Agatha Christie classics latest to be rewritten for modern sensitivities
Agatha Christie classics latest to be rewritten for modern sensitivities
Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries have original passages reworked or removed in new editions published by HarperCollins.
By Craig Simpson
25 March 2023
Agatha Christie novels have been rewritten for modern sensitivities, The Telegraph can reveal.
Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries have had original passages reworked or removed in new editions published by HarperCollins.
The character of a British tourist venting her frustration at a group of children has been purged from a recent reissue, while a number of references to people smiling and comments on their teeth and physiques, have also been erased.
It comes after books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming were edited by modern publishers.
The new editions of Christie’s works are set to be released or have been released since 2020 by HarperCollins, which is said by insiders to use the services of sensitivity readers. It has created new editions of the entire run of Miss Marple mysteries and selected Poirot novels.
Digital versions of new editions seen by The Telegraph include scores of changes to texts written from 1920 to 1976, stripping them of numerous passages containing descriptions, insults or references to ethnicity, particularly for characters Christie’s protagonists encounter outside the UK.
The author’s own narration, often through the inner monologue of Miss Jane Marple or Hercule Poirot, has been altered in many instances. Sections of dialogue uttered by often unsympathetic characters within the mysteries have also been cut.
In the 1937 Poirot novel Death on the Nile, the character of Mrs Allerton complains that a group of children are pestering her, saying that “they come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children”.
This has been stripped down in a new edition to state: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children”.
Vocabulary has also been altered, with the term “Oriental” removed. Other descriptions have been altered in some instances, with a black servant, originally described as grinning as he understands the need to stay silent about an incident, described as neither black nor smiling but simply as “nodding”.
In a new edition of the 1964 Miss Marple novel A Caribbean Mystery, the amateur detective’s musing that a West Indian hotel worker smiling at her has “such lovely white teeth” has been removed, with similar references to “beautiful teeth” also taken out.
The same book described a prominent female character as having “a torso of black marble such as a sculptor would have enjoyed”, a description absent from the edited version.
References to the Nubian people – an ethnic group that has lived in Egypt for millennia – have been removed from Death on the Nile in many instances, resulting in “the Nubian boatman” becoming simply “the boatman”.
Dialogue in Christie’s 1920 debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles has been altered, so where Poirot once noted that another character is “a Jew, of course”, he now makes no such comment.
In the same book, a young woman described as being “of gypsy type” is now simply “a young woman”, and other references to gypsies have been removed from the text.
The 1979 collection Miss Marple’s Final Cases and Two Other Stories includes the character of an Indian judge who grows angry demanding his breakfast in the original text with “his Indian temper”, a phrase now changed to say “his temper”.
References to “natives” have also been removed or replaced with the word “local”.
Across the revised books, racial descriptions have been altered or removed, including, in A Caribbean Mystery, an entire passage where a character fails to see a black woman in some bushes at night as he walks to his hotel room.
The word “n—–” has been taken out of revised edition, both in Christie’s prose and the dialogue spoken by her characters.
It is not the first time Christie’s works have been altered. Her 1939 novel And Then There Were None was previously published under a different title that included a racist term.
Agatha Christie Limited, a company run by the author’s great grandson James Prichard, is understood to handle licensing for her literary and film rights. The company and HarperCollins have been contacted for comment.
Hamline University, a self described “liberal arts” college, fired a lecturer for showing adult students this piece of controversial art that is considered by art historians to be “a global artistic masterpiece”
Hamline University, a self described “liberal arts” college, fired a lecturer for showing adult students this piece of controversial art that is considered by art historians to be “a global artistic masterpiece.”
Some students had complained to the college that the artwork included a depiction the Prophet Muhammad, which is against their religion. Instead of standing up for the “liberal arts,” the college fired the lecturer who showed the artwork. Art historians consider the artwork to be “a global artistic masterpiece.”
Source for image and information: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/12/26/hamline-university-apparently-fires-art-history-lecturer-for-showing-depictions-of-muhammed/
Texas Wesleyan Cancels Play After Students Say Use of Slur Is Harmful [The writer of the play is black]
Texas Wesleyan Cancels Play After Students Say Use of Slur Is Harmful
The play’s author, who is Black, said he crafted its language to be historically accurate in representing civil rights struggles. But the theater program at the university heeded the call of students.
By April Rubin
October 6, 2022
Texas Wesleyan University halted its production of “Down In Mississippi,” a play about registering voters in the 1960s, after criticism from students who said racist epithets in the script could contribute to a hostile, unwelcoming environment. Its author said he was using that language to represent the reality of the period.
The play by Carlyle Brown, a Black playwright based in Minneapolis, focuses on the efforts of a movement that led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed racial discrimination and protected Black voters. The plot, which is set during the Freedom Summer campaign, centers on three student activists as they travel from New York City to the South to register Black voters.
In telling that story, the playwright included a scene in which a white character used a racial slur, repeatedly, to refer to Black people, opening up a controversy on campus that also spotlighted a larger rift in American society over discussions of race and the portrayal of the struggles of people of color in media and the arts.
Two students who were not part of the production, and were described as a Latinx woman and a Black woman, heard about the scene through word of mouth and submitted bias reports to the university’s administration on Sept. 23, said Chatashia Brown, the university’s assistant director for student diversity and inclusion programs.
Their complaints prompted administrators of the university, in Fort Worth, to host a “listening session” on Sept. 29, which had been previously scheduled as the opening night of the play. Students, actors and members of the university’s faculty and staff joined the open forum, as did Mr. Brown.
Black students said that the explicit language in the play would further aggravate problems on a campus that they said did not cater to the needs of its significant population of students of color. As of fall 2021, 58 percent of students at Texas Wesleyan identified as Asian, Black, Latino or biracial.
“They wanted to kind of come in and be able to see the story and understand its impact without being triggered by it,” Ms. Brown said.
The students who expressed their concerns said that the repetition of the racial slur, spoken about a dozen times in the play, would have caught them off guard and negatively affected their mental health. They worried that the play could lead other students who are not Black to feel more comfortable repeating the slur.
“We pretty much all understand what harmful language is and how it’s been used because a lot of them still deal with that today,” Ms. Brown said. “So they just thought the timing and the place of it was pretty upsetting.”
The playwright said that his intentions were for the performance to be historically accurate. To him, the past shouldn’t be sanitized — and he said that the racial slur was used provocatively, for audience members to feel the impact it has had in real life. The scene portrays one of the play’s three students, who is white, showing the Black student how he would be treated on their journey. Training sessions like the one portrayed were common at the time and were intended to help people understand the severity of the behavior they could face.
Mr. Brown, who joined the listening session on a video call, said the play seems to have become a catalyst for a discussion about racial relations on campus that is separate from his work
“As the conversation went on, a couple students went up and looked at my image on the screen and said, ‘It’s not your play, Mr. Brown; it’s just not the play at this place, at this time,’” he said in an interview.
Last school year, the president of the Black Student Association went on a hunger strike to raise awareness of the lack of diversity on Texas Wesleyan’s campus. Among the sources of her discontent: The university didn’t have substantial classes focused on ethnic or racial studies, despite having a diverse student body; and no established multicultural center existed for students to convene.
The protest, along with other feedback from students about concerns with the campus climate and diversity, prompted the university to announce earlier this year that it would emphasize “community, engagement and inclusion” through a strategic plan, which included measures such as incorporating multiculturalism, inclusion and anti-intolerance in its curriculum; engaging in culturally relevant teaching to connect with students of diverse backgrounds; and identifying a space on campus for multicultural student programs.
However, the discussions around the play showed that students’ grievances had not been addressed to the extent they wanted, said Jaylon Leonard, president of the student body.
