Thursday, August 05, 2021



Professors at America's top medical schools are being bullied by woke students into apologizing for using 'transphobic' phrases like 'pregnant woman' and 'breastfeeding'

Professors at America's top medical schools are being bullied into teaching students that biological sex is a construct and are apologizing for using the terms 'male' and 'female', students say.

Reporter Katie Herzog spoke with one student at a med school in the University of California system who says instructors are too scared to acknowledge the existence of two different sexes because it 'can be considered transphobic.'

The student - identified only as Lauren - shared her story with Herzog in an article published on Bari Weiss's Substack blog on Tuesday.

'I think there's a small percentage of instructors who are true believers [in woke ideology], but most of them are probably just scared of their students,' Lauren told Herzog.

Lauren claims that, in recent months, students have circulated a number of petitions designed to 'name and shame' instructors for 'wrongspeak.'

In one of Lauren's classes, which was recorded and posted online, a professor profusely apologized for using the term 'pregnant woman'.

Lauren says the unnamed professor told their class: 'I said "when a woman is pregnant," which implies that only women can get pregnant and I most sincerely apologize to all of you.

'I don't want you to think that I am in any way trying to imply anything, and if you can summon some generosity to forgive me, I would really appreciate it,' the professor states in the recording, which Herzog obtained access to.

'It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone. The worst thing that I can do as a human being is be offensive.'

'Since recent petitions were sent out, instructors have been far more proactive about 'correcting' their slides in advance or sending out emails to the school listserv if any upcoming material has 'outdated' terminology,' Lauren told Herzog.

'At first, compliance is demanded from outside, and eventually the instructors become trained to police their own language proactively.'

In another recording obtained by Herzog, one instructor can be heard stating: 'Biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender are all constructs. These are all constructs that we have created.'

Lauren says her college also uses an 'online forum' which sees students correct teachers who use language they find offensive.

Examples she shared with Herzog included professors being told not to use the terms 'male', and 'female,' and warned to use the term 'chestfeeding' instead of breastfeeding, to avoid offending transgender men who have given birth.

That forum can see students share their 'suggestions,' in real time, with one professor reportedly driven to tears after being upbraided for using 'male' and 'female' during one of their lectures.

Lauren also told of how students circulated petitions to try and pressure professors into complying with their linguistic demands.

On one occasion, they were angered by a staff member's decision to use the pronouns 'she' and 'her', as well as the terms 'father' and 'son,' during a lesson on chromosomal disorders, with those words blasted as 'cisnormative.'

'Cis' - short for cisgender - is a term used to describe someone who identifies as the gender they were born as, as opposed to a transgender person.

That petition is said to have yielded fast results, with the instructor quickly apologizing for using 'binary' language.

The same member of staff was also condemned for describing a transgender person as a 'man changing into a woman'.

Students were angry that their teacher was suggesting the person wasn't always a woman.

But Lauren was left mystified by the complaint, telling Herzog: 'If trans women were born women, why would they need to transition?'

Meanwhile, a recent graduate from the Mount Sinai Medical School in New York also told Herzog that there was a preoccupation with sex and gender at that institution.

'Everything was about pronouns,' the student stated. '[But] it was impossible to push back without worrying about getting expelled.'

That graduate said many of their peers introduced themselves to patients with their pronouns, and asked for them in return.

Lauren says that there are real world implications for trying to erase the differences between the two sexes, as medical conditions often affect biological males and females differently.

She cites aortic aneurysms - which can be deadly - as one example. Males are four times as likely as females to experience an aortic aneurysm, but Lauren says 'this very significant difference wasn't emphasized' during classes.

The trainee highlighted how crucial time is for her and her fellow medics, and said vital seconds could be wasted by trying to establish a patient's sex.

Meanwhile, many medical experts similarly say that erasure of biological sex will have an adverse affect on patients.

Herzog and Weiss also cited the example of a transgender man

'How male and female members of our species develop, how they differ genetically, anatomically, physiologically, and with respect to diseases and their treatment are foundational to clinical medicine and research,' one anonymous former dean of a top medical school told Herzog.

'Efforts to erase or diminish these foundations should be unacceptable to responsible professional leaders.'

Harvard professor Carole Hooven agrees, stating: 'Today's students will go on to hold professional positions that give them a great deal of power over others' bodies and minds.

'These young people are our future doctors, educators, researchers, statisticians, psychologists. To ignore or downplay the reality of sex and sex-based differences is to perversely handicap our understanding and our ability to increase human health and thriving.'

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Harvard professor who refuses to use the term 'pregnant people' and insists on 'woman' is accused of transphobia by her woke Ivy League colleague

A Harvard professor of evolutionary biology has been slammed by her department's diversity head for rejecting the term 'pregnant people' and insisting on referring to people as male or female instead.

Carole Hooven, who has been at the university for 20 years and received multiple teaching awards, spoke of feeling 'frustrated' at the atmosphere in academia.

She told Fox News on Wednesday that she was dismayed at the insistence on politically correct terminology, which she felt was misguided.

University professors were discouraged from using the words male and female, and referring to pregnant women, she said. The terms were deemed offensive to the transgender and LGBTQ community.

'I've been feeling pretty frustrated over the last five years or so. It's been gradual,' she said.

'This kind of ideology has been infiltrating science. It's infiltrating my classroom, to some extent.'

Hooven said that her lessons were focused on hormones and behavior, sex and sex differences.

On July 13 she published a widely acclaimed book, 'T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us'.

She continued: 'Part of that science is teaching the facts.

'And the facts are that there are in fact two sexes - there are male and female - and those sexes are designated by the kind of gametes we produce.

