I just received the following press release from FIRE’s Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, Samantha Harris, which details how institutions of higher learning use threats of reprisal to chill student speech. In this case, the University in question is one of my alma maters, Johns Hopkins—heightening my outrage:
[…] Johns Hopkins University has suspended a student for an entire year for posting Halloween party invitations that some students found offensive on Facebook.com. After the university found 18-year-old junior Justin Park guilty of failing to respect the rights of others, harassment, and intimidation, among other charges, Park sought help from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).
“Jeopardizing a student’s entire academic career because some students were offended by a joke is not just unfairâ€â€it’s cruel,†FIRE Director of Legal and Public Advocacy Samantha Harris said. “Hopkins should teach its students that the way we deal with speech we dislike in a free society is with more speech, not with severe and life-altering punishment.â€Â
The Halloween controversy at Hopkins began on October 26, when Park, the social chair of the Sigma Chi fraternity chapter, posted an advertisement for the fraternity’s “Halloween in the Hood†party on Facebook.com. Director of Greek Affairs Robert Turning asked Park to remove the invitation because some students found it offensive. Park removed the advertisement on October 27. After receiving inquiries into whether the party would still take place, Park posted a different advertisement and Sigma Chi hosted the party on October 28.
On November 6, Associate Dean of Students Dorothy Sheppard sent Park a letter stating that the two Facebook.com advertisements “contained offensive racial stereotyping†and that “there were offensive decorations at the party.†Sheppard’s letter informed Park that he was charged with “failing to respect the rights of others and to refrain from behavior that impairs the university’s purpose or its reputation in the community,†violating the “university’s anti-harassment policy,†“failure to comply with the directions of a university administrator,†“conduct or a pattern of conduct that harasses a person or a group,†and “intimidation.â€Â
On November 9, the Student Conduct Board held a hearing to discuss the charges against Park, and on November 20, Park received another letter from Sheppard stating that he had been found “responsible for all charges.†As the letter explains, Park currently faces suspension from the university until January 2008, during which time he cannot even set foot on campus; completion of 300 hours of community service; an assignment to read 12 books and write a reflection paper on each; and mandatory attendance at a workshop on diversity and race relations. Park filed an appeal of the university’s decision on November 27.
On November 28, FIRE wrote a letter to Johns Hopkins President William Brody to emphasize that Hopkins’ severe treatment of Park is inconsistent with its Undergraduate Student Conduct Code requirement that students must “protect the university as a forum for the free expression of ideas.†FIRE has requested a response to that letter by Tuesday, December 5.
“Hopkins’ unconscionable treatment of Justin Park should shock anyone who values free speech,†Harris said. “Johns Hopkins must not be allowed to promise free speech to its students and then deliver heavy-handed repression. FIRE will keep fighting until Justin Park’s rights are restored and the rights of all Hopkins students are secure.†[…]
I’ve told this story before, but while I was teaching, a friend of mine was hauled before a review board because one of his Black students found Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” both “offensive” and “harrassing”— specifically, its use of the word “nigger.”
No sanctions were leveled against my buddy, but the very fact that he was required to put on a suit and tie and go present a defense reveals all one need know about the contemporary academy: no longer a place for the free exchange of ideas so much as a place where, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, the “correct” ideas, framed in the “proper” language, are celebrated, reiterated, and reinforced.
Like a church, almost.
The plight of Lawrence Summers at Harvard was simply the most high profile example of how entrenched “truths” aren’t to be challenged, even when the challenges go to the very heart of an assertion’s claim to truth—the irony being that many of these now ossified truths (eg. gender trumps sex, race is socially constructed, authenticity grants one absolute moral and intellectual authority, etc.) were born in the wake of the linguistic turn, where Truth itself was reduced to a mere consensus that had become institutionalized and repeated.
In the current case, this student is, in effect, being forcibly re-educated by the Hopkins administration; and the reason for this is that nowadays, instead of teaching students how to think, universities are more and more concerned with making sure students know what to think. And to that end, they are too often willing to resort to intellectual totalitarianism to fend off any potential opportunity for giving “offense,” including restrictive pre-emptive speech codes.
Such, naturally, has the very practical effect of stifling debate and winnowing down “acceptable” intellectual positions that may otherwise find fertile ground in discussions. And without those perspectives, mere assertions, by dint of going unchallenged, become articles of secular faith.
In short, we have reached the point where we have sacrificed inquiry at the altar of appearances, polishing and re-polishing the sham veneer of utopian order that tops the entire cheap edifice. Which is funny, because I’d bet that many of the 60s leftists who brought about the transformation of eductation by introducing postmodern sensibilities into the academy would never have imagined themselves to be the second coming of the Victorians.
