Harvard backtracks, yanks ‘bridge’ program, forces female groups to go co-ed / Harvard to let students report instructors for making them ‘uncomfortable,’ saying ‘offensive’ things / And... "whiteness privilege"... a page at Swedish scouts site that has since been removed

Harvard has a while back forbade "single-sex organizations", such as fraternities and sororities, and promised punishments for those belonging to them, punishments such as: "[being] permanently blocked from serving in campus leadership positions, athletic captaincies or recommendations for postgraduate fellowships such as the Rhodes." Initially, sororities have been given five more years before they'd be forced to transition to "gender-neutral", but they've changed their mind recently and decided, nope - they have to transition as well. Immediately. Sorority recruitment plummeted this year after the sanctions took effect. It's something I've posted before: here and here but didn't update on this.

Anyway... as The Harvard Crimson reports, administrators are updating Q guide - an online system through which Harvard students evaluate their courses - to go beyond self-reported metrics such as class difficulty, work required and “lecturing acumen." They promised at a recent town hall meeting for undergraduates to add the “uncomfortable” question and something similar to an “offensive” question.

After several attended said they fear possible academic or career repercussions could deter students from reporting instances of bias or inappropriate conduct on the part of a superior, Jennifer L. Hochschild, chair of the Government department said that the department is exploring the idea of an “electronic suggestion box” that would allow students to anonymously report misbehavior. Hochschild first announced the idea of the box in an email sent to Harvard affiliates earlier this month. “We’ve got to figure out how to do this right. But the broad idea is some kind of institutionalized pretty simple mechanism with a very low threshold in which people can anonymously say what’s going wrong, without having personally to come forward.”"

http://archive.fo/lSwn6

And lastly... Swedish scouts has a page on "whiteness privilege", that they've since removed. While in itself it's not campus related (mainly soc jus, and in another country), it reminded me of something I wrote recently, on which I'll touch near the end.

It refers to it as "exercise", suited for scouts from 12 to 25 years old. It said that, "The benefits that white people receive from the whiteness norm are too many people hidden and difficult to get an eye on. The purpose of this exercise is to visualize such privileges, and to discuss how tight and restrictive the norms really are."

Under "how", it explains as to how it's supposed to happen; participants should be asked to sit in a small group and get at least ten privileges that "white skin" has in their society. "These are privileges at a structural level as well as on a more everyday level." The group should then be helped by listing some examples, such as that "white skinned people do not have to defend their descent and do not need to answer the question "where do you really come from?" In most new situations they come to." After that, they are supposed to to gather all participants and report what they've come up with.

Then they are instructed to discuss "what is required more than just having white skin to have these privileges"; how other factors are involved, such as religious beliefs, sexual orientation, gender expression, and age. Ultimately, it says, "Continue by talking in the group about how it is possible to take responsibility for changing how the norms look. In what ways are we and strengthen the norms by their means of being and responding to other people? How can we avoid doing that and how can we act together for less tight and restrictive norms?"

Source of the page: http://archive.fo/rZ0ED

And of the article talking about it being taken down without comment: http://archive.fo/DyeDH

Now... I don't consider myself a paranoid person. If anything, for the most part, I like to consider myself a realist. But this to me signals as to what I've hypothesized in this thread, specifically about a) consciousness raising that's not US or UK limited, b) to quote:

"If you want people to join your cause, you wouldn't want to try and alienate them, would you? If anything, you just might try and bring more. Though one has to wonder how accurate that would be in parts of the world that were mostly majority-white and didn't actually participate in historic oppression, but similar patterns of silence, imo, can be noticed, along with attacking people with buzzwords when they bring up things. I can actually think of a particular case, in which a German woman decried "sexism and racism" of her country. Hmm. The question is, if my hypothesis is true, how much effect would such ideologies have in such countries - could they be brought to the level of US, its "infection", so to say, or not, given history?"

And while not in school (though I wouldn't be surprised), with brief search about Germany I found an article talking about it. Specifically:

"If one wants to put a stop to the right-wing cultural revolution as a "white German", one should, in the sense of critical whiteness, first deal with one's own privileges and prejudices, and above all with the unknown world of experience of the discriminated. Accordingly, the German-White-Christian normality is not merely launched by AfD agitprop and Pegida slogans, but implied - and often unknowingly - by the center of society," in an article titled, "The invisible white norm".

http://archive.fo/ZTkKf