A Northwestern University insider, who wishes to remain anonymous, leaked to Popehat the following email on Title IX investigations, which was circulated to the Northwestern faculty and staff last Friday.
FROM: Joan Slavin [Director, University Sexual Harassment Prevention Office; Title IX Coordinator; Special Assistant to the Provost]
TO: FACULTY GROUP [3,344 email addresses], ADMIN GROUP [3,635 email addresses]
DATE: Friday, May 30, 2015 at 3:15 p.m.
Dear Northwestern administrators and faculty:
Many of you have expressed concern and upset at Professor Laura Kipnis' latest article, this one attacking Northwestern's Title IX investigation of her based on a past article. (Those of you who have not read the article can find it here: http://chronicle.com/article/My-Title-IX-Inquisition/230489/?key=Gm52dwRqaXtKZyxmNjlDZTpTYXE8NEx2MnREYn8hblFREg==. Trigger warnings for victim-blaming, sexual assault issues, cultural prejudice.)
As you know, we have a strict policy against commenting on pending Title IX investigations except to Northwestern administrators, victims, witnesses, victim advocates, student-administration liasons, and victims' emotional support companions. Therefore, I cannot state whether or not several more students have filed complaints against Professor Kipnis based on her writing an article discussing her experience with students filing complaints against her based on her writing an article. I also cannot state whether we have commenced a new proceeding, a more comprehensive one this time, against Professor Kipnis.
But I must emphasize that Northwestern University will not tolerate any retaliation or aggression, macro- or micro-, against students who have made complaints against faculty or each other. Such retaliation is both unlawful under Title IX and against University policy. Professor Kipnis' latest article, like her previous one, represents a deeply problematical challenge to these community values.
This situation requires a review of our basic anti-retaliation rules. I hope that this will both remind you of your obligations and demonstrate without cavil that our policies are completely consistent with freedom of speech, properly understood.
Public Attacks On Victims: When a student accuses a faculty member or another student of sexual misconduct, the only University response consistent with Title IX is contrition, acceptance, and support. That's an obligation of all University employees. Whether or not the complaint has yielded public litigation or press coverage, it is inappropriate for University employees to engage in victim-blaming and victim-challenging behaviors that might deter complaints. Prohibited behaviors include weighing, evaluating, questioning, critiquing, deconstructing, or otherwise assaulting the victim's complaint. This proscription applies to all departments: it is inappropriate to challenge a victim's factual account or legal assertion through the disciplines of law, philosophy, rhetoric, logic, or physics. Statements of support and belief in the victim's account remain acceptable — and strongly encouraged — under any discipline.
Professor Kipnis forces me to clarify a point that ought already be plain in an environment like this one: "neutrality" is no shield for attacks on victim integrity. Professor Kipnes' columns suggest that it is appropriate in the course of discussing an accusation to report what the target says in response to it. Unless the response is a full acknowledgement of wrongdoing and apology, it is not appropriate. Repeating what the wrongdoer says in response to an allegation re-victimizes the victim. The pretense of "neutrality" or "even-handedness" or "telling both sides" has its roots in privilege. Neutrality is not neutral in any academically meaningful sense.
We recognize that these concepts can be difficult to understand for some, particularly those in the physical sciences. Therefore, we have retained a professional adviser to help employees comply with their obligations. Justin Weinberg is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and has published a forceful rebuttal to Professor Kipnis' most recent article, and has reaffirming this University's values: http://dailynous.com/2015/05/30/northwestern-and-title-ix-whats-going-on/. As a respected Professor of Philosophy, he is eminently qualified to explain what areas of inquiry and discussion are inappropriate in a University environment.
Title IX Procedure: Professor Kipnis' latest article is a brutal and biased attack on the University's procedure for evaluating Title IX complaints. I must remind the faculty that discussions of procedure and "fairness" are not excuses to attack victims. Employees should avoid discussions that imply that any particular victim, or victims in general, may not be telling the truth, or may be seeking unwarranted remedies. We do not speak in a vacuum; our words can hurt and retaliate. Discussions of notice to the accused, assistance of counsel, burdens of proof, and opportunity to confront accusers all arise from a presumption that the victim might be untruthful or mistaken. That is not a presumption that we may lawfully or ethically entertain.
