Progressives are Punishing a Gay Professor for Stating the Obvious

Progressives, drunk on cultural power and sanctimony, steeped in vapid ideology, and patinated in faux-fragility demonstrate that history does, indeed, repeat itself as the political left again become oppressors.

The most recent demonstration of leftist tyranny comes from the University of Washington (UW) where Stuart Reges, an openly homosexual lecturer in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, is being hounded out of his 15-year job by students, colleagues, and administrators who have no understanding of the critical importance of First Amendment protections to a healthy body politic.

The saga began in June of 2018 when Quillette, an online “platform for free ideas,” whose female founders “respect ideas, even dangerous ones” and “believe that free expression and the free exchange of ideas help human societies flourish and progress,” published an article by Reges titled, “Why Women Don’t Code.”

His article, inspired by the firing of James Damore by Google for the offense of writing an inter-office memo on, inter alia, the disparity in numbers between men and women and the absence of intellectual diversity at Google, addressed similar problems within academia, including the enraged responses to his pleas merely to discuss diverse views on diversity.

In this first article for Quillette, Reges established both his academic credibility as well as his bona fides regarding his commitment to fostering a love of computer science in young women. Then he addressed three professionally perilous topics:

• Reges argued there are, broadly speaking, two different approaches to advancing workplace “diversity,” one of which is the “equality agenda” that seeks to remove “artificial barriers.” He calls the other approach the “equity agenda,” which “involves a commitment to righting the wrongs of the past. Political and religious diversity are not on their list because they don’t represent the immutable characteristics previously used to justify discrimination.”

• The equity agenda’s view of “inclusion often demands the exclusion of ideas and opinions.”

• Reges next stated what should be a commonplace observation: men and women are different. Instead, that observation was met with howls of outrage from those who ironically argue that in order to attract more women into the computer science field, the field must change in ways that will attract women—who, they claim from the other side of their mouths—are no different from men.

• Finally, Reges argued—with evidence—that there are complicated reasons for the male-female disparity in the field of computer science, among which are innate inclinations and free choice.

Jordan Peterson, 2018 cultural mega-star, then tweeted about Reges’ article, which put Reges on the radar of the faux-fragile and sanctimonious, including students and colleagues at his own school and in his own department. Since, Reges had a three-year appointment, the intolerant had to wait until December 2019 when his appointment expired to exact revenge, and exact it they did. In another article published January 11, 2020, Reges reported the following:

I was stripped of my primary teaching duties and given a highly unusual one-year probationary appointment. … In the 15 years I have been part of the school, I am the first regular lecturer to be offered less than a three-year extension. … The one-year reappointment is also odd given my faculty rank. I was the first lecturer in the College of Engineering at UW to be promoted to the rank of principal lecturer. The faculty code indicates that the normal period for reappointment for a principal lecturer should be at least three years. The administration had to obtain special permission from the provost to make such a short appointment. It is also perhaps worth noting that I am the only current member of the faculty in the Allen School who has won the Distinguished Teaching Award, which is the highest award given for teaching at UW.

At least as troubling was the response from a group of graduate students who filed a grievance against Reges with the Union of Academic Student Employees and Post Docs at the University of Washington (UAW) and then concocted recommendations that reveal their puerility:

• A relaxation of grading on coding style.

• Allowing students to work together in a group for part of their grade instead of requiring them to complete all graded work individually.

• Training for TAs in inclusion and implicit bias.

• Review of all course materials for inclusiveness. For instance, of a lecture that involves calculating body mass index (BMI) using guidelines from the National Institutes of Health, the report noted that it “seems insensitive to present students with a program that would print out that some of them are ‘obese’ while others are ‘normal.'”

• A reduction in the amount of effort expended pursuing cheating cases by 50 percent even though there has been no reduction in cheating cases.

These graduate students also recommended “that courses incorporate inclusiveness best practices as outlined in an Allen School document,” including these:

• The addition of an indigenous land acknowledgement to the syllabus.

• The use of gender-neutral names like Alex and Jun instead of Alice and Bob.

• The use of names that reflect a variety of cultural backgrounds: Xin, Sergey, Naveena, Tuan, Esteban, Sasha.

• An avoidance of references that depend on cultural knowledge of sports, pop culture, theater, literature, or games.

