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loudlytransparenttrash · 7 years

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This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 13

The University of San Francisco this week is scheduled to host a segregated orientation dedicated to black students. The day-long event billed as having been “designed by Black students, faculty, and staff to welcome new Black students to the USF Black Experience” will “address the specific and particular needs of Black students at USF.” The orientation is being run by Ja’Nina Garrett-Walker, who in 2014 implemented a campus-wide campaign called “Check Your Privilege,” where students were encouraged to walk around wearing t-shirts with their particular privileges, such as white, male, straight or Christian, displayed across themselves.

It didn’t take very long for academics to jump on the racial strife in Charlottesville in order to (once again) denounce white society in general. University of North Carolina law professor Erika Wilson and University of Detroit Mercy’s Khaled Beydoun argue that “white supremacists aren’t fringe segments, they are just part of the racist white supremacist American policies such as immigration limits and requesting people to show ID to vote.” In addition, the professors point out the “white privilege” on display by the nationalists protesting the removal of a civil war statue, as they feared no repercussions by not wearing any masks which proved white society’s “presumption of innocence.” Or maybe because they actually weren’t doing anything wrong... ”Wilson and Beydoun also connected the Confederate flag to the Third Reich, pointing out that it’s a criminal offense in Germany to display anything Nazi related and the same has to be applied to Confederate flags or symbols in the United States. Hopefully, these law professors remember there’s a little thing called the First Amendment.

Stanford University is set to offer a class this fall called “White Identity Politics,” during which students will “survey the field of whiteness studies” and discuss the “possibilities of abolishing whiteness,” according to the course description. Questions to be posed throughout the semester include: “How is white identity to be understood in relation to white nationalism, white supremacy, white privilege, and whiteness?” Ernest Miranda, a spokesman for Stanford, said “abolishing whiteness’ is a concept with the belief that if white people stopped identifying politically as white, it would help end inequalities.”

A Kansas State University professor wants you to take children’s books “just as seriously” as those written for adults, as they are full of hidden racism. English professor Phillip Nel asks the, er, important questions in his book - Was the Cat in the Hat Black? which deals with the “hidden racism in children’s books.” The professor says the Cat in the Hat is a “racially complicated figure,” one influenced by blackface minstrelsy. “What’s interesting about children’s literature is racism often hides in it in ways that we don’t notice, in ways that we don’t see, in ways that we’re not even consciously aware of.” So in other words, it doesn’t exist until you create the idea of it existing? Gotchya!

Journalism grants offered through Brandeis University are being offered to everyone as long as you are a woman and not white.They happily explain why they are denying white journalism students grants, saying “Without greater diversity in journalism, some very important stories are never pitched, some assignments never made, facts never gathered, and serious abuses of power never uncovered.” Those selected will receive up to $10,000 as part of the program.

A University of Michigan student, whose research interests include gender and sexuality and childhood, released a research paper which suggests that preschool teachers are the reason most people identify as heterosexual. “Reproducing (and Disrupting) Heteronormativity: Gendered Sexual Socialization in Preschool Classrooms,” published in the journal Sociology of Education observed just nine preschool classrooms over the course of 10 months to come up with this wild theory. Heidi Gansen says that preschool teachers are both constructing and disrupting gendered sexuality in multiple ways. She wrote that teachers affect preschoolers’ gendered sexuality by “actively promoting or encouraging heterosexual discourses and practices and ignoring sexualized behaviors.” Gansen specifies that not once did the teachers suggest that it was appropriate for the girls to play the dad, or even have a household with two moms. Gansen finishes by complaining that even in the preschools with the most progressive teachers of all the ones she observed, “children still engaged in heteronormative practices with peers,” adding that “these findings demonstrate the importance of teachers actively working to disrupt heteronormativity, which is already ingrained in children by ages 3 to 5.” Those damn kindergarten teachers, making kids grow up to be straight.

A workshop offered at the University of Texas at Austin teaches students bisexuality, pansexuality and “fluid sexuality” should be embraced and supported. Called “Interrupting Monosexism,” the workshop aims to interrupt “biphobia and bi-erasure” and “brainstorm actions for supporting the work of bisexual, pansexual and fluid advocates,” according to the university’s website. Other workshops hosted by the center include “What Do Thriving Queer Communities Look Like,” “Histories of & Accountability to Trans Feminisms,” “Identifying & Interrupting Everyday Intersectional Sexism” and “Intersectionality & Allyship.”

Students at Sarah Lawrence College, a posh, private liberal arts college in New York consistently ranked one of the most expensive colleges in the nation, recently called on peers and others to pay female campus activists for their “emotional labor.” Posted mostly by black students, their beg for money states “In honor of the labor that women and femmes of color do for Sarah Lawrence every month of the year, give your $$$” A discussion about white students’ lack of interest unsurprisingly quickly ensued.

The New School in New York has published an extensive guide on “microaggressions” to warn students that such behavior can be “as damaging as ‘explicit’ aggression.” According to the guide, even “experiences that are not intentionally hostile or physically threatening can be harmful,” and thus it is critical for The New School as “a university community” to “acknowledge and work to decrease these kinds of hurtful experiences.” Microaggressions, the guide contends, can come in verbal, nonverbal, and environmental forms. What are environmental microaggressions you may be wondering? “Monuments, artwork or posters in public spaces that are predominantly white cisgender men and women,” for instance, are deemed "environmental microaggressions." Professors who fail to ask students for their preferred pronouns, or who assign too many books written by "white cisgender men," are likewise considered guilty of micro-aggressing against students.

