Pik and Ab
[I]t would be a simple matter to send out for professional reinforcements, thus demonstrating to King Abdullah that, whatever the Prince of Wales may have told him in the dunes, our shared values do not, currently, feature male supremacy. Instead of Prince Charles fawning on the airstrip, one pictures, say, Sandi Toksvig, heading a welcoming party composed of adulterers, gays, Jews, Catholics, apostates, immodestly dressed women and a variety of other law-abiding sinners who would be dead, or at least severely incapacitated, if they lived in King Abdullah’s country. After inspecting a battalion of beautifully turned out slags (replacing the Welsh Guards), he and his companions would be driven – by women drivers of Filipina extraction – to a special performance of the Vagina Monologues, after which a female journalist (replacing John Simpson), would explore the extent of our shared values on behalf of the BBC.
Then some rather pointed questions.
From Prince Charles, with his history of woman trouble, one has come to expect this creepy respect for an absolute ruler with 30 wives. From Howells, who presumes, no doubt, to be a progressive politician, the reflexive, Foreign Office cringe is more disturbing. What if the more persecuted half of the Saudi population were black? Would he have talked about “shared values” in the days of Pik Botha? Is it because only half its population is oppressed that we share values with Saudi Arabia, but none with Burma?
Umm…yes. It’s democracy, you see. Women are only half the population and they’re oppressed in so many places – that it would be undemocratic to make an issue of it. Colonialist and undemocratic. Pik Botha different, Pik Botha bloody Boer, King Ab not a bloody Boer.
Of course Howells is not alone in considering the complete subjugation of Saudi women to be a kind of quirky, cultural difference, rather than an outrage…With the advance of young British veil wearers, proudly declaring their right to be invisible and their love of extreme modesty, this and many other forms of faith-related female subjugation have become complicated areas for liberal protest. If, as we’re often told, many British Muslim women love their jilbabs, how can we be sure Saudi women do not also rejoice in their coverings, accepting, in the same dutiful spirit, total exclusion from civic life and physical chastisement by their devout partners? How can we be sure their would-be liberators are not – like women who adorn themselves and women who cut their hair short – just a few more Women Who Will Go to Hell?
We can’t, so let’s talk about something else, shall we?
one of Gods little jokes marie.
Hard to fault that. Freedom for Muslim women!
Wouldnt it be great for moslem women throughout the world to have a burka burning ceremony,imagine the impact of millions of women casting their robes and veils on to a giant bonfire at the same time in every city and town across the globe!
‘imagine the impact of millions of women casting their robes and veils on to a giant bonfire at the same time in every city and town across the globe!’
Good god, man! Think of the environmental impact. Burqas must be biodegradable!
He has an estimated personal wealth of more than £13bn, making him the world’s eleventh richest man, according to the Sunday Times.
But he likes to keep the exact details of his wealth under wraps.
I am sure he does – and I bet he has as well his thirty wives and twenty five children under wraps.
OB, congratulations on your July 2007 radiobroadcast from Point of Inquiry. I listened to it with eagerness last evening. You did an admirable job, as well as doing B&W proud. You should have been a politician /teacher. You have the endowments to be such – as you can fairly bring your points across with no bother at all! Your American accent (in Ireland as well) is à la mode, cool and refreshing on the ears.
Well done Keep it up!
Tarski’s T-condition T: The proposition expressed by the German sentence “Schnee ist weiss” is true if and only if snow is white.
But who really and truly cares about the welfare of those Saudi women (and other Muslim women) living under such an oppressive religio-political system? Who else but those legendary advocates for women’s rights and freedoms everywhere and at all times… David Horowitz, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter.
Uhm, well. Of course. That would’ve been my second guess, honest.
Or maybe my third.
Katha Pollitt has her doubts, too, and expresses them in this snappy little essay.
Pollitt ends with a very interesting question which, frustratingly, she does not address immediately, postponing it to a future column: How did Ayaan Hirsi Ali end up falling in with these people? Have the “multiculturalism is everything” and “we mustn’t judge other cultures” idiots of the left so alienated her? I worry that I’m just deluding myself when I judge that those self-deluding twits are a fringe minority among progressives.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/thefirecache/8555.html G. is it a fringe? this is the university of Delaware.
