Althouse: "They’re snooping and snarking around campuses, pouncing on 'politically correct' utterances and protocols in their effort to de-'liberalize' liberal education..."

September 5, 2016

"They’re snooping and snarking around campuses, pouncing on 'politically correct' utterances and protocols in their effort to de-'liberalize' liberal education..."

"... which they’re claiming to save from 'The New Intolerance of Campus Activism,' as Friedersdorf’s headline writer put it sloppily. (He probably meant to write 'in,' not 'of' — a Freudian slip, perhaps.) But the freedoms of speech that conservative pundits are touting so passionately against 'liberal' totalitarianism on campus mean little if moneyed interests have the megaphones and the scapegoats, while most ordinary citizens have laryngitis from straining to be heard."

Wrote Jim Sleeper in Salon last year, which I'm reading now because Greg Lukianoff pointed it out as an example of "Sleeper’s weird diatribes." Lukianoff is powerfully outraged at Sleeper for an op-ed that appeared in the NYT yesterday.

22 comments:

rhhardin said...: There's a power struggle and an independent free speech struggle.

Even the tea party immediately produced power people who wanted to lead.; 9/5/16, 7:09 AM
Sebastian said...: Some progs are wrong, some malicious, and some just plain crazy.

Where are these hordes and battalions of free speech advocates that have invaded the liberal fortresses?

The snooping and snarking and pouncing on campuses is done by the prog powers that be.

The real moneyed interests on campus are administrators and the endowments and tax subsidies they control (and of course, hovering in the background, the feds and their blackmail do-this-or-else policies).; 9/5/16, 7:23 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: I tried the Salon link but fuck it. Must be that some people find that kind of writing delightful.

Seems to me that Lukianoff has a legitimate beef and that Sleeper is an ass.; 9/5/16, 7:25 AM
Tommy Duncan said...: In the realm of free speech the opposite of "diversity" is "university".; 9/5/16, 7:33 AM
Paul Snively said...: The single good thing about totalitarians like Sleeper is that, ultimately, they always self-identify.

The bad thing is that sometimes they self-identify after gaining real power over other people.; 9/5/16, 7:34 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: From the linked article:

... posted under a headline, ‘Meet the Privileged Yale Student Who Shrieked at Her Professor,’ with photos of her and her parents’ suburban Connecticut home.”

The student's name is Jerelyn Luther.; 9/5/16, 7:34 AM
Jaq said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/5/16, 7:37 AM
Jaq said...: As PB&J recently pointed out, though I can't find his exact quote, so I will put his thoughts into my own language.

The country was better off when losers who would consider voting for Trump had no voice. It was so much better when the great mass of men lived lives of quiet desperation.

These people are just "afraid" and should shut up. After all, we don't let the laboratory rats vote on how the lab should be run, do we? No!; 9/5/16, 7:37 AM
Mick said...: Salon??!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
Seriously? You take anything written there as having any basis in reality?; 9/5/16, 7:47 AM
Virgil Hilts said...: I read Sleeper's piece yesterday and thought its was incoherent. You would expect lecturers at Yale, even if batshit crazy, to at least write well and persuasively. The most-liked comments were interesting. As with the trans bathroom issue, even the liberal readers of the NY Times seem to have some common sense on this issue - they cannot stand the PC movement on college campuses or the screaming campus garbage babies that Sleeper embraces.; 9/5/16, 8:58 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Yeesh. That's some bad Sleeper writing there.

He needs an editor with a chainsaw and a translator.; 9/5/16, 9:23 AM
MikeR said...: Went through (most of) Sleeper's screed last year. Short version: You need to empathize with the situation of black students. And once you do, that frees you from empathizing with anyone else.; 9/5/16, 9:26 AM
rhhardin said...: Hysterical feminist will crack a smile. Via Tim Blair. No doubt viral.; 9/5/16, 9:56 AM
cubanbob said...: Tommy Duncan said...
In the realm of free speech the opposite of "diversity" is "university".

9/5/16, 7:33 AM"

Brilliant.; 9/5/16, 10:04 AM
Big Mike said...: But the freedoms of speech that conservative pundits are touting so passionately against 'liberal' totalitarianism on campus mean little if moneyed interests have the megaphones and the scapegoats, while most ordinary citizens have laryngitis from straining to be heard.

But today the "moneyed interests" with the megaphones are CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc., etc. The "ordinary citizens straining to be heard" are the young men and women FIRE supports.; 9/5/16, 11:20 AM
jg said...: Poor loser, or poor winner? One thing for sure: people fight hardest when they're afraid of losing something.; 9/5/16, 11:29 AM
Joe said...: Big Mike, you forgot George Soros.; 9/5/16, 11:34 AM
Birkel said...: Big Mike wrote "CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc., etc."

That might be rewritten as Time Warner, (Microsoft and Comcast and GE), Carlos Slim and Amazon, etc., etc.; 9/5/16, 11:56 AM
hombre said...: Totalitarian lefty censors were bound to fight back, just as they are compelled to lie and engage in ad hominem attacks to make their case.

It's who they are.; 9/5/16, 12:18 PM
pst314 said...: Mick 7:47am "Salon??...Seriously? You take anything written there as having any basis in reality?"
They are garbage, but they have influence, so it's best to take them seriously. What would you have us do? Ignore them? Leave their lies unchallenged?; 9/5/16, 3:33 PM
wildswan said...: "Tim said:
The country was better off when losers who would consider voting for Trump had no voice. It was so much better when the great mass of men lived lives of quiet desperation.

These people are just "afraid" and should shut up. After all, we don't let the laboratory rats vote on how the lab should be run, do we? No!' "

There are two parties today - the party of Kick Me and the party of Fuck You. The globalizers have been saying Fuck you to the people since the first Clinton election. And now some voters are saying "Fuck you" back and some - are not. There's an interesting article that came out at the time of the Super Tuesday primary votes relating areas with declining life expectancy to areas with strong support for Trump. These are white areas that have lost jobs due to globalism and this in turn has set in motion processes that cause these areas to resemble the black inner cities - poverty, drugs, violence and despair. However in their voting these areas are saying "Fuck You", not "Kick Me." If the blacks allied with them there could be change.

http://time.com/money/4241826/super-tuesday-life-expectancy-donald-trump/; 9/5/16, 9:04 PM
Rick said...: The wrong word in the headline is "New" not "of". There's nothing new about any of this, it's been going on since at least the 80s. The "new" aspect is that the people who created and supported it on campus then are now in positions of sufficient power to punish those who don't demonstrate proper deference.; 9/6/16, 6:30 AM