Seems our whole society is struggling mightily with “perceived” truths as opposed to the truth. So far the results haven’t been pretty.
I would like to say that this is frankly unbelievable.
Sadly it is all too obviously true.
The student is not who should be suspended, actually the leadership (joke) should all be fired. Until the people who pay the bills at these non-educational institutions stand up and take action, stupidity like this will continue. I’m ready for a tax payer revolt to withhold the percentage of tax money that goes to higher education (joke). Warn your congress member it is coming if they don’t get off of their duff (stop making million dollar kickback/graft deals) and do something they were elected to do.
We will now consecrate the bond of obedience.
THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER (ROUND OF SENSITIVITY / DIVERSITY TRAINING)?
And the left calls conservatives “brownshirts”?
Assholes, one and all…
That seems an insult to the Victorians. They would have used private shame and public opinion, rather than the repressive machinery of an unaccountable bureaucracy…
Any takers on how this ends , other than not well ?
I think much of problem with leftists comes from their view that they possess a privileged viewpoint sitting at the spearpoint of history. Believing in nothing, having unmoored themselves from their biological inheritance, they disconnect from the continuity of human experience that comes from the knowledge that we are the Victorians, and the Puritans; the Romans and the Etruscans; the bronze-age hunter frozen in ice.
To them, there is the past, and there is the now. Having failed to absorb history, failed to connect to the identical internal experience of a thousand generations of man, they cannot see that they have adopted the part of court jester that each generation produces, and occasionally empowers as bloodthirsty tyrant.
It’s an interesting idea, but I think I agree with Major John; they’re actually less Victorian than Stalinist. ‘Re-education’ is an apt word. Card and Coulter are right: Leftism is a secular religion, and a particularly intolerant one.
Hanson had a great essay yesterday in OpinonJournal about how the Left is voluntarily throwing away the precious legacy of the Enlightenment. One thing that alarms me about their repression of free speech is that I have developed a particularly keen hatred for them all.
I’d bet that many of the 60s leftists who brought about the transformation of eductation by introducing postmodern sensibilities into the academy would never have imagined themselves to be the second coming of the Victorians.
If you get in your car and start out on a drive to Los Angeles, but the road you are on leads to New York, you are going to end up in New York no matter how sincerely you “imagine yourself” to be going to Los Angeles.
I don’t know about you, but I judge a driver by his knowledge of where the roads go, not by where he “imagines himself” to be going.
I’m starting to wonder if we’re being too passive in our acceptance of this crap. What do you think would happen if we contacted them and called them on their intolerance? Perhaps the time has come when we have to start fighting back or face the erosion of our rights.
I’ll third Major John and Ahem: there was much more to Victorian civilization than prigs putting trousers on their piano legs. “Little stalins” seems a more apposite fit for the current professoriat.
I think the result will be polarized learning institutions. Professors will choose up philosophical sides–the very notion of “Liberal Arts” will be lost in multiculturalism.
Is there an institution of higher learning that doesn’t hold dear the doctrines of John Hopkins?
What am I going to do with my own kids? I teach them to think for themselves and then they go to a college and get brainwashed by revisionist history and politically correct crap? Faulkner is even suspect? What the hell?
I only used the Victorians as a reference because, though this is clearly more totalitarian than neo-Victorian in fact, the bigger insult to the left is that they should find themselves having become what they so despise: those who were renowned for worrying over propriety of appearances and vectoring that worry into moral outrage.
And let’s face it. Calling many of the hard leftists “Stalinists” is only an insult to them if they don’t bracket out the mass killings. Which they often silently do.
Melissa:
[url=”https://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/21143/” target=”_blank”]
Inoculate them.[/url]
Isn’t this the system that Harry and Nancy want to further subsidize by cutting student loan rates?
Ted Kennedy:
What overwrought nonsense. A student’s desire to turn his Halloween party into a modern-day minstrel show has nothing at all to do with the free exchange of ideas. Your friend’s problem with the review board is a more serious matter, but you admit that he didn’t suffer any consequences from the student’s complaint about Faulkner, so presumably the review board was able to stand up to the rampaging PC horde. Is this the best the conservative grievance lobby can do?
You said “end,” so you know I’m going to say this, because I always do, but it’s true:
A means, especially one “resort[ed] to,” is an endâ€â€the end. Always.
We can argue equally plausibly that any local repressive bureaucracy that calls itself liberal is really Victorian, Stalinist, fascist, ancien régime conservative, medievally religious, Satanically secularâ€â€anything, even liberalâ€â€because that makes not one goddamn atom of difference. They are all all those things, but whatever we name them, what’s “resort[ed] to” is unchanged.
