All's Quiet on the Harvard Front: Jiggling Gymnast Segregation Continues

As I wrote in another post, Harvard, modest women, and a radical proposal do relate to the War on Terror.

News Media Keeping Mum

The traditional news media are maintaining a discreet silence, for the most part, about Harvard's radical experiment of

• Denying men their girl watching privileges while women exercise
• While allowing women to blatantly exhibit modest behavior

I haven't seen this sort of gross disregard for authority and tradition since the sixties: I can't blame editors for wanting to keep this case as low-profile as possible.

Bloggers Defending the Status Quo

Blogs and op-ed are another story. A few of the headlines show that this blatant disregard for the right of young men to mix it up with half-clothed women isn't going unnoticed.

• "Harvard Caves To Six Female Muslim Students"
  Hub Politics (March 2, 2008)
• "Sharia Law is Busting Out All Over"
  Yid with a Lid (March 3, 2008) (Don't blame me: That's the name of the blog.)
• "Harvard and Segregation"
  Lamplighter blog (March 2, 2008)
• "In Response to Muslim Demands, Harvard's Gym Now Has Women-Only Hours"
  Western Standard (March 2, 2008)
• "Harvard Launches Separate But Equal Workout Hours So Muslim Women Can Keep Their 'Modesty' "
  Mere Rhetoric (March 2, 2008)
• "Harvard to kowtow to Muslim women"
  City-Data Forum > General Forums > Politics and Other Controversies (March 2, 2008)
  (In case this post disappears as the page evolves, I'll quote the comment here: "Seriously. When will this stuff end? I have heard about creeping sharia, but this is getting ridiculous. It needs to stop NOW!!"
• "Islamists win segregation of women at Harvard"
  Christian Action Network (no clear date)

The Fate of a Culture Hangs in the Balance

A common theme seems to be emerging here:

• "Harvard Caves"
• "Sharia Law"
• "Segregation"
• "Muslim Demands"
• "Separate But Equal"
• "kowtow"
• "Islamists" and "Segregation" (again)

Harvard definitely struck a nerve here. The good old sixties slogans of "segregation," and "separate but equal," are just about guaranteed to elicit the (politically) correct emotional response.

The people who are so upset about this outbreak of modesty have a great deal to be concerned about. Harvard's accommodation of women who do not share the western cultural value that women are just like men, and should bounce their way through workouts in the company of men, is a flagrant violation of a politically correct standard which has stood for decades.

If this sort of defiance of the ideals which Gloria Steinem worked so hard to hammer into American culture spreads, who knows where it may end?

• Men may be forced to use separate locker rooms
  (I lost track: did the unisex locker room ever get accepted?)
• Women may get the peculiar idea that they aren't just like men, except for the ability to bear children
• Worse, women may rebel against the standards of display which have enjoyed societal support since the days of the burning bra and the topless bathing suit

This could be the end of American culture as we have known it for generations.

Personally, I can't say that I'm sorry.

Rights, Reason, and the Real World

One of the reasons I have respect for traditional Middle Eastern culture, and other 'less advanced' groups around the world, is that, for all their faults, they recognize that women aren't men, and that men aren't women.

Somewhere around Woodstock, American culture lost track of that fact.

It's only in the last decade or so in the west, that detailed studies of the human brain, and genetic studies, have forced an occasional and grudging acknowledgment that women can, on average, be distinguished from men. I knew that all along, but then I'm one of those people who developed an avid and enduring interest in women around the age of thirteen.

The War on Terror is, to a great extent, a conflict between two cultures.

On the one hand, there's western civilization, which places a great deal of importance on individual freedom. On the other, there's a segment of the Islamic world which doesn't seem to be able to tolerate anyone who doesn't do things exactly as their imams say they should.

I don't think there are many non-Muslim Americans who seriously doubt that some elements of traditional Islamic culture are going to have to be re-evaluated by Muslims.

I also think that western civilization must take a long, hard, and unemotional look at what is really important to personal freedom, what isn't, and what simply has no connection with the real world.

I wrote about Harvard and jiggling gymnasts earlier, in "Harvard Decision Threatens Collegiate Tradition: Girl Watching" (March 3, 2008).

Related posts, on Islam, Christianity, Religion, Culture and the War on Terror.

Harvard Decision Threatens Collegiate Tradition: Girl Watching

This actually does tie in with the War on Terror.

Responding to requests by female Muslim students, Harvard University made a decision that angered some students: and, I suspect, disappointed many more.

Harvard now has set aside 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays to women, and only women, at the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center.

I can't help but think that Harvard is caught in a four-way squeeze play.