“It was not the play itself, but about some things that we had dealt with in the past with the school in regard to diversity and inclusion recently that weren’t unanswered,” he said, adding that “for this to be thrown on top of those issues, it was something that we were not ready to accept.”
Production dates for “Down in Mississippi” were first delayed, and the theater program considered hosting the play off campus at the Jubilee Theatre, a Fort Worth venue that puts on plays that highlight African American experiences. But the faculty of the Texas Wesleyan theater department decided not to put on the play at all, after students involved expressed their discomfort, said Joe Brown, theater chair and professor of theater arts.
The theater program has produced plays about the Holocaust, the gay rights movement, religion and political extremism, and they have been well-regarded in the campus community, Professor Brown said. All of the upcoming plays this season will examine the theme of exclusion.
“Our motivation was what’s happening in the United States right now is pretty scary with women’s rights and L.G.B.T.Q. rights and voter suppression and Black rights,” he said. “There’s some scary things happening in different states, so we felt the timeliness of ‘Is history repeating itself?’”
Students in the play sought the guidance of D. Wambui Richardson, the artistic director of the Jubilee Theatre, early in the production process, since he has put on several other plays with similar themes. He has heard the critique that the approach of a play could be glorifying negative aspects of the Black experience, citing an act on police brutality as an example, Mr. Richardson said.
“Our response was if we’re not creating a space for the conversations to be had in a safe and nurturing environment, then those conversations are not being had,” he said.
He offered for the production of “Down In Mississippi” to be moved to his theater, but Mr. Richardson came to understand that the Fort Worth student community did not seem ready for it.
“A message is only as important and vital as the lips that will repeat it, the ears that will hear it and the legs that will carry it,” Mr. Richardson said.
As the only Black person on the production team, Mya Cockrell, who was responsible for the scenic design, had reservations but felt that she had to come to terms with a show that was moving forward.
She appreciated that members of the cast went out and spoke with people involved in the civil rights movement and learned about the history, but she said that the greater campus community would have benefited from that discussion.
“I personally don’t think that the theater was in a place to put on a show like this,” Ms. Cockrell said, “because I think there’s a lot more that we can do as a community to help people, and I don’t think we were necessarily doing that or educating people outside of the theater.”
At Venice High School in Florida, an advanced placement and honors English teacher quit her job after the school ordered her to remove several books from her classroom shelves
Shame on the school for banning these books.
I trust the teacher to offer these books to her students.
This skilled and talented teacher is very brave to quit her job.
Atlas is shrugging.
Here’s the article:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-quit-sarasota-teachers-story-184654179.html
‘Why I quit’: a Sarasota teacher’s story
By Carrie Seidman
September 9, 2022
Janet Allen comes from a long line of educators. Her mother taught fourth grade, her father high school English. Her sister is a college professor and her brother was a teaching assistant before earning his MD.
“It’s sort of in my DNA,” says Allen, a national board-certified teacher rated “highly effective” during her time in the Sarasota County Schools district.
But this fall, for the first time in 16 years, Allen is not spending days in the classroom and nights grading papers. Last month – on the first day of the current academic year – Allen resigned from Venice High School, where she had taught Advanced Placement and Honors English since 2015.
“I didn’t quit until the last day for any other reason than hope,” Allen says. “Hope that something might change.”
Abruptly, she excuses herself to find some tissues.
“I might cry here,” Allen says apologetically. “It’s like a breakup. A very long, drawn-out breakup.”
Allen is among the teachers who felt so vilified, undermined and threatened by the legislative reforms instituted by Gov. Ron DeSantis that they chose to leave their jobs. The restrictions have not only hamstrung teachers, Allen says, but are harming students by undermining trust and depriving them of the education necessary to compete on a national level.
Allen, who recently shared her decision to leave with the blog Scary Mommy, says that in an effort to rile up his base for votes, DeSantis is “using the teachers and students as kindling and they are getting burned.”
“Education is about understanding as many different possibilities and perspectives as you can,” Allen says. You don’t have to agree with any of them. But to be exclusive with what kids learn is doing them such a great disservice.”
Allen began teaching in 2006 at an impoverished high school on Chicago’s north side with a largely minority and immigrant population. Her masters’ training at the University of Illinois at Chicago instilled a creative and experiential approach – for example, instead of a traditional report, Allen would ask students to create a commercial or a board game for the book they’d read – that proved highly successful.
When Allen and her husband moved to Florida in 2015 to be closer to her parents before the birth of their daughter, she was delighted to be hired at Venice High, a school where “nothing was dripping, I could use as much paper as I wanted – and there was air conditioning!”
The school seemed equally thrilled to have Allen. She says administrators often brought observers to her classroom to “show me off,” and that she was encouraged to “do my own thing.”
“I always branded myself as ‘teaching beyond the test,’” she says. “That I would teach critical thinking and that reading was not just for information, but interpretation. To get students to do something they didn’t think they could do and have it be a memorable thing for the rest of their lives . . . that’s the essence of learning.”
But Allen said she also “always treated my students as if their parents were in the room with me, as though anything was being recorded. I treated them with respect.”
When Allen discovered LGBTQ students at Venice High were being bullied, she volunteered to sponsor the school’s first GSA (Gender and Sexuality Alliance). From her years in Chicago, Allen knew that “sometimes the only place a kid feels safe is at school.” Almost immediately, she detected a shift.
“Whereas before I’d been seen as an asset,” Allen says, “now I was being seen as a liability.”
After the pandemic began – ostensibly for “practical reasons” — Allen says she was instructed to “get everyone on the same page” with standardized assessments. Last year administrations warned that teachers who taught anything outside of the pre-approved syllabus would not be “protected.” As mandates from the state increased and her autonomy dwindled, Allen struggled to maintain her standards.
Allen says she was pressured to change grades and forced to defend herself against lies spread when she became the GSA sponsor. She also says parental complaints were accepted without investigation, and that she was never asked for her side of the story in any conflict.
Allen had always gone above and beyond in her job, but now the stress, long hours and contentious atmosphere were taking a toll on her health and family.
The final straw came last spring when Allen says she was ordered to remove several books from her classroom shelves. One was Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” a book Allen says changed her life after her own sophomore English teacher gave it to her when she was bored.
“Maybe for some people it doesn’t seem like such a big thing to just take it off the shelf,” Allen says. “But for me it became ‘How much can I take? How much can I be a part of something where I’m sacrificing my entire teaching philosophy? If this is happening, what’s next?’”
Allen says that when even fellow teachers urged her to stop teaching certain material for fear of parental reprisal, she had nowhere left to turn for support.
“The message I got was that if I continued to be true to myself and teach the truth about literature and historical context, to allow kids to pick books that interested them and reflected their own lives or explored other cultures and experiences, to not tell on kids who prefer different pronouns, that it would only continue to make life harder for those around me,” she says. “Which would only make me feel even more unwelcome.”
Today Allen is a “room mom” in her 6-year-old daughter’s classroom; she is considering substitute teaching, but has no plans to return full time. She knows she’s fortunate to be able to make that choice but also feels she can “do more to help educators and education as a voter, a writer and a parent, unencumbered by the restrictions of being a teacher.”
A self-described “rebel” whose father, an active teacher’s union member, taught her to “speak truth to power,” Allen scoffs at the suggestion that speaking out publicly about her departure could sabotage future employment. “If burning bridges is what it takes, I’d be happy to burn them all,” Allen says.
“If parents had any idea of what is going on in the schools and how it is affecting teachers, they’d do the same thing. These kids are not going to be prepared for anything on a nationwide scale. And what does that mean about their being prepared for life? I’m much more interested in standing up for kids and educators than in having the opportunity to apply for a job with Sarasota County Schools.”