Curriculum: It is our collective responsibility to avoid unlawful retaliation not only directly, but implicitly. During this period of reassurance, and whenever Title IX investigations are pending, the College of Arts & Sciences faculty should avoid undue emphasis on problem authors whose texts undermine free reporting of sexual misconduct, such as Arthur Miller, Franz Kafka, or Harper Lee. This is an excellent opportunity to redouble our efforts to expose students to writers who embrace welcoming approaches to victim truths, including Rigoberta Menchu or Wahneema Lubiano. Classes on the American court system, civil rights and civil liberties, and criminal justice may continue so long as professors emphasize to their students that they are participating an an anthropological study of a profoundly sexist and cisgender-biased system and that no positive normative judgment is intended.
With these guidelines, I hope that faculty conduct will better reflect our University's shared values. Further Title IX investigations will help professors recognize how their expression, whether in the classroom or out of it, can help us achieve our goal: a welcoming environment for everyone.
Last 5 posts by Ken White
- Now Posting At Substack - August 27th, 2020
- The Fourth of July [rerun] - July 4th, 2020
- All The President's Lawyers: No Bill Thrill? - September 19th, 2019
- Over At Crime Story, A Post About the College Bribery Scandal - September 13th, 2019
- All The President's Lawyers: - September 11th, 2019
A tad too transparent, Ken.
Kinda' new to this site, so that was satire…yeah? Like the pony thing?
Yeah. Satire. Sweet sweet satire
On the one hand, it's not far off from certain gender studies learning materials I've seen. On the other hand, I'd sincerely hope it's satire. But my expectations are rock bottom at this point.
I understand that satire is protected by the First Amendment. But this was insufficiently parodic to avoid being confusing. At least, I didn't laugh. Not once.
Not the Post-Modern physical sciences.
This was clearly written by ponies trying to infiltrate Popehat.
It is thoroughly depressing to me that after reading it twice, I can't tell if it's Satire or Real.
That is likely to make me a sad panda for a few days. :(
Makes me glad I decided to get out of teaching at the college level…
Very clever, but obviously the "physical sciences" professors having to listen to a prancing Philosophy professor who obviously lacks basic understandings of civil rights tipped the balance towards satire.
@Mdt
Eh. There were several places where it would have been written differently if it was real.
Here's a version of the Chronicle article not behind a paywall:
http://laurakipnis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/My-Title-IX-Inquisition-The-Chronicle-Review-.pdf
Obviously not real. Far too clear and concise. No college administrator ever writes like that.
They implement communication techniques to formulate, promulgate and propagate a synchronally viable and sustainable educational perspective within a broader strategy to effectuate a comprehensive academic environment …. Aw, forget it, I don't even ….
is there anyway around the chronicle's paywall?
Hey, look, this fascist is a Harvard Law grad. What the hell are they teaching these dumbasses?
@BuckIV Yes this article is satire, however the pony menace is all too real.
Satire? I found literally nothing in this piece that I do not believe these people would say or do. This piece clearly lays out how the SJW's act and think.
Satire is supposed to be an exaggeration on a political stance. Modern SJW's are so deranged and evil that I don't believe they can be effictively saterized anymore.
To put it bluntly if Ken said this was actually real I'd believe him.
I had to crack a smile at the bolded bit.
IMO The most striking thing about this whole Kipnis episode is that it doesn't require anyone to speculate about what happened between two people in private. Everything to do with this whole story can be witnessed in its unambiguos entirety. Right from her initial article through the public responses to this.
You can plainly see a certain mindset stripped bare with all its workings.
Not a satire:
From Justin Weinberg’s “updates” on his above-linked, forceful rebuttal post:
Can just a couple of paragraphs here or a mere tweet there actually constitute retaliation?
