Lefty Brainwashing At College Orientation: Wisconsin Edition
This sort of thing is of major concern.
Often the faculty have no idea what goes on at orientation. The first contemporary case of brainwashing at orientation hit the news back in '08 when FIRE forced the University of Delaware to cut it the hell out. Of course many faculty would be in favor of such brainwashing...but most, I believe, would not.
Now it should go without saying that I'm not necessarily objecting to such things being discussed. I have some doubts that it's necessary, and I do have some concerns that merely choosing which topics to discuss can put a slant on things. And I do have some concerns about low-level, non-faculty administrators setting the agenda for students' first encounter with the institution. It's my impression that those positions often fill up with people who uncritically absorb whatever leftists fashions are in the air (or were in the air when they were undergrads). BUT: open discussion of such any issues is a-ok.
The concern isn't discussion, it's indoctrination.
Even introducing concepts like "privilege," "microaggression," and "rape culture" as if they're serious concepts for serious people and serious thought already puts a lefty slant on things. Now...if they wanted to say something like:
Here's this idea, currently trendy on the far left, 'microaggression.' Here's what it's supposed to be... Here's why people think we need it... Here are the objections to it (e.g. none of the things categorized thusly can plausibly be characterized as acts of aggression, ergo it's part of the whiny lefty project of pretending that things you don't like are acts of violence against you)...
Well that's one thing. Even though such discussions might not be conducted objectively...well, that's always a danger. That's an acceptable risk, I'd say. But flat-out indoctrination is a different thing entirely...
Also: should we go to red alert about the Wisconsin thing? Sounds more like a yellow-alert situation to me. Let's go to DefCon Huh? That's somewhere between DefCon Meh and DefCon Shit!
Often the faculty have no idea what goes on at orientation. The first contemporary case of brainwashing at orientation hit the news back in '08 when FIRE forced the University of Delaware to cut it the hell out. Of course many faculty would be in favor of such brainwashing...but most, I believe, would not.
Now it should go without saying that I'm not necessarily objecting to such things being discussed. I have some doubts that it's necessary, and I do have some concerns that merely choosing which topics to discuss can put a slant on things. And I do have some concerns about low-level, non-faculty administrators setting the agenda for students' first encounter with the institution. It's my impression that those positions often fill up with people who uncritically absorb whatever leftists fashions are in the air (or were in the air when they were undergrads). BUT: open discussion of such any issues is a-ok.
The concern isn't discussion, it's indoctrination.
Even introducing concepts like "privilege," "microaggression," and "rape culture" as if they're serious concepts for serious people and serious thought already puts a lefty slant on things. Now...if they wanted to say something like:
Here's this idea, currently trendy on the far left, 'microaggression.' Here's what it's supposed to be... Here's why people think we need it... Here are the objections to it (e.g. none of the things categorized thusly can plausibly be characterized as acts of aggression, ergo it's part of the whiny lefty project of pretending that things you don't like are acts of violence against you)...
Well that's one thing. Even though such discussions might not be conducted objectively...well, that's always a danger. That's an acceptable risk, I'd say. But flat-out indoctrination is a different thing entirely...
Also: should we go to red alert about the Wisconsin thing? Sounds more like a yellow-alert situation to me. Let's go to DefCon Huh? That's somewhere between DefCon Meh and DefCon Shit!
posted by Winston Smith at
10:27 AM
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