"The purpose of writing about their missteps now is not to condemn these students,"
writes Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.
Their young lives are tremendously impressive by any reasonable measure. They are unfortunate to live in an era in which the normal mistakes of youth are unusually visible. To keep the focus where it belongs I won’t be naming any of them here.
The focus belongs on the flawed ideas that they’ve absorbed....
It's a longish article, describing the uproar at Yale, but it does not develop the idea I am most interested in: how university faculty
taught the very
ideas that the students are now throwing back in their faces.
The Yale student appears to believe that creating an intellectual space and a home are at odds with one another. But the entire model of a residential college is premised on the notion that it’s worthwhile for students to reside in a campus home infused with intellectualism, even though creating it requires lavishing extraordinary resources on youngsters who are already among the world’s most advantaged....
But for many decades, in the intellectual space of the American university, it's been presented as deeply intellectual to think in the very terms that the students have processed into activism.
Posts
107 comments:
I dont think we need to worry about these city people taking our guns away.
I quoted this yesterday, and I'll repeat it here (from the link):
Here’s one of the ways that white men at Yale are most privileged of all: When a white male student at an elite college says that he feels disempowered, the first impulse of the campus left is to show him the extent of his power and privilege. When any other students say they feel disempowered, the campus left’s impulse is to validate their statements. This does a huge disservice to everyone except white male students. It’s baffling that so few campus activists seem to realize this drawback of emphasizing victim status even if college administrators sometimes treat it as currency.
People don't respect minorities enough to tell them when they are wrong. They don't respect them enough to question their motives. They are too afraid to look racist/sexist/xenophobic, so they won't tell them. It does them no favors.
"Their young lives are tremendously impressive by any reasonable measure."
Start with dubious premise. Proceed.
I am Laslo.
I was telling my husband, a lifelong Democrat, about the dustup at Yale. He had heard about it, but he assumed the Yale students were upset because an authority figure had tried to tell them what to wear for Hallowe'en. He could not believe it was that students wanted *more* rules about what the (adults!) could wear.
When we were in college, any administration notification about how to dress for Halloween would have been discarded without being read. That was the real liberalism. Try it, Yale Students. You will like that kind of Freedom.
This began at Columbia in the 60s when the administration, for the first time in US colleges, capitulated to student rioting and occupation of the university president's office.
An important aspect of the 1968 Columbia University protests was the manner in which activists were separated along racial lines. The morning after the initial takeover of Hamilton Hall, the 60 African American students involved with the protest asked the predominantly white SDS students to leave. The SAS decision to separate themselves from SDS came as a total surprise to the latter group's members. SAS wanted autonomy in what they were doing at that point in the protest, because their goals and methods diverged in significant ways from SDS. [3]While both the SAS and the SDS shared the goal of preventing the construction of the new gymnasium, the two groups held different agendas. The overarching goal of the SDS extended beyond the single issue of halting the construction of the gym. SDS wanted to mobilize the student population of Columbia to confront the University's support of the war, while the SAS was primarily interested in stopping the University's encroachment of Harlem, through the construction of the gym. It was of great importance to SAS that there was no destruction of files and personal property in faculty and administrative offices in Hamilton Hall, which would have reenforced negative stereotypes of black protesters destroying property then popular in the media. Having sole occupancy of Hamilton Hall thus allowed SAS to avoid any potential conflict with SDS about destruction of university property, as well as with other issues. Thus, the members of the SAS requested that the white radicals begin their own, separate protest so that the black students could put all of its focus into preventing the university from building the gym
As is usual in interactions between blacks and white leftists, the blacks lost.
The protests achieved two of their stated goals. Columbia disaffiliated from the IDA (Institute for Defense Analysis) and scrapped the plans for the controversial gym, building a subterranean physical fitness center under the north end of campus instead. A popular myth states that the gym's plans were eventually used by Princeton University for the expansion of its athletic facilities, but as Jadwin Gymnasium was already 50% complete by 1966 (when the Columbia gym was announced) this was clearly not correct.
creating an intellectual space and a home
Let them have Potemkin villages.
Heavens to Betsy! Our host has now internalized the idea that what goes around comes around. One might observe that the maxim too soon old too late smart may apply here.
I think, though, back in those days, it was still permissible to throw a punch at those who were in-your-face offensive with the costumes, the parties, and closed door rules.
You didn't need to throw any punches. You could just think, "What an ass". This was actually back when being offended was not a life-traumatizing emotion. It was something you just handled.
Somewhere along the line, being offended has become a horrible crime.
