From Safe Space to Attack Zone: As goes Evergreen, so goes academia
The “safest” spaces seem to be the most intolerant of dissenting views.
We’ve written a lot about the attacks on progressive professor Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College. He was accused of racism by student activists for opposing a proposal to ban white people from campus for a day, a move he condemned as impermissible racism.
In a bizarro world that is today’s campus, the anti-racist was called a racist as a tactic to ostracize and isolate him, with physical confrontations not only of Prof. Weinstein, but also of the college president who submissively capitulated to the mob.
I summarized the events in The Campus Inquisition at Evergreen State College:
The short version is that Weinstein has become the target of students after he wrote an email objecting to a campus movement to exclude whites for a day, as impermissible racism. His email was polite and thoughtful.
Yet the reaction was vitriolic, as we covered in the post Evergreen State leftist professor stunned as SJWs viciously turn on him…
Students are being steeped in an ideology and attitude in which racism in the name of social justice is accepted. That’s a dangerous situation for the nation.
Weinstein is getting support from unlikely places like NY Times columnist Frank Bruni, These Campus Inquisitions Must Stop:
Racism pervades our country. Students who have roiled college campuses from coast to coast have that exactly right.
But we’re never going to make the progress that we need to if they hurl the word “racist” as reflexively and indiscriminately as some of them do, in a frenzy of righteousness aimed at gagging speakers and strangling debate.
That’s a mechanism for shaming, not a strategy for change. It mesmerizes all. It converts none.
I’m thinking of the recent ugliness at Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Wash., which echoed too many other incidents at too many other schools….
Right-wing media have had a field day with Evergreen, but not because they’ve faked a story. No, the story was given to them in ribbons and bows.
That last sentiment, regret that “right-wing media” might be right this time, seems to be reflected in a general lack of coverage in the mainstream media of Prof. Weinstein’s plight.
In 1Billion yrs I never thought I'd say this: @FoxNews stepped in last night to uphold MLK's antiracist liberal values.@npr & @nytimes? MIA https://t.co/HHhf4CDuxD
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) May 27, 2017
Incredibly, there also appears to be an effort to scrub the public record, such as the original, widely circulated video of Prof. Weinstein being confronted being removed by YouTube for violating its “harassment and bullying” policy.
(Update – a different, longer upload of that video is still live on YouTube)
This interview with Tucker Carlson contains portions of that confrontation video:
This would be consistent with the claims of the student and facutly activists that they are the victims of Prof. Weinstein getting publicity to his plight. An open Google Docs letter signed by dozens of faculty members and staff demande that Prof. Weinstein be punished and the student activists praised.
The College Fix originally reported, Evergreen State faculty demand punishment of white professor who refused to leave on anti-white day:
More than 50 professors at the public college – nearly a quarter of faculty – have signed a statement as of Friday afternoon calling themselves “angry and frustrated and concerned” by the backlash against students and the university.
They demanded Weinstein be punished for his response to students who cornered him and called him racist after he refused to leave campus on the anti-white “Day of Absence”:
Demonstrate accountability by pursuing a disciplinary investigation against Bret Weinstein according to guidelines in the Social Contract and Faculty Handbook. Weinstein has endangered faculty, staff, and students, making them targets of white supremacist backlash by promulgating misinformation in public emails, on national television, in news outlets, and on social media.
Do meet Naima Lowe, race-baiting @EvergreenStCol Prof. who incited 'white allies' to 'collect' my anti-racist sister-in-law's 'racist ass': pic.twitter.com/accPPQSSVL
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) May 31, 2017
This video from Badger Pundit also shows how faculty have been in the lead:
(language warning)
John Sexton at Hot Air has a transcript of Prof. Weinstein’s interview on the Joe Rogan show, in which he discussed the cult-like status of what’s happening:
On the intersectional left behaving like a cult
Weinstein: Several people, in fact, many people, have started to now refer to what’s going on in the staff/faculty zone here as a cult. And I think, on the one hand, that could be tongue-in-cheek. On the other hand, the mechanisms at work that have people doubling down on absurdities rather than trying to get on the right side of history as quickly as possible, it is very cult like. Again, you asked me what would have to happen for us to right the ship, the second one is my faculty colleagues have to wake up to the fact that their belief structure has become bizarre and unrecognizable from any normal position.
Here is an abbreviated video of that discussion:
Prof. Weinstein himself described the college cutting off access (for everyone) to the faculty directory as symbolic of this cult:
In trying to assess this situation, I stumble upon one of our post from September 2016, Evergreen State College President Says Safe Spaces ‘Critical’ to Student Success. In the sub-headline, Mike astutely asked, “Safer for whom?”
