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Volokh Conspiracy

Los Angeles Times editorializes against UC 'microaggressions' definitions

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This is the issue I blogged about last week, under the heading "UC teaching faculty members not to criticize race-based affirmative action, call America 'melting pot,' and more"; you can also check out my op-ed on the subject in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. (The op-ed title was "UC's PC police," but, as with titles for newspaper articles generally, this was the newspaper's choice, not the author's.)

This morning, I was delighted to see that yesterday's Los Angeles Times editorialized against the "microaggressions" definitions. An excerpt:

It's troubling when any institution tries to squelch debate or discourage controversial ideas, but it's downright alarming when this occurs at a university—and even worse when it is the University of California, whose Berkeley campus was at the center of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. Yet that's exactly what's happening thanks to heavy-handed sensitivity training about so-called microaggressions. University instructors everywhere should feel free to say that America is a "land of opportunity" or that affirmative action is "racist" or that a student of any race or gender is "good in math" without having to worry that they might inadvertently be offending someone. UC officials should understand that and stop trying to defend their over-the-top, politically correct list of unacceptable topics and questions.