Hate and intimidation seem to be tools of the trade. I fear that the story of Keith John Sampson, a student and Janitor at IUPUI, reflects an attitude that is lamentably typical:

May 9, 2008 — IN November, I was found guilty of “racial harassment” for reading a public-li brary book on a university campus.

The book was Todd Tucker’s “Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan I was reading it on break from my campus job as a janitor. The same book is in the university library.

Tucker recounts events of 1924, when the loathsome Klan was a dominant force in Indiana - until it went to South Bend to taunt the Irish Catholic students at the University of Notre Dame. . . .

But that didn’t stop the Affirmative Action Office of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis from branding me as a detestable Klansman.

They didn’t want to hear the truth. The office ruled that my “repeatedly reading the book . . . constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers.” . . .

the $106,000-a-year affirmative-action officer who declared me guilty of “racial harassment” never spoke to me or examined the book. My own union - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - sent an obtuse shop steward to stifle my freedom to read. He told me, “You could be fired,” that reading the book was “like bringing pornography to work.”

Ultimately, after being pressured by the ACLU and FIRE, the school backed down.

Combine the self-righteousness of the racial grievance lobby with the cluelessness of a bureaucrat at work, and you have a nasty mix.