Campus crybabies, cowards abound

                           

Campus crybabies, cowards abound

By LeRoy Goldman

Columnist
BlueRidgeNow

Published: Sunday, July 17, 2016 

I am old enough to remember when the opportunity to attend college was seen as the best and surest pathway for an individual to mature, learn and live a fuller life. But now political correctness has cast an ominous shadow over all that. 

Political correctness, as it is being practiced on university campuses all across America, is stifling freedom of expression through intimidation. It is the antithesis of what Thomas Jefferson said upon the founding of the University of Virginia in 1819: “This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead.”

Understanding the expanding assault on college life and teaching requires familiarity with three concepts that are not household terms: safe space, trigger warning and microaggression.

A safe space in educational institutions means the institution, its professors or its students will not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech. Trigger warnings explicitly state that the content of a text, video, course syllabus or lecture may upset or offend some people. Microaggressions are words that could be deemed violent, such as asking a Latino person, “Where were you born?”

The coercive use of these concepts on campus is not benign. It’s malignant.

In fact, the expanding assault on academic freedom and free speech, led by hysterical students and legions of university diversity police, is powerfully assisted by the federal government through its regulations that implement Title IX of the 1972 Education Act amendments. This assault on free speech by an unholy alliance of college-age crybabies, university diversity bureaucrats and federal regulators strikes at the heart of every university’s raison d’être.

Even worse is the silence of those who could most effectively combat this menace — the university’s faculty members. Their all-too-convenient silence makes them cowards and accomplices in this madness that will not stop until it turns academic freedom into higher education’s passion play.

Here’s a sampler of what university life has become. In The Washington Post several months ago, columnist George Will described how Colorado State University punished the alleged rapist of a woman who said she was not raped. The individuals in question had consensual sexual intercourse. The following day, a classmate of the woman in question noticed a hickey on her neck. She reported an alleged assault to school officials.

Based on inaccurate hearsay evidence, Colorado State University suspended the male who had been falsely accused.

Catherine Rampell, in a column in the Washington Post last March, described how two members of Bowdoin College’s student government will face impeachment proceedings because they attended a party where some attendees wore tiny sombreros. Students and administrators at Bowdoin “went ballistic” and an investigation into ethnic stereotyping was begun. Those who attended the party were reprimanded or placed on social probation.

In a column in The Washington Post in May, Charles Lane reported how Harvard University, in response to gender inequity, is transforming campus culture. Harvard has decided to sanction organizations that only admit men or women. Starting this fall, Harvard will prohibit members of single-gender organizations from holding “leadership positions” in any university-recognized undergraduate organization. In addition, Harvard also will prohibit such people from applying for Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.

In The Washington Post last fall, columnist Kathleen Parker wrote that, based on a survey of 1,100 colleges and universities, only 18 percent require American history or government, where an understanding of free speech and the First Amendment would be taught.

Earlier this month, professor Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches at NYU, stated that most efforts at the diversity challenge faced by universities have been a failure. Unbelievably, he said, “There’s no strong evidence that these costly efforts have changed anything.”

Thus, he proposes a radical fix. He wants universities to stop allowing freshmen to choose their own roommate. Instead, he wants universities to “generate multicultural roommate pairings.” Call it the next logical step for the diversity empire’s stormtroopers!

Professor Charles Lipson of the University of Chicago has spoken powerfully against this spreading menace in a column for Real Clear Politics last month. He has proposed steps that universities should undertake to protect campus free speech. Failing that he argues, “they will fail in their basic mission of promoting the exchange of ideas, real learning and innovative research.”

He’s right. But until he’s joined by his professorial colleagues, he is a voice in the academic wilderness.

The parents of the crybabies would be better served by diverting their daughter’s/son’s tuition payments to a psychotherapist for services rendered to their enfant terrible. No apologies here to those who just perceived a microaggression.

And the spineless professors should be required to write and rewrite Thomas Jefferson’s UVA mission statement on their whiteboards until they can demonstrate they comprehend its meaning.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:  

EmailMe