Here is G. R. O’Brian writing at The Federalist:
‘Diversity of thought,’ ‘free speech,’ and ‘academic freedom’ are simply lack of standards by other names. Conservatives need to do better than these to re-take the college campus.
The Federalist’s Bre Peyton recently shared this video of Yale University students shrieking at a professor over an email in which his wife questioned Yale’s policy of banning “culturally insensitive” Halloween costumes. If there were any doubt over how out of control things have gotten in our major institutions of learning, this small sample of a much larger trend should end it.
While conservatives have in the past year or so found common cause with mainstream liberals such as Jonathan Haidt and Jonathan Chait in combating this new status quo, the bar of success should not be set so low as to consider not being silenced as a victory. Conservatives must move beyond seeking to coexist with this insanity to challenging the current higher education system as it currently exists if they truly want to suppress the damage these institutions are causing our society.
The Intellectual Climate of the University
An average college student at most state and leading private universities will witness displays targeting Israel for war crimes, warnings of an ominous “rape culture,” and complaints of “white privilege.” Such demonstrations express an ideology that has been growing in the academy but has only recently entered the cultural mainstream.
The terms “New New Left” or “Academic Left” might be appropriate aliases for this ideology. It evolved from the New Left of the 1960s, adding third-wave feminism, the LGBT movement, the consolidation of post-colonialism, and “privilege theory,” which surfaced in the 1990s. Its greatest claims should be familiar to most of us by now: gender is socially constructed rather than based in biology; the West is uniquely despicable for its history of imperialism; racial identity rather than individual action determines guilt and responsibility; and capitalism has increased rather than decreased poverty and exploitation.
Read more: The Federalist
Image credit: Turning Point USA.
