Day: March 13, 2001

The Demise of the First Amendment on College Campuses

The university I attended in the 1980s had a speech code. Everybody I talked to hated that speech code, regardless of whether they were Left, Right, male, female, black, white, Asian, whatever. After several years of lobbying by groups and individuals who were otherwise diametrically opposed on issues, the university finally gave in and essentially eliminated the speech code.

So I always find it odd when I read accounts around the country of students actively demanding that the universities and colleges they attend censor students who say things that these self-appointed individuals find offensive.

David Horowitz has recently pushed all the right buttons of these folks by attempting to place an ad in college newspapers giving ten reasons why the notion of reparations for slavery is not only incorrect but racist as well. Of the 40 newspapers Horowitz sent the ad, only 6 have printed it while 13 have rejected it (some of the papers have yet to respond).

Now certainly newspapers have the right to reject any ad they receive, but of the 6 newspapers that agreed to publish the ad, 4 later went on to cave in and apologize to student activists for running the ad. The sight of newspapers prostrating themselves in apology, of course, fulfills Horowitz’s predictions about political correctness on American campuses and he’s reaping a whirlwind of free publicity far beyond what his ad dollars could have bought him.

One of the newspapers that didn’t apologize for the ad was the University of Wisconsin-Madision Badger Herald. Several student groups protested the newspaper and several paid for an ad which the Badger Herald refused to run, but which the UW Madison Daily Cardinal did agree to run. The ad was sponsored by a number of student groups including the Multicultural Student Coalition, La Mujer Latina, Promoting Intergroup Relation son Campus, La Colectiva Cultural de Atzlan, International Socialist Organization, Wunk Sheek, Union Puertorriquena, Wisconsin Black Student Union, Asian American Student Union, National Panhellenic Council, Student Labor Action Committee, and Generation 2008. The text of that ad is a chilling reminder that the urge to censor is alive and well on American campuses.

First, the ad refers to another incident in which the Badger Herald published an editorial cartoon that mocked the Ku Klux Klan. The cartoon was protested essentially on the grounds that regardless of whether or not the cartoon made fun of the KKK, to present any depiction of the KKK in the student newspaper was racist and harmful. The student groups who placed the ad concur with this view,

THe KKK represents a racist ideology that historically operated to violate the civil rights and liberties of non-whites through violent action. The KKK cartoon that appeared in the Badger Herald reflects this same racist agenda. Context alone cannot filter out or justify the traumatic effects of a KKK cartoon with images of a swastika that offends Whites, Asians, Latinos, Blacks, Native Americans, and Jews. If a cartoon of a rapist was placed in the Herald, it still represents rape and violent domination over women, no matter what dialogue takes place.

Even though I’ve read this several times now, I still find it almost unbelievable that a group of college students in the United States actually wrote this drivel. My first reaction was that maybe they really haven’t considered the effects of actually following through on a policy such as this, but unfortunately they have.

The racist advertisement [by Horowitz] that recently ran in the Herald is a bold slap in the face to students of color who have to deal with the daily effects of the miseducation that the advertisement produced. These attacks are masked as examples of free speech that have historically been used to reinforce white dominance, which is one form of white supremacy. This type of speech has a debilitating impact on the lives of those students of color who are being targeted by race. Intent is never an adequate justification for impact.

This is an increasingly common view of free speech by some elements on the academic Left. Speech is redefined as a tool of oppression which can then be safely dealt with. Rather than arguing that they would like to censor or ban arguments against slavery reparations, the student groups can then argue that they are simply eliminating racism rather than restricting free speech. This argument has its roots in a more sophisticated attack on speech by radical feminists which blurs the line between speech and action such that a sexually explicit image literally is an act of sexual violence itself.

And, of course, once you are dealing with racist oppression rather than free speech, anything goes. The students’ ad considers the fact that “Black students have stormed the office of the Badger Herald on numerous occasions over the past couple years” to be proof of the newspaper’s culpability in racism. I suspect a group of pro-life activists who took out an ad noting that anti-abortion activists had “stormed” the offices of a notoriously pro-choice newspaper would be considered an example of the rise of right wing militancy at best (and rightly so).

Finally, the ad calls for the University of Wisconsin to punish the newspaper saying,

Due to this history of abuse and disrespect, students and staff are calling for the UW administration to put the Badger Herald on probation. We are demanding that the campus learning environment be respected, and that the University community take responsibility for assessing the negative impact the Herald’s irresponsibility has on student’s perceptions of people of color on campus. THe call for a better campus climate means that all university buildings should be safe and healthy learning environments. The alternative to this is that student’s rights to an equal education free of racial agitation will continue to be violated.

You have to love that last line, calling for “an equal education free of racial agitation,” as it could have been drafted by any number of white racists who opposed the civil rights movement. As Salon.Com editor Joan Walsh wrote in a piece on the controversy,

The Horowitz ad is explosive because for too many years campuses have been places where ideological bullies, usually on the left, have been devoted to blocking political debate, rather than engaging in it — and they’ve succeeded.

… The reaction to Horowitz’s ad proves at least one of the points he makes in it: A morbid attraction to the role of victim, and an unhealthy fear of disagreeable ideas, are all too common in campus politics, and they seem to afflict left-liberal students of color disproportionately.

Horowitz is now calling his detractors “brownshirts,” of course, and on the phone he reminds me “the Nazis took over universities first.” It’s a little overheated. And yet there is something disturbing about the idea that a group of offended students could intimidate student newspapers into rejecting Horowitz’s ad, or apologizing for it once they’d accepted it.

Disturbing is about the best adjective I can think of for the ad that appeared in the Daily Cardinal.

