Meme - "INDIGENOUS SCIENCE IS MORE CREDIBLE THAN WESTERN SCIENCE"
When indigenous people use indigenous science and then start dying at a higher rate, this will be due to "racism"
Meme - Native Americans practising human sacrifice: "OH, LOOK! HERE COMES THE FAR RIGHT..."
*Spanish*
Book burning at Ontario francophone schools as 'gesture of reconciliation' denounced - "A book burning held by an Ontario francophone school board as an act of reconciliation with Indigenous people has received sharp condemnation from Canadian political leaders and the board itself now says it regrets its symbolic gesture. The “flame purification” ceremony, first reported by Radio Canada, was held in 2019 by the Conseil scolaire catholique Providence, which oversees elementary and secondary schools in southwestern Ontario. Some 30 books, the national broadcaster reported, were burned for “educational purposes” and then the ashes were used as fertilizer to plant a tree. “We bury the ashes of racism, discrimination and stereotypes in the hope that we will grow up in an inclusive country where all can live in prosperity and security,” says a video prepared for students about the book burning... more than 4,700 books were removed from library shelves at 30 schools across the school board, and they have since been destroyed or are in the process of being recycled... Lyne Cossette, the board’s spokesperson, told National Post that the board formed a committee and “many Aboriginal knowledge keepers and elders participated and were consulted at various stages, from the conceptualization to the evaluation of the books, to the tree planting initiative.” “Symbolically, some books were used as fertilizer”... Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, said the news calls for reflection. “I have seen negative images, cartoons, and presentation that do not respect the dignity of Indigenous communities. So I think we really need to change our approach to teaching our children”"
“Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people"
Now woke activists are burning books – and it's become a frightening gamble to write one - "When is a book burning not a book burning? When it’s a “flame purification” ritual... Tintin in America was targeted, which is curious because though its depiction of Native Americans is patronising, it was intended to be sympathetic: poor yet proud, they are driven off their land by greedy Americans. Hergé, the creator of the series, is a classic example of why you can’t dismiss an entire catalogue on the basis of isolated errors. He grew as an artist. Early work, like the notorious Tintin in the Congo, was flagrantly racist, but Hergé realised that, regretted it and in the astonishingly beautiful Blue Lotus, he gave Tintin an Asian friend, an equal, who Tintin loved so much that, in a later story, he was drawn by a dream to Tibet to rescue him from the Abominable Snowman (itself revealed to be victim of bad PR). If we filter history, we lose a sense of progression, or the nuance of times past. People also shouldn’t burn books because it’s wicked and thick. Am I allowed to say that? Justin Trudeau, the airhead prime minister of Canada (please, God, not for much longer) said he was against book burning “on a personal level”, but that it’s not up to us to tell indigenous people how to feel or act. When arsonists set fire to churches over the summer, Justin said, again, that it was wrong, but he could understand the motivation (the discovery of unmarked graves of indigenous people taught in church schools). Trudeau embodies a generation caught between inherited respect for free speech, property, heritage and the consolations of faith, vs an inability to defend these things in the face of moral claims made by the “victims of history” – or, more likely, a liberal-Left elite that piggybacks on their story to win or retain power. Even the British Government, which has begun a war on woke, is hamstrung because many of its ministers have swallowed the philosophy from which woke arises. The correct line is that censorship is almost always wrong and the current claims being made for domination of the public sphere are unreasonable. We need, ironically, a reassertion of earlier liberal certainties. In 1953, at a time when there was an effort among Americans to remove “subversive” literature from libraries, President Eisenhower departed from prepared remarks at a Dartmouth commencement to say something that at the height of McCarthyism was brave and today seems radical (no, these issues are nothing new: our ancestors thought long and hard about them). “Don’t join the book burners,” he told the students. “Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book” – so long as the book wasn’t fundamentally indecent (Ike was still a Republican, after all). He added that communists “are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn’t America.” In short, the West is the West because we don’t tell people what to think. Now we have taken a step back towards McCarthyism, treating past mistakes and contemporary radicalism as if they are a poison from which we must be shielded"
