Author: Redactor

Just “being a professor” doesn’t make you smarter than your students. Or more grounded in reality. Or common sense.

Take Priya Venkatesan, a Dartmouth academic who teaches a class in something-​or-​other to do with science, postmodernism and higher or lower consciousness or something.

She is suing some of her former students. Why? Maybe it’s like climbing Mount Everest: You do it to see if you can. And this professor apparently thinks modern anti-​discrimination laws entitle her to go after students simply for criticizing her teaching.

Roger Kimball has the scoop over at PajamasMedia​.com. He quotes Professor V’s minatory email to her students. In it she merely says she is suing “some of you” under Title VII of what she blunderingly calls “anti-​federal” discrimination laws. She obviously didn’t like her students’ class evaluations, which she ominously says she will reproduce in a book.

Don’t wait for her to find a publisher. Many of the evaluations have already found their way onto the Internet. Typical criticisms include “awful,” “nonsensical,” “worst course ever.” Sure, we can’t know the quality of her teaching for certain without trekking to Dartmouth and sitting in. But from her course description and her email’s grammar and logic I’m willing to credit the students’ insights.

More I shan’t say, as I don’t wish to be named in Professor V’s lawsuit. My lawyer is overworked already.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Last November, Keith Sampson, a college student, was found guilty of “racial harassment.” He’d been caught reading a book while on break from a part-​time job with the school. Uh-oh.

The book is titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. It recounts a conflict between Irish Catholics and the Klan back in the 1920s. The book is clearly anti-Klan.

Reading such history cannot amount to “racial harassment,” even if somebody complains that it does. But such a complaint was all it took to get Sampson in hot water with the hall monitors at his school, Indiana University/​Purdue University (Indianapolis).

According to Sampson, the “affirmative action officer” found him guilty without ever talking to him or inspecting the book. The official accusatory letter states that “repeatedly reading the book … constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers.”

I’m sure Keith Sampson felt the university was being insensitive to his need to have the bogus accusation properly investigated.

Months later, the university is finally reversing itself, thanks to a lot of bad publicity and the involvement of outfits like the ACLU and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). But the school admits no wrongdoing.

If you ask me, the affirmative action officer has way too much time on his hands. Maybe he could spend it reading a book?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The sign said “Beware of the Dance Police.”

It graced a wooden post at San Tan Flat, a restaurant in Pinal County, Arizona. It was part of the restaurant’s protest against the county’s busy-​bodyish no-​dancing rule. Owners Dale Bell and son Spencer appealed that decision. And won. Spencer gladly took the sign down.

The victory belongs to the San Tan Flat’s patrons — who just like to dance to country music — and to its owners, and to … new media.

I first learned about this at reason​.tv. I reported how comedian Drew Carey has turned his celebrity status into a force for freedom. Here’s what San Tan Flat’s Dale Bell says about freedoms today, courtesy of reason​.tv:

Government often times in America, in 2008, is intrusive and very corrupt in its approach to small business people and individual citizens.… [G]overnment will take your freedoms away, if you are willing to give them up.

For sticking up for the rights of their customers to dance, Dale and Spencer have been rewarded with … freedom. To allow their customers freedom.

And it wasn’t just new media that helped. It was new … legal assistance. Dale thanks the Institute for Justice for making the battle a lot easier.

So, go to reason​.tv, and watch and listen … and tap your toes. Go to ij​.org, to help these great freedom-​minded lawyers.

And, if in Pinal County, dine at San Tan Flats. You’re even free to dance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

“Condign.” I’d read the word before, and still had to look it up. I looked it up again a little while ago. I think I’ll remember it now.

Some think of having to look up uncommon words as a special kind of punishment. Condign is for them, then: It has been relegated to modify punishment since the 17th century. It means “entirely in accordance with.” A â€œcondign punishment” is due punishment: not too strong, not too weak.

So thank you, George F. Will, for reminding me, once again, what “condign” means.

Mr. Will used it to characterize what would happen if former Congressman Bob Barr, a Republican-​turned-​Libertarian, got into the presidential race and took enough votes from John McCain to hand the election to the Democrat.

Now, Barr has done just that — gotten into the race.

In his column, Will relates that Barr will shed no tears for John McCain. McCain’s campaign finance regulation trampled on free-​speech rights and helped incumbents stay in office even better than before. Will gives a number of examples how McCain-​Feingold has trampled on the ability of Libertarians to get on the ballot in some states, and to support their candidate in the next presidential outing. He said if McCain loses because of the Libertarian candidate, that would be “condign punishment.”

Yes. But would the Democrat winning be condign punishment for America itself? I’ll leave that to your judgment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.