Taking Down The Issues Committee

[Hamel]

Shoot him in the face?

That's pretty hard to take out of context

Good job on exposing these bastards

[Nathan F]

Listening right now on the radio, they're inteviewing Sukhmani and the guy that broke these emails to him. Some interesting stuff. Mr. Khalsa applied to join the Committee at one time, and one of the questions during the application interview were "If you could kill one President, who would that be?" I mean, jeez, WTF is wrong with these people? They want to know who you would kill?

[Nathan F]

Update:

We've gone national again, this time through Universal Press Syndicate:

Shoot 'em in the face!
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Like most who have graduated from college, I have endured many pious and pedantic secular sermons from various members of the self-appointed moral elite. From the day I set foot on campus, I was lectured on my proclivity to rape women who might or might not be saying no, the need to be tolerant of the idiosyncratic behavior of others, and, above all, to know that I, as a campus conservative, was a crypto-Nazi slavering for the chance to commit violence on others.

The incidents of politically correct left-wing campus totalitarianism are too numerous to be chronicled here. But I too have encountered the unholy trinity of left-liberal students, leftist faculty and PC administration.

As a result of some histrionic accusations of being "sexist pornographers" and sexual harassers, my friend and I were rousted from our beds by the campus Gestapo at a ridiculously early hour. My friend was dragged off in his underwear to face the university inquisitors. Only after openly accusing the dean of students of lacking some vital male organs that were all too conspicuous in the case of my friend did the dean agree to look into the facts of the matter before punishing us. And after the woman admitted to lying, our names were finally cleared.

But the campus left is seldom content with merely lying. Sukhmani Singh Khalsa found this out the hard way at the University of Tennessee. He wrote an opinion piece published in the Daily Beacon, complaining about the left-wing bias of the university's Issues Committee and its activities, which include inviting campus speakers. He claimed that Tucker Carlson was the first conservative invited "in about five semesters" whereas the other four speakers invited that same semester were Scott Ritter, Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader and Sy Hersh.

For this, he was viciously mauled in an intra-committee exchange of e-mails, which became public thanks to the techno-idiocy of the committee members. This was protested to the dean of students, Maxine Thompson, who somehow saw no harm in the desire of various committee members to torture and murder the "raghead" who had dared to criticize them in a public forum. And when the College Republicans held a petition to protest the behavior of this university-funded committee, the associate dean of students, J.J. Brown, called the cops on them.

Fortunately, the Knoxville police appear to understand the basic concept of human liberty rather better than the upholders of academic freedom at the University of Tennessee, quickly determined that the College Republicans were doing nothing wrong, and left them alone.

After reading the aforementioned e-mails, I had several questions. Unfortunately, the student head of the committee was only willing to say that some statements had been misconstrued before informing me that she could not speak to the press. And so, I wonder:


Was Mr. Khalsa insufficiently open-minded with regard to the idea of torture that would "put the Spanish Inquisition to shame" for the Issues Committee to accept him as a member?

What was the good that the committee ultimately concluded torture would not suffice to provide with regards to Mr. Khalsa?

Since Mr. Denning asserts that the committee understands "what goes on in the committee" and "why it is liberal leaning", would someone be so kind as to share this with the Tennessee taxpayers?

Mr. Comstock's statement about the Issue Committee's performance is sadly devoid of details. What are his reasons for asserting that the committee is "doing a f------ incredible job"?

How was Mr. Rubinstein's comment "if you see one of those ragheads, shoot him in the f---ing face" misconstrued? What is the correct way to construe such a comment when made with regard to a turban-wearing Sikh?
The entire affair is nothing but another tempest in a teakettle, of course, but it is valuable as it demonstrates the totalitarian mindset lurking beneath the tolerant facade of the left. It also demonstrates the rampant hypocrisy in academia, which leaps at any chance to punish conservative students while blithely ignoring far worse offenses from their leftist counterparts.

Most of all, these e-mails reveal the shocking state of higher education. The UT administration should not only fire the two irresponsible deans and replace the entire Issues Committee, it should get rid of the professors who failed to teach these arrogant children how to write.





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Vox Day is a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist Convention, and has been down with Madden since 1992. His weekly column is syndicated nationally by Universal Press Syndicate. Visit his web log, Vox Popoli, for daily commentary and responses to reader email.

[Jadeite]

Nice. That put a smile on my face. Good luck.