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The campus speech police struck again, this time at the University of Florida.
In an effort to keep the classroom “inclusive,” professor Jennifer Lee has excluded the following words from her classroom’s vocabulary: husband, wife, mom, and dad, among others.
In the syllabus for her “Creativity In Context” class — a required course for any student pursuing a minor in Innovation — UF professor Jennifer Lee informs students of her four paragraph long classroom “communications policy” that she says will enforce “ethical conduct” in the classroom.
“The following policies and guidelines will be followed in this course,” the policy begins, followed by a bullet point instructing students to “Use inclusive language.” The policy mandates that students “[s]peak in a way that does not make assumptions about others based on “norms”, stereotypes, or one’s own identity or experience.”
The syllabus explains that this means replacing the words “boyfriend”/”girlfriend” with the more inclusive “partner” or “significant other.” The rule applies to conversations about married couples too: saying “husband” or “wife” is forbidden. Even the words “mom” and “dad” have a more “inclusive” alternative — students are told to use the word ‘family” instead.
If students refuse to censor themselves, they risk losing points in the class.
This makes no sense to me…. isn’t banning the words “mom” and “dad” by its very nature exclusive and hostile towards students who have moms and dads and refer to them as such?
Then again, this isn’t about being inclusive- it’s about being progressive.
Censorship isn’t a protective measure in the classroom, it’s a way for the professor to impose her beliefs and political agenda on everybody else. Higher education is supposed to be a place for young people to learn how to think for themselves… instead they are being censored and told what to say.
