There comes a time when serious people need to stand up and call bullshit!

Brandeis University is a private non-sectarian coeducational university founded in 1948 and located in Waltham, Massachusetts. The university is named after Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and is widely supported by the Jewish community, which traditionally leans towards socialism.

One might think that the most fundamental tenets of any university would be academic freedom, free speech, and open discussions with no taboos or restrictions. Apparently not at Brandeis, where the oh-so politically correct behavior mavens have put together rather nonsensical language guidelines.

Oppressive Language List

PARC [Prevention, Advocacy & Resource Center] recognizes that language is a powerful tool that can be used to perpetrate and perpetuate oppression. As a community, we can strive to remove language that may hurt those who have experienced violence from our everyday use. These recommendations for more neutral language are brought forth by students who have been subject to violence or who have worked with others who are healing from violence, as well as students who have sought out advanced training for intervening in potentially violent situations.

[OCS: Let us not forget that real oppressors, like socialists, Marxists, and communists, have a vested interest in perverting definitions and language to the point where words mean only what the state means at the moment they are used. A perversion that so alters our language that those with legitimate grievances cannot explain their complaint in a coherent and understandable format.]

Currently, we have our list sorted into five main categories:

• VIOLENT LANGUAGE -- Violent language in this list may be explicitly or implicitly violent expressions and metaphors that are used casually and unintentionally. These examples can be easily replaced by saying something more direct.

• IDENTITY-BASED LANGUAGE - Identity-based oppressive language includes a range of word and phrases including slurs, unhelpful euphamisms, and exclusionary words and phrases. Important to note- the appropriateness of some identity-based language varies between insiders and outsiders of a group. Words that may be offensive for an outsider to say might be acceptably used by a member of that group. If you aren't sure if you should say a word or phrase someone has used to describe themself or their community, ask or do research to learn more. [OCS: One might think that they knew how to spell euphemisms. Or that the correct usage is “themselves.”] 

• LANGUAGE THAT DOESN'T SAY WHAT WE MEAN - Language that doesn't say what we mean can often serve to avoid directly addressing what we really need to say. Using euphemisms, vagueness, and inaccurate words can get in the way of meaningful dialogue; PARC encourages you to be transparent around what you mean.  

• CULTURALLY APPROPRIATIVE LANGUAGE -- Culturally appropriative language misuses words and phrases that hold meaning in a particular culture by using them without context, appreciation, and/or respect.

• PERSON-FIRST ALTERNATIVES -- Person-first language frames people’s activities, attributes, and more as a part of the person rather than the whole person. Person-first language helps us resist defining people by just one thing about them. It is important to note that some people claim these identities and labels, in which case we suggest mirroring their language.

Consider the matter of “violent language.”

Some of the more questionable items…

I have always associated “Y’all” with the racist South where the Southern Democrats were the party of slavery, segregation, oppression, Jim Crow, the KKK, and the fight against civil rights legislation. As for the word “folx,” this is simply a bastardization of the English language to promote non-productive political correctness. Most language involves suffixes denoting masculine and feminine forms, so are we to revise all traditional language to satisfy the whims of fools?

These are phrases rooted in cultural shorthand, and only those in the grievance industry might assign alternative meanings and intentions to allow them to object. Personally, I associate “No can do” with the character Louis Winthorpe played by Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places.

I wonder what the historians at Brandeis think when they encounter the Twelve Tribes of Israel? The idea that the word “tribe” was historically used in a dehumanizing way is ludicrous, especially since most of the world is based on the tribal nature of humans.

How much does this nonsense cost per year?

There was a time when academic freedom and free speech, even anti-Semitic speech, was tolerated on the Brandeis campus…

In 2014 --  there was a virulently anti-Israel internal listserv that shows a group of professors lashing out at the Jewish state in bizarre terms and attacking Brandeis’ Jewish leadership. At that time, Ellen de Graffenreid, the university’s senior vice president for communications, was quoted as saying, "Brandeis University—like our peer institutions—upholds the principles of free speech and academic freedom for our students and faculty, which means that members of the community may hold many different opinions on a variety of topics and express them in ways that do not reflect the university's official position on a given issue."

Inside Brandeis’s Anti-Israel Listserv (2014)

During one 2009 discussion about "Israel and our organs"—which focuses on a blood libel accusing Israelis of harvesting organs—politics Professor Donald Hindley refers to the "Reinharz’ shetl" and offers to send fellow listserv members a picture of his penis.

"As an inhabitant of the not-yet-history Reinharz’ shetl, there remain important questions [about the organ harvesting], at least for me an an [sic] immigrant with his manhood still unmutilated [sic] [photos if desired]," Hindley writes.

Hindley then launches into a bizarre rant about his organs possibly being stolen by Jews if he dies in "Occupied Palestine (aka Israel) " and refers to a "Brandeis fuhrer and frau."

"Am I now assured that should I die (targeted assassination? overly energetic "interrogation;" nod and wink of the "l'université c'est moi" Brandeis führer und frau faithfully implemented by His administrative academic appointees ?) in Occupied Palestine (aka Israel) my organs (all of them? some still feel even at my advanced age more personal and "me") will be taken – and if not of use to His People, re-cycled as (non-Kosher, I hope, but money doth corrupt us all, as witness the Jewish Orthodox occupiers of Palestinian territory) sausages – frankfurters – weenies – erstwhile hot dogs?"

