University of Missouri president Wolfe confirms the death of the university…
…that was noted by Allan Bloom decades ago in The Closing of the American Mind.
I’ve written about Bloom’s book and thesis many times, particularly here and here. If you read those posts, you’ll immediately see their relevance to what’s happening now at the University of Missouri.
Here’s a summary of the Missouri situation:
The president of the University of Missouri system resigned Monday with the football team and others on campus in open revolt over his handling of racial tensions at the school.
President Tim Wolfe, a former business executive with no previous experience in academic leadership, took “full responsibility for the frustration” students had expressed and said their complaints were “clear” and “real.”…
The complaints came to a head a day earlier, when at least 30 black football players announced that they would not play until the president was gone. One student went on a weeklong hunger strike.
So now Wolfe’s gone, having taken responsibility for what happened. What was it that happened? Initially the AP story was a bit vague:
For months, black student groups have complained of racial slurs and other slights on the overwhelmingly white flagship campus of the state’s four-college system. Frustrations flared during a homecoming parade Oct. 10 when black protesters blocked Wolfe’s car, and he did not get out and talk to them. They were removed by police.
Students at the university are quoted in the article as expressing solidarity. Here’s one girl:
Katelyn Brown, a white sophomore from Liberty, said she wasn’t necessarily aware of chronic racism at the school, but she applauded the efforts of black students groups.
“I personally don’t see it a lot, but I’m a middle-class white girl,” she said. “I stand with the people experiencing this.”
And after all, what do middle-class white girls know? All they can do now is “stand with the people” experiencing whatever it is that the people say they are experiencing.
And what might that actually be? Here are some more details:
The protests began after the student government president, who is black, said in September that people in a passing pickup truck shouted racial slurs at him. In early October, members of a black student organization said slurs were hurled at them by an apparently drunken white student.
Also, a swastika drawn in feces was found recently in a dormitory bathroom.
Many of the protests have been led by an organization called Concerned Student 1950, which gets its name from the year the university accepted its first black student. Its members besieged Wolfe’s car at the parade, and they have been conducting a sit-in on a campus plaza since last Monday.
Two trucks flying Confederate flags drove past the site Sunday, a move many saw as an attempt at intimidation.
Okay, let’s recap:
There was an allegation that a truck of people drove past a black student and shouted racial epithets. We don’t appear to know whether (a) this in fact happened (b) whether the shouters were students (c) the identity of those students; and (d) whether they represented a widespread group or just themselves. But I doubt anyone except a few old curmudgeons like me are interested in the answers to those questions, or the same questions for that “apparently drunken white student,” and those Confederate flags. I’d also dearly love to know who put the fecal swastika on the wall, and why, and who it was actually aimed at.
And if the origins of that swastika are anything like many such incidents in the recent past at other universities, the perpetrator could actually have been one of the protesters or a sympathizer. For example:
…Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller News Foundation broke the story that a number of supposed racial incidents at Oberlin College in Ohio this spring [2013] were, in fact, a hoax. Oberlin certainly took the incidents seriously, even canceling classes on March 5 to convene a “day of solidarity.” However, Oberlin city police reports obtained by Ross made it clear that at least some of the material that had Oberlin up in arms, including a large swastika banner that was hung in the science center under cover of night, was in fact done by one or two Oberlin students as a “joke/troll to get an overreaction, in the context of the racist crap that has been going on on campus.”
As an example of joking or “trolling,” the latter of which is loosely defined as “deliberately provoking people in order to get an angry response,” putting up a swastika banner, hanging up anti-Muslim flyers, printing out “niggermania” cards, etc. is in spectacularly bad taste. It’s not funny, it helped put the entire Oberlin community in an uproar, it alarmed many students and faculty members, and it’s morally obtuse…
Oberlin is not the only campus that has suffered in recent times from hate incident hoaxes. New examples seem to pop up every year, sometimes more than once.
The article goes on to describe a number of fake “hate crimes,” not all of them racially tinged. That doesn’t mean the University of Missouri incidents are staged or faked; it means they need to be authenticated in some way, and it could be difficult to do so.
