(Patriot.Buzz) – Yielding to the liberals’ frail sensitivity, Northwestern University in Illinois has introduced a policy punishing anyone making fat jokes.
The university’s updated discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct policy now includes weight and height as “protected characteristics,” which means that jokes about these attributes could lead to sanctions.
The policy specifies that “Inappropriate physical contact, comments, questions, advances, jokes, epithets, or demands based on one or more actual or perceived protected characteristics” are violations.
It also bans memes or online content that mocks individuals’ weight, categorizing such material as “derogatory, demeaning, or hostile.”
Anyone who violates this harassment policy could face consequences ranging from a verbal warning to expulsion, depending on how severe the university assesses the offense.
Northwestern encourages its community to report any breaches of this policy online, and it keeps records of these complaints for at least seven years.
Critics have expressed concerns about the impact of such policies on free speech.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Ilya Shapiro remarked, “This new policy is a heavy burden on free speech and has an extra-large chilling effect on campus culture. You’d think Northwestern administrators would focus on weightier issues.”
This policy shift at Northwestern comes even though the university has a history of accommodating students on other issues, such as pro-Palestinian demonstrations, without severe disciplinary actions.
President Michael Schill noted in a congressional testimony that no students had been expelled or suspended for their involvement in said demonstrations, including an encampment on campus grounds.
Meanwhile, academic interest in body weight as a cultural and social issue is growing.
Northwestern’s gender studies department offers a course called “Critical Fat Studies,” which explores how bodies are culturally constructed across various dimensions, including gender, race, and size.
Similarly, courses like Princeton’s “FAT: The F-Word and the Public Body” and Brown University’s “Politics of Fatness” dive into the societal implications of body weight through diverse analytical lenses.
Manhattan Institute legal fellow Tim Rosenberger voiced a critical perspective on protecting body weight as a characteristic.
“Protected characteristics have long been limited to constitutionally protected categories, like race and religion, and immutable characteristics, like sex or disability,” he added.
“Excessive body fat falls into neither category and, as explored in my recent piece in the New York Post, is something to be remedied rather than embraced,” Rosenberger explained.
Copyright 2024, Patriot.Buzz
