A LEFTIST BLOGGER ACKNOWLEDGES PC IN ACADEME

(Perhaps the fact that I recently put him on the blogroll here had something to do with it)

"This is an interesting review of a book on political correctness in academia. If we accept that political correctness refers to incidents of coercive and intimidatory policies and practices that, undermine and constitute, a threat to academic freedom, then it exists in academia. This is Camile Pagalia's take on political correctness. Here is a psychoanalytic account of political correctness and a weblog called p.c.watch.

The US historian C. Vann Woodward offers an incisive definition of "political correctness":

"In the present crisis the attack on freedom comes from outside as well as inside and is led by minorities, that is, people who speak or claim to speak for groups of students and faculty.... In behalf of their cause and to protect feelings from offensive speech they have, as we shall see, proved themselves willing to silence speakers and professors, abuse standards of scholarship, curriculum, and admissions, and impose conformity or silent submission on the campus." (in Beyond P.C. p.31).

As the word has come to be used it is both the policies and an intolerance, a closing of debate, a pressure to conform to a particular program of change. Political correctness usually means the practices associated with the "progressive agenda" of the academic left in the 1970s and 1980s.

It is a charge levelled by conservatives to the pressure to conform to a radical left-liberal program, or risk being accused of a commonly reiterated trio of thought crimes: sexism, racism and homophobia. As part of the culture war the use of "Political correctness" can become a slogan used to stifle debate."

More here