My alma mater, Northern Arizona University (NAU), came under fire after a student, Cailin Jeffers, had a point taken off of a paper, because she used the word "mankind" instead of "humanity."
Campus Reform obtained copies of an email Jeffers received from Dr. Anne Scott, the professor who docked points on the student's paper.
Seriously? Since when is using the term "mankind" political? I could maybe understand the professor wanting to use "gender-neutral" language, if Jeffers was enrolled in a women's and genders studies class; but an English class is a bit absurd.
After all, the term "mankind" literally means "the human race."
To make matters even worse, Dr. Scott sent a mass email to the class about her student's use of "diction" - warning that other grades could suffer.
I don't understand liberal propaganda like this. It's a word. It's in the dictionary. It has a meaning. Just because you're construing a word to mean something completely different, doesn't mean the definition has changed - no matter how much you advocate for that change.
"In the English Dept. (and in almost all universities, and for at least 25 years now), we acknowledge this fact about language and we want our students to respect the nuances of meaning that words implicitly have, the assumptions we make, often erroneously, about what these words may mean for the general public, and to be sensitive to our word choices for the sake of writing dispassionately and objectively in our classes," Dr. Scott wrote in an email to her students.
Translation: You're in a university class, on a college campus and you must respect the safe space we've created here. If you challenge it, without even trying, then you're doing something wrong.
Translation number two: Universities and colleges across the country have been trying to indoctrinate our youth for at least 25 years, and we're not about to stop now. Sit down, shut up and accept what we're telling you...because we have degrees that say we're "experts" on anything and everything.
Do students now need to ask every author what their preferred pronoun is? What about those authors that are dead?
This is the kind of liberal indoctrination that absolutely irritates me. It was going to school at NAU and being involved in political activism that reaffirmed two things for me: one, I'm a conservative; and two, I will do everything in my power to make sure conservative voices are heard a predominantly leftist safe haven.
NAU, you taught me a lot, but one thing you didn't do was indoctrinate me. And I will call you out, just like I do with every case of liberal propaganda and abuse.