Posted on 10/01/2013 7:30:44 PM PDT by NotYourAverageDhimmi
Jason Morgan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a Ph.D. student who is objecting to his school’s mandatory diversity training. The first lesson he ever attended included a lecture by the teacher who stated that he and the entire class were all racists. The next session he was scheduled to take was a lesson on transgender issues, which he does not support due to his religious beliefs.
On September 22nd, he sent a letter to his administrators and the press telling them why he wouldn’t be attending anymore indoctrination courses on campus.
Dear Graduate Director Prof. Kantrowitz,
Please forgive this sudden e-mail. I am writing to you today about the “diversity” training that new teaching assistants (TAs) are required to undergo. In keeping with the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea, I am also blind-copying on this e-mail several journalistic outlets and state government officials, because the taxpayers who support this university deserve to know how their money is being spent.
As you are probably aware, all new TAs in the History Department are required to attend one orientation session, two TA training sessions, and two diversity sessions. Yesterday (Friday, September 20th), we new TAs attended the first of the diversity sessions. To be quite blunt, I was appalled. What we were given, under the rubric of “diversity,” was an avalanche of insinuations, outright accusations, and suffocating political indoctrination (or, as some of the worksheets revealingly put it, “re-education”) entirely unbecoming a university of our stature.
Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and students at probably every other public institution of higher education in this country, have long since grown accustomed to incessant leftism. It is in the very air that we breathe. Bascom Hill, for example, is roped off and the university is shut down so that Barack Obama (D), Mark Pocan (D), and Tammy Baldwin (D) can deliver campaign speeches before election day. (The university kindly helped direct student traffic to these campaign events by sending out a mass e-mail encouraging the student body to go to the Barack Obama for President website and click “I’m In for Barack!” in order to attend.) Marxist diatribes denouncing Christianity, Christians, the United States, and conservatives (I am happy to provide as many examples of this as might be required) are assigned as serious scholarship in seminars. The Teaching Assistants Association (TAA)–which sent out mass e-mails, using History Department list-servs, during the attempt to recall Governor Scott Walker, accusing Gov. Walker of, among other things, being “Nero”–is allowed to address TA and graduate student sessions as a “non-partisan organization”. The History Department sponsors a leftist political rally, along with the Socialist Party of Wisconsin, and advertises for the rally via a departmental e-mail (sent, one presumes, using state computers by employees drawing salaries from a state institution). In short, this university finds it convenient to pretend that it is an apolitical entity, but one need not be particularly astute to perceive that the Madison campus is little more than a think tank for the hard left. Even those who wholeheartedly support this political agenda might in all candor admit that the contours of the leftism here are somewhat less than subtle.
At the “diversity” training yesterday, though, even this fig leaf of apoliticism was discarded. In an utterly unprofessional way, the overriding presumption of the session was that the people whom the History Department has chosen to employ as teaching assistants are probably racists. In true “diversity” style, the language in which the presentation was couched was marbled with words like “inclusive”, “respect”, and “justice”. But the tone was unmistakably accusatory and radical. Our facilitator spoke openly of politicizing her classrooms in order to right (take revenge for?) past wrongs. We opened the session with chapter-and-verse quotes from diversity theorists who rehearsed the same tired “power and privilege” cant that so dominates seminar readings and official university hand-wringing over unmet race quotas. Indeed, one mild-mannered Korean woman yesterday felt compelled to insist that she wasn’t a racist. I never imagined that she was, but the atmosphere of the meeting had been so poisoned that even we traditional quarries of the diversity Furies were forced to share our collective guilt with those from continents far across the wine-dark sea.
It is hardly surprising that any of us hectorees would feel thusly. For example, in one of the handouts that our facilitator asked us to read (“Detour-Spotting: for white anti-racists,” by joan olsson [sic]), we learned things like, “As white infants we were fed a pabulum of racist propaganda,” “…there was no escaping the daily racist propaganda,” and, perhaps most even-handed of all, “Racism continues in the name of all white people.” Perhaps the Korean woman did not read carefully enough to realize that only white people (all of them, in fact) are racist. Nevertheless, in a manner stunningly redolent of “self-criticism” during the Cultural Revolution in communist China, the implication of the entire session was that everyone was suspect, and everyone had some explaining to do.
You have always been very kind to me, Prof. Kantrowitz, so it pains me to ask you this, but is this really what the History Department thinks of me? Is this what you think of me? I am not sure who selected the readings or crafted the itinerary for the diversity session, but, as they must have done so with the full sanction of the History Department, one can only conclude that the Department agrees with such wild accusations, and supports them. Am I to understand that this is how the white people who work in this Department are viewed? If so, I cannot help but wonder why in the world the Department hired any of us in the first place. Would not anyone be better?
There is one further issue. At the end of yesterday’s diversity “re-education,” we were told that our next session would include a presentation on “Trans Students”. At that coming session, according to the handout we were given, we will learn how to let students ‘choose their own pronouns’, how to correct other students who mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, and how to ask people which pronouns they prefer (“I use the pronouns he/him/his. I want to make sure I address you correctly. What pronouns do you use?”). Also on the agenda for next week are “important trans struggles, as well as those of the intersexed and other gender-variant communities,” “stand[ing] up to the rules of gender,” and a very helpful glossary of related terms and acronyms, to wit: “Trans”: for those who “identify along the gender-variant spectrum,” and “Genderqueer”: “for those who consider their gender outside the binary gender system”. I hasten to reiterate that I am quoting from diversity handouts; I am not making any of this up.
