Monday, August 17, 2020

The Cancel Mob Hits My Extended Backyard

I'm not a regular reader over at Legal Insurrection blog, but I happened to see a story today that caught my eye.  The Cancel Culture Mob has gone into attack mode over at the University of Central Florida.  UCF is on the east side of Orlando, and I'm guessing around 50 miles from me, but I've driven past it often enough  - and known enough people working part time on graduate degrees there - that I consider it part of my neighborhood.  I've never spent a minute on the campus. 

The story concerns Professor Charles Negy, a professor of psychology.  Professor Negy has been working at UCF since 1998 and earned tenure in 2001.  The story centers on the fact that a tenured professor of psychology said a couple of things that the Wokescolds objected to and they're determined to destroy him professionally and (because they typically do this) destroy him personally as well.  

One tweet, which no longer is available,said:

“If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming ‘systematic racism’ exists?”

A second tweet, also no longer available, said:

“Black privilege is real: Besides affirm. action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege. But as a group, they’re missing out on much needed feedback.”

Neither of those strikes me as something that needs to be censored or something that's out of bounds for a professor of psychology to talk about.  They don't seem extreme nor do they advocate for any action; they're just observations of the world we all see.

Can't have observations from trained observers, can we? 

Rather than debate the merits or lack of merits in his opinions, a particularly aggressive attempt to get Negy fired ensued.

There was a Change.org petition with over 30,000 signatures, a Twitter hashtag was launched (#UCFFireHim) that trended, the student Senate passed a resolution, and there were protests on campus in which the President participated

And then it got worse, going into the usual pattern of the Woke. 

Students protested in front of his home, a clear act of intimidation we are seeing more and more frequently:

A protest Saturday in front of his home drew carfuls of students and prompted police protection, according to the professor.

“The cars drove by with a megaphone shouting ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Negy must resign’ while blowing their horns nonstop,” Negy told The College Fix in an email Monday. “That went [on] for 30 minutes. That’s not ‘protesting.’ That’s bullying, harassment, and intimidation. That occurred after they had spent three hours on foot at the entrance of my neighborhood.”

He said several sheriffs were called out to protect his house.

UCF realized early on that they couldn't fire him outright for his Tweets, so they started soliciting his former students to find something he could be fired for.  Negy’s lawyer, Samantha Harris, describes what he has been through as an inquisition

UCF’s clarion call worked. Since June 4th, a litany (we don’t know the exact number, because they won’t say) of complaints has been lodged against Negy for his classroom pedagogy, for speech that allegedly occurred over a 15-year period from 2005 to 2020. The university charged Negy with discriminatory harassment on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, sex, gender identity/expression, and disability—it is worth noting here that Negy himself is both an ethnic and sexual minority—while providing him with only a handful of “examples” of his alleged wrongdoing. Negy begged for more information prior to his investigative interview so that he might prepare to defend himself, but UCF refused.

Ms. Harris goes on to say he was questioned and cross-examined for four hours one day and five hours another.  

I couldn't tell you what his ethnic minority status is, and it's hard to care less than I do, but the article points out that he's gay.  He's apparently in trouble for telling students it's easier to be gay in 2020 society than it was when he was their age.  To me, that sounds like one of those, "when I was your age I had to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways" kind of stories.  Yet these delicate students can't stand hearing it and want to get the guy fired over it. I have a cloud of Looney Tunes-style question marks in the air over my head.  WTF?  Why is a story like that grounds to fire someone?  Why does everything have to be so serious?  I bet if the person who complained about that opinion talked to any other 60 year old gay they'd hear a similar story but then they couldn't think of themselves as such victims. 

The article is worth a read to get all the details of how this professor is being treated, but more than that, it's a template of how the Cancel Culture works.  They attack everywhere, as remorseless as a Great White Shark (that's ironic). 

 

Associate Professor of Psychology Charles Negy

Final words to Attorney Samantha Harris:

Cases like this are canaries in the coal mine: if a public university—a government agency—can treat someone this way for deviating from the university’s orthodoxy, and face no accountability for doing so, then what (and who) is next?

The answer, of course, is you and me. We are next. If decent people do not take a stand against these abuses, it’s not a matter of if the state-endorsed mob will come for us—it’s only a matter of when.

 

14 comments:

  1. A comment from the Quillette article:

    Farris writes:
    I would recommend he not play their game and file a civil rights action in federal court suing the university as well as his inquisitors and relevant administrators in both their official and private capacities.


    How many professors are going to be willing to speak out if the result is a $10 million dollar settlement?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ISTM the problem with going to court is that it's a gamble. You might get a $10 million settlement and you might end up with a bill for several thousand. There doesn't seem to be a reliable way of predicting which way it goes.

