Thoughts on the Paris terror attacks

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday’s terrorist attacks in Paris were exactly the sort of thing everyone who has been paying attention to ISIS (which claimed responsibility, and probably isn’t lying) was expecting. Unfortunately, the details of exactly where, when, and how were not predicted. But the basics—multiple attacks on Westerners going about their business or enjoying themselves in their own country—were easy to predict. It was almost inevitable that ISIS would be bringing larger and more organized attacks to countries in Europe, and even to the US. The takedown of a Russian airplane in Egypt, and ISIS’ bragging about it, was a sign that more attacks might be brewing.

In the fourteen years since 9/11 we seem to have weakened ourselves rather than becoming stronger. And why on earth has Europe been so sanguine about letting in groups of “refugees” that can obviously include terrorists and members of ISIS? Some combination of economic excuses, leftism, compassion, and naivete has led the west to this point of enormous vulnerability and stupidity.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the attackers in Paris were necessarily recent arrivals to the country; I doubt they were, because planning attacks such as these takes time, and because France has not been in the forefront of taking in the “refugees” compared to nations such as Germany. I heard several people on television saying that the success of the attacks mean that there was a massive failure of French and/or international security. Maybe. But perhaps the attacks mean that the task of monitoring the huge number of potential ISIS followers who now reside in Europe’s nations, including France, is well nigh impossible. There are already way too many for adequate surveillance.

Hollande of France said:

…[O]ur fight will be merciless, because these terrorists that are capable of such atrocities need to know that they will be confronted by a France that is determined, unified and together…

“Faced with dread, there is a nation that knows how to defend itself, is known to mobilise its forces and, once again, will defeat terrorists”.

“Once again will defeat terrorists”? What does he mean? My guess would be Algiers during the 50s. However, I doubt very much that France is willing or able to do this sort of thing anymore, and even less so in France itself.

I believe that the targets were chosen for their symbolic value and for their variety. The attack on the Russian jet (which despite its differences I lump in with the Paris attacks in terms of broad goals) was aimed at transportation. The places chosen in Paris—restaurant, sports arena, concert—were a nice sampling of Westerners at play. The idea is to make people feel vulnerable everywhere they gather.

This strikes Europe where it hurts. It becomes nearly impossible to ignore the seriousness of what’s happening. The question in my mind is: will this feeling last? And, more importantly, what is the West willing to do about it?

[NOTE: Here is Ted Cruz’s statement on the Paris attacks. He makes a series of excellent points, stated clearly and powerfully, including the idea that this is Islamic terrorism, and that we should refuse to accept any of the “Syrian refugees”.

And Mark Steyn is spot on here. Hat tip: commenter “snopercod.”]

Dueling childhoods, Trump and Carson: who was/is the most pathological?

The New Neo Posted on by

I wonder if this sort of low blow is enough to make any Trump supporters turn on him:

The real estate developer said Thursday that Carson’s self-described “pathological temper” is incurable, equating it to the sickness of a “child molester.”

“It’s in the book that he’s got a pathological temper,” Trump told CNN’s Erin Burnett about the retired neurosurgeon’s autobiography. “That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that ”¦ as an example, child molesting. You don’t cure these people. You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological, there’s no cure for that.”

Trump, child psychologist.

Actually, when someone stops having a temper in his early teens, and lives to the age of 64 without a single recorded instance of bad temper, I would say he’s cured himself or grown out of it, or some combination of the two.

Can we say the same for Trump? One of the interesting things about Carson versus Trump is that, despite Carson’s having owned up to aggressive impulses as a young teen, he never managed to actually hurt anyone (partly as a result of good luck). Not so with Trump—at least, according to Trump himself:

Trump writes that he was aggressive and assertive from a young age.

“In the second grade I actually gave a teacher a black eye ”” I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled,” Trump says. “I’m not proud of that, but it’s clear evidence that even early on I had a tendency to stand up and make my opinions known in a very forceful way. The difference now is that I use my brain instead of my fists.”

