RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ritualized humiliation and self-abasement are becoming the norm for those in higher education who defy the campus enforcers of wokeness.

In a scene out of Communist China’s Cultural Revolution, current law professor Jason Kilborn and former college administrator Jodi Shaw — both white people — are the latest victims of mandatory reeducation at the hands of the race-weaponizing radicals who run the academy.

This disturbing move in the direction of normalizing academic brainwashing comes as things go the opposite way for parents nationwide who, thanks to well-publicized examples of arrogant leftist educrats’ damaging public admissions, are making great strides attacking critical race theory (CRT) at the local and state levels.

But taking on school boards over CRT doesn’t help Kilborn, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. He has been ordered by his employer to endure mandatory reeducation as punishment for using an abbreviated version of a racial slur in a legal hypothetical about race-based employment discrimination on an exam. The issue was whether the information concerned in the hypothetical was work product.

Students whined that the use of the term, even with 5 of its 6 letters redacted, was hurtful, and the school’s Black Law Students Association demanded that Kilborn be fired.

The final exam on December 2, 2020, in Kilborn’s Civil Procedure II course included the following sentence in a question that had appeared in the exam for years:

Employer’s lawyer traveled to meet the manager, who stated that she quit her job at Employer after she attended a meeting in which other managers expressed their anger at Plaintiff, calling her a ‘n_____’ and ‘b____’ (profane expressions for African Americans and women) and vowed to get rid of her.

A Change.org petition denounced the “dark and vile verbiage” in a question that “was culturally insensitive and tone-deaf,” and lacking in “basic civility and respect for the student body, especially considering our social justice efforts this year. … We cannot ignore the history and violence the N-word represents and the psychological impact, and mental trauma students were subjected to.”

The university conveniently produced reports from anonymous students who claimed Kilborn called minorities “cockroaches,” an allegation he strongly denies.

The school advised Kilborn’s attorney in a letter that his client will have to receive “individualized training and coaching … to facilitate his return to the classroom.” This includes enrollment in an extended Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation’s “Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom Online Course.”

Upon finishing each course module, Kilborn will “prepare a written self-reflection paper in response to specific prompts.” He must also work “one-on-one” with “an instructional advisor” who has “earned a certificate in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell.”

Kilborn will be forbidden from teaching while taking the course but that is “not punitive,” according to the school lawyer’s spin. “We note that faculty, administrators, and executives routinely engage in these programs as a means of continuing their education and broadening their skillset.”

“The common goal is to return Professor Kilborn to the classroom,” the lawyer wrote. “The Law School is committed to ensuring that the entire Law School community benefits from a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment.”

William A. Jacobson, himself a law professor, wrote at his website, Legal Insurrection, “This is nothing short of an attempt to humiliate Prof. Kilborn through a reeducation and supervisory program that would make Maoist Red Guards blush.”

Jacobson opines that the school is “psychologically torturing a professor just because it thinks it can.”

Although Jacobson’s statement may be “hyperbole, the abusive nature of the behavior of UIC officials is undeniable,” Kilborn told me via email.

“The whole episode is a despicable commentary on the sorry and irresponsible state of higher education administration today. I hope the truth attracts as much attention when it is fully revealed in a federal lawsuit that is all but inevitable at this point,” Kilborn said.

By the way, the school at which Kilborn teaches was called the University of Illinois–Chicago John Marshall School of Law until this past summer, but the University of Illinois Board of Trustees canceled the name for the sins of its namesake who changed the course of American history by inventing judicial review in the landmark 1803 Supreme Court ruling of Marbury v. Madison.

According to the radicals running that university, it was discovered “that despite Chief Justice Marshall’s legacy as one of the nation’s most significant U.S. Supreme Court justices, the newly discovered research regarding his role as a slave trader, slave owner of hundreds of slaves, pro-slavery jurisprudence, and racist views render him a highly inappropriate namesake for the Law School.”

Unlike Kilborn, Shaw isn’t waiting to sue.

The former Smith College administrative employee filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts on Dec. 16 for retaliation and racial discrimination including forced participation in ideological indoctrination sessions.

David Pitvorak, who calls himself in his Twitter profile an “individual rights attorney taking on Critical Race Theory in the courts,” is acting for Shaw.

“We allege that Smith forced Shaw to undergo ritual racial humiliation and tasked her with implementing policies that racially segregated and discriminated against students,” Pitvorak tweeted.

In the last few years Smith College has “fostered a toxic climate of racial fear, hostility, and exclusion” that has been “felt most deeply by lower-level employees” such as single mother Shaw, who, “while simply trying to make ends meet, suddenly found themselves thrust into the middle of an ideologically driven campaign of race-essentialism and collective guilt pushed by the school,” her legal complaint states.

Smith College “adopted an official policy of viewing every aspect of its operations through a racial lens; one that distorts all whites into malevolent oppressors and all people of color into hapless victims, regardless of any individual’s actual position or status.” This outlook “permeated every decision and action taken by the school.”

While employed at the college, Shaw “was denied a significant professional career advancement opportunity when she was told by her supervisors that they canceled an orientation program she organized ‘because you are white.’” She was required to administer a “Residential Life Curriculum” which asked students “to project stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others based on skin color.” Shaw was required to operate “affinity houses,” consisting of student housing segregated along racial lines.

At a professional development retreat Shaw was forced to attend, she “was publicly humiliated for not admitting to ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white privilege’ and was continually expected to submit to shaming and harassing group race therapy as an ongoing condition of employment.”

The kind of brutal treatment meted out to Kilborn and Shaw is becoming more commonplace with each passing day.

This in-your-face weaponized institutional racism is supported by governments, big corporations, the media, and academia itself.

And few outside of conservative circles seem to care.