Clay County father’s mic cut off at school board meeting while reading high school library book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcpRW4ySaG8
https://www.yahoo.com/news/clay-county-father-mic-cut-211133168.html
Clay County father’s mic cut off at school board meeting while reading high school library book
By Jake Stofan
July 19, 2022
A Clay County parent’s dispute with his school board has gotten national attention after he had his microphone turned off while attempting to read a passage out of a book from the Fleming Island High School library, which he considered “pornographic.”
Bruce Friedman is part of a national group called No Left Turn, which keeps a list of books parents have objected to across the country.
He found at least three examples in Clay County Schools he wanted pulled from library shelves, including one book at the Fleming Island High School library, “Lucky” by Alice Sebold.
The book’s description on Amazon characterizes it as a memoir of the author, who was brutally raped at 18 and chronicles her recovery.
Bruce Friedman sees it very differently.
“I don’t know a good parent that wants their child to read porn,” said Friedman.
Friedman took his concerns to the June 30 meeting of the Clay County School Board.
When he attempted to read an excerpt from the book, he was cut off.
“Turn off his microphone please,” said one of the members at the meeting not shown on camera.
The explanation he was given was, “There’s state laws that prohibit, and federal communications laws that prohibit you from publishing these things to a child,” said the person on the microphone.
In a statement provided by a district spokesperson, a similar explanation was given for cutting off Friedman’s microphone.
“When addressing the board, since our meetings are televised, we must abide by FCC laws and regulations,” said the spokesperson.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” said Friedman.
The district informed us an official complaint against “Lucky” was filed after the meeting, and the book has been temporarily pulled from the shelf pending an official review.
Friedman is glad the book is gone, but says he should have never had to complain.
“Why did I have to be the guy who found it? Why am I doing your job? Your job is to protect our children and educate them and send them home safely on the bus. The end,” said Friedman.
According to the district, the book was first purchased in May 2005.
The library had only one copy, which was checked out a total of 14 times since it was purchased.
The last time it had been checked out before being pulled was May 17, 2017.
University drops sonnets because they are ‘products of white western culture’
University drops sonnets because they are ‘products of white western culture’
By Margaret Kelly
May 18, 2022
The form has appealed to major poets for five centuries
The University of Salford, a public university in Greater Manchester, England, removed sonnets and other “pre-established literary forms” from a creative writing course assessment, The Telegraph reported.
Course leaders of a creative writing module titled “Writing Poetry in the Twenty-First Century,” removed an exam section that required students to write the traditional forms, including sestinas and sonnets, according to the newspaper.
The sonnet, a poetic form that likely originated in Italy in the 13th century, has been taken up by writers such as Petrarch, Shakespeare and John Donne, according to Britannica.
“The sonnet is unique among poetic forms in Western literature in that it has retained its appeal for major poets for five centuries,” the encyclopedia stated.
A University of Salford slideshow shared with staff stated that teachers have “simplified the assessment offering choice to write thematically rather than to fit into pre-established literary forms…which tend to the products of white western culture,” according to documents cited by The Telegraph.
The slideshow affirmed the change as an example of best practice in “decolonising the curriculum.” The Telegraph defined “decolonising” as “a term used to describe refocusing curricula away from historically dominant Western material and viewpoints.”
Instead, the course will incorporate “inclusive criteria” that better “reflect and cater for a diverse society,” according to internal training materials review by The Telegraph. The materials also showed that the courses could be upgraded by utilizing “a choice of assessment methods” allowing students to be tested “in a way that suits them.”
British historian: assuming sonnets alienate non-white students is ‘hugely patronising’
The Telegraph quoted Oxford-trained historian Zareer Masani’s statement that the course overhaul was “outrageous.”
“It is hugely patronising to assume non-White students would be put off by Western poetic forms,” he said. “Poetic forms vary widely across the world, but good poetry is universal.”
Scott Thurston, leader of the creative writing program at Salford, said the course was “often updated to take account of new trends and development in contemporary writing,” according to The Telegraph.
Thurston said that teachers would still instruct creative writing students in traditional forms in their first year and give them exercises in writing them. However, the curriculum would also include creative experimentation with students’ “own forms.”
Top female scientist canceled over 13-year-old ‘Michael Jackson’ Halloween costume
Top female scientist canceled over 13-year-old ‘Michael Jackson’ Halloween costume
By Jennifer Kabbany
March 7, 2022
‘UW Medicine is helping to ruin a woman who devoted her career to finding a cure for HIV’
Highly decorated virologist Julie Overbaugh has been forced out of a position of leadership at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and resigned her faculty affiliate position at the University of Washington School of Medicine due to accusations of racism and investigations involving her decision to wear a Michael Jackson costume to a Halloween party in 2009.
A picture of the 13-year-old incident, in which she is accused of wearing “blackface,” has prompted peers to accuse her of racism despite the fact that her research has focused on aiding Africans for the last three decades.
“Overbaugh has devoted her professional career to studying viral pathogens that cause HIV. But amid publishing papers, running her own research lab, and flying back and forth from Kenya, she has also pursued another professional passion: mentoring. Overbaugh is one of two recipients of this year’s Nature Award for Mentoring in Science, which is awarded to select scientists in one country or region each year,” a 2016 report in GeekWire reports.
Last year, Overbaugh was elected to National Academy of Sciences.
“I am really happy to see gender balance in this year’s elected members and hope this signals a future trend,” Overbaugh said at the time. “In my field, HIV, which is a very large field, there have only been a couple of women elected — hopefully, there will be more in the future.”
But Overbaugh’s accomplishments during an age in which female STEM recruitment and retainment is a social justice priority apparently could not outweigh the 2009 incident of emulating the King of Pop at a party that was reportedly themed after Jackson’s famous “Thriller” album.
Members of the Overbaugh lab apparently enjoy celebrating Halloween and have posted pictures of its themed parties every year. In past years they have dressed as emojis, bumble bees, fish — and even as “Binders of Babes” — a riff on Republican Mitt Romney’s gaffe while running for president.
The picture from the year 2009 is conspicuously missing from the webpage.
“The act depicted in the photo is racist, offensive and hurtful, and we offer our sincere apologies to anyone who has experienced pain or upset because of the act or this photo,” the cancer center announced in mid-February, adding Overbaugh was put on administrative leave and placed under investigation.
“Dr. Overbaugh has stepped down from her senior vice president role at Fred Hutch. She will continue working in her lab and will take a hiatus from her leadership duties in the Office of Education & Training. During this time, she will engage in an intensive education and reflection process.”
The Federalist reports:
Though the incident didn’t occur at UW Medicine, its CEO and equity officer also waded into the faux controversy. UW Medicine CEO Dr. Paul Ramsey and Chief Equity Officer Paula Houston notified UW Medicine staff in an email that Overbaugh was punished for engaging in the “racist, dehumanizing, and abhorrent act” of “blackface.” During a separate formal review process for UW faculty, the email confirmed, Overbaugh resigned from her UW affiliate faculty member appointment.
Overbaugh released a short statement to me. “I did not know the association of this with blackface at the time, in 2009, but understand the offense that is associated with this now,” she said. “I have apologized for this both publicly and privately and beyond that have no other comments.”
Ramsey and Houston claim that the UW Medicine community was “harmed” by the 13-year-old photo that most staff didn’t know existed until reading about it in the Feb. 25 email. “We acknowledge that our community has been harmed by this incident and the fact that 13 years elapsed before action was taken,” they wrote. “We are convening a series of affinity group meetings in the next few weeks to provide spaces for mutual support, reflection, and response.”
