Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”
Update – University of Delaware President Patrick Harker:
“While I believe that recent press accounts misrepresent the purpose of the residential life program at the University of Delaware, there are questions about its practices that must be addressed and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled. It is not feasible to evaluate these issues without a full and broad-based review.
Upon the recommendation of Vice President for Student Life Michael Gilbert and Director of Residence Life Kathleen Kerr, I have directed that the program be stopped immediately. No further activities under the current framework will be conducted.”
Me no Dhimmi, many thanks for the tip. I’ll read the book right away.
Fitting: I’ve been labelling public school boards “Kafkaesque” and gulags for some time now.
The unions? Unfortunately, full of left-wing opportunists who haven’t encountered a politically correct ideology they don’t fall for, hook, line, and sinker. Union “officers” are not the brightest in the bunch. IF they’re ever effective, it’s usually because the teacher who needs the support instructs them about what they should do and write on his/her behalf. The unions are every bit as complicit as the educational bureaucracies in the brainwashing that goes on and is supposed to be accepted by everyone. My union has a “re-education” counsellor, who “reprograms” teachers who are reported for so-called “racist” comments and other misdemeanours. The union’s modus operandi is also useless to the teacher: the teacher’s expected to take the board’s punishment, no matter how unjust and humiliating. Then the union files a grievance, which can take years to be heard. Meanwhile, the teacher’s expected to endure purgatory or hell. What if, finally, the teacher “wins” the grievance: sanctions against the administrators or the student(s) who initiated the mess? Don’t count on it. Usually the miscreants—student, administration, AND union “useful idiots”—sail on with their lives. The teacher’s left to make the best of his/her seriously disrupted professional (and often personal) life.
The educational mess and serious brainwashing, with the accompanying intimidation, start WAY before university.
Rudy writes, “The only way to tackle the re-programmers is to recognize that they take their philosophy seriously, and to mount a serious intellectual response. (Sorry guys, but we need something a lot deeper than ‘I know a black guy who is racist’ gain-saying) The great strides against racism and sexism that were accomplished in the Civil Rights revolution were based on very different ideas and values than the current intellectual fads and politically correct identity politics of modern academia. Our students need to know that there are other ways of looking at these issues ways that will make them proud of Canada’s heritage of western liberal democracy and Judeo-Christian values.”
I totally agree with Rudy’s last sentence, which anyone who’s seen my multitude of posts in defence of our Judeo-Christian heritage will know. (Rudy, please see the latest “foray” at the October 30th thread, “Religion of Peace”.) First of all, there are SDA regulars who deny there’s any connection between Judeo-Christian values and western liberal democracy. Secondly, that’s the mindset of the “re-programmers” who have the system sewn up: they spend all day, every day programming our kids. Have you seen any of the social studies or geography books used in our schools? Just about pure propaganda . . . besides being atrociously organized and written: utter junk. “A serious intellectual response” could include writings by such people and groups as Mark Steyn, Theodore Dalrymple, Rory Leishman, Ian Hunter, the Fraser Institute, the Natioanl Citizens Coalition, the Centre for Cultural Renewal, REAL Women, etc. But how would anyone be allowed to introduce such ideas? These writings would be instantly banned and the teacher seriously disciplined, even removed. (Check out a teacher like Chris Kempling, whose personal opinion on homosexuality collided with that of the board. Even expressing his opinion OFF campus was not allowed.)
Rudy, if you have a realistic and workable suggestion as to how our young people can be “re-programmed” to understand the truth of our heritage, I’d be interested to know.
Great post lookout! (I taught between 1971-1979, saw it coming, left).
Your point about not even being allowed to introduce competing intellectual content is spot on.
I also like your comment about today’s anti-racism having no bearing on the anti-racism of the 60s. Same for feminism. My theory on that is that when movements remain in force after the mission has been accomplished, nothing but mischief ensues — tho mischief is too mild a word here.
If you’re following the civil war in the blogosphere — Little Green Footballs contra Atlas Shrugs/Brussels Journal, that’s the kind of conclusion I’ve come to. In excoriating parties like VB in Belgium for its alleged “racism” LGF’s Johnson doesn’t seem to understand the EU environment, as in: he couldn’t even run his website there! Competing intellecutual content is verboten — criminalized.
I’m also thinking of that UK ballerina who joined the allegedly racist BNP because, despite being married to a black immigrant herself, she was deeply worried about out of control islamiic immigration/invasion, and that the BNP was the only party talking about the threat.
