The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Free Speech on Campus: ‘It Is Vital That UVA Lose This Case, and Lose Badly’

Posted on | April 8, 2021 | Comments Off on Free Speech on Campus: ‘It Is Vital That UVA Lose This Case, and Lose Badly’

A federal judge has rejected the University of Virginia’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Kieran Ravi Bhattacharya, a former UVA medical student who was suspended after he asked a few questions during a campus panel presentation on “microaggressions.” Robby Soave’s account of the case is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how “social justice” has turned elite institutions into Kafkaesque nightmares. Bhattacharya’s skeptical inquiry was interpreted by faculty as “inappropriate,” “aggressive,” and “threatening”:

Immediately following the panel, [UVA professor Nora Kern] filed a “professionalism concern card” — a kind of record of a student’s violations of university policy.
“This student asked a series of questions that were quite antagonistic toward the panel,” wrote Kern. “He pressed on and stated one faculty member was being contradictory. His level of frustration/anger seemed to escalate until another faculty member defused the situation by calling on another student for questions. I am shocked that a med student would show so little respect toward faculty members. It worries me how he will do on wards.”

“Shut up,” she explained. Skepticism and disagreement are impermissible on the 21st-century university campus. Bhattacharya’s questions made him a Thought Criminal, and soon UVA faculty ordered him to undergo psychiatric evaluation. How dare he be “antagonistic”!

Call it what it is: Stalinism.




 

Category: Education, Virginia

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