Neither Ramsey nor Houston explained how the photo “harmed” anyone. Indeed, beyond one confirmed complaint, it’s unclear if anyone even cared about the old photo.
The full memo from UW Medicine was republished by journalist Jesse Singal on his Twitter page. The memo notes that Overbaugh resigned her post at the university once administrators began their own probe into the incident.
Her faculty bio is no longer on the UW School of Medicine website, although its Department of Global Health has, as of Monday afternoon, yet to strip her from its webpage.
“A U. Washington doctor who has dedicated her career to fighting HIV in Africa, including research w/sex workers, is having her reputation and career incinerated because she dressed up as Michael Jackson, in blackface, once in 2009,” Singal noted.
https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1497289911996760064
“Just to situate everyone, the event in question happened several years before the most recent instance of 30 Rock airing blackface-oriented comedy to tens of millions of people. What she did was a bad idea but at the time was obviously not seen as too risque even for network TV,” he added.
Writing for The Federalist, Jason Rantz points out that “UW Medicine is lashing out against Overbaugh to show its wokeness and earn social currency.”
“That UW Medicine is helping to ruin a woman who devoted her career to finding a cure for HIV is immaterial to its leaders. To progressive activists, highlighting one’s virtues is more important than curing a deadly disease.”
Instead of banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools, we should give equal time to the opposing point of view from black conservatives
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 7, 2022
Many people on the left want to teach critical race theory in schools.
Many people on the right want to ban the teaching of the subject in schools.
I propose that we teach critical race theory in schools, with the three following guidelines:
First, it should be age appropriate. High school, yes. Kindergarten, no.
Second, it should be taught under the proper context. Social studies class, yes. Math class, no.
And third, we should give equal time to teach the opposing point of view from black conservatives such as Winsome Sears, Candace Owens, Thomas Sowell, Brandom Tatum, Star Parker, Walter E. Williams, Mia Love, Larry Elder, Josephine Mathias, Deroy Murdock, Herman Cain, and Ben Carson.
In this video from 2005, Whoopi Goldberg explains why she’s against censoring old Looney Tunes cartoons that have racial stereotypes. I agree with her. And I’m against suspending her for her recent comments about the Holocaust. And I’m Jewish.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 2, 2022
Whoopi Goldberg has just been suspended from The View for her recent comments about the Holocaust.
I’m Jewish, and I’m against her suspension. I support free speech for everyone, and for all points of view.
In the past, Goldberg herself has defended free speech for old Looney Tunes cartoons that have racial stereotypes. This video is from The Looney Tunes Collection Vol. 3, which was released in 2005:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCT1clqci3I
I’m Jewish, and I think it’s ridiculous that anyone would be upset by what Whoopi Goldberg said about the Holocaust
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 1, 2022
The people who insist on getting offended and upset by everything are saying that Whoopi Goldberg should be fired for her recent comments about the Holocaust.
I say those people are a bunch of totalitarian idiots.
I support anyone’s right to express their opinion on any subject.
I support Whoopi Goldberg’s right to say what she said about the Holocaust.
And I also support the right of people to say that Goldberg should be fired for her comments about the Holocaust. I disagree with what they say. But I do support their right to say it.
And I also support free speech for people who disagree with me.
I support free speech for everyone.
Free speech is awesome!
The English Touring Opera has just fired 14 of its musicians because they are white
The sacking of white members of the English Touring Opera shows how woke will destroy the arts
I for one would never go to watch an orchestra just because it had been lauded for diversity
By Zoe Strimpel
September 19, 2021
As a child and teenager in Boston, USA, I played in various orchestras. I didn’t much like it, largely because I found it boring, thankless and tiring. Rehearsals were long. Sometimes I didn’t like the music that had been selected: why had the conductor chosen another obscure piece by César Franck? But one thing that I had the luxury of never having to worry about was the ethnic makeup of the players and my own fate auditioning as a young white girl. As it happened, in the youth orchestra scene back then, the top symphonies and seats were dominated by children whose parents were Russian or Chinese. This was not a source of much comment; it’s just how it was.
Since then, we have sunk into such a quagmire of identity politics that even orchestras are now selecting players not because they are the best, but because of their skin colour. The English Touring Opera (ETO) has dropped 14 white musicians in order to increase the ‘diversity’ of the company. Aged between 40 and 60, they’ve been told their contracts will not be renewed because of ‘diversity guidance’ from Arts Council England, which gives the ETO £1.78 million a year.
Arts Council England, one of the most woke funding bodies in the land, protested lamely, arguing that it never meant to get players sacked. “We are now in conversation with ETO to ensure no funding criteria have been breached,” it said. Err. Perhaps this has been a valuable wake-up call for the Arts Council: what did it expect? If you insist on exporting the warped logic of critical race theory, pressuring arts organisations to prioritise skin colour over all else, you can hardly be surprised when they respond like this. If the ETO’s policy of race-based contract non-renewal smacks of the kinds of policies my own grandparents faced in post-Nuremberg Laws Germany, then that is entirely the fault of the institutional bigwigs slurping away at the woke Kool-Aid.
The hideous optics of the ETO debacle offer a particularly stark reminder of how in the era of wokedom, the arts are doomed. Sure, the arts have a social component, but they are fundamentally rooted in creativity and talent, and they must delight, rivet or intrigue. They are not meant to be primarily didactic. I for one would never go to watch an orchestra just because it had been lauded for diversity. I would never read a book because it had been commissioned as part of a ‘diversity and inclusion programme’ and I would never admire a work of art simply because it had emerged from a person of the right colour. Yet such ideas are gaining popularity: earlier this summer, Labour MP Janet Daby, a former shadow minister for faiths, women and equalities, put to then-Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden the merits of issuing “mandatory diversity quotas” for artists that appear in publicly funded galleries like Tate Britain. Thankfully, that quota hasn’t yet been mandated, but under a different government it might well be.
If the ETO rejig seems particularly shocking, the arts have in fact been at it for ages. Back in 2018, Penguin Random House sent a stern email round to agents and employees: the new commissioning policy would have to fall into line with diversity targets, with diversity defined by sexual identity, skin colour and whether one was able-bodied or not. The “company-wide goal” was “for both our new hires and the authors we acquire to reflect UK society by 2025”. Aside from the utter madness of assuming that the percentage of people able to write excellent books should map onto the demographic makeup of British society, this dictum showed that from now on, the narrowest, most box-ticking form of ‘diversity’ – what you are rather than who you are – would determine Penguin’s contribution to literature.
The sprawling diversity and inclusion drives our funding bodies, arts organisations and publishers, who have fallen over themselves to instigate from part of a broader domain of deranged and misapplied moral virtue. One aspect of this became particularly apparent during #MeToo, when man after man found to have a polluted past was chopped from ballet companies, films and comedy careers. I can see why men who sexually molest women might be kicked out of offices. But films? Ballet shows?
A couple of years ago I did a debate at the Oxford Union, arguing that art should not be judged by the biography of the artist, because on that score, there would be no art at all from any time before about five minutes ago. But also because it’s simply wrong: it flattens creative work, with all its many and unpredictable interpretations, into something chilly, Manichean and moralistic.
We won the debate, but only just: there were many who were adamant that art was indistinguishable from the moral virtue of its creator. For today’s arts institutions, virtue and the skin colour of artists have become one and the same thing. Not only is this an immoral equation, as the ETO clearout showed with crystal clarity, but it’s a death knell for the very notion of artistic quality.
