The latest racial “outrage” occurred at the University of Oklahoma, when history professor Kathleen Brosnan read a “historical document that used the ‘N-word’ repeatedly.” Students protested, engaged in a hunger strike, and demanded the provost resign.
Note she didn’t call anyone that word, nor did she express approval of that word. She merely read a historical document and chaos ensued. So, university professors must now be banned from reading offensive historical documents out loud. Really?
You can’t make this stuff up. I mean you could… but no one would believe you that human beings at “elite” universities could be so weak and pathetic.
The Washington Examiner has the details:
The Black Emergency Response Team at OU staged a sit-in in one of the buildings on campus, demanding the resignation of provost Kyle Harper, the OU Daily reported. The student group dedicated to fighting racism also supports mandatory equity training for all faculty members, shifting from a one-time diversity experience training to a semester-long course for all incoming or transfer students, and the creation of a multicultural center.
Nothing good can come of this.
I’m Jewish, and I’ve read plenty about the Holocaust. Jews have been called all manner of terrible things over the centuries. I take no offense if a teacher reads those things aloud. They’re part of history. We need to know — really need to know — about the bad things in our history, so that we can be better in the future. And while these students may believe that it makes things better to try to erase this history, it actually makes things much, much worse.
The “snowflakism” demonstrated on this campus endangers our ability to know and learn from that history.
As George Santayana said, “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement… Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Hat Tip: Washington Examiner
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons