Posted on 05/19/2010 2:59:28 PM PDT by reaganaut1
A St. Louis scientist who was among a select group picked by the Obama administration to pursue a solution to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been removed from the group because of writings on his website, the U.S. Energy Department confirmed Wednesday.
Washington University physics professor Jonathan Katz was one of five top scientists chosen by the Department of Energy and attended meetings in Houston last week.
Though considered a leading scientist, Katz's website postings often touch on social issues. Some of those writings have stirred anger in the past and include postings defending homophobia and questioning the value of racial diversity efforts.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu was not aware of Katz's writings before selecting him for the panel, spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller said. It was not immediately clear how the department became aware of the writings.
"Dr. Chu has spoken with dozens of scientists and engineers as part of his work to help find solutions to stop the oil spill," a statement from the Energy Department said. "Some of Professor Katz's controversial writings have become a distraction from the critical work of addressing the oil spill. Professor Katz will no longer be involved in the Department's efforts."
Katz did not respond to a phone message and e-mail seeking an interview. The extent of work he performed on the oil spill recovery effort was not immediately known.
In a website posting titled "In Defense of Homophobia," Katz wrote about the AIDS epidemic.
"The human body was not designed to share hypodermic needles, it was not designed to be promiscuous, and it was not designed to engage in homosexual acts," he wrote."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Looks like Obama is applying morality to this thing, after all.
The perverted morals of democrats.
That’s the difference between a right-wing extremist and a left-wing extremist.
The right-winger is living in his hidden compound behind a “do not disturb” sign.
The left-winger wants all your money, your mind and your time so he can save the world, after accounting for expenses.
Don’t ping me, you wackadoodle.
Sounds like Dr. Chu has common sense, something not valued at all by ivory tower types.
LOL...I did see a Freeper say he thought they should plug the leak with Waxman’s fat ass, but I felt an obligation to point out that the oil would likely flow unimpeded out of those huge nostrils of his.
I guess he wasn't queer or diverse enough to help clean up an oil spill. Should that have made any difference?
True. You are completely correct.
However, 'homophobia' is a KEYWORD and is a high percentage points knee-jerk response among the Liberal and Left-wing community and has shown to affect a good percentage of the Democratic Party demographic.
Keywords are one of the most important tools of Newspeak.
Does anyone know just what the feds are doing to stop the leak, aside from blaming BP?
Just an Obama purge of a Jewish Conservative.
Singing “Only the Beginning”.
PS: The truth is not allowed in the Obama regime.
Now, repeat after me: “Obama is always right. Conservatives are always wrong. God bless Obama!”
Diversity is the Last Refuge of a Scoundrel
Jonathan I. Katz
The air is full of talk of ``diversity’’, meaning the ethnic and racial composition of populations, workforces and (especially) student bodies at universities. This is shorthand for concern about how many members of various ``racial’’ groups are present. Most biologists doubt that race is meaningful in describing people, unlike dogs or cattle, but in everyday life the term ``race’’ is used as a proxy for physical appearance.
It is remarkable that the harder it is to evaluate accomplishment, and the less accomplishment matters to an institution, the more concern there is with diversity. In the absolute meritocracy of a used car lot, all that matters is whether a salesman can ``move the iron’’, and no one talks about diversity. In large corporate bureaucracies, government and academia, in which accomplishment is hard to measure and has only distant effects on the success and survival of the organization, diversity is always on the agenda.
The concern for ``diversity’’ can be an obsession. For example, at some universities the administrators appear hardly ever to think of anything else. Every public statement must drag in diversity, no matter how irrelevant. No platform or program is complete without a nod to diversity. The majority of public lectures concern diversity-related issues, with all the other areas of human knowledge and concern, from Shakespeare to molecular biology, confined to a minority (at my institution this was true for some years, but is now [2004] less so). Even the old-fashioned Southern racist occasionally stopped to think about the price of cotton.
Why am I so concerned about universities? Partly because I am a professor, so I see a university close-up every day. Most university faculties have less diversity of thought than the trio of Cotton Mather, Roger Williams and William Penn. But they don’t count, because they belonged to the wrong ``race’’. And partly because we subject our impressionable young people to them, as their first environment as adults.
University admissions are important because they are crucial to social mobility. That is where a young person with ability and character, but no special advantages or connections, ought to be able to leave his (or her) background behind and join an aristocracy of talent. The more university admissions are clogged with irrelevancies such as diversity, the less opportunity there is for the talented outsider, and the more the ideal of fair play is corroded. At some institutions only 10% of the places are open to applicants who are not members of some preferred group. Former presidents of Harvard and Princeton recently published a book (The Shape of the River) advertising the great advantages in life conferred by degrees from those institutions. Prejudice should not affect the award of this privilege.
