At the University of Texas – San Antonio, a bisexual graduate student in philosophy named Alfred MacDonald, in conversation with a Christian student whose fiancé is Muslim, said that Islam makes him uncomfortable because gay people can received the death penalty in some Muslim countries. She reported him to department authorities, which brought down the wrath of department chair Eve Browning, who summoned MacDonald to her office.

MacDonald secretly recorded the meeting. The transcript is here. These excerpts are jaw dropping:

EVE BROWNING: Well what they told me was that there had been no change and that their concerns are still as serious as they were. And what we want, what we all want is for all of our students to succeed academically, so when there are students saying that something you’re doing — and think what it could be, if anything — when there are students saying there’s something you’re doing that is making their learning environment less helpful, less productive, less pleasant, then we have to explore what that is.

ALFRED MACDONALD: I honestly don’t know, and I don’t know what–yeah, I mean one of these is from a class I don’t even… (Reviewing list) “Relevant comments in classes” I shouldn’t, also (2&3?), okay, I’ll just comment less, that’s easy enough. “Late to class,” already taken care of that, “leaving class partway through” already taken care of that, “derogatory comments to other graduate students” I don’t even know. I’m totally mystified. I really don’t talk to people — at this program — much at all.

EVE BROWNING: You don’t recall the topic of a Muslim fiance ever coming up?

ALFRED MACDONALD: That yes, but I was responding specifically to number four. Number five was: I said that I was bothered that I could be killed in ten Muslim countries. I’m bisexual. So they’d definitely do that in the ten countries where I would be — you know.

EVE BROWNING: Doesn’t that strike you as an inappropriate thing to say about someone’s fiance?

ALFRED MACDONALD: I wasn’t talking about the fiance. The fiance could have whatever interpretation of the religion that they want. I said something like … (thinking) that I … yeah it wasn’t about the fiance, it was about the religious practices in those countries.

EVE BROWNING: How is it appropriate to bring that up in connection with someone’s fiance?

ALFRED MACDONALD: They brought it up. The Islam part.

EVE BROWNING: And you brought up the threat to your life as posed by this fiance?

ALFRED MACDONALD: No. We got to the subject of Islam, not the fiance.

EVE BROWNING: Do you understand how someone would find that offensive?

ALFRED MACDONALD: How someone would FIND that offensive, yeah; how they could perceive it, yeah; yeah, I mean, if I…

EVE BROWNING: It’s a confusing comment to me because Muslims do not all live in countries in which bisexuals are executed. Muslims live in the United States–

ALFRED MACDONALD: Sure.

EVE BROWNING: –Muslims live in France, Muslims live in every country in the world — it’s the fastest growing world religion.

ALFRED MACDONALD: Yeah, one of my good friends at the university is Muslim.

EVE BROWNING: And do you tell him that you object to his religion because there are places on earth where gay, lesbian and bisexual people are discriminated against, including your own country?

ALFRED MACDONALD: Well, “her.” And my verbiage was “killed” not “discriminated against.” I mean, Death penalty’s pretty severe.

EVE BROWNING: What does that have to do with her being engaged to a Muslim?

ALFRED MACDONALD: Nothing. I wasn’t talking about the engagement to the Muslim. I was talking about Islam in that particular moment.

EVE BROWNING: Well, let me just say that kind of thing is not going to be tolerated in our department. We’re not going to tolerate graduate students trying to make other graduate students feel terrible for our emotional attachments.

ALFRED MACDONALD: Um… all right.

EVE BROWNING: And, if you don’t understand why that is, I can explain fully, or I can refer you to the Behavior Intervention Team on our campus which consists of a counselor, faculty member, and person from student affairs who are trained on talking to people about what’s appropriate or what isn’t.

ALFRED MACDONALD: I just won’t bring anything up about Islam again. That’s pretty simple. Although I’m not sure what you mean by… so I’ve read the student handbook pretty th–well not pretty thoroughly, but I’ve read it at least twice, and what do you mean by “it won’t be tolerated?” Like I’ll be straight up prevented from registering? Or the team that you mention, the behavior intervention team, they’re going to do something or… what exactly is the penalty for breaking that assuming that I’m in some other situation where I say something that someone else finds offensive and you…

EVE BROWNING: We’d put it either before the behavior intervention team or the student conduct board and ask them to make a recommendation.

ALFRED MACDONALD: Ask them to make a recommendation? What does that mean?

EVE BROWNING: Whether they would refer you for counseling; whether they would recommend that you be academically dismissed; they would assess the damage. They would probably try to speak to the students who are complaining and the faculty that are complaining and make a recommendation. In any case…

ALFRED MACDONALD: And this is over… I thought that UTSA was a public university with first amendment protections? So I could be dismissed for stuff like that? Just…

EVE BROWNING: Making derogatory comments? Yes.

Browning lectures him about his offenses. MacDonald tells her that he comes from an impoverished background and struggles to understand the code of professional conduct she insists on. Browning has written commands to him on a piece of paper. MacDonald protests that he still doesn’t grasp what he has done wrong. More:

ALFRED MACDONALD: And sure, I’ll think about “professional courtesy” but without [inaudible] I’m just going to be like, “professional courtesy. Question mark?” I can think about it for a while but it won’t be

EVE BROWNING: Those are things that would get you fired if you were working in my office. The Islam comment would get you fired.

