Free Republic

A governing body for psychologists in Canada ordered Dr. Jordan Peterson to undergo re-education training after complete strangers took issue with views he had expressed online. He fought back, but a Canadian court just upheld the regulator's order. What's the background? Peterson was previously in good standing with the College of Psychologists of Ontario and had no public record of any complaints. However, he made the mistake of angering strangers online with opinions at odds with leftist speech codes and dogmas. TheBlaze previously reported that individuals whom Peterson indicated were neither clients nor familiar with his clients complained to the...

In a valiant effort to see who can descend furthest into educated imbecility, Brandeis University in Massachusetts created an “Oppressive Language List” to compel students to avoid uttering certain words that might oppress their fellow students. The list includes a host of words that it has deemed oppressive. The Prevention, Advocacy & Resource Center (PARC) is the entity that wasted time and money coming up with this new and creative way to stifle speech. On its website, it said: “PARC recognizes that language is a powerful tool used to perpetrate and perpetuate oppression.” “As a community, we strive to...

I wonder if any college level literature courses teach George Orwell’s 1984 anymore. They evidently don’t teach it at the University of Colorado-Boulder, judging by a new campaign launched by the school to urge students to report the names of those responsible for any “bias-motivated incident” via an online form.The Campus Fix: The “Bias Incident Reporting” effort aims to “address the impact of demeaning and hurtful statements as well as acts of intolerance directed towards protected classes,” CU Boulder’s website states.Examples of bias, according to a corresponding poster campaign highlighting the reporting system, include calling people names or making...

There are few things in life as exquisitely pleasurable as watching the terminally silly fight among themselves, and, for those of us who have turned the practice into a spectator sport of sorts, this week certainly did not disappoint. On Tuesday, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait decided that he was tired of watching people he dislikes use the tactics on which he himself likes to rely, and, with 4,700 words of deliciously biting criticism, set off something of a firestorm. “The language police are perverting liberalism!” griped Chait. “The new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters...

If you think that academia is not the exclusive playground of the academic left, consider the fate of UCLA epidemiologist James Enstrom. In 2008, Enstrom thought that a report on the health effects of diesel emissions presented by the California Air Resources Board was faulty. As it turns out, CARB's nitrous oxide emission estimates were overstated by 340 percent. Enstrom and others had trouble believing that a Ph.D. statistician would make some of CARB's findings. They dug around and found that CARB researcher Hien Tran had falsely claimed to have a doctorate in statistics from UC Davis. In fact, Tran...

CNN's John King is attracting a lot of notice -- and some ridicule -- in the blogosphere for his on-air apology after a guest used the word "crosshairs" during a report on Chicago politics Tuesday. (The guest, a former Chicago reporter, referred to two rivals of mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel, saying Emanuel is "in both of their crosshairs.") "We were just having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race," King told viewers. "My friend Andy Shaw…used the term 'in the crosshairs' in talking about the candidates out there. We're trying, we're trying to get away from that language. Andy is...

No Permits Needed for Faith by: Bethany Stotts, January 30, 2009 In response to an Alliance Defense Fund-backed lawsuit, Yuba Community College District in California has decided to drop disciplinary actions against a Christian student who had proselytized on campus without a permit. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, “The plaintiff in the case, Ryan Dozier, had been preaching Christian beliefs in a Yuba College walkway last February when the campus police stopped him and told him he needed a permit. He later received a letter accusing him of violating college policy and telling him he faced expulsion if...

After airing an interview clip of Sarah Palin telling Fox News' Greta Van Susteren that she was looking for guidance from God about running for national office again, an appalled Chris Matthews called it "troubling," when he let loose this rant on Tuesday's "Hardball": Is, is this commentary about theocracy and going to God for approval? We've been through that with President Bush who said he, "didn't take advice from his father, he got it from another father." And we've been through this sort of Joan of Arc period. Are we gonna get another piece of this where God's leading...

I am pretty sure the Chief Justice of the Arizona went to law school, but it is just an assumption on my part. There certainly isn't much evidence of that in this silly ruling. Arizona’s Supreme Court chief justice has agreed to enforce the Hispanic Bar Association’s demands of banning the terms “illegal” and “aliens” in all of the state’s courtrooms. Claiming that the terms are inflammatory, the president of Arizona’s Hispanic Bar Association, (known as Los Abogados) has asked state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor to stop using them at trials or hearings because they create perceptions of...

