some years ago in which, after a rash of attacks on persons using wheelchairs, Cagney goes around the city posing as a wheelchair user. In the process, she learns a few things about what persons with disabilities go through on an everyday basis, including having the wrong things said to them by well-intentioned people (like the mother who yells at her little boy for “staring at the lady,” when what the boy actually did was exchange smiles with her). Does it not make sense that colleges would want students to be aware of how not to be the source of any unintentional insults to others? Does it not make sense to suggest that, at least some of the time, the words “you people are so inspiring” sound patronizing? Is that pamphlet an example of “political correctness” being rampant on campus, or of administrators making conscientious efforts to improve the atmosphere for students with special vulnerabilities? But Ms. Timpf, taking a dismissive approach, lumps yet another non-incident together with what so many Americans imagined they needed Donald Trump to save them from.
11. “Campus crime alerts have trigger warnings now.”
A picture is worth a thousand words. Here’s the complete item that Ms. Timpf and that writer at The Tab are making such a big fuss about.
Note how the trigger warning at the top does not in any way discourage reading the message that follows, but merely lets readers know before they start reading the message that, if they have been traumatized by such events, they should at least prepare themselves before proceeding to read. By no means does it suggest that they should not read it. Is that “political correctness,” or is it consideration?
Next?
* * *
I’ve saved the two stories from England and Scotland for last. Given that National Review is largely, as its title implies, a national magazine–the American nation–and given that KT’s whole implied thesis seems to be that this force called “political correctness” is out of control on the American campuses, I’m not really sure what she thinks she needs to look overseas for. (I also wonder why she thought she needed an obscure Canadian academic journal article written by a Canadian professor back in 2010.) Even so, let us take a quick glance.
Item 10. A student was hit with a “safe space” complaint for raising her hand.
KT’s original story
KT’s linked source; and see also this link
What is involved here is a set of rules for a specific deliberative body, including that when Person A is talking, Person B cannot make gestures of disagreement. Person B can disagree with it is Person B’s turn to talk, but must wait until Person A is done before engaging in any kind of communication, verbal or non, that prematurely starts the process of refuting Person A’s opinion. While Person A is talking, Person A has the floor and the attention.
Now, this rule may have been misapplied, but the existence of the protocol appears to make sense even to the person against whom it may have been misapplied. So by making a story out of this, Miss Timpf is suggesting that deliberative bodies need to contact her and have their protocols cleared with her. Maybe we should even call her “the KT police.”
Item 16. Oxford told its law students that they did not have to learn about rape or violence law if they found it too “triggering.”
As with the police email from the University of Iowa (above), this story deals with the awareness on the part of university administrators that some people, mostly due to their own past traumatic experiences, have difficulty dealing with the topics of rape and molestation. There’s clearly room for different opinions on how this should be handled when it comes to the requirements of law school curriculum, but if allowing students exemptions from certain required curriculum as a result of their personal needs due to past traumas is “political correctness,” then it can be argued that “political correctness” can be defined as any and every effort to be considerate and sensitive to persons with special vulnerabilities and needs, and that the way to avoid the taint of “political correctness” is to have an answering machine on the phone line of the office that processes so many of students’ personal concerns, that just says “Get over it, this is a recording.”
* * *
Here’s what she did for a year-end roundup the year before, and here’s 2014. I hope readers will agree both that the current edition of this blog is long enough and that enough space has been expended on the work of Katherine Timpf, at least for now. But glancing over them, I can plainly see several that come in the “somebody expressed an opinion” category, and I would also guess (just a guess, I haven’t researched them) that at least one or two of the items have certain things in common with Ms. Timpf’s less-than-Pulitzer-worthy reportage on the events at Southwestern University surrounding The Vagina Monologues.
A final note: in a couple of spots above, I linked the perception of being under siege by “political correctness” with an unwillingness to see ambiguity. I do have more to say about that in an upcoming blog, which also deals with the unhappy subject of why we are currently being graced with Donald Trump for a president.
https://www.newcanaannewsonline.com/news/article/In-Pictures-Scottish-tradition-celebrated-in-New-11112006.php
An attention-grabbing discussion is price comment. I think that it is best to write more on this matter, it may not be a taboo subject however typically people are not sufficient to speak on such topics. To the next. Cheers