Posted on 11/16/2016 12:04:57 PM PST by Lorianne
Snowflake university culture in America may have just hit peak safe-space stupidity.
Here’s what happened according to the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily:
::
Several professors on Grounds collaborated to write a letter to University President Teresa Sullivan against the inclusion of a Thomas Jefferson quote in her post-election email Nov. 9.
In the email, Sullivan encouraged students to unite in the wake of contentious results, arguing that University students have the responsibility of creating the future they want for themselves.
“Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that University of Virginia students ‘are not of ordinary significance only: they are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country, and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes,’” Sullivan said in the email. “I encourage today’s U.Va. students to embrace that responsibility.”
Note that Jefferson was specifically addressing the UVA student body in the chosen quote. It’s pretty obvious why she chose that particular one.
Some professors from the Psychology Department — and other academic departments — did not agree with the use of this quote. Their letter to Sullivan argued that in light of Jefferson’s owning of slaves and other racist beliefs, she should refrain from quoting Jefferson in email communications.
“We would like for our administration to understand that although some members of this community may have come to this university because of Thomas Jefferson’s legacy, others of us came here in spite of it,” the letter read. “For many of us, the inclusion of Jefferson quotations in these e-mails undermines the message of unity, equality and civility that you are attempting to convey.”
The letter garnered 469 signatures — from both students and professors — before being sent out via email Nov. 11. Signees included Politics Prof. Nicholas Winter, Psychology Prof. Chad Dodson, Women, Gender and Sexuality Prof. Corinne Field, College Assistant Dean Shilpa Davé, Politics Prof. Lynn Sanders and many more. Asst. Psychology Prof. Noelle Hurd drafted the letter.
“The intention of the email was to start a conversation with our administration regarding ways to be more inclusive,” Hurd said in an email statement. “In the current climate, we must seize every opportunity to communicate that this university welcomes individuals from all backgrounds.”
Politics Prof. Lawrie Balfour said she believes everyone who signed the letter, including herself, was grateful that Sullivan responded to anxiety following the election — however, many felt it was the wrong moment to turn to Jefferson, following incidents of identity-related hate speech.
“I’ve been here 15 years,” Balfour said. “Again and again, I have found that at moments when the community needs reassurance and Jefferson appears, it undoes I think the really important work that administrators and others are trying to do.”
Not all signees believe the University should move away from quoting Jefferson in all email correspondence, including Balfour.
How generous of them. What’s more incredible, is that apparently some signees do think there should be a blanket shadow ban on Jefferson quotations.
SNIP
More insanity on college campuses. The mentally weak students and faculty are at best hypocrites, more likely suffering from mental illness, and should immediately switch to a school with no links to Jefferson. In fact, they should leave Virginia.
Never mind that he wrote the Declaration of Independence and founded the very university that they are sucking the government's teat to attend. Or that he also founded the Democrat Party that they all worship................
The contrast between the patriot genius, who vowed eternal vigilance against every form of tyranny over the minds of man, and these myopic fanatics, bent on demonstrating their hate driven stupidity, could not be more stark.
The very word university means ‘the whole’ all inclusive. They have made it the very opposite of that....................
Maybe the state of Virginia should close the university that Thomas Jefferson founded? Geez, but then would all those liberal snowflakes go? Oh my!
Yeah, don’t quote one of the greatest minds since Aristotle.
Sounds like lots of safe-space and not-my-pres “students” are taking to heart the Jefferson quote, slightly modified:
The tree of tyranny must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
They are as dumb as a box of rocks. They need to read the true history of the Dem party, Jefferson was not the nice person PC history makes him out to be. Dinesh D’Sousa’s Hillary’s America makes that very plain. He took down the Picture of Lincoln, and put up Jefferson’s he found in the back room of the main DNC HQ. And took it with him.
The Racist History of the Democratic Party
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/3554
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce:[11] and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
I'm not sure they teach History or Politics at UVA.
If she had balls she would fire on the spot!
Really. There so many idiots about nowadays.
“At minimum, the profs should refuse fat paychecks and benefit packages paid for by the tax slaves of Virginia.”
For years the tax slaves of Virginia have dramatically decreased their contributions to the University of Virginia. Today they contribute less than 10% of the annual operating funds of the University. The administration and many of the school’s many wealthy alumni (who strongly support the school financially) would like to take the University private. The University’s law and graduate business schools are already privatized. Perhaps the legislature representing the tax slaves of Virginia should consider privatizing UVA, Virginia Tech, and the other state universities able to fund themselves without state support. In fact privatizing higher education might be a way for all state to relieve the burden on taxpayers.
Bet it won’t be Venezuela!
Total privatization sounds like a fine idea.
When I was a graduate student at UVA thirty years ago, Mr. Jefferson was revered by all. My guess is that the big donors are mostly wealthy, successful old alumni from that era. Odd that they take so little interest in what their money pays for.
“Odd that they take so little interest in what their money pays for.”
This alumnus stopped giving about 5 years ago after two incidents:
1) The Dean of the College, in her blog, lauded Teddy Kennedy at the time of his death, comparing him to Thomas Jefferson as a great statesman.
2) At an alumni gathering I asked the current President, Ms. Sullivan, about her position on the single sanction honor system which was under attack by a large minority of students. She would not respond, directing me instead to one of her subordinates. The assistant, with a very politically correct academic title I no longer remember, explained to me many minority students and foreign students do not share the same cultural values a single sanction reinforces. She suggested I be sensitive to the blending of cultures occurring in our society and the fact the University has be more flexible to attract students from diverse backgrounds. A single sanction may be inconsistent with a multicultural community.
I did not receive a response from my letter to the university administration advising them of my decision to redirect my charitable annual contribution and remove a legacy endowment from my estate. The administration’s subsequent handling of the recent Rolling Stone fiasco has only confirmed my decision to no longer support financially the school I once treasured.
Unfortunately those with much larger wallets than I continue to fund the school and make up for the declining contributions from the state. As long as they subsidize the progressive agenda of the current academic leaders, and the Democrat governor continues to appoint leftists to the board of visitors, the school will continue its evolution into another elitist socialist indoctrination center.
There are great men like Thomas Jefferson who are looked down upon by lesser human beings.
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