Which is not to say I endorse the VB or BNP, etc. I really don’t know enough about them to endorse or reject. Hoping that doesn’t sound PC!
As usual, Me No Dhimmi, I appreciate your post. (But it was Rudy who made the excellent observation that “today’s anti-racism [has] no bearing on the anti-racism of the 60s”.)
After I pop out to buy “The Trial”, I’ll check out the civil war to which you refer: LGF VERSUS Brussels Journal? That seems ominous. Discouraging too.
And I’m not worried about you being PC ;-!
Reply to “Lookout” comment: “if you have a realistic and workable suggestion as to how our young people can be “re-programmed” to understand the truth of our heritage, I’d be interested to know.”
“Lookout”, you yourself list some good places to start.
As for me, when I re-entered the universtity academic environment a few years ago, I was just about bowled over by the political correctness and marxist-style intellectualism related to ‘diversity training” that is now a mandatory standard for various faculties and professions. I was surprised at how much worse it was than I expected, (and I expected it to be bad), and in particular I was shocked by how far academia has moved from a place of inquiry to a place of pressure to conform to a pernicious and ubiquitous ideology. No dissent is permitted and no alternatives are presented – this is indoctrination, not education.
Awareness needs to be a first step. Many people are only just becoming aware of the problem. The Delaware case is only one example. People say with shock: “How could they think they would get away with this?” but in reality, the academic mindset is so monolithic, so ivory-tower isolated, so convinced that this is the “gospel truth” that they can’t imagine anyone would have a problem with it.
Because we are only just becoming aware, we are also only just responding to this challenge. If you are a student trying to research alternative views or even to counter the prevailing dogmas of academia, you will have to search long and hard for contemporary critiques that defend the culture and values that made western civilization the most free, most equitable, most prosperous society in human history.
There is some good contemporary material out there, but it is still limited in amount and hard to find. Its not hard to figure out why –when our students are indoctrinated, and forced to conform to the philosophical status quo just to make progress in academia, how can they develop the knowledge and skills needed to launch a counter offensive?
We send our students into higher education with almost no preparation. In order to be sufficiently inoculated against nonsense, they need solid training in the skills of logic, rhetoric and reasoning. Do you think that most youth get anything like that in our education system, or anywhere else? No, all they are exposed to is an unremitting stream of mushy “whatever you want to believe must be true” relativism. From an early age they are conditioned to be unreasoning, unquestioning proles.
Students also need the preparation provided by history – their own history. We have a long and storied history, but it is for the most part being purposely buried, hidden from the public eye, and made a matter for shame. The leftists only understand history insofar as it serves their view of the future – which is why they so often feel free to revise it. But the learning of our history, and the great writings that accompany it is vital to maintain free individuals in a free society. It is true that the chronicle of the west contains much that is unjust, tragic, even reprehensible, but it is true that it also represents a remarkable progression toward higher ideals of human dignity, liberty and equality.
It is because of this lack of knowledge of how our ancestors thought and fought for the western idea of human value, that people commenting on conservative blogs can imagine that fighting racism, sexism and poverty is an invention of the left. Be assured that world wide slavery was not ended by Marxists. Universal education was not conceived by relativists. Representative democracy was not invented by post-modernists.
The kinds of people who designed the Delaware University residence life program do so with a feeling of impunity because they believe that the battle for the mind is over, and that they are the winners. If they have won, it is by default, for most everyone in my generation didn’t show up to the fight. In our days, we played around with socialism and marxism, hedonism and relativism because we somehow thought that the foundations upon which our prosperity lay would stand forever, even though neglected and undefended. We are the generation that thought it would be “progressive” to reject all the values that brought success to our parents and grandparents. Well, now those values are gone, and they have been replaced with nothing. The left’s ivory tower intellectuals will try to fill the void with unworkable, unrealistic and historically failed concepts. But they have no real alternative, because every strike they make against our historic western and judeo-christian values undermines their foundation as well. Nihilistic relativism won’t have the last word though, because the barbarians at the gates are bent upon a more retrograde solution – the eradication of 2000 years of human progress and enlightenment and the imposition of an absolute, totalitarian rule.
Rudy, except for the “In our days, we played around with socialism and marxism, hedonism and relativism” part—I never did!—I could have written most of your post. You make excellent points with which I am in agreement. But . . .
