{"id":77310,"date":"2021-03-29T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=77310"},"modified":"2021-03-26T09:31:30","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T14:31:30","slug":"learning-to-punch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=77310","title":{"rendered":"Learning To Punch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds has a recipe for fighting back against the woke cancel mob: “Never apologize, rally your friends, punch back harder<\/a>“. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it’s a good one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what\u2019s going on with the University of San Diego Law School, whose dean shamefully capitulated to an absurd student campaign against a professor who did nothing wrong. In a post on his personal blog, Professor Thomas Smith said that those who dismiss the possibility that the Wuhan coronavirus escaped from a lab there were \u201cswallowing whole a set of Chinese\u201d\u00a0\u2014 and here he used an scatological phrase meaning, in effect, \u201cbalderdash.\u201d<\/p>

He was, of course, referring to the Chinese regime\u2019s denials, which are facing growing scientific skepticism.<\/p>

Asian students complained \u2014 preposterously \u2014 that this was somehow a racist slur against Chinese people, rather than a criticism of the brutal Communist regime. Rather than telling them that, as law students, they needed to work on their reading skills, Dean Robert Schapiro issued a craven response, suggesting that there was some basis to the complaints.\u00a0In an e-mail to the law-school community, he charged Smith with \u201cbias\u201d and with using \u201coffensive\u201d language and announced an investigation.

But here\u2019s where the story changes.\u00a0Some of the most eminent faculty members at the law school \u2014 including such big names as Larry Alexander, Maimon Schwarzschild, Steve Smith, Chris Wonnell and Gail Heriot \u2014 fired back at Schapiro. They wrote: \u201cWe are concerned that treating these complaints the way you are doing validates student reactions and strained interpretations that are misguided, that reflect a lack of critical thinking and that will chill faculty members\u2019 teaching and scholarship.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The one problem – it depends on having friends to rally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oddly enough, in academia – which has become a “woke” gulag in the past few decades – conservatives may be better placed to fight back. As lopsided as things are in academia, there is at least a tradition of academic freedom to uphold, and groups like FIRE, with money and lawyers, to help do it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you’re at a company that’s become infested with Wokies? Getting pressure to just shut up? Seeing dissenting thought shouted down around the water cooler? Seeing management starting to buckle? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Normals need to start organizing in the real world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More on this tomorrow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds has a recipe for fighting back against the woke cancel mob: “Never apologize, rally your friends, punch back harder“. And it’s a good one: This is what\u2019s going on with the University of San Diego Law School, whose dean shamefully capitulated to an absurd student campaign against a professor who did nothing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,30,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-liberty","category-slander-files"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77317,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77310\/revisions\/77317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}