Christakis invited her students to be "a little bit obnoxious". They obliged.
Kids are supposed to be stupid. Their time at the university represents the first time in their lives that they have lived in their own, away from their parents. Put those two together and you have a hotbed of danger and craziness of all stripes.
Part of the role of the university is to temper their enthusiasms, mold them into functioning adults ready to live on their own. The universities have failed utterly in their duty to the students, the parents, and to society.
the idea I am most interested in: how university faculty taught the very ideas that the students are now throwing back in their faces.
It's satisfying to see this. But how it happened is less interesting than what the creators and abettors are going to do about it. Or that would be interesting if we didn't all know the answer is "nothing".
They're simply going to hope this damages their enemies more than themselves. And since underlying their radicalism these activists are fellow leftists there's no reason to conclude this is unlikely. The military terms these blue on blue attacks and understands a certain number of friendly fire casualties is inevitable but doesn't threaten the mission. Same thing.
I was reading some of the student comments at one of the Yale papers and most of them were sensible and mirrored the comments here and in the Atlantic article, but those Yale students were allowed to use pseudonyms. I am sure that when a level-headed student at Yale speaks out he/she is subjected to victim-bullying and harassed the same way Jerelyn Luther went after the professor (and maybe much more likely to become the subject of some bogus harassment charge). Why take the heat; better to tow the line. The reason Jerelyn Luther is the way she is probably due to the sjw/marxist classes that she presumably focuses on -- taught by professors who are not much different ideologically than Bill Ayers, ideologues who would happily maim and kill their enemies if they could do it anonymously and get away with it because the end always justifies the means.
Those SJWs who allow themselves to be quoted by name are providing a real service to future prospective employers. When the employer does a search on the applicant and these kinds of articles turn up, they can easily send that application to the big bit bucket. No sane employer will willingly bring that kind of toxic person into his company.
Why did Obama tweet approval for what is going on at Missouri?
Does anyone differentiate between government censorship and private standards anymore? When we treat private institutions like governmental entities, I think we give them more power than they actually have.
I blame the school authorities, but not for putting "ideas" in the students' heads--even bad ideas are worth tossing around and ultimately it is up to the learner to determine what to get out of it.
I do blame the school authorities for cowing to this behavior. Bratty students want everyone to coddle them and save them from scary opinions or offensive speech? Of course some people will be that way. And the response from the school should be "tough titties, this is a place for learning and training. You can close your eyes and ears to it, and waste your educational opportunity, and it will reflect on you. Disrupt anything or violate the school rules, you get punished."
But when university presidents are forced out, when school funds have to get spent on creating "safe spaces", when "offensive" speakers are kept off campus--that's on the school. Giving in to this modern Maoism undercuts everything schools should be about.
Why did Obama tweet approval for what is going on at Missouri?
Because he has no true respect for a document of "negative rights"?
"Those SJWs who allow themselves to be quoted by name are providing a real service to future prospective employers. When the employer does a search on the applicant and these kinds of articles turn up, they can easily send that application to the big bit bucket."
These students have no interest whatsoever in working in the private sector. They want to work for the government — and this only burnishes their resumes.
I heard a term earlier today referring to these kids as "Crybullies."
Seems about right.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
The Daily Caller outed the shrieking student. Not sure that is appropriate. Should there be a safe place where what happens on campus stays on campus?
They want to work for the government — and this only burnishes their resumes.
This, of course, assumes a Hillary administration to hire them.
campy said...
These students have no interest whatsoever in working in the private sector. They want to work for the government — and this only burnishes their resumes.
Exactly right, if you add NGOs.
I was telling my husband, a lifelong Democrat, about the dustup at Yale. He had heard about it, but he assumed the Yale students were upset because an authority figure had tried to tell them what to wear for Hallowe'en. He could not believe it was that students wanted *more* rules about what the (adults!) could wear.
I notice that the protestors ignored her comment that they seem quite unconcerned about Christian students discomfort with sexually revealing costumes. So, they want SOME people to "get over" their victimhood.
Just not themselves.
Yale and Missouri show that higher education needs to be destroyed. Either purge the faculty or simply make it all online and use the land for universities for more useful purposes, like parking lots.
Conservatives are the ONLY ones who can possibly save colleges from themselves. But why should we? Better to let them show how foolish it is to shovel money their way.
Those SJWs who allow themselves to be quoted by name are providing a real service to future prospective employers. When the employer does a search on the applicant and these kinds of articles turn up, they can easily send that application to the big bit bucket. No sane employer will willingly bring that kind of toxic person into his company.
They won't go to a company.
