Administrators *love* this new setup because it is entree into the last bastion on the university that they don't control totally: its intellectual life. They've got a throttlehold on everything else and they really dislike the cheek of faculty continuing to stake any domains of non-oversight and supervision.
Administrators use students as catspaws because students are institutionally transitory: in a few years they move on. Cheeky faculty stick around for years and years and from the perspective of admin they perpetually need to be shown their place.
So you claim that the administrators are more leftist than the faculty, and that the administrators need to put the faculty in their place?
I agree that what the administration is doing with its leftism is much more wrong than what most leftist faculty do, but the idea that the faculty are as a rule “improperly placed”, as you suggest, seems pretty laughable to me.
Here I am not talking about ideology but power. DEI ideology for example puts the mort main of admin on every hiring firing and promotion decision, which is why they like it regardless of what it officially is for. They would like it if it said it was assuring Marxist Leninist thought or Christian virtue or Islamic fidelity or Talmudic conformity as long as it got their paw in.
Seems our colleges and universities are cutting their own throats because they are not teaching their students how to think critically. Destroy what is there then rebuild. That is the Moto of the true Marxist, though they can't tell you how to rebuild.
I went to college in the 1980s. If we students had disrupted events this way, we would have been removed from the site. Just because you pay tuition doesn’t mean you can disrupt events you don’t like. Don’t go or be removed. Where are the adults? And let me say, college students now are babies. Not adults. Embarrassing and simply destructive. There should be something that must be signed - legally binding - before a student comes onto campus: you will be removed if you cannot behave appropriately.
Wanting men out of women's sports, bathrooms, changing rooms, and prisons is not a "conservative political viewpoint". The OGs of the fight are radical feminist lesbians. Please stop repeating this untruth.
Radical feminists shouldn't be shouted down on campus, conservatives shouldn't be shouted down on campus, Zionists shouldn't be shouted down on campus, Free Palestine supporters shouldn't be shouted down on campus. Agreed on all counts.
But... not believing people can change sex is not a "conservative" point of view.
“The common thread running through all of these incidents — aside from the conservative political views being expressed by the speakers…”
All due respect, though you guys generally do great work and make good sense, the BIGGEST part of the problem *is* the thing you cast “aside”!
Leftists (no reasonable person can call them liberal!) believe that their oppressor-oppressed ideology makes it righteous to shut down the speech of others, and campus administration is *so* lopsidedly on their side politically that they refuse to actually denounce or arrest or sanction or stop them.
And yet with this piece *you* have done almost the same thing. You refuse to call a spade a spade.
With the sole exception of the wrong, regrettable decision by the USC administration to stop the pro-Palestinian valedictorian from speaking - which I note did not actually involve any uncivil protesters, let alone any illegal actions - EVERY. SINGLE. OTHER. ACT. HERE. WAS. BY. LEFTISTS.
Yet other than your brief “aside” quoted above, you pretend that the issue is not about the SPECIFIC ideology of campus administration. You cite the “unholy alliance” of ideology in the headline and at the very end here, but you refuse to give it a name. Instead you use the bland, neutral phrase “political and ideological conformity”
I’m glad that your organization supports free speech on all sides.
But continuing to pretend that “both sides do it (seek to stop the other side from speaking)” - as I’ve seen repeatedly on this blog and especially in responses to comments on this Substack - does not strengthen your argument. It weakens it.
There is not a “both sides” threat to free speech on campus today.
As the facts you lay out make abundantly clear.
There is a leftist DEI oppressor-oppressed uniculture ideology threat - nay reality - on campus.
I am disheartened that you refuse to call it by name, even as you call it out.
Is it possible, at least with public institutions, to use FOIA-type laws at the state level (in Georgia, use the Georgia Open Records Act, or GORA) to identify problematic administrators and other involved parties?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if these students spent their time listening, thinking, debating, discussing, and learning, instead of acting like toddlers throwing a tantrum to get their way? Imagine the educational possibilities...
I never dreamt we'd be living in a world where universities wouldn't allow for free thought.
Isn’t amazing that many of the progressives who complain about (and want to censor) so called misinformation on social media sites like X and Facebook also assert the ridiculous notion that a man can become a woman. Is any statement more a prime example of misinformation than that piece of nonsense?
It didn't hit me until recently, after reading more about the topic, but I've witnessed something like this at my high school.
Luckily, nowhere near the severity of the examples described. Students were offended by a comment made by a student during a school event, and interrupted the following assembly to shout their disapproval. It was terrifying. Everyone was scared. Still remember the horror on the face of the poor new student next to me...
A white student had mentioned he didn't like some of the school's anti-racist policies because it could prompt group bullying against students deemed racist. Students of color took offense to this. At first, I had wanted to tell the student who made the offending comment he was brave for sharing his thoughts. After the disruption, I thought I was a horrible person for even thinking that.
I can't ever say for sure if my peers were understandably snapping thanks to a racist environment or if their reactions were hyperbolic, but I have only seen evidence of the latter. My high school's culture bent over backwards to be progressive in every area, and yet, it seemed to never be enough.
Today, I once again wish I had been brave enough to thank that boy for speaking up.
