Posted on 01/01/2024 7:30:31 AM PST by george76
Faculty said they felt trapped in an ‘alternate reality’ when trying to navigate the college’s ‘toxic’ DEI environment..
College students attending universities with restrictive speech codes are used to walking on eggshells and keeping their heads down on campus out of fear of committing social suicide or experiencing violence. In the disordered world of contemporary higher education, Jewish students receive limited, if any, support from school administrators amid explicit calls for violence against them, while other students face punishment for banal infractions like rolling a “free speech ball” around campus.
But if you are shocked at how students are subject to hypocritical double standards and draconian speech codes, what goes on behind the closed doors of faculty lounges and administrative offices will surely horrify you. Militant students can restrict the speech of other students, but often, faculty find themselves subjected to even stricter rules that embolden this militancy in the first place.
This has proven true at Bates College, my alma mater, ranked 213 out of 250 schools nationwide for free speech. Emails obtained from several former Bates College professors show just how limited faculty freedoms are. In the past, faculty were reported to the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) for questioning students’ assertions in class or asking students to think more critically. The environment created by this policy has left some professors fearful that a student will use a simple classroom lecture or assignment to terminate their jobs.
In the wake of Bates’ latest round of antisemitic controversy — where a swastika was drawn in a dormitory bathroom amid a bevy of pro-Hamas activity at Bates — I reached out to several former and current professors at Bates to see if this DEI reporting system was still in place. After communicating with members of Bates faculty, staff, and former students, it’s clear that not only is the DEI reporting system still in operation, but it has been used to intimidate faculty into maintaining leftist orthodoxy in their classrooms.
This policy bared its teeth in the firing of Keith Taylor, a lecturer in Bates’ geology department. Taylor was fired earlier this year for asking a student to provide examples defending their assertion that Bates College was a bastion of white supremacy. Taylor was browbeaten by Dean of Faculty Malcolm Hill and ordered to apologize to his class for his supposed racial insensitivity, but instead, he denounced the school. One student recorded the exchange and shared it with me at the time.
Taylor provided several emails from a fellow professor, Loring Danforth, who feared for his termination. Danforth expressed fear at Taylor’s firing, saying he felt “trapped in an alternate reality” due to his fear of being targeted by students for speaking on race, a topic he studied, wrote, and lectured on for several decades at Bates and other institutions.
This nightmarish “alternate reality” soon became real for Danforth. A classroom discussion quickly became a struggle session after a student asserted Bates College was on stolen Penobscot land. Danforth, being a seasoned teacher, asked the student to explain what she meant. “Do you mean legally? Technically? Morally? Historically? Traditionally?” Danforth asked. In an attempt to further discussion, he followed up with the question: “Do Native Americans own the land your parents’ house in Connecticut is on, or do your parents own it?”
But instead of engaging in the discussion or thinking critically about her assertion, the student reported Danforth to the DEI office for opposing Native American land claims. That led to another reprimand by the DEI office and the dean of faculty. Ironically, Danforth is a proud supporter of Native Americans, as was shown in his email with Keith Taylor; “I’d argue it’s my right to oppose them [Native American land claims]. But in fact I support them.” Professor Danforth refused to provide comment.
That same email between Taylor and Danforth described an incident over text where Dean of Faculty Malcolm Hill reprimanded Danforth for supposedly perpetuating racism on campus. That was after Danforth was again reported to the DEI office for stating that “race was a social construction” to the offense of a black staff member. As a result, Danforth, who correctly pointed out that the social construction of race is “a fundamental concept and expression” in anthropology, was again reprimanded by Hill. Only after Bates President Clayton Spencer stepped in did Hill back down and apologize to Danforth.
Over a series of emails and text messages, several professors discussed potential punishments for DEI infractions, including being forced to “absorb literature about racism” or even be subjected to mandatory sensitivity training, which, if refused, could lead to further punishment.
Bates’s DEI reporting system has significantly cowed professors in the liberal arts. Several students I interviewed believe free speech at Bates was already nonexistent but think professors are largely responsible for allowing this toxic culture to take its current form.
One such student, a 2018 Bates graduate, James Erwin, recalled portions of emails that appeared scripted when professors corresponded with students about “sensitive” topics. “After Trump was elected in 2016, there were demonstrations around campus,” Erwin explained. “All the faculty emails for my classes and campus resources contained the same ‘I understand and support you,’ directed towards students who wanted to skip class to protest the election.”
Erwin also suggested professors had only themselves to blame for the campus climate, saying, “Many Bates professors can’t speak up because this is the bed they made … they teach this performative emotional fragility in class, so, of course, they can’t object to it now that the outrage is directed at them.”
An email I have had since my own time at Bates proves James correct. One economics professor expressed doubts that teachers at Bates could adequately instruct students, only to refuse to elaborate on his comments. Economics professor Paul Shea said, “Things like this make me fear for the future of Bates. More and more departments seem comfortable infusing their curricula with specific forms of activism and ideology and those that do not are met with hostility or, in some cases, a loss of resources. It is hard for me to see how this fits with the mission of the college.”
Shea refused to comment when asked to elaborate on the “hostility” or “loss of resources” and departures from the economics department.
