Michael Rectenwald; NYU prof, victim of PC gestapo
In the New York Post today, they tell the story of New York University professor, 57-year-old Michael Rectenwald, who was pushed out of his job by a panel of his peers because of his views on the PC culture;
Rectenwald launched an undercover Twitter account called Deplorable NYU Prof on Sept. 12 to argue against campus trends like “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings” and other aspects of academia’s growing PC culture.
He chose to be anonymous, he explained in one of his first tweets, because he was afraid “the PC Gestapo would ruin me” if he put his name behind his conservative ideas on the famously liberal campus.
[…]
“I thought there was nothing objectionable about what I had said,” he told The Post.
“My contention is that the trigger warning, safe spaces and bias hot-line reporting is not politically correct. It is insane,” he told the student paper in an interview published Monday.
A 12-person committee which included two deans named in the Orwellian tradition “Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group”. They wrote;
“As long as he airs his views with so little appeal to evidence and civility, we must find him guilty of illogic and incivility in a community that predicates its work in great part on rational thought and the civil exchange of ideas,” they wrote.
“We seek to create a dynamic community that values full participation. Such efforts are not the ‘destruction of academic integrity’ Professor Rectenwald suggests, but rather what make possible our program’s approach to global studies,” they argued.
What? “Full participation?”
He had a meeting with his own dean and Human Resources. They claimed to be worried about his mental health and sent him off on paid leave for the rest of the semester.
I guess NYU prefers the Stalin model of keeping people in line.
Category: Schools
“Free and open exchange of ideas” my ass. Higher “education” at NYU is no longer education; it’s political indoctrination.
Proof that “diversity” is only a code word for “skin color”.
Darwin vs. Group think, Darwin will win.
More like a code word for “good little Progressive”, IMO.
“…Free and open exchange of approved ideas that serve and confirm the Party Purpose.”
Yeah…this is so contrary to logical, linear, goal oriented thought and academic integrity, it gives me a headache in about 40 seconds if I start discussing it.
I’m just thankful that I never attended a university this pathetic.
Progressives at work. Ever notice how they don’t ever tell you what they are “progressing” toward?
C.S. Lewis, in his book “The Abolition of Man” wrote about this back in 1943.
Now we are seeing him proved correct – again.
Ding, ding, ding!!! Men without chests will not display virtue or enterprise. More C.S. Lewis and Rudyard Kipling in our schools to counter the depravity of the left.
Full participation as long as you conform to their ideas of dynamic and diverse. Non-conformity will be punished.
worse, they are in the road to characterizing it as a form of insanity. Re-education and mental institutions for dissidents are the next logical step. So say the ‘open-minded’.
“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
William F. Buckley Jr.
^^^^ This ^^^^
NYU has been a trade school for basket weaving since the 1960s.
I defended this country for 25 years to have it turn to this commie, totalitarian shit?!
Yes. Congratulations. Help the effort. Vote Hillary.
I’m not defending NYU, but just remember that this article only presents a very one sided story. There’s been a whole lot of that going on lately, in both the left and right press. There’s also been a whole lot of “oh they suspended/fired me because they hate me” crap.
Maybe, juuuuust maybe, they fired the guy because he’s an asshole and no one got along with him.
I’m not saying that’s the case, just a hypothetical, but don’t jump to conclusions based on a single NYP article.
Good point. There’s always two sides to outrage. Any story involving a cop and an offender whinging about brutality will usually involve about side of the story that hasn’t made the press.
So, too, might it be here…
One man’s asshole is another man’s patriot.
I’m willing to wait for more info in this case, but all the evidence out there as to what is happening on college campuses around the nation makes me lean towards true in this case.
We have our own version of the Cultural Revolution happening on our campuses right now. Comrade Mao would be proud.
More info coming up, “He(Rectenwald) even identifies as a communist, but the reaction to his tweets “proves that everything else that I said [about the Left in general] was true — that they are like a mob or a witch hunt or a witch trial and that they just shut down all views that aren’t sanctioned by them.” http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/29728/
Surely, comarade, you meant “the Stalin version of FULL PARTICIPATION”.
Did they provide him a sword so that he could commit ritual suicide, or will they go easy on the janitorial staff and just make him swallow cyanide?
No. They’re taking a page out of the Soviet playbook, albeit in a “kinder, gentler” manner.
They’ve put him on leave because they have “concerns about his mental state” (or some such crap). But I’m sure they’d have tried to have him institutionalized as a “mental defective” if they thought they could have gotten away with it.
“Uncle Joe” would be proud of them.
Wasn’t the “mental instability” charge more Khrushchev’s thing? I think Uncle Joe would just have had him shot.
The practice ramped up under Khrushchev and appears to have reached its height under Brezhnev, actually. But the practice of using “psychiatric care” as a tool to stifle political dissidents began under Stalin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union#Under_Stalin.2C_Khrushchev_and_Brezhnev
Considering the volatility of the current election, this makes graduates of NYU unavailable for any future presidential bid. Unless they would lock up the opposition. Which sounds like a solution an NYU graduate would prefer.
So he got pushed out for not saying “Sieg Heil” to political correctness, is it any wonder why many college degrees are completely worthless in today’s job market?
Sorry. Reported your comment by mistake.
I report him all the time, API has even reported himself in the past.
Reporting one of his comments is like pissing into a tsunami, smile at the satisfaction but dont expect anyone to notice.
I am reporting both of you crotch lovers.
If he’d posted something along the lines of “white people are inherently racist,” they’d be circling the wagons around him.
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion” my sober Irish ass.
How does this not violate tenure, (provided he has it?)
Guess “mental health” concerns were their justification… nevermind.
Gravel: Based upon the content of the “Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group’s” letter, I would say there isn’t anything else.
://www.nyunews.com/2016/10/26/letter-to-the-editor-liberal-studies-rejects-antipcnyuprofs-faulty-claims/
“Educational Industrial Complex” Quote me on this.
Ninety percent of what is being taught in today’s universities is nothing more that Political ( Leftist) indoctrination or flat out useless drivel.
They graduate useless, soft, clueless boys and girls who rail that they can not get a job.
Instead of realizing they were sold a bill of goods they bitch that Businesses don’t have jobs to fit their degrees, and argue that more, government-funded education is whats needed.
The Universities demand more funding, the Text book companies ( and the professors that write them ) soak the students, Educational Loan companies make out and the country has shit to show for it.
That pretty much covers “higher education”, Dog. Well done.