University Bans Research Because It Might Reach Politically Incorrect Conclusion

From The Times of London:

A researcher has been refused permission to study cases of people who have surgery to reverse gender reassignment by a university that said it risked generating controversy on social media sites.

The proposal was rejected with an explanation noting that it was a potentially “politically incorrect” piece of research and could lead to material being posted online that “may be detrimental to the reputation of the institution”.

James Caspian, a psychotherapist, who wanted to conduct the research for a master’s degree in counselling and psychotherapy at Bath Spa University, accused it of failing to follow “the most basic tenets of academic and intellectual freedom of enquiry”.

Mr Caspian, 58, a counsellor who specialises in therapy for transgender people, embarked on the research after speaking to a surgeon who had carried out operations to reverse gender reassignment surgery, as people came to regret their decision.

Mr Caspian was at first given approval by Bath Spa for his research, which needed clearance from the university’s ethics sub-committee in order for him to conduct the interviews.

He was, however, unable to find people willing to take part and asked to amend the proposal for his master’s so that it would include women who had transitioned to men and reverted to living as women, but without reversing their surgery.

Mr Caspian also asked if he could post a request on an online forum for people working in this field — the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) — as a means of recruiting participants.

He was told this would require a new submission to the university’s ethics sub-committee which, after discussion with the dean of the relevant department, rejected this request. On the sub-committee’s rejection form, it said: “Engaging in a potentially ‘politically incorrect’ piece of research carries a risk to the university.

“Attacks on social media may not be confined to the researcher but may involve the university.”

Under a section on ethical issues needing further consideration, it added: “The posting of unpleasant material on blogs or social media may be detrimental to the reputation of the university.”

When leftists claim that “science” shows that gay parenting is as good as straight parenting, or that there is man-made catastrophic global warming or that Americans are racist, some questions have to be asked:

“Was there potential research that wasn’t done because it was forbidden due to a possibly politically incorrect outcome?”

And . . .

“Was there potential research that was never proposed because the person who might have done it anticipated a hassle, and perhaps career damage?”

And, probably most important . . .

“Was there potential research that was never done because leftist social scientists were not interested in any research that might lead to a politically incorrect outcome?”

When the social sciences become corrupt, sensible citizens will tend to ignore them.

Who Really Benefits from Racial Affirmative Action?

From Walter Williams in Frontpage Mag: Williams is commenting on the fact that black students, admitted via affirmative action to colleges where they must struggle to meet demands designed for well-prepared white students, disproportionately drop out, fail and end up at the bottom of their classes. This system, of course, has its beneficiaries.

There are beneficiaries from admitting black students with little chance of performing at the level of other students. They are college presidents, administrators and campus liberals. Whether blacks graduate or have been steered into useless “Mickey Mouse” courses is irrelevant. Government race overseers are only counting colors. College administrators win kudos for achieving and celebrating “diversity,” not to mention the fact that they can keep government higher-education handouts.

Another group of beneficiaries is composed of black staff and faculty who are hired and create campus fiefdoms with big budgets based on the presence of black students. The number of black students enrolled is the key, not the number who graduate or wind up in useless “Mickey Mouse” courses or in the bottom of their classes. In fact, there is an element of perversity. The greater the number of blacks who are on academic probation or do not graduate the more justified are calls for greater budgets for academic support and student retention programs.

Of course, struggling black students can easily pick up a sense of victimhood, blaming their situation on “racist” administrations, professors or fellow students. And it doesn’t help if white students let on, perhaps in subtle ways, that they know the black students are less well academically qualified. Thus we have “microaggressions.” In spite of good intentions, it’s not easy to consistently pretend that something you know to be true isn’t.

Of course, there are plenty of professors and administrators who will egg on and pander to racial grievances. Students articulating such grievances may get rewards — a position on a diversity committee, for example, or the favorable attention of the media. And, for course, when white students react negatively to the whining (or being bullied about “white privilege”) this simply adds to the stock of grievances.

Things like this may explain the findings of a recent Gallup study: black graduates of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) fare better than black graduates of other institutions.

This applies, first, to various indices of “thriving.”

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It also applies to college experiences.

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Interpretation

This Gallup study involved a large number of respondents, but it is short of a well-controlled social science study. Most importantly, there is probably a lot of self-selection involved, and black students who choose to go to such institutions may be different from students who choose to go to predominately white institutions.

But it may be that the climate at predominately black institutions is simply better than the racially obsessed hyper politically correct climate at many predominately white colleges.

Students at historically black colleges are unlikely to be struggling academically because affirmative action has put them in an excessively demanding environment. And it’s harder to articulate racial grievances against administrators who are black, or faculty who are black (or are whites who have chosen to teach at a predominately black college). Where the overwhelming majority of students are black, the color of your skin cannot make you the affirmative action pet of administrators, or the token black on this or that committee. If somebody disses you, it’s likely to be viewed as personal, and not a racial slight.

Conclusion

Does this mean that black students should prefer historically black colleges? No — although that might be a good choice for some students. But it does suggest that they should be wary of accepting admission to any institution where they will be far below the average white student in terms of SAT or ACT scores. Williams suggests “[d]o not enroll your children in a college where their SAT score [presumably, verbal plus quantitative] is 200 or more points below the average of that college.”