I am not a lawyer, so don’t treat this as an interpretation of law, but I have to say I am puzzled by the idea that words, or a small amount of words, couldn’t constitute retaliation. Words can have all sorts of effects, including, it seems to me, effects that are retaliatory.
Am I cheerleading for the harassment and punishment of academics for legitimate speech?
Nope. I don’t see where I defend harassment in this post nor where I call for punishment. Also, “legitimate speech” is kind of question-begging, don’t you think? I’m a huge fan of free speech, but most of even the staunchest free speech defenders don’t think all speech should be legal.
Have some respect, spell the useless sack of shit's name correctly. It's "Slavin"
(Emphasis added)
I am sorry that you either did not read this piece closely enough or have lost enough of your sense of proportion and perspective that you could make that statement believing it to be true.
Yes, the far left can say ridiculous things, especially when you come across the cross breed of far left and college administrator. They can even do ridiculous things and enforce them in some domains.
This is different from "anything in that vague political direction no matter how ridiculous is totally believable and absolutely a picture-perfect representation". If you find yourself unable to see any daylight between standard social justice concepts such as "privilege" and "cultural appropriation" and the text above, then I would respectfully suggest that you're in the middle of a powerful reaction against such concepts that makes it impossible for you to see nuance. It is worth taking a step back and investigating where these scary concepts come from, even if you ultimately decide you disagree with them. As much as you want to scream "evil" and run away, there are actual human beings over there. It's worth understanding how they got there.
Also, it is good to remember that tumblr should be treated about as seriously as the latest misspelled racist email forward from that one uncle no one likes to invite to family gatherings anymore.
@Jason
That is a bit of an Ideological Turing Test fail – there are several things in the piece that give the game away to anybody who actually understands the motivations of the Social Justice movement. Hint: The motivations do not reduce to things that sounds evil like "destroy all truth" or "down with whitey," nor to something servile like "avoid lawsuits."
OR I could have just quoted what Daniel Martin said. In my defense, I came across your post before his.
Yes, we need a term for the inverse failure like that one.
please be satire please be satire please be satire please be satire OH THANK DOG IT'S SATIRE. Poe's law and all that.
I love that sentence….
No one has yet called attention to the satire flag in the "To:" line of the message header: there are more administrators than faculty in the distribution.
I said:
"Right from her initial article through the public responses to this.
You can plainly see a certain mindset stripped bare with all its workings."
Oh God, what a peculiar mindset I had when I initially read this. Fell for it. My mind had clearly been softened up in preparation by following this too closely. Time for a break. ;)
Now I'm stuck trying to decide if this is satire aimed at the university, or at the people like me who weren't 100% sure it was satire. Maybe both?
This had me on the hook for a while. Like reeling in a fish, you do it slowly. Good show.
Had I read this on April 1, I might have pegged this as a clever April Fool's gag. However, reading it on June 1, I fell for it hook, line, sinker.
I was ok with it up to:
Why link to an article behind a paywall? Why don't you at least put a $$$$$ sign or something before that link so I know it's completely useless to me and 99% of other readers.
If Kipnis' piece isn't satire, then I don't know what. It isn't funny, I get that.
I noticed it, but was still in the mindset of "this email is real", so I just chuckled darkly and plowed on. It adds to the brilliance of this piece that I got suckered for being too cynical.
Also, a non-paywalled pdf of the article is now at the author's site: http://laurakipnis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/My-Title-IX-Inquisition-The-Chronicle-Review-.pdf
There being more administrators than faculty is not a satire flag anymore. Cal Poly Pomona (which is a public university) has already crossed that line, if Iowahawk is accurate. Others may be there, but just haven't had to publish something showing it.
This is disgusting:
"As you know, we have a strict policy against commenting on pending Title IX investigations except to Northwestern administrators, victims, witnesses, victim advocates, student-administration liasons, and victims' emotional support "
So alleged "victims" can comment and respond to comments, but the accused can't?