Twitter declares access to its platform a ‘human right’ amid censorship of conservatives
https://www.foxnews.com/world/twitter-human-right-censorship-conservatives
Twitter declares access to its platform a ‘human right’ amid censorship of conservatives
The Nigerian government banned Twitter after it deleted a tweet from President Buhari
By Michael Ruiz
June 5, 2021
Twitter declared a free and open Internet to be “an essential human right in modern society” Saturday morning after the Nigerian government banned access to the social media giant following a dispute with its president – even as critics say it suppresses conservative content and bans its own users.
Twitter deleted a fiery tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari that many perceived as a veiled threat against violent separatists in the nation’s southeast – then his government’s information wing responded by banning the social media platform from the country.
https://twitter.com/Policy/status/1401151115022979076
“The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria,” the country’s Federal Ministry of Information and Culture tweeted Friday night.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, also announced that the government would begin licensing social media platforms and “OTT,” or over-the-top, operations, which offer content directly to viewers via the internet.
“We are deeply concerned by the blocking of Twitter in Nigeria,” Twitter’s Public Policy division tweeted in response. “Access to the free and #OpenInternet is an essential human right in modern society. We will work to restore access for all those in Nigeria who rely on Twitter to communicate and connect with the world. #KeepitOn.”
The declaration immediately drew responses from Twitter users who noted that the social media giant’s own policies allow for suspending and banning users – including former President Donald Trump.
https://twitter.com/Liz_Wheeler/status/1401191886405111825
“Access to the free & #OpenInternet is an essential human right in modern society… unless you’re Donald Trump. Or reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Or discussing the biology of gender. Or the murderous dictator of Iran. Or a Chinese Communist Party peon lying about COVID,” conservative author Liz Wheeler wrote in response to Twitter’s tweet.
Another user tweeted the meme of a comic book hero sweating over which button to choose – “Access to Twitter is a human right,” or “Ban these accounts for saying things I don’t like.”
Several other users weighed in with similar sentiments.
https://twitter.com/Policy/status/1401151115022979076
https://twitter.com/TheLaurenChen/status/1401246827396186114
https://twitter.com/HeartlandWX/status/1401210532951212037
The company has also been accused by Republican lawmakers of “shadow-banning” conservatives, or using an algorithm that suppresses the visibility of their tweets.
Twitter also restricted the New York Post’s account over a story about Hunter Biden just days before the 2020 presidential election, then backtracked after the story checked out.
And yet FOX Business reported last month that a network of pro-Iran Twitter accounts got numerous anti-Semitic hashtags trending as violence between Israel and Hamas broke out at its highest levels since 2014.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Buhari’s deleted tweet came in response to arson attacks on government offices and police stations and appeared to threaten ethnic Igbo militants believed to be behind them.
“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of taccess-to-its-platform-a-human-right-amid-censorshhe destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War,” he wrote in the now-deleted tweet. “Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”
The Nigerian president was a military officer in the fight against Igbo separatists who wanted to establish an independent Biafra nation in the country’s bloody civil war. More than 1 million people died in the conflict between 1967 and 1970.
Twitter rules prohibit tweets promoting or threatening violence.
California Leftists Try to Cancel Math Class
California Leftists Try to Cancel Math Class
The proposed curriculum framework aims low, abandons the gifted, and preaches ‘social justice.’
By Williamson M. Evers
May 18, 2021
Oakland, Calif.
If California education officials have their way, generations of students may not know how to calculate an apartment’s square footage or the area of a farm field, but the “mathematics” of political agitation and organizing will be second nature to them. Encouraging those gifted in math to shine will be a distant memory.
This will be the result if a proposed mathematics curriculum framework, which would guide K-12 instruction in the Golden State’s public schools, is approved by California’s Instructional Quality Commission in meetings this week and in August and ratified by the state board of education later this year.
The framework recommends eight times that teachers use a troubling document, “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’ ” Apparently, that’s also racist.
The framework itself rejects preparing students to take Algebra I in eighth grade, a goal reformers have sought since the 1990s. Students in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan master introductory algebra in eighth grade or even earlier.
At one time, California took the goal seriously and made immense progress. California Department of Education data show that while only 16% of students took algebra by eighth grade in 1999, by 2013, 67%—four times as many—were doing so. Success rates, meaning the percentage of students scoring “proficient” or above, kept rising even as enrollment increased dramatically.
The biggest beneficiaries were ethnic minority and low-income students. While student success tripled overall, African-American students’ success rate jumped by a factor of five, and Latinos’ and low-income students’ by a factor of six.
Many highly selective colleges expect students to take calculus in high school. To get to calculus by senior year, students have to proceed on a pathway of advanced courses. The framework condemns this as a “rush to calculus” and indicates that California schools won’t provide such a pathway. California high-school grads may be put at a disadvantage in applying to top colleges.
The framework explicitly rejects “ideas of natural gifts and talents.” That some are gifted in math implies some others aren’t, and this is “inequitable.” The framework’s authors also fear that those designated “gifted” may have their fragile egos hurt if they later lose that designation. So it writes an obituary for gifted-and-talented programs, which would hobble the rise of many talented children in California.
The framework rejects ability grouping, also called tracking, even though studies show that students do better when grouped with others who are progressing in their studies at the same pace. We have known for years, including from a 2009 Fordham Institute study of Massachusetts middle schools, that schools with more tracks have significantly more math students at advanced levels and fewer failing students.
The proposal’s agenda becomes clear when it says math should be taught so it can be used for “social justice.” It extols a fictional teacher who uses class to develop her students’ “sociopolitical consciousness.” Math, it says, is a tool to “change the world.” Teachers are supposed to adopt a “culturally relevant pedagogy,” which includes “the ability to identify, analyze and solve real-world problems, especially those that result in societal inequalities.”
Under this pedagogy, “students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order.” Don’t think that kindergarten is too early for such indoctrination: “Teachers can take a justice-oriented perspective at any grade level, K-12,” the curriculum revisionists write. Students could be taught fractions in the distracting process of learning the math of organizing a protest march.
This program is quite a comedown for math, from an objective academic discipline to a tool for political activism. Society will be harmed: With fewer people who know math well, how are we going to build bridges, launch rockets or advance technologically? Students will pay the heaviest price—and not only in California. As we’ve seen before, what starts in California doesn’t stop here.
My advice to California’s Instructional Quality Commission, when it meets on Wednesday and Thursday to evaluate public comments on the curriculum framework, is to scrap the document and return to the 1997 math content standards and associated framework. Written largely by professors in Stanford’s math department, it resulted in the aforementioned stupendous statewide gains in algebra attainment. Teach math, not propaganda.
2 Oklahoma Boys Pulled From Class for ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-Shirts
I totally support the boys’ right to wear these shirts in school. The school is being completely ridiculous to suspend them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/us/black-lives-matter-shirt-oklahoma-school.html
2 Oklahoma Boys Pulled From Class for ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-Shirts
In addition to the disciplinary action they have faced, the boys’ mother said that at least one of her three sons has been bullied because of the shirts.
May 9, 2021
Two brothers, 8 and 5, were removed from their Oklahoma elementary school classrooms this past week and made to wait out the school day in a front office for wearing T-shirts that read “Black Lives Matter,” according to the boys’ mother.
The superintendent of the Ardmore, Okla., school district where the brothers, Bentlee and Rodney Herbert, attend different schools had previously told their mother, Jordan Herbert, that politics would “not be allowed at school,” Ms. Herbert recalled on Friday.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma has called the incident a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights.
On April 30, Bentlee, who is in the third grade, went to class at Charles Evans Elementary in a Black Lives Matter shirt, which Ms. Herbert said he had picked out himself to wear.
That evening, Ms. Herbert learned that the school’s principal, Denise Brunk, had told Bentlee that he was not allowed to wear the T-shirt. At Ms. Brunk’s direction, he turned the shirt inside out and finished out the school day.
