Agenbite of Inwit

There's something very satisfying about incidents of McCarthyite political correctness backfiring. Such is the case with a UNC professor who attacked a student via mass e-mail for expressing views that constituted "hate speech."

The student's offense? Relating an anecdote about a male friend who felt "disgusted" by the sexual advances of another man. [I am not so naive, let it be noted, as not to consider the possibility that the "friend" is in fact the student himself--ed.] Is that homophobic? Definitionally. Ignorant? I'd say so. Loathsome? Not really---it's less malicious than simply uninformed. Hate speech? Hardly. Protected speech? Surely.

Here is his professor's response, in part:

That a white, heterosexual, Christian male, one who vehemently denied his privilege last week insisting that he earned all he has, can feel entitled to make violent, heterosexist comments and not feel marked or threatened or vulnerable is what privilege makes possible.

Ah, I'd forgotten that it's all about privilege. I suppose it's a shame that the student was not made to feel marked, threatened, or vulnerable. Good thing his professor had time to, um, mark, target, and perhaps even make him feel vulnerable before all his colleagues.

(On a related note, were you aware that racism is not a disposition towards those who are ethnically or racially different from one, but a power relation obtaining between the oppressed and their oppressors, such that racial minorities are incapable of racism a priori, whereas "white" people [as if anyone is actually white--ed.] are to be presumed racist until proven otherwise.)

Fortunately, the university disciplined the professor (after the US Dept. of Education involved itself). Here is the D.Ed.'s summary:

The e-mail message not only subjected the student to intentional discrimination and harassment, but also discouraged the robust exchange of ideas that is intrinsic to higher education and is at the very heart of the Constitution's protection of free speech.

Indeed. I am aware, just to pre-empt the nasty e-mails that are sure to follow, the the Bush government is not terribly likely to take an interest in academic McCarthyism that cuts the other way. In fact...well, read this (via The Poor Man).