Document text
- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us March 14, 2005 Commentary No offense? Not possible Rob Asghar Enlightened men and women - er, I mean, wise womyn and men - will tell you that you should respect all points of view and offend no one. That is what they say they are trying to do on university campuses, after all. But I am not convinced that they know what they mean or that such a feat is even possible. Take some recent contradictory events at prestigious universities. Actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who forms one half of a Hollywood power couple in tandem with star Will Smith, received an artist of the year award in late February from Harvard University's Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations. In accepting the award, she encouraged young women to dream big: "Women, you can have it all - a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career," she said. "They say you gotta choose. Nah, nah, nah. We are a new generation of women. We got to set a new standard of rules around here. You can do whatever it is you want. All you have to do is want it." That triggered an avalanche of condemnations. From whom - Focus on the Family? From the Stay-at-Home Soccer Moms of Suburbia? Actually, the prime complainant was Harvard's Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA), whose members said Ms. Smith's comments were offensive in that they were "heteronormative." That would be an overdressed Harvard term for "way too straight for my tastes." "Some of the content was extremely heteronormative, and made BGLTSA members feel uncomfortable," BGLTSA Co-Chair Jordan B. Woods explained to the Harvard Crimson. Uncomfortable. I had forgotten: Making someone uncomfortable is grounds for deportation nowadays. Fellow BGLTSA co-chair Margaret Barusch added: "I think the comments had a very strong focus for an extended period of time on how to effectively be in a relationship - heterosexual relationship. I don't think she meant to be offensive, but I just don't think she was that thoughtful." Whoops, that's another key principle I had forgotten. If you talk about your life, you are not thoughtful; if you talk about my life, you are brilliant. As a former longtime staffer at a major West Coast university, I often wrestled with the contradictions and conundrums that contemporary academia poses through its mission to be inoffensive and all-inclusive. In the wake of 9/11, the University of North Carolina asked its incoming freshman class to read an introductory book on the Quran, to expose them to the thinking of one billion Muslims around the world. Christian fundamentalists were appalled to be left out of the party, but progressives in academia and the media said this was an important step toward developing healthy interculturalism and proper respect for the Muslim worldview. The conundrum for a progressive university person is that the Quran denounces all sexual relationships outside of male-female marriages. Muslims are offended by homosexuality and gender-blind approaches; they may be willing to accept the existence of such activity within a free society, but they feel violated when they feel such values are being "pushed" on them or their children and they talk about leaving the country. Does their ability to be offended suddenly matter no longer? How does one reconcile the progressive impulse to understand and embrace all cultures with the reality that many of us, Muslims, gays and lesbians included, have different views of what is acceptable within the rest of society? When this happens, there is no win-win. University progressives relish bashing conservative Christians for not respecting Muslims as having an equal claim to the truth. But when both of those groups take moral stances that these progressives feel is an affront to decency, then what? Progressives who want to be all-inclusive and inoffensive must realize that they will by necessity offend someone: Either the Muslim who doesn't want his daughter to see gay people kissing on TV, or the lesbian who feels left out whenever she sees only people like Jada and Will Smith kissing on TV. The selectively applied notion on university campuses is that it is a crime for someone to offend me because of who they are, while it's perfectly fine for me to offend someone else, because of who I am. Enough already. Academic life and our society as a whole will gain if we drop the self-imposed shackles of oversensitivity. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Slippers Women's & Men's Slippers Ceramic Piggy Banks heloc libor rate Calenders 2005 Calender 2005 Accelerate Weightloss Products Memory Foam Mattress afsa studentloans home equity loans teleconferencing W2 Forms fasa student loans Matchmaking & Dating Scripts African Safari Conference Calls - $50/Month Security Systems student loan consolidation wholesale diamonds Currancy Exchange Online Casinos Community Fasa Student Loans Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams