Niamh Harris – Stanford University has published a ‘harmful language’ guide that outlines words and phrases it wants to eliminate from its websites and computer code.

Under the “imprecise language” section, the guide calls for US citizen to be used instead of American “(‘American’) often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas,” the index says.

The guide has 10 “harmful language” sections: ableist, ageism, colonialism, culturally appropriative, gender-based, imprecise language, institutionalized racism, person-first, violent and additional considerations.

InfoWars reports: The guide was published Monday, but it’s part of a project launched last May known as the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI).

Additionally, the guide is loaded with more terms it wants to replace, ostensibly to tackle things like racism, homophobia, and ableism.

Notable terms the new index wants to replace:

• “Immigrant” with “person who has immigrated” or “non-citizen.”

• “Abort” with “cancel” or “end.”

• “Child prostitute” with “child who has been trafficked.”

• “Karen” with “demanding or entitled White woman.”

• “Handicap parking” with “accessible parking.”

• “Committed suicide” with “died by suicide.”

• “Tone deaf” with “unenlightened.”

• “Addict” with “person with a substance abuse disorder”

• “Slave labor” with “underpaid.”

Click HERE for the full PDF of desired changes the index wants you to “consider using.”

For example the PDF begins:  The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative

(EHLI) is a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford. EHLI is one of the actions prioritized in the Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Action, which was published by the Stanford CIO Council (CIOC) and December 2020.

People of Color in Technology (POC-IT) ainity group in The goal of the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative is to eliminate* many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased (e.g., disability bias, ethnic bias, ethnic slurs, gender bias, implicit bias, sexual bias) language in Stanford websites and code.

The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use. Language aects dierent people in dierent ways. We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all informal uses of language.

SF Source News Punch Dec 2022