And itâ€â€let’s just say “It,” the eternal “resort,” the horrible need expressed thereâ€â€doesn’t imagine itself at all. It goes on.
Supplicants juggle justifications It doesn’t needâ€â€one generation guardians of tradition, the next idol-smashing radicals, fastened to fashion, scurrying around the anthill squirting random chemical signals, changing nothing, like saintly philosophers wasted a millenium smashing and reassembling the trinity as if solving that puzzle box could join them with it.
God is not mocked, blah blah blah, Nietzsche porn Danzigâ€â€you know what I mean. Dark Side beckons.
It is not overwrought “nonsense”, Leftard, it is a serious attempt to bully a student by the institution of which he is a member.
I would normally hesitate to advocate involving lawyers in anything, but in view of the litigious nature of your society and the clear wrong which is being done to this young man, I would suggest that his case be taken up pro bono by any lawyer that can be found who believes in the right of the weak to be prtected by the law against persecution by the strong.
Funny, that’s not what leftists said when they Photoshopped Lieberman in blackface.
So it’s your position that a year’s suspension, plus the bullshit baggage of reading a dozen books and writing papers, plus attending racial and diversity
re-engineeringtraining, is an appropriate punishment package?Does it strike you as at all ironic that when groups of conservatives complain about sex and violence on TV, they’re told, “Don’t watch! Change the channel!” but people who choose, of their own free will, to visit a Facebook page can get a student kicked off campus by crying about being offended? I’m dying to hear how you’d justify that double standard.
The University’s case against Justin hinges largely on the ads posted on Facebook – this is what they use to justify invoking “behavior that impairs the university’s … reputation in the community.”
By extension, any Johns Hopkins student who commented here and could be identified could conceivably be implicated in the same thought crime. Johns Hopkins policies clearly state that posts by students containing “offensive racial stereotyping†are only allowable in the context of revealing classified details of national security programs.
Very well, Pfc Leftard, you have offended me horribly by characterizing me as a member of “…the conservative grievance lobby.” This is an ethnic characterization I reject in toto, and consider it a grievous insult.
In reparation you get to put your life on hold for a year. Oh, you can go back at the end of it and pick up where you left off, but in the meantime anything that might be conducive to building your future is forbidden. Instead, you get to sit for hours listening to terribly earnest and sincere lectures by disciples of Limbaugh, and write essays approving of them in suitably respectful terms… for a year. Oh, and you have to read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and write book reports sanctifying them and their author.
It’s only a little thing, and of course you won’t take any permanent hurt from it, will you? Minor stuff. Nothing to have a grievance over.
Regards,
Ric
If I hadn’t seen the punishment, I would have been disappointed by the charges. But even if I supported proscecuting thought crimes, I would think a year’s suspention and 300 hours of community service and whatever else they threw at him would seem a bit harsh for putting offensive pictures on a third-party web site.
I forgot to mention that my friend brought a Black lit professor with him to assure the committee that assigning Faulkner is not a hate crime.
What could they do? They may very well have been licking their chops to assert their petty tyrannical powers, but an authentic Black stepped in to set things right.
Her imprimatur may just have saved the day.
Oh, and Pfc Leftard? What were your reactions to Steve Gilliards blackfacing of Michael Steele, or Jane Hamsher and co.’s minstrelization of Lieberman?
Similarly, how do you know that what the student accused here was doing was modern day minstrelizing? Being a Hopkins alum and having driven through the North Howard corridor, I can tell you quite frankly that that is the ‘hood.
Are white students not allowed to recognize and identify that? What if a Black student had decided to organize the same event?
These aren’t rhetorical questions.
As for my reaction being overwrought, I believe others have covered the idiocy of that charge already. Of course, you being on the “correct” side of the PC culture, you probably wouldn’t find yourself forced to undergo diversity indoctrination. All you’d have to do is flash a sign, or assure the committee investigating that you voted straight Democrat last election.
Oh. And that some of your best friends wear hoodies and listen to Jay-Z.
Jeff,
I knew what you meant about “Victorians”…I just wanted to get my own digs in, heh. I am glad you brought this one out into the open for us.
Not by a long shot. If you want an eyeful, view FIRE’s case histories. Pay special attention to how many times the courts rule against the university in question (hint: almost every time).
And regardless of whether or not your characterization is correct, promoting a modern day minstrel show is still not illegal. But clearly it’s of no concern to you if somebody’s Constitutional rights are violated.
As some of you know, I’m a guy who thinks Christianists (to use a term of some unfairness and considerable baggage) should be critically talked to whenever they start infringing on liberties. But I also think that they can talk back, even if they resort to namecalling.
