a letter sent to a university that wants to fire a professor for things he said outside of his class

Re: academic excellence

Greetings!

I don’t think I had ever heard of the University of Central Florida until just a few days ago, when I heard that the University is trying to rid itself of a professor (Charles Negy) for things he said outside of a school context.  A psychology professor at that.

I see that psychology is your number one online bachelor’s degree program.

I am looking at the offensive tweets that the Professor tweeted, and it seems to me that the questions Dr. Negy raised are questions that are at the very heart of the field of psychology, and to dismiss them because some people are offended by them insults the entire work of psychology and dismisses even your school as a reputable source for psychological studies.

The first offending tweet I am reading questions the relationship of racism with achievement within that affected racial group.  Dr. Negy uses the example of Asian Americans (Far Eastern Asians) as a contrast. 

I have asked the question and I have questioned the common answers, whether crime is a necessary result of poverty, oppression, and / or discrimination.  Or is moral behavior independent of outward pressures but an expression of inward character?  Can poor people be moral?  Do only poor people steal, or steal more than other people?  Is crime in the black communities higher than in white communities, because . 

. . .  

Yes, because what?

That question goes to the very heart of psychology, and one that any burgeoning psychologist needs to answer. 

My wife and I were discussing yesterday about Jewish people.  From a related matter.  They have faced discrimination even outright hostility for 2,000 years, in country after country.  They don’t march and protest.  They just quietly achieve the highest standards of moral behavior and academic and business success.  Any reputable psychologist would want to understand why in the face of blatant, systemic, chronic racism and bias, one group has been able to shine, so to speak, and the other seems unable to shake off the past.

The second tweet from the professor addresses the issue of self-reflection.  The black community wants everybody to focus on a handful of black lives that were lost at the hands of police officers in a confrontation situation while ignoring the endemic of black on black violence that ravages their neighborhoods. 

Self-examination is at the heart of psychology, and any psychology student is urged to actively engage their own psyche to understand their motives, ideals, goals, hurts, and limitations.  An essential part of this is to be able to accept and assess the evaluations of others.  Dr. Negy sees the black community as unwilling to accept the necessary feedback of others.  The black community sees itself as damaged and needy, but only wants help on their terms. 

I think a psychologist’s insights here are crucial in solving some of our society’s major problems today.

Dr. Negy clearly has insights and courage that are essential in helping us make progress in solving and quelling the unrest which is racking our country. 

Frankly, the societal changes being foisted on our country by these activist groups I don’t see as solving anything or helping anybody.  We are no longer resolving issues by rational debate but with violence in our streets.  Like spoiled children who scream until they get their way, our society is letting the least experienced among us determine our future.

That is not the way a civilized world is supposed to function. 

To be honest here, dismissing Professor Negy, though ostensibly for unrelated hitherto unproblematic incidents of the long past, would in my mind irreparably damage the University’s credibility as a reliable, sure source of academic excellence, at least in but not limited to the area of psychology.

Best wishes,

Larry Craig

Who to Blame for America’s Bloodshed?

When I was a kid, we had gun clubs in our high schools.  You could buy a gun at Sears or the local hardware store like you were buying a screwdriver.  No FOID cards, no background checks, and no gun violence problem.  (Time for the gun industry and NRA to accept blame for America’s bloodshed, August 10)

So what happened? 

Our country was built on God   It was God who gave us our rights, which is another way of saying that God gave us our freedoms and liberty.  Somewhere we were told that we are a secular nation, which means that God has no place in our public life and education.  And we end up losing our rights and our freedoms.

Without God, human life is no longer sacred, and nobody’s thinking that there is a God to give account to for their actions.  Life becomes cheap, and consequences are not certain.

Our Founders called us an “armed” people (Federalist no. 46), and they saw that as a good thing, unlike in Europe where they were unarmed and ruled by kings.

The problem is that we are trying to impose a secular society over one that was created with a religious foundation.   

Imagine

Space travel and the ideas of UFOs and alien abduction have been around for a long time, though mostly in the realm of science fiction.  Recently, we sent a space ship to Mars in search for ancient life.

Imagine that Mars indeed is inhabited.  By a very advanced species of, well, Martians.  It seems they live under the ground in a climate-controlled system, because the surface of the planet is uninhabitable. 

Imagine that we sent a manned (sorry), we sent a ship of astronauts to explore the planet.

The Martians capture them and use them for manual labor, digging out more caverns in the planet for their expanding Martian population.  Many of them use them for personal use: amusement or menial tasks to make their own lives easier.

They soon realize that there are plenty more Earthlings where these came from, so they send their own ships to Earth to bring back more of them for the never-ending task of creating more inhabitable space .as well as their own personal use to make their own lives easier.

Some of the Martians, though, feel compassion for the Earthlings.  They see them mistreated and abused, and they see that underneath their strange appearance, they seem Martian in their ability to think and feel. 

So what could they possibly do to help them? 

They would buy them themselves.  As many as they could.  They would need to work, of course, to help pay for the cost of taking care of them, but at least they would now be treated as Martians.  They would be treated kindly and well taken care of.  They would teach them the Martian language and all the advance knowledge of their advanced civilization. 

