Frontpage Magazine has just posted this interesting and disturbing article about how liberal faculty are attacking a freshmen female student because she had the temerity to write an article opposing "anchor babies" (children of illegal immigrants born in the US, who are, under present law, entitled to US citizenship).
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/07/thought-gestapo-in-action-at-rollins-college/
Frontpage has said it much better than I, so far be it from me to add my outrage over yet another example of liberal faculty trying to bully a student who doesn't follow the politically-correct line.
I do, however, have my own perspective on this issue. The debate over whether children born to parents in this country illegally being entitled to automatic citizenship is a topic for serious discussion in a country with a huge illegal immigration problem. Both sides have legitimate points.
I add once again that my own wife is a Mexican immigrant (legal). When her own grandmother was pregnant with her mother, she (grandmother) made it a point to return from the US to Mexico to have her child.
In addition, my daughter was born in Thailand in 1978 when my wife and I were stationed in Bangkok with the American Embassy. Previously, children of foreigners who were born in Thailand had been entitled to Thai citizenship. Only in the 1970s did Thailand change that law due to the large influx of Vietnamese boat people. Did I agree or disagree with the change in that law? Neither. It was Thailand's decision. They had every right to set the law.
Similarly, America, like every other nation has the sovereign right to set their own citizenship and immigration laws. Decent people can disagree on this issue.
Apparently, the learned professors at Rollins College don't understand that. Shame on them. They should pick on someone their own size.
What a sad comment on our university faculties. Somehow this reminds me of the Duke faculty punishing the Lacross players accused of rape.
ReplyDeleteThis generation of academia are typically the children of the college radicals of the 60s. What else can be expected?
They are more concerned with driving their political and social agendas than teaching students how to think or be decent, productive, citizens. They hardly ever assign books or works with the other point of view. They may describe it but it is like the prosecutor telling the jury what the defense case is.
No wonder home schooling is so popular and universities are in such low esteem.
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The politically libertarian, economically socialist, culturally conservative, reply to the hypersensitive bigots on the college faculty:
ReplyDeleteTo Kathryn Norsworthy: The op-ed piece is a legitimate opinion on a matter of law. I've said harsher things about Roman Catholic archbishops meddling in the way elected public officials do their jobs, and no doubt some Roman Catholics consider that "hate and intolerance," not to mention "potentially traumatizing" to those who belive said church is THE church established by God. Too bad. People outside Rollins will no doubt conclude that there is a wide diversity of opinion at Rollins, that there is no totalitarian adherence to a single form of groupthink. That is as it should be. Yup, you can't take back that someone has published a viewpoint different from yours. So, publish your own, and see how it plays out.
To Denise Cummins, Ted Gournelos and Lis Tillman: You need a remedial class in American constitutional law and general civics. You must have skipped eighth grade. This IS an issue of free speech. You ARE arguing that "responsible communication, journalistic integrity and the Rollins mission of global citizenship" requires suppression of a viewpoint you disagree with. If you want a contrary view or comment in public discourse, write one, and submit it to the editors. We all have to read words that pain us deeply. That is the price of living in the real world. The alternative is to appoint a censor who will decide who may or may not be pained over what words. What kind and gentle Nazis you all are.
Of course "College Media Matters" has every right to publish commentary by critics who accuse Pizzi of being a Nazi, supporting genocide, and promoting an atmosphere of hate and intolerance. If they want to call her op-ed "poorly articulated nativism" they can say that. She can dismiss their invective, or prove them wrong, or, for that matter, respond with a virulent counter-denunciation that proves them right. Let a hundred flowers bloom.
The politically libertarian, economically socialist, culturally conservative, reply to the hypersensitive bigots on the college faculty:
ReplyDeleteTo Kathryn Norsworthy: The op-ed piece is a legitimate opinion on a matter of law. I've said harsher things about Roman Catholic archbishops meddling in the way elected public officials do their jobs, and no doubt some Roman Catholics consider that "hate and intolerance," not to mention "potentially traumatizing" to those who belive said church is THE church established by God. Too bad. People outside Rollins will no doubt conclude that there is a wide diversity of opinion at Rollins, that there is no totalitarian adherence to a single form of groupthink. That is as it should be. Yup, you can't take back that someone has published a viewpoint different from yours. So, publish your own, and see how it plays out.
To Denise Cummins, Ted Gournelos and Lis Tillman: You need a remedial class in American constitutional law and general civics. You must have skipped eighth grade. This IS an issue of free speech. You ARE arguing that "responsible communication, journalistic integrity and the Rollins mission of global citizenship" requires suppression of a viewpoint you disagree with. If you want a contrary view or comment in public discourse, write one, and submit it to the editors. We all have to read words that pain us deeply. That is the price of living in the real world. The alternative is to appoint a censor who will decide who may or may not be pained over what words. What kind and gentle Nazis you all are.
Of course "College Media Matters" has every right to publish commentary by critics who accuse Pizzi of being a Nazi, supporting genocide, and promoting an atmosphere of hate and intolerance. If they want to call her op-ed "poorly articulated nativism" they can say that. She can dismiss their invective, or prove them wrong, or, for that matter, respond with a virulent counter-denunciation that proves them right. Let a hundred flowers bloom.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteAs a Cub fan, you remind me of Alfonso Soriano. Every once in a while, after striking out ten times, you hit one out of the park. Very good. What the Rollins faculty members involved are guilty of is suppressing free speech in the interest of political correctness. Just look at the terms they use. They remind me of that anarchist punk who spoke at UCI a month or so back, Matan Cohen. He justified disrupting the speeches of Israeli supporters with the term "Useless discourse". He and the other trolls he was with repeated it three or four times. This is what goes on on campuses all over the place.
Yes, we agree on this one. I also support Larry Summers's comments on women in engineering as a plausible analysis and one entitled to be presented for consideration. So does my mother, who has, as it happens, a degree in engineering.
ReplyDeleteAn anarchist, of all people, should know better than to label any speech worthy of suppression on the ground that it is "useless discourse."