Professor Mike Adams took liberalism and progressivism to task in his viral class introduction that will leave you cheering.
In a time where college students are offended by pretty much everything, one professor at UNC-Wilmington decided to cut through the rhetoric and let his students know that they aren’t the special snowflakes liberals and their parents would have them believe.
His epic class introduction has gone viral, and for good reason: this is the most common sense lecture to come out of any college in a long time.He begins by letting his students know that they don’t have the right to be offended and the rest you simply have to read for yourself.
Welcome back to class, students! I am Mike Adams your criminology professor here at UNC-Wilmington. Before we get started with the course I need to address an issue that is causing problems here at UNCW and in higher education all across the country. I am talking about the growing minority of students who believe they have a right to be free from being offended. If we don’t reverse this dangerous trend in our society there will soon be a majority of young people who will need to walk around in plastic bubble suits to protect them in the event that they come into contact with a dissenting viewpoint. That mentality is unworthy of an American. It’s hardly worthy of a Frenchman.Let’s get something straight right now. You have no right to be unoffended. You have a right to be offended with regularity. It is the price you pay for living in a free society. If you don’t understand that you are confused and dangerously so. In part, I blame your high school teachers for failing to teach you basic civics before you got your diploma. Most of you went to the public high schools, which are a disaster. Don’t tell me that offended you. I went to a public high school.Of course, your high school might not be the problem. It is entirely possible that the main reason why so many of you are confused about free speech is that piece of paper hanging on the wall right over there. Please turn your attention to that ridiculous document that is framed and hanging by the door. In fact, take a few minutes to read it before you leave class today. It is our campus speech code. It specifically says that there is a requirement that everyone must only engage in discourse that is “respectful.” That assertion is as ludicrous as it is illegal. I plan to have that thing ripped down from every classroom on campus before I retire.One of my grandfathers served in World War I. My step-grandfather served in World War II. My sixth great grandfather enlisted in the American Revolution when he was only thirteen. These great men did not fight so we could simply relinquish our rights to the enemy within our borders. That enemy is the Marxists who run our public universities. If you are a Marxist and I just offended you, well, that’s tough. I guess they don’t make communists like they used to.Unbelievably, a student once complained to the Department chairwoman that my mention of God and a Creator was a violation of Separation of Church and State. Let me be as clear as I possibly can: If any of you actually think that my decision to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence in the course syllabus is unconstitutional then you suffer from severe intellectual hernia.Indeed, it takes hard work to become stupid enough to think the Declaration of Independence is unconstitutional. If you agree with the student who made that complaint then you are probably just an anti-religious zealot. Therefore, I am going to ask you to do exactly three things and do them in the exact order that I specify.First, get out of my class. You can fill out the drop slip over at James Hall. Just tell them you don’t believe in true diversity and you want to be surrounded by people who agree with your twisted interpretation of the Constitution simply because they are the kind of people who will protect you from having your beliefs challenged or your feelings hurt.Second, withdraw from the university. If you find that you are actually relieved because you will no longer be in a class where your beliefs might be challenged then you aren’t ready for college. Go get a job building houses so you can work with some illegal aliens who will help you gain a better appreciation of what this country has to offer.Finally, if this doesn’t work then I would simply ask you to get the hell out of the country. The ever-growing thinned-skinned minority you have joined is simply ruining life in this once-great nation. Please move to some place like Cuba where you can enjoy the company of communists and get excellent health care. Just hop on a leaky boat and start paddling your way towards utopia. You will not be missed.
Professor Mike Adams previously made news when he won a legal battle after being subjected to retaliatory action by the college after he expressed Christian, religious and politically conservative views.
The jury found that these were the motivating factors behind the college’s decision not to promote Adams, and awarded him damages.
Do you agree with what Adams had to say? Let us know in the comments!
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From a comments on another blog below the jump break
I think the better position is to say: I have free speech. I may use it in a way you find offensive, although that is not my intention. But you have free speech too and if you are offended, you can say so however you like, as loud as you like and as often as you like. But apparently that’s not how Prof Adams sees the world.
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From a comments on another blog below the jump break
I think the better position is to say: I have free speech. I may use it in a way you find offensive, although that is not my intention. But you have free speech too and if you are offended, you can say so however you like, as loud as you like and as often as you like. But apparently that’s not how Prof Adams sees the world.
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“I’m really not seeing any decline in free speech, anywhere.”
Because you are a blind fool mikey boy. Over the years dozens if not hundreds of examples of Universities banning various kinds of speech have been posted here.
