In my May 18th blog Civic Spaces and the Illiberal Desire to Subvert Them, I updated the blog a few days later with a real world example of the hypothetical I used to illustrate the way in which colleges and universities, as well as 4k-12 schools, are operating more like reeducation centers than places of learning. The real world case concerns a Connecticut teacher who gave a student a zero on her final project proposal because she used the construct “biological woman.” Follow the link above to read about the case. While you’re there, please read the blog, too! Rather than do a second update, I have decided to blog anew a follow up to the case.
In “Adjunct who failed student for using term ‘biological women’ confirms story, plays the victim,” Dave Huber of The College Fix reported: “Though Olivia Krolczyk never named her professor, this past week The Cincinnati Enquirer did—and scored an interview with her in the process.” Melanie Rose Nipper is the professor in question. She is an adjunct in the University of Cincinnati’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department. According to the Enquirer, Nipper said she cried when she saw Krolczyk’s TikTok video about the issue. “It’s a lot, right? It’s a lot to handle.” She might have imagined how the student felt having her thoughts suppressed by a person in a position of authority. But that’s hardly a concern for woke authorities. They have a social control function to carry out. The rights of gender conforming students are arbitrary. The privilege of trans people is everything (as we saw in Queensland, Australia yesterday).
Nipper confirmed Krolczyk’s sequence of events but added, “Every final project proposal has to be approved by the instructor” and her review of the idea and Krolczyk’s language was routine in carrying out her duties as a professor. I, too, have students propose papers and projects, and we work together to get them approved (although some are never approved, this doesn’t stop the student from turning in a final paper or project—or getting a grade on the failed proposal). However, I never instruct the student in the ideological use of terminology. In fact, I guarantee students in writing (it’s on the syllabi for all my classes) that judging their politics is not part of my assessment of their work. All that I ask is that, if it is a science paper, which it usually is, they follow scholarly norms of scientific writing. I am there to teach them how to write scientifically, not how to write ideologically.
But Nipper’s pedagogy clearly has a different task and purpose, one that involves changing the way students express their thoughts, and in so doing changing thought expression in such a way as to prevent the accurate conveyance of those thoughts—if she cannot first deter them from proposing projects of which she disapproves. The Enquirer reports that, “when a student uses ‘an outdated terminology’,” Nipper “feels it is necessary to correct those mistakes.” “Not a zero for the course,” Nipper told the outlet; “a zero for an assignment.” For the record, I would never given a student a zero on an assignment unless the submission was plagiarized. I ask them to revise the proposal over a generous weeks-long process and then grade the paper on how well it meets the terms of the assignment.
Nipper believes classrooms “should be places for debate and discussion,” but not really. When “you are, intentionally or unintentionally, participating in a systemic harm of some kind,” she tells the Enquirer, then you need to be corrected. What does Nipper define as harmful? “Transphobic” language, which Nipper equates to white supremacy. In other words, observing that women are in part biological beings (female sex is a prerequisite for being a woman), and that biology matters in athletic competition, are for Nipper the same things as anti-black racism. To be sure, Nipper informed Krolczyk in her comments to the proposal: “This is unacceptable based on the community, the marginalized individuals that are at stake, and also the foundations of the course.” But this only makes the censorship goal explicit. Here the suppression of speech is being applied on the grounds that what is being said threatens vulnerable populations. Translated into real terms: some people find the speech offensive. This is not a valid reason to censor speech (see The False Doctrine of “Weapons of the Weak”).
All this for using the construction “biological woman.” Of course, this was probably an attempt to cancel the project because it challenged a belief the teacher had; Nipper was hoping to force the student to change the project proposal by failing it. But let’s stay with the construction for the moment and Nipper’s explicit motive. However redundant the construction “biological woman” is (and it is redundant), it is not “transphobic,” a propaganda term designed to make truth appear bigoted in the same way criticism of Islam is labeled “Islamophobic.” Certainly, used this way, that’s its function. Note how the teacher said she would regrade the paper (she gave the student’s proposal a zero) if the student cleansed the paper of “outdated terminology.” “I will happily regrade,” Nipper said. “You are not going to have any late penalties.” How lenient. Perhaps Nipper understood that canceling the project altogether was a perilous path. So Krolczyk would have to rewrite the proposal to conform with Nipper’s ideological standpoint, an action rationalized in terms protecting the weak, i.e., those who have all the major institutions of society in back of them.
This is not education. This is indoctrination. This teacher sees herself as overseeing a reeducation center where young people have to be reprogrammed to speak and write in the approved ideological manner. (We can’t rule out the power-tripping joy in all this for Nipper.) This is hardly an uncommon practice. This is systemic. What lies at the end of this road should concern all freedom-minded folk. The New Fascism uses the language of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It moves beneath the rhetoric of “social justice.” But like the term “woman,” justice needs no qualifier. So if you have kids you intend to send to college, teach them not to cooperate with the project to indoctrinate them. Make them stubborn and difficult. Start well before college. Teach them to do what the kids did at Marshall Simonds Middle School (see Kids Resisting Indoctrination).
I am proud of Olivia Krolczyk, the student who blew the whistle on this authoritarian teacher. More of her kind and maybe we can start turning around the rapid slide of the West into the darkness of totalitarianism. For the record, I am not calling for Melanie Rose Nipper to be dismissed or disciplined—unless this is a pattern. She needs to be reminded or educated about the free speech rights of her students, as well the principles of academic freedom. And if this is the policy of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati, then the department needs to be reformed. This is unacceptable behavior for an institution of higher learning in an open and rational society with a bill of rights that explicitly guarantees citizens the freedom of conscience and the freedom of speech.
* * *
Speaking of what happened in Queensland yesterday, here Giggle founder Sall Grover discusses new laws passed in the state of Queensland which allow residents to change their gender on a birth certificate:
“The important thing to understand with self ID laws is they have very little to do with the self,” Grover tells the host; “these are laws that are dictating how everyone else has to see someone. It is taking control over every citizens critical thinking faculties.” (I write about this in yesterday’s blog: Neutralizing the Gender-Detection Brain Module.)
And that’s the problem. One may think of himself in way that is contrary to reality (and there is a reality), but to make others think in that same way is among the worst violations of human rights. It is wrong to compel others to live in unreality and we need to rise against this assault on our dignity and freedom and on the truth (which is singular). Please watch Grover’s interview. Follow her on twitter @salltweets.
* * *
The seriousness of this madness cannot be understated.
This is the reason that the most advanced European countries are shutting down “gender-affirming care”: the evidence isn’t there. How could it be? It’s crackpot ideology devised by a pedophiles and hacks (I have a major critique of the ideology pending). But the United States, with its for-profit health system, a system that generates hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year for wealthy investors, went full-speed ahead—evidence be damned. (See Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex; Feeding the Medical-Industrial Complex.) This rhetoric of “standard of care” is garbage language. It’s scientism. Standard of care is legitimizing propaganda constructed by the very industrialists who make billions off of exploiting emotionally and psychological vulnerable children. It’s just like the standards of the food industry.
Why aren’t the progressives calling out these hacks? I never thought it would be the Republicans who would be there for the people (no offense to Republicans), but they are. Progressives helped build this industry, so my question was rhetorical. Here’s another truth bomb:
The great tragedy in all this is that it took all these years and all these broken bodies before those in power starting pushing back—and many more will be broken in the meantime. And the industry may (likely will) survive the opposition. It’s the same with the pandemic. We knew—I knew—from the beginning that what they were terrifying people into doing was all about money and control, not about actual health care. Folks will never understand this until the develop a proper critique of corporate capitalism and get their heads out of matrix.
freedom and reason 