This is almost as outrageous as the refusal of your guest columnist to document the problems with ponies in our society.
What does Northwestern think about Pony rape?
I am a self declared SJW and this post made me want to go set things on fire. I'm very thankful it's satire.
Daniel Martin June 1, 2015 at 6:50 am:
Social justice is to justice as social engineering is to engineering.
I have a sudden urge to sell weapons to people on both sides of this conflict.
That seems fair – right?
@NickM – but having only _slightly_ more administrators than academic staff, that was surely the satire? We all know that just as with chemical elements, the bigger the atom, the higher the neutron:proton ratio
I gotta admit, I think the South Carolina guy might be right. Insofar as Kipnis did call the original accuser a liar, that could very well be retaliation or part of a larger retaliation effort by faculty or the university as a whole. But the Title IX review determined it was not, which seems like the right decision.
I came in expecting satire, and even with that expectation, I wasn't sure that it was satire until I reached this sentence:
@shieldfoss
It's funny: I saw that, and thought: "That's a good name for it, but I remember that Clark did a post a couple years ago and the phenomenon has an actual name." I then browsed through Popehat's Clarchives, and found out:
Ideological Turing Test is the correct term. *facepalm* Sorry for doubting you.
I have read your site for years and understand you predilection for satire but this one is so close to believable I almost fell for it. In the modern post-modernist formulation, "fake but accurate."
@Richard: I suspect Clark and I picked up the term the same place: The burgeoning internet Rationalism movement. It's a useful test for figuring out if you have understood your opposition (and disagree because they're wrong) or if you have misunderstood them and disagree because they're the opposition.
@Shieldfoss:
Of course, there is the third option, where you are both "right" in that you both have logical arguments, but the logical arguments come from different basic assumptions, and since you disagree on the basic assumptions, you disagree on the policy.
For instance, do prisons exist primarily to punish prisoners? To rehabilitate them? To segregate them so that they cannot cause further harm? To deter future criminals?
Depending on what your basic assumptions of the role of the prison system are, you're going to, quite logically, reach much different conclusions concerning what conditions within those prisons should be.
Still, the Ideological Turing Test should root those out as well.
This is not a real memo, and it was not posted or sent to the Northwestern University community.
"Kinda' new to this site, so that was satire…yeah? Like the pony thing?"
This is satirical, but the "pony thing" is deadly serious. Do you know the damage ponies do to America on a regular basis? The threat they pose to our way of life? Ponies killed my family. Pray they never come for you!
I'm proud to say it only took me half of the letter to figure out it was Poe. The "not allowed to think critically" part was the clincher.
Bob Rowley: That you, the public relations director at Northwestern, bothered to comment on this satire demonstrates that Northwestern could easily fund one more educator, at the expense of dismissing one useless administrative official.
Patrick wins.
Ah, I need a little help please. I seem to have run afoul of Poe's Law. The bit about physics should have been the tipping point, but alas it did not impinge properly on my satire receptors and I had to check the comments to be sure.
Well done Ken, you got me good.
Patrick, that's hardly fair. Given how many people have assumed this was a real memo (however hilarious that seems to you and I), Bob Rowley's response here was perfectly appropriate for the situation, for his role at Northwestern, and for the University in general.
"As much as you want to scream "evil" and run away, there are actual human beings over there. It's worth understanding how they got there."
They were driven there by fifteen years of miseducation at the hands of so-called "professional educators." Now that we understand how they got there, can we go back to making fun of them?
So, I'm just supposed to accept that that was really Bob Rowley? My god, was the following commenter actually a cat?
If it wasn't, they either spoofed his building's IP address, or went there to post it.
The Star Chamber meets on Wednesday, the flogging will be at Friday Noon.
RSVP
Like others I was caught by this one, i thought it was real and not satire.
It is tragic that Marxism today – political correction is a Marxist tactic- are centered in American Universities.
American Higher Education, one of the largest collections of idiots the world has ever seen.
eddie wrote:
Yep (which doesn't diminish in any way Popehat's satire reaching the "requires official public response" level).