• The replacement of phrases like “you guys” with “folks” or “y’all.”

• A declaration of instructors’ pronouns and a request for students’ pronoun preferences.

Puerility and Newspeak come to academia.

To illustrate the “mob mentality” among students and administrators, who seem to believe the ends of destroying the career of Reges justify hasty judgments, incuriosity, and deceit, Reges tells the story of an anti-affirmative action campus bake sale he attended:

[T]he UW College Republicans organized an affirmative action bake sale, at which cookies were sold to Asians for $1.50, to whites for $1, and to African Americans and Hispanics for 50 cents. Cookies were free to Native Americans.

I attended the event to see how it was received and ended up having an hour-long conversation with a young woman about race relations on campus. . . .

The Stranger published an article about the event which included photographs of my interactions with the young woman. I was quoted as saying, “I don’t see racism on campus.” … But, as footage of our exchange captured by a local news team later confirmed, what I actually said was “I don’t see rampant racism on campus.” A small but important difference between a denial of ongoing racism and a disagreement about its prevalence.

[T]he day after the article in the Stranger appeared, I received a message from the director of the Allen School which included this:

. . . in my opinion, this is not about freedom of speech, and it’s also not about affirmative action. . . . This is about your lack of sensitivity to minority students and your continued (and almost gleeful) denial of their experiences, which I find extremely regrettable and disappointing coming from somebody of your stature and experience.

[The director] later told me that his judgment was based entirely on the misreported quote. He didn’t ask me what had happened. He didn’t ask if the quote was accurate. He simply concluded that I was insensitive to minority students. How he decided that I was “almost gleeful” is beyond me, but it indicates a reflexive disapproval among some my colleagues since the publication of my Quillette essay.

So far, the oppressors have failed to break or even bend Reges. He has since “joined Heterodox Academy” and “attended the 2019 Heterodox Academy Conference and the 2018 faculty conference for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).” Reges won’t acquiesce to the oppressors because he understands what’s at stake. Perhaps his warning will strengthen the spines of conservative students, teachers, and administrators:

Today, the people on campus who need to worry about expressing their ideas are conservatives and religious people. Now it is gays doing the punishing of anyone who opposes gay marriage, gay adoption, hate speech codes, and civil rights protection for gays. Everything old is new again. I’m once again having private conversations behind closed doors in my office with closeted individuals, but this time they are students, faculty, staff, and alumni who oppose the equity agenda. They are deeply concerned about the university’s direction, but they are also afraid of jeopardizing their current or future job prospects. They also worry about losing friendships and professional relationships. One faculty colleague described it as “mob rule.” … I am concerned that people believe free speech is improving on college campuses when in fact things are getting worse. We have fewer overt examples of speakers being shouted down and disinvited, but now the censorship is going underground. Those who talk to me behind closed doors censor themselves because they know the consequences of speaking up.

If every conservative would speak up, the oppressors would lose.

---

This article was originally published by our good friends at Salvo Magazine. Check them out and subscribe to this great publication!

Everyone who’s conscious knows that Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are in the tank for “progressivism”—also known as “Cultural Regressivism that Undermines Decency” (CRUD). While the hive at Google manipulates its algorithms to hide information that regressives don’t like, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook Overlords censor with the kind of tyrannical oppression that in the good old days liberals and radicals feared and loathed. Now that liberals and radicals control the levers of power, they have abandoned all previous philosophical commitments to freedom and liberty. A new explosive undercover video by Project Veritas exposes the extraordinary and deceitful machinations of Google to manipulate access to information in order that regressivism can gain and maintain yet more power. In other words, Google—like its fascistic government precursors—exploits its monopolistic power to propagandize, thereby securing its iron grip on power. Resistance is almost futile.

With his face and voice concealed, a Google insider warns about the implications of the confluence of Google’s power, reach, and bias:

What’s scary is that Google’s deciding what’s important and what’s not important. They are… effectively deleting conversations from the national narrative. It reminds me of… a book called 1984. That should have been a warning…. Google’s… deciding what gets read, what gets consumed, what people are able to click on, what appears. It reminds me a lot of fascism…. When videos get pulled off of a platform, that’s… a form of censorship…. People have no idea that it’s happening. They still think that Google’s an objective source of information and it’s not.