I’ve actually been on the front lines, as a fighter for Judeo-Christian values, for nearly three decades: the MSM and most other institutions, including most of our governments, all of which wield enormous power over the minds, actual LIVES, and fears of all of us, have gone over, lock, stock, and barrel to “the dark side”. People like me are definitely NOT included in their “inclusivity and diversity” agenda. If we speak “truth to power” above the ramparts, we are very likely to end up out of a job and/or under the jackboots of the Human Rights (sic) Commissions. Dissenters are quite severely punished.
As a teacher, who needs to keep my real beliefs under the radar—about the best people in my position can do is disregard certain directives (like posting gay-friendly propaganda in our classrooms)—I’d still like to know how you think we’re going to get our message across. E.g., Re the family, the only model one’s allowed to advocate in our public schools is the “open”, read, anything goes, model. Try promoting, or just presenting the proven advantages of the traditional model: re-education time, big time! Punishments too: letters in one’s file (which make applying for a new position difficult) and reassignments—to the worst schools. Remember. I’ve said the boards are gulags: they’re altogether arbitrary in their actions. They only observe the rubrics they feel like observing. Ones they don’t like, that might protect the teacher, are ignored. Remember too that the unions spit out a teacher accused of “homophobia” or “racism” faster than the pike spat out Jeremy Fisher in his galoshes (Beatrix Potter).
The “good guy” groups and individuals I mentioned are verboten in the public schools—and lots of other places too, e.g., the Anglican Church of Canada—so, except for the blogosphere, publication of some articles in the MSM, and in their own literature, getting the truthful message out to a wide public is difficult. (As I said, even a good number of regular posters here have been brainwashed about the “ugliness” of the British, Judeo-Christian foundation of—until quite recently—rule of law in Canada.)
Rudy, I believe the truth will out, but that may not happen until far more damage is done: maybe it’ll be when all females are wearing burqas and we’re living in chaos and squalor, right here in Canada, that our present ruling class, by then living in dhimmitude (most Canadians are ignorant of that term), will realize just how good things were before moral relativism and secularism tsunamied us. (As you’ve rightly noted the secular relativists are cutting off the very branch they and their privileges are sitting on.) There’s no guarantee at all, as someone like ET, a poster here, asserts, that all will be well. IMO, until and unless some catastrophe REALLY wakes people up—the lefties and dupes on the “good side” are still in La-La Land, even after 9/11 and a host of other Muslim caused disasters—it’s likely to continue to be hell . . .
Rudy, I don’t think there are any quick fixes to this, as you seem to imply. The powerful and dogmatic institutions of this country, which promote false doctrines—which, in the short run, benefit them—as well as swift, nasty retribution to the “unorthodox”, are impregnable fortresses. There are a few Frodos and Sams out here, but I don’t see any wholesale, frontal assault on those dark towers any time soon.
It’s been really good to hear from you: thanks for your posts and please stick around! Re my thoughts, if you have other ideas . . .
Lookout – its a good thing for people to get fired up about these things – with a view to doing something about it.
I don’t mean to say that there are any quick fixes. It may take at least a generation to begin to stem the tide. But I think we need to start that work now, by recognizing (yes, and even understanding) what is out there.
I really feel for anyone who is trying to teach today. I know it isn’t easy. One of the problems with the leftist agendas is that they are always willing to trample on the rights of the individual in order to achieve the “higher good”. We are seeing more and more examples of the outrages that are perpetrated in the name of “diversity” and “anti-racism” when these ideas escape from the ivory tower and are actually implemented in the lives and workplaces of real people.
I’m not going to begin to try to answer the question you pose in a blog somewhere way down the comment thread. If you’ve been at it for three decades, you will have done plenty of thinking about your own responses I am sure.
On the other hand, I remain cautiously optimistic. I don’t believe that even the MSM and other institutions are omnipotent, and am hopeful that active and informed resistance once awakened will yield positive results.
Thank you for your kind comments.
Rudy, you’re welcome. I appreciate your courtesy and thoughtfulness.
You say, “I don’t believe that even the MSM and other institutions are omnipotent”: I agree. You also say, “[I] am hopeful that active and informed resistance once awakened will yield positive results.”
I hope so! However, there is the problem of dissenting opinion being censored and punished. We’ll see . . .
Easy fix for the U of D problem:
1. Stop giving contributions to school with racist programs.
2. Don’t enroll your kids at that school.
3. Sue the school using the same laws that protect every other race or ethnic group.
Money will always level the playing field. If they want diversity and fairness they must actually teach it, not blame another race. This only serves to strengthen prejudice and harbor bad will. That program is a slap in the face to everyone who has paid monies o send there children to U of D.
–Mike