Crux: Universities - 21st Century Day Care for the Overgrown Baby.
Crux Articles: Articles that aren't gaming related, and will touch on other more real world subjects, such as politics, religion, or in this case, rights of free speech. Be aware that these articles are more ranty in nature, and may contain more NSFW language than normal!
Traditionally, University has been somewhere where we send our young people who are intellectually capable and have intellectual promise in order to enhance their knowledge. To expand their minds and broaden their horizons.
To increase their literacy, strengthen their skills of reasoning and application of logic, and to prepare them for a life spent in a more professional capacity.
Free speech is something that most modern democracies not only encourage, but actually enshrine in law. The right to say whatever you want, even if it's offensive or obnoxious to some, is a human right that should be protected at all costs.
Before I go any further, watch the below video.
It's a slightly sarcastic take on what I'll be talking about afterwords.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM-HJT8_esM
Done? Good.
Ridiculous right?
Nothing that insane could happen in reality, right?
Right?
Disclaimer: I never went to University. I quit school to begin working when I was about to enter my final year of secondary education, so I was about 17 at the time I left to take up a job that I thought would be of more benefit to me than completing my A-Levels. It was at the time, but longer term it proved to be of no benefit. As a result I have since began studying with the Open University, completing an Honours Degree in Computing & IT with Applied Psychology. This is an action borne of both work reasons and personal satisfaction, and so far I'm really enjoying it, but I will forever have missed out on the full University experience that I would've had, had I stuck with school and gone onto University when I was the appropriate age.
However, it seems that even today, University students the world over are missing out on a full University experience because of hysteria and political correctness gone mad.
Unfortunately it seems that this is not ridiculous, but is also reality in more than one University campus across the Westernised world at this moment in time.
Political correctness began as a movement intended to reduce the chance that minorities would take offence at certain terminology, language etc.
Noble intent? Perhaps. But it has now reached such levels of self-parody, that students like those satirised in the above video are not only real, but they are so earnest in their attempt to be seen as standing up for a cause that they've begun to become a satire of themselves.
Disclaimer #2: I am a proponent of equality and freedom. Very much so, and I believe that everyone has the right to live their lives the way they see fit. When it comes to gender, I believe men and women are equal in all things, and firmly believe a woman doing a specific job should be paid 100% in equality with a man doing the same job. Yes some men are physically stronger than some women, but likewise some women are physically stronger than some men.
Put it like this, I would not be picking a fight with Ronda Rousey any time soon... ;)
I'm also a huge advocate of gay rights and the rights of the non-hetero peoples of the world to live their lives in a manner they see fit as well. IMO the state has no right to dictate who should be able to marry or for people to love whoever they want. I live in Northern Ireland, the last part of the UK that still legally discriminates against gay people and their right to marry, much to my ever-living disdain and embarrassment. Blame religion, I do, as it's the conservative ultra-religious nutbags in the DUP blocking it every time.
Fucking religious bigoted assholes...
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, traditionally we send young people to University in order to strengthen their reasoning and argument skills, in addition to their critical faculties.
To prepare the next generation of great thinkers, philosophers, doctors, psychologists, scientists, authors etc.
However it now appears that in far too many cases, modern Uni students are seemingly less concerned with intellectual rigour, and seem all too eager to find a "cause" to champion.
Even if that "cause" is something that logically otherwise would be abhorrent or antithetical to their existence...
Case Study 1: Maryam Namazie (Video 1 or shorter 2)
Maryam was invited to give a talk at the Warwick University a few months back, and more recently to talk at Goldsmith's University. On both occasions her invite was initially retracted after an outcry from Student's Union in the Warwick University case, and in the second was objected to by the Goldsmith's Islamic Society.
Maryam's crime? Speaking out on women's rights, gay rights and calling for an end to death threats against apostates. For which, during the Goldsmith's lecture, she received death threats herself.
The thing that got me was that Goldsmith's Islamic Society had a staunch ally in the "fight" against Maryam speaking out on women's rights: The Goldsmith's LGBTQ society.
Now, that's odd enough, given how well we know that Islamic extremists treat gay people: See how ISIS treat gay people in Syria: They either behead them or throw them to their deaths from clock towers and cliff edges. But it's even more puzzling given that the (now former) chair person, Muhammed Patel (@Mopey96 - now deleted!) of the Islamic Society at GS hates gay people:
The LGBTQ society standing with ISOC over Maryam's talk stinks of nothing more than painfully, desperately needing a "cause" to champion, of not having principles and thinking independently for themselves about who it is they're throwing their support behind.
It shows a distinct lack of appreciation for the work someone like Maryam Namazie does, who it is she speaks for and shows a shocking lack of forethought and research.
