In recent days there has been an increasingly volatile movement of on-campus protests concerning issues of racial diversity and institutionalized white privilege.  The following two articles cover these protests from both the progressive and conservative view points.  Is diversity possible in American universities?  Is the white male fast tracked for success in the academic world?  What can be done to bring about positive change in this racially charged debate?

Race on Campus: the year of ‘making a statement on what America should be’

By Michelle Dean (Source – edited for size) – At schools like Yale, the University of Missouri and Amherst College, 2015 was a year marked by protests to confront deep seeded racial injustices.

2015 was a year marked by on-campus protests of an energy and volume that America has only rarely seen since the 1960s. At universities around the country, students demanded their schools confront deep-seated racial injustices and address the question of how to provide an inclusive educational environment, free of discrimination.

At Yale, the fracas first hit the national news when students protested an email from a lecturer named Erika Christakis regarding Halloween costumes, which asked, “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?” Frustrations over her perceived insensitivity combined with long-simmering frustrations about the way the administration handled race issues on campus brought on fierce protests. A video of students shouting their demands at an administrator at a related protest then went viral in early November.

At the University of Missouri, students protesting a series of racially charged incidents on campus found themselves in the national spotlight when they forced the president of the university, Tim Wolfe, to step down. They were joined in their organizing efforts by the graduate students at the university, which set off a whole host of conversations about whether or not resources were being fairly allocated at the school.

At Amherst, a three-day sit-in resulted in a list of student demands that called on the president of the college to, among other things, “issue a statement of support for the revision of the Honor Code to reflect a zero-tolerance policy for racial insensitivity and hate speech”. The movement, called Amherst Uprising, brought the campus to agree to reject the school’s unofficial mascot, “Lord Jeffrey”, who is based on a historical figure that sold smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans.

These controversies also sparked heated debates in the mainstream media. Pundits argued about the supposed “coddling” of university students. Some claimed that the campus debates were symbolic of a “new intolerance”; others, like Jelani Cobb at the New Yorker, called those arguments “victim blaming with a software update”. Recently, the Guardian interviewed students at those … schools about their experience of these controversies, and how the turmoil affected their year on campus.

Eshe Sherley, Yale, senior

There was always going to be a campaign this year. The state of affairs on this campus for people of colour – faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students – is not, and was not good. Last year the university initiated an external review process of the cultural centers for African-American and Latino students to get a sense of how things were going. The answer was: not well. And coming into this year, we knew that we were going to have a bunch of faculty of color leaving. That was how this year started.

I’ve been in Yale classrooms where people have a way of saying that black lives don’t matter, even though they don’t think that’s what they’re saying. But I don’t see that alienation at Yale any differently than what I’ve experienced in the predominantly white spaces that I inhabited before I got here. So I wouldn’t say that I felt alienated at Yale. I would just say that I’ve experienced racism at Yale in the same way I’ve experienced racism throughout my life. It’s the nature of being a person of colour in the United States.

I’ve experienced racism at Yale in the same way I’ve experienced racism throughout my life

The students who were captured on video are some of the calmest, most loving students I’ve ever known. They’re people who I see on a day-to-day basis. They’re not people who have been pushing the university for a long time. They weren’t people who were already fed up. To be so in pain over this and have this made so clear to them how much the people in the administration who were supposed to care about them didn’t, it was really painful.

I think students of color, or at least the students of color organizing on campuses in America, understand that what’s going on college campuses is intimately related to what goes on in this country generally. To make a claim that colleges should be anti-racist spaces, that they should be spaces where students of color feel like they can be their full selves, is not about wanting to be coddled in your college years. It’s making a statement about what America should be like. It’s making a statement about how institutions in general should be healthy spaces for people of color.

Connor Lewis, University of Missouri, doctoral candidate

I never really planned on becoming much of an activist. But right before this semester started, graduate students lost their health insurance with something like 12 hours of notice. One of my friends miscarried her child and had no health insurance and was left trying to figure out what to do. That’s really what got me to step up.

Every semester it seems like there’s some kind of racist or otherwise discriminatory incident on campus. The university’s response, historically, has been little more than nice-sounding platitudes. This semester really brought home the fact that this is a pervasive problem. That goes to hiring and retention of faculty of color, creating resources for both faculty and students in marginalized communities, LGBTQ or students or faculty of color.

Every semester it seems like there’s some kind of racist or otherwise discriminatory incident on campus

It all ties back to what gets money at the university and what doesn’t. Granted, University of Missouri and a lot of other higher education institutions are struggling with their budgets. But it’s a question of where is this money going? Is it being equitably distributed among committees, groups, initiatives?

The national media just kind of parachuted into Columbia, a very small college town. This is a college town that has a very, very prestigious journalism school, but that’s a whole different beast from having CNN cameras going after a story.