They will stay in college. Or join a non-profit. Or enter the bureaucracy.
So we need to remove all tax benefits of non-profits and put strict term limits on government employment at all levels.
Why did Obama tweet approval for what is going on at Missouri?
It what he has always wanted. Community organizer gotta organize.
To quote Jon Gabriel: The best part of the Obama administration is all of the racial healing.
White liberals, voting for an incredibly unqualified black dude to assuage your guilt worked out poorly.
But when university presidents are forced out, when school funds have to get spent on creating "safe spaces", when "offensive" speakers are kept off campus--that's on the school. Giving in to this modern Maoism undercuts everything schools should be about.
It also shows how much of a lie it is for the Demcorats to claim that these kids have no power. Somebody SHOULD ask the Dems their opinion on these incidents.
Of course, nobody WILL...
Michael K said...
This, of course, assumes a Hillary administration to hire them.
Government bureaucracy is largely independent of which politicians sit on top of it. Lois Lerner didn't attack the Tea Party because some politician told her to. She attacked them because she's a left winger and to her the Tea Party is wrong.
"This, of course, assumes a Hillary administration to hire them."
Safe as betting on the sunrise.
tim maguire said...
Part of the role of the university is to temper their enthusiasms, mold them into functioning adults ready to live on their own. The universities have failed utterly in their duty to the students, the parents, and to society.
I disagree. The vast majority of college students are adults, or very soon to be adults when they arrive on campus. If they are not functional that is the fault of parents and society. Sure, the university should try to redirect them if they stray, and should certainly not be encouraging bad behavior. But the university should be focused on education, not remedial parenting.
> Their young lives are tremendously impressive by any reasonable measure.
Is asking that a Yale student show good sense, competence, and maturity unreasonable?
Give the customers what they want.
"The Daily Caller outed the shrieking student. Not sure that is appropriate. Should there be a safe place where what happens on campus stays on campus?"
Maybe, if we were certain they would leave that behavior on campus when they entered society.
"I heard a term earlier today referring to these kids as 'Crybullies.'"
Perfect description.
Friedersdorf should have had a little more courage and called these kids out by name. They are monsters causing damage. Do not protect them.
"She attacked them because she's a left winger and to her the Tea Party is wrong."
Yes, that is part of it but Republicans, whether they mean it or not, have been talking about reducing the size of government and that is attacking her rice bowl.
If Hillary gets in, the bureaucrats are safe.
"For many decades, in the intellectual space of the American university, it's been presented as deeply intellectual to think in the very terms that the students have processed into activism."
Yes, the students have absorbed bad ideas from American academics. I'm not sure, though, those terms have been "presented as deeply intellectual." The academic SJW cares about power and "justice," being 'deeply intellectual" smacks of white privilege.
Nicholas Christakis, in particular, did not contribute to those "terms." He's a real scholar.
Martha said...
The Daily Caller outed the shrieking student. Not sure that is appropriate. Should there be a safe place where what happens on campus stays on campus?
"Outed" - she made an idiot of herself in public and caused a nationwide story. SJW actions have consequences and the twits who behave like this deserve to be identified. If she were 15 I might feel differently, but she is an adult. Same with Melissa Click at Missouri. These SJW twits are just reaping the Alinsky whirlwind. Pass the popcorn.
This is the end result of generations of progressive philosophies (such as Critical Theory) in academia. They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind. And by the sounds of things, there's plenty of whirlwinds to be reaped here.
Outed? She's an adult, no? Was Nicholas Christakis "outed"? How about his wife?
When did we start getting the idea that women on college campuses who make a fuss can't have their names written in the press?
Nonapod (whirlwind) - GMTA
There's been a lot of words lately about how we're on the brink of another 1968. I don't think much has changed since I was in college in the 1980s. We had hey-hey-ho-hos around then. Most of us ignored them. Mizzou has more than 35,000 students. How many were in that little grass yard? 500?
But thinks are different now, because we have just what the Missouri people were trying to avoid: still photos and video everywhere, all the time.
There have been leftist/Marxist lunatics for a hundred years. They used to hide their true beliefs and shift from issue to issue, but they never go away.
But now we've got them on tape, and Fox News makes a big deal about it, as do journals and blogs. Turn on the light, and the cockroaches scatter. They'll find other holes.
This might be a brief storm of leftist mania.
"This might be a brief storm of leftist mania."
Peak leftism. This stuff is fun when you or your parents have a job. Otherwise....
Michael K, well, yes, it can go very far and very bad before correction. But history happens faster these days than decades ago.
