“Politicians,” says Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Cal), “have bowed to the courts and stood before the people — not to silence opposition but to answer it.” He should have put it the other way around. Incumbents ought to be bowing to us and standing before the courts. Khanna’s opening quote comes from the April 18 Washington Post op-ed page, where a speech Khanna gave at his alma mater, Yale Law School, is adapted. It’s titled “Trump and Vance fear universities for a reason.” The determiner “a” implies only one possible reason. Can it really be necessary to remind the rep of the number of scary college eruptions that keep Americans, matriculated or otherwise, wary?
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The ones toiling away to maintain this parasitic structure are villainized for skepticism of it.[/perfectpullquote]
A full accounting would fall short at book length. Does anybody believe a smart guy like Ro never heard about any of them? Confronted with the ghastly details, would he say none count? Let’s go over just a few. (RELATED: Higher Education’s 7 Deadly Sins)
A good place to start is Yale University. Nick Christakis and wife Erika were both teaching there while residing among undergrads at the university’s Silliman College. The couple incurred student wrath, fascistically suggesting that the kids shouldn’t make too big a deal about Halloween costumes. The couple foolishly opined that students in 2015 had sense enough not to adorn blackface or the like without any prompting from administration. (RELATED: The Fall of Harvard: How America’s Oldest University Became Its Most Expensive Liability)
Erika, who lectured on early childhood studies, went too far with: “What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?” The foolhardy woman, who resigned over the incident, wasn’t aware of how long “early childhood” goes on in this generation of prodigies. The young “adults” surrounded her husband professor.
“We’re humans — great! Glad we understand that,” says one student, “but your experiences will never connect to mine.” Exasperated, Christakis addresses the crowd: “If you don’t believe that I can ever understand what you’re saying to me, then why do you stand here demanding to be heard?” And, in response, an anguished voice wails from within the crowd: “Because we’re dying.”
Wow, if the daily routine at the second most prestigious academy on the East Coast is killing you, imagine what a plantation like a community college might do. We should be checking for the kind of “unmarked graves” purported at Kamloops near every one of them.
That drama-queen scenario was mild compared to others where elitist wisdom is gravely doled out to our best and brightest. Keep in mind, no actual Halloween costume confronted the fragile sensitivities of students. The mere idea of oppressive holiday raiment reduced them to a pitifully hostile condition. How they manage to look down on Mayberry from such depths is a quandary of optical physics. (RELATED: Creative Destruction Comes to Universities)
Associate Professor of Communication and Media at Merrimack College, Melissa Zimdars, etched her name into national news in 2016. She warned us on the op-ed page of the Washington Post about a deluge of “fake news” confounding the masses. Bringing the expression into more common usage quickly backfired. Hearing the words, the laity didn’t sit idly. They quickly got busy finding heresy among the clergy Melissa would ordain. Many would-be unfaker-than-thous couldn’t manage to play it straight and kept getting caught. A-listers in the media racket began to get touchy. When Khanna refers to a “free press with its inconvenient questions,” he pays no attention to how they react when inconvenience comes their way.
Only fifteen months later, Chris Cuomo, in front of God and national television, compared the words “fake news” to a racial epithet beginning with “N.” It was a testament to the competence of CNN brass that it took nearly five more years to fire him — for the far lesser offense of advising his brother to keep his grimy paws off underlings. In the meantime, it was found that Claas Relotius, who was CNN’s 2014 “Journalist of the Year,” had been spinning yarns of complete fiction in print for his entire career. CNN’s commendation was only one of nearly 20 awards honoring this 4th ‘estater’ over six years of creative writing.
Matt Groening attended Evergreen State College in Washington. What happened there in 2017 at least equals, and probably betters, any mass psychosis portrayed in a Simpsons script. The POC of the faculty and student body, inspired by the Douglas Turner Ward play Day of Absence, had been skipping school on an appointed spring day each year. After 40 years, participants weren’t satisfied with their oppressors’ stoic endurance of the wounds the ritual inflicted. Absentees looked for a way to be more sorely missed. Group brainstorming hatched a solution. Instead of vacating campus, the oppressed demanded complexions that didn’t qualify be evicted. That ought to have learned ‘em.
Videos that recorded subsequent events clarified one thing beyond doubt: Evergreen admissions accord no points to applicants for not being obnoxious jerks. One faculty member, biology professor Brett Weinstein, wouldn’t play. He emailed President George Bridges about his misgivings. Word of this fomented a mob. Administration and faculty were called onto the carpet by students in a coup d’ecole. Professors and their bosses soon found themselves ordered around like convicts in a penal institution. The president of the college needed permission and an escort to use the bathroom.
