Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Channeling Ward Churchill

It all surfaced in October of last year. It followed closely on the outrage of Jena, Louisiana where a group of thuggish students beat a fellow student viciously because other students had segregated them at lunchtime. When the thugs were arrested, charged with assault and convicted in court, the cries came up of racism in the Old South. Got the sequence there? Cliques in high-school. Separation into racial groups. Indignation. Then brutal assault on someone not even tangentially a cause of the outrage. Legal process. Then accusations of racial injustice at the result of the law-breaking. Crime deserves no punishment if you are properly offended in the first place.

That was Jena. This incident was Columbia University in oh-so-cosmopolitan New Yawk City. Black, tenured female professor threatened by an inanimate object left on her door.

The Insinuation of a Threat

Hard to believe that someone who walks the streets of New York would be intimidated by a piece of rope, but there it is. It’s the symbolism, you see.

But then, we have backlash. The investigation of the rope threat leads to nothing. It is after all a college campus and students have been known to indulge in hijinks. Could this be true?

Plot Thickens

Plagiarism by one of those left-wing super-liberal tenured types? Wow! That’s a shock. Is the University out to get her? Is this serious? What kind of place are they running here? Have they no scruples? So, she wonders whether a white faculty member would be treated so disrespectfully. A reasonable question to ask. She hires counsel and writes a defense while also expressing her outrage.

You'll Never Make it Stick!

Yesterday the announcement came. Appeal rejected. Guilty as charged. And, don’t expect a complimentary reference from Columbia. Is this the coming of the new world order? Is an ultra-leftist establishment of liberal learning really going to fire her?

Hoist on Her Petard

I guess so. Next step in this drama is undoubtedly going to be a seven figure book contract and a several day gig on Oprah.

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