1. Muslim students who are women don't want to put on a jiggle-and-bounce show for the guys, want gym time when they can work out without an audience
2. The Harvard College Women's Center, apparently deciding that promoting non-westerness and excluding men outweighed understandable concerns about seeming to support modesty and traditional values, agree with the muslimahs
3. Harvard men are, understandably, angry
   • Some, like Nicholas Wells, on the magnanimous grounds that the hours given are "useless to women" and "unjust to men"
   • Others, I suspect, because they feel that women-only gym time unjustly deprives them of their cultural right to watch young women gyrating around the gym
4. Harvard women, apart from the six Muslimahs who went to the Women's Center and the Women's Center power base, are likely to become split into supporters of the women-only gym time, and those who for one reason or another like the post-sixties customs of putting hot, sweaty young women and men together for vigorous physical activities

I'll admit that for me, this situation is mostly an opportunity to sit back and watch politically-correct academics tie themselves in knots, trying to simultaneously support a non-western value system and their own unisex assumptions about human nature.

The question of whether Harvard will decide to continue providing time and space for women who prefer to not be on display for men during at least a few hours each week does tie in with the War on Terror.

The request for a modest amount of exercise time came from Muslim women.

If the War on Terror is challenging many of the Islamic world's assumptions, particularly for Muslims living in America, the reverse is also true.

Muslims in America are beginning to force this country's cultural and academic leaders to take a close look at their own quaint assumptions.

Nicholas Wells may be right, that the current Harvard policy for women who want to be modest may be a "lose-lose" situation. At least for Harvard and some on the Crimson student body.

However, I think that for America as a whole, and possibly the entire western world, the focus which the War on Terror is putting on traditional values of a minority which cannot, by America's politically correct rules, be ignored, will be a win-win situation in the end.

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More in "Harvard Sets Women-Only Hours for Gym, Complying With Muslim Students' Request" FOXNews (March 2, 2008)

Related posts, on Islam, Christianity, Religion, Culture and the War on Terror.

Shocking! American University Forced to Allow American Military Recruiters On Campus!

"Yale Law School has lost an appeal to bar military recruiters because of the school's requirement that job recruiters pledge non-discrimination, a pledge the military cannot make because of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" At least, according to edgeBoston.com.

That's true, as far as it goes. The Solomon Amendment of 1996 allows the Secretary of Defense to not give federal funding to colleges and universities if they keep ROTC or military recruitment off campus. They're free to stay military-free, but now the Defense Department doesn't have to pay them to do so.

Now, about the Ivy League's story that the military's 'discriminatory' "don't ask, don't tell" policy is why they want the American military off-campus: It's just the latest paint job on an old policy.

I don't blame America's institutions of higher education for trying to maintain their hallowed traditions and lofty standards. It was thirty four years and three days ago that The Harvard Crimson wrote the following about the Ivy League schools and the ROTC.

"Like an octopus, ROTC firmly plant its tentacles into all Ivy League school for decades. But since the late 1960s, when the program became a target of antiwar protest at all eight colleges, ROTC and the various climates in which it lived or died have taken different forms.

"A look at ROTC's fate at the eight Ivy schools reveals that the arms of the Ivy League ROTC octopus no longer seem to belong to the same animal."

Taking information from a few sources, here's what happened to the octopus.

• Brown "phased out" ROTC in 1969.
• New York's Columbia University expelled the ROTC in 1969, remaining unsullied by the institution to this day.
• Cornell University, facing "a growing feeling that the University itself was too deeply involved in United States military efforts, the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Cornell voted to discontinue all credited ROTC courses in that college." In a remarkable show of tolerance, ROTC courses were permitted at the university's other five undergraduate colleges.
• Dartmouth was purged of militaristic chauvinists in 1969, only to have the ROTC return in the mid-1980s.
• Harvard faculty voted 207 to 125 to kick the ROTC off their campus in 1969.
• Princeton also "phased out" the ROTC in 1970. ("Phased out" is The Harvard Crimson's euphamism for Ivy League schools' clearing militaristic miasmas from their pure academic air.)
• Stanford was ROTC-free by 1973.
• Yale seems to have been a great leader in removing militaristic threats to academic tranquility. The ROTC left that campus "voluntarily," around 1968.

I was in and out of post-secondary academia from 1969 to 1985, and I see that not much has changed. The great academic leaders of America seem to still be as dedicated to their version of tolerance, diversity, and anti-militarism as ever.

If the hallowed halls of ivy didn't retain a reputation for something other than intellectual shenanigans, their anti-military stance would be a fine joke.

As it is, loose associations of Muslim fanatics around the world are trying to establish their version of sharia law. If they succeed, it's unlikely that the ivy league's cherished academic freedoms will remain.

Watching what are supposed to be the best minds in America continue in their anti-military ways is as pathetic as watching a old hippie wrap himself in a burning flag.

More facts from
"Advocates for ROTC."