On Monday, Ms. Herbert went to the school to ask the principal what dress-code policy her son had violated, Ms. Herbert said. Ms. Brunk referred her to the Ardmore City Schools superintendent, Kim Holland.
“He told me when the George Floyd case blew up that politics will not be allowed at school,” Ms. Herbert said on Friday, referring to Mr. Holland. “I told him, once again, a ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-shirt is not politics.”
Neither Ms. Brunk nor Mr. Holland responded to emails or phone calls seeking comment on Friday.
On Tuesday, Ms. Herbert’s three sons — Bentlee; Rodney, who is in kindergarten; and Jaelon, a sixth grader, all of whom are Black — went to their schools in matching T-shirts with the words “Black Lives Matter” and an image of a clenched fist on the front.
Later that morning, Ms. Herbert received a call from Rodney’s school, Will Rogers Elementary, telling her that she needed to either bring Rodney a different shirt or let the school provide one for him, or Rodney would be forced to sit in the front office for the rest of the school day. Rodney did not change shirts, and he sat in the office until school was over.
Ms. Herbert learned later that day that Bentlee had also been made to sit in his school’s front office, where he missed recess, and did not eat lunch in the cafeteria with his classmates.
Jaelon, 12, encountered no issues at Ardmore Middle School because of his T-shirt, his mother said.
In an interview with The Daily Ardmoreite, Mr. Holland suggested that the T-shirts were disruptive.
“It’s our interpretation of not creating a disturbance in school,” Mr. Holland told the newspaper. “I don’t want my kids wearing MAGA hats or Trump shirts to school either because it just creates, in this emotionally charged environment, anxiety and issues that I don’t want our kids to deal with.”
Mr. Holland said there had been similar cases in the district this year.
“Most of it has not been an issue until this lady here has been angry about it,” Mr. Holland told The Ardmoreite. “I wish she weren’t so upset.”
Ms. Herbert said she met with Mr. Holland on Monday and asked him what would happen if she sent her children to school in “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts again.
“He told me nothing could be done because it wasn’t against policy,” Ms. Herbert recalled.
Indeed, the dress code outlined in the district’s Elementary Student Handbook makes no mention of politics. It says that “sayings or logos” on shirts or tops “should be in good taste and school appropriate.”
“Any clothing or apparel that disrupts the learning process is prohibited,” the handbook adds, stipulating that principals have the final say on “the appropriateness of dress.”
To Ms. Herbert, the idea that her 8-year-old son would not “be able to express that his life matters” was ludicrous.
On Friday, the A.C.L.U. of Oklahoma sent a letter to Mr. Holland, Ms. Brunk and James Foreman Jr., president of the Ardmore City School Board of Education.
In the letter, the A.C.L.U. said it would be a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights to be prohibited from wearing clothing that says “Black Lives Matter.”
If the school district does not reverse its policy and allow students to wear “Black Lives Matter” clothing, it must be prepared to prove in federal court how wearing the T-shirts creates “a substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities,” the A.C.L.U. said. “Anything less than that would be found to be a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights.”
It cited a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, which addressed the issue of a group of students who wore black armbands to object to the Vietnam War. A principal told the students that they would be suspended if they wore the armbands at school.
The court ruled 7-2 that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
“This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years,” the A.C.L.U. said.
Mr. Foreman and the other members of the school board did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
In addition to issues with disciplinary action, Ms. Herbert said Bentlee has now been bullied at school over his T-shirt. When Bentlee returned from school on Thursday, he told his mother that two white boys had picked on him.
“One boy told him that his life does not matter, and the other one told him to just get suspended,” Ms. Herbert said.
The principal told Ms. Herbert the situation would be handled, she said.
“With everything going on in the world today, I keep my boys informed,” Ms. Herbert said, adding that the family watched the news together. “They know what’s going on.”
Out of principle, Ms. Herbert said she would continue to support her sons in wearing the T-shirts to school.
Despite the turmoil, the shirts were never intended to be an “attention-seeking ordeal,” Ms. Herbert said. “I don’t see Black Lives Matter disrupting anything.”
Bill Maher blasts Democrats’ new ‘morality’ kick: ‘We suck the fun out of everything’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKkJXoSQ7L4
Bill Maher blasts Democrats’ new ‘morality’ kick: ‘We suck the fun out of everything’
Republicans like U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz have helped create a role reversal between the two major parties, the HBO host said Friday
By Joseph A. Wulfsohn
May 8, 2021
“Real Time” host Bill Maher closed his show Friday night by complaining that the Democrats have become a “no fun” party in comparison to the Republicans.
“Once upon the time, the right were the ones offended by everything,” Maher said. “They were the party of speech codes and blacklists and moral panics and demanding some TV show had to go.
“Well, now that’s us. We’re the fun-suckers now. We suck the fun out of everything: Halloween, the Oscars, childhood, Twitter, comedy. It’s like woke kids on campus decided to be all the worst parts of a Southern Baptist.”
He continued: “If Democrats had always policed morality as hard as they do now, they’d be down a lot of heroes. No FDR, JFK, RFK, LBJ, Clinton, Martin Luther King.
“Democrats are now the party that can’t tell the difference between Anthony Weiner and Al Franken.”
“We need to restore the natural order of things,” Maher told viewers at another point. “I don’t want to live in a world where liberals are the uptight ones and conservatives do drugs and get laid.
He also complained that former U.S. Rep. Katie Hill of California, once a rising star among liberals, was forced out of Congress for being in a “throuple” and having nudes photos leaked with her holding a bong, saying “that was too much for our puritanical Democratic Party.”
“We’re the throuple people! The bong people, the tantric sex gurus, not f—in’ Matt Gaetz! Us!” Maher shouted. “We did f—ing in the mud and bra burning and ‘Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out.’ They’re the party who can’t bake wedding cakes for gay people! It’s time to switch back because, frankly, you’re not good at being us and being you sucks.”
Earlier in the monologue, Maher had pointed to recent stories about Republicans appearing to be a wild bunch.
He spoke about U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and cited a report that alleged the congressman had used drugs “like cocaine and ecstasy.”
“Wild hotel suite parties? That’s our thing,” Maher reacted. “Democrats are the party of free love and fun and forgetting where you parked your car. Republicans cannot be the conservative, stick-up-your-ass party and then take our drugs and f— our women.
“JFK used to have nude pool parties in the White House. Now the politician who comes closest to carrying on that legacy is Matt Gaetz? No,” Maher told viewers.
The HBO star then listed several other high-profile Republicans linked to drug and sex scandals, including former House Speaker John Boehner, who famously entered the marijuana business, the reported polyamorous relationships of U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., the sex scandals that removed Jerry Falwell Jr. from Liberty University, and former President Trump’s alleged extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels.
“What happened?!?” Maher exclaimed. “You can always count on Republicans to be the fuddy-duddies, the wet blankets, the bores. They were the Moral Majority, ‘The Book of Virtues.’ Nixon — NIXON! — started the ‘war on drugs’ and [Nancy Reagan] never stopped spinning her catchphrase about it. … Her husband had a commission to root out pornography.
“If it was fun, Republicans were against it. They got apoplectic over Bill Clinton getting a b——.”
A Medical Student Questioned Microaggressions. UVA Branded Him a Threat and Banished Him from Campus.
https://reason.com/2021/04/07/microaggressions-uva-student-kieran-bhattacharya-threat/
A Medical Student Questioned Microaggressions. UVA Branded Him a Threat and Banished Him from Campus.
Kieran Bhattacharya’s First Amendment lawsuit can proceed, a court said.
