Professor William Jacobson teaches law at Cornell, and also runs the blog Legal Insurrection for which I sometimes write. Anyone who is a conservative on campus these days needs to be a profile in courage, and Professor Jacobson most definitely is. Recently he championed and defended another professor at Cornell who was under attack from graduate students in an incident Professor Jacobson described yesterday at length in this post at LI.
It’s complex, but here’s a summary version:
For the past year or so there has been a divisive and ugly unionization drive by some graduate students, backed by the political power of the American Federation of Teachers and New York State United Teachers. Democratic politicians in the state came out in support of grad student unionization…
For his efforts [against grad student unionization at Cornell, chemistry professor David B. Collum] became the focus of union ire, singled out by the national union and pro-union students… in a horrendous hit piece in the form of a letter to the editor of the Cornell Sun written by seven grad students, at least several of whom were involved in the union organizing…
It’s Alinsky Rules in action, freeze and isolate the target and cut him off from support. And the way you do that on the modern campus is to accuse someone of one of the “isms” or “phobias.” And worst, to claim the person is a rape apologist or misogynist.
All of those charges were lodged against Dave in the Sun based mostly on selected tweets he had made and it just hung out there from the Thursday April 20 publication through the weekend.
Jacobson suspected that Collum’s words had been twisted and/or taken out of their proper context, and he set about to show just how that happened in a letter he wrote to the editors of the same university paper:
In publishing that letter, The Sun gave a platform to a smear campaign against Prof. Collum in a manner that did not allow Prof. Collum to respond or provide for a verification of the context of the supposed evidence. I have researched several of the key tweets and quotes attributed to Prof. Collum in the letter, and it is clear that the way in which they are presented in the letter is misleading at best, and, in some cases, presents a false portrayal.
Read the whole thing in full to understand the details; it’s well worth reading. Job well done, Professor Jacobson.
This is another example of what university life has become—a witch hunt for the shrinking number of those who oppose the left, and a no-holds-barred campaign to destroy them, all in the name of self-righteous groupthink.
In addition, I became curious about the original letter to the editor from the seven graduate students. What were the charges, and what did the students want to have happen? Here’s an excerpt from their letter entitled “On a professor’s misconduct”:
Professors who supervise grads have unparalleled influence over their future careers, which can create an environment in which grads feel they do not dare to lodge complaints.
As a graduate student at Cornell, I am extremely troubled ”” in fact, disgusted ”” by the conduct of Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Chemistry Department David Collum. For years, Collum has publicly shared extremely sexist, bigoted and misogynistic statements.
Note that all the accusations involve speech, “mere speech.” There’s not even an allegation of an act (sexist, bigoted, misogynist, or otherwise) having been committed. Of course, we’ve learned from Professor Jacobson’s letter that even Collum’s speech was not as the grad students had indicated. But let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that Professor Collum had written every single thing these students alleged, and had written it in exactly the way and manner they alleged as well.
In other words, let’s discuss a hypothetical in which the graduate students’ charges are actually true about some member of the Cornell faculty. If that were the case, what would the charges be, and what would the remedies be? Their letter continues:
These statements make me wonder how he can supervise female and/or LGBTQ students without creating what the law and Cornell’s policy call a “hostile work environment.”
So the letter goes from alleging offensive speech on Twitter to an assumption of the person creating a hostile work environment, even though the allegations appear to have zero to do with that person’s actual treatment of anyone or that person’s actual behavior (or even that person’s speech) at work. These students don’t seem to require offending acts, or even offending speech at work, to be offended and frightened by that person’s presence and interactions. It’s enough for them to know (or to believe) that a person they are interacting with might harbor a non-PC thought, such as the following:
[Collum] has made posts indicating that he sees allowing young people to identify as their preferred gender as child abuse. He then supported that claim by referencing the American College of Pediatrics (a fringe group founded to push anti-LGBTQ beliefs).
But that’s a matter of real, bona fide disagreement, and although a non-leftist position it’s fairly mainstream. And yet these seven are terribly outraged/frightened that a professor might hold that opinion, and they believe such an opinion would disqualify that professor from being allowed to advise students or to chair a department (those are the remedies they are seeking in this instance).
The following quote from their letter is the heart of the matter:
Cornell advertises itself as a “caring” institution, where grad students are supposed to feel ”” and be! ”” safe.
That’s the most extraordinary statement of all. That’s what’s it’s come down to these days: many students at Cornell and elsewhere (even ones old enough to be graduate students) believe that students and graduate students are supposed to feel safe there—not just safe from crimes like assault or robbery, but safe from exposure to people with ideas that might disagree with theirs, ideas that they feel are bigoted. These students actually have come to think that this intellectual and emotional safety is the function of a college; their statement to that effect seems to be sincere and non-ironic. .
The seven graduate students’ goal, expressed in the last sentence of their letter, is that a professor who has issued words such as the ones they cited should not be advising students nor be a department chairman. And yet the alleged crimes are pure thoughtcrime.
To take the thought experiment a step further: in the brave new world world these seven students envision, I wonder what they think should happen to people they label bigots (that is, people who think making a gender re-assignment to children is a form of child abuse). Should bigots be allowed to have jobs at all? Or, like lepers in ancient times, should they walk around with bells around their necks to warn others of their sickly and dangerous approach? Should they be kept in the equivalent of leper colonies? Or maybe work camps? How about re-education camps?
Then we’d all feel safe.