Students will learn to report bias incidents (like pro-Trump chalk messages).”
That’s the headline in the libertarian magazine Reason, here:
Critics of the current intellectual climate at university campuses believe classrooms are indoctrination camps where left-wing academics brainwash students into becoming social justice activists. They are mistaken. The most pernicious and questionably legal forms of indoctrination aren’t happening in the classroom at all, and are primarily driven by administrators rather than professors.
Oregon State University provides a good example. The campus has plans to implement a new training program for incoming freshmen in the fall of 2016. Dr. Angela Batista, the campus’s interim diversity officer, sent an email to students earlier this week asking them to review the proposed training program. This training is ideological by its very nature: students will complete on-line modules in “social justice learning,” “diversity,” and “inclusivity.”
“This training initiative is intended to provide all students entering Oregon State University an orientation to concepts of diversity, inclusion and social justice and help empower all OSU students to contribute to an inclusive university community,” according to the proposal.
The modules will brief students on the history of social justice activism at Oregon, stress the importance of diversity and inclusivity, and provide students with resources to “incorporate the pursuit of social justice within their university experiences.” It will let them know about the Bias Response Team, which provides a website where students can report each other for perceived harassment. …
If you follow the link to the proposed online training program, this doesn’t actually look like the end of the Republic – although I hope the OSU Senate ensures they add plenty of material on free speech and academic freedom.. The current draft does not mention either.
Think like us, or we will forcibly reeducate you. Where have I heard this line before..?
Thanks to UOM for pointing out this Reason piece, and the dreadful program at OSU.
What if UO started promoting itself as the Oregon campus with freedom of thought and speech, and diversity of ideas?
1. Reason is a worthless magazine as a source for quality news about current events because it is so hopelessly ideological. That is certainly fine for advocacy pieces, and no one could read the linked article and think “quality journalism” instead of ideological “hit and run” (the name of the Reason blog in this case). Even within this context, this post is particularly empty, being incredibly brief and including only the author’s selective quotations from published materials and none from human beings with opposing views or who believe the effort might have some value.
2. It is difficult to infer what exactly is so terrible about the proposal on the strength of the argument-like claims presented here. It may be a poor idea, but the author in this piece fails to give reasons, preferring instead to repeat familiar anti-PC nostrums without even the pretense of contemplation or particularized investigation.
“This training initiative is intended to provide all students entering Oregon State University an orientation to concepts of diversity, inclusion and social justice and help empower all OSU students to contribute to an inclusive university community,” according to the proposal. ”
Oh, goodness, that just sounds terrible!
Look at this article, which shows how counterproductive such programs are:
https://thinkingoregon.org/2016/05/09/memo-to-osu-forget-about-social-justice-training/comment-page-1/