By Robby Soave
April 7, 2021
Kieran Bhattacharya is a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. On October 25, 2018, he attended a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions. Dissatisfied with the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter—Beverly Cowell Adams, an assistant dean—Bhattacharya raised his hand.
Within a few weeks, as a result of the fallout from Bhattacharya’s question about microagressions, the administration had branded him a threat to the university and banned him from campus. He is now suing UVA for violating his First Amendment rights, and a judge recently ruled that his suit should proceed.
Here was what the student said.
“Thank you for your presentation,” said Bhattacharya, according to an audio recording of the event. “I had a few questions, just to clarify your definition of microaggressions. Is it a requirement, to be a victim of microaggression, that you are a member of a marginalized group?”
Adams replied that it wasn’t a requirement.
Bhattacharya suggested that this was contradictory, since a slide in her presentation had defined microaggressions as negative interactions with members of marginalized groups. Adams and Bhattacharya then clashed for a few minutes about how to define the term. It was a polite disagreement. Adams generally maintained that microaggression theory was a broad and important topic and that the slights caused real harm. Bhattacharya expressed a scientific skepticism that a microaggression could be distinguished from an unintentionally rude statement. His doubts were wellfounded given that microaggression theory is not a particularly rigorous concept.
But Nora Kern, an assistant professor who helped to organize the event, thought Bhattacharya’s questions were a bit too pointed. Immediately following the panel, she filed a “professionalism concern card”—a kind of record of a student’s violations of university policy.
“This student asked a series of questions that were quite antagonistic toward the panel,” wrote Kern. “He pressed on and stated one faculty member was being contradictory. His level of frustration/anger seemed to escalate until another faculty member defused the situation by calling on another student for questions. I am shocked that a med student would show so little respect toward faculty members. It worries me how he will do on wards.”
According to Bhattacharya’s lawsuit, the concern card generated interest from an assistant dean in the medical school, who emailed him and offered to meet. The assistant dean assured him that “I simply want to help you understand and be able to cope with unintended consequences of conversations.”
Bhattacharya responded that contrary to anyone’s assertions, he had not lost his temper or become frustrated with the panel:
“Your observed discomfort of me from wherever you sat was not at all how I felt. I was quite happy that the panel gave me so much time to engage with them about the semantics regarding the comparison of microaggressions and barbs. I have no problems with anyone on the panel; I simply wanted to give them some basic challenges regarding the topic. And I understand that there is a wide range of acceptable interpretations on this. I would be happy to meet with you at your convenience to discuss this further.”
Then a dean of student affairs asked to meet as well.
Meanwhile, the Academic Standards and Achievement Committee met to to discuss the concern card. This committee voted to send Bhattacharya a written reminder to “show mutual respect” to faculty members and “express yourself appropriately.” The committee also suggested that he get counseling.
On November 26, this suggestion became a mandate: The student was informed that he must be evaluated by psychological services before returning to classes. Bhattacharya repeatedly asked university officials to clarify what exactly he was accused of, under whose authority his counseling had been mandated, and why his enrollment status was suddenly in doubt, according to the lawsuit. These queries only appear to have made UVA officials more determined to punish him: Bhattacharya’s mounting frustration with these baseless accusations of unspecified wrongdoings was essentially treated as evidence that he was guilty. At his hearing, he was accused of being “extremely defensive” and ordered to change his “aggressive, threatening behavior.”
He was ultimately suspended for “aggressive and inappropriate interactions in multiple situations.” On December 30, UVA police ordered him to leave campus.
UVA’s administration engaged in behavior that can be described as “gaslighting.” Administrators asserted that Bhattacharya had behaved aggressively when he hadn’t, and then cited his increasing confusion, frustration, and hostility toward the disciplinary process as evidence that he was aggressive. And all of this because Bhattacharya asked an entirely fair question about microaggressions, a fraught subject.
His lawsuit contends that UVA violated his First Amendment rights by retaliating against him for speaking his mind. UVA filed a motion to dismiss the case, but a district court judge ruled that the suit could proceed.
“Bhattacharya sufficiently alleges that Defendants retaliated against him,” wrote the court. “Indeed, they issued a Professionalism Concern Card against him, suspended him from UVA Medical School, required him to undergo counseling and obtain ‘medical clearance’ as a prerequisite for remaining enrolled, and prevented him from appealing his suspension or applying for readmission.”
It is vital that UVA lose this case, and lose badly. Students must have the right to question administrators about poorly formed concepts from social psychology without fearing that they will be branded as threats to public order. That’s the difference between a public university and an asylum.
‘Captain Underpants’ spin-off pulled for ‘passive racism’
https://apnews.com/article/captain-underpants-book-racism-3967162e98a322ae1e121596abf454bc
‘Captain Underpants’ spin-off pulled for ‘passive racism’
By MARK KENNEDY
March 29, 2021
NEW YORK (AP) — A graphic novel for children that was a spin-off of the wildly popular “Captain Underpants” series is being pulled from library and book store shelves after its publisher said it “perpetuates passive racism.”
The book under scrutiny is 2010′s “The Adventures of Ook and Gluk” by Dav Pilkey, who has apologized, saying it “contains harmful racial stereotypes” and is “wrong and harmful to my Asian readers.”
The book follows about a pair of friends who travel from 500,001 B.C. to 2222, where they meet a martial arts instructor who teaches them kung fu and they learn principles found in Chinese philosophy.
Scholastic said it had removed the book from its websites, stopped processing orders for it and sought a return of all inventory. “We will take steps to inform schools and libraries who may still have this title in circulation of our decision to withdraw it from publication,” the publisher said in a statement.
Pilkey in a YouTube statement said he planned to donate his advance and all royalties from the book’s sales to groups dedicated to stopping violence against Asians and to promoting diversity in children’s books and publishing.
“I hope that you, my readers, will forgive me, and learn from my mistake that even unintentional and passive stereotypes and racism are harmful to everyone,” he wrote. “I apologize, and I pledge to do better.”
The decision came after a Korean American father of two young children started a Change.org petition asking for an apology from the publisher and writer.
It also follows a wave of high-profile and sometimes deadly violence against Asian Americans nationwide since the pandemic began.
Earlier this month, the estate of Dr. Seuss said six of his books would no longer be published because they contained depictions of groups that were “hurtful and wrong,” including Asian Americans. The move drew immediate reaction on social media from those who called it another example of “cancel culture.”
Two ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ Episodes No Longer on Nickelodeon
Two ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ Episodes No Longer on Nickelodeon
One episode, which centered on a virus story line, “was never put on the schedule to be sensitive to the pandemic outbreak last year,” a spokesman said. The other, removed three years ago, was not “kid-appropriate.”
By Johnny Diaz
March 30, 2021
Two episodes of the animated series “SpongeBob SquarePants” have been removed from the Nickelodeon cable network — one because of sensitivity related to the pandemic and another for not being “kid-appropriate,” the network said on Tuesday.
The cartoon, which debuted in 1999 on Nickelodeon, follows the underwater misadventures of a talking yellow sea sponge named SpongeBob, who works at a fast-food restaurant, and his starfish buddy Patrick and other aquatic friends.
One episode, titled “Kwarantined Crab,” centers on a virus story line, David Bittler, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, said on Tuesday. The episode features a health inspector who visits the fast-food restaurant where the main character works and finds a case of the “clam flu.”
The episode “was never put on the schedule to be sensitive to the pandemic outbreak last year,” Mr. Bittler said on Tuesday.
Another episode, “Mid-Life Crustacean,” was removed from rotation on the network in 2018 “following a standards review in which we determined some story elements were not kid-appropriate,” Mr. Bittler said.