In a strange 2010 missive again lashing out at Reinharz and his wife, Hindley refers to "schwarzes," a derogatory Yiddish term for black people, and appears to take issue with U.S. taxpayer support for Israel.

What's with these Chicago schwarzes (and Israelist) parochials?  – NEVER missed a greeting on time to Israeli recipients of our nose-reared billions upon billions from the stretched American taxpayer – but what of the apparently decent monarchs  in Lichtenstein (there is a question here), Denmark, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Lesotho and Swaziland?  Swaziland is an especial problem, Tens of wives and innumerable half-royal brats . . .  and not serial wives as in civilized societies.

At least the incumbent Brandeis Royal Couple appears to be cutting and running with their a fabulous Brandeis  cache – and NOT angling (that I know of) that their first born retain control of The Trough.

Hindley again engages in anti-Semitic rhetoric when describing the Reinharz family in another 2010 missive to the listserv that includes an email from the far left Middle East advocacy group B’tselem, which Hindley refers to as "NOT Reinharz Jews."

Shulamit [Reinharz’s wife] and Jehuda were incapable (money; ideology?) of offering a Brandeis degree and podium to any of such humanly decent (a.k.a. to Israelists as self-hating, Arab-loving Jews) Israelis or American Zionists. Instead, we got moral mierda. Says a lot about Mein Leader und Frau and their financiers and courtiers. <Source>

 Longtime Leftwing Activist Professor Leaves Brandeis: ‘I Just Could Not Tolerate Anymore’ Conservatism (2015)

A politics professor associated with leftwing activism and anti-Semitic views at Brandeis University will no longer teach at the school following a one-year terminal sabbatical.

According to The Justice, Brandeis’s student newspaper, Professor Donald Hindley will end his 52-year controversial tenure at the university, supposedly because he believed his department had grown “far more conservative,” with “far fewer…let me call them activist, liberal-minded people.”

“I just could not tolerate anymore,” Hindley said. “It just wasn’t worth tolerating anymore what the place was becoming under Lawrence.”

Hindley referred to Brandeis University president Frederick Lawrence who, last July, responded to comments about leaked faculty emails from the restricted “Concerned Listserv,” in which Hindley participated.

Daniel Mael, a Brandeis student journalist, reported at Breitbart News last summer “newly uncovered emails distributed to an official university faculty listserv, comprised of a number of well-known Brandeis professors, show the narrow agenda of the professoriate.”

Mael continued:

That agenda was on full display when 87 professors signed onto a petition protesting the honorary degree slated for women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “We cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali’s triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples,” the petition stated.

Mael reported that the “Concerned Listserv,” launched in 2002, began “out of concern about possible war with Iraq,” but its subscribers criticized United States policy on issues such as the “American system,” and “the Israelists.”

Dissent was not tolerated on the “Concerned Listserv,” as Mael reported list creator Gordon Fellman explained in 2009, “It is rude to post a recipe for pork roast on a vegetarian listserv or an orthodox Jewish one, or right wing harangues on the concerned list.” <Source>

Bottom line…

Today, the anti-Semitism is couched in terms of public policy debate, and the enemy are the conservatives. Activists are pretty much the same as typified by this editorial in the "Brandeis Hoot" …

Manufactured outrage and myths of cancel culture (March, 2021)

If you are unlucky enough to be like me and have swaths of people you vaguely knew in high school sharing propaganda on Facebook, you likely have seen the outrage regarding Dr. Seuss’ “cancelation” and “Mx. Potatohead” recently. To any sane person, this seems unimportant. Decisions made by private companies and estates are not anything that the public should care about unless it genuinely affects their lives. I doubt the pulling of a few books with questionable and racist imagery and the combination of Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead into one product that probably isn’t very popular amongst children anyways has hurt anyone.

But conservatives are crying “cancel culture” as usual. It confuses me how certain conservative platforms are all for the free exercise and speech of private corporations when it comes to religion or anything right-wing, but these few events are considered legendary insults on American values. In landmark cases such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Citizens United v. The FEC, corporate personhood is important and valued by the right. These cases significantly affected legislation in the United States, and Dr. Seuss’ racist books mean nothing in comparison. Another recent example of corporate personhood is the firing of Gina Carano from the Disney+ series “The Mandalorian.” If private corporations have all the same rights as individuals, their freedom of speech and association is important too. Therefore the firing of Gina Carano not only helped Disney adequately portray their idea of what is right but also does not hinder her from continuing to spout her nonsense as well. It has been said over and over and over, but I will reiterate: freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.

This manufactured outrage from the right is almost laughable, if it wasn’t so grossly misguided. Cancel culture can be seen as a good thing, as it promotes active anti-racism in America. Although I agree it can be problematic at times, the general purpose of it is positive and those who fail to see that need to learn that the world will keep moving forward without them. [OCS:

The right’s weaponization of the term “cancel culture” is once again another attempt at making progressive actions seem like a violent attack on American ideals. Which, for one, is ridiculous because what are these “American ideals” if not racism itself?

I’d like to argue that cancel culture is simply the work of the important marketplace of ideas that democracy rests upon. This is integral to the discourse in our society, and, of course, the input of the right is important too. How many conservative voices are acting now in the wake of these non-issues just makes them look like the real snowflakes. <Source>

The more things appear to change, the more they stay the same. The only difference is the words and definitions being manufactured and used by the progressive communist democrats.

We are so screwed.

-- steve