The president of Smith College slips up…
…and mistakenly declares that “all lives matter.”
Then she apologizes for her grievous error:
“I regret that I was unaware the phrase/hashtag ‘all lives matter’ has been used by some to draw attention away from the focus on institutional violence against Black people,” she wrote.
In her apology e-mail, McCartney also shared some of the student emails she received.
She quoted one student as saying: “It minimizes the anti-blackness of this the current situation; yes, all lives matter, but not all lives are being targeted for police brutality. The black students at this school deserve to have their specific struggles and pain recognized, not dissolved into the larger student body.”
I am sure that after a short sojourn in the stocks McCartney will be perfectly okay and will not have to forfeit her job as a result of her faux pas, or go to the re-education camps.
This statement of MCartney’s is the logical extension of a trend that began (or reached critical mass) at Cornell during the 60s. As I wrote about that incident:
In previous posts of mine about Allan Bloom’s highly-recommended book The Closing of the American Mind, I’ve mentioned that one of the most riveting parts of the book is when Bloom describes the moral collapse of the faculty and administration of so many universities during the 60s, their abject and craven failure to defend their own principles, and their eager willingness to cave to threats and intimidation…
In the following excerpt Bloom is describing an incident that occurred when he was a faculty member at Cornell during the late 60s, when black militants with guns occupied a campus building and made demands. Bloom had gone to the university provost to speak up for a black student of his (unnamed in the book, but actually Alan Keyes—who happens, in a strange twist of fate, to have been the person Barack Obama soundly defeated in his 2004 US Senate race, when Keyes was put on the Republican ballot as a hasty substitute for Jack Ryan). Keyes had earlier been threatened by a black professor at Cornell for refusing to take part in a demonstration. Here’s what Bloom says transpired [emphasis mine]:
The provost had a mixture of cowardice and moralism not uncommon at the time. He did not want trouble. His president had frequently cited Clark Kerr’s dismissal at the University of California as the great danger…At the same time the provost thought he was engaged in a great moral work, righting the historic injustice done to blacks. He could justify to himself the humiliation he was undergoing as a necessary sacrifice. The case of this particular black student clearly bothered him. But he was both more frightened of the violence-threatening extremists and also more admiring of them. Obvious questions were no longer obvious. Why could not a black student be expelled as a white student would be if he failed his courses or disobeyed the rules that make university community possible? Why could the president not call the police if order was threatened? Any man of weight would have fired the professor who threatened the life of the student. The issue was not complicated. Only the casuistry of weakness and ideology made it so…No one who knew or cared about what a university is would have acquiesced in this travesty. It was no surprise that a few weeks later—immediately after the faculty had voted overwhelmingly under the gun to capitulate to outrageous demands that it had a few days earlier rejected—the leading members of the administration and many well-known faculty members rushed over to congratulate the gathered students and tried to win their approval. I saw exposed before all the world what had long been known, and it was at last possible without impropriety to tell these pseudo-universitarians precisely what one thought of them.
It was also no surprise that many of those professors who had been most eloquent in their sermons about the sanctity of the university, and who had presented themselves as its consciences, were among those who reacted, if not favorably, at least weakly to what was happening. They had made careers out of saying how badly the German professors [during the Nazi era] had reacted to violations of academic freedom. This was all light talk and mock heroics, because they had not measured the potential threats to the university nor assessed the doubtful grounds of academic freedom. Above all, they did not think that it could be assaulted from the Left or from within the university…These American professors were utterly disarmed, as were many German professors, when the constituency they took for granted, of which they honestly believed they were independent, deserted or turned against them…To fulminate against Bible Belt preachers was one thing. In the world that counted for these professors, this could only bring approval. But to be isolated in the university, to be called foul names by their students or their colleagues, all for the sake of an abstract idea, was too much for them. They were not in general strong men, although their easy rhetoric had persuaded them that they were—that they alone manned the walls protecting civilization. Their collapse was merely pitiful, although their feeble attempts at self-justification frequently turned vicious. In Germany the professors who kept quiet had the very good excuse that they could not do otherwise. Speaking up would have meant imprisonment or death. The law not only did not protect them but was their deadly enemy. At Cornell there was no such danger…There was essentially no risk in defending the integrity of the university, because the danger was entirely within it. All that was lacking was a professorial corps aware of the university’s purpose, and dedicated to it. That is what made the surrender so contemptible.
