THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS ELIMINATES THE WAR CHANT: CAN POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUN RIOT OR WOULD THAT BE POLITICALLY INCORRECT?

9/10/17

I wrote the following note to both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times in response to my alma mater’s eliminating the war chant at football games and other athletic events.    One would think that the way the state of Illinois is being run, this greatest of universities would have other things with which to concern itself, but one supposes that nothing is more important in the modern world of academia than “cultural sensitivity,” as defined by people whose most salient characteristic is the Brobdingnagian amount of time they have on their hands...generally courtesy of the taxpayers.  

Neither paper published the letter, but my readers should not therefore be deprived:

8/26/17

Kent Brown, a U of I athletic department spokesperson, says, apparently with a face especially hard to keep straight while his nose is growing, that my alma mater’s elimination of the “war chant” at football games is only partly due to “cultural sensitivity.”   Mr. Brown says that fans haven’t responded to the war chant as vigorously as they have responded to, say, prompts from video boards.  

Space requires that I limit my comments to the three most salient:

First, how low is the athletic department’s assessment of the University’s academic rigor?   Do Mr. Brown and his colleagues on the southwest end of the campus think that the Big U is producing student so naïve that they believe this claptrap about “cultural sensitivity’s” only being part of the decision to eliminate the “war chant”?

Second, having majored in the apparently culturally insensitive field of accountancy, I am no expert on native American history, so, as dangerous as it can be to defer to the experts on anything, I have to defer to those more learned in such things than I am on this matter.   Are we to believe that native Americans never, under any circumstances, engaged in war chants?   If so, history has surely changed in the many years since I roamed the quad and its environs.

Third, to whom are we being sensitive when we display such laughable genuflections to “cultural sensitivity”…actual native Americans or self-appointed guardians and enforcers of all that is moral and correct in their, and generally only their, estimation?

Such nonsensical actions as eliminating the “war chant” are troubling because they reflect the preoccupation of the modern academy in general, and, in this case, U of I in particular, with the latest half-baked ideas germinating in the addled minds of the political correctness vigilantes who hold so much sway on campus.   Beyond that, however, such actions are simply silly.   No wonder people are fed up with paying small fortunes to avail their children of the nonsense that now so permeates higher education.