<i>Above all, we are disappointed that you and President Chodosh weren’t brave enough to come to the defense of a student who was told she was “derailing” because her opinions regarding racism didn’t align with those of the mob around her. Nor were you brave enough to point out that these protesters were perfectly happy to use this student to further their own agenda, but turned on her as soon as they realized she wasn’t supporting their narrative. These protesters were asking you to protect your students, but you didn’t even defend the one who needed to be protected right in front of you.</i><p>It's like nobody on any side of any of these university free speech issues can keep themselves on the rails. These people don't seem to get it either.<p>Students don't need "protection" from free speech, nor does anyone need to be rescued from the "mockery" and "humiliation" of an accusation of racism.<p>Demands for journalism-free "safe spaces" are bad, but so too is the idea that accusations of racism are so beyond the pale that people need to be shielded from them by institutions.
These intellectually bankrupt movements horrify me. Perfectly-well-meaning people, while supposedly building a bright tomorrow, create hell. Just like the 1950s Czechoslovakia. University execs scared not to cater to idiotic demands, public shaming, double-speak, government-sanctioned kangaroo courts.<p>It's like <i>Lord of the Flies II: The College Years</i>.<p>I would like to know if the Hitler Jugend were like this, too?
These protestors just hurt themselves in the long run. That's the saddest part. ''The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.'' Yes, and we all have a moral obligation to stand up to injustices that we see. But embracing victimhood as an identity does nothing for you. It keeps you stuck where you are and unable to move forward. You start to mistake pity for respect. University administrators are doing them a huge disservice by making them think otherwise. In the lion and tiger filled jungle of the real world they are in for a rude awakening.<p>Marcus Aurelius, writing two thousand years ago:<p>"Our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."<p>I wish I had more than one upvote to give this editorial.
I wrote a long argument but deleted it all in favor of this. Everyone needs to toughen the fuck up and stop being offended so easily. Someone insults you for being different? Welcome to real life, get some thicker skin.
In high school, I had a teacher who had a rack of books/comics which he lent to students. One day, a single student complained about curse words / nudity in some of the books, and the teacher was forced to take those books out of the school. This struck me as silly. Why let one person's complaint take away this great thing for all of the students?<p>Also in high school, there was a girl who was into hard core music and died her hair blue. She was routinely mocked in the halls for being weird. This also struck me as silly. Why should a person, just because they have a minority interest / opinion, be forced to deal with such harassment?<p>I'm empathetic to both sides of this issue. However, I think we should generally err on the side of not harassing people, even if that causes unnecessary inconveniences for the majority sometimes.
I just wanted to say that I was reading the comments here and it hit me that this is the Internet I love. So often we talk about dialogue and having a conversation and I really believe the Internet is perfect for that because its hard to raise your voice on the Internet and silence someone else, but we rarely get it because—for example—Facebook isn't very threaded and you have your name attached and are only having a conversation with your "friends" so its insular. On the other side is Reddit where charged things like this just don't work well. However on HN people write thoughtful, dissenting, sourced, and well-written arguments and we have full discussions. It's fantastic. This is the Internet I love.
Just a thought for those trying to figure out what's going on: If you find what the protest movements are doing to be challenging, that's the idea.<p>Much social change begins this way; it's like disruption in tech. People find the whole idea of it challenging to their worldview and comfortable status quo, and they (we) respond predictably - angry, scared, dimissive. It's <i>heresy</i>. But if the status quo worked so well, we wouldn't need social change. In some cases, people get the idea and come around and what was heresy becomes the new status quo (for the next generation to up end, upsetting the current protestors when they are older and settled). It's similar to early adoption of disruptive technology.<p>That doesn't make every disruptive idea, socially or in tech, good, but the fact that it disrupts your social ideas is not, in itself, problematic.<p>For myself, when I feel myself responding that way, I try to take it as a sign that there's something beyond my perspective that I don't understand.
Here's a perspective on why the protesters seem to dislike news media coverage. (I'll add that there is much criticism here with little investigation of the actual facts and assertions of the protesters. I'm not trying to take a side, but to add some substance to the discussion.)<p>"There’s a good reason protesters at the University of Missouri didn’t want the media around"<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/11/theres-a-good-reason-protesters-at-the-university-of-missouri-didnt-want-the-media-around/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/11/...</a><p><i>Certainly, Tai - like any journalist - had a legal right to enter the space, given that it was in a public area. But that shouldn’t be the end of this story. We in the media have something important to learn from this unfortunate exchange. The protesters had a legitimate gripe: The black community distrusts the news media because it has failed to cover black pain fairly. ...</i><p>I've read plenty, for many years, that corroborates this point of view.
The main criticism is that Dean Spellman referred to a marginalized student as "not fitting the [Claremont Mckenna] mold". This is harmful. It is more than a poor choice of words. She should have apologized and done some training.<p>But the students are young and have no where else to direct their frustration. I hope Spellman can land on her feet. And I hope minority students can feel less marginalized on campus.
I like it. I stand by and watch some leaders stubbornly refuse any culpability at all no matter how universal the detractors, and other leaders crumble at the first sign of frission. Clearly both are extreme reactions, and problematic. I (we?) want leaders who don't pull a GW Bush and stick their fingers in their ears for all criticism. We also don't want people like the CMC chairwoman who give up so easily. I'm not sure what the middle ground is - maybe Nixon? You resist for a while, then you give up. And in return, we let you "retire" with some semblance of dignity. Or you resist for a while, the attacks fade away, and you live to fight another day. Seems fair to me.
The best place to start understanding social protest and its disruptive approach (not unlike the disruption practiced by many in SV) is Martin Luther King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail. I recommend the whole thing, but here are excerpts [1]<p>--------<p><i>16 April 1963<p>My Dear Fellow Clergymen:<p>While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." ...<p>You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. ...<p>My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. ...<p>Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. ...<p>I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal ...<p>I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.</i><p>--------<p>[1] <a href="http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...</a>
Reminds me of the warnings in this article <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-codd...</a>
Say what you will about the situation, but every time something like this happens, I end up being far more aghast at the reactions (see the article comments) than the original incident. It's really gross and a good indicator for why these flare-ups keep happening.
Sorry, but this whole college uprising is way too coordinated and the idea of personal space/safe space, college costs, and the like, are just political staging for the 2016 election similar to how OWS was for 2012. Its all backed by groups with connections to political players who need to energize this group as the candidate they will be stuck with is damaged and boring goods.<p>Figure the focus of one campaign will simply be "fixing" college, from how students are coddled to offering to pay for it all. Just watch.
I wonder what these students will think when they get into an industry like software programming that's full of racism and sexism that they have no control over (if they manage to get past those obstacles to get in in the first place). They are doing themselves a disservice by not learning how to deal not only with people who hold different opinions than they do, but also with people who are blatantly racist, sexist, or just plain assholes. While the rest of us are trying to deal with the real issue of the loss of free speech due to surveillance and censorship by authorities, they're contributing in their own little ways the final blows to a free society, a contribution undoubtedly much lauded by the traditional enemy of free speech, the state. And in return, they make absolutely no positive difference to the status quo whatsoever.<p>Even the hunger strikes are cute. A reminiscence of Ghandi? Seriously? It take a lot longer than a week to die of starvation and I doubt any of those students have the resolve to see a hunger strike out. The dean bowed down to cowardice by being a coward herself so it's clear she's not cut out for the job. I wonder if there are still people who are cut out for it?<p>As far as the issue of "safe space," if these students think such a thing actually exists, they're too stupid to be attending college. A better admissions process should weed them out.