Thursday, October 19, 2017



A Boise State professor was besieged after publishing articles and research that challenged campus transgender orthodoxy

A Boise State University professor recently learned what happens when you challenge left-wing social narratives on college campuses.

Scott Yenor, a tenured professor, has been under siege on campus after publishing articles with The Heritage Foundation and The Daily Signal about feminism and the transgender movement.

In those articles, Yenor explained the similarity in philosophy between the early feminists and modern transgender movement and how they aim at undermining traditional family values.

He wrote in a Daily Signal article on Aug. 2:

"Transgender rights activists are seeking to abridge parental rights by elevating the independent choices of young children. Respecting the sexual and gender “choices” of ever-younger children erodes parental rights and compromises the integrity of the family as an independent unit"

In response, students, activists, and even staff members at Boise State are now waging a relentless campaign to get Yenor fired or shut down.

A petition to have Yenor fired—which has now gained thousands of signatures—has been passed around on campus. Activists have posted flyers attacking him, and some have called for other faculty to come out and officially condemn him.

Despite these calls, Boise State has said it will not fire Yenor, according to The College Fix.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy sailing for Yenor, who continues to be lambasted and isolated.

In an interview with The Daily Signal, Yenor explained how the crusade against his work and others that challenge left-wing orthodoxy on campus is undercutting free speech at our colleges and universities.

The result of the reaction to his work, Yenor said, is that “there has been a very chilling effect on not only my speech, but those who would speak in defense of me both on the substance, and on the principle of academic freedom.”

The blowback came in earnest, according to Yenor, when the School of Public Service posted his article on its Facebook page. The dean received immediate negative reactions and anger from students and LGBT activists.

The dean, Corey Cook, then posted a statement on Facebook saying that while Yenor had a right to publish, his work violated the university’s aspirations of diversity and civility.

This didn’t stop the waves of attacks that would soon come upon Yenor.

The campaign against him became a “cause célèbre” for the new student diversity and inclusion hire, Francisco Salinas, according to Yenor.

In August, Salinas wrote an article condemning Yenor and tying his work to the recent events in Charlottesville and to Nazism.

And at an Aug. 29 faculty senate meeting, Boise State professor Lynn Lubamersky said that while she believes in free expression, she thinks that because of the opinions expressed in The Daily Signal article, Yenor “violated clear policies that govern our institution, our statement of shared values, and the State Board of Education policy regarding academic freedom and most important, our concern for our students.”

“The majority of our university is made up of women and transgendered people,” Lubamersky continued. “[Yenor’s] public statements published with the byline: Boise State University (BSU) professor of political science, a real violation of the rights of women and transgendered students.”

Lubamersky said:

When someone expresses bigoted, homophobic, and misogynistic views as a representative of a university, I think that we do have the right and responsibility to at least make a statement that we do not share these values and they are not represented of our university.

Since Yenor published the Daily Signal article in August, he received a constant stream of criticism and calls for his work to be shut down.

“The position seems to be that anyone who would do research in areas that don’t affirm the contemporary views, should be shut down,” Yenor said.

Boise State student Ryan Orlando called for his school to “part ways” with Yenor in an article he penned for The Odyssey.

“There are a multitude of morally reprehensible notions in Yenor’s writing which constitute a dangerous ideology that warrants separation from the university,” Orlando wrote.

“In our belief, this is hate speech, and it’s alienating a lot of folks in this Boise State community,” said Joe Goode, a member of the Boise State Young Democrats, according to KTVB.

“We want to show that our university stands for more than hate, we are a community of equality and inclusivity.”

While he has received withering personal attacks over his research, Yenor said that few have engaged with the ideas or have seriously attempted to refute his arguments.

Yenor said the personal attacks don’t bother him, but he worries about the long-term impact on people worried that their views will not be argued with, but simply attacked on campus.

“That’s been one of the most disappointing things,” Yenor said. “Everyone in academia could live with having a debate about ideas, but a debate has to start with an understanding what the other person is arguing.”

“It strikes me that there has really been, first of all, no effort to first understand what I’m arguing, and second of all, to get anywhere beyond name-calling and labeling,” Yenor said.

