In Praise of Whistleblowers. Where bigotry is concerned, faculty can and must police each other.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | December 14, 2023 | Graham Hillard

[karpov]

What is racism’s limiting principle? At times, the answer has to do with practicalities: Xi Jinping would presumably enslave every last Uyghur if geopolitical and administrative circumstances allowed it. Or perhaps religion gets involved: One shudders to think, for instance, how the internment of Japanese Americans might have unfolded had not the nation’s residual Christianity stayed certain hands.

In most places, thank God, there are not only pragmatic and religious limits on bigotry but social ones, as well. Yes, we humans egg each other on to evil, but we also keep one another in check, perhaps especially where public morality is concerned. Hence the irreplaceability of the dissenter, the snitch, or the scold. If such a person allows himself to be silenced, an ideologically homogeneous community has no one to draw it back from the brink.

Consider, for example, an internal report obtained by the National Association of Scholars earlier this fall, detailing appalling racism at the University of Washington. When, during the ’22-’23 hiring season, a psychology-department search committee attempted to fill an open faculty position, it ranked three finalists without regard for race. Subsequently, however, that ranking was condemned by a subsidiary departmental body known as the Diversity Advisory Committee. Having placed a white candidate above two applicants “of color,” the search committee had necessarily violated the logic of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and could not be allowed to proceed. Though some psychology faculty seem to have offered token resistance, the search committee ultimately gave in and re-ordered the applicants such that a black candidate took the lead.

[Spok]

Penn State, MIT and Harvard have embraced rape, murder, torture and racism, in the proper “context “, of course. Try to imagine the context in which the Holocaust would have been morally justified. I can’t. And this shows us clearly where the slippery slope of situational ethics will take us.

[The Duke]

Bigots ought to be able to think any thing they want, and the rest of us should be free to think they’re idiots.

[AppyPappy]

The Left: We love Whistleblowers unless a Democrat is doing the bad deed.

[Pontiac]

“deconstruct how evaluating candidates based on certain characteristics (e.g., productivity, verbal fluency under pressure, charisma, likeability, [or] visionary leadership) may advantage privileged groups over underrepresented groups”;

Here is the ideal candidate; a lazy, illiterate, stutterer, repulsive, nasty fool.

Oh, don’t forget he has to be Black!