Some of their Martian philosophers protested the whole thing, both the bringing of the Earthlings to Mars, taking them from their homeland, but also the using of them for forced labor as well even personally possessing them for their own private purposes. 

Others argued that it was the Martian thing to do.  If they just let them go free, other, less compassionate Martians, or the Martian government, would only take them themselves, and they would no longer be free.  Besides, how would an Earthling even get along in Martian society?  They don’t speak Martian and know nothing about life on Mars.  How would they survive?

No, they were able to protect them by keeping them out of the caverns and the hands of cruel, unfeeling Martians who would only abuse them.  Maybe someday all the Martians would recognize that these Earthlings should have been left alone.  As one great Martian teacher said, Do unto other Martians as you would have them do unto you.  Surely that would apply to Earthlings as well.

I think it would make a good book and maybe a series of movies.  People like stories of other worlds.  It can take their minds off the problems of this one.

Before you defund the police

Police are a lot like firefighters.  We regularly have emergencies that require professional help immediately, so we have specially trained people ready to respond quickly to our calls.  (What should police do?, August 6)

One big difference is that we pay firefighters to stay at the fire house between emergencies, and the police we ask to patrol the communities.  I suppose we could ask them to stay at the station until there are specific calls for their help.

But as a person who had worked in business all my life, it seems like a waste of money to just have them waiting for something to do, so to speak.  So we give them other assignments, like monitoring traffic.  We also use a police presence in our public schools as a deterrent.  For a while, we had a rash of mass shootings in our public schools, and everybody demanded we put police in our schools to protect the students and staff.

Now we have calls to shift funding from the police to other services, saying that we don’t need the police to perform these services.

The problem is that the level of police, and firefighters, that we have is determined through experience.  We base the number of personnel on how many we need during times of crisis.  When a crisis comes, it is too late to hire and train more people.  You need to have them dressed and ready to go.

So you can’t look at the other things police are doing to say that we don’t need that many of them.  The choice is whether you want your tax dollars used to keep the police actively working on our behalf or essentially inactive waiting for the emergencies.    

So, Should We Kneel or Stand?

Now that the major professional sports are starting up again, we need to answer the question: should they kneel or should they stand?  Whether it’s for the National Anthem or just the American flag.  If you think everyone should stand, you will not like watching your favorite sport when they all kneel.  If they should kneel, then what do you think when a few of them stand?  It seems that those who are standing are standing for different issues than those who are kneeling.

If you are not a sports enthusiast, I think the question is still relevant, because you will not be able to escape the sounds, the sights, and the talk about what people are doing.

Imagine that you and your spouse had an argument.  The issue was an important one.  You both got angry, and the issue was not fully resolved.  Maybe you like to spend a lot of money on your hobby, and your spouse thinks you spend too much, and you don’t have enough money for other things that your spouse thinks are important.  You know that you both still disagree, and that the issue will come up again at some point in the future.

A few days later, you get a call from your spouse’s attorney, asking you to come in to give your side of the story.  The lawyer is a divorce lawyer.  Oh, no, your spouse isn’t asking for a divorce.  They just want to document the incident.  Why?  Well, you never know if at some point they might need it.

I would say that that spouse has just put a big crack in their marriage.  The first spouse will always feel on edge, afraid to be fully honest, afraid to talk about a certain thing again.  Or anything of importance.

I worked in a business for much of my life that would often write up employees for certain infractions.  The reasoning is that if they ever wanted to fire an employee, they would need to have several write-ups before they could do that.

I was the recipient of some of those writeups, and I resented them.  Why?  To me, it conveyed the message, yes, I want to fire you, but I can’t, so I’m doing this instead. 

Now I was a manager myself for a while, and I chose not to write up my employees.  I thought write-ups were counter-productive.  I wanted my employees to be happy on the job, not just content to do the bare minimum but who would eagerly do their best. 

Now let’s look at these protests.

They say that the issues are injustice, police brutality, social justice, and racism.

We are told that these problems have gone on too long.

If this were a marriage, this is a spouse going to the divorce lawyer.  The marriage is not working.  Or at least that’s the message.  Or is it?

When you express your grievances through the flag or the National Anthem, you are saying more than that we have some unresolved issues, some disagreements. 

The flag stands for the whole thing.  The whole country, the American experiment, as some call it, the whole idea of freedom and liberty for which our Founders went to war to establish.

Kneeling for the anthem means that the whole thing is broken.  The marriage is broken. 

The person kneeling may not see it that way.  They may see it as simply protesting that one thing, albeit a big thing.  But the message that that act conveys is far more, something far different.  Imagine you asked your spouse or your kids to do something, and they gave you the middle finger.  Are they just saying no, or are they saying a lot more than that?

True communication in the world requires that both parties understand the same words in the same way.

I have learned that if I’m discussing, say, democracy, we need first to agree on what we mean by the word democracy before we can discuss it, otherwise we can be talking about two different things.  Are we talking about a system where the majority rules on everything, or do we mean simply that we are a country that is supposed to have free and fair elections?