PC doesn’t help anyone. If Michael Richards had said “Negro” instead of “Nigger”, would he be a better person? Would his idiotic meltdown be any less offensive if he had said “African-Americans”? I’m not sure he’d have gotten even Rev. Jackson’s attention.
This Hopkins “crime” is absurd. The punishment is ultra-absurd. And the university should be ashamed of itself. I hate when institutions infringe on liberty. And in this case, it’s a (probably left-leaning) corporation of university trustees who want to defend its PC, allegedly progressive, turf (donations, sought-after minority professors, football-recruits, government subsidies, et cetera). It’s disgusting. Corporate liberalism is an idiotic strain within what is otherwise my favored worldview. In this instance, it’s the (sensible) call for sensitivity enforced by the power of government (or corporation) to make those who are alleged to have been insensitive pay for it. Freedom of speech goes out the window when it is stifled by the threat of punishment.
I’m glad Richards said “nigger”. It allowed us to see him, and him to see himself. Whether healing and reconcialition occurs doesn’t matter to me one bit. What matters is that he spoke his mind. You, me, the NAACP, and people watching/buying Seinfeld or UHF can decide whether he’s worth supporting, boycotting, being an example, or just the butt of bad jokes. But I’m glad he said “nigger” because now we can talk about sensitivity. Same goes for Mel Gibson, whose latest movie looks pretty cool even though I’ll probably wait for Netflix.
We need to hale the Dixie Chicks before a review board. Then all the fuss over their dopey pronouncements will become No Big Deal, and they can stop feeling martyred about it.
Are you going to fight your corner, Leftard? Or are you going to creep away like a whipped cur?
Does he ever?
What is most interesting about this whole sorry episode is that this 18 y/o is being punished for what is actually promoted and celebrated in hip hop music and videos.
The JHU Black Student Union was “offended”?
Look in the mirror, baby.
– Moral lesson: the Left continues to be as children, having discarded all of the customary social constructs in a self-defined fools errand of “personal freedom”, nee rejection of personal responsibility, and conversily, now embrace play-ground tactics, in an effort to suppress those very same constructs that strip them, and their politics, down to the bare feckless essentials. Stiffling counter voices becomes an absolute imparative, when your mantra is so devoid of humanity, and social moors, you have no true defenses. thats why we see all the boisterous, over the top hyperbole whenever their idea’s are challenged, and the requisite accompanying “victimhood” projections. They are simply not serious people. Only the things they are trying to wrought are serious, and seriously flawed.
I don’t know, McGehee, I don’t come here very often. Normally if Dan suggests there is something Jeff has posted which is required reading.
Dan is generally right.
But the level of opposition debate is a bit disappointing.
The treatment being meted out to this boy by his own University seems to me to run counter to everything that America stands for.
From the Examiner:
The invitation encouraged racial-stereotyping costumes, included references to the late attorney Johnnie Cochran and O.J. Simpson, and prefaced descriptions of Baltimore as “a ghetto,†“the hood†and “the HIV pit†with a four-letter epithet.
A small group of black students went to the party and said white students were dressed as pimps, prostitutes  and slaves.
Then again, maybe the whole lot should just lighten up, perhaps a party themed “Unemployed academic failiure Heebs who threaten people with their cocks.”
How well would that go over, Pasty?
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Arrrr, this be most insensitive to we entrepreneurs of the high seas. We may be a bit thuggish at times, tis true, but our contributions to the climate have long been unappreciated.
Yo ho ho.
“Unemployed academic failiure Heebs who threaten people with their cocks.â€Â
– Or possibly a party with the theme:
“SecProgg bigots that hide behind bald faced racist/anti-family/anti-religious cowardly comments, showing their real lack of principles”
– How well would that go over, Lib-turd?
– Maybe if you got a job, you wouldn’t have so much time for your “brave” posts. you think?
How in God’s name do you expect it to get a job? Be reasonable.
Hmmm. It would demonstrate humor and imagination.
Which, coming from that side of the aisle, would leave us all suspecting it was the work of a right-leaning parody group.
The party was in poor taste and no one here is arguing that it wasn’t. However, no one was forced to go to the party, or to stay there if they found it offensive. And poor taste is not grounds for punishment.
Considering you’re too fucking stupid to spell the word “failure” correctly, it’s awfully cute that you’d attack someone else’s academic credentials.
A word to parents out there reviewing the colleges your children are applying for, be afraid, be very afraid…..
“…[be] afraid, be very afraid…..”