Secretly recorded conversations with Google executive Jen Gennai reinforces the claims of the Google insider, further revealing Google’s Leftist bias, arrogance, and determined efforts to use its power to influence the next presidential election:

The reason we launched our [Artificial Intelligence] principles is because people were not …. saying what is fair and what’s equitable, so we’re like, “Well, we are a big company. We’re going to say it.”… [M]y definition of fairness and bias specifically talks about historically marginalized communities, and that’s who I care about. Communities who are in power, and have traditionally been in power, are not who I’m solving fairness for. Our definition of fairness is one of those things that we thought would be like obvious, and everybody would agree to, and it wasn’t…. [T]he same people who voted for the current President did not agree with our definition of fairness.

Gennai’s/Google’s—let’s just say Gennoogle—Gennoogle’s definition of fairness differs not only from the definition held by the “people who voted for the current president” but also from the definition held by many others. Many people understand “fairness” to mean “impartial or just treatment without favoritism” or “the quality of treating people equally.”

“Historically marginalized communities” refers to identity-peddlers’ four favorite categories of humans:  blacks, women, homosexuals, and cross-sex “passers.” Leftists like Gennoogle have been forced to add “historically” to marginalized, since these groups have pushed from the margins to the center which will not hold.

Clearly Gennoogle has no interest in genuine fairness. “Fairness,” like hatred, inclusivity, safety, tolerance, and equality, means exactly what the googley Humpty Dumptys choose it to mean. Who cares if theologically orthodox Christians or political conservatives are treated unfairly. That’s their problem to solve, dagnabbit!

Gennai reveals the supreme arrogance of Google, which presumes to make “things more fair” by supplanting the will of the people as expressed through the duly elected executive and legislative branches of the government with Gennoogle’s reconceptualization of “fairness”:

The White House and Congress won’t play a role in making things more fair, so people are holding us accountable to fill the gap of what should be done.

Gennai makes clear the presumptive supremacy of the Google hive mind over the elected representatives of the people:

We got called in front of Congress multiple times, and we’ve not shown up because we’re like, we just know they’re going to just attack us. We’re not going to change our mind. There’s no point in just sitting there being attacked over something that we know we’re not going to change…. They can pressure us, but we’re not changing.

Gennai adds more flesh to the bones hinted at in her allusion to Trump, his supporters, and “fairness”:

Elizabeth Warren is saying that we should break up Google…. [S]he’s very misguided. That will not make it better, it will make it worse because now all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation…. a small company cannot do that.

We all got screwed over in 2016…. so now we’ve rapidly been like, “What happened there? How do we prevent it from happening again?”

Evidently in panic mode after the exposé was released, Gennai penned a futile effort to recast her damning words and malign Project Veritas:

[T]hese people lied about their true identities, filmed me without my consent, selectively edited and spliced the video to distort my words and the actions of my employer, and published it widely online.

While Google engages in unconscionable, secretive efforts to manipulate public opinion and to silence conservative employees through fear of loss of employment, she’s outraged about being secretly recorded?

Surely a smart human like Gennai knows that all documentaries and exposés “selectively” edit. The ethical issue is not whether an exposé is selectively edited. The ethical issue is whether it was edited in such a way as to distort someone’s words. Gennai tries to prove that Project Veritas distorted her words about the 2016 election, saying she never suggested Google objected to Trump’s election per se but rather to “foreign interference”:

In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016.

If Gennoogle’s concern were really with online foreign interference, what sense did her statement about being “screwed” mean, since Russian attempts at foreign interference didn’t affect the election outcome. Leftists like Gennoogle believe they were “screwed” by Trump’s winning. They were not “screwed” by Russian attempts to interfere. Does Gennai think all Americans just fell off the turnip truck?

Project Veritas asked the Google insider about the meaning of this statement from an internal Google document:

In some cases, it may be appropriate to take no action if the system accurately affects current reality. While in other cases, it may be desirable to consider how we might help society reach a more fair and equitable state via product intervention.”

The Google insider translated into plain English what “helping society” looks like in the Google hive:

What they want to do is they want to act as gatekeepers between the user and the content that they’re trying to access. They’re going to come in, they’re going to filter the content. They’re going to say, “Actually, we don’t want to give the user access to that information because it’s going to create an outcome that’s undesirable to us.”

