Bari Weiss, a staff editor for the New York Times, addressed her concerns over the chaos that erupted at Evergreen State College over a professor who refused to participate in a “Day of Absence” for white students and staff.
“This professor’s crime? He had the gall to challenge a day of racial segregation,” writes Bari Weiss in a column on Thursday. She’s describing the situation of Bret Weinstein, a progressive biology professor at Evergreen State College who is facing the wrath of a leftist campus mob for refusing to participate in a diversity initiative which asks all white community members to leave campus for a day.
The “Day of Absence” is an annual tradition at Evergreen State College in which minority community have typically left campus in order to highlight, by means of their absence, their important and vital role to the community. This year, organizers instead asked white community members to leave campus.
Weinstein pushed back against the program, writing in an email that an ethnic group asking another ethnic group to leave a space is discriminatory.
There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles (the theme of the Douglas Turner Ward play Days of Absence, as well as the recent Women’s Day walkout), and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.
Weiss goes on to express her concern over the reaction of the Evergreen community. She suggests that Weinstein’s email made a reasonable case against the “Day of Absence.” Despite this a campus mob derailed one of his morning biology classing, informally demanding his resignation for his thought transgression. Later, the student protesters formally demanded that Weinstein be suspended without pay.
For expressing his view, Mr. Weinstein was confronted outside his classroom last week by a group of some 50 students insisting he was a racist. The video of that exchange — “You’re supporting white supremacy” is one of the more milquetoast quotes — must be seen to be believed. It will make anyone who believes in the liberalizing promise of higher education quickly lose heart. When a calm Mr. Weinstein tries to explain that his only agenda is “the truth,” the students chortle.
Following the protest, college police, ordered by Evergreen’s president to stand down, told Mr. Weinstein they couldn’t guarantee his safety on campus. In the end, Mr. Weinstein held his biology class in a public park. Meantime, photographs and names of his students were circulated online. “Fire Bret” graffiti showed up on campus buildings. What was that about safe spaces?
Weiss adds that shutting down conservatives on college campuses has become “de rigueur,” a French term meaning “required by etiquette or current fashion.” She offers a warning to liberals, claiming that conservatives shouldn’t be the only group remaining to that defends free speech.
“Liberals shouldn’t cede the responsibility to defend free speech on college campuses to conservatives. After all, without free speech, what’s liberalism about?” she finishes.
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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