In the diversity business what matters about people is their ``race’’, which is taken to determine character, intellect and moral value. That is the philosophy of National Socialism, with a different Master Race and (so far) no subhumans.
Most university administrators would object to the suggestion that they obtained their philosophy from Mein Kampf. So, let us consider a different hypothesis. University administrators are generally failed or bored academics who have chosen the camaraderie of the committee room over the rigors of the library or laboratory. Their proper task is to improve the quality of research and teaching at their institutions. But this is hard to do, and even harder to evaluate. Worse, the competition is trying equally hard; some institutions will rise in the pecking order, but others must fall, and their administrators are then failures.
Diversity offers a way out. It is easy to proclaim as a goal, and easy to achieve-—simply meddle in the procurement, hiring and student admissions processes until whatever goal has been chosen is reached. Then congratulate yourself on your success, and announce that you will do even better next year. Even the most incompetent administrator can be a winner!
When someone talks about ``diversity’’ he is changing the subject from his proper responsibility-—doing his job better. At a university that is improving the quality of teaching and research. At a government agency it is serving the public. In a foundation it is carrying out the donor’s wishes. And in a profit-making corporation it is making money for the shareholders. The next time you hear or read ``diversity’’, substitute ``Americanism’’, another right-sounding (but now unfashionable) slogan. Both of these are excuses for not doing one’s proper job.
Diversity has another attraction. It offers the pygmy Napoleons of adminstration a chance to interfere in every decision made-—procurement, hiring and (at universities) student admissions. It keeps them busy and justifies their existence. It is a protection racket-—give them a percentage or they will prevent you from hiring or admitting the people you need, or awarding contracts to the lowest or best bidders. It provides administrators plenty of opportunities to do favors for their friends, a natural human desire which, in other circumstances, remains under an ethical cloud. It often amounts to breach of fiduciary responsibility, violation of a public trust, or theft. It is the fashionable form of patronage.
The quest for diversity leads to another poisonous idea, that all decisions should be controlled by a central authority. No power is delegated, no subordinate individual or independent institution is given responsibility, or can act on its own authority, because it cannot be trusted to arrive at sufficiently ``diverse’’ results. This is a fundamentally totalitarian idea, that power should be centralized rather than dispersed, and diversity is the rich manure in which this poisonous seed is growing.
In 1964 Congress passed, and the President signed, a Civil Rights Act which forbade racial discrimination in most areas of American life. Recently, on dubious grounds, the Supreme Court partially suspended this act for 25 years. The list of submitters of amicus curae briefs in favor of suspension was remarkable. It included leaders of business, labor (odd bedfellows!), government and academia. Why?
The Act attempted to establish an individual right not to be subject to racial discrimination. This would increase the rights of individuals in oppostion to the power of institutions. Is it surprising that the leaders of those institutions would argue in favor of increasing their power and against the rights of individuals? This is why the people of California passed by initiative Proposition 209, outlawing racial discrimination by their state and local governments, over the opposition of leaders of both political parties and most large institutions.
The diversity movement is racist at its core. When dealing with people we should be concerned with intellect, talent, character and accomplishment. People aren’t dogs or cattle; race matters only to racists.
Someone who talks about diversity is probably a scoundrel.
Postscript: The February 13, 2004 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education contained an article by one of the prominent advocates of ``diversity’’ (a man named Stanley Fish, an administrator and formerly an English professor-—surprising, in view of his self-proclaimed limited vocabulary-—see the article for details). He asserted that there is no place for intellectual diversity at a university. This Fascist idea, that only one kind of thought is acceptable, is unfortunately very influential in many universities today. Thus, as Orwell predicted, fascism comes calling itself anti-fascism. In contrast, I assert that intellectual diversity is the only kind of diversity that has any relevance to a university’s mission.
Jonathan Katz
Thu May 13 12:39:11 CDT 1999
Katz is the victim of political correctness “rule” instead of the rule of law, and a derogation of Katz’s 1st amendment rights.
zer0bambam plugging the leak
I'm missing the controversial part?
After reading this, it’s easy to see why Hussein’s totalitarians want to put him on an ice floe.
It is an abomination to all freedom.
In fairness, Katz actually titled his own posting "In Defense of Homophobia", so this one isn't just AP bias.
OMG.
This is ludicrous. And it shows, once again, Obama putting his image above the safety of our nation.
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