The university system has existed for centuries without safe spaces but now they’re indispensable?
That’s what the president of Evergreen State College says.
Campus Reform reports:
Safe spaces ‘critical’ to student success, college prez says
In the wake of the University of Chicago’s attack on safe spaces, one college president is adamantly defending their usage and calling UC’s letter insensitive to the needs of students….
Evergreen State College president George Bridges …. has taken it upon himself to present a defense of the use of trigger warnings and safe spaces, even calling them “critical” to the success of students.
“The University of Chicago’s letter to incoming freshmen was a sign of insensitivity to the needs of students,” he began his op-ed in The Seattle Times, saying UC’s letter “wasn’t welcoming,” adding that “the message, conveyed in a letter from the dean of students, revealed a profound indifference to concerns that many students now bring to colleges and universities.”
The new President of Evergreen set a tone — as Prof. Weinstein has pointed out:
That tone is one of capitulation in the form of “safe space” ideology. Physical safe space is one thing; intellectual safe space is something entirely different. It is that latter form, intellectual safe space, that pervades campuses.
While it’s anecdotal, it certainly does seem that the worship of “safe space” breeds intolerance.
The supposedly safest spaces, be it at Oberlin, Middlebury, Berkeley, or any of the other dozens of campuses, are the most intolerant of dissenting views.
Evergreen State College was a safe space for the racists masquerading as social justice activists. It was and is a very dangerous place for anyone who refuses to go along with that social justice charade.
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Comments
Is this some sort of ghetto teach-in school?
The problem is the school. Missouri heard loud & clear from its donor base when it veered off into BLM Never-Neverland, but places like Evergreen & Oberlin have alumni who are mostly moonbats themselves, & fully approve of the BS.
The ultimate solution is to end taxpayer subsidies for students, faculties, & institutions (except direct specific research grants). Let them use their fatted endowments to fund their nonsense. Leave me out of it.
It’s the logic that suffers.
[class] diversity rears its ugly head. Most notably by [class] diversitists projecting their judgment of people by the “color of their skin”.
http://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/448243/paris-climate-agreement-lifestylization
That’s a very insightful piece by Jonah Goldberg.
Everyone should read it. Even the idiots who refer to him as illiterate, a cuck, and an elitist. Falsely in all cases…
I’d sooner click on a link to the Clinton Defense and Resistance alliance site than EVER a NR link ever again. Idiots thought they could tell people who the “correct” candidate was and who we must not vote for.
Thanks for self-identifying as a wall-eyed idiot.
The NR editors expressed an opinion. You and everyone else were free to agree or disagree.
You choose to go full SnotFlake, and stuff bullshit in your ears.
Fine. Join the unthinking, intolerant Colleective.
Rags, I used to enjoy coming to this site specifically to read your comments. But now I look forward to the day you’re banned. Right or wrong, you’ve jumped the shark with your continuing ad-hominem attacks on those who disagree with you.
Here’s a fun fact for you….
I’ve always posted the same way. You can go back and read my stuff.
So, just MAYBE, it is YOU that’s changed. If so, why…???
Just food for thought. If you retain the capacity.
Thanks for the link. Especially as I just got back from a weekend with all such good people who just assume that I must be one of them because I fit the demographic.
If ever there was an AA hire !
Yikes !
Well, those “annual mandatory trainings” called for in the faculty “Solidarity Statement” should be entertaining.
Everyone will have to brush up on their Cambodian history history in order to get the public denunciations just right.
Khmer Rouge, the obamas of Cambodia, murdered 3 million people:
Paris student group: During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris with KN as their leader organized their own communist movement, which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975, and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.[20]
Two members of the group, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University of Paris; Hu Nim obtained his degree from the University of Phnom Penh in 1965. Most came from landowner or civil servant families. Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related to the royal family. An older sister of Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court of King Monivong. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith (also known as Ieng Thirith), purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.[23]
The Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured, and eventually executed anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed “enemies”,[24] including:
Anyone with connections to the former Cambodian government or with foreign governments.
Professionals and intellectuals – in practice this included almost everyone with an education, people who understood a foreign language and even people who required glasses (which, according to the regime, meant that they spent too much time reading books instead of working). Ironically, Pol Pot himself was an educated man with a taste for French literature and spoke fluent French. Many artists, including musicians, writers, and filmmakers were executed. Some like Ros Serey Sothea, Pan Ron, and Sinn Sisamouth gained posthumous fame for their talents and are still popular with Khmers today.
Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai, and other minorities in the Eastern Highlands, Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Catholic, and the Catholic Church in general), Muslims, and the Buddhist monks. The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden (ḥarām). Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed.
“Economic saboteurs” – many former urban dwellers were deemed guilty of sabotage due to their lack of agricultural ability.
The Khmer Rouge established over 150 prisons for political opponents, of which Tuol Sleng is the best known.[55] According to Ben Kiernan, “all but seven of the twenty thousand Tuol Sleng prisoners” were executed.[56] Examples of the Khmer Rouge torture methods can be seen at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The museum occupies the former grounds of a high school turned prison camp that was operated by Khang Khek Ieu, more commonly known as “Comrade Duch”, together with his subordinates Mam Nai and Tang Sin Hean. The buildings of Tuol Sleng have been preserved as they were left when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. Several of the rooms are now lined with thousands of black-and-white photographs of prisoners that were taken by the Khmer Rouge.[57]
On 7 August 2014, when announcing convictions and handing down life sentences for two former Khmer Rouge leaders, Cambodian judge Nil Nonn said there were evidences of “a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Cambodia.” He said the leaders, Nuon Chea, the regime’s chief ideologue and former deputy to late leader Pol Pot, and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, together in a “joint criminal enterprise” were involved in murder, extermination, political persecution and other inhumane acts related to the mass eviction of city-dwellers, and executions of enemy soldiers.[58]
Number of deaths: Modern research has located 20,000 mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia. Various studies have estimated the death toll at between 740,000 and 3,000,000, most commonly between 1.4 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions, and the rest from starvation and disease.[59]
The Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University estimates the number of deaths at approximately 1.7 million (21% of the population of the country).[60] A UN investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimates that 3 million had been killed.[61] Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed,[62] while Marek Sliwinski estimates that 1.8 million is a conservative figure.[63] Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a “most likely” figure of 2.2 million. After five years of researching grave sites, he concluded that “these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution”.[59]
An additional 300,000 Cambodians starved to death between 1979 and 1980, largely as a result of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policy.[64]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge
The most ominous note of all:
“The Khmer Rouge believed that parents were tainted with capitalism, so they separated children from their parents, indoctrinated them in communism, and taught them torture methods with animals. Children were a “dictatorial instrument of the party”[109] and were given leadership in torture and executions.”
McLellan, Janet (April 1, 1999). “5”. Many Petals of the Lotus: Five Asian Buddhist Communities in Toronto (1st ed.). University of Toronto Press. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-8020-8225-1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#cite_note-Janet_McLellan-1
Y’all do realize that to the students of Evergreen State College, and most Democrats, what you just posted falls under the heading of erotic literature for private enjoyment. We will be dealing with these moral-less degenerates for a while. It is going to be kinetic.
Maybe I was thinking about the Cultural Revolution in China.
Or the VC in Vietnam… or was it Stalin’s Russia? (All metaphorically speaking, of course.)
At any rate, these things seem to end with a spectacle in the village square of people denouncing themselves–and others–for wrong thoughts.
If you live in that swamp, you have to keep the alligator happy as best you can and hope it eats you last, I suppose.
An open Google Docs letter signed by dozens of faculty members and staff demande that Prof. Weinstein be punished and the student activists praised.
Okay, who wants to explain the First Law of Holes to these people.
“Racism pervades our country.”
No, it doesn’t.
To be perfectly transparent, the form of diversity recognized by the left, which denies individual dignity (i.e. content of character), including racism, sexism, congruence (“=”), is a clear and progressive issue that is illegal under our constitution. It’s legal under the progressive constitution of South Africa, but not in America.
That caught my eye too.
Racism is so pervasive in this country that it’s necessary to gin up phony stories of racially-motivated attacks in order to support the claim.
Well, I would agree that it pervades the Democrat Party.
Normal people: not really.
In other words, the ones bellyaching about “racism” constantly engage in psychological projection.
Reverse racism DOES pervade our country.
Another member of the secret cabal of fat, female, black, self-righteous, entitled, flaming liberal, supercilious, anti-American, cultural misapproriators comes out of the closet and joins Michelle Obama, Donna Brazil, DeRionne Pollard, Juhmu Green, and Whoopi Goldberg.
Hmmm…. funny thing. It’s precisely because of the Leftist/Feminist ideology of victimhood and oppression pushed and coddled by Prof. Weinstein, and other college officials, administrations, and professors across the land – which has placed him exactly where he is now.
