The Campus Has Become A Circus Taken Over By Racist Bullies
Terrific long read laying out the situation at Evergreen State College by the former provost there, Michael Zimmerman. It concludes with this:
The Evergreen campus has become a place where identity politics takes precedence over every other aspect of social intercourse. It has become a place where it is acceptable for colleagues to levy personal attacks on colleagues in response to differences of opinion and even in response to calls for dialogue. It has become a place where it is acceptable to shout down those with whom you disagree. And it has become a place where the administration watches from the sidelines, apparently fearful of antagonizing anyone.But that is not what leadership is about. Leadership means treating all members of a community with respect and demanding that others do the same. It also means publicly holding community members responsible for their behavior. Finally, it means having and upholding a set of principles, even when doing so might be uncomfortable.
Evergreen is not alone in the constellation of institutions of higher education facing these problems. It is, however, a place that has allowed extremists to dominate and discussion to die. Others will do well to learn from the mistakes made on this campus.
To me, to be able to go to college -- to spend four or more years learning -- is an enormous privilege.
But where's the learning at Evergreen? That mob around Bret Weinstein has much to learn from him about how to reason, how to have a conversation, and how to advance one's thinking through, as he put it, "dialectic." I admire both Weinstein and Nicholas Christakis, who showed similar poise and class in the face of an angry mob.
I suspect that at least some of the impetus behind this focus on race and the demands for special treatment for "people of color" (rather than judging by the content of one's character) is race-based admissions.
Admittedly, I don't know whether this happens at Evergreen. But it does happen elsewhere -- in college and in med school. (It's also insulting and unfair to highly accomplished black students and black people in various workplaces who may be assumed to have gotten where they are through affirmative action rather than their work and their smarts.)
I've blogged about race-based admissions before. This is Clarence Thomas' words:
The University admits minorities who otherwise would have attended less selective colleges where they would have been more evenly matched. But, as a result of the mismatching, many blacks and Hispanics who likely would have excelled at less elite schools are placed in a position where underperformance is all but inevitable because they are less academically prepared than the white and Asian students with whom they must compete. Setting aside the damage wreaked upon the self-confidence of these overmatched students, there is no evidence that they learn more at the University than they would have learned at other schools for which they were better prepared. Indeed, they may learn less.
Of course, post-modern bullshitthink is probably part of what's driving the behavior at Evergreen and elsewhere. When the standard is that there are no standards, this makes it far easier for people to go lazy instead of achieving and to devote themselves to demanding perks and status that they think they shouldn't have to earn like the rest of us.
And as for the current environment on campus, Clay Routledge put the absurdity of it so well:
In the US, people freely give $50-70k a year to a private college to study how the US is oppressive and capitalism is evil. #privilege
— Clay Routledge (@clayroutledge) July 3, 2017
via @CHSommers
Kindly refrain from using "racist" as a slur against leftists. That's their word. Please say "anti-white," a more precise and unambiguous term.
AndrewR at July 3, 2017 6:13 AM
And when all is said and done, Weinstein will be...released from his contract, his supporters will find themselves under ever increasing scrutiny, and the mob congratulating themselves on their tolerance and open mindedness in driving out the heretics.
I R A Darth Aggie at July 3, 2017 6:25 AM
You realize this goes all the way down to kindergarten. I don't know how many English teachers I had who had difficulty with the English word 'opinion'. It is normal these days to ask students for their opinion and then tell them it's wrong. And you obviously punish them and grade them down for having the wrong opinion. It's been that way for decades.
Ben at July 3, 2017 6:52 AM
Apparently the last conservative/libertarian has left teh building:
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9384
Someone should have asked him/her to turn off the lights. And one less heretic to be burned at the stake.
I R A Darth Aggie at July 3, 2017 7:15 AM
As Sowell states, it is indeed better to be a big fish in a little pond than an angry student at an elite school. And why are blacks unable to do well at elite schools? Broken families and terrible schools, both the result of democrat policies.
The left is racist not only against whites, but they assume blacks can't ever succeed without help, can't even figure out how to vote without hand holding.
cc at July 3, 2017 8:59 AM
Evergreen is not an academically competitive school. It doesn't attract academically oriented students or faculty.
Where academic preparation probably does play a role, is in the fact that Evergreen is known as a dumping ground for poorly qualified students in WA school systems. A lot of those kids have psychological and behavioral issues, and otherwise can't succeed in a normal academic environment.
I suspect that this is why the administration is so coddling towards their violent antisocial behavior.
Similarly the school doesn't attract good faculty or administration candidates. If anything, it's a black mark to have Evergreen on your CV. The ones who do want to work at Evergreen tend to have a political motive.
Frankly the school needs to be have its accreditation suspended until they can provide a safe campus environment conducive to educating students.
It's apparent that the current administration isn't willing or able to do that, so they should be removed. So should the faculty who are encouraging student hate groups on campus.
WA Academic at July 3, 2017 11:56 AM
It's one thing for someone to organically become the big fish in a small pond. It's another for someone to know they're too advanced for a particular program they're going to enter (but not advanced enough for an elite school). Those big fish have a tendency to take resources and opportunities from those who really need them.
Fayd at July 3, 2017 11:59 AM
> Evergreen is not an academically
> competitive school. It doesn't
> attract academically oriented
> students or faculty.
You must —on some animal level— recognize the sheer obtuse-itude of your blog comment. Wikipedia:
This is your tribe, babe. These are your people.Live it. Own it. Be it... Or maybe surrender your own public funds and tax breaks, if your brethren so offend you.
Crid at July 3, 2017 2:28 PM
JayEff Christ. If you're job title is "Faculty," you are fucking well academically oriented.
MisterMiss "July 3, 2017 11:56 AM" is just upset that someone else has caught onto to HisHer gravy train.