Giving a teacher a black eye when you are in second grade (assuming this is a true story) is not ordinary child aggressiveness, either. It is something closer to pathology. So I guess redemption and/or cure is possible for such pathology, since Trump hasn’t been giving people actual black eyes lately. Except that Trump’s pathology is now expressed in words such as those he used to slur Carson, as well as his own self-aggrandizing narcissism.

Here’s an article on Trump, written in 1990 and worth a look. It’s an interesting portrait of Trump’s ruthlessness as an adult, with a bit of historical background such as this:

As a boy, [Trump] was equally restless. “Donald was the child who would throw the cake at the birthday parties,” his brother Robert once told me. “If I built the bricks up, Donald would come along and glue them all together, and that would be the end of my bricks.”

Aw, he was just practicing for the day he’d be building a wall, don’t you see?

Bravo to some brave voices at Claremont McKenna

The New Neo Posted on by

In my earlier post today, I used an addendum to discuss this editorial by the student editors at Claremont McKenna College. But I decided it needed a post of its own, in order to spotlight it. Reading it may give you some hope. Make sure you also read the comments there.

Here’s an excerpt from the editorial. But I suggest you read the entire thing:

First, former Dean Mary Spellman. We are sorry that your career had to end this way, as the email in contention was a clear case of good intentions being overlooked because of poor phrasing. However, we are disappointed in you as well. We are disappointed that you allowed a group of angry students to bully you into resignation. We are disappointed that you taught Claremont students that reacting with emotion and anger will force the administration to act. We are disappointed that when two students chose to go on a hunger strike until you resigned, you didn’t simply say, “so what?” If they want to starve themselves, that’s fine””you don’t owe them your job. We are disappointed that you and President Chodosh put up with students yelling and swearing at you for an hour…

Second, President Chodosh. We were disappointed to see you idly stand by and watch students berate, curse at, and attack Dean Spellman for being a “racist.” For someone who preaches about “leadership” and “personal and social responsibility,” your actions are particularly disappointing. You let your colleague, someone who has been helping your administration for the past three years and the college for six years, be publicly mocked and humiliated. Why? Because you were afraid. You were afraid that students would also mock and humiliate you if you defended Dean Spellman, so you let her be thrown under the bus. You were so afraid that it only took you five minutes to flip-flop on their demand for a temporary “safe space” on campus. Your fear-driven action (or lack thereof) only further reinforced the fear among the student body to speak out against this movement. We needed your leadership more than ever this week, and you failed us miserably…

To our fellow Claremont students, we are disappointed in you as well. We are ashamed of you for trying to end someone’s career over a poorly worded email. This is not a political statement”“”“this is a person’s livelihood that you so carelessly sought to destroy. We are disappointed that you chose to scream and swear at your administrators. That is not how adults solve problems, and your behavior reflects poorly on all of us here in Claremont. This is not who we are and this is not how we conduct ourselves, but this is the image of us that has now reached the national stage.

We are disappointed in your demands. If you want to take a class in “ethnic, racial, and sexuality theory,” feel free to take one, but don’t force such an ideologically driven course on all CMC students. If the dearth of such courses at CMC bothers you, maybe you should have chosen a different school.

There’s much more. As I said, I suggest you read the whole thing. It ends this way—and, in the current climate on the campuses around this country, this represents true courage:

Lastly, we are disappointed in students like ourselves, who were scared into silence. We are not racist for having different opinions. We are not immoral because we don’t buy the flawed rhetoric of a spiteful movement. We are not evil because we don’t want this movement to tear across our campuses completely unchecked.

We are no longer afraid to be voices of dissent.

The beginning of a backlash? Let us fervently hope so. And will it matter, when the adults in charge lack any sort of spine?

_____________

The resignation of Mary Spellman: another bear dances

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The dancing bear reference is to this quote from Allan Bloom’s 1989 description of the behavior of most faculty and administrators in response to Cornell’s crisis in 1969:

[S]tudents discovered that pompous teachers who catechized them about academic freedom could, with a little shove, be made into dancing bears.]

