Recently I received an
e-mail message from Kennesaw State University’s Office of Diversity—and it was
chilling. My colleagues, students, and I
were being encouraged to report on violations of political correctness. Shades of the Stasi and Gestapo immediately
danced before my eyes.
It appears that our Office
of Diversity has established a “New Bias Reporting Website.” Faculty, staff and students are asked to
alert our moral guardians of any “bias motivated incident” we have experienced
or witnessed.
What counts as a bias
motivated incident? Any untoward
behavior based on a person’s “individual or group identity, beliefs, and/or
perspectives.” These, we are told, can
be obvious, such as discriminatory comments or behavior. Or they can be subtle, such as “statements
about someone’s looks or appearance that might be linked to historical
stereotypes.”
In other words, if you feel
uncomfortable with what someone says, you should get them in trouble. You can initiate vigilante justice based
solely upon your subjective sense of entitlement. Put another way: Snowflakes of the world
unite! You have nothing to lose except
your integrity and our democratic traditions!
The people who put this website
together must have assumed that they were promoting justice. They could not have been more wrong! They are actually following in the footsteps
of the Jacobin Committee of Public Safety.
Do you know what this
was? Why it was the chief means of
carrying out the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Ordinary people were urged to report on
counter-revolutionaries. Then those
implicated were brought to trial and subsequently introduced to Madame Guillotine.
Who counted a
counter-revolutionary? Soon enough, it
was anyone the accuser did not like.
Since guilt was in the eye of the beholder, no one—not even the most
respected insurrectionists—was safe from indictment. In the end, matters got so out of hand that
these insurgents were eating their own.
Nor has this been an isolated
occurrence. We saw it again in Nazi
Germany, in Communist East Germany, in the Soviet Union, and in Mao’s China. Whenever a government incites its people to
spy and inform on each other, trust and justice are lost. Vendettas, power grabs, and violence become
the order of the day.
Is this what we want? Is it where we are headed? Are subscribers to the Black Lives Matter
movement to be given veto power over whatever they desire? Are they to be handed a weapon with which to
eviscerate their enemies. These
activists may not chop off heads, but they are bound to ruin more than a few
careers.
All of this is especially
amazing given that college campuses are among the least biased places in our
nation. More particularly, KSU is not a
hotbed of racial tensions. In the
quarter of a century that I have been on its faculty, I have witnessed the
percentage of minority students swell.
Why are they coming? Because they find us a congenial place to
learn. Students get along with each
other. They routinely form interracial
friendships. They even date across
racial boundaries. Nor are the
professors intolerant louts. Most, in
fact, are card-carrying liberals.
So why are we taking a
chance of destroying academic freedom?
What is to be gained by allowing the radicals to decide what constitutes
the proper sort of education? My guess
is that this will produce empty-headed conformity. Just as in places like East Germany, a
lock-step mentality will bring tyranny and economic devastation in its wake.
We are frequently told that
the best way to improve race relations is to open an honest conversation
between the races. I can think of few
better ways to foreclose this possibility than by what KSU’s Office of
Diversity is doing. My hope is that our
administration understands this as well.
Isn’t it ironic that in the
pursuit of justice, we so often undermine it?
KSU’s current P.C. initiative may have been launched with the best of
intentions; nonetheless it has the potential for the worst imaginable outcomes.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
No comments:
Post a Comment