Incoming freshmen at Vassar College will be required to complete a series of diversity-themed workshops as part of their new-student orientation. The expansive 15-day orientation also features exclusive events, such as a dinner for “first-generation and undocumented students,” plus an “LGBT Center Open House” and a “Women’s Center Open House.” An explicit goal of this year’s New Student Orientation is to help students begin “engaging and appreciating social justice,” noting that students will embark on “the journey towards self-awareness, community awareness, identities, and affirming belongingness within our own communities.”

A feminist professor at Grinnell College is offering a course this fall on “American Whiteness” that will focus on “attacking racism by making whiteness visible.” The professor declined to provide a current syllabus, but a previous offering of the same course described America as a "racist nation" due to the pernicious effects of "whiteness." Professor Karla Erickson, a self described “feminist ethnographer,” will teach the four-credit special topics class. In the 2015 syllabus, it states “Whiteness is, among much else, a very bad idea,” quoting Kansas University Professor David Roediger. “It is quite possible to avoid criticizing white people as individuals but to criticize the idea of white people in general.” Well that makes sense.

Southern Methodist University has finally reversed its decision to relegate a 9/11 memorial display to a secluded area of campus. The school has also revised the policy that had been cited to justify rejecting the original request to host the 9/11 Never Forget event on the campus. The university had initially denied the memorial at the usual location on campus in accordance with a policy guaranteeing “the right of all members of the community to avoid messages that are harmful or harassing." In a statement published last week, SMU apologized and reiterated the importance of honoring the victims of the 2001 attack.

A Clemson University professor is comparing President Trump’s ban on transgender soldiers to “Nazi eugenic propaganda,” calling it “ableism deployed to incarcerate or kill disabled people.”

A Vanderbilt University professor complained in an academic journal article that mathematics is too “white and heteronormatively masculinized.” Citing the “masculinization of mathematics,” Luis Leyva then suggests that the apparent “gender gap” in mathematical ability is socially constructed (as opposed to arising from inherently different cognitive abilities) and therefore women are being kept out of mathematics in order to keep the field “masculinized.”

A University of Iowa professor wrote an academic journal article explaining how she endeavors to "dismantle whiteness in my curriculum, assignments, and pedagogy." Jodi Linley argues that unless her "mostly white" students are made to confront their privilege, they will be "complicit" in perpetuating white supremacy. Linley says her commitment to designing classes that fight white privilege began as soon as she became a professor in 2014, at which point she resolved to “develop courses that both unveiled and rejected” the notion that “neutrality and objectivity are realistic and attainable.” She offers up five strategies other professors can use to deconstruct white privilege in their own classes, such as making sure white students know that teachers will be interrupting oppression that occurs in classroom settings and segregating students by race. “For white students, talking about race with an all-white group of peers facilitates their realisation that they are raced beings, thus revealing their own white ignorance.”

New York University is looking to hire a tenure-track professor to teach subjects such as “racial justice activism” and “intersectional queer and transgender politics.” Despite declaring its commitment to "equal treatment and opportunity" for all applicants, NYU also says it intends to “substantially increase the proportion” of faculty from “historically underrepresented groups." The university has a lengthy wish-list of subject areas that it would like the new professor to address, most of which relate to racial and/or gender-based identity politics. NYU is “particularly interested” in topics like “postcolonial and decolonial studies, intersectional queer and transgender politics of race, critical race theory,” and “Africa and African diaspora media studies.” In addition, the school would like the new professor to be familiar with issues of “digital media and racial justice activism,” and “class and racial disparities in media access and adoption.”

The University of Georgia has made Professor Richard Watson remove a “stress reduction policy” from two of his course syllabi after facing national backlash for the practice. He had adopted a policy that would allow students who felt “unduly stressed by a grade for any assessable material or the overall course” to “email the instructor indicating what grade you think is appropriate, and it will be so changed” with “no explanation” required. Watson did concede this policy might hinder the development of students, although it’s become clear that’s no longer important in higher education today.

Less than one month into the job, North Carolina State University's new Director of Multicultural Student Affairs has big plans, including segregating student housing by skin color, providing a new housing option exclusively for 'women of color.' Nashia Whittenburg describes it as a refuge for female minority students to "deal with some of the microaggressions you might have had to deal with throughout your entire day." “The point and purpose is if you are student of color and you may not see anybody who looks like you in class, here is your opportunity to get some support and to deal with some of the microaggressions.”

During a recent six-day conference in Portland, Oregon, archivists attended a presentation on “Identifying and Dismantling White Supremacy in Archives.” The panel called on archivists to “decenter whiteness by valuing materials produced by people of color and communities of color,” and “explicitly prioritize materials produced by people of color and communities of color.” At another panel promoting the Black Lives Matter movement, one presenter was quoted as saying, “If white activists don’t use their privilege to give the platform over to POC, their activism is exploitive.”

A private investigator hired by Regis University has determined that a conservative student did not violate any laws or university policies by holding a “Social Justice Bake Sale.” Regis had accused the student of violating “university policy and federal law” and even blocked him from their twitter account after holding a satire bake sale, selling cookies at different prices depending where the group sit on the oppressed rankings. The private investigator concedes that “there are insufficient facts to find that his conduct violated specific Regis policy or law,” though he notes that “numerous students were justifiably offended by this ‘bake sale.’”

A University of California, Davis microbiology professor is claiming a victory over the patriarchy after his complaints led organizers of an academic conference to invite more female speakers. Professor Jonathan Eisen noticed most of the invited speakers were white males, so he announced that he would contact each of them directly to ask that they withdraw. He bragged about going to great lengths checking the speakers’ race, genders and pronouns to ensure that his assumptions were correct. Eisen went on to urge attendees, sponsors and presenters to boycott the meeting, billing the event as “The White Men’s Microbiome Congress.” Eisen succeeded in generating enough pressure to elicit an apology along with assurances that future events would “represent the diversity of the scientific fields.”

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