The College Fix

Is there anything sweeter than progressive priorities in a cage match?

The City University of New York’s Graduate Center has told staffers and faculty not to use “gendered salutations” in correspondence with students, and just use their full names instead, The Wall Street Journal reports:

The memo, signed by interim Provost Louise Lennihan, calls the policy part of the Graduate Center’s “ongoing effort to ensure a respectful, welcoming and gender-inclusive learning environment…and to accommodate properly the diverse population of current and prospective students.”

The school insinuates this has something to do with complying with Title IX. Nope:

Saundra Schuster, an attorney and Title IX consultant for universities, said the statute is intended to protect individuals from gender discrimination—no matter how they identify their gender, including transgender individuals. But, she added, “to say they must [bar gendered salutations] because of the law is ridiculous.”

“I love the concept,” she said, “but they are not mandated to do this.”

One progressive:

Gendered salutations represent “an outdated and unnecessary formality [that] serves no purpose other than to label and risk misrepresentation,” said Allison Steinberg, a spokeswoman for the Empire State Pride Agenda, an advocacy group for gay and transgender people.

Smacked down by another, linguistics professor Juliette Blevins, who says the salutation ban can “create other problems”:

In some parts of the world, using someone’s first name is insulting and not acceptable: “Therefore, the policy, as it now stands—which encourages use of first and last name, without title—enforces one particular view of what is or is not ‘gender-inclusive’ without considering the negative effects it could have cross-culturally,” she said.

A professor at nearby CUNY-Staten Island who’s also a Republican assemblyman has this bon mot:

“If a student asked me to call him ‘Godzilla,’ I would happily call him ‘Godzilla’ or whatever anyone asked to be called,” [Joseph] Borelli said. “But we do not need another ultra PC policy change.”

Read the full article.

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IMAGE: Harvard University