Manhattan Institute scholar and author Heather Mac Donald appeared on the Mark Levin show this weekend to discuss how campus culture has begun to surface in American politics. Social justice warriors used to be confined to college campuses, now their world view has been adopted by many elected officials.
Mac Donald points out that college students are indoctrinated upon arrival to believe they are either victims or oppressors and that this paradigm is worsening the problem it is supposedly solving.
She uses the Kavanaugh hearings as an example of the advancement of the progressive concept of campus ‘rape culture’ and the diminished value of due process.
Here’s a partial transcript via FOX News:
LEVIN: Well, you have a BA and MA in English. You have a JD. You are a lawyer, but you are a scholar in so many areas — race relations, immigration, policing in colleges and universities. And this is where I really wanted to delve in with you. You have a new book, “The Diversity Delusion: How race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture.” This so relevant today, and you that argue toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance and widened division in our larger culture. And I think we see this everywhere now.MAC DONALD: We certainly do, the Kavanaugh hearings was an example that were all in gender studies 101 now, Mark. Virtually every aspect of the culmination of hysteria that greeted Judge Kavanaugh was perfected over the last decade on the college campus.Above all, the preposterous mantra to believe survivors regardless of the evidence, regardless of due process. This is the campus rape hysteria that has been transforming the lives of males on campuses, creating an extraordinarily costly bureaucracy, moved into the real world and it is not going away, it’s only going to get worse.
This is the key line of her argument:
From the moment a student steps on a college campus today as a freshman or a fresh person, I should probably say, the bureaucracy is determined to drum in to that student’s head, identity politics, which says, he is either a victim or an oppressor. Oppressors are obviously most famously white males, heterosexual white males. The only way they can get out to of their oppressor category is to become an ally – an ally of the oppressed.The most preposterous delusion of all of this is student actually believe that they are at risk of their lives from circumambient racism and sexism on a college campus. This is an environment that in traditional liberal terms is the most tolerant environment in human history for society’s traditionally marginalized groups.
She goes so far as to say that this campus culture is breeding hate and could ultimately lead to civil war as generations of young people are being taught to hate each other, their country, and western civilization.
This video is about 15 minutes long. Watch the first five minutes at least. After that, you may decide to view the whole thing:
Mac Donald discussed similar issues and her new book ‘The Diversity Delusion’ during a recent interview with Aaron Sibarium of The American Interest:
Aaron Sibarium (The American Interest): Thank you for agreeing to do this, Heather. To begin, why don’t you tell me what The Diversity Delusion is about, and what inspired you to write it at this particular moment.Heather Mac Donald: The book is about the identity politics and victim ideology that have taken over college campuses. I was inspired to write it out of a combination of sorrow and rage. Sorrow, because I believe so strongly in the humanist mission of universities and the extraordinary privilege of being able to study the greatest works of civilization. And rage, because I see ignorant students being encouraged by faculty and campus administrators to reject the monuments of human thought on such absurd grounds as an author’s gonads and melanin.TAI: In the book, you talk about this “metastasizing diversity bureaucracy,” saying it’s not just on campus, but that it’s spread to other institutions too. In particular, you talk a lot about businesses and tech companies indulging in identity histrionics. Do you see this ideology affecting national politics too? Has it started to affect not just private businesses and HR departments, but also the day-to-day political realities of America?HMD: Absolutely. We have just lived through a month of Gender Studies 101 with the hysteria over the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The tribal victimology that characterizes college campuses is now becoming the currency of a surprisingly large sector of the Democratic Party. Many females have decided that they represent an oppressed class and that such traditional Enlightenment values as due-process and the presumption of innocence are expendable. Campus rape tribunals have discarded essential truth-finding mechanisms such as cross-examination in the service of the #BelieveSurvivors mantra. And now that contempt for rational means of proof is entering the public consciousness as well.
Featured image via YouTube.
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