In the forty-five years since that capitulation at Cornell, much has happened. University presidents such as McCartney are usually already so leftist themselves that their “surrender” isn’t really a surrender at all, merely an acknowledgment of a momentary slip-up in an otherwise seamless web of leftist PC thought, from administration to professor to student and back again, everyone dancing in a ring.
Circle dancing is magic. It speaks to us through the millennia from the depths of human memory. Madame Raphael had cut the picture out of the magazine and would stare at it and dream. She too longed to dance in a ring. All her life she had looked for a group of people she could hold hands with and dance with in a ring. First she looked for them in the Methodist Church (her father was a religious fanatic), then in the Communist Party, then among the Trotskyites, then in the anti-abortion movement (A child has a right to life!), then in the pro-abortion movement (A woman has a right to her body!); she looked for them among the Marxists, the psychoanalysts, and the structuralists; she looked for them in Lenin, Zen Buddhism, Mao Tse-tung, yogis, the nouveau roman, Brechtian theater, the theater of panic; and finally she hoped she could at least become one with her students, which meant she always forced them to think and say exactly what she thought and said, and together they formed a single body and a single soul, a single ring and a single dance.
When I was an undergraduate in the early 1960s, we used to joke there was nothing more cowardly than a college president. Nothing has changed that opinion.
Back then, it was threats of violence and moral cowardice. Now it’s just cowardice.
Great contribution. Reminds me of Erin O’Connor’s writings.
For years I followed a tenured English professor, Erin O’Connor, at University of Pennsylvania.
She wrote regularly of these types of failures and breakdowns within higher education. She would write of faculty/administrative spinelessness. She would write of the “tenure” system and how damaging it is to both students and other educators.
She truly was the whistle blower within the system. I can only imagine that she was not making friends along the way. No matter to her. She called it the way she saw it. Damn, she revealed more cases and stories that one could digest (many came by way of others who sought her out for help). Very admirable individual.
She left UPENN and no longer writes on these issues as far as I can tell. And that is sad.
http://erinoconnor.org/2012/02/
I was out riding my bike today and I saw a really embarrassing bumper sticker. It said, “Every life is precious, Drive safely.”
Actually, the full text of the students’ comments that the pres. of Smith said caused her to rethink her statement also makes the point that all lives matter; it’s just they want the focus on black lives at this moment:
Riffing on Bloom and Kundera and…
G K Chesterton had made the point that those who would not believe in God would believe in most anything. I doubt though he would have thought it possible the brights would believe in everything — so much so as to make it obvious — they really believed in nothing. It is the vacuous mind that will continuously inflate itself, larger, greater, to hold all it is prepared to hold, even the contrdictory, contrasting, and conflicting.
Kundera spotted the type – academic/intellectual cum ideologue cum free-thinker:
“…it reminds us of Stalin’s son, who ran to electrocute himself on the barbed wire when he could no longer stand to watch the poles of human existence come so close to each other as to touch, when there was no longer any difference between sublime and squalid, angel and fly, God and shit.”
their abject and craven failure to defend their own principles
They never had any principles. The Leftist teacher unions in 1930s made sure of that.
the last part reminds me of an old friend, Gwydion Pendderwen… Dance dance wherever you may be…
The president’s message was that human life has intrinsic value. A sentiment lost with progressive morality and policy (e.g. pro-choice). The group’s message was a reprimand to black people who murder other black people in the majority.
“I regret that I was unaware the phrase/hashtag ‘all lives matter’ has been used by some to draw attention away from the focus on institutional violence against Black people,” she wrote.
——
Do me a favor, will ya? — pass me my medication.