That episode followed another character, Mr. Krabs, the owner of the fast-food place, who is feeling old and asks SpongeBob and Patrick if he can join them on a wild night out, according to IMDb.com. The trio breaks into a woman’s house and takes her underwear. CNN reported on the removal of the episodes on Tuesday. The “Mid-Life Crustacean” episode is also no longer on Amazon.
News of the episodes’ removal came at a time when other streaming platforms and publishers have sought to give audiences context for older films, television shows and books that carry offensive content.
Last week, a children’s graphic novel by the creator of the popular “Captain Underpants” series was pulled from circulation by its publisher, Scholastic, which said that the book featured images and tropes — including Asian stereotypes — that perpetuate “passive racism.”
The move to pull the book came days after a man opened fire at three massage businesses in and near Atlanta, killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent.
Earlier this month, after WWE wrestling episodes began moving to Peacock, NBCUniversal’s new streaming service, racist moments were removed from old episodes. One episode from 1990 presented a showdown between Roddy Piper, a white wrestler, and Bad News Brown, a Black wrestler. Mr. Piper appeared at the match with half his face painted black.
Also this month, the estate of Dr. Seuss announced that six of his books would no longer be published because they contained depictions of groups that were “hurtful and wrong.”
A progressive organization called Civis Analytics fired a data analyst because he did the job that he was hired to do
Stop Firing the Innocent
June 27, 2020
David Shor, for example, was until recently a data analyst at a progressive consulting firm, Civis Analytics. (Emerson Collective, the majority owner of The Atlantic, is an investor in Civis Analytics.) Shor’s job was to think about how Democrats can win elections. When Omar Wasow, a professor at Princeton, published a paper in the country’s most prestigious political-science journal arguing that nonviolent civil-rights protests had, in the 1960s, been more politically effective than violent ones, Shor tweeted a simple summary of it to his followers.
https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1265998625836019712
Because the tweet coincided with the first mass protests over the killing of George Floyd, it generated some pushback. After a progressive activist accused Shor of “concern trolling for the purposes of increasing democratic turnout,” a number of people on Twitter demanded that he lose his job. Less than a week after he tweeted the findings of Wasow, who is black, Civis’s senior leadership, which is predominantly white, fired Shor.
Loyola University Maryland yanks video promoting black Baltimore entrepreneurs, financial literacy
Loyola University Maryland yanks video promoting black Baltimore entrepreneurs, financial literacy
By Matt Lamb
March 31, 2021
Cancels entire business competition
Loyola University Maryland’s business school removed a video that proposed a project to match black entrepreneurs in Baltimore with black students to provide them with mentoring on business skills and financial literacy.
Several students at the Catholic university in Baltimore submitted the video to the “Building a Better Baltimore” competition as part of the Sellinger School’s annual “Building a Better World Through Business” series that involves various events.
“How might the Baltimore business community effectively advance racial equity?” the proposal competition asked.
The video quotes from slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass and former President Barack Obama to make the case for the mentorship program that focuses on the “black youth of Baltimore.” Students talk about the program while walking through decrepit streets and housing.
The video (below) has been removed by university officials, but someone reuploaded the video and The Fix uploaded it as well to preserve it in case that version is removed.
The program, to be called “Baltimore’s financial fathers” would have worked with the “Baltimore business community” to match black business owners with black youth to become “agents of change.”
However, the university removed the video after complaints from the student government association and an activist group called “Addressing the System.”
Furthermore, the entire competition has been cancelled by the university. “This even [sic] has been cancelled” the page said.
University officials are thankful for community members for “calling us into deeper conversations about institutionalized racism on campus,” Kathleen Getz, the business school dean wrote in an email, a portion of which the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education obtained.
Getz also said that “Black lives matter, and we must demonstrate that through our actions.”
Getz said the university planned to find “opportunities” for the community to “participate in a practice of restorative justice.”
Students drive university to respond
The response came after complaints from some student leaders and activists.
“This is disrespectful on so many levels and is Racist [sic] !!” the student group wrote on Instagram on March 22 along with a screenshot of one student participant walking through crippled buildings while wearing a suit.
“The video promotes the ideology of white saviorsim [sic], white supremacy and most of all a lack of addressing structural racism!” the page said.
“Countless times Loyola has pushed racial issues to the side. And deemed them self’s [sic] as separate from the Baltimore community !!” the activist group said.
The student government, which co-sponsored the annual business promotion event, criticized the video as well.
“[W]e do not condone the racially insensitive messages displayed in the video,” the group posted on social media, in a post archived by FIRE. It appears to be from an Instagram story, which deletes after 24 hours. The post is not visible on its Instagram page.
“As a once-proud Loyola University alum, I am ashamed that my alma mater has succumbed to this kind of pressure,” Giovanni Gravano, a staffer for the free-speech group, wrote in the blog post covering the story.
“Where strong university values once guided Loyola and its initiatives, it seems those have been replaced by submission to politically motivated demands from social media,” Gravano said.
The free-speech group said it is monitoring the situation.
Cancel culture goes after USA Today editor Hemal Jhaveri for saying that the Boulder shooter was white. Here’s a picture of the shooter. He sure looks white to me.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 26, 2021
Hemal Jhaveri just got fired from USA Today because she said the Boulder shooter was white.
Here’s a picture of the Boulder shooter. He sure looks white to me.
But regardless of whether Jhaveri was right or wrong about the shooter’s race, I think it sucks that USA Today fired Jhaveri.
Cancel culture sucks.
Bill Maher says the people who actually live in China don’t care about Dr. Seuss’s “racist” cartoon of a Chinese man holding chopsticks, because they’re too busy learning math and building skyscrapers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DH4v6FnbvM
The real reason that Georgetown Law fired adjunct professor Sandra Sellers is because she told the truth about affirmative action
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 11, 2021
The New York Post just wrote:
Georgetown Law professor caught complaining about black students on Zoom: video
A white Georgetown Law professor was fired Thursday after getting caught on video belittling black students during a Zoom call with a colleague, saying they “usually” perform “just plain at the bottom” of her classes.
Georgetown Law Dean Bill Treanor said he was “appalled” by the conversation between now-terminated adjunct professor Sandra Sellers and another faculty member, David Batson, who was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
Here’s the video of the relevant part of their conversation:
https://twitter.com/hahmad1996/status/1369786323293310985
In the video, Sellers says:
“I hate to say this – I end up having this angst, every semester, that a lot of my lower ones are blacks. Happens almost every semester.”
Sellers was fired for that.
She wasn’t fired for lying.
She was fired for telling the truth about affirmative action.
In 2017, the New York Times wrote:
A 2009 Princeton study showed Asian-Americans had to score 140 points higher on their SATs than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than blacks to have the same chance of admission to leading universities.
Sellers’s statement in the video – the statement for which she was fired – is really no different than that quote from the New York Times.
In 2012, the Atlantic wrote this article, which is called, “The Painful Truth About Affirmative Action.” It explains how affirmative action causes many black students to be “mismatched” to colleges that are above their ability.
According to the article, black students who get admitted to college based on merit tend to end up graduating, whereas black students who get admitted to college based on affirmative action tend to end up dropping out. The solution is to get rid of affirmative action, so that each and every black student will be properly matched to a college that matches their own unique ability.
Graduating from a college that the student got admitted to based on merit, is far, far better than dropping out of a college that the student got admitted to based on affirmative action.
Another point that the Atlantic article repeatedly makes is that black students who get admitted based on merit tend to be far happier than black students who get admitted based on affirmative action.
I strongly recommend reading the entire Atlantic article, which is available here.
Sellers’s statement in the video – the statement for which she was fired – is really no different than that article from the Atlantic.
Sellers wasn’t fired for lying.
She was fired for telling the truth about affirmative action.
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