In the education bubbles, Glenn Reynolds is correct: parents and students are simply going to opt out. Why spend $40-60k/year for a stupid exercise in futility? Japan went through that a few decades ago, and look where it landed them.
Then again, if government funds for higher education keep going the way they are, we might end up with a permanent underclass of leftist, stupid, angry, "emo" graduates of traditional colleges.
NY Mag: Can we take political correctness seriously now?
By Johnathan Chait:
Even if it were the case that political correctness was totally confined to campuses, it would not make the phenomenon unimportant. Colleges have disproportionate influence over intellectual life, and political movements centered on campuses can spread well beyond them (anti-Vietnam began as a bunch of wacky kids, too). But to imagine p.c. as simply a thing college kids do relieves us of taking it seriously as a coherent set of beliefs, which it very much is. Political correctness is a system of thought that denies the legitimacy of political pluralism on issues of race and gender. It manifests itself most prominently in campus settings not because it’s a passing phase, like acne, but because the academy is one of the few bastions of American life where the p.c. left can muster the strength to impose its political hegemony upon others. The phenomenon also exists in other nonacademic left-wing communities, many of them virtual ones centered on social media, and its defenders include professional left-wing intellectuals.
The upsurge of political correctness is not just greasy-kid stuff, and it’s not just a bunch of weird, unfortunate events that somehow keep happening over and over. It’s the expression of a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism. The reason every Marxist government in the history of the world turned massively repressive is not because they all had the misfortune of being hijacked by murderous thugs. It’s that the ideology itself prioritizes class justice over individual rights and makes no allowance for legitimate disagreement. (For those inclined to defend p.c. on the grounds that racism and sexism are important, bear in mind that the forms of repression Marxist government set out to eradicate were hardly imaginary.)
American political correctness has obviously never perpetrated the brutality of a communist government, but it has also never acquired the powers that come with full control of the machinery of the state. The continuous stream of small-scale outrages it generates is a testament to an illiberalism that runs deep down to its core (a character I tried to explain in my January essay).
Bob Ellison -- great points. The scenes at Missouri where the SJWs were trying to stop the filming were not something I had seen before. Notice how the cockroaches who get caught in the light at Yale and at MO go quickly underground and shut off or delete their social network presences, as though the internet might somehow forget about them.
"This is the end result of generations of progressive philosophies (such as Critical Theory) in academia."
If given the opportunity, would Virgil Hilts and Nonapod go back in time to kill cute little baby Immanuel Kant in his crib?
Hell yeah, you gotta step up, man.
They act like a bunch of spoiled rotten 3 year olds, but the 3 year olds grow up to act civilized.
I would never strangle little Immanuel (though a lot of Marxists would if they thought it would serve their ends).
I admit that I would probably be able to smother baby Hitler with a pillow.
Let's keep in mind that Jerelyn Luther tried to get two nice, mild-mannered, kind-hearted teachers fired from their jobs.
Chait makes some excellent points but I still think (the triumph of hope over experience maybe) that this is a leftist perfect storm that will pass over time. Sure, it'll leave some damage as it passes but it will pass. I can't see it emerging much outside of the university setting where it can flourish and be sustained.
Still, the illiberalism behind it is a challenge to liberals: that being whether you will choose the "no enemies on the left" path or the "this is not what we can allow" path.
If they choose the no enemies path then the storm may last longer and be more destructive than it has been.
That won't be good for liberals and the country.
Affirmative action, gender/ethnic studies, privileging victim emotion over rational analysis: hard to sympathize with this Master and his wife when they seem so obviously the types who made a career of pandering to this culture.* To quote an influential thinker: "chickens comin' home to roost!"
*The Screaming Lutheran's role in the committee selecting the College Master is particularly revealing, and more than justifies naming her.
The solution is simple -- even if your high school kid is brilliant, send him to University of Alabama or University of Georgia, or any SEC school (except for those interlopers at University of Missouri), have him enjoy the football season, drink beer, not get too worked up over the GPA, make some friends, and date pretty girls. All will work out:)
Jerelyn Luther should take some time off from her Halloween-costume protests and read Homer's Iliad, which is about the consequences of the rage of Achilles. She has the same problem -- self-destructive rage -- that Achilles had.
I suppose that Yale does not teach Homer any more.
If the best college my grandchildren could get into was Yale, I'd urge them to go the second-best college.
Handy guide:
When you hear SWJ = Instant mute
The only aspect of this protest worth noting is that intellectuals generally have less value than football players per word and play, respectively.
LOL - its fun seeing the Stalinists attack the Leninists.