Actually, that is VERY fringe. Do you think lots of universities are like this? Even very, very liberal ones? No. This bizarre PC-gone-wild reeducation program is unique as far as I know. I have never in all my reading encountered a definition of “racist” as “anyone belonging to the politically dominant ethnicity, i.e. white.” Even the most radical (and not necessarily wrong for being radical) discussions of the universality and invisibility of privilege I’ve ever seen have NEVER equated merely belonging to a privileged category of persons with being racist. That is far and away one of the stupidest, most insulting things I’ve ever heard of outside the context of religion. (Nothing beats religion for stupid and insulting, I’m afraid.)
And who brought this ridiculous Delaware indoctrination program to a halt? A much more mainstream liberal organization: FIRE is basically a smaller-scale ACLU focused specifically on civil liberties in higher education. In fact, one of FIRE’s founders used to be an ACLU regional director.
The funny thing is, given the context of recent discussions hereabouts, FIRE is fighting the real fight for academic freedom that David Horowitz uses as a pretense to push a right wing political agenda. This essay, if you take the time to sort through the details, makes it pretty clear what the difference is: For every problem caused by overzealous lefties on college campuses, the FIRE solution is to defend and promote individual freedoms for students AND faculty, and to fight for openness and transparency to undermine the pernicious politics encouraged by closed-door decision-making. In sharp contrast, the Horowitz solutions are to restrict faculty academic freedom and to introduce even more pernicious politics into academia (by creating opportunities for more civil lawsuits, and by requiring state elected officials to get involved in university hiring practices and curricula).
I also find it interesting that the campus speech codes and other nonsense that FIRE fights were a growing trend of the 90s that seems to have significantly reversed itself since then. That is, instead of more and more campuses adding First Amendment-threatening speech codes and such, campuses largely stopped adding them some years ago, and many such codes instituted in prior years have been quietly discarded (or simply ignored) since then. In recent years, campuses are much more likely to threaten the First Amendment by trying to stifle student protests and such – a threat to free speech originating from the right rather than the left. And all this started happening BEFORE Horowitz started pushing his highly misleading Academic Bill of Rights, which (surprise, surprise) focuses entirely on the threats to free speech that originate from the left (or “threats” that are entirely of Horowitz’s invention) and completely ignores threats to freedom from the right (as well as creating some new threats).
A “small world” aside: A buddy of mine went to work for FIRE straight out of law school. He’s moved on to other things now, including a very smart and interesting blog about denialism in all its many and not-that-varied forms.
G thanks for blog link, I acept that the details of Horowitzs a.b.r are far from perfect but dont you think he has a point though? I mean filth like ward Churchill are quite often given a platform to speak but someone like Horowitz has a pie thrown in his face so hard that it nearly drives his glasses into his eyes. Isnt that definition of racism extrordinary? what kind of twisted mind could think that up.
G, I posted the Pollitt essay in News a few days ago (just in case you thought I’d missed it!). I too was very frustrated by the ‘to be continued’ at the end.
I’m not sure the denialism of the twits is quite that fringe-y. I think I’ve mentioned here (I know JS has mentioned it at Talking Philosophy) that a prominent lefty publisher – Verso – was interested in our next book (about religion and oppression of women) but in the end decided against it because…we mustn’t be critical of Islam. Really. They were tempted, they were serious, they had meetings – then decided Nah. I think that’s rather shocking.
Richard, I think you’re looking at this from a rather slanted perspective. Ward Churchill is a nobody: A tiny fraction of people had ever even heard of him until he said something incredibly stupid and the right wing outrage machine got hold of it and blew it up into a national issue. On the flip side, Horowitz has been very widely known and had many platforms
But yes, that definition of racism is extraordinary and ridiculous. By the logic of that definition, every heterosexual person is a homophobe and every able-bodied person is prejudiced against the disabled.
OB: That Verso story makes my teeth grind. However, not being at the meetings you had with them, (nor privy to the reasoning they used in private when not meeting with you), I’m not sure how much of that is that nutty multiculturalism “mustn’t criticize other cultures or religions” guff and how much of that is ordinary pragmatic cowardice: Let’s not say anything bad about the Muslims, because they have a nasty tendency to get all stabbity and ‘splodey.
