Black law students demand “Diversity Monitors” in all classrooms. Professor Reynolds suggests that the proper term is “Zampolit” (Russian term for the political commissar present in every Soviet classroom, factory and army units), and he’s right.
The Black Law Students Association at the University of San Diego School of Law is calling for campus administrators to train and post diversity officers in classrooms to observe and report bias and other “disparaging” actions against students of color.
According to an open letter from the USD Black Law Students Association, these diversity officers would be charged with watching classrooms and reporting incidents or conduct they consider questionable or discriminatory.
“As Black law students we are privileged with the opportunity to pursue a legal education and seek membership to the legal profession, however, we are not immune to the oppression that is inextricably linked to our Blackness,” the group states in their six-page letter to USD law faculty and students.
In addition to monitoring duties, the diversity officers would meet annually with professors and deans to go over how they could better promote diversity in the school’s instruction, the letter states.
In the letter, BLSA claims many students of color at USD’s law school are subjected to racist behavior and comments in the classroom and feel “uncomfortable ‘calling out’ the student or professor for fear of retaliation or because they second guess whether the experience qualifies as a microaggression.”
The addition of diversity monitors to classrooms would balance academic freedom with “the need to promote an inclusive learning environment.”
BLSA states that in the legal community, it’s more necessary that students of color hold their peers and professors to a “higher standard of scholarly rigor by interrogating prejudices and exposing it for what it truly is — intellectual laziness that has no place in an academic setting of merit.”
The demand for classroom diversity monitors is one of the nine “calls to action” BLSA published in their open letter.
Around the country, college students are being hunted for "racist” social media posts they may have made when they were 12-years old, tenured professors are being fired for “insensitive” comments (one who was just up for review was a Chinese language professor who explained to his class the the Chinese “filler word”, used as we might use umm, or er, was “nega” — that was too close to “nigger”, and the students howled for blood, and got it, too.
Mandatory “diversity” classes for white students, “struggle sessions”, fear; they are already here, and spreading. Large corporations and university administrators are too weak and docile to stop this, so it’s up to students; I hope they still value freedom enough to fight this enslavement, but I’m pessimistic.
(update: note this part”: the budding lawyers feel “uncomfortable ‘calling out’ the student or professor … because they second guess whether the experience qualifies as a microaggression.” These poor dears want a grown up to tell them when they’ve been micro-aggressed against. God help anyone dependent on the services of any of these students in court.)