This exposé will come as no surprise to former Google employee Mike Wacker, recently fired for publicly criticizing Google’s “outrage mobs and witch hunts.” Wacker shared that the Google outrage mobs (OMs) demanded Google have nothing to do with the conservative Heritage Foundation, calling its president Kay Cole James the Grand Wizard of the KKK. For those who don’t know, Kay Cole James is black and endured egregious racist attacks when growing up.

You may wonder exactly how the OMs could justify calling a black woman the Grand Wizard of the KKK. Well, this particular OM has concluded, apparently with no scientific proof, that masquerading as the opposite sex is analogous to race, and, therefore, opposing things like co-ed restrooms and locker rooms—which the Heritage Foundation does—is analogous to racism.

Wacker revealed that one Google employee was reported to Human Resources (HR) for sharing a National Review article, and another was reported for appearing “to be promoting and defending Jordan Peterson’s comments about transgender pronouns,” which allegedly made some Google employee “feel unsafe at work.” #eyeroll

What other subjective, often-changeable feelings will Google OMs conclude are analogous to race? Will those employees who disagree with the hive’s assumptions about those other feelings be safe in that “nonpartisan,” inclusive space to express their views? And what if the OMs are wrong? What if cross-sex identification, cross-sex hormone-doping, surgical mutilation, and co-ed private spaces are, in reality, neither good nor right?

While Wacker lost his job, Blake Lemoine retains his job as senior software engineer at Google. The name Blake Lemoine may sound familiar. He made the news in 2018 for calling Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn a terrorist for writing an op-ed critical of the obvious bias against conservatives and Republicans within tech companies like Google and Facebook.

Wacker reports that in internal Google employee forums, Lemoine also said this:

If you think that trans women aren’t women then you can either keep it to yourself or GTFO [Get the f**k out]. Google’s corporate policies are crystal clear on that.

While Google employees are free to say that “transwomen”—who are objectively, immutably, scientifically verifiably men—are women, others are not permitted to say “transwomen” are men. Deviate from the deviant narrative and off with your head!

Trouble seems to follow Lemoine—who identifies variously as a pagan priest and Gnostic Christian—wherever he goes. The “bisexual” Lemoine who is in a “non-monogamous” relationship with his wife enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2003 and then in 2004 “realized he did not like working with U.S. Army troops.” When the Army refused to allow him “to quit the Army,” he went on a work strike and then a hunger strike. He was court-martialed and discharged for bad conduct.

Before whistle-blower Mike Wacker, there was former Google engineer James Damore who was fired in 2017 after he wrote and distributed a measured internal memo replete with evidence in which he criticized Google for, among other things, being “an ideological echo chamber.” Can’t have any Google employee pointing out that the emperor brooks no dissent. Off with his head!

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Dark-Underbelly-of-Google.mp3

---

---

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

 

Can you hear the harmonious choir of diverse voices echoing from the Downers Grove Public Library Board of Trustees? You can’t? Oh, that’s right, Tuesday night in the service of diversity and inclusion, the Downers Grove Village Council expelled the one conservative member from the library board.

The controversy began when a “monitor” from the League of Women Voters attended a recent library board meeting at which board member Arthur Jaros expressed concerns over these three items that had been unexpectedly added by a yet-unnamed staff member (or members) to a proposed long-range strategic plan:

1. Provide regular training for all staff in equity, diversity, and inclusion.
2. Incorporate inclusive practices into library services.
3. Create a diversity strategy for hiring.

The “monitor,” Susan D. Farley, claims that Jaros “proceeded to continue to express his personal view on how we should… reject any… people different from white straight people.” This claim—which Jaros vigorously denies—clearly suggests that Jaros seeks to reject persons and that he holds racist views.

Jaros objected to #2 because he believed the term “inclusive” was too ambiguous. He’s of course right. Only sociopaths would think all phenomena or all perspectives on all phenomena should be included in libraries, particular in the children’s section. The library board agreed and struck item #2 from the list.

Jaros objected to #3 because such language usually refers to hiring quotas based on identity politics, and he believes that hiring should be based on merit. He’s right again. I would go further to say that the term “diversity”—like “inclusive”—is too ambiguous. Diversity is neither intrinsically good nor bad. It simply refers to differences. In the service of diversity, does the board want to hire KKK members, infantilists, and Antifa anarchists who have no respect for authority, rules, policies, or social conventions?