The live depictions of what developed evoke a question. What was Weinstein thinking when he passed up a day of authorized hooky? Golf, fishing, or a stool at your favorite bar had to beat hell out of the company of the swelling pus-pack he instructed. The Weinstens were threatened, and police protection became necessary. The persecution fantasies from speakers during the insurrection would be treated with powerful psychotropic medication at any asylum.
The incident at Oberlin in 2016 was more bizarre. A student of the college, Jonathan Alladin, was seen shoplifting at Gibson’s Bakery. He might have succeeded without trying to make an underage purchase first. Contrary to unsupportable narratives, Alladin was not profiled, as crooks go, he was clumsy and inept. “Boosting,” as the practice is known in underworld argot, was not taught at Phillips Andover, where Jonathan prepped. Wikipedia claims that making off with Gibson’s merch was an Oberlin “rite of passage.” However ideologically driven you might find that website, it sounds believable.
Allyn Gibson, a scion of the business, noticed two bottles of wine under Alladin’s jacket at the counter. He was hit in the face as the phone was knocked from his hand while taking a picture. Outside the store, the man was on the ground being pummeled when police arrived.
When a “cause” like this ignites a student body, faculty, and administration … the victim industry is finding causes in desperately short supply. Less than 24 hours later, aggrieved Oberliners massed in front of the bakery. Students were given credit for missing class while harassing the business. Anti-Gibson fliers, printed with official school sanction, were handed out. Speeches, from freshmen all the way up to Oberlin’s Dean of Students, were made equating Gibson’s stand against theft to unconscionable oppression. The smear campaign lasted years.
Alladin and co-conspirators pled guilty to all charges and apologized for their actions. A lot of people get rowdier and less morally exacting in college environments. Working-class youngsters who go on to higher education tend to have aggressive confrontations with authority behind them at earlier stages. Far from a “thug,” Alladin was more likely a victim of so-called “affluenza.” It’s an affliction that can cross color lines.
How Colleges Shake Us Down
As far as antics of academia go, these are just the theatrics. If George Bridges chose to be a hostage at the place he supposedly ran, Evergreen is more of a joke than a threat. The trouble goes much deeper than University presidents’ beclowning themselves before Congress and the Senate. We have seen an epidemic of loathing for the American way of life and Western culture itself become common in the general curriculum. Students come out with militant hair triggers over trifles. The hate-hating industry prowls for prey incessantly. When there’s a dearth, hate and “phobia” must be invented.
What goes less noticed in this plague of melodrama is how the country is shaken down. Lurking behind every incident is a university administration that grows and sucks revenue from the economy shamelessly. They are exactly who ends up with the lucre when students mortgage their futures. People in the media whining about college debt generally leave this part of the equation out of op-eds. Meanwhile, everyone paying for the services of the college educated — whether they be doctors, lawyers, “experts” or credentialed people of any kind — ultimately foots the bill long term. Most of those who scratched for that degree have loans to pay off. When you feel stung getting the bill from them — who are they paying off?
Economically, we have enormous reasons to fear academia. Their cut of the pie chart of consumption is coming to resemble that of the financial sector. That’s something that might be measured. What defies any gauge, rule, or scale is the politicization of the curriculum. A professoriate that enjoys every advantage availed by Western modernization — plane, trains, automobiles, AC, full medical, pro-sports and entertainment, urban amenities, and general luxury — seethes with loathing and resentment toward the system that provides. Where’s any evidence that the kids mobbing up and blocking traffic go back to nature or live spartanically? Their perception of where it all comes from is distant, if not an absolute blind spot.
In the meantime, the process of coddling, consoling, and reassuring students of their indispensable value to human welfare inspires fresh angles of consumption without production. They’ve been adding layers of bureaucracy to the government, education, and the corporate world for at least two decades. We are told that not enough people really care. Those who get paid to gush concern in newly invented career lines inevitably devote energies to a precious few. Nonentities, who don’t seem to count, get flushed further down the pipes of priority. The ones toiling away to maintain this parasitic structure are villainized for their skepticism of it.
There isn’t any mass movement of populists ready to strike out against the culture of learning. No shortage of Americans exist, however, who doubt writing an English sentence as well as Khanna does is worthwhile without taking in the grisly details of “education’s” present state. Truck drivers, pipe-fitters, farmers, small retailers, and yeomen generally didn’t invent the prevailing ‘us versus them’ mentality. An insatiable credentialed class did that.
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