A Canadian historian faces cancellation for rejecting comparison between residential-school tragedy and the Holocaust - "Kamloops was, according to clergyman Kevin Annett, proof of "the Canadian Holocaust." And "Is this Canada's Holocaust Moment?" Asks the Times Colonist, pointing to "commonalities and parallels." The question posed above is rhetorical, for of course the answer must be yes – or else. Anyone, even a highly credentialed historian, intrepid enough to dare to say no publicly, to say aloud that the abuses that occurred in the residential schools, distressing as they were, and as deserving of condemnation as they are, as well as the unmarked graves, are in no significant way comparable to the Holocaust, will find him or herself defenestrated on social media. Not that such an opinion would find any mainstream publication willing to publish such a view. Chris Champion, publisher of the biannual Dorchester Review (DR) (to which I have contributed and have written about) did dare to publish a rebuttal to the "Canadian Holocaust" trope on the DR website, titled "From Katyn to Kamloops." And, as he anticipated, Champion is reaping the social-media whirlwind, accused of "targeted hate" and "harassment," and even antisemitism by implication. (Champion is rather a practiced hand at pricking sacred narrative balloons on the subject of the residential schools. Just weeks ago, he wrote a piece for DR titled "The Imbecilic Attack on Egerton Ryerson.") What was Champion's alleged crime? He had the nerve to point out the existential difference between a discovery of "unmarked" graves—i.e. individual graves that bear no names—and the discovery of a "mass grave"—that is, a single pit into which hundreds or thousands of bodies killed en masse have been pitched. Unmarked graves, as in Kamloops, signify deaths. Death is not interchangeable with killing. It is generally agreed that the majority of residential-school deaths were caused by tuberculosis or other disease (Many of the children arrived at the schools already infected with tuberculosis. And rates of tuberculosis, virtually eradicated in the general population, remain high amongst certain Indigenous populations, rising to 300 times more for the Inuit). Many of these deaths may have been avoidable under better living conditions or more scrupulous care in segregating the sick from the well (a lesson the shamefully high COVID death rates in our nursing homes proves has still not been learned). It may be disheartening to know these poor children's bones lie in perpetual anonymity, but it should not be shocking to us that the graves were unmarked. As Champion notes, unmarked graves "were the norm for the poor for centuries: in the Irish potato famine and during the Spanish influenza." These deaths are cause for sorrow and regret. But there is no evidence that murderous intention stalked the corridors of the school. Yet plenty of media reports and public statements by influential people have tried to nudge us into thinking these children were deliberately killed (Google "Kamloops, killing, residential schools"; I got 3,370,000 hits). In an open letter to her community, the president of Victoria Island University, for example, stated that the 251 children had been "killed" at the IRS. And, Champion writes, "Teachers leading classes online implied that the children had been murdered." That is wrong in intention—to amplify neglect and abuse into a radically more depraved category of oppression, against which those accused cannot defend themselves—and in pedagogic principle: children should be taught factual, not emotional history... Abba Eban, Israel's elegant former minister of Foreign Affairs, once said, "There is no business like Shoah business"—Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust—and he was referring to exactly this tendency: the exploitation of the dead for material benefit (even in good causes like Jewish education and community agencies). Today we might add social media virtue-signalling to the benefits received... Ordinary Canadians were not, and are not, guilty of residential-school crimes. It is not fair for our present government to burden us with guilt for what former governments did. And it is not fair that historians who speak the truth about history should be silenced or shamed by virtue-signalling and arrogant—but historically ignorant—social justice warriors."
Only liberals get to compare everything to the Holocaust
Letters to the editor: Who says the unvaccinated are right-wing loonies? - "Lowering the flag when the news broke about the graves at the Indigenous residential schools was the absolute right call. The recent Liberal suggestion that the flag should remain at half-mast until First Nations issues are resolved simply means that judging from the Liberal total inaction on this file, the flag will remain at half-mast in perpetuity. Overdue work has got to begin on Indigenous issues and in the meantime the flag should be raised and then immediately lowered to half-mast to honour the Afghan interpreters and their families that Justin Trudeau disgracefully abandoned to the Taliban so that he could call an unnecessary election."
Pizza place owner refuses John A. Macdonald $10 bills | Toronto Sun - "A Mi’kmaw-owned pizza shop in Nova Scotia recently announced on Facebook that it will no longer accept $10 bills bearing the image of Canada’s first prime minister, after the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of children at now-closed residential schools."