But like all blind Liberal-Left fools you only see what your ideology allows you to see.
‘The Price of Free Speech: Campus Hate Speech Codes
‘Oxford University Student Union bans free speech magazine because it is ‘offensive”
‘University of California Seeks to Ban Freedom of Speech’
‘Conservative Journalist Banned From Participating in University Debate on Censorship’
”Transphobic’ feminist Julie Bindel banned from Manchester student union talk on free speech’
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The test for any teacher or researcher with strong political views is: can they give credit those who argue well for opposing views?
I gather that Adams is a fairly conservative Christian with a habit of denouncing feminism and Marxism as plots against God. ‘
Feminism is a minority social movement, whose members murder innocent children in order to obtain sexual gratification’, he proclaims in one column.
Feminism is a minority social movement, whose members murder innocent children in order to obtain sexual gratification’, he proclaims in one column.
If one of his criminology students produces an eloquent and well-researched paper that argues for, say, the right of victims of sexual assault to access abortions, or a link between economic inequality and crime, can Adams give said student credit? If he can, then he’s living up the credo he proclaims in this speech. If not…
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No, the complaint is not that people are expressing themselves as against a position. I may, or may not, be ‘offended’ that someone says there is no God. I may be offended because someone else feels hurt when you say there is no God. It may be your intention to ‘offend’ me, another person, or no one. It does not matter in the slightest what your intention is, because the issue is that ‘offence’ is subjective, and you cannot judge my motives, let alone worry about what people around you may or may not find offensive. You may choose to be polite and civil, as you don’t wish to give offence, and that is equally your right. But a loud mouthed bugger (an offensive term, I am using the term in a derogatory fashion to sodomites) may say what he pleases, no matter how uneducated, vile, or stupid, and should be at liberty to do so. It is equally our right to tell them to shut it and not have any further discussion. We are all at liberty and whether we use that positively or negatively is our choice and what generally separates civilised men from the barbarians (whether they be at our gates or inside the citadel).
Professor Adams is not advocating that you cannot say what you wish if offended. He’s saying that having a code of speech on the wall, which limits freedom of speech, is absolute rubbish. He’s saying that complaining to the university, and wanting to actually harm someone else (through economic damage, whether loss of job, censure, loss of advancement, etc. or through intimidation and coercion) is absolutely unacceptable. It doesn’t mean you can’t go to his office and tell him what you think, but you must have the balls and brains to do it, not just run off to someone else to protect you against the mean man who doesn’t care that you have an illogical view that you can’t, or won’t, actually defend.
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And by viewpoint you mean that you cannot violate other people’s freedom of speech? That if you really think it’s such a good idea, then you aren’t ready for higher learning? That you should work with people who are volunteering to have the liberty you so wish to destroy? And if nothing else fails, there are places which share your viewpoint and you’ll probably be happier there? It’s partly humourous, I imagine, but there is a grain of truth. We’ve spent around 100 years advancing in some areas, but falling fundamentally backwards in others. Freedom of speech isn’t something to be whittled away by children who lack the maturity to actually attend what used to be called ‘higher education’ for a reason.
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What a refreshing read. Prof Adams skewered the numpties on their political correctness, their hypocritical liberal tolerance, and their disregard for truth and freedom. And the beautiful thing about it is they have no understanding of what he is talking about. They have trivialised themselves into an irrelevant political wasteland where they espouse womens and gay rights on the one hand and promote acceptance and tolerance of Islam and sharia law on the other.
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The difficulty is that people seem to think that they have a right not to be offended. And that if they are offended that is just the worst thing and everyone should stop what they are doing and provide therapeutic comfort to them.
It is also a tactic that is used by the left to shut down debate.. At the gay marriage debate here in Masterton everyone of the pro-gay marriage contributors from the audience began their talk with “I feel offended by your remarks”. It’s a tactic that the left uses. Here they were trashing traditional marriage, they were the aggressors, we were just defending the status quo, but we were offending them?
And the funny thing is that the essence of the Liberal university is free speech, the free exchange of ideas. I do think that the universities in America particularly need to stand up to this. At the moment we appear to have poorly educated young adult radicals essentially running the University.
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There have been high-profile controversies lately over whether allegedly offensive atheists and allegedly transphobic feminists like Germaine Greer should be able to give guest lectures at a couple of British universities, but at several universities in America there’s been a successful campaign by supporters of Israel to ban pro-Palestinian groups from distributing leaflets and holding meetings. David Horowitz is an American conservative who has famously campaigned for the sacking of various allegedly Marxist academics, on the grounds that they are corrupting youth.
