I just found the following in Inside Higher Ed:

The e-mail to some faculty members at the College of William & Mary came out of the blue, reminding them to be careful about the language they use in class and, specifically, asking them not to use the word “retarded” in class.

Its appearance last week perplexed some professors and prompted one or two to tell the student newspaper that administrators were questioning their professionalism. Several experts on faculty speech said that the missive was unusual, but that rather than a threat to academic freedom, they saw a sincere effort to protect potentially vulnerable students. “…[T]he word retarded has returned in slang usage to mean dumb or stupid, but this is not an appropriate way to use the word in class,” Kelly Joyce, the dean of undergraduate studies, wrote in her e-mail.

Mind you, there had been no incidents surrounding the word “retard” on campus where this piece of idiocy originated. Based on the email of this sad excuse for an administrator, one could assume that profs at the College of William & Mary run around all day long, calling students retards. However, there was nothing of the kind going on at this college.

The insulting email that this administrator sent to professors is not a response to any existing issue on campus. It is nothing but yet another attempt by an overpaid and useless administrator to take vengeance on the teaching faculty for being more intelligent and productive than s/he is. As we all know, scholars go into administration when they realize that they can’t make a name for themselves in research. Their rage against their more successful colleagues who laugh at their ineptness as researchers makes them lash out at professors with these ridiculous and condescending demands.

The other two groups of administrators are either spousal hires (i.e. useless husbands and wives of academics who are given these cushy positions of authority because they’ll get bored at home) or people hired from the corporate environment whose overall stupidity makes them incapable of understanding what the academia is all about. Of course, such folks have no idea how to do anything useful on campus, so they insult and condescend to professors instead.

I have blogged time and again  (and then some) about attempts by administrators to rob educators and scholars of our autonomy, dignity, time, and authority. What is really frustrating is that, more often than not, academics do not resist the offensive onslaughts by the useless and ignorant administrators. Kelly Joyce, the dean who had the incredible gall of sending this condescending message on the proper use of vocabulary to people with PhDs, should immediately become a pariah on campus. A good way of showing this administrator their place would be to recite definitions of words to them whenever they appear in public. For example,

Table, 1. an article of furniture consisting of a flat, slablike topsupported on one or more legs or other supports: a kitchentable; an operating table; a pool table.

Or better yet,

Professor – a person who often gets insulted by administrators, but this is not an appropriate way to use a professor on campus.

One could also email this dean lists of offensive words s/he shouldn’t use in public and explain in detail why these words are offensive and shouldn’t be used.

Unless we start doing something to show these ignoramuses their place, they will continue to insult us.