Yes, the sciences aim at truth. The rest of these dolts want to obscure it, therefore we must reeducate zee scientists.
Clark's imagination was a derivative work from Kipnis' second article:
She should sue.
Trigger warnings. What horseshit.
Heh.
Pretty good satire. I did peg it as satire, based on the little rhetorical flourishes ("or physics", the list of authors), growing more egregious toward the end. Couldn't have done it based on the positions taken. I've seen every one of those in serious advocacy.
Amusing, in any case. At least, blackly so.
It's more tragic that people equate socialism (or "marxism") with so many things it's not in an attempt to capture the anti-communist tendencies that exist in our society after more than 50 years of anti-communist propaganda. Either that or socialsm/communism/markism (or whatever you want to call it) has suddenly grown as movement to include everything the writer thinks = bad. Have you ever asked yourself why you do that? Is it just a Pavlovian response?
I thought the tea party had that definition locked right up.
The only reason I could tell that this was satire is that it was too clearly written.
Weasel words.
The degenerate, plutocratic, Western liberal welfare state is much more similar to the dole and circuses of decadent, aristocratic Rome than it is to Marxist socialism or, if you prefer, communism. Marxist socialism has core ideals of reciprocal social responsibility in the people and in the state, where the Western welfare state has a fat belly, satisfaction of gonadal urges, and minds numbed by shallow amusements.
Kipnes is manufacturing her own academic career! Maybe she'll get a third article from this laughable mess. I hope she buys you all lunch, at least.
"Marxist Socialism" has also visibly failed everywhere it's been tried on a scale larger than a commune, so you know…there's that.
I completely bought this until I reached the part about good and bad authors. Otherwise I found this completely believable, and that makes me sad.
It was a noble experiment, anyway.
OMG, I bought the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker. I was so angry I couldn't sit still. Thank goodness I thought about it for a while and did not hit the Send button on the massive email I had been preparing to publicize this "atrocity."
Well done. You got me.
From the linked article by the Justing guy:
I put this through the official Ken White Popehatlator (©®™💩🇺🇸) and it appears what he actually means is:
What a douche bag. Actually, that's probably uncharitable towards douchebags – they have a legitimate role to play and a job function to perform.
I am posting in an epic thread.
Even the most cynical of regular readers should know any "leaked memo" post on Popehat has at least a 95% pre-test probablility of being satire. Having a passing aquaintance with the incident (ie read three articles on a couple of sketchy sites), this first sentence was all I had to read to know Ken had nailed it again…
The clear exclusion of "the target of the investigation" from this list zeros in on one of the most controversial issues: Professor Kipnis wasn't told there was an investigation, and when she found out, she couldn't get the Admin. to tell her what it was about. Even the students who initially filed the complaints (simply asking for a couple of factual corrections the Prof stubbornly refused to make) thought that was bull poop.
On the other hand, this situation is so extreme and such a heinous example of academic "right think", it's hard to satirize without involving alien abductions, Nazis and clones – so good job!. All over a couple of poorly written garbled mash-ups of opinion and sort-of facts that should simply have been ignored. Instead, the students are being treated to faculty and administrators on their worst behavior – and we expect students to act rationally? So glad I didn't take my undergrad advisor's advice and go into academics…
I got as far as the Harper Lee reference before I started asking, "Onion? Is this an Onion article?" I know I had a lot on my mind, but there was still no excuse.
@Dragonmum
The students also claim that the investigators lied to Kipnis about an offer to retract the complaint, refused to have the interviews recorded, and misreported the interviews. You know the system is corrupt when the plaintiffs have to step up and defend the accused.
I would apply Occam's razor to this email. First, we have the Director, University Sexual Harassment Prevention Office; Title IX Coordinator; Special Assistant to the Provost as author. Yes, such a title easily explains why this university has more administrators (with preening titles such as this) than Faculty. To be such a Director requires a phalanx of minions to support your every whim and decision.
