At Hamline’s campus newspaper, Pravda On Snelling, student writer Zachary Knudson notes that notwithstanding the fact that his paper had reported that Tom Emmer had been hired, he had not.   It was an un-offer, Winston.  It never happened.

OK, the paper is actually called The Oracle, but you get the picture.

Anyway, Knudson’s piece tidies up some of the narrative loose ends of the Emmer flap – and leaves a huge, red, “McCarthyite” siren blazing.  Knudson quotes Professor David “Tailgunner Dave” Schultz:

Schultz said that after staff began hearing about the possibility of Emmer joining the Hamline faculty, e-mails were drafted by some staff members to be sent to administration outlining their concerns over the hiring of Emmer.

Schultz said that the faculty was concerned for two major reasons, including whether the political positions Emmer holds were incompatible with the university’s mission, specifically his stance on same-sex marriage.

“Two major reasons?”  What was the other?

As to same-sex marriage?  For starters, Emmer’s position on the issue is in line with that of well over half of Minnesotans, including, I suspect, a majority of Democrat voters.  Is it Hamline’s position that only people who believe in the overthrow of traditional marriage may teach at Hamline?

Given that same sex marriage is one of those “Things White People Like” – blacks and latinos are much more traditionally-minded on marriage than us crackers are – does that mean that the University must screen double-dog hard to get only politically pure black and latino faculty? Or do black and latino faculty get a pass on this issue?  How about the “students of color” – do they get a pass, or are they at Hamline to be re-educated?

And here’s the clinker; Emmer didn’t talk about gay marriage during the governor’s race.  Not at all.  Indeed, one of the reasons I supported him was because of an appearance on the NARN at the State Fair in 2009; when someone from the audience asked him what he thought about gay marriage, Emmer responded instantly “I don’t care – this race is about jobs and spending”. Only the DFL ” Alliance For A “Better” Minnesota” focused on gay marriage during the race; Emmer stayed focused on the economy.  And he may have left a lot of pro-tradtional marriage swing voters on the table – maybe enough to cost the election.

So what we have here is Hamline University essentially admitting that they have a McCarthyite screening process for political correctness; a faculty veto on faculty that represent, in fact, any kind of ideological diversity.

I caught this in the paper – Hamline University’s president, Linda Hanson, declares that “Despite Emmer fiasco, Hamline embraces diversity“.

This should be interesting:

Given recent events involving former gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer and Hamline University, I would like to bring perspective to the university’s continuous identity with the core values of our founders, the early Methodists of Minnesota, who envisioned Hamline as a place to educate citizens for lives of civic responsibility and service in an environment of open inquiry, critical thinking, civil discourse and high ethical standards.

Those remain our core values, lived out every day in our classrooms, on our campus, and in the business and civic community.

With an asterisk.  Always, always the asterisk; “unless it’s a conservative”.

Regretfully, we acknowledge that our process in our dealings with Mr. Emmer did not rise to the standards that Hamline University upholds as an institution. We take responsibility for that and do not take our shortcoming lightly.

“We take responsibility for that?”

How?

In what way do you or your “university” take “responsibility” for what happened?

Go ahead – read the entire op-ed.  There is not one more mention of the Emmer flap.  (Emmer is mentioned in the context of a gubernatorial debate that Hamline hosted).

Here is the fact, President Hanson; your university hired (this seems to be clear; the deal was done, according to my sources) Tom Emmer, a conservative Republican and former GOP candidate for governor.

A pack of pristinely-liberal professors (according to some sources), including (according to some more sources) Professor David Schultz, your university’s answer to Larry Jacobs and contender for Jacobs’ throne  as “the most over-quoted person in the Twin Cities media”, came to your office and demanded that the school not besmirch its faculty – who, to this observer and collector of stories, seem to fit Alan Dershowitz’ description of “diversity” in the Harvard Law School faculty, “people in skirts or with different-colored skin who think exactly the same” – laid down the PC law on you.  You and your administration buckled to what was nothing more than a case of intellectual cleansing.

And so when you write, apparently with a straight face…:

This does not, however, define or change the foundation upon which Hamline was established and has thrived for 157 years: one of diversity, open debate and the expression of divergent points of view.

…I, and many of your students and alumni who’ve written me over the years, and people who are familiar with your school’s record for priggish, selective, and always PC-slathered intolerance, are perfectly justified to ask “Really?  How do you figure?

Or, perhaps better yet, “What record of open debate and divergent points of view?”

Like most communities, Hamline has tension when we are discussing matters that pertain to civil and human rights.

While challenging discourse always is welcomed and heard, Hamline has and always will stand firm on its core value — one that goes back to the very founding of the university: the value and respect for the dignity of every individual.

As Minnesota’s first university, Hamline has a long record of the responsible, civil and open exchange of ideas.

As president, I am confident we will continue our respected tradition of preparing students to be independent thinkers, prepared to make a contribution to their communities as engaged citizens and leaders.

I’m sorry, President Hanson.  Those are some nice-sounding words.

Your university’s record doesn’t support them any better than they supported the hiring of Tom Emmer.  Or the airing of any conservative view, anywhere on your blinkered, PC-addled campus.

“Taking responsibility” would be showing some accountability – showing how it is that conservatives aren’t idea non grata on your campus.

But I don’t suspect you can.

