Finally a university stands up to the politically correct madness… for now

Last updated on: September 3, 2016 at 7:57 am by Mark Meckler

Finally a university stands up to the politically correct madness… for now 2016-09-03T07:57:59-06:00 Mark Meckler

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Just when it seemed like nearly every American university had completely abandoned the First Amendment rights of its students, the University of Iowa decides to stop a dangerous body from forming on campus that has a track record of being nothing less than the language police.

Georgina Dodge is Iowa’s chief diversity officer and is responsible for rejecting a plan to create a Bias Assessment and Response Team like so many other institutions. After seeing how that played out in places like the University of Northern Colorado, Dodge determined BARTs were nothing more than “scolding panels.” She told a local Iowa paper:

“Frankly, the [word] BART has become a bit tainted because of the actions that these people have taken. One of the things that we’ve seen at many schools is that the BARTs have become almost punitive in nature. When we are dealing with incidents that do not rise to the level of a policy violation, how you are going to penalize someone is a big question?”

Iowa doesn’t hide the fact that it is a haven for social justice. In fact, it made the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s top ten list of “worst abusers of student and faculty free speech rights” last year, which is nothing to brag about. A student speaking to HeatStreet confirmed that fact saying, “UI was known as the ‘Berkeley of Midwest,’ so it leans left. That’s a given. We’ve had issues where the president has gone with appeasement whenever there’s a complaint on campus.”

FIRE views Dodge’s decision against instituting a campus BART is at least a step in the right direction. It’s lawyer Ari Cohn said:

“Conduct that rises to the level of actionable harassment under controlling law should be dealt with under the applicable policies that the University of Iowa, along with other universities, maintain. But if a university wants to enable students to report expression protected by the First Amendment, it should do so in a way that focuses on providing support for the affected student rather than chilling expression by hauling students in for questioning.”

It is a step in the right direction, but how big of a step remains to be seen. After all, there is still a chief diversity officer and plenty of social justice warriors to keep Iowa’s safe spaces in proper working order. But any step towards academic freedom is better than none.

Instapundit pointed to an excellent article in The Spectator when linking to this story. It’s by Rod Liddle and he makes some solid points about the PC culture’s outlandish demands:

There is something magnificently fatuous in trying to outlaw an emotion, and especially one as productive, on occasion, as hatred. If they are determined to go down this route I would much rather they outlawed simpering or self-righteousness…

It is no longer possible simply to argue that you have your opinion and they have theirs: the internet has taken us all to a place way beyond the reach of such common sense. It is perhaps the anonymity of social media and its instantaneousness that effects this kind of polarisation — as well as the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there desperate to take offence, yearning to be victims of a hate crime, anxious to see you and me punished.

I suppose the police go along with this sort of garbage partly because they have to, but also because these non-crimes are very fashionable and politically correct and are rather less messy to clear up than other sorts of crimes…

It is a strange position we have got ourselves into.

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