Harvard University: name calling is lame …

  Mean-minded: means  uncoopeative, un-kind, unfair.

 Freedom to express ideas too often   results  in personal   name calling.  You’re mean-minded!  Oh?  

This happens too often   in churches, at colleges  and  by other entities.

Rather than examine the validity of the message, go after the messenger.

Instead of answering why one disagrees with an idea  — e.g.,   someone says that  an Aptos CA   church board  made a dumb decision to get rid of  a board reporting to it   or  someone says that  a college department  at Harvard  made  a dumb decision to  require  a poltically correct course   — critics  attack the author expressing the idea.   She’s out to hurt us. She’s mean minded.  Sound familiar?

A recent illustration:

The Chair of the Department  of English at Harvard  — James Simpson —  recently   maligned  author Heather Mac Donald for her  “mean-minded article”. Mean-minded?   What in the world does that mean?

 Dept. Chair  Simpson adds nothing to explain what he means.  But being “mean-minded ” certainly sounds bad.  See  Jim Simpson’s Wall Street Journal letter titled Great Literature Magnifies Repressed Voices, Always

  Why malign author  Heather  Mac Donald for criticizing a new requirement of Harvard University  that all  English majors must take a politically correct class? It’s widely known that institutions of higher learning have become more and more politicized in recent years.  It’s a topic  which parents and all persons concerned with education are increasingly  concerned about.

Ms Mac Donald wrote a OpEd titled,  Does Harvard Consider Oscar Wilde Marginalized?

Mac Donald writes,  it used to be that English majors at Harvard were free  to “pursue the subline free of political overlay…” but now Harvard requires a course in authors who have been “marginalized for historical reasons...” “Told that literature is one long process of “marginalization” she [the English major student]  is less likely to lose herself in the shady pastoral poetry being instead on the hunt for partiarchy...”She has been primed to see marginalization, usually her own, evem hilariously at regally privleged Ivy League schools…”  

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Aptos Psychologist:    Let’s stop attacking the messengers and listen to the messages?

And, if a decision is bad — it’s always possible to re-consider it!

And, let’s protect freedom of speech — in churches and on college campuses.