G, ah, that’s a point. I don’t think we even thought of that. (Maybe because of having looked at their list. They are a tad…predictable.)
G. Ward Churchill had tenure at the university of Colarado that is hardly nobody, dosnt it worry you that scum like this had untill recently a captive audience? I dont buy Horowitz claim of wholesale marxist infriltration at American universities but I do think he has a point.Think about this that definition of racism existed in a university no one challenged it how could something that stupid even gain currency unless there were like minded people at the university?
Richard, you’re veering around wildly again, talking about several different things as if they’re all a part of some single idea – and they’re not.
First you brought up the whacky Univ. of Delaware reeducation center. I agreed that it was horrible and nuts, but I pointed out how it was actually a liberal/left organization that exposed and opposed that nonsense. I then contrasted the FIRE activists who fought this nonsense on campus with David Horowitz, who responds to threats against fundamental civil liberties on campus with… more threats against fundamental civil liberties (just different people’s liberties, or different liberties).
Then you brought up Ward Churchill. I have no idea why, really. I can’t see why he’s so important, but you brought him up because “he has a platform” and Horowitz got pied once. I pointed out the facts: Churchill was unheard of before the right wing outrage machine made him a celebrity for his stupid positions, and then when people DID hear of him (through the popular press echoing the right wing outrage machine) it wasn’t like he had any influence on them – he just pissed them off. In contrast, Horowitz has been widely read and talked about and been an invited speaker and all that for years and years, so the fact that some people don’t like him (for all the reasons I’ve been talking about elsewhere) and someone threw a pie in his face once doesn’t really make your point. Or any discernible point.
So then you throw both Churchill and the Delaware people in the same post, but I don’t understand your point. Why should I be worried that Ward Churchill had a “captive audience”? By the way, they’re called “college students.” They aren’t captive; they pick their college and they pick their classes. And I promise you, professors don’t have nearly as much influence on students as you seem to be worried about. By and large, students are BORED by their professors, not indoctrinated by them – which is especially true of those who practice Churchill’s brand of postmodern claptrap. I’m sure most of his students thought he was a blowhard and an asshole. Hell, most of MY students have probably thought that – what I say makes sense in ordinary English, unlike the tortured ravings of the po-mos.
I find the Delaware nonsense much more troubling – and I said so very clearly, so what’s your point in repeating it? Are you just trying to get me to agree with Horowitz that there are some real problems on American college campuses? Yeah, sure. I agree. But what is the real nature of those problems? And what are the best solutions? I think pretty much everything Horowitz says to characterize the problems and explain their origins is wrong, and he’s even more wrong about how to fix those problems.
What are the real problems? I think the intro to The Shadow University, written by FIRE co-founder Alan Charles Kors, characterizes the problems very clearly (albeit with a little more alarmism than probably necessary).
G. My general point is that there does seem to be a generaly hostile climate toward centre right opinion in more than a few American university,s, that would not be a problem if the teachers were like you because even if you hate what is being said you would(I am sure) wish to confront and rebut rather than what seems to be the tendency in some cases to shut down speech that is incorrect.The fact that fire exists shows that there is a problem.
Great link yesterday G. just finished it, I thought a bit more after reading it what realy bothers me about this, a university is somewhere that schools the future leaders,judges,generals of the nation what is the future for the first amendment if this is what they are being taught today, speech laws like Europe has?
This is what I mean about misunderstanding the problem. This speech code and silencing and thought-policing nonsense simply isn’t happening in the classroom. Faculty just don’t do that sort of thing, or very little of it: Overwhelmingly, college professors ADORE it when students are engaged enough to argue with them about anything. (Except work and grades: We hate it when they argue about – actually, whine about – course work and grades.)
Those speech codes and ideological force-feedings are being done by ADMINISTRATORS, not faculty – just as in the University of Delaware case. It’s the student affairs people who get so caught up in “promoting diversity” that they forget to protect basic liberties.
Let me simplify it this way: University administrators in charge of student affairs are concerned about two things above all: (1) avoiding bad publicity, and (2) avoiding lawsuits. If you want your school to avoid bad publicity, you have to prevent college students – 18-22 year olds for the most part, mind you – from doing stupid things. If you want to avoid lawsuits from the overprotective parents of those young people, again you have to try to prevent them from doing stupid things. But the problem is, there can be no freedom without the freedom to do stupid things – and young people are especially prone to do stupid things: So student affairs administrators often slide from setting reasonable limits on activities to stifling individual freedoms to an excessive and sometimes even unconstitutional degree.
