There’s No Safe Space for Ideas on Campus ‘Animal Farms’

[Dashinka 24,747]

By 

Daniel Payne
Nov. 25, 2019 7:05 pm ET

 

Most Americans know that higher education has for several decades been in the grip of a deeply intolerant, fanatical and uncompromising strain of progressive activism. Students and sometimes even faculty members regularly chase heterodox speakers off campus, demand complete fealty from terrified campus bureaucracies, and denounce and destroy each other over the slightest and most inconsequential ideological deviations. The environment isn’t unlike George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” a place where “no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”

 

Yet an even more intolerant brand of campus activism is taking shape. This rising political philosophy isn’t merely allergic to dissenting ideas but is opposed even to ideas about dissenting ideas. It’s a bit like the concept of metacognition in reverse: These activists, gripped by zealotry and inflexible dogmatism, are taking pains to avoid even thinking about thoughts with which they disagree. 

 

Consider a recent controversy at Washington College in Maryland. Students there successfully lobbied to shut down a campus production of a play just one day before it was set to open. 

 

The aggrieved students were upset that the play, Larry Shue’s “The Foreigner,” depicts the evil antics of the Ku Klux Klan. But the play doesn’t show Klan members in a sympathetic light—on the contrary, they’re the villains of the piece, and they get their comeuppance in the end. Yet students were deeply upset by the Klan costumes the actors would wear, so the play had to go. (The theater department was “unable to find a satisfactory compromise” with the student activists, a campus official dryly noted.)

 

Several professors have also landed in hot water recently simply for speaking an offensive word while students were around. At Emory University, law professor Paul Zwier is facing major sanctions from his school because, in a few instances, he said the N-word. Mr. Zwier didn’t direct the word at anyone or anything; he merely mentioned it, first as part of a discussion of case law and then to illustrate a larger point during a private conversation. Students claimed Mr. Zwier threatened their “safety and emotional well-being.” Another student who heard Mr. Zwier use the word was reportedly “visibly shaken” after the experience, as if he had suffered a near-death experience. Faculty wanted Mr. Zwier barred from school events, lest they be forced to sit near him and risk their own reputations.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/theres-no-safe-space-for-ideas-on-campus-animal-farms-11574726733

[TBoneTX 45,990]

Good continuous grief.

[Dashinka 24,747]

24 minutes ago, TBoneTX said:

Good continuous grief.

No doubt!  So much for freedom of speech, and freedom of thought.

[luckytxn 2,265]

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

I think we need to take a second to appreciate the type of societal/social astringent Trump has become. The left have poisoned institutions for decades while playing coy about their objective. They don't even pause to think about how radically their views have flipped in such a short time span. In 3 short years, the Trump astringent has propelled these toxic elements to the surface, transparent about their actual agenda and the comprehensive destruction to freedoms and our way of life that took so long to build, and that so much blood was spilled to attain and maintain. Unfortunately, they've attained too much power to not do much damage, but the good news is, they comprehensively divulged themselves with sufficient time to do something about it that doesn't mean civil war, because that's the inevitable result if the left and their newfound authoritarian buddies get much worse.

 

The left are so mentally compromised right now by psychological manipulators in the media, government, etc., they don't even grasp the corrupt elements they're aligning with. They're driven by this infantile Id-like desire to be handed their way and don't care what gets destroyed to attain it. Freedoms are irrelevant, elections are irrelevant, due process is irrelevant, logic is irrelevant, science is irrelevant, patience is irrelevant, and this, of all the elements involved, prominently cultivated by institutions of "education".

 

The most corrupt elements know precisely how to market to this behavior (the same way compromised women are a lightning rod to abusive men), and basically use these people as instruments to get their own way. It would be wise for the left to take a step back and re-attain some thick skin, some introspective reasoning, and stop furthering this authoritarianism, because the people that are pulling these strings most certainly don't mind the chaos that's being sowed. They can't stand seeing their power and influence diminish.

Edited November 27, 2019 by Burnt Reynolds

[Dashinka 24,747]

14 minutes ago, Burnt Reynolds said:

I think we need to take a second to appreciate the type of societal/social astringent Trump has become. The left have poisoned institutions for decades while playing coy about their objective. They don't even pause to think about how radically their views have flipped in such a short time span. In 3 short years, the Trump astringent has propelled these toxic elements to the surface, transparent about their actual agenda and the comprehensive destruction to freedoms and our way of life that took so long to build, and that so much blood was spilled to attain and maintain. Unfortunately, they've attained too much power to not do much damage, but the good news is, they comprehensively divulged themselves with sufficient time to do something about it that doesn't mean civil war, because that's the inevitable result if the left and their newfound authoritarian buddies get much worse.

 

The left are so mentally compromised right now by psychological manipulators in the media, government, etc., they don't even grasp the corrupt elements they're aligning with. They're driven by this infantile Id-like desire to be handed their way and don't care what gets destroyed to attain it. Freedoms are irrelevant, elections are irrelevant, due process is irrelevant, logic is irrelevant, science is irrelevant, patience is irrelevant, and this, of all the elements involved, prominently cultivated by institutions of "education".

 

The most corrupt elements know precisely how to market to this behavior (the same way compromised women are a lightning rod to abusive men), and basically use these people as instruments to get their own way. It would be wise for the left to take a step back and re-attain some thick skin, some introspective reasoning, and stop furthering this authoritarianism, because the people that are pulling these strings most certainly don't mind the chaos that's being sowed. They can't stand seeing their power and influence diminish.

I would add to that the entrenched bureaucracy is in a similar state of mind.

[Boiler 45,979]

I did not see it going this far, not sure why, there is no shortage of historical precedents.

[TBoneTX 45,990]

15 hours ago, luckytxn said:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

Except cows that insist on farting, thus hosing our planet.

[Dashinka 24,747]

18 hours ago, Boiler said:

I did not see it going this far, not sure why, there is no shortage of historical precedents.

I agree, I did not see this going this far as well.  

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

More educated opinions:

https://www.thecollegefix.com/rutgers-prof-fox-news-and-the-gop-are-existential-threats-to-the-country/

Rutgers prof: Fox News and the GOP are ‘existential threats’ to the country

 

Quoting tweets since she's protected her account:

Quote

I have long argued that the US has been a crypto-fascist republic. Given the Soviet purchase of the GOP and some members of the Dems, we are sliding towards the real thing.

Quote

At this point, Fox is openly fascist. They and the GOP are existential threats to the USA.

I wonder what they consider the criteria for a fascist who isn't open about it. 🤔

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.romania-insider.com/andrei-serban-explains-quitting-columbia

https://www.thecollegefix.com/columbia-professor-who-fled-communism-resigns-says-university-is-becoming-communist/

Quote

Columbia professor who fled communism resigns, says university is becoming communist

 

It was at this meeting that the dean of the art school told them that there were “too many white professors, too many heterosexual men,” and that it would be best to hire a minority or a woman, or a gay man.

Serban, who was the director of the hiring committee, says that he was told that it could not be someone like him because he is a man that has been “married, a heterosexual man who has children.”

The professor says that he then asked if they could choose a straight white male if the most qualified candidate happened to be so, and was promptly told that they could not. “I felt like I was living under communism again,” he said.

 

 

If true, this can't be legal.. I hope a lawsuit is coming.

Edited November 29, 2019 by Burnt Reynolds