You Mustn’t Stop The Hysteria
In other academic news, it turns out that if you dare to punish students who use coercive mob tactics to threaten and intimidate non-leftist speakers and those who wish to hear them, then you are creating “an unsafe and threatening environment” for students who want to use threatening and coercive physical tactics. And also you’re racist, which rather goes without saying. Apparently, any hint of consequences for thuggish and censorious behaviour merely affirms “white supremacy” and will “suppress and criminalise” students whose own attempts to suppress veer towards the criminal.
This, we’re told, is “unfair.”
The thinker of these deep thoughts, Charles H F Davis, a professor of education at the University of Southern California and the director of USC’s Race and Equity Centre, is aghast at the prospect of students being suspended if found to have repeatedly engaged in violence or disorderly conduct with the intention of suppressing debate. The professor also accuses Ben Shapiro, a speaker who’s been on the receiving end of student thuggery, of advancing “racist rhetoric,” while omitting any evidence to support this claim. We are, however, informed that this unspecified “hate speech” is “a form of violence itself.” To which, presumably, any actual violence – say, by leftist students exulting in mob force – is merely a form of payback. Physically coercive tactics are, says Professor Davis, employed only in desperation by “those… willing to labour in the name of justice” and whose “very minds, bodies and spirits” depend on these lively and vigorous forms of expression, which are “clearly a demand for greater racial equity and inclusion.”
Readers are invited to find justice in this short but somewhat instructive video here, filmed during Mr Shapiro’s visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in November last year, and in which a lone female journalist experiences first-hand the bottomless compassion of these brave student labourers.
Such is academia’s Clown Quarter, where the best and the brightest are nowhere to be seen.
Update, via the comments:
Stripped of its pretensions, Professor Davis’ article is basically a demand that the behaviour of leftist students, and minority leftist students in particular, be unconstrained and free of normal consequences, including the university’s own code of behaviour, compliance with which is a condition of being welcome on campus, and which explicitly forbids “coercive disruption.” The professor, however, like so many of his equally dogmatic protégés, prefers a campus where those deemed sufficiently woke can act with impunity, unhindered by mere civility and reciprocity, or indeed a sense of proportion. Which suggests something beyond mere narcissism and approaching sociopathy.
And remember, the Clown Quarter is the left’s fiefdom, where its ambitions and fantasies thrive largely unopposed. It’s a prototype utopia. Hence all the pushing and shoving, and tribal acrimony, and double standards.
Update 2:
See the second item here. Just in case there was any doubt.
The thinker of these deep thoughts, Charles H F Davis,
There’s your problem.
There’s your problem.
It’s a deep rabbit hole. And apparently, the way to enhance the life chances of black students is to encourage them to self-righteously ignore unfamiliar arguments, and indeed try to suppress them, physically, while generally behaving like delinquent thugs. Which, in the real world, always works out so well.
I am primarily responsible for teaching graduate-level courses and conducting research on forms of organized resistance, systems of oppression, and structures of domination in education
Hmm….
I am primarily responsible for teaching graduate-level courses and organized resistance, systems of oppression, and structures of domination in education
Yes, that sounds more like it.
Again it’s perfectly simple; an argument as old as time –
I’m right, you’re wrong!
What’s the Latin “argumentum” phrase for this familiar state of discourse? Perhaps instead of disciplining and jailing the students, we should discipline and jail this professor – who sounds awfully like an instigator.
I’m starting to think that those who are unable to comprehend the idea of freedom of speech should, perhaps, have their own institutions of
indoctrinationeducation where they aren’t exposed to to the horror that is having Ben Shapiro or Charles Murray being allowed to speak within 5 miles of them.They’ll be able to run free, protesting and screaming to their hearts content without ever encountering a contrary view.
Or maybe just mass deportation to Liberia. Whichever is cheaper.
Why would you want to do that to poor, in more ways than one, Liberia? I’m not entirely sure but as it’s on the west coast of Africa, in the ‘I’m never going there unless at the point of gun’ region, I’m sure they’ve got plenty of their own lunatics they can’t handle as it is.
Why would you want to do that to poor, in more ways than one, Liberia?
Ok, you force me to make the ultimate move: Antarctica. Checkmate!
More seriously, I chose Liberia because they’d be forced to see the results of their tribal politics.
On re-watching the “exulting in mob force” video, linked above, I’m still taken aback by the protestors’ blatant bad faith. Having declined several invitations to participate in Mr Shapiro’s open Q&A session, and having instead decided that no-one on campus, whether student or visitor, should be permitted to hear views that the protestors disagree with, the psychodrama ensues. And so, gorged on self-righteousness, the protestors gleefully aggress random people who just want to listen to a talk – by physically blocking their way, surrounding them, invading their personal space, screaming abuse at them, harassing them, shoving them, assaulting them – all while chanting “No violence!”
As if they are the ones showing restraint.
And this is done while exploiting the moral anonymity of the mob, under cover of which no-one is likely to be held responsible for behaviour that would otherwise, done as individuals, result in criminal charges or repayment in mind.
And also you’re racist, which rather goes without saying.
