Article: 7887 of alt.activism.d Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,su.etc,alt.activism.d From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) Subject: Measure 116: racial harassment Message-ID: Sender: news@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University Date: 08 Jun 1993 15:21:29 GMT Lines: 135 (In my announcement of these postings I mistakenly ascribed to the _Wall Street Journal_ the speculation that dropping the case being related to the nomination of the University President to be head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The speculation is by the editors of _Measure_.) The following is an editorial which appeared on April 26, 1993 in _The_Wall_Street_Journal_. Reprinted with permission of The Wall Street Journal * 1993 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. BUFFALOED AT PENN A freshman, the latest victim of the ideological fever known as political correctness, goes on trial at the University of Pennsylvania today. It's not irrelevant to note that the head of this institution, Sheldon Hackney, is President Clinton's nominee to head the National Endowment for the Humanities--and a man, university spokesmen insist, committed to free speech. That's reassuring to know, especially in light of the goings on at Penn. There the disciplinary furies of the speech police have descended on freshman Eden Jacobowitz for shouting out of the window. Mr. Jacobowitz, it seems, was studying in his dorm room after midnight, when women members of a black sorority camped outside his window began stamping their feet and screaming and generally whooping it up. Irate, Mr. Jacobowitz yelled that they were water- buffalo and that if they wanted to party there was a zoo nearby. Thus began one of the more Kafkaesque chapters in the ongoing campus follies. The campus police rushed up and asked other dorm residents--some of whom in fact _had_ been shouting racial slurs--if they had yelled out of the window. All of them denied it. Only Eden Jacobowitz stepped forward to say he had been yelling out of the window. The police asked the dorm residents if they knew the race of the noisemakers, and were told no--except for Eden Jacobowitz, who said yes. But that, he told the police, had nothing to do with his anger. Mr. Jacobowitz, who thought one should not lie to the police, would pay a price for his forthrightness. He had yet to learn what they don't teach at freshman orientation; namely he had now entered a world where a charge of racism or sexism is as good as a conviction. The racial harassment case mounted against him reads like something from the theater of the absurd. The campus judicial inquiry officer, Robin Read, determined that the student had intended a racial slur by the reference to water buffalo, which she said suggested "large black animals that live in Africa." The student's reference to "zoo," Ms. Read charged, was also racial--notwithstanding the fact that it is a term commonly applied on campuses to noisy fraternity houses, as in the movie "Animal House." In the course of her continuing inquiry, Ms. Read asked Mr. Jacobowitz if he had been having "racist thoughts" the night of the crime. He had no such thoughts, he assured her. Despite this official's determined belief that 'water buffalo' is a racial slur, a variety of experts who could be expected to know a racial slur when they heard one, disagreed. Dr. Elijah Anderson, a leading black ethnographer and sociologist at Penn, has offered to testify in Mr. Jacobowitz's behalf, that water buffalo is not a racial slur, direct or indirect. Professor John Roberts, director of Afro-American Studies at Penn, and several other of the university's authorities on Afro-American culture and black-white relations emphatically agree. Penn Professor Dan Ben-Amos, an expert in black folklore provided the key to the question of the water buffalo reference. When he determined that the student had attended Yeshiva and knew Hebrew, he suggested that the student had quickly translated an extremely common Hebrew word, "behameh," which literally means "water oxen" but is used in everyday language to mean fool or thoughtless person. It has no racial connotations whatsoever. In the course of her interrogations, Ms. Read offered the freshman a deal. There would be no further charges if he would agree to hold a racial sensitivity seminar in his dorm and also agree to have a harassment charge noted on his transcript. Mr. Jacobowitz refused the offer, which is why he is now on trial, facing the possibility of expulsion from Penn if found guilty. What happens to him at today's tribunal should be of interest to anyone concerned with the state of reason and sanity on the campuses today. ________________________________________ The editors note with serious concern that the intent of the University to enter the "harassment charge" on the student's transcript smacks of an introduction in the US of Soviet-style "political kharacteristics." These