This kind of crap got the republican Nixon elected. The left should double down till november, please keep talking.
"When you hear SWJ = Instant mute"
SJW.
Fixed it for ya!
Shows who the real fascists are.
"send him to University of Alabama or University of Georgia, or any SEC school"
I was pretty unhappy with U of Arizona when my daughter was there, mostly about General Ed courses and once she got into her major they pretty much went away.
A friend of mine has three boys at U of A. One graduated in Civil Engineering last May and is now a Marine officer. The second is a Petroleum Engineering senior (at my suggestion a couple of years ago) and the youngest is a freshman and probably taking some of the same stupid General Ed classes my daughter had to take. I don't know his major.
Arizona is good in Medicine and Nursing and probably Engineering. Pick the major and then the school. I have a Dartmouth graduate degree and liked the school but you have to like cold weather. I don't think it is half the school it was before it went coed.
I certainly would not pay to send a kid to Yale. New Haven is a crappy town. Harvard would be OK> I like Boston but not the money's worth. If you live in New York and want the kid to go into hedge fund management then Harvard is probably the best.
Not for the education. Just for the contacts.
Why are they this way? Because the universities are operating under an older model and all the modern day liberals are cultural Marxists. And they don't find freedom of speech to be of paramount importance. This is why EVERY SINGLE GROUP on the left is asserting the exact same principle. They are victims. They need to be prevented from being offended.
This was also the reasoning behind the SC allowing for gay marriage AND the push for gay marriage was argued on the same principle. Can't offend the gays. If you think differently you should be hounded out of your job.
Considering this was the tactic used for all major issues ,why are you surprised that liberals on college campuses might think those tactics are the way to affect change.
Reddit parodies of Social Justice Warriors?
Someone needs to remind Obersdorf that all successful stereotypes and parodies are deeply based in reality; ones that are pure fantasy remain mired only in the minds of the subgroup that uses them as a mythical Other.
It only takes a few minutes looking at a subset of Tumblr accounts to find any number of people who either really do think that way or are spending an unaccountable amount of time and effort being very good simulacra of it.
Yes, they get parodied and amplified.
No, they're not just something the Other Side made up to delegitimize Good People Caring About Important Stuff.
(And I say very good in that they also have perfectly anodyne posts and irrelevancies, in a way almost all "parody accounts" completely fail to; it's too much work to fake that.
Occam's Razor suggests they're real, in other words, given what we know about the variety of things that people demonstrably will seriously believe.)
In your position as master,” one student says, “it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students who live in Silliman. You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?!”
“No,” he said, “I don’t agree with that.”
The student explodes, “Then why the fuck did you accept the position?! Who the fuck hired you?! You should step down!
Chait would like us all to believe that it's only the nutzo PC left that behaves like this. Not so. The other day on the FB forum for the alumni of my college, I had the temerity to not per se defend the actions of Kim Davis, but to point out to the other participants that the history of modern liberalism has always privileged individuals who make moral stands against what they see as unjust laws (e.g. Thoreau & his moral majority of one, Rosa Parks, the Berrigan brothers). You set the rules of the moral game. Kim Davis is just applying them.
The most amazing shit came back in response. Them: "She needs to leave her religion at home & not bring it to her job!". Me: "So, you're saying that bureaucrats should just enforce the law without any conscience?" "It's the law! If she doesn't agree, she should resign!". Me: "Then, should the city councils of sanctuary cities resign because they disagree with federal immigration law?"
It soon became clear that my interlocutors had simply never discussed these issues with anyone outside of their own ideological bias. They were just stunned that someone would disagree.
Chait just doesn't want to see how badly intolerance has infected run-of-the-mill liberalism. That may because Jonathan "I hate, really hate, President Bush" Chait is part of the problem.
Mike Sylwester said...
Let's keep in mind that Jerelyn Luther tried to get two nice, mild-mannered, kind-hearted teachers fired from their jobs.
This a feature or a bug?
The comments to Chait's piece were depressing. Constant comments about right-wingers trying to stifle dissent with little evidence to bolster it.
Bernie Sanders was politely received at Liberty University.
Would a single Progressive school let a far-right wing person speak without massive protests and attempted disruptions? We all know the answer, given that they have silenced/tried to silence: Jonah Goldberg, Ann Coulter, Christina Hoff Somers, Milo Yiannapoulos, etc.
When you hear SWJ = Instant mute
Ditto "privilege", eh?