– Not really necessary. Simply make sure your child has a broad education, including the vicious, seditious nature of the new Left, and its mentally warped antipithy to all things classically American, including the “agenda’s” of the typical poly-sci prof’s, and they’ll be well equiped to deal with it all. Pre-education is the key. My son comes home every day and relates stories of various teachers Leftist comments, and we discuss. In fact he’s developed it into a kind of “spot the Socialist propaganda” game. I of course coach him in caution of speaking back power to thruthiness. It won’t help his grades, and it just encourages the SecProggs perpetual angst. I’ve taught him, ignoring them is the worst thing you can do to their twisted ideology.
and prefaced descriptions of Baltimore as “a ghetto,†“the hood†and “the HIV pit†with a four-letter epithet.
I live outside of Balturdmore for 3 1/2 years.
This description is kind.
In actuality it consists young urban predators and their scared liberal prey….
They can kill you, but you better not make fun of them or The Authorities Will Notice.
First of all, you needn’t worry: I have sent and financed two youngin’s through that system. In neither case, did the indoctrination take. Neither child is – or was – a conservative, but they retained a large portion of their common sense and I expect they will turn rightward as time goes by.
In fact, the “goody two-shoes teacher’s pets” of the collegiate world are the leftist indoctrinated ones. The real rebels in college are like Brando’s character in The Wild One (when asked what he was rebelling against he replied ‘What do you got?’).
They got a another system created by pompous, self-righteous 68ers. Most college kids see right through it.
Considering you’re too fucking stupid to spell the word “failure†correctly, it’s awfully cute that you’d attack someone else’s academic credentials.
-Sure can and still will. Those of us with jobs who visit these unfortunate mental swamps aren’t really terribly preoccupied with spell-check.
“I live outside of Balturdmore for 3 1/2 years.
This description is kind.
In actuality it consists young urban predators and their scared liberal prey…. ”
-I’ve lived in Baltimore for 12. Not one mugging, car break in, etc. -and I earned a degree. I didn’t scramble between colleges writing unreadable fiction.
I’ve heard those lines about the city before, typically from pussies that live in the counties.
Gotta go. Got a job to do and a party to go to later.
Neither is grounds for punishment. Before you make such an idiotic comment, why don’t you refresh yourself on the 1st Amendment.
Nobody here said his speech wasn’t offensive. We are saying that offensive speech isn’t illegal (incidentally, the courts agree with us). It’s funny to see who the real fascists are. Thoughtcrime anyone?
Of course nevermind the fact that you lived like a Jew in Munich in 1939….
I’ve heard those lines about the city before, typically from pussies that live in the counties.
Yeah, like the carjacked Indian woman who was scraped off her car by the carjackers driving through a barbed-wire fence to get back on the Bal-Wash Parkway. Remember that?
She was still hanging onto the infant carseat the pussy….
“She was still hanging onto the infant carseat the pussy….”
– She probably had offended the car-jackers by calling them car-jackers. How insensitive of her….
For the record, I lived in Baltimore and environs for 26 years—18 in Randallstown, 4 in Reisterstown. And I earned degrees from both Towson (undergrad) and John Hopkins (grad) while in Maryland. And my unreadable fiction has won a few awards.
I guess the judges assumed I was on the correct side of the culture wars at the time of the judging, eh?
Anyway, yet again we find “progressives” like MyPetGloat who bound around the internet with their phony names denigrating real people while trying to airbrush history and turn falsehoods into truth by sheer will and repetition.
My “failure” as an academic, as you call it, consists of a choice to leave a PhD program before completing my foreign language requirement to be a stay at home father. And to write, rather than spend my time grading student papers. So if that’s how you wish to define failure, have at it. After all, we’re most of here pretty used to the eagerness “progressives” show in defining just about everything they aren’t involved with as a “failure.”
SAVE US ALL, ANONYMOUS TROLL! SAVE US FROM OURSELVES!
And hey—make sure you get your kike lines in, too, while you’re at it. Because we know it’s just your way of protecting the brown folk—and that by dint of being a progressive, you cannot be accused of racism or anti-semitism. Your aiming “Heeb” at me is just your way of trying to make a political point. Like Steve Gilliard and Jane Hamsher.
You are one of the good guys.
Whereas those white frat boys? They’re just racist assholes who don’t feel the plight of the black man as deeply as do you. Same goes for the folks at FIRE. Probably Christian conservative fucks, the lot of ‘em. Otherwise, why would they try to protect the Constitutional rights of one of the Bad People?
Tell me: some of your best friends are Black, right?
Prick.
I’m an academic failure as well:
I got my degree and use it in the real world to make money!
turing word: take as in take the money and run–out of academics!
I’m sure. Those fries don’t make themselves.
And (wink, wink) I’ve heard what happens when you rascals from McDs get together after hours. Par-tay!!!
You know what else is racist? “The Wire.”