One irony here is that the black students who were in an uproar that the Prez hadn’t said that “black lives matter” probably have said nothing about blacks killing blacks. Blacks are murder victims at a rate about 8 times higher than whites. This cannot be blamed on whites, because about 90% of the killers of blacks are other blacks. But these black students at Smith are most likely silent about this.
Because it easier to blame someone else.
If black lives matter more, why didn’t they tell you about the one executed in DC by their royal guards?
Or did people conveniently forget that episode by now. As they were commanded to, so they shall comply and obey. [Wrote this on the wrong thread last time]
The destruction of the once strong black family is a national tragedy. They once had more stable, nuclear families than white families. Thank you LBJ and your enablers for chaining 3 generations to the welfare plantation. Thank you sharpton and company for tightening those chains. Thank you farrakhan for promoting race war. With enemies like this who needs friends.
All lives matter; but, apparently some lives matter more than others.
Ann, as you no doubt know, the point here is that the Thought Police are so crazed that even a message that says she agrees with them on Everything is violently criticized for deviating in one deeeetail from the Allowed Speech.
This goes in the same rubbish bin as “micro-aggressions” and other bilge.
Sam L: “Back then, it was threats of violence and moral cowardice. Now it’s just cowardice.”
Public destruction of reputation can be career-ending.
Not sure if “All lives Matter” in the minds of Progressives, however, I do know that “All Racist Comments” do not. Not when made by fellow democrats, Progressives, Liberals, Leftists, socialists.
Sony executives have affirmed, once again, that Liberals are racist. Wow—-the emails containing racist remarks are legion.
Racist remarks made by Harry Reid—immediately forgiven by Liberals.
Racist remarks made by Joe Biden, ignored by Progressives.
Racist and bigoted remarks made by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, falling on deaf democrat ears.
Democrats created the Ku Klux Klan
They revered Senator Byrd, a vaunted Kleagle in the Klan, until the day he died.
They created Affirmative Action, a racist program.
Margaret Sanger worked tirelessly in efforts to control irresponsible procreation by blacks. She was disgusted by their, “lack of control over sexual urges”.
This is going to come back to haunt them. In running the program, in which the perception is that academia and blacks only believe black lives matter, specifically excluding white lives, and the media, politicians, bureaucrats, and others who or which also seem to hold this belief, the reverse is the only course of resistance. When you highlight a minority, especially a sorely unpopular one, with special treatment, at some time, as history shows, that special treatment turns very ugly.
It would be easy to suggest that this can’t, or won’t happen. Because it hasn’t happened to most living people in a personal way. It would be easy to just suggest that the people who did that were on the wrong side, and were just following the herd and being herded. People follow herds, for the most part. And while black is being pushed as beautiful today, tomorrow, when light shines into those hollow vessels, and they see the monstrosity being black has been allowed to become, getting the herd to switch directions won’t just be easy, it will be impossible to stop.
This is going to hurt really bad. Only, this time, it will be right. The problem, however, with anything like these shifts, is that even when done for the right reasons, they go too far. All who believe in the government forget that what the government gives, it can and does take away. Everyone who was for Zerocare, because “free”, who just found out that they are paying for “free” care for others, who actually are ending up with no care because of spend downs and other out-of-pockets, so have simply been screwed, should transfer that understand to race and realize… it’s going to get real ugly real fast after half a century of “special treatment”.
Can’t say that I care, at this point. Just as I don’t care about slavery from a century and a half ago, I also don’t care about any perceived oppression from half a century ago, that… in hindview, seems to have been reasonable, given the options. Not that I have power, one way or the other. Simply, I don’t care, at this point, about any price paid in adjusting norms, propriety, and such, or the heads that will be lost to that adjustment. Don’t… Care…
It’s not as if black Americans are targeted for murder. Most black murders are committed by other blacks. And more white Americans are murdered every year.
Wait. We are talking about human lives, right?
You know, those complex processes embodied in clumps of cells that evolve from conception to natural, accidental, or premeditated (e.g. abortion) death.
