Michael Shermer
Scientific American
Fri, 01 Sep 2017 18:46 UTC

© Izhar Cohen
The roots of the current campus madness

In a 1946 essay in the London Tribune entitled "In Front of Your Nose," George Orwell noted that:

"[...]we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

The intellectual battlefields today are on college campuses, where students' deep convictions about race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation and their social justice antipathy toward capitalism, imperialism, racism, white privilege, misogyny and "cissexist heteropatriarchy" have bumped up against the reality of contradictory facts and opposing views, leading to campus chaos and even violence. Students at the University of California, Berkeley, and outside agitators, for example, rioted at the mere mention that conservative firebrands Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter had been invited to speak (in the end, they never did). Demonstrators at Middlebury College physically attacked libertarian author Charles Murray and his liberal host, professor Allison Stanger, pulling her hair, twisting her neck and sending her to the ER.**

One underlying cause of this troubling situation may be found in what happened at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., in May, when biologist and self-identified "deeply progressive" professor Bret Weinstein refused to participate in a "Day of Absence" in which "white students, staff and faculty will be invited to leave the campus for the day's activities." Weinstein objected, writing in an e-mail: "on a college campus, one's right to speak-or to be-must never be based on skin color." In response, an angry mob of 50 students disrupted his biology class, surrounded him, called him a racist and insisted that he resign. He claims that campus police informed him that the college president told them to stand down, but he has been forced to stay off campus for his safety's sake.

How has it come to this? One of many trends was identified by Weinstein in a Wall Street Journal essay:

"The button-down empirical and deductive fields, including all the hard sciences, have lived side by side with 'critical theory,' postmodernism and its perception-based relatives. Since the creation in 1960s and '70s of novel, justice-oriented fields, these incompatible worldviews have repelled one another."

In an article for Quillette.com on "Methods Behind the Campus Madness," graduate researcher Sumantra Maitra of the University of Nottingham in England reported that 12 of the 13 academics at U.C. Berkeley who signed a letter to the chancellor protesting Yiannopoulos were from "Critical theory, Gender studies and Post-Colonial/Postmodernist/Marxist background.

" This is a shift in Marxist theory from class conflict to identity politics conflict; instead of judging people by the content of their character, they are now to be judged by the color of their skin (or their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, et cetera). "Postmodernists have tried to hijack biology, have taken over large parts of political science, almost all of anthropology, history and English," Maitra concludes, "and have proliferated self-referential journals, citation circles, non-replicable research, and the curtailing of nuanced debate through activism and marches, instigating a bunch of gullible students to intimidate any opposing ideas."

Students are being taught by these postmodern professors that there is no truth, that science and empirical facts are tools of oppression by the white patriarchy, and that nearly everyone in America is racist and bigoted, including their own professors, most of whom are liberals or progressives devoted to fighting these social ills. Of the 58 Evergreen faculty members who signed a statement "in solidarity with students" calling for disciplinary action against Weinstein for "endangering" the community by granting interviews in the national media, I tallied only seven from the sciences. Most specialize in English, literature, the arts, humanities, cultural studies, women's studies, media studies, and "quotidian imperialisms, intermetropolitan geography [and] detournement." A course called "Fantastic Resistances" was described as a "training dojo for aspiring 'social justice warriors'" that focuses on "power asymmetries."

If you teach students to be warriors against all power asymmetries, don't be surprised when they turn on their professors and administrators. This is what happens when you separate facts from values, empiricism from morality, science from the humanities.

**Editor's Note (8/18/17): This sentence was edited after the print article was posted online. The original stated that students at Middlebury College "physically attacked" Charles Murray and his campus host, Allison Stanger. In fact, a police investigation determined that it appears several participants in the demonstration against Murray came from outside the campus community and that those wearing masks used "tactics that indicated training in obstruction and intimidation." Although the attackers were never identified, and thus the police were unable to press charges, Middlebury maintains that the masked assailants were not students but outside agitators. It has also made an official statement that "the College disciplined 74 students with sanctions ranging from probation to official College discipline, which places a permanent record in the student's file

Yes this is sad. Can you trace this way of educating back to a source? The root. What, how, whom And why? Once again, sadly this article is truth and it's completely nut's how the educational system is conditioning students.

Thanks for finding this and posting it.

it started about 9 years ago...

Scratches head. Yeah. And I think it started a lot earlier in some other countries.
Your not at liberty to say here?

free speech has been going on as long as right to gun ownership

it has escalated along the same path too ...

Tryin to think what event happened about 9 years ago

Free speech is a right, preventing free speech is not.

I have noticed the hypocrisy these days,it has become more prevalent more blatant and unfortunately those with myopic views can't see it or don't want to see it because they have become so blinded by their own ignorance.The media these days are bursting at the seams with all those who want their voices heard..and whether they are right or wrong seem to pick up a following of like minded people no matter where they go..but this has always been.Now social media has made it easier to get their words out there..this is just the beginning . Where it goes from here is just a matter of how well we can quell the ignorant,but to do so would be denying their rights..so I guess the best that one could hope for is to stem the flow of violence brought on by those who seem to think that civil discourse is beating someone in the head with a stick..

free speech is not prevented just because I dont allow someone to say things in my home, nor because a school doesnt want someone speaking at their facility.

If they are invited to speak at the school but not allowed by the violence
of others, that is preventing free speech.

No. Free speech only applies to CONGRESSIONAL Law, not what citizens, schools, or organizations allow within their premises.

I think what you are describing is capitalism. Demand dictates what people will pay for and how much.

what planet are you on??

There is a certain groups that popped in my mind.
Are you sure it didn't start before 9 years ago?

The one with dictionaries and a constitution.



Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[1]


capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state

and that has what to do with progressive liberals acting stupid?... i get it, you and your ilk hate the white man, like you're ok with king shabazz yelling about killing white babies (free speech) but not the KKK being pro white(not free speech)

Yes.. the typical "F" the whities.. they suck.. but I'm not a racist... agenda


we suck... AND its all our fault.... Lol

hilarious, all the projection in these threads. What I said was NOTHING to do about hating anyone, and I STILL have never said it was ok to anyone to yell about killing babies of any color...

what I posted was simply an explanation of what freedom of speech alludes to.

try not to bait. If I said it , quote it and respond, or else please do not misrepresent my posts ... thanks

The tradition of declaring that institutions of higher learning are leading the country to ruin, or at least to decadence and self-indulgence, is at least as old as the existence of institutions of higher learning.


Since they are subject to waves of new fads with each generation of students sweeping through them, momentary fluctuations such as described hardly qualifies as "disasters."