Former Evergreen State College Professor Bret Weinstein claims that the college brought in a civil rights attorney to defend stripping guest speakers of their right to speak.
“Evergreen is desperately trying to escape the hole it dug for itself last year,” Weinstein tweeted on Wednesday. “But it refuses to comprehend what occurred, and so it digs down, not out. @EvergreenStCol admin brought in constitutional lawyer, Alan Levine, to publicly rationalize deplatforming. I went.”
Weinstein claims that the attorney, Alan Levine, spent an hour mischaracterizing high profile incidents that involved attempts by students and faculty around the country to restrict expression rights.
“Levine spent an hour misportraying well documented events on other campuses and nastily caricaturing good people including [Nicholas Christakis], [Erika Christakis], [Greg Lukianoff], and (implicitly) [Jonathan Haidt]. Levine ignored the Evergreen riots entirely.”
Weinstein tweeted his critique of Levine’s presentation:
He attacked @charlesmurray's work as outside the realm of what can reasonably be discussed. In describing events at Middlebury he omitted the violent injury done to Prof Allison Stanger who was, of course, planning to discuss Murray's work with him before violence broke out.
— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) January 24, 2018
Levine's premise: racism is rampant on campuses. Students in some demographics experience oppression regularly, and individuals are in a good position to diagnose it. They are banishing white supremacy but are now blocked by a right wing conspiracy falsely invoking free speech.
— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) January 24, 2018
I asked him this:
Putting free speech aside, disagreement and the free exchange of ideas are at the core of the work of a university. But there is an asymmetry–it is easier to disrupt someone's ability to make a point than it is to make one…
— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) January 24, 2018
…a single individual screaming incoherently can block any viewpoint. Who gets to decide what ideas may be expressed on a campus? Do creationists get to shut down discussion of evolution? Do climate change deniers get to block discussion of environmental chemistry?
— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) January 24, 2018
At the event, Weinstein asked Levine about the “tyranny of the anointed” or the notion that that self-appointed speech guardians get to determine which types of speech are acceptable on campus. He used the example of a creationist shutting down a discussion about evolution.
Weinstein claims that Levine responded by arguing that white men should be restricted from determining which ideas are offensive enough to be shut down. Weinstein wrote that he was shocked to hear such an argument from a “constitutional scholar.”
Some ideas, he argued, don't deserve protection. Those are the ones we get to bar.
Who decides what perspectives may be silenced?
Not I, because I am a white man. Shutting viewpoints down is the province of people who've faced a history of oppression.
— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) January 24, 2018
Yes, a constitutional scholar, brought to campus by @EvergreenStCol's administration, really did make that argument out loud. And his answer got vigorous applause from the audience.
— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) January 24, 2018
Breitbart News extensively covered the controversy at Evergreen State College that took place last spring. Chaos ravaged the Evergreen State College campus throughout the end of their spring semester. After Weinstein gently objected to an activism event that asked white community members to leave campus for the day, student protesters took over the campus, demanding Weinstein’s termination.
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