Chimerae of illusory hatreds

Interesting to see the silent majority of students begin to push back at the themes of racism, oppression, suppression, patriarchy, etc. being advocated by a small, ideologically and factually bereft minority of students.

First, from University of Missouri, Univ. of Missouri student: ‘Several of us are afraid to disagree with other students’ by Ian Paris.

An innocent man lost his job. Racial tensions are at an all time high. Faculty members refuse to acknowledge students’ First Amendment rights. Campus authorities are policing speech.

This is my reality as a student at the University of Missouri.

I believe in liberty for all people, but the current climate on campus runs counter to that. Some friends tell me they are afraid to voice their opinions lest they come under fire from the administration or peers – or the police.

The University of Missouri police department sent an email urging students to report offensive or hurtful speech – not because it is illegal – but so the Office of Student Conduct could take disciplinary action against these students.

Several of us are afraid to disagree with other students, who in turn may report us to the authorities so we can be “dealt with.” Many students have told me they are also afraid to speak out against the protest narrative, afraid they will be called “racist” and become campus pariahs.

What’s lost is honest dialogue.

Those of us who want to support on some level the protesters’ pain bristle at their disregard for the First Amendment and freedom of the press and willingness to listen to others.

The “safe space” built at Mizzou means dissenting voices are decried as “racist,” “offensive” or “hurtful.” Students face diversity reeducation, pending expulsion.

Speech on my campus has become limited, not just on the quad. Grad students refuse to dissent from the opinions of liberal professors lest they lose their position, for example.

This is not an Orwellian dystopian novel – this is the climate of the University of Missouri, and it’s the reality that I, and my fellow students, face every day.

Even better is the piece, We Dissent by the Editorial Board of the Claremont Independent.

First they dress down the administration for their cowardice, failure to lead and hypocrisy including:

Second, President Chodosh. We were disappointed to see you idly stand by and watch students berate, curse at, and attack Dean Spellman for being a “racist.” For someone who preaches about “leadership” and “personal and social responsibility,” your actions are particularly disappointing. You let your colleague, someone who has been helping your administration for the past three years and the college for six years, be publicly mocked and humiliated. Why? Because you were afraid. You were afraid that students would also mock and humiliate you if you defended Dean Spellman, so you let her be thrown under the bus. You were so afraid that it only took you five minutes to flip-flop on their demand for a temporary “safe space” on campus. Your fear-driven action (or lack thereof) only further reinforced the fear among the student body to speak out against this movement. We needed your leadership more than ever this week, and you failed us miserably.

Too often in academia, empty talk and platitudes is all that is served up. People are distanced from reality and from the concomitant need to act with courage, agency and responsibility.

They finish by addressing the students of Claremont, both the unreasoning rabble as well as the silent majority of bystanders.

To our fellow Claremont students, we are disappointed in you as well. We are ashamed of you for trying to end someone’s career over a poorly worded email. This is not a political statement––this is a person’s livelihood that you so carelessly sought to destroy. We are disappointed that you chose to scream and swear at your administrators. That is not how adults solve problems, and your behavior reflects poorly on all of us here in Claremont. This is not who we are and this is not how we conduct ourselves, but this is the image of us that has now reached the national stage.

We are disappointed in your demands. If you want to take a class in “ethnic, racial, and sexuality theory,” feel free to take one, but don’t force such an ideologically driven course on all CMC students. If the dearth of such courses at CMC bothers you, maybe you should have chosen a different school. If students chose to attend Caltech and then complained about the lack of literature classes, that’s on them. And though it wouldn’t hurt to have a more diverse faculty, the demand that CMC increase the number of minority faculty members either rests on the assumption that CMC has a history of discriminating against qualified professors of color, or, more realistically, it advocates for the hiring of less qualified faculty based simply on the fact that they belong to marginalized groups. A hiring practice of this sort would not benefit any CMC students, yourselves included.

We are disappointed in the fact that your movement has successfully managed to convince its members that anyone who dissents does so not for intelligent reasons, but due to moral failure or maliciousness. We are disappointed that you’ve used phrases like “silence is violence” to not only demonize those who oppose you, but all who are not actively supporting you. We are most disappointed, however, in the rhetoric surrounding “safe spaces.” College is the last place that should be a safe space. We come here to learn about views that differ from our own, and if we aren’t made to feel uncomfortable by these ideas, then perhaps we aren’t venturing far enough outside of our comfort zone. We would be doing ourselves a disservice to ignore viewpoints solely on the grounds that they may make us uncomfortable, and we would not be preparing ourselves to cope well with adversity in the future. Dealing with ideas that make us uncomfortable is an important part of growing as students and as people, and your ideas will inhibit opportunities for that growth.

We are adults, and we need to be mature enough to take ownership of and responsibility for our feelings, rather than demanding that those around us cater to our individual needs. The hypocrisy of advocating for “safe spaces” while creating an incredibly unsafe space for President Chodosh, former Dean Spellman, the student who was “derailing,” and the news media representatives who were verbally abused unfortunately seemed to soar over many of your heads.

Lastly, we are disappointed in students like ourselves, who were scared into silence. We are not racist for having different opinions. We are not immoral because we don’t buy the flawed rhetoric of a spiteful movement. We are not evil because we don’t want this movement to tear across our campuses completely unchecked.

We are no longer afraid to be voices of dissent.

Wretched as these sad protests against the chimerae of illusory hatreds might be, perhaps the silver lining is the spur it might serve to remind people of the everlasting need to defend liberty against the hand of tyrants who would suppress others.