The latest bear to dance is Claremont McKenna’s Dean of Students, who resigned today amidst a controversy that is described thusly. Note how well it mirrors that at Mizzou:

…[A] group of over a hundred students gathered around the Hub patio in a demonstration led by students in the CMCers of Color group…

Prior to the protest’s start, CMC junior Taylor Lemmons ’17 announced in a post on Medium that in protest of the lack of support she believes DOS has shown towards students of color and of other marginalized identities, she is undergoing a hunger strike until Dean Spellman resigns from her post…

In an email from President Chodosh sent to students before the protest, Chodosh committed that the college will move forward with hiring two new positions, one under the umbrella of student affairs and one under the Dean of Faculty and academics, to support diversity and inclusion on campus. With the support of these two new positions, he added, the College has “authorized the creation of a new programming space to support campus climate (identity, diversity, and free speech)” which “will be dedicated to collaborative, educational work by students, professional staff, and other experts on diversity, identity, civil rights, and free speech issues on our campus.”…

One of the primary demands articulated in the open letter (released earlier today) from CMCers of Color, SAGA, APAM, BSA, and GenU was the creation of a resource center on campus for students of marginalized identities. At the demonstration, President Chodosh publicly committed to providing a temporary space for a resource center in the interim period while they work on establishing a permanent center.

Apparently, that particular dance was not good enough. After a one-day hunger strike (even I could accomplish one that long) Spellman resigned, as had her predecessors Wolfe and Loftis before her. In her letter, she wrote:

To all who have been so supportive, please know how sorry I am if my decision disappoints you. I believe it is the best way to gain closure of a controversy that has divided the student body and disrupted the mission of this fine institution. Most important, I hope this will help enable a truly thoughtful, civil and productive discussion about the very real issues of diversity and inclusion facing Claremont McKenna, higher education and other institutions across our society.

Indeed. I’ve long noticed—haven’t you?—that bowing to the pressure of a small group of determined demonstrators with non-negotiable demands invariably “enables” a thoughtful, civil, and productive “discussion.” Actually, as many of the demonstrators at Mizzou made clear, a “discussion” was not the goal. But educators love that word “discussion.” It’s second only to “dialogue.” And a dialogue is not a one-sided set of demands accompanied by a hunger strike.

What started the ruckus at CMC? Words, of course:

In October, a student shared an article with Spellman that she had written about feeling marginalized at Claremont McKenna. Spellman’s responsed that she is trying to better serve students who don’t fit the “CMC mold.”

Spellman’s emailed reply went like this:

Thank you for writing and sharing this article with me. We have a lot to do as a college and community. Would you be willing to talk sometimes about these issues? They are important to me and the DOS staff and we are working on how we can better serve students, especially those who don’t fit our CMC mold.

Notice that what Spellman was very clearly offering was a discussion. However, anyone who’s not been asleep for the last 20 years or so can see the problem in that last phrase. It’s going to hurt someone’s feelings, even though—and this is especially important—that idea is the sort of thing that was in the very article that the student had called to Spellman’s attention, and which occasioned Spellman’s response:

Maybe most of us have felt out of place at Claremont McKenna College for one reason or another, but my feelings of not belonging cut deep across economic and racial lines…

Within the first weeks of school, I told an upperclassman Latino that I felt like I was admitted to fill a racial quota. Why would they want me here? Impostor syndrome is prevalent among first-generation students. These feelings caught me by surprise as I had never known what it felt like to be the “minority” in my predominantly immigrant, low-income Latinx hometown…

Students of color often report feeling unwelcome at predominantly-white institutions, and CMC is far from an exception. Our campus climate and institutional culture are primarily grounded in western, white, cisheteronormative upper to upper-middle class values…

Some will think I am overreacting. Some will say I do not belong at CMC and should have transferred (which I cannot afford). Some will believe I am “biting the hand that feeds me.”

I suggest you read the whole thing. But the excerpts I’ve offered go a long way, I think, towards explaining some (not all, by any means) of what’s happening at Mizzou and CMC and other places around the country. The emotionally-laden demands of the students for more and more of a feeling of safety and inclusion can never be assuaged because they have their origins in the nature of the affirmative action and diversity programs themselves, which have fostered what this student refers to as “imposter syndrome” and is explained here. Irony of ironies; but it makes a certain amount of sense psychologically as a reaction in those with who seem to have a somewhat fragile sense of self-worth and accomplishment.