The writers guild should step in right now and make those responsible for that show take racial sensitivity training classes. Or at the very least have Cliff Huxtable make a cameo, so that we slackjawed yokels don’t go thinking all Blacks are criminal!
SAVE US FROM OURSELVES!
Revolting and in the end counterproductive. What’s next? A genuflection before Sharpton and “Hymietown” Jackson?
Support F.I.R.E. They do a wonderful job.
Anecdotal evidence will get you nowhere. I thought you had a degree? It must be in some bullshit liberal arts subject like womyn’s studies. According to the FBI, Baltimore has one of the highest violent crime rates in the country.
I thought pfc Leftard crept in like a whipped cur. So don’t be too harsh on the poor thing, please, it’s the nature of the beast.
MyPetGloat’s IP resolves to Bally’s Total Fitness in Towson.
Outside Baltimore. Upscale community. Near the university.
Which means MyPetGloat has a better chance of being pantsed by a jock than finding himself in the “hood.”
What a fucking poser.
Hey, Gloat—Howsabout regaling us with some “street” stories about the time you fought an extended turf war over a stairmaster?
What did you expect, Jordan? MyPetShoat demonstrated cognitive dissonance in his first post by using “Heeb” immediately after pointing out a news article focusing on the racist context of the party.
I’ll agree with MyPetShoat having a bullshit liberal arts degree, but more likely it’s something like “Beer Can Design”. S/he does have a job, after all.
I’m actually a Baltimoron and have been all my 22 years of life. I went to University of Maryland Baltimore County undergrad and I am currently attending University of Baltimore School of Law. I have been assaulted once during my attendance (only one semester!) at UB. My father, while attending the school, was mugged once and had his car broken into once (the thief took many of his law school books). There are the nice parts of the city where the attorneys work, the yuppies hang out, and the college kids drink; then there are the parts you wouldn’t drive through in broad daylight. Baltimore is one of the worst cities in the country for crime and STDs; certainly it is parody worthy. For crying out loud, there is a hobo-town across the street from and in direct line-of-sight from the front doors of the Baltimore City Central Police Precinct!
Johns Hopkins has seriously disappointed me with their recent actions. I myself made a bit of a stir with an article I wrote for the UMBC paper during my senior year. The article was concerning the Muhammed cartoon. I was… unsympathetic to the plight of our Muslim brothers. After about 200 or so hate-e-mails, there was a nice little discussion forum organized by the school, though attendance was optional (my editor convinced me to go) and I never was made to apologize. I thought that was a decent way to handle the issue, though I was much more inclined to just say “fuck off and laugh for once.” Even still, that would have been a better route for Hopkins to go. Get everyone in the same place at the same time, and talk like respectful adults sharing the same community.
S/he probably was pantsed by a jock, Jeff. As jocks are usually (but not always) frat members, that would explain MyPetGloat’s antipathy towards fraternities.
His cognitive dissonance is also explained, no doubt a result of post traumatic stress from the pantsing incident.
The poor thing is a victim.
http://www.savejustin.org/
Okay, Slartibartfast, so it’s the worst. And you have statistics. But, you see, I’m lazy.
BUT MYPETCHOAD HAS NEVER BEEN MUGGED WHILE RIDING THE RECUMBENT BIKE AT BALLY’S IN TOWSON!
SO YOUR STATISTICS—LIKE YOUR PRESIDENT—ARE A BIG BUNDLE OF EVIL RACIST FUNDAMENTALIST LIES!
I didn’t catch anywhere in this post where Justin was identified as a Korean American. Well, he is. So there’s that.
Pasty –
I work in Towson. I live in Baltimore city.
Bye.
On what street?
In some places it’s so so tough the Hotels are missing the “E”s in their signs.
Yeah, but there was that once in the shower.
Hey MyPetChoad: are you up for some slumming with me in the strip clubs along Charles Street?
C’mon, it’ll be like an Urban Safari in your own backyard!
You’re a big time urban warrior, c’mon!
If I could pry you out of the wine bars, elitist.
Oh, c’mon, the strip clubs are on Baltimore Street; everyone knows that. They’re a block over from Charles Street. If you’re going much further than that down Charles to find a strip club… well, probably not what you want to see naked, y’know?
Ha! I think you are correct. I lived there 92-95… I dunno, I distinctly remember some strip clubs on Charles Street….
Y’know, during the all-time-high murder rate.
I liked The Wharf Rat at fells point.
And I can tell you, speaking a few words of Korean to the old Korean guys selling crabs can get you a hell of a deal!
MYPETGOAT IS AUTHENTIC – DON’T BE MESSIN WITH A BRO FROM DAH HOOD CRACKERS!
