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 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?
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.”
Portland State University’s College Republicans chapter invited radio host Lars Larson to live stream his show at the school, but unfortunately for the radio host, he exercises his right to concealed carry a firearm and Portland State was NOT too pleased about that, according to Campus Reform.
You see, Portland State has a policy that BANS students and employees from carrying firearms on campus. PSU General Counsel Cynthia Starke sent an email to Lars, saying “We are requiring you to affirmatively state that you will not intend to and will not carry a firearm on PSU’s campus, either openly or concealed, during the event hosted by the Portland State College Republicans on October 22, 2018.”
The College Republicans’ faculty advisor, Virginia Luka, sent the group an email suggesting that if the group knowingly invites a guest who plans to break the rules, they could be sanctioned, which the College Republicans took to mean possible defunding or stripping of their recognition as a campus group.
Remember fam, Portland State is a public university, which means it’s subject to state policies and receives taxpayer money. Lars claimed that what the school is doing is unconstitutional, saying that Oregon’s Constitution more strongly upholds the right to bear arms than even the federal Second Amendment and citing a 2011 case in which Western Oregon University suspended a student for carrying on campus only to have a court rule that licensed concealed carry holders were, in fact, allowed to carry firearms on public school property.
Lars didn’t want to get the students in trouble, though, so he didn’t concealed carry at their event. The radio host said he got disinvited from the event but the school says the group cancelled. But Lars did concealed carry on campus Thursday.
Lars can carry on the campus, but the College Republicans told him that even if they joined him in a Facebook livestream while he was doing so, they would get in trouble. That doesn’t seem very fair to me, but what do you guys think?
