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Mike Adams on Diversity at the UO

There’s a superb column over at townhall.com by UNC-Wilmington Prof. Mike Adams, who recently spoke at the UO. In it, Adams mentions both the Insurgent controversy and the UO’s Five Year Diversity plan. To quote Glenn Reynolds, “read the whole thing.” This is good stuff– I’m real sorry that I missed him when he came to town. Hat-tip to Andy for the linkage.

  1. Bryan says:

    Yeah, Olly, the tone of the debate as he presents it seems entirely inappropriate. I wouldn’t say that I’m riled, but I’m unimpressed, particularly with the fact that some in this corner seem so accepting of his brand of argument. I see no evidence that he holds the same interests or values as the professors who made the very admirable site you linked to. Those guys are interested in intellectual rigor and a more accurate understanding of the term “diversity”. He’s interested in the establishment of battle lines, a heightened emotionalism, and an increasingly blurred meaning of the term “pc”, which is every bit as pernicious as any given or supposed rendering of the term “diversity” in this context.

  2. Olly says:

    I didn’t say I “liked” him, Bryan; I have no idea who the guy is. I said his column makes some valid points. (And also that there’s something slightly odd about buttressing a pro-diversity comment with the phrase “some douchebag from Mississippi”, but that’s by the by.) He’s right about the Insurgent. In my opinion, he’s right about the incidental fee. This:

    UO ought to be embarrassed by that definition [of diversity]. And any taxpayer reading your report should demand that you de-fund all of your diversity initiatives until you decide exactly what

  3. Bryan says:

    Look at the guy’s other columns and see if you still like him.

  4. olly says:

    “Sounds like a stand-up guy to me

  5. frank says:

    Interesting….

  6. Timothy says:

    Bryan: anything with more than two URLs gets auto-moderated. You can post it, and then immediately go approve it.

  7. Bryan says:

    Because I haven’t deduced a way to post a comment that includes links and quotes without first posting a comment that does not, and then going into edit mode to re-work it, my earlier comment on this thread might have slipped under the radar. So, um, it’s up there, arguing that perhaps Adams does not actually have his “facs” right.

  8. Andy says:

    Bryan,
    Yea it was pretty late when I wrote that.

    Erik,
    I heard him speak, and what’s wrong with debating? He seems to get the facs right about our current situation.

  9. Erik says:

    His argument is fairly credible, but I don’t know if I can say the same about his bio:

    “Mike S. Adams was born in Columbus, Mississippi on October 30, 1964. While a student at Clear Lake High School in Houston, TX, his team won the state 5A soccer championship. He graduated from C.L.H.S. in 1983 with a 1.8 GPA. He was ranked 734 among a class of 740, largely as a result of flunking English all four years of high school. After obtaining an Associate

  10. Bryan says:

    some usage suggestions, from dictionary.com:
    Antidote: (n) a remedy or other agent used to neutralize or counteract the effects of a poison
    Anecdote: (n) a short account of an interesting or humorous incident
    Censor: (v) to examine and expurgate
    Censure: (n) an official rebuke, as by a legislature of one of its members
    Censorship: (n) the act, process, or practice of deleting parts of publications, correspondence, or theatrical performances

    But anyway… it seems to me there are a few problems with Adams’ letter that may preclude its being seriously considered by the man to whom it is nominally addressed. Specifically:

    Of course, the fact that UO supports free speech when it agrees with the speech and opposes free speech when it disagrees with the speech can be roughly translated as follows: UO does not support free speech.

    The UO has made it pretty clear that it does not “agree” with the Insurgent‘s printing of Jesus cartoons, which seems to be Adams’ point of reference here. Similiarly, the University as an institution never expressed a position of disagreement with the Commentator during our 2005 scuffle with the Programs Finance Committee. The University administration might have done well to guide the PFC somewhat more strongly on that issue– but as we all know, in what turned out to be a learning experience for the PFC, there was a shake-up among its personnel and free speech was eventually upheld. UO does in fact support free speech.

    This is a requirement that UO cannot seem to follow because of its own anti-Christian and pro-homosexual bias.

    An anti-Christian bias, you say? Oh, I guess I’d nearly forgotten about those lengthy forms I had to fill out upon admission to this University explaining that I was not, nor had I ever been, a member of a Christian church. Come to think of it, I suppose the prominence of the Newman Center and the Students of Faith, the Koinonia Center, the evangelists in the EMU amphitheater, and the campus of Northwest Christian College adjacent to our own have all been figments of my imagination.

    But what exactly is a pro-homosexual bias? The position that individuals shall not be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation? From what I can gather we do endeavor to adhere to US law on that one, so I suppose perhaps we are guilty as charged. Oh… unless he’s referring to the official University administration policy that students shall be coerced into providing their professors with homosexual favors in order to obtain A’s in their classes. Somehow in my state of delusion, hallucinating the vestiges of Christianity on our campus, this fact had escaped me.

    And, of course, since you have expressed support for the racially biased MRRF, you, too, are promoting bias. Hence, before it is eliminated, the bias response team should eliminate you, President Frohnmayer.

    If the President makes it this far into the letter before his eyes glaze over, I’m inclined to doubt he’ll make it much further. It might be assuming too much to regard this tossed-off statement as evidence of some sort of Donohue-O’Reilly-Adams trifecta, quixotically campaigning to have Frohnmayer’s head served up on a plate. Still, it’s a tad ridiculous.

    It’s one thing, and a noble endeavor at that, to examine the specifics of the Five-Year Diversity Plan and to agitate against its egregious elements. It’s another thing entirely to get so bent out of shape about its very existence as to lose all perspective on how and why the Plan has become a fact of our lives, and to childishly thrash out at the tallest monsters on the horizon. Frohnmayer is in no more a position to scrap this plan than he is to censure or censor the Insurgent. Just as the Supreme Court decision in Southworth prevents the Administration from exercising editorial control over publications, the US District Court of Oregon holds authority to ensure that it implement a diversity plan in keeping with the terms of its 2002 out-of-court settlement with former academic advisor Joe Wade. Why on earth John Moseley didn’t either grant Wade the promotion he deserved or document his failures is at this point moot (or not), but now we have to deal with the fallout. Frohnmayer didn’t dream this plan up, but he is bound by law to spepherd it into existence in one form or another. It seems childish to waste time demonizing figureheads rather than attempt to productively influence the language and the scope of a plan that will undoubtedly cement into place in a very short amount of time.

  11. Andy says:

    Conservatives defending free speech?

    A few weeks ago Prof. Mike Adams, Townhall.com columnist, spoke at the University of Oregon (ODE Article), and consistently stated that offensive speech should be ridiculed, not censored, on college campuses. He also provided comical antidotes of himself helping libertarian and conservative campus groups avoid censor and promote free speech despite liberal, authoritarian rules. I took particular pleasure listening to him extol the virtues of ridicule as I felt it pertained to the mission of the Commentator. I e-mailed him afterward and while he edges on factual error, Adams correctly identifies hypocrisy. (drink).

    “But, of course, UO

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