Note, also, when you think about Spellman’s phrase “our CMC mold,” that the protesters were making demands on the behalf of “marginalized” students, a phrase that I assume they were using even before Spellman wrote her otherwise-impeccably-PC note.

Here is Spellman’s previous statement in response to the matter of her offending email:

In a demonstration on Wednesday afternoon, students confronted Spellman, who apologized for her “poorly worded email.”

“The CMC mold is a thing I talk about with students every day,” she said. “They come to me and tell me how they don’t fit in ”¦ That is what I am referring to as the mold.”

Spellman’s resignation comes a few days after the resignation of junior class president Kris Brackmann, who stepped down when a photo of her from Halloween circulated on Facebook. The picture features two female students wearing sombreros, fake mustaches and ponchos, with Brackmann posing in front as a dancer from Justin Bieber’s music video, “Sorry.”

Shades of Yale’s Halloween costume brouhaha.

Expect to see more and more and more of this sort of sequence of events, as craven administrators cave to the pressures of their empowered and angry students’ demands.

[ADDENDUM: The editorial board of the student newspaper at CMC offers an impassioned defense of liberty, criticizing the demonstrators and Spellman’s reaction. Well worth reading the entire thing, but here’s an excerpt:

…President Chodosh. We were disappointed to see you idly stand by and watch students berate, curse at, and attack Dean Spellman for being a “racist.” For someone who preaches about “leadership” and “personal and social responsibility,” your actions are particularly disappointing. You let your colleague, someone who has been helping your administration for the past three years and the college for six years, be publicly mocked and humiliated. Why? Because you were afraid. You were afraid that students would also mock and humiliate you if you defended Dean Spellman, so you let her be thrown under the bus. You were so afraid that it only took you five minutes to flip-flop on their demand for a temporary “safe space” on campus. Your fear-driven action (or lack thereof) only further reinforced the fear among the student body to speak out against this movement. We needed your leadership more than ever this week, and you failed us miserably.

Apparently the editors are not happy to see bears dancing. Good.]

Demonstrators want a black-only “healing space”

The New Neo Posted on by

So they ask their white supporters to leave:

Prominent Black Lives Matter activist Johnetta Elzie seemingly confirmed those with Caucasian skin were asked to leave the area, tweeting that the group had created a “black only healing space for the students to share, decompress, be vulnerable & real.”…

Mark Kim, another reporter for KOMU who was at the scene, told TheBlaze that he spoke with some people around the area and confirmed white individuals had formed a separate group upstairs.

“White allies are upstairs in their own breakout group,” he said in a tweet.

The news comes after the Concerned Student 1950 group had blasted the “white media” earlier this week for not “respecting black spaces.”

The obvious response is to comment on the irony of it all. But this is nothing new; many people have noticed for decades that integrated schools have produced a fairly large amount of racial self-segregation.

The earlier goals of the civil rights movement of my youth (1950s) involved a color-blind society in terms of equal opportunity and equality under the law. But there have long been separatist movements, going back to the 19th century (for an overview of the history see this; later, Malcolm X was the most popularly known advocate during the 60s).

The separatism of the black students at Mizzou can be seen in that context, or as a temporary touchy-feely effort to “share, decompress, be vulnerable & real” away from those prying white eyes, even of supporters.

[NOTE I: Johnetta Elzie, the prominent BlackLivesMatter activist quoted in the article, doesn’t appear to be a Mizzou student (there’s a January interview with Elzie here). And yet she seems to be some sort of leader at the university, allowed to organize and direct the student groups in this manner. She’s not the only Ferguson activist heavily involved, either; see this.

Little did Michael Brown know he’d become such an inspiration when he attacked police officer Darren Wilson.]

[NOTE II: You might wonder why I’ve written so very many posts about the University of Missouri. What’s happening there, and at Yale, has struck a nerve that’s been vibrating in me for decades, even back when I was a graduate student myself: demands by students that an entire university and all its administrators, faculty, and students, cater to their needs and their feelings, and never let them know a moment of grief or fear or even mild upset. I encountered the attitude for the first time in the early 90s; for all I know, it was established even before that, but that was my first personal experience of it as a witness to it among the undergraduates I saw. At the time, the topic wasn’t racial; it was what a particular student perceived as sexual harassment. But it was an ominous development then, and it’s an ominous development now, whatever the topic.