It also means your are better off in a school that is not hyper politically correct. A school that is not overrun with diversity bureaucrats, and where white students are not berated about “white privilege.” A religious institution (one that is really religious, not merely nominally religious, like Marquette) is a likely choice.

But the first thing to remember is this: the people who talk loudest about having your best interests at heart, probably don’t.

Minority Students as Victims of Affirmative Action

From Jeff Jacoby:

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION is once again before the Supreme Court. The case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, arose from the usual scenario: A white student applied to the university but was denied admission, while black applicants with weaker academic credentials were admitted because of racial preferences designed to favor minorities.

It’s no mystery why Abigail Fisher, the rejected student in this case, would object to that racial double standard and take her protest all the way to the Supreme Court. What’s less clear is why the University of Texas embraces such a double standard.

Then, further on in the article:

What particularly concerns Heriot and Kirsanow [members of the Civil Rights Commission] is the substantial body of empirical evidence demonstrating that affirmative action hurts the very students it is intended to help. Their brief discusses the problem of “mismatch.” That is the term for what happens when an elite institution relaxes its usual standards to admit more racial minorities, thereby encouraging black students to enter schools where they are apt to be academically weaker than their peers. The result is that students admitted through affirmative action tend to cluster near the bottom of their entering cohort, to have lower grades and higher drop-out rates, and to more frequently abandon rigorous courses or switch to less demanding majors.

For anyone who cares about minority advancement, the toll taken by mismatch is heartbreaking. Only one-third of black students who enter law school, for example, end up graduating and passing the bar exam on the first attempt. Another example: At Duke University, to take another example, 54 percent of black and Hispanic men who started out as science and engineering majors switched to a different field, compared with a mere 8 percent of white male students who did so. A study of underrepresented minority students at 23 universities found that the number who would have successfully earned degrees in science, math, and engineering would have been between 35 and 45 percent higher — if only the students had attended schools where their academic credentials were closer to average.

The Civil Rights Commission has reported on the troubling “mismatch” phenomenon in several recent studies. An important 2012 book by legal scholars Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr. delved into the issue in sober detail. There is little doubt that racial preferences have backfired, leaving the nation with fewer black doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, and professors than would otherwise be the case. There was some politically-correct hyperventilating when Justice Antonin Scalia asked about this research during the Fisher oral argument this month.

But there is nothing outrageous in taking a hard look at mismatch, or in seriously confronting the harm it has caused. Racial preferences have held back far too many minority students. The sooner those preferences are scrapped, the more success black students will achieve.

For a more detailed review of the evidence, which clearly supports Jacoby, check this article in the Wall Street Journal.

Affirmative action is not, in fact, about “diversity,” it’s about political correctness. A genuine diversity agenda would require recruiting conservatives and libertarians for faculty positions in most departments in most universities. It might require giving preference to students from poor and working class backgrounds. It would involve giving preference to foreign students coming from cultures quite different from that of the average American kid (and this includes the average black American kid).

Affirmative action, in other words, is not a genuine diversity policy. It’s just a racial spoils system.

Two New Examples of Groundbreaking Social Research

First, a study relevant to the Iraq War:

Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die

CHAPEL HILL, NC—A field study released Monday by the University of North Carolina School of Public Health suggests that Iraqi citizens experience sadness and a sense of loss when relatives, spouses, and even friends perish.

Said [study director Jonathan] Pryztal: “When trying to understand the psychology of the Iraqi citizenry after four years of war, think of a small American town roiled by the death of a well-known high school football player.”

According to Pryztal, the intensity of the grief does not diminish if the mourner experiences multiple bereavements over time. “If a woman has already lost one child, the subsequent killings of other children will evoke similar responses,” he said. “In the majority of cases we studied, it appeared as though those who lost multiple kids never actually got used to it.”

Next, a study of college student behavior:

Mizzou Study Shows That Possessing a Fake ID Results in More Drinking by Underage College Students

COLUMBIA, Mo. - For college students under the age of 21, possessing a fake ID is a tell-tale sign of underage drinking.

With the upcoming collegiate school year approaching, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have completed a study examining fake ID ownership and heavy alcohol consumption by freshman and sophomore students. The team of psychologists discovered an increasing number of students obtained fake IDs during their first two years of college and that ownership resulted in more drinking during that period of time. Over the course of four semesters, fake ID ownership increased from 12.5 percent to 32.2 percent among students younger than the legal drinking age.

The study also revealed that students belonging to fraternities or sororities were more likely to own a fake ID.

“The biggest finding is that having a fake ID is a risk factor for additional drinking - drinking that might not otherwise be occurring,” said Kenneth J. Sher, professor of clinical psychology in the College of Arts and Science’s Department of Psychological Sciences. “The other piece is how ubiquitous it is - how many underage drinkers have a fake ID. Basically, being a heavy drinker predicts the likelihood that someone will obtain a fake ID, and having a fake ID predicts that someone will be a heavy drinker.”

One of these accounts comes from an official university website, and the other comes from The Onion.

Quick, before clicking through -- which one is which?