Comments on: Academic freedom, conformity of opinion, and the student demands

By: Campus climate roundup - Overlawyered

Campus climate roundup - Overlawyered — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 05:30:09 +0000

[…] reactions to my Storify piece on the campus demands: John Leo/Minding the Campus, Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit, Jerry Coyne/Why […]

By: Wilbur

Wilbur — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 15:14:31 +0000

If this continues, I see a market created for colleges that explicitly reject such nonsense and offer courses which may lead to success in the real world.

By: mojo

mojo — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 16:39:44 +0000

No, I think not. I really don’t care what their “demands” are. Expel them all and let someone who will use the opportunity take their place.

By: Allan

Allan — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:43:33 +0000

In reply to Hugo S. Cunningham.

Good question. I seem to remember the 1950s when conservatives were a bit uptight about allowing blacks into their schools and universities. Racists propagated the idea. Conservatives supported the racists, thinking the progressives were moving too fast (WFB admitted he was mistaken).

The legacy of racism is not since 1960, it is since 1660. While those campuses have largely begun to no discriminate due to race, they have not done (and society has not done) much to ameliorate the long-lasting legacy of racism. Certainly, you may not discriminate against blacks today. But if you are one of those who is descended from white Americans in the 1860s, you have benefited from the racism of those times.

I am not proposing that there be mass distribution. However, it is naive to say that the current great landowners in this country and the blue-blood wealthy of the north have not derived their assets in a way that blacks were never given a chance to do.

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 21:48:08 +0000

@Allan–

You complain about “[suppression of] minority views” condoned by ”WASPs” in the “power structure,” I assume you are talking a)bout campuses (eg their culture and administration). (Otherwise, the subject is too diffuse for debate here).

Are you talking about McCarthyism and Jim Crow, both largely discredited in campus culture by 1970? Or are you talking about things more recent?

Are you talking about racial/gender, etc minorities or political minorities?

Please present some specific right-wing or centrist analogs of what Walter is criticizing here.

By: Jane Gray

Jane Gray — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 18:08:22 +0000

“My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle” – Firefly

By: MattS

MattS — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 16:07:30 +0000

In reply to Ben Catoe.

” I find it amazing that capitalism is considered evil (by these people) when it has dragged more people out of poverty than any other system.”

There is nothing amazing about it once you realize that their goal is not to raise the poor out of poverty, but to drag every one else down into it.

By: Ben Catoe

Ben Catoe — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 07:02:33 +0000

Seems like many of these demands are recycled from the Occupy moments. As a side note, I find it amazing that capitalism is considered evil (by these people) when it has dragged more people out of poverty than any other system.

By: Walter Olson

Walter Olson — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 21:44:46 +0000

It might be tempting to dismiss these as mere silly, extreme demands, which colleges would never actually adopt. But well-known institutions like Occidental are indeed caving in:

https://reason.com/blog/2015/11/23/exclusive-occidental-faculty-voting-to-g

By: Bill Poser

Bill Poser — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 20:12:39 +0000

Students who think that colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression are exclusively the domain of white people are abysmally ignorant of history. And those who advocate some of the measures above are either ignorant of history or have not learned from it. The Cultural Revolution was tried in China. It was awful. Let’s not try it again.