These sorts of arguments and battles will always go on, in any society where a modicum of liberty is allowed, because free speech is never an entirely straightforward thing to think about in an educational context. In 21st century NZ we (almost) all agree that, all other things being equal, folks should have the right to stand in a public place and say whatever they like, and to publish whatever they like. This agreement is a hard-won thing, even if most Kiwis take it for granted. But things get complicated as soon as we start talking about what we’d like to be taught to our offspring, what we want in our state-funded schoolbooks, whose book we want to win a state-funded award, and so on.
Often, and inevitably, arguments about free speech get entangled with arguments about scholarly and aesthetic merit. A decade or so ago a student at a New Zealand university produced a Masters thesis that argued that the Holocaust never happened. When a furore blew up over the fact that student’s thesis had been accepted and that he had been awarded a Masters degree, the history department in the firing line insisted that the student had been carefully supervised, and that he had produced many references for his thesis and had written the text cogently. For many people, myself included, that sort of excuse is absurd: Holocaust denial is by definition bad scholarship. For others, the history department was upholding a tradition of freedom of speech and thought.
The principle of debating rather than proscribing ideas is a good one. But it isn’t at all an easy principle to follow, as some here seem to think.
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That is a very narrow interpretation. Saying that you have no right to be offended, and if your really cannot bare that, here’s some advice is not the same thing as being unwilling to hear others. Saying, ‘Time to grow up or get out of my class, as you aren’t going to like it here’ is not the same as being a wuss. As I said earlier, I don’t think it’s a ‘great speech’ (having to tell people the basics of free speech, and rail against the idiocies of the system, is hardly a great day), but that doesn’t mean he isn’t right and there are people who will take their point beyond mere disagree and actually attempt to coerce him and others. That is the fundamental problem. Don’t like his attitude? Don’t attend his class, don’t read his material, etc. The fact he has to tell students this is what’s so telling (or even thinks he needs to open a class with it).
If anything, it sort of reminds me of Back to School.
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Indeed, it takes hard work to become stupid enough to think the Declaration of Independence is unconstitutional. If you agree with the student who made that complaint then you are probably just an anti-religious zealot.
Oh dear.
He is saying that disagreeing with his interpretation of the DoI, such that his shoe-horning of “God” into it (God is your idea of “creator”, not mine) is a violation of Church and State separation, is the same as saying the DoI is unconstitutional.
He conflated his interpretation with the document itself. Put another way, he does not consider any other interpretation to be held by anyone other than a religious zealot.
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It would have been sensible to place this alongside the recent insanity at Yale and Mizzou universities in the USA, together with the news that it seems such “protests” have spread to other universities.
That way we would not have people saying they’re “unaware” of problems. Higher education in the USA is not just in the shit because of out-of-control costs, but because of the increasing militancy of left-wing identity-politics groups. It really is starting to remind me of what happened at Salem, with hysteria spread by Twitter instead of word-of-mouth.
Take a look at what this poor dumb bastard at Yale said the other day – and remember that this started with an email instructing people on how to wear Halloween costumes that don’t give offence:
Christakis apologized for his role in a controversy that erupted the day before Halloween when his wife, Erika Christakis, the associate master at Silliman, challenged a campus-wide request that students be sensitive when considering costumes that could be offensive. An early childhood educator, she advised Silliman students either to “look away” or to voice their discomfort, counsel that drew a sharp rebuke from minority students. The pair defended the e-mail on social media last week, suggesting that the uproar was emblematic of “campus censorship culture.”
And here’s what he’s saying now:
“I have disappointed you and I’m really sorry,” Nicholas Christakis told about 100 students gathered in his living room on Sunday for a meeting also attended by Jonathan Holloway, the dean of Yale College, and other university administrators.
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“I mean it just broke my heart,” Christakis said. “I thought that I had some credibility with you, you know? I care so much about the same issues you care about. I’ve spent my life taking care of these issues of injustice, of poverty, of racism. I have the same beliefs that you do … I’m genuinely sorry, and to have disappointed you. I’ve disappointed myself.”
No survivor of a Maoist “struggle” session ever said it better. To paraphrase Wilde, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at that. Although I thought another literary reference was also apt:
“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
This is not small or isolated or unique. From my perspective I don’t care. “Liberal” academics created these monsters and now they’re loose inside the castle walls.
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