…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.]
