(from InsideHigherEd):
By Patrick Bigsby
Several months ago, I was sitting in an employment discrimination seminar with a couple dozen of my peers. As you might expect, the class dealt with intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, and other identity categories. Our discussions of these subjects invited disagreement, as well as an opportunity to share our varying backgrounds and experiences. One of my classmates, ‘Jay,’ was an extremely thoughtful and polite individual as well as an engaged and diligent student who very clearly cut against the grain of the dominant political ideology. Jay argued on behalf of ideas that many of classmates condemned as ridiculous or even abhorrent, even though they knew him to be an excellent student and kind person. Jay’s thoughts were deemed too similar to talking points associated with opposing ideologies and he was branded an object of scorn. CONTINUE READING HERE