Case Study 2: Germaine Greer
Similarly to Maryam, Germaine was invited to speak at yet another University, this time in Cardiff Uni. Prior to the lecture's date, she made some rather unfortunate and offensive comments on transgender people, stating that "Transgender women aren't really women".
Regardless, rather than debate the issue with Germaine at the lecture, and try to convince her that she was wrong, some of the students at Cardiff decided to try and shut her down, by launching a petition on Change.org to try and put a stop to her lecture, entitled 'Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century'.
So rather than try to engage in a structured debate with Germaine, they tried to outright prevent her from speaking at all. Hardly indicative of young people mentally prepared to test their mettle against one of the 20th Centuries foremost feminist figures!
Case Study 3: Erika Christakis
Erika penned an email in response to a directive from the Intercultural Affairs Committee at Yale University in the US, that decided that students should not wear halloween costumes that "might offend" or "culturally appropriate" minorities.
Erika's email basically stated that students should be able to wear whatever the hell they like, even if it's a little bit "offensive or obnoxious". She asked "whether blond toddlers should be barred from being dressed as African-American or Asian characters from Disney films".
For any right-minded person dressing your 4 year old caucasian daughter as Mulan or Pocahontas wouldn't even raise an eye-brow, but not here.
After that, hundreds of students signed an open letter criticising her viewpoint. Following the furore she resigned her post as a lecturer at Yale, and her husband, a fellow lecturer at Yale has taken a semester-long sabbatical, after he had to endure the shrieking of butt-hurt cry babies screaming in his face:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IEFD_JVYd0
Case Study 4: Tim Hunt
Sir Tim Hunt was asked at short notice to give a talk at the 2015 World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul. The words in question that caused this particular shit-storm?
"It's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls? Now, seriously, I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt an important role in it. Science needs women, and you should do science, despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me."
Now, clearly Tim was being self-effacing and somewhat taking the piss, calling himself a chauvinist and going on to jokingly justify that statement by making clearly ridiculous assertions that were taking the mickey out of the people that actually think that way.
Now the talk was given during a lunch for female journalists and scientists, and clearly those in attendance thought that Tim was not being misogynistic as his words were greeted by warm laughter and applause.
But of course that wasn't the end of it. Someone recorded a short snippet of the talk, cut it to make it look like he was being a sexist pig, and uploaded it online. Then the social media butt-hurt police took over, there was a Twitter-storm, and he eventually had to resign his post as honorary professor with the University College London's Faculty of Life Sciences.
Case Study 5: Katie Hopkins
Now, Katie is a woman that I, along with a large percentage of the UK population have come to despise deeply over the years. The woman is a shit-stain on the public arena, because all she has ever done is make statements designed purely to revolt, disgust and shock in order to keep herself in the public eye and further her own worthless career.
There's a famous quote, one all too often mis-attributed to Voltaire, but actually penned by Evelyn Beatrice Hall writing about Voltaire's attitude on the subject, that goes like this:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And with this statement I agree whole-heartedly. So even though I despise Katie Hopkins with every fibre of my being, I defend her right to say the crap she spouts, because that's her right to do so.
However, it seems like the students of Brunel University don't have quite as mature an attitude to her right to speak.
She was yet another example of someone invited to give a talk at a University that was then treated somewhat childishly by the students.
She was part of a panel debating whether the welfare state had a place in 2015 as part of Brunel's 50th anniversary celebrations, but as soon as she started to speak a large section of the students in attendance simply stood up, turned their backs on her as she spoke, then a minute or so later started filing out of the auditorium.
So again, rather than debate Katie Hopkin's reprehensible views, they simply refused to engage and instead behaved like a bunch of spoilt whining babies throwing a tantrum and walked out. I wonder if any of them had their fingers in the ears going "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU. I'M TELLING MY MUMMY ON YOU"
Sadly it seems that in today's world of overly-sensitive cry-baby students and the ease with which social media armchair warriors and philosophers can shriek the loudest and force the hands of otherwise rational people and bodies to crumble under the pressure and go against common sense.
Instead of strengthening their intellectual capacity, rigour and critical thinking faculties, it seems students and by extension the social-media cry babies would prefer to become intellectually lazy by refusing to engage in debate.
And just before submitting this article to the ether of the web, I came across this little pearl. The president of a small college in the US basically told his students to "grow up" and stop being so "self-absorbed and narcissistic".
That whenever their feelings are hurt or they take the slightest bit of offence that they play the victim, and that so-called "safe space" policies where dissenting opinions are shut down for fear of causing offence are stunting free speech.
And this is in a CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. And if the Christians are getting pissed off, well boy, you know something's fucking rotten in the state of Denmark.
Right?
And if anyone's offended after reading all this?
Then that's entirely your right.
As it is mine to not particularly care ;)
And if you've made it to the end of this monster and are still reading, well done, a Twitter cookie for you!