Even more annoying was the insertion into the story of a complete red herring — the mission statement of the Independent Women’s Forum. The reporter’s first question to me was if I had contacted Melana Vickers because she was affiliated with IWF, with its “agenda” of opposing corrosive feminist ideology. I told him that I had heard of Melana Vickers because of a paper she wrote back in 2003 (“Death of the Liberal Arts?”) and while I was familiar with the stance of IWF, that wasn’t the reason for commissioning the paper from her.
Seeing where the reporter was going, I mentioned that I used to teach logic, and that one of the logical fallacies I covered with my students was the ad hominem-circumstantial fallacy. That’s the logical error of dismissing someone argument not on the basis of anything intrinsic to the argument itself, but merely because of some circumstance pertaining to the person making the argument. The reporter did include my point that ideas need to be evaluated on their own merits, but there was no reason whatsoever to bring the IWF into the story.
Note also that the story quotes a couple of students who liked their Women’s Studies courses. No doubt their names were suggested by WS profs who were sure that they’d say something nice like “epiphany.” It’s not surprising that some WS students, who probably came into the program with the right set of attitudes and were pleased to have them reinforced, believe that they benefited greatly from their classes. If you had a course on astrology and asked a few of the students who signed up to take it if they thought it was beneficial, most would probably vigorously say that it was.