A lot of people felt particularly shell-shocked by the intensity of media coverage. I think that this is something that a lot of students have felt because of course suddenly now they’re dealing with family members asking what’s going on. There’s nobody that didn’t feel it.

Bella Berkley, Amherst College, freshman

I’d been reading a lot in the news about Missouri and Yale, and then I read on Facebook that there was going to be a one hour solidarity sit-in at the Amherst library. One hour turned into three days.

For the first day, people were standing up sharing their own personal stories of how they experienced racism on campus, and how people had experienced socioeconomic, or racial discrimination.

I think micro-aggressions happen on every college campus. I’ve heard stories about people being denied into parties, or going to parties and the party sort of stopping to purposely to make that person feel uncomfortable so they leave. I do think that Amherst is making strides to try and address them as best that we can.

I think this school is trying it’s hardest to collaborate with students and faculty to think about how we can make this a little more inclusive for everyone.

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A Conservative Student’s Take On the Recent College Protests

By Julius Kairey (Source)

Can liberalism defend itself from its progeny?

This question is rarely considered by liberals themselves. But after seeing the disturbances on America’s campuses over the last couple of weeks, they would be well-advised to start.

Universities are supposed to be bastions of liberalism. Liberal administrators have insisted for decades that they know how to craft an environment free of hatred and bigotry.

Under their beneficent control, America’s campuses would nurture a belief in universal human dignity that undergirds the traditional liberal worldview. Multiculturalism and affirmative action were stepping stones aimed at vindicating the most important value of all: tolerance.

The Definition of Intolerance

Of course, tolerance that proceeds in only one direction – “tolerance for me, but not for thee” – is the very definition of intolerance.

Yet that intolerant conception is now accepted as correct by some leftist students nationwide.

The results have been predictably disastrous.

The left has perverted the liberal idea of tolerance by combining it with the perverse politics of identity and power. Too afraid of being labeled racists by campus radicals, the liberals have largely given up fighting for their own professed principles: democracy, equality under the law, equality of political rights, and the rule of law.

The drive to reduce “inequalities” in pursuit of “social justice” on campuses now takes precedence over every long-standing right cherished by liberals, most especially the freedom of speech.

Today’s students are willing to trade freedom for comfort. They will end up with neither.

How Did Things Get so Bad?

Identity politics, which is diametrically opposed to individualism and freedom, is now ingrained in the fabric of our universities. The sorting of students into “oppressors” and “oppressed” starts at the beginning of the contemporary college experience.

Those sorted into the “oppressed” category are exhorted to bring up their “marginalization” at every opportunity. Most of them cannot describe how they have personally faced substantial racial, ethnic or other discrimination (because few have).

So instead, they dutifully recite talking points about the “structural oppression,” “white supremacy,” and “systemic racism” allegedly faced by their identity group.

When conflict erupts, the “oppressed” are entitled to do as they please. If they behave well, they are praised for restraint in the face of injustice. If they behave badly, even violently, the “system” is blamed, and they are absolved of all responsibility.

Those sorted into the “oppressor” category usually consist of people who are some combination of white, heterosexual, Christian, and male.

Their highest calling is self-flagellation. They are required to condemn their own “privilege” and denounce the accomplishments of themselves and their families as unearned and unjust. They are to apologize for their identity group at every opportunity.

Those who try to think for themselves are denounced for their heresy as traitors to the cause of collective liberation. Those who insist on following any kind of moral principle or precept – which will necessarily offend some people – are deemed intolerant and demonized.

A Culture Of Hypersensitivity

We are now viewing the utter inability of liberalism to stand up for its own values. Modern American universities are no longer liberal models, but due to their restrictive and Orwellian environments, foster hypersensitivity and conformity.

The sense of victimization that these students feel is used to justify their nasty tactics. If you are on the wrong side of the social justice war, they will not stop at attacking your arguments. They will go after you personally – your job, your reputation, and your livelihood – to intimidate.

Not realizing that capitulation welcomes contempt rather than respect, liberal college administrators have capitulated and accommodated the radicals.

The radical left wants power, not justice. Liberals betray their own principles of freedom and equality under the law when they acquiesce to policies of racial quotas in the classroom and political censorship on the campus.

University of Missouri students demand a faculty that is a minimum of 10 percent black, and demand the addition of a mandatory “awareness and inclusion” curriculum developed by non-white students and faculty. They want to dictate the academic offerings of a university, with special treatment for their own racial groups. That is not equality.

Leftists are destroying liberalism. Universities are quickly gaining a well-deserved reputation as some of the least free institutions in American life.

The task is for conservatives, and true liberals, to stand up for America’s moral, legal, and political foundation.

Establishing classical liberal values in America required tremendous sacrifice on the part our forefathers. We are not about to see that legacy damaged by students who have no understanding of the source of their own freedom and prosperity.