Administrators *love* this new setup because it is entree into the last bastion on the university that they don't control totally: its intellectual life. They've got a throttlehold on everything else and they really dislike the cheek of faculty continuing to stake any domains of non-oversight and supervision.
Administrators use students as catspaws because students are institutionally transitory: in a few years they move on. Cheeky faculty stick around for years and years and from the perspective of admin they perpetually need to be shown their place.
So you claim that the administrators are more leftist than the faculty, and that the administrators need to put the faculty in their place?
I agree that what the administration is doing with its leftism is much more wrong than what most leftist faculty do, but the idea that the faculty are as a rule “improperly placed”, as you suggest, seems pretty laughable to me.
Here I am not talking about ideology but power. DEI ideology for example puts the mort main of admin on every hiring firing and promotion decision, which is why they like it regardless of what it officially is for. They would like it if it said it was assuring Marxist Leninist thought or Christian virtue or Islamic fidelity or Talmudic conformity as long as it got their paw in.
Seems our colleges and universities are cutting their own throats because they are not teaching their students how to think critically. Destroy what is there then rebuild. That is the Moto of the true Marxist, though they can't tell you how to rebuild.
I went to college in the 1980s. If we students had disrupted events this way, we would have been removed from the site. Just because you pay tuition doesn’t mean you can disrupt events you don’t like. Don’t go or be removed. Where are the adults? And let me say, college students now are babies. Not adults. Embarrassing and simply destructive. There should be something that must be signed - legally binding - before a student comes onto campus: you will be removed if you cannot behave appropriately.
Wanting men out of women's sports, bathrooms, changing rooms, and prisons is not a "conservative political viewpoint". The OGs of the fight are radical feminist lesbians. Please stop repeating this untruth.
Radical feminists shouldn't be shouted down on campus, conservatives shouldn't be shouted down on campus, Zionists shouldn't be shouted down on campus, Free Palestine supporters shouldn't be shouted down on campus. Agreed on all counts.
But... not believing people can change sex is not a "conservative" point of view.
Greg is beyond thrilled. That seems dangerous.
Fair
“The common thread running through all of these incidents — aside from the conservative political views being expressed by the speakers…”
All due respect, though you guys generally do great work and make good sense, the BIGGEST part of the problem *is* the thing you cast “aside”!
Leftists (no reasonable person can call them liberal!) believe that their oppressor-oppressed ideology makes it righteous to shut down the speech of others, and campus administration is *so* lopsidedly on their side politically that they refuse to actually denounce or arrest or sanction or stop them.
And yet with this piece *you* have done almost the same thing. You refuse to call a spade a spade.
With the sole exception of the wrong, regrettable decision by the USC administration to stop the pro-Palestinian valedictorian from speaking - which I note did not actually involve any uncivil protesters, let alone any illegal actions - EVERY. SINGLE. OTHER. ACT. HERE. WAS. BY. LEFTISTS.
Yet other than your brief “aside” quoted above, you pretend that the issue is not about the SPECIFIC ideology of campus administration. You cite the “unholy alliance” of ideology in the headline and at the very end here, but you refuse to give it a name. Instead you use the bland, neutral phrase “political and ideological conformity”
I’m glad that your organization supports free speech on all sides.
But continuing to pretend that “both sides do it (seek to stop the other side from speaking)” - as I’ve seen repeatedly on this blog and especially in responses to comments on this Substack - does not strengthen your argument. It weakens it.
There is not a “both sides” threat to free speech on campus today.
As the facts you lay out make abundantly clear.
There is a leftist DEI oppressor-oppressed uniculture ideology threat - nay reality - on campus.
I am disheartened that you refuse to call it by name, even as you call it out.
Is it possible, at least with public institutions, to use FOIA-type laws at the state level (in Georgia, use the Georgia Open Records Act, or GORA) to identify problematic administrators and other involved parties?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if these students spent their time listening, thinking, debating, discussing, and learning, instead of acting like toddlers throwing a tantrum to get their way? Imagine the educational possibilities...
I never dreamt we'd be living in a world where universities wouldn't allow for free thought.
Isn’t amazing that many of the progressives who complain about (and want to censor) so called misinformation on social media sites like X and Facebook also assert the ridiculous notion that a man can become a woman. Is any statement more a prime example of misinformation than that piece of nonsense?
That data is scary...
It didn't hit me until recently, after reading more about the topic, but I've witnessed something like this at my high school.
Luckily, nowhere near the severity of the examples described. Students were offended by a comment made by a student during a school event, and interrupted the following assembly to shout their disapproval. It was terrifying. Everyone was scared. Still remember the horror on the face of the poor new student next to me...
A white student had mentioned he didn't like some of the school's anti-racist policies because it could prompt group bullying against students deemed racist. Students of color took offense to this. At first, I had wanted to tell the student who made the offending comment he was brave for sharing his thoughts. After the disruption, I thought I was a horrible person for even thinking that.
I can't ever say for sure if my peers were understandably snapping thanks to a racist environment or if their reactions were hyperbolic, but I have only seen evidence of the latter. My high school's culture bent over backwards to be progressive in every area, and yet, it seemed to never be enough.
Today, I once again wish I had been brave enough to thank that boy for speaking up.
When various southern universities resisted desegregation in the 60’s we sent in the National Guard. That’s what we need to do again. With tanks.