RUTHFULLY YOURS

A Kansas University professor who used the n-word during a class discussion about race is on leave while the university investigates a discrimination complaint against her.

Thus begins an article about one Andrea Quenette, a thirty-three year-old assistant professor of communications, whose career has just been permanently blemished, if not ended, because a small group of KU graduate students decided to “expose” her use of language they allegedly found personally offensive.

The outrage occurred during a November 12 graduate class discussion of the relation between black undergraduate retention rates and systemic racism. Addressing the issue of systemic racism at KU, Quenette noted that although “I don’t experience racial discrimination so it’s hard for me to understand the challenges that other people face,” she nevertheless had to admit that “I haven’t seen those things happen, I haven’t seen that word spray-painted on our campus, I haven’t seen students physically assaulted.”

According to all concerned, no student objected openly to her politically incorrect language violation at the time. After class, however, the students (plus another graduate student who was not in the class) signed a letter calling for Quenette’s termination. I assume they are asking only for the termination of her employment, though I sincerely doubt any of them would hesitate to demand the termination of a professor’s life, if they thought such a demand would stand up in the kangaroo court of academic review. (Give it a few years, kids; we’ll get there yet.)

While students from Yale University in Connecticut to Claremont McKenna in California are protesting, demanding more cultural sensitivity, safe spaces and trigger warnings, some students at Princeton University in New Jersey are fighting back.

In response to a sit-in of the university president’s office by 200 members of the Black Justice League, over 1,300 members of the university community signed a petition to ensure that Princeton “maintains its commitment to free speech and open dialogue and condemns political correctness to the extent that it infringes upon those fundamental academic values.”
As signatures on the petition climbed, students formed the Princeton Open Campus Coalition. They wrote to Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber and asked to meet with him to discuss preserving the freedom of speech and civil debate that are the hallmarks of a classical education. Evan Draim, a Princeton senior and one of the group’s founders, told me in an email: “We hope that our peers at other colleges gain inspiration from what we are doing at Princeton.”

The Black Justice League’s demands include a dorm for those who want to celebrate black affinity; mandatory diversity training; and a requirement that students take a course on so-called marginalized peoples. They also want the renaming of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the removal of a mural of President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, who graduated from Princeton in 1879 and who served as the university’s president from 1902 until 1910, formally segregated the federal workforce.
Campus protests are the latest in many students’ efforts to be protected from situations that they find difficult.

Eisgruber has agreed to set aside four rooms on campus for the use of students of different cultures, and to consult with faculty and the board of trustees on other demands.
Asanni York, a junior who helped organize the protests, said the university was not doing enough to address racial problems on campus, and that “black students on this campus feel uncomfortable every day.” York told me: “I’m focused less on how President Eisgruber resolved the sit-in and more on how campus will change in the next two semesters.”
Wilson was a racist by today’s standards, but he was hardly a reactionary figure in his time. As university president, he tried unsuccessfully to disband Princeton’s now-famous eating clubs on the grounds that they were elitist, and he pioneered the idea that Princeton should be a university “in the nation’s service.” As America’s president, Wilson substantially expanded the size and scope of the federal government including such institutions as the Federal Reserve Board.

Joining John Kerry and Bernie Sanders, Prince Charles became the latest to blame the Syrian civil war on global warming.

In a half-hour interview that aired tonight on Sky News, Prince Charles said man’s impact on the climate spurs violence and conflict, specifically the civil war in Syria.

“There is very good evidence indeed that one of the major reasons for this horror in Syria was a drought that lasted for about five or six years, which meant that huge numbers of people in the end had to leave the land because water ran out, their crops failed,” Prince Charles said. “Increasingly, they came into the cities already full of Iraqi refugees from that horrible crisis. This combined created a very difficult situation.”

“It is bad enough now with refugees, but think what it will be like if we do not deal with the problem which is actually helping to cause it because the conflict often comes from movement of people as a result of not being able to survive,” he continued.