No, I do not think I am overstating the actual reality of the UD’s program.  It was an attempt to use the accusations of bigotry and racism to promote bigotry.

The program counted on the notion that whites continue to have a system designed to keep minorities suppress, and I just don’t buy it, not any more.

Sure once upon a time that is precisely how things were.  But Governments no longer restrict by Race, and if anything offer so many advantages to minorities that the playing field has become unbalance the opposite way in compensation.

And likewise, corporations are subject to constant scrutiny and litigation for even the appearance of racial injustice.

So a program that takes the sins of the past and attempts to present them as still just as bad of not worse, and ignores the advances made is useless.

In short, the way to combat racism is not to create even more racial distrust with over generalized accusations, coupled with standards that are not only fallacious, they are so slanted as to create racism out of whole cloth.

Well FIRE took the program public and the bloggers took the program viral, and now the University has shut it down.

Breaking: University of Delaware terminates its indoctrination program

Wow. The combination of FIRE + blogs proved to be too much for the University of Delaware.

Late Thursday, University of Delaware President Patrick Harker released on the school’s website a Message to the University of Delaware Community terminating the university’s ideological reeducation program, which FIRE condemned as an exercise in thought reform. He stated, “I have directed that the program be stopped immediately. No further activities under the current framework will be conducted.” Harker also called for a “full and broad-based review” of the program’s practices and purposes. While concerns remain about the University of Delaware’s commitment to free expression, FIRE commends President Harker for his decision to immediately terminate the Orwellian residence life education program. FIRE will have more on this development tomorrow.

The university president’s note reads in part:

While I believe that recent press accounts misrepresent the purpose of the residential life program at the University of Delaware, there are questions about its practices that must be addressed and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled. It is not feasible to evaluate these issues without a full and broad-based review.

Upon the recommendation of Vice President for Student Life Michael Gilbert and Director of Residence Life Kathleen Kerr, I have directed that the program be stopped immediately. No further activities under the current framework will be conducted.

The program wasn’t “mischaracterized” by anyone other than the university itself, when it wrote that the program wasn’t mandatory. A plain reading of the program’s materials proved that beyond doubt.

Nevertheless, the program is dead, and that’s a very good thing.

Indeed.  The most shocking thing to me is that this has been going on for about 4 years, and never made the news till now.  It is also going on in other forms on other campuses, but I think that people are now aware and will shut them down when they are found.

And the thanks belongs in part to two professors at the University of Delaware.

Hot Air audio: University of Delaware professor speaks out; Update: Transcript added

Earlier today I interviewed Dr. Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware. She and a colleague, Dr. Jan Blits, led the way in exposing and ultimately stopping the university’s insidious indoctrination of students via on-campus housing. We discuss some aspects of the program that haven’t been in the press yet, how and why she and Dr. Blits exposed it, and its origins in groups like the American College Personnel Association and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, both of which push the agenda and materials that made up the Delaware program. Click to play.

Go to Hot Air for the Audio..

Update (MM): Here’s a partial transcript of the first half of the interview. Thanks to Professor Gottfredson for making the time for Hot Air readers!

BP: Welcome to Hot Air audio today. Bryan Preston here along with Dr. Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware. How are you today, Dr. Gottfredson?

LG: Very fine, thank you.

BP: Dr. Gottfredson, you’ve been involved in the story that we’ve been following this week of the indoctrination program at the University of Delaware in student housing. Tell me: How did the story get to FIRE and FIRE’s web pages? How did that happen?

LG: Well, it came by two routes really that joined together. FIRE had been receiving complaints from parents about the program. So they were investigating. My colleague, Jan Blits, were also hearing from our students about the indoctrination and one-on-one meetings and the like in the dorns and so we started looking into it. We were horrified by the materials that we were able to obtain. We passed them on to FIRE and then we learned that FIRE was already on the case and things went from there.

BP: So, students had already started complaining. I take that as a good sign that folks were not only disturbed, but they were willing to take some action against it.

LG: Yes, students, in fact, had been complaining to their R.A.s and to residence life, but not getting any response from them. So, we did take it to FIRE.

BP: And that was an excellent move. That’s what brought it to our attention. We check in with FIRE very frequently to see what they’re up to–

LG: –FIRE is an excellent organization.

BP: –they really are. And when I saw that story earlier this week, I had the sense that it was gonna have some legs.

LG: Jan Blits and I are members of the Delaware Association of Scholars—he’s president– and we’re always on the lookout for violations of academic freedom and civil rights. And so we were very interested in bringing this to public attention.

BP: And just so folks understand the perniciousness of this program, it’s not as though it was an optional class that college students, who are adults, had the option of taking.

This was in student housing, which is mandatory on the campus, right?

LG: It’s mandatory for all freshmen who are not living, getting an extension to live at home. Yes, it’s mandatory to live in the dorms. So many of the students were led to believe that the so-called educational component was also mandatory. In fact, to my horror, I discovered students thought that it was a requirement of the honors program in which I teach, which is a horrible smear on the honors program. It’s simply not true. It was not required. It’s not mandatory, although students were routinely told in very pressing e-mails from their R.A’s that it is mandatory, you must show up.

And they would track them down if they didn’t and pester them to come and make up meetings and one-on-ones with their R.A.’s.

BP: And I think bringing the R.A.’s into the discussion is a crucial one because by using the resident assistants, they could, the residence housing group, could really apply a great deal of pressure to students who didn’t want to be a part of this program.

LG: Well, they certainly can. They are a very large apparatus that controls the lives of their residence in detail–from who’s written up, who’s favored, and how their time is scheduled. The R.A.’s are apparently suddenly springing meetings on students and demanding that they come, even when students had other work to do. So students were very upset—it’s a drain on their time as well as their privacy and dignity.

BP: Right. Not to make too much of the connection, but it just reminds me of the political officer apparatus that the Soviets had. They’d always have a political officer on ships and every unit and just about everywhere else in society. This kinda reminds me of that.

LG: Well, I was horrified when I read the materials, these are the Residence Life’s own materials, which they were very proud of, in which they describe how R.A.’s would get close to students so that they were able to persuade them. They bring students in on these one-on-one sessions, which are supposedly required. They ask them the most–ask them intimate questions that I would get fired for asking a student—certainly behind closed doors—“when did you first discover your sexuality”…so, they were intruding on their personal beliefs, they were demanding in public that they state them and give reasons for them. They would have them in some of their exercises, floor meetings, require students to move to one side of the room or the other: “Yes or no on do you agree with rights for homosexuals to marry or abortions. No in between allowed. Yes or no…they would also have to give their reasons. So there was enormous pressure—this was just one example– to toe the line, the ideological line, which was very clear, I think, to all the students what it was…

I wish there was more transcripts, but hear the whole audio at Hot Air.

I find it shocking, deceptive, intrusive and patently offensive, and I applaud the efforts of these two instructors, FIRE and the Blogosphere for helping this program find its end.

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