      But maybe I'm woefully ignorant of how they choose courts.

      Delete
    2. Suppose 1,000 conservative professors each file similar lawsuits on the same day, and agree to share the bills and the awards. Then one wins $10M while the rest lose $5K. One month later, a different 1,000 conservatives from a different occupation do the same...

      Delete
  2. His surname appears to be a mis-spelling of a very common Hungarian name: Nagy - just wondering.
    Also not too uncommon amongst Jewish Hungarians - just wondering.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I mistyped it as Nagy a couple of times while writing this. The blogger editor warned me by telling me I had not misspelled it.

      FWIW, among the things he was hassled about at the four hour inquisition were (1) being up front about being atheistic and (2) being honest about Islam as a "religion of peace". (He pointed out saying that means ignoring their own scriptures) I'd bet that he shares #1 with over 90% of the faculty, but nobody else would publicly say #2.

      Delete
    2. "The answer, of course, is you and me...it’s not a matter of if the state-endorsed mob will come for us—it’s only a matter of when."
      - What? Why "we" have been their new targets for quite a while now, and by we I mean white people. We are the new n*****s you see. Frankly, for a professor of psychology Mr. Negy seems a little obtuse. He should have been able to anticipate the reaction to his comments from recent events at other institutions of communist indoctrination throughout the country in the recent past and understood that as a white man his employment at UCF is dependent upon keeping a low profile.

      Delete
  3. I would beware of creating enemies with nothing left to lose, were I a Cancel Culture type. Of course, they probably won't figure that out until too late.

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    Replies
    1. Exactly.

      I'm a bit miffed at people committing suicide over the current state of things. Oh, I get it. However there ARE people responsible for the mess, there ARE people profiting from making things worse / continuing the crisis. I'm not saying what Nasim Najafi Aghdam did was good, but I sure as heck am willing to bet that YouTube staff had second thoughts that day.

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  4. There are too many students that no longer deal in facts but instead rely on the old narratives that they learned in K-12 by their propaganda instructors. They learned their narratives well at the knee of the Bill Ayers generation.

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  5. Every year is year zero for the Left.

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  6. UCF is a Public school founded by the Florida legislature. I wonder what the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis has to say about the Marxist infection in a state school under his purview

    This Marxist infection has turned Americas schools into re-education camps, the results being the likes of the Obama Regimes cabinet members, and agency heads that pulled off Russiagate, and todays military’s officers that today are obedient to BLM, Antifa and Obama.

    The future of our Republic is dark as todays college graduates who choose governments service are red diaper babies, well educated Marxists on a mission to destroy the Republic of America as a capitalist economy and turn her into a Communist state and means of production.

    I see only grim future for our children if we let the communists continue with their plans.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "I wonder what the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis has to say about the Marxist infection in a state school under his purview"

      Nothing. That's what he'd have to say. Just like every single feckless "conservative" that has been unable to even keep grown men dressed up in drag from accessing children in public spaces

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  7. Close the schools, every one of them. There is an opportunity here as some of the laziest people in human history, teachers in K-PhD, demand and clamor to retain their salary and benefits which have always been far more generous than they should thanks to unions and tenure for teachers and professors respectively. And these shiftless people also bear most of the responsibility for the intellectual wasteland that is the brainpower of three generations. Taking seriously the notion that the War to Save Josef Stalin made the world safe for communism, the entire American education took that on as a mission statement.

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  8. SigGraybeard,

    What has happened to Prof. Nagy is nothing new whatsoever.
    It's just evidence of the bolshevist indoctrination centers
    euphemistically called 'Colleges' or 'University's' starting
    to enter their own cannabalistic communist death spiral as
    they literally turn on their own and devour each other in
    orgiastic spirals of 'virtue signalling' and related self-destructive
    behavior.

    Raging Golden Eagle covered it perfectly here:

    College Professors SHOCKED When Their Monster Turns on Them!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-LVfG8W4B4

    "You just hate to see college professors find themselves on the receiving end of this monster of their own creation huh?" -- Raging Golden Eagle

    As Napoleon said, "Never interrupt an enemy while hes
    making a mistake."

    I highly concur!

    Let the bolshevist incubation camps (and that's ALL of them;
    ALL 'gov' schools absolutely included!!)implode and self-destruct
    and burn themselves to the ground!!

    They are part and parcel of the corruption and rot created by
    the "Hostile Elite" parasite class that owns and controls 'Mureica...
    Let the fucker burn down to the ground and then sow salt on the
    ruins...the fuckers have it coming!!

    BFTTW!!!

    NorthGunner - The Truth Is It's OWN Defense

    ReplyDelete