I wrote an earlier post on that graduate school experience of mine; here’s an excerpt:

I experienced this personally (as an observer, not a target) in the early 90s when I returned to school for a Master’s degree. The trend was already quite highly developed and deeply entrenched at the time, much to my surprise, even though it had escaped my notice till I returned to campus life.

But I discovered it when the young women in an undergraduate class I was required to take for my Master’s””a class which, being in the social sciences, consisted almost entirely of women””were virtually all in favor of a definition of actionably offensive speech that went something like this: “speech that offends any person in the subjective sense, rather than speech that is in fact objectively offensive.” In vain I stood up in front of the 100-or-so students, most of them around twenty years younger than I, to ask what the limits of this might be, to suggest that it was wrong to allow the most sensitive among us to dictate what was unacceptable, and to speak up for free speech in general. I was met with uncomprehending stares and impatient dismissal, a fossil in my own time.

I realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Not one person appeared to agree with me, or if they did they weren’t saying so publicly or privately. And the professor, a woman just a couple of years younger than I, was clearly on their side. I have never forgotten it, and although at the time I didn’t put it in a political left/right context (that came later), I realized it was a frightening development and it made me feel very, very uneasy and quite alone.

Things have only got worse, with the advent of the internet, social media, and twenty-five more years of student marination in leftist memes.

In my research on Mizzou, the other day I came across some videos of the student movement there. I plan to write about them in the future; viewing them told me something about the emotional component of the fight going on there. I don’t know if I’ll get around to it, but that’s my plan.]

Meanwhile, on the Hillary front

The New Neo Posted on by

Hillary throws charter schools under the school bus.

And there’s a lot of brouhaha about whether she’s wearing a wig these days, sparked by (of all people) Trump, and continued by Drdge and then pooh-poohed by Hillary’s hairdresser (as reported by, of course, a British newspaper).

Both of these issues—the first substantive, the second frivolous—are a big yawn. Because at this point Hillary’s campaign is a big yawn. We are very very familiar with her, her strengths and weaknesses, her ability and willingness to lie, her raucous laugh, her continual shift to the left. What more is there to say except the details?

And she will be the nominee. I have never wavered from that position, and I see no reason to doubt it now. She could well become the next president, another position I took a long time ago and see no reason to change now, although it’s a prospect I deeply dread.

The next year will be interesting. But the news of Hillary herself doesn’t seem very interesting to me.

There may not have been any KKK at Mizzou, but the poop swastika…

The New Neo Posted on by

…appears to have been real.

That’s a load off my mind.

Apparently, there’s evidence of a police report, minus a photo* [see ADDENDUM below]. I still don’t understand why it wasn’t photographed or otherwise documented (DNA, anyone?), because if the perpetrator were to be located that would have been grounds for some sort of disciplinary action.

And I still haven’t a clue why this was seen as targeting black people. Wouldn’t the natural target be Jews? I’m assuming there are some Jews at Mizzou who might be ripe for some persecuting.

And then, lo and behold, because research is my middle name, I decided to find out. I located this article in the school paper written very shortly after the incident occurred, and amazingly enough, the appearance of the excremental swastika was indeed initially treated as being anti-Semitic in intent. But the Jews on campus and their spokespeople were relatively low-key about it. And here I thought Jews were supposed to be so emotional:

Jeanne Snodgrass, executive director of Mizzou Hillel, a nonprofit organization and Jewish campus center, said she was contacted by Residential Life about the incident.

“Unfortunately sometimes things happen, and I think that the university is responding appropriately and dealing with it very seriously,” Snodgrass said.

Snodgrass apparently successfully resisted the urge to instead say “unfortunately sometimes shit happens,” for which I salute her.

More:

Jordan Kodner is an executive for both Zeta Beta Tau and Chabad, a Jewish student organization on campus. He said he found out about the incident when he was at Hillel and someone brought it up right after it happened.