Fight is over Mywetcoat, Now don’t you have some towels to pick up? Or better yet, you had better wipe the sweat off the Nautilas machine before the next customer comes in to order a protein smoothie you putz…..
No sanctions were leveled against my buddy, but the very fact that he was required to put on a suit and tie and go present a defense reveals all one need know about the contemporary academy: no longer a place for the free exchange of ideas so much as a place where, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, the “correct†ideas, framed in the “proper†language, are celebrated, reiterated, and reinforced.
This is true, and it is true because academia is a business. I wrote about this some months ago on my website here.
I have to confess that I visited Baltimore once, and I wasn’t mugged or killed. And I was totally at the toughtest Bally in town.
So, case closed.
$40k for a degree in Ethno-musicology and all I got was this lousey receptionist’s job.
I’ve got to say, both in this thread and in Steve’s article, I think the liberal arts are getting a rough treatment. Being a Poli Sci/Philosophy double major in undergrad, I am well aware of the potential for easy abuse these particular studies present. However, there is very little quite as intellecually fulfilling, or as deep, as an honest study and debate on issues of the social sciences. These sciences are not worthless, or even of less worth than the “hard” sciences. Where would we be without Locke, Nietzsche, Rawls, Hume, Aristotle, Nozick, Descartes, Pierce, Fodor, Turing, Tocqueville, and Wittgenstein? Now, I’m not a disciple of the schools of thought presented by each of those people (being such would require some sort of Multiple Personality Disorder), but the writing of all these men have contributed greatly to the world of thought. Certainly, not every social science student is another Aristotle, but every engineering student isn’t Archimedes either.
I’m enough of a rebel to believe that something doesn’t have to be marketable to be worthwhile. Anyone else?
I’m enough of a rebel to believe that something doesn’t have to be marketable to be worthwhile. Anyone else?
I agree completely.
I love my hobbies too, but I gotta pay for them somehow.
TW: stock as in: I’ll stock the cereal aisle as soon as I finish this Neitzche….
Johns Hopkins—home of the Lancet study.
Why shouldn’t I be surprised by this?
good catch, mishu
Well, another one for the Hall of Fame!
I got my fill of Baltimore running down there from Aberdeen Proving Grounds…I saw the Inner Harbor, and now I feel there is no need to ever go back. I can just go over to Gary, Indiana if I need the same “atmosphere”.
I agree as well, MMShillelagh. But my experience has taught me that anyone who offers up an anonymous college degree as the basis for assuming the moral high ground without being asked is either a BS artist, or has a Liberal Arts degree. Or both.
Sometimes the mud splashes the wrong people, though. My apologies.
Liberal arts majors are no more likely to end up underemployed than any other majors. It depends on the person. My English major daughter got a very nice corporate job right out of college so it’s not impossible. In my years of teaching I’ve seen plenty of total idiots who told me they were going to major in engineering and then did to my dismay. It makes me nervous about bridges and high buildings. The only thing worse is when I have to go to the local hospital, and I see a former student as my nurse. My mind races, “What kind of student was s/he??? Do I really need this blood drawn today??”
– I tend to save that brand of angst for ex-school chums that went on to become airline mechanics, but I’m just weird that way.
MShillelagh:
I don’t have any problem with liberals arts types since I got a couple of degrees in that after I got out of the service. And I think the names you have mentioned are obviously “important.” I certainly wasn’t trying to derogate them.
The problem with the liberal arts is that those courses descend—by nature of the subject matter—into basically classes about morality, with the professor-student consensus I described setting the tone for what is moral, and what is not. It _is_ of course possible to do poli sci, sociology, philosophy, literary criticism, aesthetics, history, and much else in a rigorous, objective, and critical manner. But they are rarely done that way because the students don’t really want that, and the students pipe the tune.
Good luck, life has been good to me, even though my career has nothing to do with my studies. Which, BTW, is fine.
The creature is an antisemitic, illiterate, bullshitting poseur. The sort of Stalinist leftover who in London would live in Brixton and pretend to be ‘invigorated’ by the pulse of the inner shitty.
Not worth consideration, unless you want to bring his ‘heebs’ slur to the attention of whatever passes for the authorities in Baltimore.
I have supported the Orioles since I walked out with a sweet American girl in Salisbury Md, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
Jeff & everyone,
I was just over at Brendan Loy’s site and thought you might be interested in what the thought police are up to at the Notre Dame Law School. Loy’s seriously peeved.
Methinks MyPetChoad lives down near Loyala—technically Baltimore, but home of some of the highest tuition and home owner rates in the state.
But hey—black people sometimes work out at Bally’s, and MyPetChoad gets them a towel for flop sweat if they need a towel for flop sweat. So you see, he’s a real champion of $5.75 an hour CIVIL RIGHTS!
