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America's Ten Most Oppressive Colleges
An anonymous reader writes: A new review of free speech on campuses across the United States has listed the country's ten most oppressive colleges, with examples of why they earned this odious status.
The first link is the actual report, while the second provides a good quick summary. In either case, the behavior of college officials in attempting to squelch dissent is quite disgusting. Far more horrifying and worrisome for the future were the number of cases where the students themselves moved to stamp down on opposing views. They are the future, and that future does not look pleasant. In South Carolina students are suing their college for interrogating them for daring to hold an event in support of free speech that offended some students.
The first link is the actual report, while the second provides a good quick summary. In either case, the behavior of college officials in attempting to squelch dissent is quite disgusting. Far more horrifying and worrisome for the future were the number of cases where the students themselves moved to stamp down on opposing views. They are the future, and that future does not look pleasant. In South Carolina students are suing their college for interrogating them for daring to hold an event in support of free speech that offended some students.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You have no right not to be offended.
Shove your idea of "microagressions" right up your ass. So it can be near your brain.
'Oppressive' seems a bit over-the-top. Even TFA article doesn't use that word.
Next up: "America's Most Genocidal Colleges"!
So let's be clear: pretty much all of these situations are completely unacceptable, and most disturbingly they show a tendency for much of these sorts of problems to occur on the left, what essentially amounts to the "illiberal left" http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/liberals-and-the-illiberal-left/384988/. However, FIRE's own biases are coming into play in this list, in that every example they decide to include is on the left or has no political aspect. But there were a lot of rimilar activities with an apparently right-wing bent, such as the situation at Wheaton College https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/06/wheaton-illinois-moves-fire-professor-who-wore-hijab. It may be that FIRE's top list is still more of an issue for legitimate reasons because many of these universities are large, public universities and thus engaging in trampling on free speech is even more serious, but it does seem like FIRE's own biases may be having a role in what they've decided to highlight.
However, the general upshot should be clear: trampling on free speech is not ok. And we should support free speech whether or not it is speech we agree with. Universities must be bastions of free expression for them to effectively do their jobs. And groups of all sorts should remember that even if they have power now to censor others, they may not always be the ones in power.
The John William Pope Center is a mouthpiece for a right-wing think tank, and is no friend of higher education.
That having been said, some of the incidents described are pretty egregious. But then university administrators have been cowardly autocrats since universities began.
Religious universities have doctrinal statements you sign when you enroll. If that offends you, don't go there.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
The "source" is one of the heads of FIRE, which is a civil liberties organization specifically devoted to issues like protecting the free speech rights of students and faculty from everything from overly broad speech codes, to not getting tenure because the professor fails to hold the right views. Chances are that if you are a university student or professor who has been victimized by campus commissars of political correctness, you will be represented by FIRE if you aren't doing it by yourself.
Your whole comment just screams "ad hominem" because it focuses on one particular source cited when the writer is the head of a different organization that has an excellent record at defending the rights of students and faculty from campus autocrats. And yes, that is "ad hominem" in the true sense. Hey folks, don't believe it because damn dirty right wingers are involved, even if they are arguing that college campuses are trampling the rights of political minorities.
When so many people started talking about the importance of "trigger warnings" and how they had developped "PTSD" from encountering divergent opinions from theirs, I just shrugged and. When my younger brother transitioned to female and started raving hard about all things Social-Justice-y, I was stupefied. When she started talkign about her anxiety attacks over the mere mention of the word "rape" (she has never been sexually assaulted nor witnessed any rape except on TV), I started digging into the science of anxiety fits to see what there really was about it.
It turns out that one can indeed teach one's own brain to develop PTSD over any kind of stimuli at all. All you need to do is to foster a sense of being threatened every time you encounter the stimulus of your choice. For example, you start thinking about people trying to beat you up, of menacing predators pouncing, of natural disasters closing in on you, whenever the stimulus is there. You can also jsut go and read detailed testimonies of aggressions - the more expressive and vivid, the better. You then reinforce and validate this self-inflicted perception of threat by expressing to other people how you feel threatened by the stimulus of your choice, and have the other people agree with you. Basically, this retrains your amygdala into stimulating your cingulate cortex so that it activates the limbic axis for fight-or-flight response. With enough practice, you can push yourself deep into somatization, and develop identical symptoms to that of genuine PTSD-sufferers, to the point where you will have nausea and dizziness just from thinking about the stimulus.
The interesting thing is, it's the kind of the reverse of desensitization therapy for actual PTSD: if you have a rape victim with severa agoraphobia, you can slowly train their amygdala into NOT stimulating the cingulate cortex and thus not triggering panic attacks by desensitizing them to open spaces or the outside, until the link between "outside" and "being attacked" ceases to exist in the brain.
That, IMO, is how SJWs make themselves sick, and make others around them sick, with an acquired mental disorder.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I work at a Catholic university. When I first started here, I was extremely cautious about my agnostic views, but over time learned that most of the people here are open to and nice about alternative views. I've even become friends with the campus ministry and they know of my leanings. I think part of it is that I'm as respectful of their views as they are of mine and we work together with common purpose. I know Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and even atheists on staff and in faculty, and have never witnessed any kind of retribution against anyone because of their religious beliefs.
If you don't like free speech, then why don't you go to any one of the number of countries where it doesn't exist?
I am a millennial, born in 1987, and let me tell you, the stereotype is true. Most of my generation are soft, squishy, and hypersensitive. Those are the best definitions I've ever heard, and I thank you for them. Most of my people CAN'T handle the real world. And people who use the term "inflammatory speech" are the soft, squishy types who can't handle the real world.
