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Grad student union unequivocally condemns University for hosting speaker

Last updated on 11/19/2018

Turning Point is a well-funded right-wing agit-prop group that regularly tries to get me to repost links to their poorly written and researched stories about left-wing agit-prop professors, e.g. a recent one about the fact that no UO faculty give money to Republican candidates. (The $5K that Chuck Lillis gave to Ben Carson doesn’t count, since Lillis is just a trustee.)

Even worse, they didn’t cite my earlier, seminal work on this. Desk reject. I tell them that I’ll repost their stuff if they’ll add me to their Professor Watchlist of dangerously liberal faculty, which would give me some street cred with the faculty, but I think they’re on to me.

TP sponsors a UO student group, which brought a speaker to campus Friday. The Daily Emerald has the story here:

… Cabot said that it is hard to stay conservative on campus with social and academic pressures, but those who are end up more informed politically. He said he worries that liberal students are not being exposed to ideas from all areas of the political spectrum.

“When [liberal students] do finally hear conservative ideas, they don’t know how to handle them,” Cabot said.

As is demonstrated by this op-ed from the GTFF grad student union exec committee, here:

The elected leadership of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation unequivocally condemns the University’s hosting of Cabot Phillips’s “Liberal Privilege” tour. For over forty years, the GTFF has committed itself to fostering an environment of academic freedom, rigorous debate, and the life of the mind for graduate employees and the wider campus community. Phillips and his associated organizations “Campus Reform” and “Turning Point USA” are only interested in cheap political theater at the expense of UO’s students and employees, not good-faith exploration of political ideas. …

For the record, I hope this means that GTFF is not going to be engaging in cheap political theater by chanting and drumming all over campus next time they go on strike.

6 Comments

  1. Deplorable Duck 11/18/2018

    Sounds pretty bland. Still, kudos to Daily Emerald for covering this (grammar notwithstanding). But also -1 for the lack of transcript or video. In these days when NYT or WaPo cannot be trusted to provide neutral, factual coverage, I don’t really believe anything until I’ve seen the source material.

    (And if you haven’t already read this, it’s definitely worth five minutes of your time. I seem to be living this.)

  2. hardnosedduck 11/19/2018

    Relevant? Interesting at least. (And ouch.)

    White liberals self-present less competence to minorities than to other Whites—that is, they patronize minorities stereotyped as lower status and less competent. In an initial archival demonstration of the competence downshift, Study 1 examined the content of White Republican and Democratic presidential candidates’ campaign speeches. Although Republican candidates did not significantly shift language based on audience racial composition, Democratic candidates used less competence-related language to minority audiences than to White audiences.

    https://psyarxiv.com/pv2ab/

  3. apt 11/19/2018

    From Kelley’s “Black Study, Black Struggle,”

    “…it never occurred to us to refuse to read a text simply because it validated the racism, sexism, free-market ideology, and bourgeois liberalism against which we railed. Nothing was off limits. On the contrary, delving into these works only sharpened our critical faculties.”

    I’m grateful I got to be a student at a time when “safe spaces” didn’t circulate as both idea and practice on campuses. Now as a faculty member, I’m grateful when students come to realize safe spaces are a false construct, and their capacity for critical thought expands beyond the regurgitated, pop-social justice rhetoric flowing forth a little too easily on this campus…

    hardnosedduck – yep.

    • charlie 11/20/2018

      According to the U.S. Department of Education, about 20 million students attend American unis. I’ve yet to see a study which quantifies just how many students demand/need safe spaces, actually fulfill stereotypes disseminated by MSM, or engage in any activism. Are we talking ten million, a couple million, ten thousand, what? Without any attempt to at least estimate numbers, I’m guessing that much of this is nonsense…

    • honest Uncle Bernie 11/20/2018

      Ah yes, Robin Kelley, author of an admirable book on Thelonious Monk. Who was not himself so political, or leftwing.

      As for Turning Point — why shouldn’t a student group invite them if they so desire? The response of the GTFF makes me all the more sympathetic to the idea that we could use a visit from a group like TP, whatever their virtues and faults may be.

    • Deplorable Duck 04/06/2019

      I witnessed something rather striking in front of the EMU yesterday. A couple of anti-abortion (I assume) protesters were there. Not students–more like hapless yokels. But quiet and not in any way threatening.

      One had a large sign board, but I couldn’t see it. Several students had decided that the proper response was to block the view of all passers-by. One of them had literally picked up an orange traffic barrel and was hugging it at chest height right in front of the sign–a unique instrument of censorship, to be sure.

      UO is failing these kids. If they want to make civic contributions and get ahead in their future careers, they need to know how to confidently articulate their arguments. A traffic barrel will never win the day.

      (If it matters, I’m very pro-abortion myself. But I’m also very free speech.)

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