Protester Heather Clark cut the audio at a Portland State University panel featuring James Damore, the Google employee fired when he dared point out that biological differences between men and women partly explain the gender gap in science, tech, engineering, and math, according to The College Fix. Clark succeeded in silencing the speakers for about 10 minutes and was rewarded for her efforts with a second degree criminal mischief citation and a two-year ban from Portland State.
“I know that some were expecting a violent disruption,” said Clark. “I don’t think that was ever on the table. Bottom line, people like James Damore are absolutely not welcome here. We must make that clear.”
I’m sorry, but absolutely not welcome according to who? Clark’s not even a Portland State student. Who else is tired of progressives delivering these pious dictates from on high, claiming to speak for the people? But it’s only when it benefits them; don’t forget, these are the same clowns who turned the word “populist” into a slur.
“A small walkout and some equipment damage isn’t saying much, but it’s a whole lot louder than nothing,” continues Clark.
Yeah, I guess it’s a whole lot louder if by louder you mean quieter. Silencing someone is the coward’s way out and this lady’s just a less powerful version of Google, who figuratively unplugged Damore for uttering hate facts by depriving him of his livelihood.
Aside from Clark and some others who walked out, there were apparently only a handful of other protesters outside the event with signs depicting famous female scientists, as if Damore said women can’t do science. Because why refute his actual argument on general trends when you can be lazy, misrepresent it as “all women suck at science,” and create a good guy-bad guy narrative that doesn’t stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
Portland State University professor Peter Boghossian and his team submitted a dog rape piece, along with 19 other hoax articles, which often mimed the language of social justice, to peer-reviewed journals in order to test whether these journals were actually practicing solid scholarship. The journals published seven of the fabricated articles and rejected another seven, with the rest left in a review stage before the hoax was revealed, according to Campus Reform.
Seven accepted, seven denied — 50% isn’t too good of a rate. So you’d think that someone would give Professor Boghossian and his friends a medal, but Actually, Portland State accused the professor of research misconduct, as he didn’t get the consent of subjects before performing his experiment on them.
Of course…if he were to tell them they were being tricked…that would kind of defeat the purpose. But no matter. Portland State sent him a letter this month saying he was found guilty of violating the rights of human subjects and banning Peter from conducting research on human subjects until he completes a training and meets with a campus vice president, reported Campus Reform.
The letter, sent from another vice president, says he believes “the results of this office’s review of your research behavior raises concerns regarding a lack of academic integrity, questionable ethical behavior, and employee breach of rules.”
But what about the integrity and ethics of the academic journals, which are pumping out “scholarship” almost as bonkers as Peter’s hoaxes all the time? These journals provide a legitimacy to these poisonous ideas that leads to their acceptance by Hollywood, the media, Silicon Valley, etc. Can we get some accountability, please?
A scruffy, scarf-wrapped bell-ringer protested conservative blogger Michael Strickland’s speech at Portland State, according to a video posted by Campus Reform.
Strickland was going to give a speech about a 2016 incident in which he was arrested and convicted for pointing a gun at a Black Lives Matter group that was advancing toward him in what he thought was a threatening manner. Now, Portland State told me that it let the College Republicans have some extra time after the disruption, which the group said lasted almost an hour and a half. But the school also said “the officer [present] used his professional judgment and determined not to threaten or restrain the individual so as not to escalate a potentially unsafe situation.”
Whoa, whoa, hold on. Police aren’t supposed to escalate unsafe situations. They’re supposed to eliminate whatever danger or illegality is present. This wasn’t a case of a protester signaling his dissent. This was a case of a protester silencing a speaker. Silencing isn’t just Antifa punching someone out. It can also be physically blocking a presentation from being seen or, as in this case, making it impossible for other people to hear someone by drowning them out.
Also, the campus building where Strickland tried to speak has a rule banning “disruptive or disorderly conduct, or behavior that unreasonably disturbs patrons and staff and interferes with use and enjoyment of the facilities including, but not limited to…Noise that is disturbing to others.”
Anyways, after that protester was done with the bell, he used something almost as annoying and vapid, his voice, proceeding to admit that he could make up allegations about the speaker. Given this situation, as well as Christina Hoff Sommers’ attempted speech at the Lewis & Clark Law School last year, I’m really curious. When Soros or whoever is combing through applications to be a far-left agitator, which is a more important qualification? Willingness to overlook facts in favor of violence or loving the sound of your own voice?
Portland State philosophy professor Peter Boghossian, along with two others, figured they’d conduct an experiment and submit bogus articles on feminism, race studies, etc. to see if elite journals would fall for them, reported Campus Reform. Spoiler alert: they did. Peter and his trickster crew got seven articles published, ones ranging from “rape culture” in dog parks to a feminist version of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. But social justice academics were not about to let Peter get away with making an utter fool of them.
Portland State’s Institutional Review Board requires researchers to get “informed consent” from “human subjects” before conducting their experiment. But, of course, asking people if you can prank them kind of defeats the whole point of pranking them.
Here’s my issue. It would be one thing if the experiment these guys ran totally backfired and the academic journals rejected all of the essays. But out of the 20 articles Peter and his team submitted, seven got approved, seven got denied, with the rest left in limbo. I don’t know about you, but to me, when it comes to separating hard-hitting genius from hocus pocus garbage, the role of scholarship, 50 percent doesn’t seem like too good of a score.
And while it’s unclear how Portland State’s going to punish Peter, a dozen faculty members wrote a letter bashing the professor’s experiment. They said that “the ‘hoaxes’ are simply lies peddled to journals, masquerading as articles. They are designed not to critique, educate or inspire change in flawed systems, but rather to humiliate entire fields.”
Hmmm…what both humiliates but also triggers social change? A bunch of liberal arts and sciences and humanities professors signed that letter, but not one of them seems to know the word “SATIRE.”