If someone says something you don't like, YOU IGNORE THEM. Ignoring the blowhards is the easiest way to get them to stop. You don't fight with them, it just causes them to double down on their opinions. And remember, just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't make them wrong. You sound EXACTLY like one of these millennial pukes of my generation who are the special snowflakes who can't handle ANY kind of criticism or ANY kind of opinions that fall outside of or make them question their worldview. The fact that you invoke Donald Trump just proves my point.
I want a country of 300 million people, all speaking their minds, and all understanding that not everyone will agree with them at every turn. The fact that Donald Trump (since you brought him up) has so many supporters just tells me that there is a large swath of the population that is disenfranchised, and that contrary to popular belief, they seem to fall across all racial, demographics, and educational boundaries. People who are taxpaying members of society just like you and me who deserve to have their voice heard. Whether or not I agree with them. But you would have them silenced, because their opinions aren't the correct ones. They aren't "falling in line" with what YOU think is right. That's not freedom. Period.
You see, that's the beauty of a free society, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about you. You don't have to "fall in" with the party line. You can stand up and give the finger to whoever you want, and you AREN'T PUNISHED FOR DOING SO. Punishing people for speech, as you are advocating, is dangerous and tyrannical. And I don't understand why people just don't get it. Freedom is the best thing to ever happen, and the soft squishy types like yourself only seem to want to put it back in the bottle. It makes me sick.
willing to enroll students of any faith/non-faith who are will to abide by the conduct codes
The code of conduct is misleading, for serious students they're usually not that onerous, just focus on your studies and you probably will never have disciplinary issues. But you can't live some place for 4+ years and be a castle, particularly not with modern group-based education practices. My sister went to Liberty, I don't know why, but I hear-tell if you are even mildly catholic, never mind some heathen non-Christian religion, you won't feel very welcome. I don't know how it is now that Falwell is gone, but I felt it clearly standing there during graduation. There's a secret handshake in the vocabulary they use, and the interpretations they use.
Unless there is some very compelling reason to be at a religious university, I think it's just not worth pretending to be someone you are not. There are plenty of good secular schools. In the US at least most of the secular schools offer both better educations and better reputations anyhow, with a few exceptions I can think of.
Full-disclosure: I attended BYU and actually really enjoyed my time there. Brigham Young University should be on that list. Student's will be expelled (and their transcripts locked so they can't transfer credits either) if they convert from Mormonism to any other religion while a student. You can literally get academically disciplined for profanity or criticizing LDS leaders. It isn't just student's though. Faculty can also get in serious trouble for what they say. For example, a BYU professor and historian (Michael Quinn) was strongly pressured to leave after he published honest histories of the LDS church's history with polygamy. He had been an excellent professor as evidenced by the fact that one of his years at BYU the graduating class voted him the best professor on campus. BYU is absolutely not a place where you can talk about the LDS church honestly and openly without getting kicked out (at least if you want to talk about large parts of history that the church tries to bury).
I caused a minor revolt and pissed off the ultra-leftists (the sane leftists sympathized with my views) when I publically accused our micro-aggressions indocrnitator that she was being culturally insensitive and that it was absolutely unethical and a violation of university policy for her to conflate cultural idioms with aggressions. Something like "When speaking a rural Appalachian dialect is a microaggression, you have banned my culture" and then quoted our "cultural diversity" statement. Itw as funny. The indoctrinator was red faced and puffy. The ultra-leftists went off on their screed, the sane leftists argued with them, and then the hour allotted was over. I'm sure I'll be summoned to the dean's office again, and I think I'll have the EO complaint written.
That's because it's a Catholic university and not an Evangelical Christian university like Liberty U. Catholics have long been very tolerant of other religions that way (they had some real problems back in the time of Galileo, but they've had centuries to improve), and have long been big promoters of education. Catholic grade schools are much the same: they take kids of all (or no) faiths and aren't real pushy about the religion angle.
No, they don't. They have doctrinal statements for faculty and staff, and may have stricter conduct codes, but they are generally willing to enroll students of any faith/non-faith who are will to abide by the conduct codes
I attended Brigham Young University (owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Tithing from the faithful subsidize students' education, so members of the faith pay a lower tuition (like how residents pay less at state universities). Faculty and students must sign the Honor Code and receive an Ecclesiastic Endorsement on a yearly basis. In essence, you promise to live up to dress and grooming standards, live the Word of Wisdom (no alcohol, tea, coffee, tobacco, or illicit drugs), follow moral rules (no extra-marital sex, no men in the ladies dorms [or vice verse] after midnight), etc. This does not exclude students from other religions - or even atheists - but most students are LdS.
Liberty U is very tolerant of other views - as are most Christian Schools - being a core element of their beliefs.
Bullshit.
From every job listing for Liberty
Disclaimer Statement: Liberty University's hiring practices and EEO Statement are fully in compliance with both federal and state law. Federal law creates an exception to the "religion" component of the employment discrimination laws for religious organizations (including educational institutions), and permits them to give employment preference to members of their own religion. Liberty University is in that category.
That particular entry I pulled out at random was for a Network Engineering job. If you aren't a Baptist you can't even plug in network cables there. I've personally known people who have lied about their religion to get a job there, and people who got rejected for being Catholic. Employees sign a "Way of Life" contract.
Tolerant my left nut.
Most places don't ask such questions
Most places are not religious institutions.
I'd love to see those idiots if people were allowed to refuse them service because of their religion.
This is already true. A church is free to refuse service to muslims. A mosque is free to refuse service to christians.