"I was telling my husband, a lifelong Democrat, about the dustup at Yale. He had heard about it, but he assumed the Yale students were upset because an authority figure had tried to tell them what to wear for Hallowe'en. He could not believe it was that students wanted *more* rules about what the (adults!) could wear."
Check out this video on "cultural appropriation" on Halloween:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uveb8-L3YHY
First the blacks weigh in and say you can't do black face, or dress like gangstas, then the pacific islanders weigh in, and say they have problems with people wearing skirts, and hawain style shirts, then the white guy weighs in for the crazy and/or disabled interst group. and you can't do anything with crazy or disabled, as that is "appropriative of disability culture".
Disability culture? There's a culture? That's like a nationality now? What's off limits? Prentednign to be a mental patient, or blind or deaf.
THen the gays come forward and have a problem with drag. Drag is an artform deeply woven in the history of the queer community, you see. So you can't have any drag costumes as that is offensive to queer community. (though I do wonder why, if this is so transgederism woudlnt' be appropriation of cis culture and biology, and so deeply offensive to those identifying as cis. But I digress).
Then Hispanics come forward, then the Asian guy. BUT NO WHITE GROUP IS REPRESENTED (unless you include the white crazy cripple guy). SO I GUESS YOU CAN APPROPRIATE WHITE CULTURE, or dress like stereotypical white guys. I do notice that the Asian guy is dressed like an American in a Northern Face Jacket. Nothing wrong there right? But that's appropriation! He should only be wearing traditional Asian garb. He better not appear in costume as anything other than an Asian.
Anyway, its truly a sight to behold. And really highlights the political correctness gripping the kids in colleges today. why are they like this? Because of identity politics. That's literally what they are espousing and their identity has turned them into an other who is a victim. They are practically arguing for balkanization of groups.
It's a nice sober article by Chait (thanks MayBee!), who normally is a wild-eyed, unrepentant Leftist.
As a liberal white male, though, Chait should sub-title it,"Oh, Sh%@, they might be coming for me next!"
As I highlight in the video, that appears to be the norm for many college students, especially ones in minority groups. If the students at Yale come across like reddit parodies of social justice warriors, rather than coherent activists, maybe the parody is actually how social justice warriors portray themselves.
They don't appear to think they are parodies, they seem very earnest in expressing their views on cultural appropriation.
Its not a parody. That is the face of social justice warriors, Conor. And so, condemn them.
We'd condemn that Nazi Youth if they were overtaking a college campus. So why not totalitarians?
I have to wonder: given that these kids are borderline insane and developmentally not above toddlers --- should ANY of them be allowed to have sex?
"THen the gays come forward and have a problem with drag. Drag is an artform deeply woven in the history of the queer community, you see. So you can't have any drag costumes as that is offensive to queer community. (though I do wonder why, if this is so transgederism woudlnt' be appropriation of cis culture and biology, and so deeply offensive to those identifying as cis. But I digress)."
Also, forgot to mention, isn't drag in and of itself a cultural appropriation of women? They dress up like stereotypical women and sing like Liza Minelli. They are in fact men.
So appropriation of the cultural appropriation is wrong, but the initial appropriation is ok? huh?!?
"We'd condemn that Nazi Youth if they were overtaking a college campus. So why not totalitarians?" Especially given their same penchant for anti-semitism and drawing swastikas.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/university-of-missouri-police-ask-students-to-report-hurtful-speech/
Fascism is a phenomenon of the Left (plus all Theocracy). Always has been. Only the willfully blind do not acknowledge this simple truth.
Yale ignores the obvious solution to this controversy, recently pioneered by Mizzou - let the "men of color" on the football team decide.
What's funny (at least to me) is that these college nimrods actually make the Hippie-college protesters from the 1960s and 1970s look good!
Then, there were some major issues -- VietNam War, Civil Rights.
Then, some of the students knew that college was the only thing saving them from the Draft, and potential service and (death) in Vietnam. They had some real skin in the game.
Then, women's rights and gay rights were not even existent. Women got married, gays were still criminals in most states.
Now? "Your Halloween costume hurt my feelings" or "somebody in a truck said something mean!"
It's pretty pathetic.
Read this article last night. Fantastic. The Atlantic should get a lot of credit for holding academia accountable for what's happening now. "The Coddling of the American Mind" started the process.
My grandfather's generation fought WWII.
My father's generation fought in Vietnam.
People slightly older than these students fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These students feel unsafe when other express things the students don't like. They are traumatized by someone shouting an insult at them. They can't function if an official doesn't mirror their own opinions strongly enough.
What will their kids be like?
How about this?
When you hear 'garage mahal' - instant mute!
