Colleges have, for at least several decades now, been known as hotbeds of activism. Usually that activism is an exciting footnote on college’s larger mission of educating young adults, preparing them for their careers and adulthood, and helping them grow and become well-rounded individuals. Lately that footnote seems to have grown to the point that it’s starting to crowd out the central purpose.
My concern is heightened because much of the activism I’m referring to appears to have a decidedly racist and anti-free-speech flavor to it. For example, last October protesters at Berkeley’s Sather Gate formed a human chain and blockaded white and Asian students. All of this brings me to Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Evergreen has cancelled classes today and tomorrow because of a phoned-in threat. While specifics about the threat are still unknown at this time, it’s not hard to imagine that it’s related to events of the past couple weeks. Here’s the background:
Evergreen has, for many years apparently, had an event known as “Day of Absence & Day of Presence”. This year, in apparently a change from previous years, the event called for whites to stay off campus. Enter biology professor Bret Weinstein. He sent this email (also available here in a less jarring color scheme) protesting the change to the event. Here is the key portions:
This email, sent in March, apparently came to light last week and earned him the ire of activist students. The students disrupted his class to confront him and it was … heated. They called for his firing / resignation. The police got called to escort him off campus (literally escort, as in protect from the protesters, not escort as in the typical remove-from-campus usage). Weinstein says the police told him to hold his classes off campus because the protesters were looking for him and they were concerned for his safety. The protesters apparently occupied and barricaded the library at one point, and crashed a faculty meeting. They confronted the college president with some demands. The college president released statements on the 27th and 30th. The story got picked up by the NY Post and Tucker Carlson’s show, among other media outlets. And now, as mentioned earlier, classes are cancelled. Here are some of the highlights. Things seem to have gone off the rails somewhere way back there, to the point that the college is no longer functioning as a college. How the hell did we get to this point? What can be done to turn things around and strengthen the notion of free speech on campus?
ETA: dang, all that typing and I meant for this to go into Great Debates, not Elections. Mods, little help?
If you are going to bring the massive reputation for candor and honesty of both the New York Post and Tucker Carlson, you don’t leave much room for argument.
So, yeah, our university system is doomed to chaos and madness, brought about by savage hordes of ravening lefty activists. Just like Berkeley, fifty years ago. Nothing but a smoking ruin remained. Can confirm, I was there. Even helped a bit. You’re welcome!
“Death of higher ed” is hyperventilating, but I agree with the professor’s every word – calling for the exclusion of “white” people from campus for a day isn’t helpful for any cause (it may have been in the days of true segregation, but not now) – and the students threatening the professor for stating this are simply despicable.
As an Olympian, I can attest that Evergreen has always been a strange, strange place - even in a town full of hippie liberals, it’s practically its own little enclave.
I’m a Greener Grad (Q. What do you say to a Greener wearing a suit? A. Will the defendant please rise), class of 98.
This is awful.
I don’t worry about teenagers and other undergrads making stupid political decisions. Teenagers make stupid decisions in every aspect of their lives. But the administration of a college should be better than this.
Moreover, there are politicians who have been gunning for Evergreen since it was founded about a half-century ago. They don’t need bullets. This is a bullet.
The “activism” (or what passes for it) is partly what Trump voters (and even those who didn’t vote for him) see as an attack on white America. This goes back to the Missouri protests and the other campus protests around the country. Evergreen is far from the only place where charges of “racism” can be weaponized against people who have their own opinions, and even minorities can even end up accusing each other of racism.
This is also part of a larger hyper-response to racial insensitivity, perceived or actual. I made a comment on the “Douchebag of the Day” thread in the Pit forum in response to the Denver Post journalist who got fired for saying that he was ‘uncomfortable’ with a Japanese driver winning the Indy 500. He absolutely should have been confronted and disciplined. But he wasn’t just disciplined – he was terminated. As I expected, there was some push-back against my comments but I stand by them. People can make a mistake. They can say something that’s insensitive. They should not automatically have their careers terminated because they say one thing that’s offensive. So now that the journalist is fired, now what? Did we solve the problem of racism? Is the fired journalist truly sorry or is he probably bitter and even more determined to say “F*ck you” to people who seek to balance a perceived slight? I’m guessing the latter. Maybe a heart-felt apology with an opportunity to engage in some sensitivity training and community service would be a better response. But in our society, people want revenge…which does NOT solve the original problem.
The OP was in part about a professor who didn’t say anything offensive, or at least nothing that a rational person would find offensive. He spoke out against a segregated event. As a result the “students and femmes of color” and “black trans disabled students” and their allies tried to get the professor fired, and made it impossible for him to teach on campus and made threats against him.
I suppose that can be called a hyper-response to perceived racism. I would call it a temper tantrum from a bunch of liberal loonies who had their bubble popped.
