astronomy

Water buffalo incident

Water buffalo incident is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Water buffalo incident rather than just read about it. In short: The water buffalo incident was a controversy at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, in which a student, Eden Jacobowitz, was charged with violating the university's racial harassment policy. The incident received widespread publicity as part of the increasing debate about political correctness in the United States in the 1990s.

Key takeaways

Water buffalo incident belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Water buffalo incident to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Water buffalo incident from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The water buffalo incident was a controversy at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, in which a student, Eden Jacobowitz, was charged with violating the university's racial harassment policy. The incident received widespread publicity as part of the increasing debate about political correctness in the United States in the 1990s.

Incident The incident occurred on January 13, 1993, when Eden Jacobowitz shouted, "Shut up, you water buffalo! If you're looking for a party, there's a zoo a mile from here," out of his window to a crowd of mostly black Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters making noise outside his dorm. Others had shouted at the crowd, but Jacobowitz was the only one charged. Members of the sorority stated that they had been rehearsing for an event which involved stepping, a traditional dance among African Americans. Initially Jacobowitz had an advisor assigned to him, who urged him to accept the University's offer of a settlement. The settlement required him to admit to violating the racial harassment policy. Instead, he contested the university's decision under the advice of Penn history professor and libertarian activist Alan Charles Kors. Jacobowitz, who was born in Israel and speaks Hebrew, explained his choice of water buffalo as from Hebrew slang behema (animal or beast, see also behemoth), used by Israelis to refer to a loud, rowdy person. He procured several expert witnesses who attested to this and others, such as Michael Meyers, President and Executive Director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, who gave testimonies that water buffalo was not a racial epithet against African Americans. Jacobowitz's story was brought to the fore by the media focus on Penn. On April 23, several days before his hearing, the New York-based Jewish Daily Forward broke his story with the headline "Pennsylvania Preparing to Buffalo a Yeshiva Boy". The story gained even wider media coverage after The Wall Street Journal picked up the story with an editorial entitled "Buffaloed at Penn" on April 26. Jacobowitz was interviewed on television several times. Based on testimony that Jacobowitz had called the women "water buffalo" and the university's belief that this was a racial epithet, it proceeded with prosecuting him. On May 13, 1993, news anchor John Chancellor opined that "the language police are at work on the campuses of our better schools. The word cops are marching under the banner of political correctness." The hearing was delayed for another two months while international press commented and criticized Penn's decisions. Garry Trudeau devoted a Sunday's Doonesbury to the water buffalo incident. The affair ended in May 1993 when the group of students agreed to drop charges, spokeswoman Ayanna Taylor saying that they were "disappointed by a judicial process which has failed us miserably".

Lawsuit In February 1996, Jacobowitz sued the University of Pennsylvania for emotional distress and accused university officials of conspiring with the women to bring false charges against him. The university settled the lawsuit in September 1997 without admitting wrongdoing nor paying Jacobowitz directly, though it did cover some of his legal expenses.

Legacy Vernon Jordan offered a dissenting viewpoint years later when he wrote "the participant in the white mob became a hero for the right wing, while the four black women remained faceless and the objects of national ridicule." University President Sheldon Hackney argued that the incident "was hijacked for ideological purposes" and that dismissing the phrase as harmless "ignores the long history of animalistic representations of African Americans as part of white supremacy's mind game [and] ignores the question of what the women thought they heard and why they got so angry." Kors, the professor who aided Jacobowitz, co-founded the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education as a result of the incident.

See also African American–Jewish relations Controversies about the word niggardly University of Pennsylvania controversies

References

External links The water buffalo incident through eyes of Jacobowitz Daily Pennsylvanian, 4/15/2003 GUEST COLUMNIST: Kors: Penn, Hackney mishandled 'water buffalo' case Daily Pennsylvanian, 12/7/1998 Sheldon Hackney's Spring From Hell Pennsylvania Gazette May/June 2003 Book excerpt from The Shadow University Archived 2005-12-27 at the Wayback Machine

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Water buffalo incident

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Water buffalo incident claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Water buffalo incident before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Water buffalo incident ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Water buffalo incident

In research: Water buffalo incident appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Water buffalo incident in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Water buffalo incident is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1993 controversies in the United States, 1993 in Pennsylvania, African-American history in Philadelphia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Water buffalo incident outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Water buffalo incident in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Water buffalo incident means in your own words.
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Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
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Frequently asked questions

What is Water buffalo incident in simple terms?

Why does Water buffalo incident matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Water buffalo incident?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Water buffalo incident.