Crid at July 3, 2017 2:30 PM
Sorry Crid, but academic accreditation has very little to do with the quality of education that an institution provides.
It's primarily the result of an assessment of the school's financial solvency, and ability to maintain operational and administrative processes necessary to ensure compliance w/ regulatory and statutory rules (e.g. to handle student loans ).
Likewise, it does nothing to ensure that faculty maintain academic standards.
You've been mislead.
WA Academic at July 3, 2017 7:24 PM
> Sorry Crid, but academic
> accreditation has very little
> to do with the quality of
> education that an institution
> provides.
No apology, necessary, Muffin!... Because I never said anything of the kind. I care not for Evergreen's academic reputation, nor for your own: The problems is precisely that your gossipy sniping at Evergreen's "quality" is intramural, while your metastatic finances burden the rest of us indistinguishably. "Accreditation" is as good a membership card as any.
Don't pretend you're different kinds of people than the Evergreenies, whatever the (apparently shameful) name of your own institution: You are not, and we have no reason to presume you're better by intellectual depth, let alone courage of expression.
> You've been mislead.
I grew up on a campus... Don't kid a kidder.
Crid at July 3, 2017 8:00 PM
It's like being chastised by Oswald Bates!
WA Academic at July 3, 2017 8:41 PM
It's like being mocked by someone who wants to drop names! (...When logically cornered!)
Crid at July 3, 2017 10:03 PM
While it seems promising that noxious *academics* are eating their own, I won't be encouraged until I can actually see the bottom of the bowl.
If any dividing line is possible between wheat and chaff, a better indicator might be stem or not stem, rather than which socialist jobs program happens to employ you.
You're pretentious sweetie. Crid has a nose for that.
Isab at July 4, 2017 2:25 AM
*misled
Corrected for the WA Academic.
D'oh!
Radwaste at July 4, 2017 4:02 AM
> I won't be encouraged until I
> can actually see the bottom
> of the bowl.
Exactly. My nephews got nephews now, and this could take another generation to shake out... But the meter is running.
> a better indicator might be
> stem or not stem
Yes. Or maybe well-employed alumni-at-year-3 vs not. Iowahawk has many thoughts to admire which seem like sarcasm but actually aren't.
Crid at July 4, 2017 4:52 AM
"That is because attendance at a postsecondary institution no longer guarantees a “college education.” Instead, colleges and universities now provide a full-service experience of “going to college.” These are not remotely the same thing." ~ Tom Nichols (The Death of Expertise)
Conan the Grammarian at July 4, 2017 7:26 AM
In the '80s, the government used default rates to de-certify colleges and universities (and trade schools) for participation in the student loan program. If a school had greater than a certain percentage of its students defaulting on their loans, the school was decertified. The hurdle rate was ridiculously high, so only schools for the poor ever got decertified.
Why are we financing so many college educations with loans?
How on earth did we allow so many colleges to raise their tuitions and costs to the point that their customers couldn't afford it and then create a government handout program to subsidize these overpriced institutions?
A market-based system would have seen those cost-spiraling colleges forced to retrench with fewer students. Instead, we've created an entire industry to subsidize inefficiency.
Conan the Grammarian at July 4, 2017 7:47 AM
Many many years ago, 1980's maybe, there was a 60 Minutes TV show about this from Memphis. The local CC's & tech colleges had programs for data processing that the black kids would go to... But Holiday Inn, the locally-based employer with deep IT staffing needs, wouldn't hire from those schools because the proficiency of their graduates was too shallow.
This, and Trump, and everything in the world, is all of a piece.
I've been trying to make peace with Charles Murray, and it's been going better than I thought it would. In this interview from twenty-three years ago, he puts it like this:
Well, gee willikers, but that's what everyone's been saying about Brexit and Trump for the last two years (fifteen, if you include Steyn). All the machinery at the verge of our government and our economy is focused on taking care of the people who were going to do well anyway, or those who will profess obeisance to that machine (e.g., inner-city Democrats).Everyone else votes for Trump.
Civilization has to figure out what to do for loyal people who happen not to have been born brilliant, but who have been born with American/western citizenship. They deserve better than they've been getting.
Crid at July 4, 2017 11:07 PM
"Frankly the school needs to be have its accreditation suspended until they can provide a safe campus environment conducive to educating students."
No no no. We need institutions like Evergreen. Why? So that the idiots can self-identify, and the rest of us will know who they are and can avoid them.
To riff on what Crid wrote above: Not only do we have the problem of where do the non-elites fit into our society, we have the problem that, as is becoming evident, a lot of our elites aren't all that elite. Somewhere along the line, all of those highly respected institutions took a wrong turn, and now we have a bunch of butt-nekkid emperors running around loose, and this is becoming apparent even to some of the elites themselves. We've got a philosophy that calls itself "progressivism" but is nothing of the sort, and nations being run by people who consider themselves to be above national pride. A lot of our cities are Curley-ized, a dysfunctional but self-reinforcing pattern of power politics and client classes. The elites tsk-tsk over the provincialism of people who want to live peaceful lives in a fairly predictable system of law and order and market economy; meanwhile, the elites live in gated subdivisions with private security, so that they are immune from the effects of the policies that they push. Said elites bop off to Davos or Cannes or Rio in their private jets whenever the mood strikes them, to lecture the rest of us about global warming, and then they are stunned when people don't take them seriously. "Don't they know who we are? We went to Harvard!"
When education reduces itself to credentialism, I'm not sure what happens next. The Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, and the movable-type printing press broke the grip of the Middle Ages Catholic Curleyites and the mystery guilds. So far, we have the Internet as our movable type. Now where do our Enlightenment and Reformation come from?
Cousin Dave at July 5, 2017 7:14 AM
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