Next, the dig against 'physical sciences' seems strange, but remember that STEM is recognized as the last bastion of male privilege, and the professors are willing to suggest *trigger warning – doubleplusungood thought* perhaps men are smarter than women explains the disparity of student mix.
'Safe spaces' for protection from disturbing ideas.
In a country with Liar-in-Chief President Nine Iron, parody and satire are pretty much dead. The reality of America is so bizarre it is beyond satire. No idea is crazy enough for Directors, University Sexual Harassment Prevention Officers, Title IX Coordinators or Special Assistants to the Provost to embrace.
Think about the fact that pretty much all the posters here are confused if it is satire or real. When you can't tell the difference, these people are beyond satire.
Oh, Poe, you and your law.
that's from her official bio
Sadly, she's real.
Bob Rowley, it's not that we don't think you're being honest, it's that you might have been duped. Do you think it 's possible that the Northwestern administration is telling you it's not genuine just so that you can plausibly deny that it is? That's part of your job and I, for one, understand that.
The e-mail is obviously genuine because it fits in with what Obama's Dept of Education wants. So maybe it's not Northwestern's fault if they're just doing what Obama's Dept of Education is making them do.
Ken, maybe you can check around and see if any of your sources have been able to come up with a leaked e-mail from the Dept of Education's Office of Civil Rights on this. That would settle the matter once and for all.
Given all the heat and confusion about this case already, posting a satire that's not labeled as such does not seem helpful. The comments above make that sadly clear.
@Dave
It was helpful to my mood.
Ultimately the goal is to criminalize normal human behavior and legitimize mischief (ironically by pathologizing it – note the references to drinking) so the powers-that-be can manipulate the newly guilty through confession and then abuse and exploit to their heart's content. This autocratic strategy is nothing new. You don't have to believe it but might have made for a more acerbic satire.
Self-proclaimed world famous authority on all things, University of Chicago law Professor Brian Leiter calls Popehat "right-wing crazy": here
@Dave
I seriously found it very helpful to my perspective on this issue. And it's very funny too :)
Several passages above helped me pee myself.
Again, to repeat: This memo attributed to Joan Slavin is not real. It was not sent out to people at Northwestern University.
No email, anywhere in the world (from a functioning server), could possibly have been stamped:
DATE: Friday, May 30, 2015
And we all know why, right?
@Jeffrey Deutsch
Just because Friday was the 29th, you think that is a hint?
RE: Bob Rowley
The fact that you've replied not once, but twice to this thread only makes my previous post in this thread all the more true.
Does Northwestern University really pay you to scour the internet in an attempt to convince people that something is true which we already know is true? It's satire, almost everyone knows that already.
I wonder which other high level administrative jobs in America include the phrase "playing Captain Obvious on the internet" in the job descriptions.
Oh good, we're back to a world where people only quote Leiter when he's making himself look stupid or crazy.
"Oh good, we're back to a world where people only quote Leiter when he's making himself look stupid or crazy."
Why else would someone quote him? Or link to his website?
@ desconhecido
June 2, 2015 at 4:03 pm
For Nietzsche-worship, of course. Or is he off that kick?
@Mikee
To be fair, NU might be receiving emails and phone calls from people who think it's real. Of course, if that's true, then posting comments here really isn't the way to respond.
You had me until the Curriculum section. Well done, Ken.
That was the giveaway… Menchu whose fabricated memoir won a Nobel prize; Lubiano, who led the "Group of 88" Duke faculty in presuming the guilt of the accused lacrosse players. Even the most committed SJW wouldn't cite these notorious frauds. Besides which, Lubiano hasn't published anything in particular for students to be exposed to.
Mikee,
We live in a world where Onion news stories routinely run in top papers all around the world as real stories. I'd argue there is no possible way for people to take an Onion story on the face as factual, yet here we are in a world where Onion stories have run in places like the New York times and not once but many many times.