Yenor said only a handful of students have come out to publicly defend him or even make the simple argument that he should be allowed to speak on his views without getting fired, though he has received a lot of private support.

Yenor said he’s made new friendships, especially among those who privately share his views or actually want to understand what he has to say.

Nevertheless, he said he now feels like an “alien” on campus.   “There’s a kind of feeling that there’s a mob,” Yenor said. “And you don’t run across a mob.”

What’s been worst about all the flak he’s received on campus, according to Yenor, is this larger impact on speech.

While Yenor said he will not back down about writing about gender and other areas that he studies, he is worried about what the attacks mean for free speech and others who are afraid to have their careers derailed.

“The problem with what is happening is that the idea that I’m in violation of the campus civility policies is intended to have a chilling effect on my speech and the speech of anyone who would agree with me,” Yenor said. “That is the bottom line with how I’m being injured.”

This, according to Yenor, will damage institutions of higher learning.

“What is primarily at stake in my case, I think, is the development of a culture of victimization on campus or a social justice framework for understanding education,” Yenor said in a follow-up email.

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Toronto School District to Remove "Chief" from Job Titles because It's a microaggression against indigenous peoples                         

KATHERINE TIMPF   

I’m all for sensitivity, but this? This is stupid.

The Toronto District School Board has announced that it will remove “chief” from all job titles out of concern that the word is a microaggression against indigenous peoples.

    Now, if you were thinking, “Wait . . . ‘chief’? That word didn’t even originate as an indigenous word!” then you’d be correct. “Chief” is actually an Old French word meaning “highest in rank or power; most important or prominent; supreme, best,” originating from the Latin word “caput.” In other words: Not only is “chief” not an indigenous word, but also, none of its original meanings even had anything to do with indigenous peoples or their leaders.

    “[‘Chief’] may not have originated as an Indigenous word, but the fact is that it is used as a slur in some cases, or in a negative way to describe Indigenous people,” school spokesman Ryan Bird said, according to an article in the College Fix. “With that in mind, as it has become a slur in some cases, that’s the decision the administration has made to be proactive on that.”

    If a word is being used offensively, then of course you should be against that usage. No good person wants to hurt anyone else. But honestly, I just have to ask: What in the hell is the point of stopping people from using a word in a way that is not offensive — seeing as it is, you know, not offensive?

    “Chief” can mean all kinds of things; it can mean “most important.” (As in: “Will and Grace reruns are the chief reason I stayed home all weekend.”) Is “most important” offensive? No. Oh, I also call my dad “chief” sometimes. Is that offensive? No, he thinks it’s funny, and the only potentially offensive thing about what I just wrote is that I sort of took credit for that nickname when really my little brother came up with it.

    It’s all pretty ridiculous, but what might bother me most about this whole debacle is the district spokesman’s idea that we need to be “proactive” about these sorts of things. As in, no one needs to actually be offended by a word to ban it, we need to just figure out what words might be offensive ahead of time, and then ban them preemptively. It may sound nice, but it’s actually an incredibly dangerous idea that threatens to eradicate all sorts of language from our vocabulary.

    Think about it: Pretty much every word in history has probably been used in an offensive way at one time or another. For example, I’ve been called “princess” in a derogatory, sexist way many times — should I be phoning up the royal family in England and trying to force them to change the way they refer to any daughter of the queen? Hey, it may just be that it’s being used as a title and not as a slur in that case, but it could potentially offend people like me who have heard it other ways, so I should probably call them up and try to convince them to change it, right?

    But no. I’m not going to do that. Not only because I don’t have any of their numbers, but also because I’m not an insane person. Unfortunately, however, some people seem to have become so insane that I’m a little concerned I may just have given someone an idea.

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UK: Muslim schools must not segregate boys and girls, says Court of Appeal in landmark ruling

Religious schools that segregate girls and boys have been told that they are breaking the law, but a landmark court judgment has given them time to change their regime.

Three Court of Appeal judges ruled unanimously that the mixed al-Hijrah school in Birmingham was unlawfully discriminating on the ground of gender with its rigid segregation policy. Girls and boys have separate classes, are banned from mixing at lunchtime or during any activities and use separate corridors.

Ofsted said that this failed to prepare pupils properly for modern British life and it placed the school in special measures last June.

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