Of course this is the same bunch of jerk-offs who thought that the murderer of a police officer had something worthwhile to say at a graduation ceremony, so I guess no one should be surprised.
Do the white students who have been asked to leave for that day get reimbursed on the tuition and fees cost for the day ? They are not at school for the day, forced out. So why they have to pay for the day ?
That is the question on my mine, and not one news piece that I have read mentions this.
And as Trump and the OP’s question state, a mine is a terrible thing to waste.
I don’t think any one is going to defend the crazy students’ actions, but as to the OP’s question, we appear to be a long, long way from this spreading kind of attempted oppression spreading to college campuses nation-wide. At the end of the day, these students don’t have much power and they do not seem to have much support among any other college groups at different universities outside Washington State. Oppression usually has a much higher chance of succeeding when someone or someones have legal and political power.
You can imagine all you like. As dysfunctional as the campus may have been in recent weeks, I found this article about the thread from a Seattle news station.
This sounds like an external threat, rather than an internal one. Assuming it is as reported, this wasn’t the “racist and anti-free-speech” students threatening a professor, this was someone threatening (and threatened by) the communist, scumbag town.
Please don’t assume that Evergreen State College is a normal example of higher education. From Wikipedia:
The Evergreen State College is a regionally accredited public liberal arts college and a member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges, located in Olympia, Washington, USA. Founded in 1967, Evergreen was formed to be an experimental and non-traditional college. Full-time students enroll in interdisciplinary academic programs instead of classes. Programs typically offer students the opportunity to study several disciplines in a coordinated manner. Faculty write narrative evaluations of students’ work in place of issuing grades.
I know there are some grads of the school in this thread so I won’t say what the school is thought of in the region.
Wguy, we know how some of the locals think of the school. I have mixed feelings about it–overall, I got a great education there, but it absolutely allows students to go and get virtually no education at all.
Thanks Robot Arm, for the threat transcript. I was wondering if it was something like that. HurricaneDitka, got anything to say?
On reading more, it may be that things are a bit more nuanced than I thought at first. It sounds like the idea was to encourage white students to volunteer to leave campus for a day, sort of a thought experiment for white students to feel what it’d be like to be excluded, and nonwhite students to get the feel of not being such a tiny minority (Evergreen is something like 95% white). I’m still not entirely down with that, but it’s not nearly as bad as I thought at first, and it makes the professor’s response–where he calls it oppression–a bit whinier.
I do wish the administration were clearer in how it dealt with the overreactions of teenagers on campus. There are almost certainly legitimate problems with racism on campus, there were when I was a student, but the slightly whiny professor’s email isn’t one of them as far as I can tell, and shutting down the university is not at all an appropriate response to the problem.
That said, while I was there, there was an anarchist conference organized on campus, which then went marching in downtown Olympia and smashed television sets in the street and blocked traffic and gathered a hundred or so crusty-punks in front of the state Capitol, chanting and shouting. The cops were predictably freaked out and surrounded the marchers with a couple dozen cop cars until the group finally dispersed peacefully.
That event was a turning point in my realization that maybe anarchists didn’t really have all the answers.
That’s your perception of the college’s mission. That’s what most taxpayers and donors and governments perceive as the college’s mission. The revealed preferences of higher ed – e.g. where they spend money, who they hire, who gets promoted etc. say very much otherwise.
Outside of community colleges and some small liberal arts colleges, nearly all of higher ed prioritizes research and scholarship way, way over teaching. On the student side, more and more resources go to more to various student services and better food/lodging. More comfortable student living means more students means more students means more money, approximately none of which will go toward improving undergrad education.
The thread title is silly: until the robots take over and we all live like eloi, obviously, there will still be some kind of higher education. We will need doctors and engineers, etc. But the industry is headed for massive upheaval in the not-distant future, not so much because there is a political/ideological disconnect between academia and the broader culture (though it certainly doesn’t help), but because the academy as it exists has made itself more and more inefficient at doing the things that the people paying the bills want it to do.
There’s an interesting dynamic happening right now in which illiberal left-wing actions on free speech get criticized by the right and the liberal left and get widespread national news coverage, while the roughly-as-frequent right-wing actions (by FIRE’s count) get less coverage.
For example, of those of you familiar with the Evergreen controversy, how many are aware of what’s going on with Prof. Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor? Fewer, I strongly suspect.
I’m not quite sure what the reason for this is, but I think it has something to do with how the left is divided on the incidents of left-wing illiberalism while the right doesn’t care or supports right-wing illiberalism. But that might just be my own bias talking. I’m curious to hear other explanations.
I’m in the region. I think Evergreen has a good reputation.
Regarding the OP, college students will often push the limits and then some. Hopefully, over time, they learn what is effective and what is not. And why.
