Monday, May 30, 2016

Prof Who Won't Recommend a Pro-Gun Student Is Everything That's Wrong with Academia
...Reading the full column, it quickly becomes clear that the professor believes everyone who has encountered a gun and not recoiled in horror is a sociopath. She doesn't have very well-developed reasons for thinking this—she says guns were part of her life growing up but does not suggest that they were ever used improperly. Her mother got rid of the family gun because they worried her father was suicidal, and no gun-related harm ever came to him or anyone else. If anything, the professor seems to have an inexplicable fear of guns, though she is entitled to feel that way.

She is also entitled to decline to write a letter of recommendation. But—and this point needs to be stressed—her reasons for not wanting to recommend Sarah are abhorrent. Sarah's views about guns have nothing do with being a good student, and it's not even clear what her views are: she's merely made a couple vaguely pro-gun statements. It's cultural, rather than political: Sarah is the kind of person—a guns person—that the professor instinctively dislikes. ...

Missouri State Students Warned: Police Only Exist To Protect White Male Privilege
A poster campaign at Missouri State University sought to privilege-shame students for being straight, white, male, Christian or able-bodied (among other characteristics) and informed students that the police only exist to protect white men.

The posters were sponsored by the university’s student government and Residence Hall Association (RHA) and reportedly went up inside a dorm Saturday morning before being removed on Sunday night in the face of backlash from students on Twitter. The Daily Caller obtained pictures of six of the posters from an MSU student before they were taken down....