Patrice Dutil: When the Times of London comes knocking on Macdonald’s door - "150 “Friends of Sir John A. Macdonald” signed a letter defending the record of Canada’s first prime minister and urged Canadians “to ensure everyone has access to a balanced view of our common past.”... Misrepresenting Macdonald is a favourite tactic of woke activists... the Times article was far more outrageous in stating that the signatories to the statement were defending a “racist Scot.” They did no such thing, and the reason is simple: the slur means absolutely nothing. Back when “race” meant English or French, Catholic or Protestant, Macdonald showed that he was friend of all: he built his considerable political career on his ability to forge a coalition of those social segments. It took some courage, but it was not impossible. In sharp contrast, George Brown, the Liberal leader, was a francophobe and anti-Catholic — a real racist Scot. Another Liberal leader, Edward Blake, once put a bounty of $5,000 on Louis Riel’s head — something Macdonald’s government did not do. Yet nobody has accused Blake of being racist. In terms of Indigenous people, Macdonald was as racist as the Liberals who sat across the aisle in the House of Commons and the electors who voted for both parties. Macdonald’s gravest critics were the Liberals, who hammered his government for spending too much money to help the country’s Indigenous peoples. In fact, Macdonald demonstrated his humanity by reacting strenuously to the plight of Indigenous peoples. In the last year of its mandate (1877-78), Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie’s Liberal government spent $421,504 on Indian Affairs. Macdonald, arriving at mid-fiscal year, boosted the spending to $489,327, a 16 per cent increase... Macdonald, like the vast majority of Canadians in the last half of the 19th century, believed Canada’s Indigenous population was on the brink of being entirely assimilated. For them, the best policy was to accelerate that process by ensuring that Indigenous children attended school. It sounds awful today, but it was progressive in its day. What he did do, however, was strenuously advocate that the right to vote be granted to Indigenous males. After a long debate, this policy was accepted by the House of Commons, as long as the franchise was not extended to the men who lived in the rebellious Northwest Territories. Macdonald, incidentally, also spoke in favour of giving women the right to vote, but his proposal was repeatedly turned down by the legislature. Macdonald, notwithstanding his views on Indigenous culture, defended Aboriginals as British subjects and wished them to achieve the same status as other Canadians. Macdonald is also routinely tagged as a racist when it comes to Chinese immigration. There is no doubt that it was his government that legislated restrictions on immigration from China. He was following the practice of Australia, New Zealand, the United States and practically all the other countries in the Western hemisphere. The difference was that Canada was the last country to do so, and yet still allowed Chinese men to enter if they paid a $50 fee. Macdonald did not exclude any other peoples from immigrating to Canada. So the issue of race, when it comes to Macdonald, is nothing more than a fetish brandished by 21st-century revisionists"
John A. Macdonald statue in Charlottetown will stay, with changes to 'tell the true story' - "The City of Charlottetown will add a representation of an Indigenous elder or child next to a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald to create a reminder of the darker side of the former prime minister’s legacy. The statue in the cradle of Confederation depicts Canada’s first prime minister sitting on a bench with his arm outstretched and his top hat beside him. It has been vandalized at least three times since council voted last June not to remove it despite criticism of Macdonald’s role as an architect of Canada’s residential school system, where thousands of children suffered abuse or even death. The Epekwitk Assembly of Councils wrote to the city in January recommending several changes to the statue. They include blocking the empty space on the bench to remove the possibility of photos next to Macdonald’s likeness."
