A Campus Mayhem Syllabus The grievance protests spread, and the adults keep rolling over.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-campus-mayhem-syllabus-1448232933?alg=y#livefyre-comment
By now you’ve heard that the insurrections at Yale University and the University of Missouri have spread to campuses from California to New Hampshire. The grievances and student demands for safe spaces vary, but the disease is the same: Faculty and administrators who elevate racial and gender diversity above all other values, including free speech.
The road trip begins at Yale, which erupted a few weeks ago after a faculty member suggested that the administration shouldn’t dictate what is an appropriate Halloween costume. In a better era she’d have won free beer at every party on campus, but this time the resulting ruckus featured a student cursing out a Yale sociologist on a lawn for being “insensitive.”
Last week’s response? “I have never been as simultaneously moved, challenged and encouraged by our community,” Yale President Peter Salovey said in a campus-wide letter. He promised a center exploring “race, ethnicity and other aspects of social identity”; more faculty digging into those topics; more training on spotting racism at what must surely be one of the most racially sensitive places on Earth. Mr. Salovey talked up Yale’s $50 million commitment to diversifying the faculty, and you can bet he doesn’t mean intellectual diversity.
Tumult also rolls on in Missouri, where students ousted the college president over allegations that he didn’t adequately resolve racial incidents on campus. We recently suggested that Mizzou’s quad dwellers, who passed the days threatening enterprising young reporters, try running a sprawling public university. No philosopher king has emerged.
The Missouri system’s governing board invited student feedback at a Friday meeting, which proved thankless: Students complained that the get-together brushed too closely with a holiday break for that culturally shameful event known as Thanksgiving. “You should have had this meeting a long time ago,” one participant intoned before ticking off demands.
An estimated 100 campuses have joined the fun, all alleging systematic racial injustice, and one low point was Dartmouth College, where protesters stormed the library and spewed profanities at students as racial oppressors because they preferred to study. The college issued a statement saying Dartmouth is “following up on any complaints related to the protest and will continue to do so.” President Phil Hanlon should expel the rampagers for violating the college’s code of conduct, replacing them with some of the thousands of rejected applicants who might appreciate the purpose of college.
But most redolent of our times is Princeton University. Last week students invaded the president’s office insisting that the school expunge references to Woodrow Wilson because he was a racist who supported segregation. Wilson was Princeton’s president before he ascended to the White House.
Current President Christopher Eisgruber agreed to kick off discussions about Wilson’s legacy, among other concessions. Colleges used to take pride in the accomplishments of their alumni, but now students want to rewrite American history if it doesn’t suit contemporary political mores. Then again, given the politicized way American history is taught these days, maybe it’s best to drop it as a discipline. Mr. Eisgruber should be embarrassed for conceding that hijacking campus buildings is a way to get what you want.
The examples are endless, with an especially dishonorable mention to Smith College: Students there barred journalists from covering protests if they didn’t agree to supply favorable coverage because “by taking a neutral stance, journalists and media are being complacent in our fight,” as an organizer put it to a Massachusetts news outlet.
The capitulating college presidents all insist that they are committed to protecting “the free and open exchange of ideas,” to borrow a phrase from Yale’s Mr. Salovey. Perhaps he should reread Orwell.
The protesters and their friends in the press are saying that concerns about free speech are “silencing tactics” intended to distract from racial grievances. But it’s thanks to a society that guarantees free expression that anyone can air grievances at all. There are few better “silencing tactics” than a roving mob.
The post-1960s progressives who run universities today celebrated free speech in their salad days, so why don’t they now? Perhaps because holding up the First Amendment is an admission that Western civilization, which produced the luxury of university life, is worth defending.
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