“A lot of people are very confused, especially with this particular one ”” using feces,” he said. “I know that kind of confused a lot of people. It just seems very odd ”” were they trying to send a certain message with it?”

He said he hopes the incident will be a wake-up call about anti-Semitism on campus. He said he is upset that it is usually downplayed.

Kodner doesn’t feel threatened because nothing violent has happened yet.

I believe that Kodner may be referring to people’s confusion about whether the poop swastika was meant to be expressive of support for Nazi beliefs, or whether it was meant as a negative commentary on the value of those beliefs.

Thalia Sass, president of the Jewish Student Organization, was more emotional about the entire incident:

“I still think that when something like this happens, Jewish students feel threatened,” Sass said. “I was actually really mad about this because I heard about it from a Maneater* [student newspaper] reporter. It happened on the 24th, and we’re only talking about it now? Why wasn’t JSO contacted earlier by Residential Life?”

The group plans on speaking to the residents of Gateway Hall during a mandatory residential meeting on Monday evening. They said they plan on talking about the history of the swastika and how it relates to Jewish people and the Holocaust.

Let us pause here and say: college students don’t already know this history? I realize that’s a rhetorical question, because at this point it’s actually very possible that many college students don’t know this history. However, we can be pretty sure that anyone drawing a swastika in fecal matter on a bathroom wall actually was among those students who were aware of it.

The following explains how it might be that the black students got involved in the aftermath:

[The Jewish Student Organization] also plans on reaching out to the Legion of Black Collegians for a social media campaign using the hastag #hateliveshere.

An event was also planned which would be inclined to improve public relations:

The [Jewish Student Organization] also plans on organizing an event at Speakers Circle on Nov. 6 to hand out bagels and cream cheese. Slogans that were suggested for this event include “Spread Cream Cheese, Not Hate.”

Not a bad slogan, actually. Only I would prefer they include some lox.

[ * I’ve been wondering for days about the title of that student newspaper, The Maneater. Isn’t there some campus group that can object to that as sexist, or cannibalist, or upsetting vegetarians, or…well, I’ll stop right there? So once again, research is my friend:

The Maneater was founded in 1955 by Joel Gold, then a sociology student, as editor-in-chief…Gold took over the former newspaper, then named the Missouri Student…Gold renamed it The Maneater to reflect a more aggressive news angle and transitioned the paper into an independent watchdog of the university.

Regarding the name change, Gold wrote in the first issue of The Maneater, “The name ”˜Missouri Student’ reflected the editorial policy of the former paper quite well. It signified nothing…. The Maneater by its very name cannot content itself with merely presenting the news…. The Maneater is a tiger with fangs bared and claws sharpened ready to analyze the facts and then to pounce. A tiger exists because it is, and not for one group or another.”

And that was way back in the 50s, an era that was supposed to be so placid.]

[NOTE: The title of this post refers to this.]

[ * ADDENDUM: Some rather underwhelming photos of the poop swastika have finally surfaces. Doesn’t look much like the classic Nazi swastika, but probably not just a random POS either.]

Why yes, let’s

The New Neo Posted on by

A good idea from Kevin Williamson, now that Democrats are fighting against the so-called “Cadillac tax” that was instrumental in getting Obamacare (remember Obamacare?) its low CBO scoring, the low scoring it needed in order to pass muster:

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who is a numbers guy, should have the CBO rescore Obamacare as it is actually being implemented, incorporating not only the proposed Cadillac-tax repeal but also the effects of enrollment numbers that are lower than projected ”” current expectations are that 2016 will see about half the enrollments originally estimated. The result will be not billions but hundreds of billions of dollars in additional deficits. Let Herself defend that on the campaign trail this year, or let that batty old loon from Vermont try to convince the public that all that lost revenue can be made up by raising taxes on 400 guys in Manhattan. By all means, let’s have that fight.

Another resignation at Mizzou

The New Neo Posted on by

But this time it was assistant professor Melissa Click:

An assistant communications professor at the Missouri School of Journalism resigned from her courtesy appointment Tuesday after she was caught on video confronting a student journalist and attempting to block him from shooting photos on a public quad.