Their young lives are tremendously impressive by any reasonable measure.
Not really. They're terribly posh young things at a terribly posh old school engaging in the modern equivalent of throwing breadrolls at the help.
They are unfortunate to live in an era in which the normal mistakes of youth are unusually visible.
These aren't really the "normal mistakes of youth." Like stealing policemen's helmets or abusing the valet, these are the sorts of "mistakes" privileged young people make. Normal youthful indiscretions are things like getting inappropriately drunk or maybe a bit of fornication.
That said, they are at a disadvantage in that in the future evidence of their little tantrum will be open for anyone to pull up on Google -- people used to have to fish around for evidence of shabby behavior rather than having it up on Youtube for all to see.
Re: Martha:
The Daily Caller outed the shrieking student. Not sure that is appropriate. Should there be a safe place where what happens on campus stays on campus?
No . . . but (if I am thinking of the same article) I did think that bringing her mother's business into it and looking up her family home was not appropriate.
"It's a longish article, describing the uproar at Yale, but it does not develop the idea I am most interested in: how university faculty taught the very ideas that the students are now throwing back in their faces."
Throwing back, indeed. Back in the day (I'm sure Althouse will remember the day), Herbert Marcuse was all the rage. I remember when he came to Yale in 1969 or so, and filled the largest hall to overflowing for a lecture on his philosophy. For those of more tender years, he was famous for essays such as "Repressive Tolerance" and "An Essay on Liberation," which argued that right-wing speech should be repressed whenever it marginalized the powerless (pretty much all the time, in his telling), while left-wing speech should be tolerated, even when it urged violence, because it did the opposite. Hard to believe how seriously all of that was taken in the late 1960s, but it was. I doubt whether his writings still figure in the curriculum of today's social justice warriors -- among other reasons, he wrote in a dense, Heideggerian prose that was really tiresome to plow through. Tender snowflakes don't do that kind of stuff.
None of this is really new. What's different is that, 50 years ago, the protests were about a war no one wanted to get drafted into, the Kennedy-King assassinations and Kent State shootings that got everyone's attention, and a civil rights movement that hadn't yet devolved into self parody. That's a long way from the possibility that someone, somewhere might put on an offensive Halloween costume, and not be officially reprimanded for it.
The Daily Caller outed the shrieking student. Not sure that is appropriate. Should there be a safe place where what happens on campus stays on campus?
It was a public protest. You don't get to pick and choose what parts you want publicized. You cannot "out" somebody who is there willingly and participating enthusiastically.
There is safe place where what happens on campus stays on campus. It's called your dorm. Otherwise, you're in a public space.
Chait is a wild-eyed unrepentant leftist? That is the funniest thing I've heard all week.
"processed into activism". I love that phrase.
Diamondhead said...
"The Daily Caller outed the shrieking student. Not sure that is appropriate. Should there be a safe place where what happens on campus stays on campus?"
Maybe, if we were certain they would leave that behavior on campus when they entered society.
One wonders if Diamonhead's seen Inglorious Basterds...
If given the opportunity, would Virgil Hilts and Nonapod go back in time to kill cute little baby Immanuel Kant in his crib?
That was a Star Trek episode, right?
My father was a lovely man. He had a contrary streak a mile wide, and he loved to discuss current events at the dinner table. He was willing to argue either side of a question. He never took the fact that you disagreed with him personally, but you had better come prepared to back up your opinions with reasons, if not facts. It was great training for thinking through questions. That was what home was like in our house. Full marks to both of the Professor Christakises for fostering full and open discussion at their residential college.
It's satisfying to mock the student-morons on today's college campuses, but you should be very clear-eyed in doing so. By that I mean: don't underestimate the enemy. It's satisfying to think that they'll get their comeuppance when they go out into the real world, but ... what if they end up taking control of the real world? Remember what Orwell said in 1984 about the sort of people who served Oceania's various agencies and organs? They were all gray, unattractive creatures, banal and dull--the cogs that turned totalitarianism's wheel. Don't be fooled by the appearance and nutty behavior of such people. Beware their power. Act accordingly.
The Daily Caller not only revealed the name of,the shrieking student but also the address of her house in ritzy Fairfield, Connecticut, the price of the house, the name of her mother and the company where her mother works. In the comments, the shrieking student's absent and decoupled father's name is revealed ( Mubando) and his location (Zimbabwe).
The Daily Caller does report the significant fact that the shrieking student who screamed WHO THE FUCK HIRED YOU was herself on the search committee that selected the Christakis duo to serve as Silliman College Masters.
