GREG LUKIANOFF OF F.I.R.E. ON THE HINDLEY DEBACLE AT BRANDEIS:
Does something seem oddly familiar about the case of Donald Hindley at Brandeis? As Torch readers well know, Donald Hindley is a professor who has served Brandeis for over 46 years and was found guilty of “racial harassment,” apparently for criticizing and explaining use of the word “wetback” to deride Mexicans and other immigrants. I say “apparently” because, as Eugene Volokh so effectively has pointed out, Brandeis has not even been clear with Hindley what words got him in trouble. Still, all signs point to the use of the word “wetback,” which a single student apparently found so offensive that he or she filed a complaint, regardless of the context in which the term was used.
If the case seems to ring a bell, it should. Such tales of PC run wild have been with us in fiction for decades. The Hindley case reminds me of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, in which a professor’s career is turned upside down after he refers to two students who did not show up for class as “spooks.” The professor, of course, meant “ghosts,” but when the two missing students turn out to be black, the incident ignites a firestorm of identity and personal politics. (The professor, it turns out, is actually a light-skinned black man himself who has hidden his race all of his life, adding a nice Rothian touch.)
As Wendy Kaminer has pointed out, punishing someone for using an epithet in order to decry its use is right out of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry gets in trouble for using the n-word even though his point was that the n-word should not be used. Volokh also points out another similar situation, the famous moment in Monty Python’s Life of Brian when a crowd stones anyone who uses the word Jehovah even when they are trying to use the word to make the point that it shouldn’t be said! Such nightmarish due process violations and abuse of language always bring to mind Kafka and Orwell, and for me, of course, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin.
Read the whole thing. And you might want to peruse the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education website, and maybe even consider making a donation. They do good work.