Political Correctness is Out of Control

reviewjournal.com

Hans Hoppe, an economist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is under fire for doing his job. In March, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal, he was giving a lecture to a money and banking class on "groups who tend to plan for the future and groups who do not":

Another example he gave the class was that homosexuals tend to plan less for the future than heterosexuals.

Reasons for the phenomenon include the fact that homosexuals tend not to have children, he said. They also tend to live riskier lifestyles than heterosexuals, Hoppe said. . . .

Within days of the lecture, he was notified by school officials that a student had lodged an informal complaint. The student said Hoppe's comments offended him.

A series of formal hearings ensued.

Hoppe said that, at the request of university officials, he clarified in his next class that he was speaking in generalities only and did not mean to offend anyone. . . .

The student then filed a formal complaint, Hoppe said, alleging that Hoppe did not take the complaint seriously.

He said university officials first said they would issue him a letter of reprimand and dock him a week's pay.

That option was rejected by Hoppe's dean and by the university provost, Hoppe said.

More hearings ensued, he said. In the end, the university gave him until Friday to accept its latest offer of punishment: It would issue him a letter of reprimand and he would give up his next pay increase.

Hoppe's ideas seem reasonable and are clearly relevant to his scholarly discipline. Contrast his experience with all the university types defending the intellectually bankrupt anti-Americanism of a Ward Churchill, and it's clear that the idea of academic freedom has degraded into what one might call academentia.

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