Opinion: Queen's University has lost its way - "Queen’s University recently announced that it ranks first in Canada and fifth in the world in the 2021 edition of The Times Higher Education impact rankings, for “its efforts to advance the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), locally and globally.” These goals include: climate action, gender equality, life below water, life above water, responsible consumption and production, and peace, justice and strong institutions. It is worth noting that Russia is the most represented nation in the rankings, with no fewer than 75 of its institutions making the cut... John Stackhouse, another private-sector trustee, formerly editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail and now a senior vice-president with RBC, crowed that in its efforts, Queen’s was “showing the true purpose of a university.” Those who believe the true purpose of a university is to pursue academic excellence and ensure that students who pass through its doors have the skills to build prosperous lives for themselves as productive members of their community, might differ. How is Queen’s doing on that front? Less well. In The Times’ other, more meaningful, list, its Higher Education World University Rankings, which measures apparently passé categories like teaching, research, and knowledge transfer, Queen’s placed – well, it wasn’t given a place. It was lumped in among 50 other universities in the 251-300th bracket... That Queen’s trustees feel the university’s performance is an “astounding achievement” and shows “the true purpose of a university” is no surprise and reflects the administration’s recent priorities with painful clarity. This is this same board of trustees which recently decided to remove the name of Sir John A. Macdonald from the Queen’s faculty of law building. It did so on the recommendation of a report commissioned by the school’s vice-chancellor that was so steeped in progressive jargon and critical theory it would put the worst laughing-stock “woke” schools in the U.S. to shame. The report claimed legitimacy by relying on a selective and biased survey in which 49 per cent of those who wanted to remove Sir John’s name indicated they believed he was “a genocidal white supremacist.”"
Jason Kenney: Cancel John A. Macdonald and we might as well cancel all of Canadian history - "I think Canada is worth celebrating. I think Canada is a great historical achievement. It is a country that people all around the world seek to join as new Canadians. It is an imperfect country but it is still a great country, just as John Macdonald was an imperfect man, but was still a great leader. If we want to get into cancelling every figure in our history who took positions on issues at the time that we now judge harshly, and rightly, in historical retrospect, then I think almost the entire founding leadership of our country gets cancelled. Tommy Douglas, who recommended the use of eugenics to sterilize the weak as he said. Members of the Famous Five, heroes of Canadian feminism, and the fight for equality for women, some of them were advocates of eugenics that we would now regard as deplorable. So if we go full-force into cancel culture, then we’re cancelling most, if not all, of our history. Instead, I think we should learn from our history... there are statues of John A. Macdonald all across Canada, which is only natural given that he is our founding prime minister, without whom the country would not exist. Why is this question only ever asked about John Macdonald and not Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who for example increased the Chinese head tax by tenfold, effectively to bar immigrants from east Asia, the Wilfrid Laurier who brought in the Continuous Journey policy which led to the tragedy of the Komagata Maru and which was a racist policy designed to prevent people of south Asian origin from immigrating. Sir Wilfrid Laurier who signed an order in council barring Black people from entering the country and who maintained the same residential school policy that began under the Macdonald administration, in fact expanded it to its peak in I believe the 1920s. … If the new standard is to cancel any figure in our history associated with what we now rightly regard as historical injustices, then essentially that is the vast majority of our history... The longest serving Canadian prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, adopted the None Is Too Many policy that made it effectively impossible for Jews fleeing the Holocaust to seek refuge in Canada. It’s been historically documented, a gross historical injustice. The late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau brought in martial law and led to the arbitrary arrest of thousands of people with absolutely nothing to do with the FLQ crisis. Previous prime ministers associated with the internment of Italian-Canadians that were just apologized for, of Japanese-Canadians during the last war. There is no shortage of sadness, tragedy and injustice in our past. The greatness of Canada is that we have overcome those things. Yes, we have had imperfect leaders, and yes, we have had imperfect institutions. And yet, we have still built through that, a country that is the envy of the world. We’ve learned from those shortcomings."
Melissa Mbarki: Cancelling John A. Macdonald will do little to help Indigenous people - "Who was responsible for residential schools? In the last century, every government since 1883 was complacent and did nothing to investigate reports of abuse or initiate the closure of residential schools. Are we creating a villain and cancelling John A. Macdonald because we need someone to blame?... Why are we persecuting “one man” for the crimes committed by others in the last century? Any government during that span of time could have closed these schools. In 1969, ownership of the schools was transferred to the Department of Indian Affairs. Prior to this transfer, what did the government know about the abuse, neglect and death of Indigenous children? Another important question, who was prime minister at the time? Who decided to keep these schools open? The history of residential schools could have taken a turn for the better if Pierre Elliott Trudeau did the right thing and closed them... Since we are removing statues, why stop there? We can rename airports, paint over murals and erase history but this will not bring healing or justice to our communities. When the dust settles, we will have the same issues. These are not going away because you decided to remove something. If you were going to city hall to advocate for a removal of a statue, you can take that effort and advocate for urban issues that directly affect us. Is homelessness and children in care unimportant? Indigenous children make up 69 per cent of foster care system and one in 15 adults are homeless. Sadly, these statistics are overshadowed by a piece of concrete. I am going to say this bluntly, cancelling culture and removing history is not going to change the issues Indigenous people face today. How can it? You are taking the easy road to prove a point and that works in no one’s favour. It is easier to tear something down than it is to build a community up, so step up and help us with issues that require immediate attention. Tearing down a statue does the opposite of what we are trying to accomplish. It is a gesture that further divides people and breeds racism. It is time to start having respectful conversations with each other and bring awareness to issues that actually affect Indigenous people."