Please allow me to be quite frank. My job, which I love, is to teach students Japanese history. This week, for example, I have been busy explaining the intricacies of the Genpei War (1180-1185), during which time Japan underwent a transition from an earlier, imperial-rule system under regents and cloistered emperors to a medieval, feudal system run by warriors and estate managers. It is an honor and a great joy to teach students the history of Japan. I take my job very seriously, and I look forward to coming to work each day.
It is most certainly not my job, though, to cheer along anyone, student or otherwise, in their psychological confusion. I am not in graduate school to learn how to encourage poor souls in their sexual experimentation, nor am I receiving generous stipends of taxpayer monies from the good people of the Great State of Wisconsin to play along with fantasies or accommodate public cross-dressing. To all and sundry alike I explicate, as best I can, such things as the clash between the Taira and the Minamoto, the rise of the Kamakura shogunate, and the decline of the imperial house in twelfth-century Japan. Everyone is welcome in my classroom, but, whether directly or indirectly, I will not implicate myself in my students’ fetishes, whatever those might be. What they do on their own time is their business; I will not be a party to it. I am exercising my right here to say, “Enough is enough.” One grows used to being thought a snarling racist–after all, others’ opinions are not my affair–but one draws the line at assisting students in their private proclivities. That is a bridge too far, and one that I, at least, will not cross.
I regret that this leaves us in an awkward situation. After having been accused of virulent racism and, now, assured that I will next learn how to parse the taxonomy of “Genderqueers”, I am afraid that I will disappoint those who expect me to attend any further diversity sessions. When a Virginia-based research firm came to campus a couple of years ago to present findings from their study of campus diversity, then-Diversity Officer Damon Williams sent a gaggle of shouting, sign-waving undergraduates to the meeting, disrupting the proceedings so badly that the meeting was cancelled. In a final break with such so-called “diversity”, I will not be storming your office or shouting into a megaphone outside your window. Instead, I respectfully inform you hereby that I am disinclined to join in any more mandatory radicalism. I have, thank God, many more important things to do. I also request that diversity training be made optional for all TAs, effective immediately. In my humble opinion, neither the Department nor the university has any right to subject anyone to such intellectual tyranny.
Thank you for your patience in reading this long e-mail.
Sincerely,
Jason Morgan
Reeducation Camp ?
If someone publicly calls you a racist, can you sue them for defamation of character?
Just a thought...
Brave guy. I hope he doesn’t lose his job, but frankly, if he has to submit to this crud to keep it, it’s not worth it. Nothing is.
Maybe a private university is the only chance.
I read this the other day and gotta give the youngster kudos for standing up for what he believes. Sadly too many of the kids today have been so indoctrinated with this crap that they readily accept it. Or the go along to get along and don’t have the backbone this youngster did. God bless him.
I can’t answer your question directly. But, I have some anecdotal information from a relative who did his undergrad at UWisc and grad work somewhere else.
He wasn’t surprised to hear that this class existed in a soft science at UWisc, but his impression was that science grad programs were relatively less affected by PC concerns, at least from the indoctrination standpoint.
This brave fellow can expect an audit in the near future. How dare he speak his opinion. /s
I know you people are intimidated of that book learnin’ stuff, but this sort of thing goes on only in two or three far-left schools in the north.
I’ve never run across it as a student or a teacher.
/book learnin’
//it’ll get you a job that pays more than minimum wage!!!
I would love to see the reply to this, if one is ever forthcoming.
The History Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been a hotbed of progressivism and radicalism for well over a century—the home of Frederick Jackson Turner, Charles Beard and William Appleman Williams. It’s great to see that someone there is willing to swim against the tide.
I hope many stand up with him but ..................
I stood up in my church for similar crap and not a man stood with me.
What did you expect from the Un. of Wisconsin? It has been marxist-central since the 60’s with no hope for change in sight.
I do hope the Governor reads this email. Then let the shit hit the fan.
As Alan Kors said long ago about the word “faciliator”. “When you hear that word, hide your children, dear parents.”
I’ve told my FRiends here about the time when I, my best friend in graduate school, and one of his professors attended a “racism awareness workshop” (a voluntary version of the mandatory nonsense Mr. Morgan is decrying) for the purpose of causing trouble in a genteel sort of way. I seem to have been most effective, since the unter-dean who was running the thing had to rescue my “facilitator”, who was at a loss how to deal with my assertion the by-and-large racism is dead in America, and what prejudice remains is cultural, and is often rational. By the end all of us were discussing culture not race, so I felt I had won the day. It wasn’t all that long afterward that anti-racism in the U.S. started using the word “multiculturalism” which had before that been a purely Canadian notion. I’ve always wondered whether that started first at Penn and whether I inadvertently cause it.
If actually true, the professor making that statement is, by definition, racist by lumping everyone into the same category without even knowing them. The leftists ALWAYS accuse those trying to follow moral law of things the leftists themselves are doing. Liberalism is de facto RANK HYPOCRISY and those not following it should be beaten until they decide to accept it.
Yes, there are. To find one, check out the Intercollegiate Studies Institute website. You should also consult their print publication Choosing the Right College, which can be purchased at the website. This is a thick publication that reviews hundreds of colleges and universities and provides information on such things as the political climate on campus. Use the Worldcat database to find it in a public library near you.
A splendid letter written by a splendid young man. He is to be congratulated for his forthrightness and willingness to share his brilliant politically incorrect insights with his superiors and the world.
I'm in his corner - big time!
And Jason, whatever the roads you travel from here on in, may the Grace of God be with you in all your endeavors.
CA....
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