See here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/29/fooled-by-the-onion-8-most-embarrassing-fails.html
Honestly I don't fault the guy for pointing out the obvious because the obvious sometimes isn't as obvious as some people think. Press directors and such usually get the unglorius work of running around pointing out the obvious because someone writes off a nasty gram after reading a piece of satire.
Wow….. if you have the unfortunate sense to dive into the rabbit hole of a situation this article is referring to, please bring a barf bag. This whole thing is the very embodiment of pants-sh*ttingly nightmare level behavior. I pray that we will soon see the high water mark of this PC behavior and there will be a swift backlash against everyone involved. Otherwise……may God have mercy on all of our souls.
These satanic cultists are MOLESTING OUR CHILDREN!!!
Oh wait, wrong moral panic. Carry on.
@WDS: Yep!
The bit about neutral arguments is interesting, even if it is satire. After all: it's right. That's the whole point about privilege, the status quo, etc. To take a 'neutral' position in most settings is to defacto support, interestingly, the less privileged side. Take global warming – when giving 'equal' weight to arguments on either side, you are by default vastly elevating the prominence of the AGW deniers. Or take the example of a criminal caught, on camera, shooting a cop, who then gets shot by other cops – to present a 'neutral' viewpoint ends up elevating the criminal's story to a level of prominence which it does not deserve, according to the available data.
It's sort of like the old canard, not making a decision is a decision in and of itself. Taking a 'neutral' viewpoint is the same as siding with one side or the other. Neutral really doesn't have a meaning that's anything like what people imagine it means – at least the way it's normally used. A true neutral presentation of, say, global warming, would present the facts as are, and come off as a pro-science article, since it would give effectively no credit to the denialist movement. But people wouldn't call that neutral, even while it gave equal weight to the various opinions – they would call it biased.
Given that any metaphor to swinging pendulums is not only problematic but inherently phallogocentric, it's not surprising that representatives of the field from which the pendulum originated would have problems understanding this discourse, and therefore they must be reeducated first.
Nullifiidian June 4, 2015 at 9:19 am:
The language and mathematics of Physics creates and supports rape culture. Students of mechanics are expected to accept and believe this:
Students of critical gender studies know what that means!
And that's without even considering inherent sexism in the symbols of vector calculus.
It is strange world we live in when "phallogocentric" is academia-approved jargon, but calling someone a cunt is a huge taboo. How are these any different?
sinij:
Well, one crucial difference is that "phallogocentric" isn't applied to people, therefore "phallogocentrism" isn't a gendered slur. There are ways of intellectually disagreeing with the analysis and ideas implicit in the term "phallogocentrism", but no way to disagree with being called a "cunt" except to say "F— you!"
Even though I mock the concept, I have to say that if you think that "phallogocentrism" is supposed to be misandrist, then you probably don't know what it is. If you know what it is and still think it's misandrist, then you're clearly overreacting. Heck, it would be an overreaction even if its intended use were misandrist, because there's scarcely anything less relevant to the wider world than the neologisms coined by French deconstructionists.
I think Bob Rowley deserves a break this weekend so in case anyone missed it check his official response at
https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/31/leaked-northwestern-university-email-states-rules-for-title-ix-investigations/#comment-1315435
and
https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/31/leaked-northwestern-university-email-states-rules-for-title-ix-investigations/#comment-1315320
I'm not sure what phallogocentrism is, but I assume it refers to logos like this one:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/1904865/Disastrous-logo-designs.html?image=2
Northwestern's president's useless statement on Title IX and freedom of speech
Not objectionable, but… why bother?
"eminently qualified to explain what areas of inquiry and discussion are inappropriate" rang weird. "trigger warning … cultural prejudice" rang Way Out. but as has been indicated by a mixed bag, certain credulities and inanities are by no means impossible to attribute to those inhabiting more or less any Place of Power.
exquisitely precise..
Please tell me that Joan Slavin was immediately fired for publishing this outrageous piece of Orwellian trash!
Bill, this was satire.
For a hint: see the email's supposed day and date, and then check a calendar.