Today's bang head on desk moment can be found here. As if you needed to look very far for one.
Here's a paragraph:
A Brooklyn College professor who called religious people "moral retards" was elected to head his department this month - sparking a campus uproar.
E-mails expressing alarm that Timothy Shortell was now chairman of the sociology department circulated among students last week on the school's Midwood campus.
Shortell has written in an online academic publication that the devout "are an ugly, violent lot. In the name of their faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers."
Well, tell us what you really think Prof. Shortell.
Bleah.
Shameless, unsubtly biased, intellectually dishonest and clearly uneducated. Yep, that's who I want to inspire my students and represent my institution of higher learning.
You mean we are supposed to get upset being called retards by a sociologist? Someone who was too dumb to get a degree in psychology? Someone who couldn't figure out how to write piffle like the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator?
Yawn. Call me when a real scholar shows up.
He really picked the wrong college to do this at. Speaking as a BC alum I can tell you that while the college may be a city/state public one it also has a high number of religious people thanks to a very fine Newman Center, a Canterbury Center (for Anglicans), a Hillel House (for Jewish students) right off campus and numerous Islamic clubs and organizations. Brooklyn College is also right center in the middle of a large Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, many of whom attend the college. I'm frankly surprised there wasn't an even BIGGER outcry.