'Pollys' Spotlight Politically Correct Excesses On U.S. Campuses
by Jim Brown
April 14, 2005
(AgapePress) - A higher education watchdog group has unveiled its annual "Campus Outrage Awards," documenting the worst "absurdities" and most egregious examples of political correctness on college campuses this year.
The president of Harvard University receiving a faculty vote of no confidence for suggesting that innate differences might account for some of the inequalities between men and women in certain fields of endeavor; and Duke University hosting a Palestine Solidarity Movement conference with a segment designed to recruit students for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- those are just two of the dubious honorees on the winners' list at the Collegiate Network's 2005 Polly Awards.
Collegiate Network spokeswoman Sarah Longwell feels the Pollys should compel parents to hold schools accountable for pitching one-sided orthodoxies at their children. "These awards remind the public that millions of Americans enter our institutions of higher learning every year with the promise of receiving a well rounded, unbiased education," she says, "and all too often that promise is broken."
Another Polly-winning incident involved a student group at Carnegie Mellon University -- a group that hosted "New Black Panther Party" Chief Malik Zulu Shabazz. A notorious anti-Semite, Shabazz is known for, among other things, advocating the killing of Zionists and claiming white people are genetically disposed towards racism.
Longwell says the New Black Panther Party speaker was escorted around campus by body guards who had riot batons and "were getting in people's faces." This, in and of itself was a complete violation of Carnegie-Mellon's weapons policy, she notes, but still more excesses followed.
"When [Shabazz] actually gave his speech -- to which, by the way, black students and attendees were given preferential admission -- he told all the Jews in the audience to raise their hands, and to those who did he said, 'I'm watching you,'" the Collegiate Network spokeswoman says.
Another absurd incident occurred at the University of Nevada - Las Vegas, Longwell recalls. There, the administration disciplined an economics professor for telling students that homosexuals engage in less long-term financial planning than heterosexuals because, typically, homosexuals do not have children. Also, in what the Collegiate Network is calling "an astonishing abuse of administrative power" at Occidental College, campus "shock-jock" Jason Antebi was fired from his radio program and found guilty of "sexual and gender hostile environment harassment" against his entire listening audience after three students were offended by his satirical on-air remarks.
But according to the Polly Awards judges, this year's number one outrage was a decision by LeMoyne College to expel Scott McConnell, a graduate student with exemplary grades, after he wrote an education paper in which he opposed multiculturalism and advocated corporal punishment in elementary schools.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
