Just two updates. You’ll remember that students at Middlebury College in Vermont physically attacked both Charles Murray and his host, Allison Stanger, on March 2 (see here and here). Never mind that most of them hadn’t read The Bell Curve, or that Murray wasn’t even talking about that book; it was enough that he got demonized because they heard Murray was a racist. Fine; let them protest from their ignorance, but don’t allow them to physically assault Murray. Stanger’s hair was pulled, and apparently that injured her neck.

Over at the Washington Post, columnist Richard Cohen, whose politics I don’t know, has a piece decrying the thugs at Middlebury, “Protestors at Middlebury College demonstrate ‘cultural appropriation’—of fascism“, which is a good title. It begins and ends with Stranger’s injury:

Cohen gives a link to the Post‘s report on the disciplinary action taken by Middlebury (see the college’s statement here), which at least was something, but probably not sufficiently harsh to deter future violence:

More than five dozen Middlebury College students were disciplined for their roles in shutting down a speech by the author Charles Murray in March, the college announced this week. But the students were spared the most serious penalties in the episode, which left a faculty member injured and came to symbolize a lack of tolerance for conservative ideas on some campuses.

The college, in Middlebury, Vt., issued a statement on Tuesday describing sanctions against 67 students “ranging from probation to official college discipline, which places a permanent record in the student’s file.” The statement did not disclose how many students received the harsher punishment, but said, “Some graduate schools and employers require individuals to disclose official discipline in their applications.”

Ten to one the vast majority of students got probation, which isn’t on their records. In such cases there is no deterrent once the probationary period is over, and for those not so punished, there is no deterrent towards disruptive behavior. If I had a kid, I wouldn’t send it to Middlebury, or to Evergreen State for that matter. And I wouldn’t lecture at either school if invited.

Discussing the college disruptions of speeches by Milo Yiannopoulos and Heather MacDonald, Cohen uses the students’ own petard against them:

Far more dangerous than what any of these speakers has to say is the reaction to it. The protesters — some of them non-students — are involved in what’s called, to invoke a trendy term, “cultural appropriation.” In this case, it is the culture of fascism. Benito Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy was facilitated by the steady use of violent protesters to break up meetings and silence opponents. The tactic proved successful, and in 1922 Mussolini became dictator of Italy. Hitler, on the other side of the Alps, took careful notes.

I won’t flatter the student protesters by asserting they are aware of their ideological antecedents. But I will say that those who chose not to hear Mac Donald or Murray missed something. Mac Donald, who writes often for the Wall Street Journal, knows her stuff. You may not agree with her, but she is reasonable and learned. As for Murray, his caricature as a white racist is a simplistic libel. I am not prepared to defend “The Bell Curve” — it has been years since I’ve read it — but that’s beside the point. It’s for Murray to defend. And, if given the opportunity, I’m sure he can do it.

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Reader “ohnugget001” called my attention to a piece by beleaguered biology professor Bret Weinstein at the Evergreen State College, whose safety was threatened for refusing to leave campus as a white man on the “Day of Absence.” Yesterday Weinstein wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal called “The campus mob came for me—and you, professor, could be next.” (The reader misidentified it as coming from the Post.) I have a copy of that article, which is behind a paywall, and perhaps judicious inquiry will also yield you a copy. (Deadline 4 pm CST today).

The first half of the piece recounts what happened at Evergreen; the second gives the background. Weinstein notes that Evergreen is “arguably the most radical college in the country,” and part of that stems from its curriculum, which is designed to allow extensive interpersonal interactions between professors and students. (I also had that at The College of William and Mary.) He blames the current problems at his school on the tension between science and postmodernism, and on the new President, George Bridges, whom Weinstein thinks should resign (he said this on Dave Rubin’s show). I’ll quote the last bit of the piece verbatim; it’s the meat of Weinstein’s thesis, so you don’t really need to read the whole article.

The bolding is mine as I think equity of outcome needs to be discussed more openly. Let me add that I’ve discovered that Weinstein has a long history of anti-racist activism and fighting against prejudice, so demonizing him as a racist, which is what the students did, is deeply unfair.

Weinstein:

. . . . the protests resulted from a tension that has existed throughout the entire American academy for decades: The button-down empirical and deductive fields, including all the hard sciences, have lived side by side with “critical theory,” postmodernism and its perception-based relatives. Since the creation in 1960s and ’70s of novel, justice-oriented fields, these incompatible worldviews have repelled one another. The faculty from these opposing perspectives, like blue and red voters, rarely mix in any context where reality might have to be discussed. For decades, the uneasy separation held, with the factions enduring an unhappy marriage for the good of the (college) kids.

Things began to change at Evergreen in 2015, when the school hired a new president, George Bridges. His vision as an administrator involved reducing professorial autonomy, increasing the size of his administration, and breaking apart Evergreen’s full-time programs. But the faculty, which plays a central role in the college’s governance, would never have agreed to these changes. So Mr. Bridges tampered with the delicate balance between the sciences and humanities by, in effect, arming the postmoderns.

The particular mechanism was arcane, but it involved an Equity Council established in 2016. The council advanced a plan that few seem to have read, even now — but that faculty were nonetheless told we must accept without discussion. It would shift the college “from a diversity agenda” to an “equity agenda” by, among other things, requiring an “equity justification” for every faculty hire.

The plan and the way it is being forced on the college are both deeply authoritarian, and the attempt to mandate equality of outcome is unwise in the extreme. Equality of outcome is a discredited concept, failing on both logical and historical grounds, as anyone knows who has studied the misery of the 20th century. It wouldn’t have withstood 20 minutes of reasoned discussion.

This presented traditional independent academic minds with a choice: Accept the plan and let the intellectual descendants of Critical Race Theory dictate the bounds of permissible thought to the sciences and the rest of the college, or insist on discussing the plan’s shortcomings and be branded as racists. Most of my colleagues chose the former, and the protesters are in the process of articulating the terms. I dissented and ended up teaching in the park.

Yes, Weinstein isn’t supposed to be on campus, as the police say they can’t guarantee his safety. All that for writing a reasoned email refusing to absent himself from campus based on his skin color! I am curious to hear Weinstein’s views on equality of outcome, but I suppose neither his colleagues nor the students will get to hear them since they’ve effectively muzzled him. What a world!

h/t: BJ