Nevertheless, PCU could not have been made without actual examples of PC. Finding examples from today's universities is not difficult. The PC university exists -- often surreptitiously -- on campuses throughout the country.
"I think Bisexual Asian Studies should have its own building. The question is: Who goes--the Math department or the hockey team?" This frightening utterance comes from Andrea Garcia-Thompson, president of Port Chester University.
Fortunately, Ms. Garcia-Thompson and her university exist only in the fictional world of PCU, the 1994 comedy lampooning political correctness (PC).
Nevertheless, PCU could not have been made without actual examples of PC. Finding examples from today's universities is not difficult. The PC university exists -- often surreptitiously -- on campuses throughout the country.
To be PC is to support social, racial, and gender group-think. "PC" really means "political collectivism."
Incoming freshmen who are still innocent of the PC lexicon won't be for long. Universities have set up orientation seminars and residence hall programs for their reeducation.
Villanova University's Office for Residence Life imposes diversity training on all its Resident Assistants. The training is, according to the Office of Multicultural Affairs, "centered around a commitment to embrace diversity." During one such training session, RAs focused on "exploring issues of oppression" and discussed "some of the many ways various structures in our society manage to allow some groups in our society to prosper...while others, despite earnest efforts, are targets (inferior) of the agents (superior). Staff were placed in small groups and given the task of developing oppressed communities. Some of the forms of oppression examined included racism, heterosexism, sexism, and ableism."
The various forms of PC groupism impose group identification on students and assign them values and social positions. All whites are regarded as "oppressors" and all minorities are therefore "victims." Since the ideas and values of individuals are supposedly predetermined genetically, the only way to combat racism is to increase the number of "victims" and reduce the number of "oppressors."
Hence, the PC university's most sacred goal is "diversity" (increasing the relative quantities racial groups branded "underrepresented"). This objective, like any other from the PC agenda, is trumpeted as an article of faith. Anyone who dares to question the draconian means used to achieve diversity (let alone the legitimacy of the end) soon discovers an Orwellian world of newspeak, doublespeak, and outright lies.
Ohio State University's diversity action plan states, "bold steps must be taken to recruit and retain greater numbers of women and minority faculty, staff and students...all administrators must be responsible and held accountable for advancing the university's goal of increasing diversity." This goal takes precedence over the university's non-discrimination policy, which is supposed to bar university administrators from discriminating against anyone (even the "overrepresented") based on race.
The diversity policy at the University of Colorado, according to its website, reads, "the University of Colorado at Boulder has a strong institutional commitment to the principles of diversity and takes affirmative action to achieve that end." And the very next sentence says: "The University does not discriminate in its educational and employment programs and activities on the basis of race, color, [and so on...]."
That university officials attempt to combine two opposite statements into a single policy reveals the utter shamelessness and openness with which they employ deceit to maintain racial preferencing schemes. While universities demand that their students adhere to strict policies of academic honesty, university administrators routinely violate the most basic principles of academic honesty. They place politics above concerns for factual truth. They insist that two plus two equals five when "four" would not be the politically "correct" answer.
Meanwhile, professors, the very individuals whose job it is to stand up for academic integrity, express remarkably little opposition to PC's wholesale disregard for truth. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising considering that many professors owe their jobs to the existence of the PC university.
A quick glance through just about any university's course bulletin reveals the extent to which classes have become politicized, especially by Afrocentric and feminist ideologies. References to race, class, gender, and other collectivist concepts pervade the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Most disturbing is when they are inserted arbitrarily into courses that should be entirely non-political.
The University of Puget Sound offers a course called "Introduction to Film Criticism." However, the course's published description reveals its real purpose: "the discussion of each film will be contextualized through attention to visual and narrative construction of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and social class." So much for critiquing films based on their esthetic value.
The University of Vermont offers a course called "Contemporary Feminist Art" which focuses on "gender construction...racism, art and activism, post-modernism" and other things that surely inspire great feminist masterpieces.
Blending feminism with tree-worship, Vermont's Environmental[ist] Studies department offers courses in "Ecofeminism" and "Radical Environmentalism." That these PC courses make no attempt to be scientific is revealed by the fact that Vermont has a separate department of Environmental Science.
Whatever jargon the PC zealots may throw at students, it is almost invariably based on variations of Marxism. PC substitutes "race" ("gender") for class, "minorities" ("women") for proletariat, "whites" ("men") for bourgeoisie, "racism" ("sexism") for capitalism, and "diversity" for communism. Like the old Marxists, the new PC Marxists follow a rigid dogma, rely on intimidation, and exhibit intolerance toward those with different views. And as with Marxism, the incoherence and intellectual bankruptcy of PC will eventually relegate it to the dustbin of history.
In a more rational time, individuals will have the opportunity to look back on the PC era and make sure its absurdities are never again repeated. They will be able to ensure that the college admissions process is guided by objectivity, not racial engineering; that university programs spread knowledge, not politics; that professors encourage independent thought, not ideological conformity; and that young minds be permitted to learn in freedom. Until that time comes, don't be surprised if a Bisexual Asian Studies department appears on your campus.
For further enlightenment...
