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On-going protests at Sarah Lawrence College are from the same playbook as those at Evergreen nearly two years ago. @keikoinboston, as usual, has a detailed thread, weaving sources from many places. Highlights follow: (1/20)
A single professor is used as a flashpoint to incite rage and amplify the messages of Grievance Studies and Cathartic Victimhood (@BretWeinstein at Evergreen, Abrams at SLC). 2/
The professor-as-flashpoint is charged with all manner of hatred and bigotry. This is effective in drumming up support for the cause, so what matter if it is factually untrue? 3/
At Evergreen, too, the ideology was empowered with tacit, and often explicit, collaboration from the upper reaches of the administration. 4/
Many dozens of faculty and staff at Evergreen signed a letter demanding a formal investigation of @BretWeinstein for the apparently criminal act of going on Fox News. 5/
Later, some signatories of the Evergreen letter told us that they had misunderstood the letter, were sorry they had signed. 6/
By contrast, at Sarah Lawrence, 27 faculty (out of a larger faculty population) signed a letter last December supporting Abrams. How do those faculty feel now, I wonder. 7/
Protesters at Evergreen never could point to any actually racist incidents. (Except: they create the rules, & asking for evidence is evidence of racism, so by asking the question you have revealed the racism that is not visible by any other means.) 8/
At Evergreen, the vast majority of students who did not appreciate the disruption to their education either self-censored, or, if they tried to speak their minds, were shouted down, re-educated, woke-schooled. 9/
At Evergreen, there were reports of students and staff, disabled and not, literally imprisoned in the Library when protesters took over. The protests did not serve those students. 10/
The campus paper at Evergreen—the Cooper Point Journal, or CPJ—was reliably deeply partisan but, since it was the only game in town leading up to the protests, outside media treated it like a reliable source. 11/
The reputational damage to Evergreen was—justifiably—immense. It was also unnecessary, and reversible. @BretWeinstein and I offered to help turn the place around, to publicly embrace true inquiry and civil rights. The college wanted none of it. 12/
At Evergreen, the number of new first year students was down 40% this year, compared to last. 13/
The PR firm that Evergreen hired to spin the news and slander their own was soon promoted to the level of a full division of the college, while President Bridges simultaneously demoted both Academics and Student Affairs. 14/
Here, the mother of one of Bret’s and my former students explains why her daughter, who had been on track to go to Evergreen, won’t be getting anywhere near there now: 15/
That former student, Jakob, did exceptional work with us. He studied pygmy sloths, a species endemic to a tiny island off Panama, and published the work with other students of ours (one of whom, Sam, got a Fulbright and continued the work) in PLOS ONE: 16/
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…
Yes yes and yes. This ideology, when enacted, ruins functional systems, including both liberal arts schools, and relations between people. When forced to focus on and submit to demographic factors above all else, we lose sight of each other’s humanity. 17/
When Evergreen’s president capitulated to demands on the evening of May 26, 2017, were the protesters appeased? Of course not. It was *after this* that several students took up bats and began assaulting their peers. 18/
Do not feed the terrorists, no matter their age. This only empowers them, and then you have a bigger problem. 19/
The protesters are not speaking for everyone they claim to be speaking for. They are angry, narcissistic, and deeply confused. Their ideology is internally inconsistent, unhelpful, and, above all else, cruel. /end