'Do we make eggs, big sex cells, or little sex cells, sperm. And that's how we know whether someone is male or female.

'And the ideology seems to be that biology really isn't as important as how somebody feels about themselves, or feels their sex to be.'

Earlier this week reporter Katie Herzog, writing for Bari Weiss' Substack newsletter, spoke with one student at a med school in the University of California system who says instructors are too scared to acknowledge the existence of two different sexes because it 'can be considered transphobic.'

The student, identified only as Lauren, told Herzog: 'I think there's a small percentage of instructors who are true believers [in woke ideology], but most of them are probably just scared of their students.'

Lauren claimed that, in recent months, students have circulated a number of petitions designed to 'name and shame' instructors for 'wrongspeak.'

Hooven was interviewed for the story, and said she was concerned about the trend in academica.

'You know, we can treat people with respect and respect their gender identities and use their preferred pronouns,' she said on Wednesday.

'So understanding the facts about biology doesn't prevent us from treating people with respect.'

Hooven said that the political correctness was 'incredibly confusing for science educators and for students trying to learn about the world and learn the tools of science and critical thinking.'

She said it was wrong for professors and the media to 'start backing away from using certain terms that they are afraid people will find offensive.'

She continued: 'And that fear is based in reality. People do find these terms offensive; they do complain on social media; they do shame people and even threaten to get people fired.

'So it's no wonder that a lot of people are caving and yielding to the social pressure.

'But we are doing students and the public a great disservice, and dividing the populace.'

Hooven's remarks were strongly criticized on Friday by Laura Simone Lewis, who tweeted: 'As the Director of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force for my dept @HarvardHEB, I am appalled and frustrated by the transphobic and harmful remarks made by a member of my dept in this interview with Fox and Friends.

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Bloated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Staffs Explode Cost of Higher Education

The woke revolution on college campuses is being bolstered by a vast network of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” staffers who gobble up school budgets and enforce left-wing orthodoxy.

A recently released paper by Jay Greene, a fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, and James Paul, a doctoral fellow at the University of Arkansas, sheds light on the inflation of diversity, equity, and inclusion staff on modern college campuses. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

The study examined the personnel at “65 universities representing 16 percent of all students in four-year institutions in the United States.” It found that a significant number of personnel at those universities are devoted solely to the task of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Of course, general administrative bloat on college campuses is nothing new. There has been a sustained growth in administration in recent decades that has contributed to a drastically higher cost of education and tuition. It certainly has outpaced by far the increase in the number of employees engaged in teaching students or conducting research.

That alone should be cause for concern as a college degree weighs more heavily on students, many of whom are saddled with enormous student loan debt and increasingly questionable job prospects.

Perhaps worse, it’s becoming a bigger problem for taxpayers, many of whom never received a college degree or gained the benefits of one. When legislators and donors provide money for higher education, is that really what they think they are investing in?

The study’s authors found that “the average university has 45.1 people tasked with promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and that at some schools, the number is much higher. They found that the University of Michigan, for instance, has 163 diversity, equity, and inclusion personnel and that many other schools had similarly high numbers.

It seems that that emphasis is overtaking what one would assume is the core function of higher education; namely, teaching students.

For instance, the authors of the study compared the number of diversity, equity, and inclusion staff with the number of history professors typically on campuses and found that the average institution has “1.4 times as many DEI personnel as tenured or tenure-track history professors.”

At many schools, there were twice the number of diversity, equity, and inclusion staff as history professors.

What’s worse is that the total staff and faculty devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives is likely much higher than what the study uncovered. As its authors note, “the DEI personnel count is likely an underestimate of universities’ commitment to DEI.” There are likely a huge number of staff on campus who do not include diversity, equity, and inclusion in their job titles, yet spend most of their time working on those goals.

Is the surge in diversity, equity, and inclusion staff on college campuses making them more welcoming places? That’s doubtful.

“Universities—especially those that are publicly funded—should be welcoming to all students, and it is admirable that inclusion is a priority for so many institutions of higher education,” they wrote. “Having said that, this research suggests that large DEI bureaucracies appear to make little positive contribution to campus climate.”

It’s more likely that the surge in diversity, equity, and inclusion personnel “may be better understood as a signal of adherence to ideological, political, and activist goals.”

It’s hardly news at this point that a commitment to “diversity” in modern academia not only ignores a diversity of viewpoints (where diversity actually matters), but often actively precludes it.

Instead of producing more desirable results for students, the explosion of diversity, equity, and inclusion staff both reinforces ideological dogmas while providing high-paying jobs to an empowered activist class.

“Employing dozens of DEI professionals—in the form of chief diversity officers, assistant deans for diversity, and directors for inclusive excellence—may be better understood as jobs programs subsidizing political activism without improving campus climate,” the authors of The Heritage Foundation study wrote.

This explosion in diversity, equity, and inclusion staff is certainly in line with larger trends in American society as diversity consultants operate to inculcate woke orthodoxies in elite institutions.

Swarms of diversity, equity, and inclusion officers enforce left-wing ideology on college campuses, corporate boardrooms, government agencies, and even K-12 schools. It has become a vast, hive-mind apparatus that keeps activists employed, dissenters cowed, and the revolution moving forward.

They are the glue holding together this top-down social revolution being foisted on America and much of the rest of the West.

Americans, regardless of ideology or background, pay for the wastefulness of our colleges and universities.

But Americans are not only paying the salaries of the swarms of diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators who eat out our substance, we are paying an even higher price for the destructive ideologies they impose and reinforce.

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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