Brandon

Monday, November 09, 2015

Left Wing Greivance Mongering on College Campuses Reach Pathologic, Fasicst Levels

Is it any wonder so many college grads can't get jobs?

Remember when Halloween was a fun, safe holiday where you could dress up and act goofy? Well, at Yale University, and soon to be many others, the holiday has become a tinderbox of left wing grievance mongering that borders on the insane.

At Yale, it started when the Administration sent an email to students requesting they "avoid wearing “culturally unaware and insensitive” costumes that could offend minority students. It specifically advised them to steer clear of outfits that included elements like feathered headdresses, turbans or blackface." Many students were "frustrated" with the restrictions. Responding to that, Erika Christakis, the wife of the master of Silliman College sent her own email in which she said:
I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.

Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense – and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes – I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: 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? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.
...
Nicholas [her husband] says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society. . . .In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that.
Naturally all hell broke loose after that. Perpetually aggrieved left wing student activists at Yale are now demanding the resignation of Ms. Christakis.


"Other people have rights too." You didn't really say that did you?

Then, there was this image of a circle of shame around Nicholas Christakis in the courtyard of the Silliman College dormitory complex at Yale. He made the mistake of saying "other people have rights too, not just you!" Oh boy did that strike a nerve! Watch as one ringleader shouts at Mr. Christakis to "be quiet." If I were one of the perpetually aggrieved and someone used that tone with me I might feel threatened by her microaggression. But then, it's somehow OK for left wing fascists to shut down, shout down or even threaten those who do not obey. Remember the Bernie Sanders rally in Seatlle?

Milo Yiannopoulus sees a parallel in history:
Students of history will notice an alarming similarity in the video above to the “struggle sessions” of Maoist China, a form of public shaming in which perceived enemies of the Party would be surrounded in a public place by Red Guards, Mao’s most zealous supporters. The Red Guards would hurl abuse at their target until they confessed to their crimes. Uninformed critics might argue that the Red Guards were a weapon of the Communist state, and not a genuine grassroots movement, but they’d be wrong: the Red Guards started out as a student movement, on Chinese campuses. Afraid yet?
Is it any wonder there are so many left wing kooks populating fascist organizations like Black Lives Matter? They're getting a full dose of left wing crazy courtesy of America's higher education system that seems to have lost the mission to teach skills and now specializes in so many ways in teaching greivance mongering. The inmates are running the asylum!

Related: Yale Officials agree to physically tear up U.S. Constitution if it will make aggrieved student happier. Tell me these left wing nuts are not fascists!

Related: Winners of Biased Course Contest

Campus Reform sponsored a contest for the most biased college courses. The winners are:
  • History 73S: “History of the Police in the United States: Slave Patrols to Ferguson”—submitted by Nick Sovich, Stanford University ‘17
  • Political Science 415: “Taking Marx Seriously”—submitted by Avery Riggs, Amherst College ‘18
  • American Studies 3731: “The Refusal to Work”—submitted by Casey Breznick, Cornell University ‘17
No doubt that last has a mandatory attendance requirement!

UPDATE:
In the Atlantic, Conor Freidersdorf writes:
Everyone invested in how the elites of tomorrow are being acculturated should understand, as best they can, how so many cognitively privileged, ordinarily kind, seemingly well-intentioned young people could lash out with such flagrant intolerance. What happens at Yale does not stay there.
Further, another student at Yale reports that there are some students so upset by the Halloween costume controversy that they can't eat, sleep or go to class. They are on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Just what will it be like for these pampered left wing pets when they enter the real world?

At City Journal Heather MacDonald concludes:
This shocking video is a glimpse of the future—the boorish, hate-filled Cultural Revolution come to America. Colleges have capitulated completely to delusional victimology; unless employers are willing to stand up against the coddled products of the academic hothouse, we may all soon be living in a world of screaming, monomaniacal victims.

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