Why Brandeis University Should Change Its Name

July 5, 2021 --

(Thanks to New York Post, June 25, for providing the information in this item)

My alma mater (Class of 1962) has gotten into the news, the waning days of June, for announcing -- with pride? -- that it is banning a list of problematic words and phrases, including "picnic" and "rule of thumb." A special unit at this former institution  of higher learning -- the Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center  (PARC)-- has ruled that such words  and phrases, and others, of course, "'reinforce systems of oppression."   And what would we expect a PARC do if not seek out -- and find -- words and phrases of "oppression." 

LPR, however, sees a problem in common sense here. "Picnic" is proscribed on the charge that whites picnicked while watching a lynching. The suggested substitute is "outdoor eating." Yet, weren't those white lynching-watchers sitting in the outdoors, eating? Because racists were eating outdoors, should New York City immediately put an end to the outdoor dining sheds that sprang up throughout the city due to the Covid-19 restrictions on indoor eating?  LPR refrains from taking the further step to call on people of good conscience to stop "eating" because that is what racists do, too.

PARC also proposes "general rule" in place of "rule of thumb" as that -- and this is news to LPR -- originated from a British law allowing men to beat wives with sticks no wider than the thumb.   LPR, however, sees a problem with "general rule," too, for its militaristic connotation.

LPR is surprised that PARC has not, presumably, demanded the renaming of Brandeis University because it is named for an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States who was a man, white, Jewish and, no doubt worst of all, "a Zionist."  
Among the woke population, Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis is clearly guilty on all counts, especially the last one, denoting him as a, heaven forfend, "colonizer."

LPR is ready with a new name for this Waltham, Massachusetts school: Chelm University.  (LPR clicksters are iinvited to Google "Chelm", a fictional city in Jewish folklore.)

By the way: until now, the Brandeis motto has been:  "Truth Even Unto Its Innermost Parts." That should also be changed to: "Wokeism Until Its Collapses Under Its Own Ramifications"

And thank heavens Parc has not banned "human" because it includes "man," replacing it with "featherless biped."