Letting the facts do the talking seems to be a lost art among university bureaucrats today, at least at Georgia Tech. Honesty takes a back seat to misinformation, distortions of the truth and the assumption that those with opposing views are inherently wrong and deserving of retribution. It doesn't help when some members of the media leave this unchallenged. But now a federal judge has made note of Tech's apparent "lack of candor." In March 2006, the Alliance Defense Fund —- Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith —- filed a...

Quebec legislature bans word 'weathervane' Speaker says its hurtful and a slur after Charest called Dumont a weathervane one too many times October 16, 2007 THE CANADIAN PRESS QUEBEC – Politicians in Quebec's legislature will have to come up with a new way to slag their opponents now that the word "weathervane" has been added to the list of unparliamentary language. Speaker Michel Bissonnet judged the word to be "hurtful" as the legislature resumed Tuesday after the summer break. Premier Jean Charest has called Opposition Leader Mario Dumont a weathervane on numerous occasions recently, elevating him on Tuesday to "national...

Move over, Roe v. Wade. The latest liberal judicial litmus test is whether the nominee is willing to repudiate the phrase "homosexual lifestyle." Believe it or not, that's one of the two raps against Leslie Southwick, whose nomination for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.

PETA to AP: Don't Refer to Animals as 'It' By E&P Staff Published: April 26, 2007 4:00 PM ET NEW YORK The animal activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has written a letter to Norm Goldstein, the editor of the AP stylebook, asking that the book be changed so that pronouns referring to animals always be "he," "she," and "who." AP responded by noting that the stylebook only uses "it" and "which" if the animal's sex has not been established and the animal's name is unknown. PETA says that in a society that is recognizing animals rights...

Personality Test: The dispositional dispute in teacher preparation today, and what to do about it by William Damon 09/08/2005 The standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Excellence (NCATE) are of critical import for America's future teaching corps and for K-12 education in general and will wield disproportionate influence for decades to come. Over the past fifteen years, 25 states have outsourced the approval of teacher preparation programs to NCATE by adopting or adapting its standards as their own; the other 25 have various "partnerships" with the organization. Which makes it all the more disturbing that central to...

At Penn State University, “Acts of intolerance” are unacceptable and in order to prevent them and punish offenders the school has a “Report Hate” hotline and Web site.

Schools of Reeducation? By Frederick M. Hess Washington Post 02/05/06 For those who have been troubled by the tendency of universities to adopt campus speech codes, a worrisome new fad is rearing its head in the nation's schools of education. Stirred by professional opinion and accreditation pressures, teachers colleges have begun to regulate the dispositions and beliefs of those who would teach in our nation's classrooms. At the University of Alabama, the College of Education explains that it is "committed to preparing individuals to promote social justice, to be change agents, and to recognize individual and institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia,...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- It isn't often that a group of college professors is soundly and thoroughly embarrassed by a collection of mere students in an intellectual arena. But that's exactly what happened at the end of February, when the University of Alabama's Student Senate passed a sharp resolution directly opposing a heavy-handed, short-sighted and illiberal "hate speech" resolution that their Faculty Senate had already passed. The Faculty Senate's original resolution called for the creation of a series of new regulations which threatened to drastically curtail First Amendment rights at their public university. With their remarkably independent and sophisticated response, UA's...

Rolling back the tide of tyranny Mike S. Adams February 28, 2005 Last semester, the faculty senate at the University of Alabama (UA) passed an Orwellian speech code designed to restrict “any behavior that demeans or reduces an individual based on group affiliation or personal traits, or which promotes hate or discrimination.” Anyone armed with an 11th grade education can see that such a speech code is unconstitutional. Indeed, many of the UA “diversity initiatives” such as the Vagina Monologues would be banned under such a code, if the university had any intention of applying the code equally. Come to...

As the sordid controversy of University of Colorado (UC) professor Ward Churchill plays itself out, what is perhaps the most damaging aspect of it has largely escaped notice, campuses' double standard in First Amendment matters. Churchill, as widely reported, compared the World Trade Center victims on 9/11 to Nazis and praised their murderers as "gallant…combat teams." In the ensuing national uproar, Hamilton College in New York, which had invited Churchill to speak, decided to cancel the event, stating it had received threats of violence against Churchill and college officers. The college's president, Joan Hinde Stewart, covered her back with bogus...

FULL TITLE: The Disturbing Parallels Between University Speech Codes and Old South Demands to Limit Freedom of Speech By Charles W. Nuckolls and David T. Beito Charles W. Nuckolls is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama and David T. Beito is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama. Both are members of the Liberty and Power Blog (www.libertyandpower.com) at the History News Network. "In the South,” Faulkner said, “the past is not dead. It isn't even past." How true, especially when the segregationist legislation of the early 1950s reappears in the guise of protection...