Liberals claim there is nothing wrong with "having a conversation", silencing indigenous (i.e. "minority") voices like these which point out how this crowds out real action
Raymond J. de Souza: With Macdonald's statue taken down in his hometown, what of the Canadian project itself? - "Six years ago the country’s great and good gathered in here in Kingston — Sir John A. Macdonald’s hometown — to mark the bicentennial of his birth. Not just on his birthday in 2015, but in the year leading up to it. Some notable Canadians served as guest guides for Sir John A walks beginning at the statue, offering their own tributes to Canada’s first prime minister. Liberal prime ministers John Turner and Paul Martin did the honours, as did Macdonald biographer Richard Gwyn, journalists Lloyd Robertson and Steve Paikin, to say nothing of Bob Rae and Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. The statue is not just a relic of a forgotten past; it is part of the living present in Kingston. But would any of them come today?... I was at the statue with Richard Gwyn on one occasion, and spoke with him at his book launches here for his two-volume biography. Gwyn did not hide Macdonald’s shortcomings but his conclusion was blunt: “No Macdonald, no Canada.” Now that there is no longer place for Sir John A in the heart of Canada’s first capital (1841-1844), one must enquire about the integrity of the Canadian project itself. That Sir John A finds his home in the necropolis rather than the living city suggests one answer to that."
Head of B.C. civil liberties group under fire over ‘burn it all down’ tweet - "This story has been updated with additional Tweets from Naomi Sayers which state: “Burn it all down. Doesn’t literally mean, burn it down.” Ms. Sayers subsequently advised Global News, through her lawyer, that she doesn’t support burning down churches."
When a leftist says "burn it all down", it doesn't mean "burn it down". But when a conservative says to march "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard", it's inciting an insurrection
Melissa Mbarki: This violence must stop. It's only preventing reconciliation - "Did Indigenous people start all these fires? A 40-year-old man from Langdon, Alta., has been charged with setting grass fires on Siksika First Nation on Canada Day. Videos of non-Indigenous women throwing orange paint on a church circulated over the weekend. Survivors are having a difficult time with this violence around them. Some, like my grandmother, believe in Catholicism. Many are overwhelmed right now and are defending themselves for a crime they did not commit. There is encouragement going around to “burn them all down,” with the sentiment that “I’ll defend you if you do.” This rhetoric is dangerous and places innocent lives at risk. It’s counter-productive to what reconciliation is. Many non-Indigenous people may not realize that a quarter to half of our First Nations communities are Christian. Many people on mine have overcome addictions by finding Christianity. For this very reason, I will never disrespect anyone’s faith... We do not see the human aspect of those who currently work in these churches. Unless they were directly involved in residential schools, what would their connection be to past injustices? The federal government has done a great job in deflecting the blame onto the church... Murray Sinclair, the First Nations lawyer and former senator who served as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, posted these words on Facebook, along with a photo of a toppled statue of Queen Victoria at the Manitoba legislature: “I am not at all impressed by acts of destruction such as this. The people who commit these acts and those who condone them, need to understand how much they set back any chance of moving the dialogue on changing the bad relationship we have, forward. Do you really think this is going to help? Of course you don’t. That’s not why you did it. You may have been instigated by those who want nothing to do with changing the relationship. You may have been instigated by people bent on making you look bad. You may have easily acted to do this because of the anger you feel and some sort of sense of getting even. I feel no pride in any of you who did this.”"
Internalised whiteness!
