Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Speech Codes at Indiana Purdue University

Beware of what you read while on a university campus. This is what happened to a student at Indiana Purdue University in Indianapolis . (Hat tip Pajamas Media)

http://thefire.org/article/9255.html


He didn't say anything. He was observed reading a book with KKK in the title.

He was guilty of racial harassment according to the university's head of the Affirmative Action Office.
This is a result of the speech codes of so many American universities.

Of course, it all depends on who the victim group is and who the perpetrator group is. While many universities are seeing true hate speech on their campuses on a regular basis, if it is directed toward whites or Jews, people just turn their heads. If the perceived perpetrator is white and the perceived victim group is black, Muslim or Hispanic, it's call out the cavalry. Should it not be equal for all?

I remember when I was researching my book on the creole language  Papiamentu and wanted to get information on Joel Chandler Harris and the Uncle Remus stories. To get the material, I had to go to a special section of the UC-Irvine library and sign for it-and read it in the library. Of course, those materials were deemed racist (which they were not) in the 1960s and disappeared from many college library shelves. At UCI, they were hidden in a special section of the library.

Thank God nobody reported me checking these materials out. Why, my career might have been ruined.

And this guy was reading a book about the KKK (which was not even complementary toward the KKK) and some bureaucrat-or should I say victocrat- in the university finds him guilty or racial harassment.

Well, in the end, cooler heads prevailed. The student was "cleared". I wonder if the Affirmative Action official was fired or disciplined.

Nah.

5 comments:

  1. That is crazy. The student was probably doing research.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Further proof as to how important the First Amendment is.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think I once read a copy of Mein Kampf, although I didn't finish it. How can anyone speak intelligently of why Hitler's reasoning was warped, who hasn't read it? I also eventually got around to reading The Bell Curve.

    What Gary has highlighted here is a typical bureaucratic disease, which knows no ideology. It operated in the minds of 50s school administrators who thought they could lead students in prescribed prayers, in the minds of 80s school administrators who thought they could deny recognition to a Christian student group, in the minds of TSA employees who know they are supposed to search but hardly know what for.

    The good news, of course, is that the silly charge was promptly quashed, as it should have been.

    ReplyDelete
  4. One wonders how Eric Holder of the U.S. DoJ would handle this case. We do know how Ray Bradbury handled it.

    Squid

    ReplyDelete
  5. The fact that Eric Holder was not involved says it all. Some things really do not require federal intervention. That's why we have 50 states.

    ReplyDelete