‘It’s totally bonkers’: Cambridge University dons warned not to shake hands with Muslims or disabled people in case it offends them

From The Daily Mail:

  • Tutors angry at being treated like ‘social misfits’

By Simon Tomlinson

Last updated at 12:38 PM on 14th December 2011

Sensitive issue: Cambridge University bosses fear Muslim women will be offended if academics try to welcome them with a handshakeSensitive issue: Cambridge University bosses fear Muslim women will be offended if academics try to welcome them with a handshake

Academics at Cambridge University have reacted with dismay after being ordered not to shake hands automatically with Muslims or disabled people in case it upsets them.

A directive sent to admissions tutors warns that some applicants are ‘culturally sensitive’ to traditional greetings and suggests that ‘suitable body language’ is just as welcoming.

A spokesman for the university said: ‘Dons should read the situation properly and bear in mind that not all people will want to shake hands.’

He said the warning related in particular to Muslim women and some people with disabilities.

Some tutors say they have been made to feel like ‘social misfits’ as a result.

One, who did not want to be named, said: ‘It seems to be totally bonkers. We know when to shake someone’s hand and when not to.’

‘All this seems to be stupid and pointless and could make interviews even more awkward.’

 

 

Sally Hunt, the University College Union general secretary, said: ‘While I am sure this advice is well-intentioned, academics are grown-ups and are intelligent enough to know when to shake a person’s hand or not.’

Anger: Some dons at Cambridge University (above) feel they have been treated like social misfitsAnger: Some dons at Cambridge University (above) feel they have been treated like social misfits

Cambridge University moved to integrate female Muslim students further in 2009 when it decided to allow them to wear burkas at graduation ceremonies.

By tradition, students are required to wear dark suits and white shirts under their graduation gowns.

The university had clamped down on breaches of the rules after officials complained students were increasingly wearing casual clothes to ceremonies.

But it clarified that clothing linked to religious observance, such as burkas, would still be allowed.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

5 Replies to “‘It’s totally bonkers’: Cambridge University dons warned not to shake hands with Muslims or disabled people in case it offends them”

  1. What is “totally bonkers” is allowing muslim students in the first place.

    It’s the rich western educated ones that are the terrorists

  2. “Muslims or disabled people in case it upsets them.”

    Why the redundancy? Muslims are disabled human beings. They have to live as Muslims don’t they?

  3. Cambridge and Oxford used to be two of the finest, if not THE finest universities in the World. Now look at what is happening to them.
    Education is not just about learning and reciting facts, figures, dates or the answers to quiz questions. It is about learning how to think – how to question, how to examine evidence and how to come to your own conclusions, whilst providing rational arguments as to how you came to those conclusions.
    When a place of high learning tells someone not to shake hands with Muslims or disabled people then it is simply giving a command without justification, or without the right to say ‘no’ or to question why.
    This is a sign that pseudo-intellectual buffoonery has invade the system. Cambridge University is on its way down. The education system in Britain is already a joke.

  4. The left has worked hard to take over the educational establishment in all nations, this was done so they could dumb down the teaching of history so the younger generations would not be informed about the past failures of the lefts policies. Another reason was to indoctrinate the kids in the leftist dogma, according to this dogma anyone not a government bureaucrat has to be told how to do everything because they are too dumb to know what to do.

    In the US some of the State Universities have managed to avoid the worst of the leftist programs but the Ivy League schools are currently incapable of teaching anyone anything.