Taylor’s emails and the various professors with whom I spoke expressed the same feeling: Bates no longer resembles an academic institution committed to free speech. T. Glen Lawson, who taught in the Bates Chemistry Department for over 30 years and is now retired, said, “It is true that the [Bates] environment is toxic and freedom of expression and academic freedom have both been suppressed in the past few years, so I was happy to leave. I don’t really care about what goes on there now.” Jenna Berens, a 2023 graduate of Bates, agreed. “The culture is definitely toxic in the context of the classroom. I can imagine that culture extends to the faculty, too.”
Bates’s DEI system has successfully made almost every professor at the college terrified of his or her own students. With fees to attend Bates set at over $81,000 for the 2023-2024 academic year, parents and students are footing the bill for DEI enforcers alongside the collaborating programs within the college that act as speech police and reporting systems.
It is obvious that antisemitic students control Harvard University’s campus, and they have the freedom to spew their poison with no accountability from the administration. It took a congressional hearing, alums withdrawing millions of dollars, and leading companies pledging not to hire Harvard graduates for the school even to notice its antisemitism problem. Legacy institutions with larger budgets often overshadow Bates. However, the toxic, illiberal behavior that has consumed Bates is a glimpse of higher education’s future. Across the country, there are thousands of smaller colleges like Bates, where free speech has been destroyed and its defenders driven underground.
Bates and its faculty preach the college’s commitment to academic excellence, egalitarianism, and freedom. Those words ring hollow when the academics tasked with passing those values on cannot defend them.
Must be something new in the water in Maine?
I think the most absurd part of the story is a geology prof getting into it about race relations with a student.
“It’s about the rocks…not the race” is all the professor needed to say. Repeatedly.
Engaging with fools is never a good tactic.
Shut the whole operation down....................
Both political parties have sold us out. Bush 41 was the worst believe it or not. He was part of the WEF and one to start off giving China keys to our kingdom. Then there was Henry Kissinger who brought in and trained Klaus Schwab. He’s a communist and megalomaniac.
Have you heard of voting with your feet? This refers to relocation within a federal republic such as ours, from failing places to more successful places.
Think of the marketplace as voting with your dollars. Take your money elsewhere. Patronize schools with values you embrace.
The problem with voting with your dollars is that many schools are well-endowed and, so, are largely immunized from tuition, contributions, etc. This endowment issue is even a bigger problem in the mainstream churches that don’t give a hoot about the contributions, or lack of contributions from current members.
So, we need BOTH voting with your dollars AND working from within to take back the schools, churches and charities that we can.
My youngest was mostly tutored and homeschooled, growing up in multiple locations overseas. He got into university at 13, did the 2 year undergrad. requirements and quit. He said it was all B.S. I had no problems with that. Ironically, the professors extolled how conservative they actually were during orientation, though they seem to be out of touch with what that means anymore.
I would encourage you to talk with your son about his plans for the future. There are many occupations that don’t require a degree, from truck driving to mechanic and other “trades,” to business person, writer and other occupations where you show your stuff in another way. Some occupations, such as engineer and medical doctor, require degrees (and possibly the specialized knowledge encompassed by those degrees). So, the degree is part of the price you pay. If I’m correct in reading what you wrote, you son has tremendous potential, but maybe isn’t motivated to go down a pre-defined route. He may also be discovering that he is smarter than other people older than he is, and in certain positions of authority. Again, if I am correct, you should see if you can help your son use his gifts to advantage, and not let them become his downfall. I have seen maybe a dozen persons who let their gifts undo them. Hey, if I’m out to lunch, I apologize for taking your time.
The article is good, except the author takes a stance that this is the exception or perhaps an extreme.
This is a mild account of the the routine experience of instructors and professors in the social sciences and humanities.
In all universities that I know of.
Thoughtful words. My son quit over a decade ago and has made a nice life for someone under 30 in our economy. Having grown up in multiple cultures, he has a pretty good grasp on life, where he’s going, and is aware he has the option to pursue just about anything he desires, as nothing is impossible with God and He can make a way where there is no way.
Get your masters at bates?
All it takes is one faculty member to sue.
I really loved the
Student: “Bates College sits on stolen land”
Professor: “Your mom sits on stolen land”
DEI is communism. It descends from Gramsci’s “Crtitical Theory’ head of the Italian Communist Party in 1924. The recent incarnation, revised his work and turned it into “Critical Race Throry’. DEI is their communist rules for destroying Western Culture, in order to to install communism.
I wonder how many administrators at Bates and other “top colleges and universities,” especially the DEI folks have earned Ph.D.’s in their fields and have engaged in serious scholarship for a decade or two before becoming deans or administrators. I suspect most took the easy way and either
on-line ED.U’s or Ph.D.’s in any the the grievance studies programs that now abound in the USA.
Glad to hear. Got three of my own finding their way out there. Each their own unique story.
“ With fees to attend Bates set at over $81,000 for the 2023-2024 academic year, parents and students are footing the bill for DEI enforcers alongside the collaborating programs within the college that act as speech police and reporting systems.”
$81,000? Who is so stupid to pay for this?
LOL
There is a lot of pressure in universities for professors to incorporate propaganda in their courses. Simply sticking to the topic isn’t enough to satisfy the administrators or save the professors from grief.
There is another site that has a post about this called Legal Insurrection. The site is quite good. It’s run by a smart and brave Professor Jacobson at Cornell. This particular thread has few comments but if you click on Home you can see the range of topics they cover.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.