Source:

Badger Herald: UW Madison Independent Racist Propaganda Machine. Advertisement, The UW Madison Daily Cardinal.

Who’s afraid of the big, bad Horowitz? Joan Walsh, Salon.Com, March 9, 2001.

Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks – and Racist Too by David Horowitz

The Legitimization of Child Pornography and Pedophilia

A Newsweek cover article claims that the Internet has become a boon for child pornographers and is legitimizing pedophilia in the mind of sexual deviants. As the author of the piece writes,

Many law-enforcement officers worry that the spread of child pornography, as well as the easy access to like-minded people via the Internet, has a “legitimizing effect” making the pedophile believe that his own impulses are OK, because they are shared by so many others. That feeds appetites for this material, meaning more kids will be victimized.

Clearly the Internet has made it easier for such individuals to communicate and network in relative privacy. It’s a lot less risky for pedophiles to get in touch with each other over the Internet than it would be in a traditional face-to-face setting in a community.

However, before condemning the Internet as solely responsible for the legitimization of pedophilia, it is worth noting that the American intelligentsia has long been moving toward a legitimization of pedophilia — at least as it pertains to boys — since the late 1980s completely irrespective of anything that’s been happening on the Internet.

The Weekly Standard’s Mary Eberstadt wrote an article back in 1996, “Pedophilia Chic,” making this argument and revisited it recently with a follow-up article, “Pedophilia Chic” Reconsidered: The taboo against sex with children continues to erode.

Who needs the Internet, after all, when pedophiles could read a paper in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin that reviewed sexual behaviors formerly considered psychological maladies, such as homosexuality, and then concluded that, “This history of conflating morality and law with science in the area of human sexuality by psychologists and others indicates a strong need for caution in scientific inquiries of sexual behaviors that remain taboo, with child sexual abuse being a prime example.”

Eberstadt’s main focus is on some elements of the gay rights movement allied with or excessively tolerant of groups such as the North American Man-Boy Love Association, but she could as easily have surveyed academic feminist, postmodernist and other literature for assertions that the idea of an age of consent is a bourgeois relic.

Population Age Distribution Information Now Available

The FAQ area has been updated with several pages on the current and projected population age distribution for the world as a whole as well as country-specific data for the percentage of people who are 0-14, 15-59, and 60+. This information is very important because one of the major factors that influences future population levels is the number of young people.

The short summary is that the world as a whole is beginning to age, but the developed world is aging extremely quickly, with a projected 2050 median age of almost 46.4 years, while the developing world is aging much more slowly and as a result will experience continued population growth during the first half of the 21st century.

For more information, see the Population Age Distribution pages.

Activists Protest Ohio State University's Planned AIDS Research Project

Animal rights activists recently spray painted graffiti at the home of Ohio State University’s president William Kirwan and OSU’s Bricker Hall. The act of vandalism was apparently in protest of AIDS-related animal experiments slated to begin soon at OSU.

Activists spray painted “Ask Dr. Y Why, Stop the Killing, OSU=Profits Over Pain, Stop Killing Cats and Cat+Meth=Bad Science” on all four sides of Bricker Hall.

The slogans target Dr. William Yonushonis, director of OSU’s laboratory animal resources, who has been outspoken about the importance of animal research. In the wake of the vandalism, Yonushonis reiterated that, “Almost all the major advances in medicine and surgery have been made through animal testing.”

The methaphetamine references refer to research funded by the National Institutes of Health that will be carried out by OSU associate professor of veterinary sciences Michael Podell. The research involves studying the effect that methaphetamines have on the progress of cats injected with FIV (which is similar to human HIV).

Animal activists maintain the research is pointless but as Yonushonis notes, “The research study he [Podell] is doing is worthwhile. HIV replicates at astronomical rates in the brain when used with methaphetamines.” If FIV turns out to replicate in the presence of methaphetamine like HIV does, studying the disease in cats could lead to important information about HIV.

A couple days after the slogans were spray painted, animal rights activists protested outside Bricker Hall against the experiments. The ignorance of the activists was highlighted by protester Nickie Stoan who told the OSU Lantern,

The reason I’m here is that my little brother had a heart transplant, in which they had to experiment on pigs for. He wouldn’t be alive today if they didn’t have that technology. But I think they’re just being curious here, like trying methaphetamines and AIDS. There’s really no connection that it’s going to lead to a cure, and it’s just useless testing, and I think it’s cruel.

It’s amazing just how poor of an understanding many people have of science. Scientists “just being curious” is extremely important to progress in all areas of research; so important in fact that it is given a specific label — basic research. Stoan seems to think that the only animal experiments required for her brother’s heart transplant were some experiments on a few pigs, but in fact hundreds and hundreds of basic research experiments — researchers “just being curious” — provided the insights and understanding necessary so that scientists could ultimately figure out how to transplant organs.

Sources:

Vandals graffiti Ohio State U. president’s house over animal rights issue. Chanda Neely and Monica M. Torline, The Ohio State University Lantern, March 6, 2001.

Protesters call Ohio State U. AIDS research on cats inhumane. John Sobotkowski, The Ohio State Lantern, March 8, 2001.

Kenyan President: Women Have ‘Little Minds’

Daniel arap Moi, president of Kenya, made headlines in that African nation when he said that women were underachieving because they have “little minds.”

“You [women] can achieve more, can get more but because of your little minds, you cannot get what you are expected to get,” Moi said.

It didn’t help matters any that Moi chose to make his remarks at the opening of a regional women’s seminar in Nairobi.

Moi’s remarks were condemned and criticized by a wide range of leaders in Kenya from the head of the Catholic church to the chairman of the Law Society of Kenya.

Source:

Outrage at Moi remark. Joseph Warungu, The BBC, March 8, 2001.