But beyond that, there’s another question: so what if these things happened? So what, even if they were committed by students? If the students can be identified, there are proper remedies and disciplinary action to follow, I’m almost certain—and no doubt they would be followed. If the incidents can’t be authenticated or the students identified, though, does that mean that, unless a campus reacts as Oberlin did to its hoax incident—canceling classes to convene a “day of solidarity, and the like—it’s an insufficient response? President Wolfe had already stated that his administration was meeting “around the clock” to study changes that were needed, and that many of them were already included in a “systemwide diversity and inclusion strategy” that had been in the works even prior to the incidents, and was due to be announced in spring of 2016.
Not good enough; not even close. Here’s what the University of Missouri protesters felt would have been a sufficient response (or rather, responses). I offer them in their entirety:
I. We demand that the University of Missouri System President, Tim Wolfe, writes a handwritten apology to the Concerned Student 1-9-5-0 demonstrators and holds a press conference in the Mizzou Student Center reading the letter. In the letter and at the press conference, Tim Wolfe must acknowledge his white male privilege, recognize that systems of oppression exist, and provide a verbal commitment to fulfilling Concerned Student 1-9-5-0 demands. We want Tim Wolfe to admit to his gross negligence, allowing his driver to hit one of the demonstrators, consenting to the physical violence of bystanders, and lastly refusing to intervene when Columbia Police Department used excessive force with demonstrators.
II. We demand the immediate removal of Tim Wolfe as UM system president. After his removal a new amendment to UM system policies must be established to have all future UM system president and Chancellor positions be selected by a collective of students, staff, and faculty of diverse backgrounds.
III. We demand that the University of Missouri meets the Legion of Black Collegians’ demands that were presented in 1969 for the betterment of the black community.
IV. We demand that the University of Missouri creates and enforces comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum throughout all campus departments and units, mandatory for all students, faculty, staff, and administration. This curriculum must be vetted, maintained, and overseen by a board comprised of students, staff, and faculty of color.
V. We demand that by the academic year 2017-2018, the University of Missouri increases the percentage of black faculty and staff campus-wide to 10%.
VI. We demand that the University of Missouri composes a strategic 10 year plan by May 1, 2016 that will increase retention rates for marginalized students, sustain diversity curriculum and training, and promote a more safe and inclusive campus.
VII. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding and resources for the University of Missouri Counseling Center for the purpose of hiring additional mental health professionals — particularly those of color, boosting mental health outreach and programming across campus, increasing campus-wide awareness and visibility of the counseling center, and reducing lengthy wait times for prospective clients.
VIII. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding, resources, and personnel for the social justices centers on campus for the purpose of hiring additional professionals, particularly those of color, boosting outreach and programming across campus, and increasing campus-wide awareness and visibility.
Perhaps that would be enough. For now.
By the way, the student government president at this school (whose undergraduate population is 79% white and 8% black) is black. One would think that might be evidence of a lack of systemic racial prejudice at the school, but apparently not nearly enough to save President Wolfe. Only turning the University of Missouri into a re-education camp will do. And I doubt that would be the end of it, either; the left rarely stops there.
This is very ominous. But it’s only the current manifestation of a trend that has been going on at least since the late 60s; the incident Allan Bloom was describing occurred at Cornell in 1969, after all. I’ll close with his words from The Closing of the American Mind, which I had quoted in a post I wrote last June entitled “Student Power and its Origins”:
[S]tudents discovered that pompous teachers who catechized them about academic freedom could, with a little shove, be made into dancing bears.
We no longer hear much about academic freedom; it’s dead. It died quite some time ago, after becoming fatally ill in the late 1960s. President Wolfe didn’t want to be made into a dancing bear (demand #1), so he’s gone. That’s another kind of dance, but to the same tune.
[ADDENDUM See this for more dancing bears of the Ursus universitatis variety.]
This is one of the craziest things I have ever seen!
How is the president responsible for all theses actions of third parties?
After reading the students’ demands, no wonder he quit. There was no way he could do all those things.
Here in NE many fans want the AD and UNL Chancellor to resign because the new football coach has lost six games. Now that’s a real crisis!
Ominous indeed. And not just because these social-justice storm troopers might make better use of their time by mastering the subjunctive mood.
Forgot to add but in a recent “secret” basketball scrimmage between Creighton and Missouri, the Bluejays soundly beat the Tigers.
I’m not sure why black students would have an issue witha swastika, the Third Reich was dedicated to the elimination of Jews. (I don’t support it, or think it’s appropriate, btw. Just sayin.)
Tom:
That’s why I said I’d like to know who the swastika was aimed at. The usual target would be thought to be Jews.