In the protests going on today in our country, the things they are trying to say are being said in ways that are conveying something else. 

When a person kneels for the flag or the National Anthem, in their heart they may say they are protesting a particular social cause, but the message they are conveying is that they despise the whole country.   The whole idea of America.  What it stands for.  No, that may not be their intention, but that’s the message that a lot of people are hearing.

You want to protest social injustice?  Don’t express disdain for the whole country and all it stands for.  It’s like telling your spouse you are sorry you married them whenever you have a disagreement.

The Bible says that a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.  (Proverbs 15:1)  Kneeling for the flag and the anthem are harsh words that stir up anger.  You’re offending and angering the very people you will need to solve your problems.  You may achieve some changes that are superficial at best, but you’re not going to win the hearts and minds of those whose hearts and minds you disrespect.

But there is a bigger issue here beyond just conveying mixed messages.

At the same time that people are protesting certain problems in our country, there are others who actually do want to get rid of the whole thing.  And they are using these protests over particular grievances in their cause.  They want to get as many people as possible to focus on everything that is wrong in the country such that they will no longer think there is anything good about it, that there is nothing worth defending.

The protests started out as a protest over one incident of a police interaction that went bad.  Then it went to all police, and now it’s gone into things that happened hundreds of years ago.

You may have grievances about a lot of things in our country.  But the bigger question is whether you think the country is still basically a good one or if deep down, it’s a bad country. 

There are two overlapping narratives here, and we don’t know in individual cases what the message is.  When you kneel for the flag or the National Anthem, a lot of people are understanding the message that justice isn’t really the problem.  America is.  We don’t have justice, we have racism, not because we have problems in our country, but the problem IS the country.

Until we answer that question; whether the United States is a good country with problems, or a bad country that must be replaced, these protests will only lead to more unrest and conflict and won’t solve anything.

An Open Letter on Racism and the Protests

We are told that our country is a racist country that oppresses and holds down people of color.

Yet there is not another country in the world today that any person of color who is already here now would rather live in.  And millions of people of color have come to live here by their own choice, and millions more are waiting to do so.  Should we tell them not to come?

If it had not been for slavery, all the descendants of slavery here now would still be in Africa and not in the country of their choosing.  I submit that their life here now is better than it would have been if they had never been brought here so long ago from Africa.  People of color, frankly, should be thanking God every day that they live here in spite of everything they say is wrong with this country.

There is a story in the Bible of a man whom God greatly favored whom God, you could say, caused to be sold into slavery and later unjustly imprisoned who thanked God afterwards when he realized how God was using the events of his life for a greater good.  (Genesis 37-50)  And this man forgave the ones who sold him into slavery in the first place because of that.

But we are told that people must protest and even riot about the mistreatment of black people by the police. 

The mistreatment of black people by the police was indeed the stated reason for the protests when they started, but the purpose for the protests by those who actually organized them and got them going goes far beyond problems with the police.  The mistreatment of blacks by police gave their cause acceptability in the eyes of the public.

We know that the protests are not really about the plight of black people, because 1) they say and do nothing about the much greater problem of rampant violence in black communities.  More people are shot and killed in black neighborhoods by black men in a few weeks than die at the hands of police officers in the entire year.

We know that the protests are not really about the plight of black people, because 2) they are offering nothing that is intended to improve the lives of anyone.  There is a proposal to shift funding for policing to social services.  Most people I think see that as unrealistic and even dangerous.  We are already seeing what a diminished police presence looks like in some places, and I don’t expect that to last.  The goal I believe is to reduce possible future police resistance as these protests and riots continue and expand.

We are told that we should not bring up the issue of violence in the black communities, because that is a different, separate, and unrelated issue than the issue at hand, that of racism, both personal and systemic.

But people aren’t buying that.

We are told that everybody needs to invest in black communities, but we have seen what has happened to people who have.  Not everybody is able and willing to rebuild their businesses after they have been looted and burned to the ground.

We are told that all our schools and neighborhoods need to be fully integrated.  But people who live in those neighborhoods that are said to need more integration are afraid that that violence that we read about every day in the newspapers will follow that integration.  

  

There is a lot more going on than simply protesting over the death of one man at the hands of police.

Their intention is to present a constant complaint of as much as possible about American society and life, so that they can condition the American people to see their country as broken and so that they accept these complaints as valid. 

The protests now include the issues of slavery, systemic racism, and indigenous peoples with the goal of discrediting the entire foundation of the United States and Western Civilization, so that these people will be able to demand wholesale changes to the system and that the defenders of the historical United States and Western Civilization will feel completely unable to defend it, its history, its institutions, and its practices.

They want the American people to see the whole basis and organization of our country as irredeemably flawed, such that it cannot be repaired and must be replaced.  They don’t want to fix the United States; they want to replace it.

They want to intimidate and shame the American people into silence and acquiescence such that they will not resist as these people try to reinvent America. 

I wish I could say that changes will come out of these protests and riots that will actually improve the lives of anybody.  But the protests and riots are no longer about George Floyd and the police but about bringing down the United States as we know it.