Most Americans by now know that “diversity” is code for race, class, sex, homosexuality, and “transgenderism.” The staff member (or members) who surreptitiously added these action items likely meant that the library should hire based on membership in these categories. What this phantom staff member (or members) surely did not mean is that library hiring decisions should ensure ideological diversity among staff members. The board voted to change the word “hiring” to “recruiting.” Meh.

And now we come to the part that twisted up the knickers of monitor Farley. Jaros opposed any requirement that all staff members be “trained” in “diversity” and “inclusion.”

“Diversity” and “inclusion” are terms exploited by the Left to justify purchasing picture books that celebrate two phenomena integral to Leftist sexuality dogma: homosexuality and biological-sex rejection (aka “transgenderism”). Leftists’ commitments to diversity and inclusion are, shall we say, inconsistently applied. Sometimes that is a good thing.

You don’t (yet) see librarians bleating about the dearth of picture books positively portraying polyamory. If love is love, why no picture books about consensually non-monogamous love for the kiddies? Nor do you see those bigoted speciesist librarians begging for picture books that celebrate zoophilia.

Could they be imposing their own prejudiced, provincial, hateful moral beliefs on all of society?

In order to do just that—that is, impose their subjective moral beliefs on all of society—social regressives continue to compare skin color to homosexuality and now to the science-denying “trans” ideology. But subjective erotic/romantic feelings or internal subjective desires to be the opposite sex have no points of correspondence to skin color—an inconvenient fact that Leftists ignore so they can virtue-signal and call people hateful bigots. Just don’t go calling them “hateful bigots” for their moral views. That would be bullying and make them feel unsafe.

Downers Grove Public Library presumably embraces the Library Bill of Rights that it includes in its library board policies:

• … Materials should not be excluded because of the… views of those contributing to their creation.

• Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current… issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

• Libraries should challenge censorship…. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.

• A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of… views.

Apparently diversity of views matters when it comes to resources but not when it comes to the composition of the board. Instead of banning books, the Village Council of Downers Grove bans people.

“Progressives” are nothing if not hypocrites. While they claim to oppose “book banning,” they engage in de facto “book banning” by simply neither purchasing nor requesting books that offend their sexuality sensibilities. While claiming to value diversity, they seek nothing less than a complete ideological monopoly when it comes to their doctrinaire sexuality ideology.  While claiming to value tolerance and inclusivity, they kick board members who don’t toe the ideological line off library boards. In their foolishness, presumptuousness, and self-righteousness, regressives violate their own principles, stooping to coercive and oppressive tactics to eradicate diversity and dissent.

“Progressives” claim to value diversity and inclusion even as they fight like pit bulls to quash both. The idea-police rationalize their censorship, people-banning, and assault on the First Amendment by arguing that some ideas may hurt the feelings of some people. So, are we as a society willing to apply that principle consistently? Are we willing to say that any idea that may hurt the feelings of people must be banned from public expression and that anyone who expresses those ideas must be prohibited from working or serving on diverse boards in America?

In prior rational times, safety entailed the absence of physical harm—not the absence of ideas we don’t like to hear. The First Amendment guarantees the right to speak freely and that includes the right of people whom Leftists hate to express moral propositions Leftists hate.

You know what’s as least as scary as book-banning? A society that can no longer distinguish right from wrong is at least as scary. A society that prevents people from working because of their moral beliefs about sexual behavior is at least as scary. And a society that places sexual desires above children’s needs, religious liberty, and speech rights is at least as scary.

In the packed room of 200 people on Tuesday night, 21 people spoke: 16 in favor of the village council’s decision to oust Jaros, 5 opposed. In a town of 49, 500, are there not 20—or 200—conservatives with the spine to come alongside Jaros?

Fortunately, Jaros is an attorney. He’s suing monitor Farley, the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, and village councilman Greg Hosé for defamation.

Remember James Damore, the Google software engineer who in a measured and smart internal memo made a persuasive case that Google was an “ideological echo chamber” and was promptly fired? Downers Grove Mayor Martin Tully and his Gang of Six just “googled” Arthur Jaros.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Downers-Grove-Village-Council-Ousts-Only-Conservative-Library-Board-Member-in-Service-of-Inclusion.mp3

---

If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI,
please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  

It does make a difference.