Believe me, I’ve worked with Student Affairs. I’ve been in many meetings between leaders of student organizations and the Vice President of Student Affairs at my university, and every discussion of the rules and policies of the university eventually came down to “protecting the reputation of the university” and “safety” – in other words, avoiding bad press and avoiding lawsuits. Go read the introduction and first chapter of The Shadow University that I linked to above, and you’ll see what I mean.
David Horowitz had been trying for years to drum up hysteria about crazy leftist professors forcing their views on students and flunking people for disagreeing with them and so on – but he keeps telling these “anonymously submitted” stories from “real students” with no sources, no corroboration, and no evidence. To date, he has not substantiated a single one of these claims. Actually, I find that somewhat surprising. I would think after years of trolling for them that he would have found at least a few solid, plausible cases that would support his hysteria – just because professors are human and flawed as anyone. But he hasn’t. I guess, despite the flaws of the tenure system, that the institutional checks on faculty tyranny actually work pretty well.
Really, all of the hue and cry from Horowitz and other right wingers always seems to come down to this ridiculous notion that people – even college students – deserve to have their opinion respected. This is simply wrong, and wrong-headed. People deserve respect as human beings, no matter what, hence our concern with basic rights. Opinions have no such status, nor should they. Opinions deserve only the respect that they earn: If your opinion is the product of a convincing, well-reasoned, evidence-supported argument, then it has earned respect and any intellectually honest person ought to accord it that respect – or come up with better arguments to show why the opinion is flawed. That idea is fundamental to any and every area of academic pursuit. (Although some academic disciplines seem to have lost track of it, like literary theory – or were always sorely lacking in it, like theology.)
Horowitz is angry because opinions like his own get short shrift in the academy. Maybe if he and his ideological ilk could come up with better arguments, their opinions would be more widely respected. As it is, the entire Horowitz ABR agenda is to force people to pay right wing conservative opinions respect that they have not earned.
Or look at it another way: It is very well-documented that, on average, the better educated a person is, the less likely they are to accept religious beliefs – especially the most dogmatic sorts of religious beliefs. I think the reason is fairly obvious: Part of getting an education is absorbing that fundamental lesson about respecting (or not respecting) opinions. Opinions/beliefs only deserve as much respect as the strength of the arguments that support them – where “strength” is not a matter of emotional appeal or popularity, but of reasoning and evidence. Arguments for religious beliefs are generally very weak on reasoning and entirely lacking in evidence – and so religious opinions lose the respect of people who’ve absorbed that basic lesson of intellectual inquiry.
Maybe something very much like this is the reason why right wing conservative ideology isn’t very popular in academia: Honest intellectual inquiry simply doesn’t support the opinions that conservatives so strenuously insist are true.
(And yes, I used the phrase “right wing conservative ideology” deliberately, Richard. You keep talking about “centre right opinion” not getting respect, but so many of your contributions to these comments sounds like far right talking points that I have trouble taking your assessment of “centre” seriously.)
Thanks G. that at least clarifies what happeens in universitys(the closeset I have been to one was clearing ones drain)depends on what you mean by right wing opinion not earning respect? if you mean the stuff about God says abortion is wrong crap I would agree but i quite often read stuff by Prof williams and Soul and I would say their opinions on economic isues are very worthy of respect.
It just dawned on me the other day you said most students are bored by their professors what are they doing there then?spending their parents into bankruptcy? it must be a bit soul destroying for you?
That’s the terrible paradox of education in places where it’s abundant and readily available. Children and young people in Afghanistan and Uganda (to name just two) are ravenous for education; in the US many of them are bored by it. One wants to urge them to think about the Taliban and be grateful…
How true that is O.B.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2007/11/07/academic_cesspools_iihttp://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2007/11/07/academic_cesspools_iihttp://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2007/11/07/academic_cesspools_iihttp://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2007/11/07/academic_cesspools_ii Prof Williams on the subject G. although he is pretty much ditto Horowitz {I am leaning more your way on this now).