As someone on another site noted in regards to demand #1:
The university president had so much White Privilege that he was forced out of office by a mob of students.
Yep, that’s my definition of power.
There is manifestly a terrible racist climate at U.o.M. and the genuine racists — the footballers and their starving leader — have now won a great victory. Pity.
Although, truth to tell, Pres. Wolfe didn’t belong in a job requiring a capacity to make a strong defense of an institution dedicated to learning as he evidently has no clue about that. This is akin to Obama’s evident disdain for the people who voted him into office: the mere fact of his election warrants his disdain.
We should add this topic to the list of things our GOP candidates should be asked about. Who among them will end this madness?
Steven Hayward asks at Powerline: Where is Sam Hayakawa when we need him?
Great advertizing to make potential students think twice about taking on ten of thousands in debt to attend UofMo; unless one wants a degree in how to community organize a fascist mob.
Given that well under 5% of PhDs in real disciplines (not ethnic or gender studies) go to blacks, Where are those 10% of faculty going to come from? The answer has been to steal black faculty from other programs. It’s a zero sum game.
The Concerned Student 1-9-5-0 demands are too funny. But I see some inconsistencies and omissions. For instance, why would I as University president agree to demand #1 – essentially to comprehensively abase and humiliate myself – when they still ask for my scalp (sorry – trigger warning!) in demand #2? And really, to keep with the Maoist template, there should be some demand for a mandatory reeducation process for senior University administrators, perhaps a hitch on a migrant worker chain gang to purge them of remnants of bourgeois thought through healthy proletarian labor.
Meanwhile, in possibly related news:
http://www.vox.com/2015/11/9/9698394/jeb-bush-killing-baby-hitler
Not a spoof.
The belief that young people are best taught by their own ethnic group is unsupported by any data and could be seen as racist. When the first batch of Cubans fled Castro and landed in Florida, their children were taught by Anglos. When the Hungarian refugees came to the U.S. in the Fifties, they had no Hungarian teachers. When the Viet Namese boat people came to the U.S. they had no Viet Namese teachers. All these kids did fine, and they have largely blended in.
What black college students should look for is qualified faculty of all backgrounds. That would largely be the case at U of M.
On the other hand we have many examples of black public school leaders cheating on tests or getting their hand in the cookie jar.
I suspect that what the students are looking for is faculty who will cut them some slack.
Identify the leverage, magnify it, and continue to push with maximum effort until you meet steel.
Is this the analogue for the Columbia University surrender of the 60’s? The times just keep getting more interesting.
In any socialistic system, eventually ALL thought, speech and behavior must be categorized as either forbidden or mandatory. Political correctness taken to its end state, being necessary to the survival of the State.
The “fecal swastika” hearkens to “Christ in Urine”. Perhaps the same people or mindset that embraced the latter are responsible for the former. The fecal contamination may have been inspired by the days of Occupation, where progressive sanitary habits displaced spoken and written forms of expression.
45 years ago, I was a student at a small liberal arts college with vaguely leftist pretensions. Unfortunately, I fit right in. That spring, a bunch of black political poseurs took over the college library and demanded that a black library be established for black students. The administration responded by giving them a room in the library that had previously been devoted to contemporary fiction. In the grand scheme of things, this was harmless and did very little damage to the library, but it was the start of my losing respect for the college and becoming very cynical about leftist causes. Please don’t laugh, I was only eighteen.
I’m sure I’m not the only one with memories of left wing political extortion in academia. These things seem to run in cycles, and it looks as if we’re in for few years of this crap.
them a room in the library that had previously been devoted to contemporary fiction….
…..
…..
Fitting.
Not a spoof!
I’m starting to understand what Facism looks like.
Cap’n Rusty Says: I’m starting to understand what Facism looks like.
its communism, not fascism…
their symbology, rhetoric, and such is more akin to the communists in Germany that lost to the fascists. both were against the dominants and the disproportionate economic holders.
however the goal here is to reproduce histories bigger flows, as in the hapburgs bringing in lots of immigrants, a country losing its super power status, lots of fronts (racial, feminist, homosexual), tensions boiling, lower morals from a hedonistic period, etc.
the point is to reproduce the more peaceful conversion of the state that the Austrian dude accomplished except to steer it to communism ultimately, with a detour to distract the folk with the scapegoat du jour.
the way other states have fallen to socialism is not desirable in the likes of fully formed large economy nations with a well developed military system. attack them and you get people to get together more than you divide them.
so things look like fascism, as that was the systems method to changing a state that is collapsed economically to a left socialist state in which its a very short hop to the next step from their
without the trappings and visuals of the past, its hard to see what it is, as in the west we are not historically educated in knowing them both in the prewar period and also postwar for the most part (while we think we know the war period by the shallow depictions that leave out substance)
ideologies and proponent are quite practical and will use whatever works even if the opposition is the one that realized it first.