Click faced opposition from the journalism school, and her letter of apology didn’t help her:

Earlier on Tuesday, Kurpius lambasted Click while lauding the photojournalist.

“The Missouri School of Journalism is proud of photojournalism senior Tim Tai for how he handled himself during a protest on Carnahan Quad on the University of Missouri campus,” Kurpius said in Tuesday’s statement.

“The news media have First Amendment rights to cover public events,” Kurpius said. “Tai handled himself professionally and with poise.”

Tom Warhover, the executive editor of the Columbia Missourian, a university newspaper, told the Times he was “pretty incensed” about Tai’s treatment.

“I find it ironic that particularly faculty members would resort to those kinds of things for no good reason. I understand students who are protesting and want privacy. But they are not allowed to push and assault our photographers — our student photographers.”

This was one of those situations where the video evidence was overwhelming and clear. So, unlike the school’s administrators Wolfe and Lofin, Click was forced to resign over (a) something she actually did wrong, that was (b) clearly documented, and (c) involved a basic aspect of her job, respect for freedom of the press.

The tale of the racist string, and the college administrators who responded

The New Neo Posted on by

Somehow I’d missed this story when it first came out in September. But it certainly fits in quite nicely with recent events. It involves an incident that occurred at the University of Delaware:

When the black studies student saw a piece of string in a tree, she did what any self-respecting black studies student would do: shriek racism.

The string looked like rope. And rope means lynching. And that meant within a few minutes of this Tuesday night discovery on the campus of the University of Delaware, the entire university community from the acting president on down was in a full hate-crime panic.

The campus cops started posting on Facebook and Twitter about “racist displays.”

Ditto the acting president, who condemned the “despicable” act.

Ditto the black students and their campus allies…

The acting president called for a rally to condemn the atrocity.

Then students started to wake up. And many knew the rope was not a rope, but a string. And the noose was not a noose.

And the act was not a hate crime. Or even a fake hate crime.

It was just string that held up a paper lantern — left over from an alumni party in June.

But none of that mattered. The anti-string, anti-hate crime rally went on, as scheduled.

Now let’s step back for a moment. I did a little more research, and found a photo of the string in question, and it’s actually a bit easier to understand the furor. It did look like it might have been a noose reference:

delaware

What’s more, there had been a previous noose incident at Duke, in which a student later confessed, was no longer at the school, and was facing disciplinary action. That seems to be the proper course of events. Later, the news came out that there was no racist motive—at the link, you can read the Duke student’s letter of abject apology explaining what actually had happened, which appears to have been a rather elaborate but innocent pun—and the still-unnamed student was allowed to return to school.

At the U. of Delaware, once the paper lantern origin of the “noose” was revealed, some students still doubted it and were convinced it had been a hate crime; it was hard to let go. The administration decided to go ahead with plans for the rally and discussion:

In a statement after the discovery but before the police investigation’s conclusion, university acting President Nancy M. Targett called the ropes “hateful acts.”

“Such cowardly and reprehensible acts are clearly designed to intimidate and frighten, and they are unacceptable on our campus,” Targett wrote.

The university president followed up hours later with a second statement, sharing the police findings.

“At the same time, the sensitivity of our campus to this potential issue clearly indicates a need for continuing dialog within our community,” Targett said.

One can almost sympathize with administrators. Almost. Faced with angry and near-hysterical mobs whipped up by activists and reacting to everything they see with the eye of the racially hyper-sensitive who cannot tolerate a single act that’s even potentially or possibly racist in origin, even if that act is only symbolic and the act of a single individual, administrators fall back on meetings and dialogue to address the issue and soothe the mobs. Who knows, you may end up having to resign, if you don’t do the same.

Here’s a video that describes some of this, with visuals:

What if the administrators had initially issued a statement saying they were investigating the incident and were trying ascertain its origins and the intent behind it? That there may or may not have been a racist motive, and it had to be determined first? They could still have some sort of dialogue and discussion—but some of that discussion could actually be about how to determine the facts when you see something, and what happens when you react without knowing those facts. One would have thought this was part of the function of a college.

No more. And does anyone doubt that, in the current climate, such administrators would ultimately be forced to resign, even if it turned out that there had been no racial incident at all?