I have no sympathy for Prof. Weinstein, or any other Guilty-White Professors at this college, as they meekly stand there and accept the verbal and violent abuse, capitulating to the growing black mob, never defending themselves as Whites. They have self-loathed themselves to the point of no return, believing the black culture of dysfunction saw them as non-racists, or saw them as White heroes of the black “cause”. THEY themselves created this mess, and it’s only appropriate they seep in in.
It’s so true. Now I’m sure the remaining white teachers at Evergreen are scared sh*tless that the mob of race baiting students and teachers of color will be coming after them next.
It won’t matter if they have been “down with the struggle” like Prof Weinstein was for most of his career. These white profs are learning the hard way that to these rabid students, they are just another evil racist white guy.
I am no expert on the French Revolution, but are there not some parallels here where the useful idiots eventually meet the guillotine when they are no longer needed? Perhaps these Marxist professors are simply meeting recycled history.
G’head and feed the rabid dogs, just don’t be surprised when they turn around and bite you.
Yeah, we all have life experiences.
From ’87 – ’92 I worked in a US Army SCIF. All of my coworkers and my OIC were ethnic minorities (black and Samoan). We we’re a great team and are still friends.
After the military I went to college, the first ever in my family. One grandfather was a coal miner in Middleburg (KY) the other a moonshine in Franklin (TN). Dad worked for a factory (ever hear the song; “read’n, write’n, route 23”, that’s our family story).
Took a position as a Juvenile Corrections Program Coordinator after graduation and married my fiancée, who happened to be black.
From ’96 – ’00 was accused 14 separate times of being a “bigot / racist” because I wouldn’t sign release papers for kids in my treatment group. Many had been caught using drugs, some had fought on campus and a few had made sexual advances to staff. No matter. The accusations and hostility from the parents wore me down. I left.
From ’00 – ’04 worked as a child case manager doing mental health assessments but I wanted to “help” the community. In ’04 I became the director of a community center and from ’04 – ’08 worked butt off and loved the job. Still I had to deal with board members telling me on a weekly basis, “I don’t trust you cuz your white”, “if I had been on the board when they hired you it wouldn’t have happen, we need a black male” and “you don’t know shut about the black community and your white as needs to go”. All of this while I raise three children with a black woman and lived in a predominantly black community! Understand, my friends and neighbors were great. But the educated, leadership within the community beat the heck outta me and my family until I’d had enough. I reported things to the board, eeoc and even went to our funders (city, county and united way) as a last hail mary. In the end, it wasn’t worth it.
My point. . . . . . .I’ve seen bigotry and been damaged by the impact of it. Yet, to many, this poor white boy who’s the grandson if a coal miner and moonshine distiller has nothing but “white privilege”. Right. Okay.
Frankly, we’re dividing this country more and more. Oh and me. . . .yes, the stress caused a divorce. I’ve remarried and now live in a very white suburb and have grown fond of my desk job doing assessments for the court. Sure, there’s no connection to the community any longer and no sense of “we can change things” but for this 49 year old father of five there’s also no “drama” so, I’m good.
Coming soon: a non-Muslims-off-of-campus day.
Excuse me, but I (who have little fashion sense according to my significant other) must say that Naima Lowe has no fashion sense.
Well, like Michelle Obama (another fashion slob) she’s good at nothing other than taking and hating.
Hence, the only place she can find employment is in a college. That idea should end.
The Left has long accepted the Critical Race dogma that people of color can’t be racist (because racism is institutional, etc.).
Therefore if a person of color demands that all white people leave the campus that, by definition, could not be a racist demand.
Indeed, such demands are where Critical Race Theory can reasonably be expected to lead. And therefore, since Evergreen College’s faculty and leadership are fully bought into such theories, they can hardly be expected to object when these theories are put into practice.
Which is to say, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean” (as Humpty-Dumpty said in Lewis Carroll’s novel “Alice in Wonderland”).
At times it actually seemed Naima Lowe’s dog was trying to pretend they’d never met before.
What kind of liability would a grad from Evergreen find if by chance they sought employment outside of academia & radical politics? What employer would take the risk of hiring a product of Evergreen? How tainted are the faculty & administration because of their affiliation?
As a taxpayer in Washington State, I resent paying the salaries of these people with their bullying and obscenities. Evergreen State doesn’t have to meet standards of quality and equal opportunity that other colleges have to meet because they are supported by tax money.
That tax money is not in jeopardy because Washington State is controlled by left-wing Democrats, and Evergreen consistently generates left-wing Democrats. The state Republicans introduced a bill to convert Evergreen to a private college, but the Democrats won’t hear of it. It’s interesting to hear the Democrats make excuses for the behavior of the students and faculty at Evergreen.