Statue of women's rights pioneer Emily Murphy defaced with red paint in Edmonton - "The statue of Emily Murphy — one of the ‘Famous Five’ who in 1927 fought to have women declared as ‘persons’ — was found splashed with red paint... The statue in Emily Murphy Park was discovered vandalized with red paint, the word ‘racist’ also written in red, on Tuesday, weeks after the downtown statue of Sir Winston Churchill was slopped with red paint... Elisebeth Checkel, the president of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Edmonton, said at the time Churchill has a complicated legacy and believes it is important to look at him in a balanced way. “If we look at any historical figure, we will find the same thing,” Checkel said. “If we look at almost any person from the 1880s, we would find their views were if not repugnant to us nowadays, we would find they were disagreeable, for sure. If you look at Churchill’s later actions and life as he grew, as we all hope to do, his views did change. The balance should be celebrated because without Churchill we would not even have the right to protest in this country.”"
Manitoba premier angers Indigenous in saying monarchs' statues will be rebuilt - "Statues of two queens that were torn down by protesters on the Manitoba legislature grounds will be rebuilt, Premier Brian Pallister said... 'Tearing down is a lot simpler than building up'... The statues were tied with ropes and hauled to the ground during a demonstration over the deaths of Indigenous children at residential schools. The statue of Queen Victoria, larger and placed prominently near the main entrance to the legislature grounds, had its head removed. The head was recovered the next day from the nearby Assiniboine River. A smaller statue of Queen Elizabeth located close to the lieutenant-governor’s residence was toppled but left largely intact... Pallister’s remarks on Canada’s history, however, were criticized. “The people who came here to this country … didn’t come here to destroy anything. They came here to build,” he said. “They came to build better … and they built farms, and they built businesses, and they built communities and churches, too.” The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs called the comments abhorrent. “To minimize, romanticize and celebrate the settler colonialism that displaced First Nations from their ancient and sacred lands in the most brutal and heinous ways, the way he did in his comments, is unconscionable and a desecration to the graves of the ancestors on which the legislature is built and on which the City of Winnipeg now lies,” interim Grand Chief Leroy Constant said in a prepared statement."
Not hating your history and ancestors is abhorrent
Statues of Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth II toppled in Winnipeg - The Globe and Mail - "A statue of Queen Victoria in Kitchener, Ont., was doused in red paint. In Victoria, a statue of Captain James Cook was dismantled and thrown into the harbour. The statue was replaced with a wooden cut out of a red dress — a symbol representing murdered and missing Indigenous women — and its base was smeared with red handprints. In St. John’s, N.L., two prominent buildings and a statue dedicated to the local police force were vandalized with bright red paint."
Against Land Acknowledgements - "These are sombre declarations intended to acknowledge that land now used for some event or purpose was once inhabited by indigenous tribes (some acknowledgements add that the land was unjustly taken). They are rather like ritual acts of expiatory prayer, usually recited by rote from a standardized text. It doesn’t seem to matter much whether or not the speaker actually agrees with the sentiments expressed; what’s important is that the required words are spoken... this convention has been common practice in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada for some time, but has only begun to make an appearance in the US in the last few years... they represent affirmation of a specific ideology. As such, they constitute a flagrant violation of the institutional neutrality recommended by the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report in 1967. The report was prepared by a faculty committee tasked with examining “the University's role in political and social action,” and it affirmed “the University's commitment to the academic freedom of faculty and students in the face of suppression from internal and/or external entities while also insisting on institutional neutrality on political and social issues.”... I posted my syllabus with the following declaration under the heading “Indigenous Land Acknowledgment”: I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington... the Director had the IT staff remove my syllabus from the university’s website and replace it with a statement that read: “Note: The course syllabus has been temporarily removed due to offensive statements. We apologize for the inconvenience.” A day later, the syllabus was replaced with a version that redacted the land acknowledgment... As has become usual in the DEI context, that word “inclusive” sounds tolerant even as it is used to enforce conformity. The Director went on to provide three different options for students who wished to file complaints about me. The following day, she informed my students that a new section of the course taught by a different instructor would be made available, and that any students who wanted to switch could do so... As a state school, FIRE pointed out, the University of Washington is bound by the First Amendment, which means that any limits on speech must be content neutral... The university administration’s ballistic response has put everyone else on notice—make trouble for us and we will make plenty of trouble for you. They know as well as Nassim Nicholas Taleb does that the desire for a quiet life is what allows dictatorships of small minorities to prevail."
