Welcome to the totalitarian world of "student activism" at America's elite universities.
November 27, 2015
Learn more about the Freedom Center's Stop the Jihad on Campus campaign.
It isn't just Woodrow Wilson who's got to go.
For the social justice warriors on America's college campuses these days, force and intimidation are paying off in spades.
Following the occupation of the president's office courtesy of the "Black Justice League," Princeton University is the most recent "institution of higher learning" to relent to students' demand to reject "racism."
President Christopher L. Eisgruber has "agreed"--more accurately, was bullied into agreeing--to petition the Board of Trustees to consider reevaluating "the legacy" of America's 28th president and one-time Princeton University president, Woodrow Wilson.
The website Inside Higher Ed informs us that the Black Justice League regards Wilson's as a legacy of "racism" that continues to inform "campus policy and culture."
These elite, Ivy League universities are indeed a dangerous place for racial minorities. Perhaps this is why it isn't only the eradication of every last vestige of the ominous name and image of Wilson from their school that these fonts of wisdom and courage demanded. They as well demanded--wait for it--the retirement of the distinction of "master" at the school.
You read this correctly: Students at one of the most elite academic institutions in the world feel threatened by the word "master."
And they've forced its leaders into protecting them from it.
There will be no more "masters" of colleges at Princeton; there are now only "heads" of colleges.
The "head" of the Whitman College at Princeton remarked that while "we are aware that the term 'master' has a long history of use in universities," the truth is that "by now" it is "anachronistic and unfortunate" to assign this label to "the positions [that] we hold."
Other demands include the demands for the creation of classes on "the history of marginalized peoples" and a "cultural space on campus" for black students.
Over at Columbia University, students and faculty recently held a "teach-in and speak-out" titled "Race, Ethnicity and University Life." According to the school's newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, students and faculty sought ways in which to "address institutionalized racism in light of nationwide protests regarding the experiences of students of color on college campuses."
Melinda Aquino, the Associate Dean of Multicultural Affairs, lauded student activists for prevailing upon Columbia to establish "the Office of Multicultural Affairs." Still, she laments that not more has been accomplished. "Change is happening here," Aquino said, "but there's something at the root of the institution that we're not addressing." She continued: "There are still things that are broken."
Aquino didn't get more exact as to what is "broken" at Columbia. But she knows that something is.
Devon Wade is a sociology professor who also serves as "an adviser to the Men of Color Alliance, a program under the OMA [Office of Multicultural Affairs] that brings together students that are self-identified men of color[.]" Wade believes that in order to change Columbia in the ways in which he and his ilk are certain that it needs to be changed, there needs to be a "centralized, University-wide diversity office."
Only such an office stands a chance of holding "higher level of the administration" accountable.
And for those with any doubts about just how difficult life at the world's most prestigious academic institutions are for "marginalized students," Nissy Aya, a black female student, put them decisively to rest with her heart-choking testimony about her travails in trying to attain a four year degree in...well, four years.
"I was accepted as the class of 2014," Aya stated. However, she will not receive her degree until 2016. Aya insisted that this--this!--is a "marker of how hard it has been for me to get through this institution."
Aya said that she takes many "first-years" (formerly freshmen) under her wing because she "could not imagine what it would be like to be a 17, 18 year-old coming into this institution[.]"
Aya maintains that Columbia "should pay me for all I do."
One respect in which she's been victimized is via the Core Curriculum.
"It's traumatizing to sit in Core classes," Aya claimed, for "we are looking at history through the lens of these powerful white men" (italics added). As a black woman, she wonders, "where do I fit in?"
Aya noted that in her art class, the instructor on multiple occasions described Congolese art as "primitive." Yet the tortured student didn't register any complaint, for she was already exhausted from having had to "address so many other instances of racism and discrimination" that day.
The connection between students' "trauma" at Princeton over the very sound of the name of "Woodrow Wilson" and that of the students at Columbia over the white men generally whose work composes the cannon of Western civilization is telling. While their awareness of critical thought and logical consistency undoubtedly extends no further than viewing these intellectual virtues as the antedated "racist" prejudices of white men, the logic of the demands of the one group and that of the other is one and the same:
It is, ultimately, an anti-white logic.
To see that this is so, let's now turn to another distinguished institution of higher learning to which this student-storm trooper rebellion has spread: Dartmouth.
Two weeks ago, black students allegedly affiliated with the "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) movement cursed and threatened white students who were trying to study in Dartmouth's library. According to Campus Reform, about 150 black students chanted: "F*** you, you filthy white f***s! F*** you and your comfort! F*** you, you racist s***!"
One white female student who had been trying to study for her exams ran from the library. The black mob followed her while cursing at her.
Those students who refused to join in were both verbally and physically abused. Several were pushed about and commanded to "stand the f*** up" and referred to as "filthy white piece[s] of s***!" One young white woman was slammed up against a wall as many protesters shouted in her face, calling her a "filthy white b****!"
Woodrow Wilson is a smokescreen. He was a "racist," but he is such because he is white.
Dartmouth provides one more clue as to how the student-activists at all of these different schools are ideologically one and the same.
One student had been working on a group project in a private study area when his adviser expressed his disappointment in his student for not getting in on the BLM chaos. According to Campus Reform, the adviser "demanded" that the student participate.
These student barbarians, these Victims, are Frankenstein's monsters.
The Dr. Frankensteins here are their professors and administrators who have, in one way or another, been laboring tirelessly to convince students that they are victims of the "disease" of "Whiteness and racism."
And at Dartmouth, the Vice Provost for Student Affairs, Inge-Lise Ameer, apologized, not to the white students who, it would appear, now need a "safe space" of their own, but to their black assailants. "I'm very, very sorry that you feel this way," she said. "We don't want you to have this experience here."
She added that in reply to those who flooded her office with complaints about the protest, "we told them that they were all ridiculous and that the protest was a wonderful, beautiful thing."
Ameer concluded by writing the complaints off as the function of "a whole conservative world out there that's not very nice."