Oh, well. One step forward. Two steps back.
kcom Says:
December 11th, 2014 at 3:43 pm
I’m about to the point where I want to get a bumper sticker that says “I don’t brake for Democrats”.
Some pigs are more equal than the rest of the barnyard.
“The president of prestigious Smith College is red-faced and apologetic Tuesday for telling students on the Northampton, Mass., campus that “all lives matter.”
That statement by Kathleen McCartney is one of the most pathetic apologies I’ve ever read. One must assume that a college president has a high IQ and then this? Obviously a high IQ does not confer common sense. When I was young my mother used to say that “there is a fine line between genius and insanity”. Perhaps there is something to that old saying.
There’s actual violence backing up those threats, at least when you get caught alone:
Berkeley protester gets culturally enriched by other protesters
Sometimes fear is the correct response.
to such people All lives dont matter:
The life of a prol was never worth that of a party member
The life of a nazi was always worth more than a Jew
The live of a white man is worthless
how else will you get the ok to strip them more, and execute/exterminate them? how else would it be ok to collapse the birth rate, take disproportionately from them, then when the demographics change, take more till what happens?
I spent the last four years of the sixties in the Army and most of it overseas out of the USA. In the 1980’s I had a discussion with a fellow worker, my age who was a protestor engaged in shutting down the University of Wisconsin in the 60’s.
I asked her if she felt that strongly about the cause and did she consider the damage to the college and country they were doing. Her reply amazed me when she told me that for her is was an easy decision. She said she was 19 years old, it was spring time, warm and pretty outside and finals were coming up and she didn’t care to study and then she said her real reason was that it was fun. She said she was going braless with great tits and it was a giant fun party and that was reason enough.
Pingback:CIRCLE DANCING: The President Of Smith College Slips Up, Says Something Inclusive. “University pre… | CRAGIN MEDIA
Key quote: “But he was both more frightened of the violence-threatening extremists and also more admiring of them.”
It’s not just that academics are cowards, it’s also that they embrace evil.
Circle dancing? More like circle jerking.
All black lives matter? Someone should have told Dr. Kermit Gosnell about that years ago (but: local story, never mind). Also Margaret Sanger and her Planned Parenthood.
The willingness of college presidents to cave to the SJW’s is exactly why I am happy the Rolling Stone gang-rape story fell apart so quickly. If one of them caves, you can be sure that other college presidents will soon follow.
Illuminati…”That statement by Kathleen McCartney is one of the most pathetic apologies I’ve ever read. One must assume that a college president has a high IQ and then this? Obviously a high IQ does not confer common sense. When I was young my mother used to say that “there is a fine line between genius and insanity”. Perhaps there is something to that old saying.”
I doubt if in today’s world an individual with a genius-level IQ would be very interested in becoming a college president. He or she would be more likely to be pursuing research/scholarship as a professor, or innovating and making money in the private sector.
Illuminati writes:
“Obviously a high IQ does not confer common sense.”
_______________________________________
This is a maxim in today’s culture which is not given its due. And that is very serious.
VERY SERIOUS.
Common sense has been sacrificed to:
***Political Correctness
***Progressive ponderances within Theoretical Framework (i.e. “Global Warming)
***Elevated reliance upon “computer modeling”
***That human behavior which used to be metaphorically regarded as, “gazing at one’s navel”.
Most of the aforementioned has much to do with what occurs in our education. What the Left has done to education. Our children/students have been so abused in the process of education.
It’s indoctrination.
It’s propaganda.
It’s agenda-driven.
It’s “race”, “gender”, “class” oriented.
(other than the hard sciences)
Silent moment for, Common Sense.
It can no longer be defined as “common”.
And so much of it is bereft of sense.
It’s driven from the heart rather than the mind.
i suspect that before they had full power to do what they wanted without aprobation or the ability of the public to respond, the Nazi’s gliechshaltung, much like this, created a public culture, which hid the actual culture cowering behind closed doors that could not break free until the war ended…
Heaven Sutton (aka “who?”) was unavailable for comment.