Sunday, April 02, 2006

DePaul University preaches diversity--except for conservative opinion

Crossposted on Marathon Pundit.

Well, Fr. Dennis Holtschneider, DePaul University's president, is making snide comments about conservatives again.

Last month some creep used a permanent marker to write racist graffiti inside a DePaul dorm on the school's Lincoln Park campus.

Although the DePaul public relations department denies it, in the far-left group-think at DePaul, the vile incident seems inexorably tied to the mock affirmative action bake sale held by the DePaul Conservative Alliance in January.

From UPI on March 9:

DePaul University spokesperson Denise Mattson told WBBM Radio the incident was an assault on the university's values.

Mattson said the campus has been politically charged since late January when a new campus organization, the DePaul Conservative Alliance, conducted an "affirmative action bake sale" at which blacks were charged less than whites.

"That certainly created some dialogue about affirmative action policies and practices about minorities on campus," Mattson said.

A university spokesman said the alliance was not suspected in the graffiti incident.

From the latest edition of the DePaulia, the school newspaper of the university:

"First of all, let me say I am proud to be your President," said Holtschneider, at the information session held after the prayer vigil the day after the crime. "I sent out one e-mail, and we filled the lower SAC (my note: the Student Activities Center) [with] hundreds of people. It looked like DePaul." Holtschneider opened the floor up to students' questions and concerns, some relating to the affirmative action bake sale that had occurred several weeks before the graffiti incident.

"At this point, the two events are not related, but both events harmed us as a community," said Holtschneider. (Emphasis mine)

Father Holtschneider: Affirmative action, which came into play after the 1964 Civil Rights Bill became law, was never meant to be permanent. So there is nothing wrong in questioning a policy that many Americans--perhaps most--feel deserves at least a second look.

Oh, the article goes on and on about diversity. But I guess conservatives don't figure into the DePaul diversity stew.

Dr. Steven Plaut, our man in the Holy Land, found this DePaulia op-ed from student Ali Abbas about Catholic DePaul recently adding a queer studies minor. Ali seems okay with the minor. But I want to highlight this passage from his op-ed:

The Chicago Tribune claims that Reverend James Halstead of DePaul’s religious studies department expressed that he had no academic qualms with the program but was concerned with "how it would affect DePaul’s image."

What's left of DePaul's reputation is in tatters.

13 comments:

Anonymous,  10:24 PM  

The right wing has the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court, yet you still whine like crybabies when some college administrator says something you don't like. What is with you people?

Marathon Pundit 10:32 PM  

Since most colleges are dominated by the hard left, I feel this is an important issue.

Anonymous,  10:51 PM  

Yeah Anonymous 10:24 is right! We have the presidency, congress, and the judiciary! Why should we care about someone trying to steal our liberties? You have the universities, why should you care about the Presidency, congress, or the judiciary? Oh, thank you University, for you are the last stronghold of the liberals.

Marathon Pundit 12:09 AM  

This just in: DePaul takes 2nd Place in the 9th annual "Polly Awards for their efforts in supressing free speech. Yale took first.

http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_marathonpundit_archive.html#114403409858545363

Anonymous,  12:36 AM  

This is probably just another staged "hate crime" by liberal students. It's becoming a more common method for lefties attempting to discredit conservatives.

Anonymous,  2:13 AM  

The suggestion that most colleges are dominated by the hard left is total BS. What happened at DePaul is unfortunate, and there are more professors who tend to vote democratic than republican, but to say that they are "dominated" is ludicrous. Show me an objective study that shows that conservative students are disproportionately discriminated against on the whole. When I say objective, I don't mean from hacks like Horowitz. The study can come from a legitimate conservative group like Cato or Heritage that actually do very good research and come up with great policy ideas, but don't give me tripe from the likes of Malkin or Coulter or Horowitz that give real conservatives like myself a bad name.

Sir Galen of Bristol 7:05 AM  

If you think conservatism gets short shrift at DePaul, try Catholicism!

Anonymous,  8:01 AM  

Thank you angry conservative. Mr. Ruberry, you are walking a fine line. I wouldn't lean too much or you will find yourself in the pit with Horowitz, Malkin, Coulter etc.

So-Called Austin Mayor 9:17 AM  

How can you suggest that DePaul is anti-conservative when they will host one of the conservative movement's finest thinkers?

grand old partisan 9:32 AM  

As a concerned alum myself, Fr. Holtschneider and I have exchanged several letters. Believe it or not, he apparently feels that a group of students exercising their right to free speech on a legitimate of public policy issue is of greater harm to the university than bringing in an academic fraud who lied about his heritage to get ahead in his career and believes that the victims of Sept. 11th deserved to die since they were akin to Nazis.

I'm not sure what sort of "fine line" cbm thinks John is walking, but he is simply pointing out very real and, in my mind, unfathomable examples of intellectual hypocrisy by DePaul’s administration, and the absurd double standard they have created in defending incendiary liberal speech by rebuking (and, in a very real sense, slandering) those who express incendiary conservative speech.

Keep up the great work John!

Marathon Pundit 12:58 PM  

Thank you GOP Partisan.

As for the wrestler, that person was not invited to speak at DePaul by the student activities office--the people who've invited Sami al-Arian and Ward Churchill, among others, the wrestler was invited by the DePaul Conservative Alliance.

And I stand my ground about most colleges being dominated by the hard left. Here is Illinois, we have such tenured "prizes" as Billy Ayers and Benardine Dohrn.

On Marathon Pundit, I'm going to have a Chomsky post.

Jonah 7:19 PM  

Just a technical note- in DePaul lingo, SAC stands for Shmidt Academic Center, not Student Activity Center. The student center is just the student center.

Eppur' si muove 4:01 AM  

Let's not be wishy-washy, namby-pamby or express anything but REAL conservative thoughts.

Here is one from a conservative historian from the 19th Century (after all, if Adam Smith, David Hume and Edmund Burke are still in the conservative pantheon along with such luminaries as Freddie von Hayek and George Will - and Mme Rand, why leave out good 19th Century conservative writers):

"From the time when the barbarians overran the Western Empire to the time of the revival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome had been generally favourable to science to civilisation, and to good government. But, during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object."

T.B. Macauley, "History of England", Chapter I, Part 3

No, I definitely think we should not give in to all this PC speech.

Let's be logical and get back to basics - learning such important things as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (propagated in 1854), whether there are seven sacraments or whether the Prots are right that there are only two, the mystery of transsubtantiation and why it can only be effected by a male, celibate priest or whether we are truly heretics if, in reciting the Nicene Creed we mean when we say: "consubstantialem Patri", the koine: "homo-i-ousion" instead of "homo-ousion" - or does that question come to close to supernatural queer studies - genitum non factum: begotten not made?

It seems to me that a major in Catholicism could be profitably combined with a minor in queer studies. After all, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, but he begot his son with no female help at all - and remember, we are all made in God's image, as can be clearly seen on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a work of that queer painter - what's his name...but, hush, we probably are not supposed to know that either!!

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