Junkthought Journal

A tale from the University of California’s Lobotomized Academics

Steve’s latest recalls the case of Keith Fink, who as a UCLA student was an academic John Wooden, winning three consecutive National Debate Championships. Professor Fink, an attorney, began teaching communications at UCLA in 2008 and proved popular with students. Campus bosses didn’t like it.

Keith Fink

Students jammed into Fink’s course on “Free Speech in the Workplace,” so department chair Kerri Johnson restricted the class size. As the peasant Dennis (Michael Palin) might say, who is this who is so wise in the ways of academia? Kerri Johnson is co-author of “Swagger, sway, and sexuality: Judging sexual orientation from body motion and morphology.” The study appears on the website of the National Institutes of Health Library of Medicine, which offers this abstract:

People can accurately judge the sexual orientation of others, but the cues they use have remained elusive. In 3 studies, the authors examined how body shape and motion affect perceived sexual orientation. In 2 studies, participants judged the sexual orientation of computer-generated animations in which body shape and motion were manipulated. Gender-typical combinations (e.g., tubular body moving with shoulder swagger or hourglass body moving with hip sway) were perceived generally to be heterosexual; gender-atypical combinations were perceived generally to be homosexual. These effects were stronger for male targets. Body shape affected perceived sexual orientation of women, but motion affected perceived sexual orientation of both men and women. Study 3 replicated and extended these findings. Participants judged dynamic outlines of real people (men and women, both gay and straight) in which body shape and motion were measured. Again, gender-atypical body motion affected perceived sexual orientation and, importantly, affected accuracy as well.

There had been a lot of confusion on the subject until Kerri straightened it out. Johnson also shows up in UCLA’s LGBTQ studies department. In those quarters, she explains, “my research incorporates diverse methods that are at the cutting-edge of communication science. This enables me to pinpoint with unprecedented precision the visual cues that send messages to others and how these cues are utilized by perceivers,” and so on.

As Olson Johnson (David Huddleston) said after Gabby Johnson’s speech in Blazing Saddles, “now who can argue with that?” Kerri Johnson is now Associate Vice Chancellor, Faculty Development, and a professor in the departments of communication and psychology. If anybody called UCLA the University of California’s Lobotomized Academics it would be hard to blame them.

“They are all afraid of a vocal, rational intelligent conservative who can provide a check on the progressive narrative,” Fink told this writer in 2017, when UCLA failed to renew his contract. The debate champion is now back at his law firm. If you have a labor or employment problem he’s the kind of person you want on your side.