Academia's PC Rot

"White culture is a melting pot of greed, guys, guns, and god."

--From University of Delaware’s August 2007 "diversity facilitation training" program for resident assistants (RAs).

You know what I object to most? Giving "melting pot" a bad name.

The irony of what’s happening on college campuses is that in the name of diversity, the marketplace of ideas that used to distinguish a great university is giving way to an ideologically rigid world view that brooks little dissent. This from the National Journal’s Stuart Taylor Jr., who says he has “never been conservative enough to vote for a Republican presidential nominee.”

According to Taylor:

 One Delaware University RA report classified a young woman as one of the "worst" students in the residence life education program for saying that she was tired of having "diversity shoved down her throat" and responding "none of your damn business" when asked "when did you discover your sexual identity?" Said Kelsey Lanan, a 19-year-old sophomore, "it seemed like they were trying to convince us we were racist and sexist and were horrible people".

 "At least in the humanities and social sciences," Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein wrote in a 2004 essay, "academics shun conservative values and traditions, so their curricula and hiring practices discourage non-leftists from pursuing academic careers. The quasi-Marxist outlook of cultural studies rules out those who espouse capitalism. . . If you think that the nuclear family proves the best unit of social well-being, stay away from women's studies."

 the 88 Duke professors who signed [the] April 2006 ad in the school paper spearheading the mob rush to judgment against falsely accused lacrosse players included 80% of the African-American studies faculty; 72% of the women's studies professors; 60% of the cultural anthropology department. . .

 Duke literature professor Grant Farred has produced . . . a monograph styling Houston Rockets center Yao Ming, a native of China, as "the most profound threat to American empire." In the fall of 2006, Farred accused hundreds of Duke students of "secret racism" against "black female bodies" because they had registered to vote. . . to defeat rogue Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. . . [Now] Cornell [has] hire[d] away and tenure[d] Farred. . ."We are very enthusiastic about Professor Farred, whose work everyone in this department has long admired," remarked Cornell English Department Chairwoman Molly Hite.