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February 18, 2006
The Hip Hop Generation Versus Aristotle, Newton and Shakespeare
...or Foucault, for that matter.
Professor Bainbridge is striving mightily to ruin what's left of my evening by linking to a report that a bill has been introduced into the Arizona state legislature that would require colleges and universities to
“provide a student with alternative coursework if the student deems regular coursework to be personally offensive,” that is, where “a course, coursework, learning material or activity is personally offensive if it conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion.”The modest amount of reasoning ability I have is paralyzed with frustration. Is this the endgame of the postmodernist attack on objective truth? After all, this is just the latest in the all-too-familiar episodes in which the majority is held captive by the mere whim of an individual.
As if that's not bad enough, the good professor continues:
I'm betting any number of my fellow conservatives think this is a great idea. After all, we must protect the tender feelings of students from left-liberal professors, right?
Am I missing some subtle satire here? Of course conservatives want nothing of the kind. We don't want lib/Left professors censored or students somehow inoculated against their views--we just want the Leftist stranglehold on the hiring process broken so that an alternative point of view might be offered.
In a more general, or strategic, sense the idea that "whatever you believe is your own personal truth" (and therefore worthy of legislative protection) must also be attacked and defeated. The value of reason and the objective truths obtained through its use have essentially constructed the world we enjoy today. A person's belief that he can climb up on his roof, flap his arms and fly away doesn't mean his belief is the truth.
Are we to relegate Aristotle to the dustbin just because of the protests of any random product of our thoroughly screwed-up public education system?
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Comments
Oh I've just gotten back from vacation and this is what I find???
I'm gunna have to stop yapping about those exploitative paintings of women by dead white males. Titian--be gone!
Posted by: AcademicElephant at February 20, 2006 10:25 PM
REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES: Brought peace.
REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!
Posted by: Jeff at February 20, 2006 11:46 PM
Followed up: http://elephantsinacademia.blogspot.com/2006/02/picture-of-day-do-i-offend_21.html
Cheers! AE
Posted by: AcademicElephant at February 21, 2006 07:21 AM