I’d invite President Hanson’s response, but I’m sure her faculty would pinch a loaf at the thought of their president communicating, not only with a conservative blogger, but a non-academic peasant whose only contribution to Hamline is not macing every piece of Hamline frat trash that’s puked on his lawn over the years).;

Hamline University – my neighbor which, when it’s not trying to turn all of Minnehaha Avenue into its own back alley is busily expunging itself of all students that transgress its administration’s razor-thin comfort zone – has gotten itself in the news by, depending on who you ask, either bailing out of discussion with Tom Emmer for a position at the Business School, or responded to a mob of liberal dogmatists on the faculty who took a break from their four-hour-a-week teaching schedules to voice their larynx-shredding outrage at the potential affront to their school’s pristinely-PC heritage.

I suspect that there’s a little – OK, a lot – of both involved. It’s entirely possible to square both accounts; that there’s a game of “telephone” involved as to exactly how close Emmer was to a position at Hamline, and exactly which position and where – that’s Hamline’s official position – with the likelihood that a bunch of Hamline’s relentlessly-PC academic hothouse flowers stormed the President’s office to protest the potentially inhuman working conditions involved in having a conservative in their zone.

So I thought – what better way to divine the gestalt of an institution than to look at their “product” – their classes?

The following is a quick look at Hamline’s course catalog, skimming through various departments.

BIOL 3056 – PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL GENETICS

Goals: To acquire an understanding of the genetic basis for non-progressive political thought.  This is a business-academic partnership with the New York Times.  (Cross-listed with PSYC3056, “Abnormal Political Psychology”

POLS 5152 – GETTING RESULTS FROM POLLING

(This is an intercollegiate class taught by Professor Larry Jacobs of the Humphrey Institute).

GRVN 1001 – INTRODUCTION TO GRIEVANCE STUDIES

Introductory-level students will learn the scientific, psychological, legal,moral, cultural, financial, social, semiotic and textual bases of the world’s grievances against male heteronormative society. Final project will relate reasons student was culturally constrained from completing any coursework.

LART 1075 – ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL ARTS

Freshman-level survey of the history of liberal arts and liberal education, and the imperative for cultural and intellectual diversity, and why wingnuts, teabaggers and God-botherers don’t count.

EDUC 4039 – DIVERSITY IN ACADEMIA

A senior-level seminar focusing on tools and techniques to ensure the classroom – pre-K, high school or graduate school – is a friendly, diverse mix of people of different  races, genders, potential genders, affectional orientations, meta-affectional orientations, religions and worldviews, classes, meta-classes and pseudo-classes, ethnicities, grievance groups, grievance-based ethnicities, affectional-orientation-based religions, who are progressive.

RELG 2250 – PHILOSOPHY AND THE HOLOCAUST

Answering key philosophical questions of the Holocaust, including “Would a loving God allow a Holocaust to happen to non-Republicans?”

WOMN 5204 – CHALLENGES IN FEMINISM AND WOMYN’S STYDIES

This class explores the responses to “woMEN” like Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Michele Bachmann and Ann Coulter, and the inevitable conclusions that result.  Concurrent with lab course WOMN 5205,

BUSN 3205 – ETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICES

This Business School course explores the methods of conducting a successful business without excising excessive “profit” from the people.  Cross-posted with GRVN 3205, “Principles Of Grievance-Based Accounting”

 

MARK4059 – CHALLENGES IN MARKETING

Senior Business School seminar on issues involved in marketing in an era of failing schools, diminished literacy, endless adolescence and nonexistent expectations. Must be taken concurrently with internship at the Minnesota Federation of Teachers, MN-PIRG or the DFL.

POLI 3969 – GRASSROOTS ACTIVISM WITH STYLE

Taught by visiting adjunct Professor Alita Messinger.  Explores techniques for making plutocrat activism look like grassroots activism.

JOUR 3103 – PHILOSOPHY OF JOURNALISM

Cross-posted with POLS 3103 “Currents In American Progressivism” and PSYC 3103, “Practicum in Skinnerian Behavioral Conditioning”.

 

Wait – that was 11 classes.

I guess it’s academic inflation. I’ll give the extra one to Emmer.

John Anderson at Youth for Western Civilization notes that the U of M Duluth is spending lots and lots of taxpayer money enforcing political correctness:

At the end of September, while engaged in public campus outreach at University of Minnesota-Duluth, a conservative activist handing out Constitutions was both threatened by a self proclaimed Black Panther and harassed by the Director of the Office of Cultural Diversity, Susana Pelayo-Woodward. The Black Panthers are, in the grand scheme of things, small timers who rely on intimidation by street activists but don’t have much of any real influence on society. Susana Pelayo-Woodward is another matter, an administrator with an entire bureaucracy behind her. The question is what are Minnesota taxpayers getting out of this?

The piece answers that – read the whole, infuriating thing.

Of course you’re paying for it:

Overall, the Office of Cultural Diversity at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, a branch campus of the University of Minnesota with less than 10,000 undergraduates, has a budget of $656,770 for this year. $32,572 of this amount is taken from students in the form of mandatory student fees they must pay on top of tuition costs, and nearly all of the rest comes from Minnesota taxpayers.

Ms. Pelayo-Woodward makes over six figures, with benefits…to do what?

For the most part, the Office of Cultural Diversity is an employment program for aging leftist activists without marketable job skills like Susana Pelayo-Woodward. Salaries and benefits for full time staff make up two thirds of the budget, and much of the rest is comprised of travel reimbursements for staff, salaries for student employees, and ‘professional services’ from leftists which are not employed full time. Only $1000 is spent on student assistance, an amount marginally higher than the phone bill of $775.

Read the whole thing.