The Left’s brown shirts, the SJWs, seem to like making up false flag operations as well, to intimidate people and get them fired. And it works.
These days I don’t even read Leftist propaganda, because there’s always an underside, a shadow, that they are hiding.
I bet a lot of companies will start thinking twice about hiring University of Missouri graduates. What company wants the temper tantrums and the law suits that come with these hires?
We are in a race war. Right now it is mostly a “cold war” with violent skirmishes. Who can say what will trip the wire? Or when?
Mizzou has about 35k students, and less than 10% (7%) are Black. What do the others who are paying through the nose for an educational experience think? What do the taxpayers who support this cesspool of spineless capitulation think? When will they demand value for money?
It is truly magnificent to witness how our Historic President has transformed the country as predicted, ushering in The Age of Racial Harmony, a time of unprecedented sympathy, fellowship, goodwill and cooperation between American whites and blacks.
Next black students will demand free tuition, room and board, and books, $10,000/mo stipend AND a $250,000 graduation gift because … fairness.
Step 1 – CXL football for the remainder of the season
Step 2 – revoke protesters athletic scholarships
Step 3 – Suspend football program
4 – Expel troublemakers
I read Allan Bloom’s book when it first came out. You can get a pdf download of it free off the Internet. Things have only gotten worse. We now have English literature degrees that do not require Shakespeare or other of the great writers. Those writers have been superseded by “Critical Theory of something or other” by some author who will soon be forgotten.
We are creating a storm front of Social Justice Warriors. Vox Day recently release a book “SJW’s Always Lie”. When these SJW’s create a twit storm, never apologize of resign. There is no forgiveness. They want scalps and a sense of victory. That only encourages the SJW’s to find and attack a next victim. Fight back with everything you have.
Wolfe did everything wrong (although it is possible he just didn’t want to deal with the nonsense. It is draining.). What he should have done is attacked. Put the coach on a short leash: show up Monday for practice or clean out your office. Any player who boycotts practice is immediately removed from the team and any scholarships rescinded. If there are not enough players left to field a team, then cancel the season and rescind all football scholarships. The only way to defeat these twits is to not negotiate and take strong action. Who was the President of the University of California at San Francisco who did just that and ended the revolts and protest there in the late 60’s? That was a success. Most other pathetic responses were failures.
I got a couple of degrees from Mizzou long enough ago that this stupid protest won’t affect me. Back in the 1980s South Africa was the cause du jour – “WHAT DO WE WANT?? DIVESTMENT!! WHEN DO WE WANT IT?? NOW!!!” (Snooze.)
The kids involved in this current debacle don’t realize that the loud whistling sound in the background is the plummeting value of their MU degrees.
But hey, they’re down with the struggle, even if they have to make one up.
But hey, they’re down with the struggle
Maybe some of them have a career in porn and have been scouted by Planned Profit. They know which side their butter is spread on.
Rick Caird, some people have the guts to fight. Others just fold over, as I said about the older gen. Although the younger gens have their share of weaklings as well.
https://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/inside-the-war-against-the-lefts-sjws/
Check out the video of one scientist’s counter attack against femi nazis.
Pingback:The Higher Education Bubble is Bursting Like a Festered Zit | The Universal Spectator
This is the Chinese Cultural Revolution. When do the students get sent to farms to bring in the crops?
I was once told “Why don’t you Jews just get past the Holocaust already?”
It’s so odd to me that the symbol was a swastika and yet none of the Jews on campus (if they have any) are protesting.
If only we could harness the energy from the perpetual self-grievence industry, we would all be better off than pinwheels and solar dust collectors.
I am thankful I graduated back in 1991. I was in high-tech programs yet had friends who were in the arts, music, etc fields. It was dumb-founding listening to the garbage they spewed out then, I cannot possible imagine how a young adult today could possibly deal with this stuff.