Steve, I appreciate your response to my comment. Yes, I agree, lib arts do present the greatest risk for academic abuse. I just always worry that one day that will make people think of lib arts as inherently worthless or even bad.
I had a pretty unique experience in my liberal arts education. The quality of teachers was remarkable, especially considering that my undergraduate institution prides itself more on being a “science and tech” school. I consistantly, though certainly not always, had very fair minded professors; granted, most with a leftist slant, but they had enough of the spirit of what I like to think of as a “classic academic” to really enjoy debate and discussion within a pretty rich marketplace of ideas.
I always kind of resented the idea that lib arts students don’t get very good jobs (though I guess I can’t deny it too strongly, as I ran ever so quickly from undergrad to law school). Does anyone have any sort of numbers of this issue? In my experience, a lot of the tech people have low job satisfaction, and logically there are a lot fewer unemployed people than there are lib arts majors, so they are working somewhere.
You just wait, pally. Pretty soon, you’re gonna be calling MyDeepThroat Mr. $7.25/hour Civil Rights Dude! 100 hours, baby!
We unemployed Heebs demand $7.25 an hour, too! WHO WILL TAKE UP OUR CAUSE?
By the way, I’d love to live in Salisbury. Rural, but only about 20 minutes from the ocean.
I have many college pals who hail from the eastern shore, and I lived there several summers myself. Should have bought a house down there in the early 90s. It’d be going for over a million now.
He shouldn’t be suspended for a year. Thats terrible. Just add his facebook profile to his transcript. Whats that old line? that you fight speech with speech?
Incidentally, costumes themselves are generally steroetypical. Which is what connects them to their referents.
Is “OJ” now a black stereotype? Johnny Cochran? Are all pimps black? Should Keenan Ivory Wayans be prosectuted for I’m gonna git you sucka? Robert Townsend for Hollywood Shuffle?
Is it okay to dress as Simon Legree?
Me, I’m waiting for the Wiccans to start demanding that kids cease dressing as hideous witches. Afer all, such stereotypes are harmful to their self image.
And those degenerates who insist on cultivating this -ist stereotype should be forced to take sensitivity training courses wherein they learn that witches are just like you and me. Well, except that they use holistic healing techniques and tend to use the rhythm method. And have jars filled with newt eyes and the blood of children.
Johns hopkins is a private university. Though there are cases that are very persuasive to me about how the first amendment should be enforced on private institutions that are in effect ‘company towns.’ I believe New Jersey does that to malls via its constitution. I would imagine a private campus would be similar to a mall.
Does Hopkins receive federal financing? Does it work with the federal student loan organizations?
Private universities, in my opinion, can run like company towns—provided they aren’t taking money from the feds.
And while I agree that Hopkins can mete out punishment for violations of its constitution, I don’t see why the student couldn’t counter with a lawsuit that challenges Hopkins’ right to overrule the first amendment and extend its control of students into cyberspace.
They are probably tax exempt. Is that federal subsidy enough for you to impose the first amenment on them? Other amendments, like 14th?
I’m all for any excuse we can find to force private powers to respect the first amendment. Tax exempt? Can’t have rules against interracial dating. Kids on student loans? Can’t teach creationism as science (FIRE does seem to be leaving these guys alone). Federal contractor? Your workers now have first amendment rights to say what they want at work.
I would guess that suit wouldn’t work. I can see a contract theory, but not a constitutional one. I know in general in the employement world you can be fired for off-campus activity. But maybe some places have created positive rights against employers. More power to them.
Like I said before, this kid shouldn’t be suspended. Would it be cruelty enough for mr. FIRE if this kid’s invitation was the top result on a google search for his name? There are a lot of justin parks out there. How cruel would be to simply drop a copy of the invite into the kids transcript?
JH may be a private university, actus, but if any of its students are using Fed subsidized student loans to attend, then that compromises the “private” designation.
Of course, JH is within its rights to do whatever it wants with this 18 year old student … including chasing him out and badmouthing him to any other college/university he tries to attend (I’m thinking of the case of the student who was born and raised in South Africa who put “African-American” on his college application, but when the school found out his melanin level wasn’t up to par, they expelled him and then tried to blackball him at other colleges). But it doesn’t make JH actions morally or ethically correct.
Turn on BET, watch hip hop videos on MTV, listen to any number of Rap or hip hop “artists” … the stereotypes of pimps and hos are ubiquitous.
Good lord, my daughters have thrown several “theme” parties over the years… for the 60’s one, everyone came dressed as “hippies” … consisting of clothing that was actually worn in that era, or the military one last year where everyone wore versions of camo.
It was a party actus. P A R T Y.