Steven Salaita |
Steven Salaita, gnostic: in a February 5 lecture at UNC-Chapel Hill, he claimed that the word “civility,” used in post-colonial discourse, “sets up a hierarchy that distinguishes between those who are capable of entering into modernity and those who are incapable of entering into such a passage.” University of Illinois officials (who denied him a job last summer), didn’t know the word was “racist” and, “thought ‘civility’ was [an] innocuous word.” Because, you see, words have meanings known only to an ordained elite with access to Knowledge, which is conferred via a PhD in victimization studies; the rest of us remain in darkness.
A clumsy, sophistic attempt by Salaita to delegitimize his opposition, i.e., the civilized world. Note that it finds its most willing supporters in academe.
