Simple mind-stretching exercise.
I’m of two minds about this. However, one positive educational outcome could be that students would recognize Nazi arguments for Jewish genocide when they are found in other contexts, such as in arguments for eugenic abortion and euthanasia.
The argument “for” genocide, aggressive war, terrorism, rape, murder, and so forth, is essentially that there is no right or wrong. All morality is not only arbitrary, but bourgeois and under suspicion.
All property is theft.
Gender is fluid.
Science is political.
To go beyond this, the argument that the Jews in particular are to be exterminated is that Jews have an identity that transcends the State. The State, therefore, cannot control them. The same argument applies to many others. Basically, to anybody who thinks or can think for himself.
Pol Pot, in Cambodia, extended this logic to all people who wore eyeglasses.
Basically, the masses are to consist of sheeple to be ruled by a self-perpetuating elite.
If they had been told to argue in favor of Communism taking over in the United States, would we be reading about it?
What I’d rather see in schools is an exercise where students are required to write various essays from a conservative perspective.
Progressive leftists have been relying on ad hominem (is that sexist?) attacks for decades — to the point where there are virtually no leftists who understand, are familiar with, or can explain the conservative viewpoint on any issue.
The Orwellian trend to completely silence conservative thought on U.S. college campuses speaks volumes about the Progressive worldview, and its utter separation from any sort of rational thought process.
How about schools assign essays on things like why globalism and the UN need to be abandoned, or why the income tax should be eliminated, or why government redistribution of wealth is counterproductive at best, and outright evil at worst?
Putting your name on a paper defending the holocaust could easily destroy your life. Even if is was just a class exercise, this was beyond stupid.
I cannot see how this assignment can in any way be justified or excused.
It’s actually a good study in tyrannical groupthink. Why would good people so willingly acquiesce to such evil?
Accepting this as an appropriate assignment requires one to believe that a) There is no true evil; B)Evil does not contaminate you if you dally with it and C)The ends justifies the means.
The professor should apologize absolutely. He used his authority to strong arm people to violate their consciences about strongly held cornerstones of their belief systems. Setting up that kind of stress for students is battery.
Arguing for genocide sullies a person. I could never utter such words. What do you do to people when you take away their right to stand for good. I would have grave reservations as to whether such a teacher however gifted should be allowed to teach. No one should be forced to speak words that violate their deeply held beliefs even if someone tells them its just an exercise. That this teacher would consider such behavior just an exercise speaks to his own moral bankrupcy.
Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it
A stopped clock. Kalifornia students woke up for a brief moment.
I agree with the students. Imagine if these students decide to run for office in 15 years. Some lib would dig up these essays and destroy them.
What’s next? Asking our young to ‘empathize’ with serial killers?
Fire the ‘teacher’ ...
Isn't that the norm with Bolshekrats?
Next they can argue in favor of the child sex slave trade.
On the one hand, it is very useful to understand how a certain group of people may be systematically dehumanized to the point where outright murder is no longer anathema, because it could happen to others: white males on the very same campuses, perhaps? "Whiteness" is, after all, as inescapable and indelible as "Jewness" used to be if one is to believe the neo-Aryan racial theories of the current crop of Social Justice Warriors.
On the other hand, the student incapable of producing such a paper due to profound moral convictions is a failure. One who produces a brilliant apologia is a success (with, as others pointed out, his or her name on the paper). I'm not sure that's a wise position for a teacher to place a student into, even if the intention is honorable.
I realize the teacher wants them to understand our enemies like Sun Tzu, puts them in a situation where they have to ration do I obey orders or risk being shot? What sort of morals did these people in the top nazi brass have ETC.
But for a University assignment, this is just going too far.
NEXT UP: An Assignment as a Democratic party senator to vote for euthanasia and eugenics