"was herself on the search committee "
I thought that was a nice touch.
"That's a long way from the possibility that someone, somewhere might put on an offensive Halloween costume, and not be officially reprimanded for it."
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
Karl Marx
Then of course Mark Twain said, “History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
Young people are always looking for causes. There are plenty of causes around to attach to. Most of the important ones require work, sacrifice and risk. Many causes in vogue on elite college campuses require little of this. It's activism on the cheap of a particularly selfish form. It's another element of the extended (sometimes permeant) adolescence we have created in our society.
garage mahal said...
Chait is a wild-eyed unrepentant leftist? That is the funniest thing I've heard all week.
It's nice to be able to agree with you wholeheartedly, Garage.
Allright, allright, I'm sorry for calling Chait a "wild-eyed unrepentant leftist."
I hereby retract that comment.
Chait is more of a whining, lefty, pseudo-journalistic Beta-Male.
How's that?
Althouse is quite right that this is a massive case of chickens coming home to roost. It is the whole Frankfort School, deconstructionist, Critical Theory mindset in the Academy that has produced the entitled infantilism now on display. As ye sow so shalt ye reap. Those who have spent the past few decades undermining the liberal order are now surprised to find that it cannot protect them.
As usual, Mr. Friesdorf is mistaken. You CANNOT parody SJW's. You cannot exaggerate them too much.
In the third generation, disaste — Chinese proverb
http://www.governmentalwaysfails.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/pajama_boy.jpg
Richard Dolan - Thanks for the Marcuse memories! It's funny how his ideas are now animating the left, and most of the idiots demonstrating don't even know that. My view is, IF we're going to start censoring dangerous and offensive ideas, can we please start with Marxism and all its offshoots, including Marcuse and Critical Race Theory and so on?
My generation protested the Vietnam war and the police shooting students in Ohio. Now it's Halloween costumes
The part I like is that the football team is able to fire a college president. So much money is involved in college football that if a football team says they will boycott a game, then they get their way. Who knew? Apparently it's the case everywhere that the college football coach is better paid than the college president and usually better paid than the governor. But no one thought it through to its implications till the Mizzou guys. Of course being football players I doubt if they see what they have done to U of Missouri academic degrees which they have made a joke.
But I like the idea of the Rose bowl also selecting the presidents of the colleges represented. It just makes those Bowls sort of exciting for those of us who don't know a quarterback from a goal keeper. The pre-game talk would really brighten up. "The players are balloting now on whether to come out. Nicholas Cristakis is pushing a peanut around the field with his nose; Melissa Click is punching out an NBC camera crew; and Ward Churchill has been elected President of Yale. But is it enough? Apparently some players don't want an English guy as President."
I notice that the SJW are not protesting that we are sending troops,into Syria. Anything perpetuated by Obama which they would have had a shit fit if perpetuated by Bush. Is quietly swept under the rug while they instead argue minute and silliness.
Once again, Prof. Althouse attacks the students while exonerating her buddies, the professors. The faculty didn't unwittingly "[teach] the very ideas" the students are expressing: they have aided, abetted, and encouraged the current suppression of expression on college campuses. When left-wing students spit on people who disagree with them, or use violence against newspaper photographers, university professors stand in the same relationship to those students as Southern governors stood to lynch mobs. They want it, they support it, and they get it.
I don't expect a university professor to have the kind of courage to say that kind of thing.
The shrieking brat is from the mean streets of Fairfield Connecticut . Nobody knows the trouble she's seen.
It is a good thing her mother runs her own business- the only way she gets a job.
jr565:
The social justice people did not protest Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Ukraine, Yemen, Pakistan, Mexico, etc., and generally anti-native foreign and domestic policies supported by this administration. They did not protest selective exclusion under the "=" movement, Supreme Court's ruling for selective discrimination, and Obama's celebration of pro-choice doctrine. And they never protest elective abortion of wholly innocent human lives by the millions nor cannibalism by the Planned Parenthood corporation et al. Social justice has become a profitable oxymoron under left-wing direction.
Chait is more of a whining, lefty, pseudo-journalistic Beta-Male.
I've always thought of him as pajamas boy, all grown up.
When we were in college, any administration notification about how to dress for Halloween would have been discarded without being read. That was the real liberalism. Try it, Yale Students. You will like that kind of Freedom.
They don't intent to take anybody's input regarding their own costumes. It's just that they want the power to decide what other people can wear.
Oh, like Rouhani.
Balfegor,
It's completely relevant to bring up "who the fuck hired you" girl's family because it shows a fairly privileged upbringing.
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