Posted on 02/23/2006 7:30:24 AM PST by Born Conservative
Dear President Spanier ( president@psu.edu ):
Last week I gave a lecture at Pennsylvania State University (PSU) on the topic of free speech. While I was there, I noticed that PSU has this rather amusing statement on “Nondiscrimination and Harassment”:
Harassment may include, but is not limited to, verbal or physical attacks, written threats or slurs that relate to a person's membership in a protected class, unwelcome banter, teasing, or jokes that are derogatory, or depict members of a protected class in a stereotypical and demeaning manner, or any other conduct which has the purpose or effect of interfering unreasonably with an individual's work or academic performance or creates an offensive, hostile, or intimidating working or learning environment.
I found your statement on “Intolerance” to be equally amusing:
Intolerance refers to an attitude, feeling or belief in furtherance of which an individual acts to intimidate, threaten or show contempt for other individuals or groups based on characteristics such as age, ancestry, color, disability or handicap, national origin, political belief, race, religious creed, sex, sexual orientation or veteran status.
And the following was simply a classic:
Acts of intolerance will not be tolerated at The Pennsylvania State University.
I really don’t know how you’re going to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy on intolerance. When someone is intolerant will you hold a hearing? Then, when the judges condemn them for intolerance will you hold separate hearings to address the intolerance of the judges? How long will it take before everyone at Penn State is judged as intolerant by someone else?
In order to better gauge the depth of the black hole of tolerance into which you have stepped, I have a suggestion. Take two mirrors and face them towards one another. Next, I want you to stand in between the mirrors holding a sign that says “intolerance.” How many signs do you see? Are you beginning to get the point, President Spanier?
As much of a mind-bender as that was, I want you to see another dilemma stemming from your “Student Guide to General University Policies and Rules”:
When students accept admission to Penn State, they accept the rights and responsibilities of membership in the academic and social environments of that community. Students are expected to support its essential values and to maintain a high standard of conduct that may exceed federal, state, or local requirements (including) respect for the dignity of all persons and a willingness to learn from the differences in people, ideas, and opinions … Concern for others and their feelings and their need for conditions that support an environment in which they can work, grow, and succeed at Penn State.
How exactly are you going to promote concern for everyone’s feelings in a free society? The First Amendment offers no guarantee of a peaceful, unwounded inner child. It guarantees that each of us will be offended with regularity in exchange for the right to speak freely. That is the price of living in a free society. It is a small price, indeed.
Of course, if you really were serious about banning derogatory “banter, teasing, or jokes,” eradicating “contempt,” and mandating “concern for others and their feelings” it would be very hard to take you seriously. But it is far worse than that at Penn State. It appears that you are, at best, insincere hypocrites. Please allow me to explain.
After my speech at Penn State, I picked up a few copies of an “alternative” student literary magazine called “Problem Child.” The Pennsylvania taxpayer-funded publication is written and distributed on your campus. It recently featured a poem about Mother Teresa. Actually it was about one of Mother Teresa’s body parts – one that rhymes with the name “Delores.”
Just when I thought that 'Mother Teresa’s clitoris' was the most blasphemous poem I’d ever read, I read one called “What really happened to Unicorns.” It was hard to ascertain the point of the poem, but it seems the author thinks that Adam’s wife Eve was really a transgendered unicorn. I wanted to send you a copy but there were too many references to the f-word to merit reproduction. I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.
I also read poems entitled “Jesus thinks your skirt is stupid” and “I could spit you God.” But my favorite – by a long shot - was “Consummate angry poem.” It began with a reference to a Catholic priest sleeping on the author’s “limp d**k.” It ended with the author’s prayer thanking God he’s not a Jew.
I will not belabor the obvious point that anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism are permitted at Penn State despite your feigned interest in banning contempt for all groups. I will simply allow my good friends at The Alliance Defense Fund to do the talking. Wednesday morning they sued you in federal court.
This lawsuit promises to bring a lot of unwelcome banter. I expect the judge to show contempt for your institution’s collective constitutional ignorance. When he shows intolerance for your intolerance of intolerance you will probably feel uncomfortable. I sincerely hope my predictions don’t offend you.
Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and is a regular columnist for Townhall.com.
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What has happened to my Alma Mater?
Funny, I didn't see any mention of this letter in my PSU Alumni magazine. Great post--I love Mike Adams.
I'm not sure I can tolerate tolerance much longer. It's too hard to know what to tolerate.
Were those policies authord by Trey Parker and Matt Stone?
BTW, Is PSU still holding the "C**T Festival" up there in Happy Valley?
I've thought this for a long time. US universities have become a fall back position for the radical left - where all the 60's idealists decided to park their useless rears and enjoy a nice cushy jobs, free from the realities of the working world.
These types of professors have killed the learning process right at the root - critical thinking. They consistently have the left bent conclusion they want to arrive at and then gather up data around them to support their conclusion. They vehemently oppose other potential ideas even if they may have been arrived at through unbiased observation and testing. They aren't teaching students how to learn, instead they are force-feeding ideas from one particular viewpoint. They are complete and utter failures at teaching and equipping our youth with critical thinking skills, which has done this country a great disservice.
What these types of professors don't seem to grasp is that Academia is not the real world, it's a vacuum where idealistic scenarios can exist on paper and chalkboards. Their students won't have the same luxury of remaining there in that vacuum and collecting a salary. They'll be heading out to the real world, complete with it's survival of the fittest, uber-competitive pressures. A place where idealistic theories break down and yield to practical and realistic solutions that work. There's the way we'd like the world to be, and there's the way it is - to confuse the two when trying to achieve results is committing to failure.
The University of Michigan Code from the late 1980's turned me from a foaming-at-the-mouth-neo-marxist-liberal to the uber-conservative I am today!
Conservatives are created everyday because of these codes.
What's the chance of the word 'uber' showing up in the same thead?
Maybe Conservatives are Nazi's at heart???
(just kiddin')
Actual quote byDr. Kathleen Dixon, the Director of Women's Studies, Bowling Green State University
Double-uber, or uber-duece?
So many of these univ presidents are such reprehensible a$$holes.
Another Nittany Lion here. Penn State used to be a relatively conservative, or at least non-radical, school not that many years ago. It's so disheartening that any political news I hear from Happy Valley these days is standard leftist political correctness. I am writing to Spanier to express my displeasure, and to connect that displeasure with future contributions to the University. Fortunately, much of the student body at Penn State appears to remain relatively normal. Must be the Paterno influence.
You are missing the point. The collegiate types want their charges to get out into the competitive world, experience it, then start The Revolution when they find out the real world is not anything like what they learned about in college.
...it's too bad the paper wasn't saying it about muslims...
Reminds me of:
"But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few sick, perverted individuals.
If you do, shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system?
And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general?
I put it to you, Greg. Isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?
Well, you can do what you want to us, but we won't sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!"
My son is a freshman up there this year. He said there are still quite a number of conservatives at the school. A lot of this year's freshmen were H.S. freshmen on 9/11 and have very pro-Bush, pro-WOT views.
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