followed Soviet and Soviet satellite subjects from school throughout their adult lives and assessed the person's profile of political correctness. _Measure_ learned before going to press that the complainants in this notorious University of Pennsylvania case have withdrawn the charges. The complainants claimed that (1) media reporting was slanted in favor of the accused, (2) they had been deprived of the "right to an impartial trial," and (3) "they had been victimized by" agents of the university and by its judicial process. The editors believe that the withdrawal may have had something to do with the upcoming confirmation hearings for the U of PA President, Sheldon Hackney, for the position of Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. -- John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305 * He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense. Article: 7890 of alt.activism.d From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.activism.d Subject: Re: Measure 116: racial harassment Message-ID: <130176@netnews.upenn.edu> Date: 8 Jun 93 16:05:32 GMT References: Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.books Organization: University of Pennsylvania Lines: 31 In article jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes: >BUFFALOED AT PENN [article deleted; can't possibly sit through it again] >_Measure_ learned before going to press that the >complainants in this notorious University of >Pennsylvania case have withdrawn the charges. The >complainants claimed that (1) media reporting was >slanted in favor of the accused, (2) they had been >deprived of the "right to an impartial trial," and (3) >"they had been victimized by" agents of the >university and by its judicial process. They also said that E.J.'s remarks were a bit different from what he's admitted to saying (i.e., "you black water buffalo", etc.). For the record, E.J. has been offered lots of jobs from prominent alumni once he graduates. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with books, but it's a sure bet that someone will make it into a movie. -- ------------------------------------------------------- Lauren Crawford Holmes //// crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu Article: 7896 of alt.activism.d Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.activism.d,talk.politics.misc From: igb@fulcrum.co.uk (Ian G Batten) Subject: Re: Measure 116: racial harassment Message-ID: Sender: news@fulcrum.co.uk Organization: Fulcrum Communications References: Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1993 09:46:05 GMT Lines: 25 In article jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes: > slur by the reference to water buffalo, which she said > suggested "large black animals that live in Africa." I assume that this ``fact'' sets the intellectual tone for the rest of the ``process''. Leftist American academia and Rightist American religious fundamentalists deserve each other in a deep and fundamental way. They both believe in censorship, thought control, thought crime, the suppression of individual rights and the idea that certain groups are entitled to rights at the expense of the rights of others on the basis of some perceived ``evening of the score''. They both oppose freedom of speech and freedom of thought. They both have a collection of scapegoats (Secular Humanists, White Males) and a list of unspeakable ideas. >From England, with real censorship, I used to look to America with a feeling of envy for the freedoms you have. It's not nice to watch them being pissed away. Freedom is wasted on (some of) the free... ian Article: 7898 of alt.activism.d Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.activism.d,talk.politics.misc From: chucks@uars2.acd.ucar.edu (Chuck Smythe) Subject: Re: Measure 116: racial harassment Message-ID: <1993Jun9.164253.21382@ncar.ucar.edu> Sender: news@ncar.ucar.edu (USENET Maintenance) Organization: Ntl Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Chemistry References: Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1993 16:42:53 GMT Lines: 21 In article igb@fulcrum.co.uk (Ian G Batten) writes: >Leftist American academia and Rightist American religious >fundamentalists deserve each other in a deep and fundamental way. .... I posted some comments to this point last week. I expected at least a _few_ flames from it, but nooo... Try, try again. >From a review of Robert Hughes' _The Culture of Complaint_, in the April 19 New Yorker (by Henry Louis Gates): "...the people who are the targets of conservative polemics often find them perversely gratifying. A harmless vanity on the academic left is to think onself mad, bad, and dangerous to know.... and the conservative screeds heartily support the delusion. You have to imagine how the fellow in the loony bin who thinks he's Jesus feels on meeting the inmate who agrees with him, because _he_ thinks he's Pontius Pilate. They may be enemies, but they're also co-conspirators..." Chuck Smythe