ALFRED MACDONALD: All right. I mean…

ALFRED MACDONALD: …Would it really get me fired to say that I could be killed somewhere?

EVE BROWNING: In that situation as you’ve described it, absolutely yes.

ALFRED MACDONALD: How?

EVE BROWNING: Don’t even ask. It’s clear you’re not taking my word for it. I don’t care to convince you. If I can’t persuade you that it’s in your interest to behave in ways that other people don’t find offensive and objectionable, then at least I’ve done my job.

ALFRED MACDONALD: Well I know that it’s in my interest. I’m just trying to understand the reasoning.

EVE BROWNING: You don’t have to.

ALFRED MACDONALD: Well, this is a truthseeking discipline!

Well, see young man, that’s your first mistake. Academic philosophy, as it is taught at UT-San Antonio, is more like theology taught in Karachi. It is a truth-finding discipline. Prof. Browning and her colleagues already have the truth, and if you disagree, your academic career will be burned at the stake.

MacDonald no longer attends UT-San Antonio.

The conversation between him and Prof. Browning took place last autumn. Though his recording was secret, it is legal in Texas to do that, as long as the person recording is involved in the conversation. I first read about this case yesterday, via Robby Soave, who points out that it was first reported in Gay Star News. That story contains a link to the audio recording itself, if you’re interested in hearing it.

So, let’s understand where we are. If you study philosophy at UT-San Antonio, you are entering an academic culture in which you can be threatened with severe sanctions, including dismissal from the program, for making statements that offend another student. Never mind that they might be true (e.g., that bisexuals can face the death penalty in certain Muslim countries), and never mind that they might be fairly mild claims (e.g., that this fact makes a bisexual feel negatively disposed toward Islam).

The philosophy graduate program at UTSA is one in which a student, having heard this statement from a bisexual colleague, does not attempt to engage in philosophical dialogue about it, but rather runs to Mommy to tattle. That is to say, this is a program in which the students inform on each other for speaking incorrect thoughts.

This is a program where a student who steps out of line is threatened with being sent to a re-education session.

This is a program in which a student from an economically marginalized background, one who doesn’t grasp the secret codes of the educated class, with all its fussy freemasonry, can find himself facing denial of entry into the circles of the elect, because he said the “wrong” thing.

This is a program in which a student, asking for an explanation of why it is a disciplinary offense to observe aloud that he could be killed in certain Muslim countries because of his sexual desire, is told to shut up and not question authority. (“Don’t even ask. It’s clear you’re not taking my word for it. I don’t care to convince you”). This is apparently a program in which one cannot inquire into Islam, except to praise it. What are the other sacred cows in this program? Who can say for sure?

Why would anybody who wants to study philosophy choose to enter the graduate program at UTSA? Seriously, why? It sounds like a miserable experience, one that trains graduate students not to seek truth, but to shackle their minds and imaginations with ideology, and conform — or else.

These corrupt programs cannot die fast enough. But: how will the actual humanities — not this zombie counterfeit — survive in this environment?

This one reason why classical Christian schools are so very, very important. Christian study centers at universities ought to do like Vaclav Benda and his circle in communist Czechoslovakia did: if the universities are only teaching ideologically conformist cant instead of the humanities, then set up alternative classes where that teaching and learning can take place. We cannot wait for the institutions to collapse or be reformed. The tradition doesn’t pass on itself, you know.

Meanwhile, take a look at this clip from The Lives Of Others. The setting is the cafeteria inside the headquarters of the Stasi, the East German secret police. Wondering this morning how many humanities graduate students in the US see this clip and think of the suffocating atmosphere of militant conformity in their own programs:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHZJsMfukQY&w=525&h=300]

UPDATE: Bruce Bawer wrote about this incident a couple of weeks ago. It’s great. Excerpt:

I’ve never met Alfred MacDonald or Eve Browning. I don’t know anything about either of them aside from the details of this case, a brief online Q. and A. exchange I had with MacDonald, and the basic facts of Browning’s career as available online. But one thing that’s obvious to me here is that the philosophy student is a great deal more interested in “truth-seeking,” as he put it, than is the philosophy professor – who is manifestly far less of a true philosopher, wrestling with facts and ideas and prepared to entertain opposing views, than she is a dyed-in-the-wool bureaucrat, reflexively spouting inane platitudes and enforcing irrational procedures and regulations, and a good multiculturalist, unwilling to address the darker sides of the institutionally fetishized “other.”

Soon after his meeting with Browning, MacDonald transferred to Texas State, where, he says, he’s now doing well. “Texas State’s department is considerably better about open speech” than UTSA’s, he told me. That was good to know. Unfortunately, however, Eve Browning is still on the job. And professors like her are legion. She’s far from alone in taking the view – or, at least, acting as if she takes the view – that the execution of gay people in countries that are governed in accordance with sharia law is less offensive than mentioning those executions.

Fortunately, more and more gay people are awakening to the fact that the left, academic and otherwise, does not have their back. When it comes to supposedly downtrodden groups, the left has a distinctive pecking order. Especially now that same-sex marriage is legal in the U.S., gays are no longer seen as being particularly oppressed – especially not gay white males, who thanks to their whiteness and maleness are increasingly viewed as members of the oppressor class, not the oppressed. Muslims, on the contrary, are at the very top of the victim-group heap – and, perversely, every time another act of murderous jihad is committed in the name of Allah, Muslims’ victim status seems to grow.