Probably the last place you should go when seeking real-world advice is a college “studies” class.
That is, unless you want to elicit eye rolls and smirks from the general public.
A new freshman seminar at the University of Minnesota could be titled “Gluttony for Ridicule,” but, alas, it’s called “Ending Sexual Violence at the University of Minnesota.” Its instructor, Lena Palacios, is — you guessed it — a “studies” professor (“Communication Studies”).
Palacios, whose research and instruction include “critical prison studies and prison abolitionism, Black, Indigenous, Chicana & Latina queer and trans feminisms, and girls’/girlhood studies,” identifies as a sexual violence survivor and says university policies and so-called “bystander prevention” efforts are problematic due to “shift[ing] the burden to report sexual misconduct onto people with little power.”
This is quintessential “studies” talk, of course, and here’s the kicker:
When a person is harmed, Palacios said, “The first thing you have to do is say, ‘Where are they on the totem pole of hierarchy? Do they have more power or less power?’ And those questions are usually not addressed by the [University] admin.”
Read that again. The first thing you should should do is pull out the Politically Correct Hierarchy Handbook from your back pocket and figure out the victim’s spot on the “hierarchy.” The first thing!
Recall Andrew Sullivan’s point about this sort of absurdity: “It is clearer and clearer to me that the wholesale adoption of critical race, gender, and queer theory on the left makes normal people wonder what on earth they’re talking about and which dictionary they are using.”
Sullivan was referencing why the Left got smoked in the recent in the UK elections; however, this warning applies to the American Left, as well. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who always demonstrates she believes the American amber waves of grain are no different than the halls of an Ivy League university, did it yet again at the latest Democrat debate.
Warren told the crowd Thursday night that if elected president she would “com[e] out onto the White House lawn once a year” to read aloud the names of transgender individuals who had been killed.
Why would she do this? Because the former law professor (and Native American) wants you to think these folks were murdered because of their sexual/gender orientation, and that such killings are an “epidemic.”
But that’s not reality. Columnist Ron Dreher dug into the stories behind each of the 22 transgender killings and discovered nary a definitive anti-trans motive. “Epidemic” is a “100 percent political term,” Dreher says.
And politically correct.
Keep in mind, too, that one of the Left’s biggest preoccupations is “mass incarceration,” but like Professor Palacios’ “hierarchy” the worry only applies to those on the “correct” spot on the proverbial totem pole.
After all, how else can you say it’s free speech to burn the American flag (it is, by the way), but not a LGBTQ flag? How can you blast cops for enforcing dumb laws, and then double down by making the laws even dumber?
MORE: Progressives’ inanity is their greatest weakness
MORE: The latest regressive progressive brainchild regarding race
IMAGE: Shutterstock.com
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.