The University of California’s Insane Speech Police

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Daily Beast:

Administrators of the UC system think referring to America as a ‘melting pot’ is somehow offensive—and want teachers to stop using that and many other innocuous phrases.

 

Fifty years after the birth of the free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley, officials across the UC system are encouraging faculty and students to purge mundane, potentially offensive words and phrases from their vocabularies.

 

Administrators want members of campus to avoid the use of racist and sexist statements, though their notions about what kinds of statements qualify are completely bonkers. “America is a melting pot,” “Why are you so quiet?” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” are all phrases that should raise red flags, according to the UC speech police.

 

Requests for faculty to quit perpetrating these teensiest of microaggressions are thankfully just that—requests—although the fact that they come straight from the desk of UC President Janet Napolitano lends them some muscle. On January 5, Napolitano dispatched letters to UC deans and department chairs inviting them to attend seminars “to foster informed conversation about the best way to build and nurture a productive academic climate.” That’s bureaucrat-speak for learn to keep your mouths shut.

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Free speech meltdown.

[Valin]

Kansas University Student Senate Votes to Ban ‘His/Her’ from Governing Document Because They’re ‘Microaggressions’
Trigger warning: This article contains several gender-specific pronouns.
Katherine Timpf
October 26, 2015

The Kansas University student senate has voted to banish gender-specific pronouns such as “his/her” from its Rules and Regulations document because they’re “microaggressions” against the students who don’t use them.

 

To, you know, work toward stamping out oppression or something, the group will replace all of those hurtful “him/his”-es and “his/hers”-es with the much more sensitive and modern “they/them/their,” according to an article in the Lawrence Journal-World.

 

In case anyone might think (know) that “they/them/their” are often considered (are) plural and not singular pronouns, the group will add a disclaimer at the bottom explaining that they’re using them this way “to increase the inclusivity of Student Senate and prevent microaggressions gender pronouns pose to individuals who don’t use them.”

 

(So, basically, they’re doing it for social justice — a motive that, once declared, automatically makes the necessity of any initiative indisputable.)

 

It’s not clear if any “individuals who don’t use” gender-specific pronouns had actually reported that the existence of them in the document had been causing them distress, or if the student senate was just being preemptively heroic.

 

(Snip)

 

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H/T http://www.dennisprager.com/'>Dennis Prager