Everything on campus is by default racism, though this is a magnificent example of the convoluted thinking of these idiots, former IDF sodier is racist for not raping Palestinian women. Click through the tweet to get the full story, apparently an “academic” report decried the lack of “organized military rape” because it showed racism, just as “organized military rape” would have. Heads I win, tails you lose – apparently this won a Deep Thoughts™ award of some kind.
Related, the lunacy wrought by the academics bleeds over to the real world where Harvey Weinstein is a racist because he didn’t rape any black women, but Harvey Weinstein is a racist because he denies raping a black woman.
physically blocking their way, surrounding them, invading their personal space, screaming abuse at them, harassing them, shoving them, assaulting them – all while chanting “No violence!”
They mean ‘don’t hit us back’.
They mean ‘don’t hit us back’.
Heh. Well, quite.
If you watch the whole thing, you’ll see the mob of protestors basically crushing people and jostling them, putting them in genuine fear for their safety, and then, when the pushing reaches a critical point and one of their victims looks like he’s about to retaliate, dozens of hands shoot up in the air, as if to say, “Don’t hit us, we’re totally innocent!”
Why, it’s almost as if these tactics had been worked out in advance.
So, Professor Davis is announcing that “civil” discourse no longer exists, at least at USC. Make no mistake. This is nothing less than a declaration of war, justified by simply redefining mere speech as “violence,” if said speech is contrary to Davis’s received wisdom. One wonders whether Davis has thought this through. I doubt his office at USC is sufficient to protect him from those whom he wishes to muzzle. Does he believe the rest of us will do nothing if we can no longer engage in reasoned debate?
Four legs good, two legs bad!
Ah, in my hastiness to get my thoughts down I had not considered that, good point actually.
This goes directly to one of the points Jordan B. Peterson has made, mainly that Marxists do not believe in logic* and therefore view debate as pointless. He explained in one of his videos that he was scheduled to debate someone of the opposite views at a law school in Canada but none of the faculty would debate him. He was shocked since lawyers are generally trained to be professional debaters but he realized that as they were almost entirely Marxists they simply didn’t believe in the idea of debating their ideas – they were right, end of story, no debate required.
Not to be a smart arse but, based on past experience he most likely believes the answer to your question is, ‘Yes’, since they’ve been blocking debate and shouting down people for quite some time with minimal to no blow back.
*he used a different phrase as I believe he was talking about the science related to gender issues but logic was definitely in the mix somewhere.
“Does he believe the rest of us will do nothing if we can no longer engage in reasoned debate?”
It’s worked out well for them so far. I can think of two instances where they’ve encountered a fight. I can think of fifty where they haven’t.
@Tom
… since they’ve been blocking debate and shouting down people for quite some time with minimal to no blow back.
That’s the problem. When the paradigm changes, some people are slow to catch up. That includes those of us accustomed to living in a civil society under the rule of law. Those like Professor Davis insist, however, on making sure we know that time is gone. Fine. We may be slow, but we’re not stupid. Eventually we’ll begin to act is if his academic pronouncements are no longer . . . academic.
It’s worked out well for them so far.
Yeah, and it will continue to work until, suddenly and unexpectedly, it doesn’t. Slow to anger doesn’t mean incapable of anger. As R. Sherman says, we’re not stupid. Or, in other words, “all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”.
“While evils are sufferable”. How much more will be suffered remains to be seen.
Didn’t someone once write:
…But in these cases
We still have judgment here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th’ inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.
I think he also wrote:
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
but my guess is they don’t teach that stuff any more.
@R.Sherman
You’re right, people are slow to catch on to paradigm shifts, especially when they shift towards something unpalatable. The change, to quote a Hemingway character, will come ‘gradually, then suddenly.’ And it won’t be pleasant.
As @jaberwok says, we are likely to suffer evils “While evils are sufferable…” but it seems that what passes for ‘evils’ are not being suffered simultaneously by a large enough group to become insufferable. As long as freedom of speech is denied to a small group here, and one small business is closed down there, the vast majority of people who would be angered to action will not know or care. This might be different were the media not firmly on the other side, but they are, so it’s not.
On the general theme developing here, I don’t think we’re headed for another Kent State moment. I fear we’re headed for a Bernhard Goetz moment. And the fallout from that will be dire.
I fear we’re headed for a Bernhard Goetz moment.
For those unfamiliar with it, as I was, the Goetz saga is quite a thing.
“Does he believe the rest of us will do nothing if we can no longer engage in reasoned debate?”
Well, the self-styled “Antifa” neo-Marxist blackshirts are staging nationwide
protestsriots on the Fourth of November, so we’ll see.I suspect “Occupy 2.0” will be no more “effective” than the original, other than getting more Republicans elected.
I fear we’re headed for a Bernhard Goetz moment. And the fallout from that will be dire.
The retaliation ALWAYS gets punished, even if the instigation never is.
On the other hand, when one of the Left’s footsoldiers opens fire on Republican lawmakers preparing for a charity baseball game, the right is still blamed.
Such is academia’s Clown Quarter, where the best and the brightest are nowhere to be seen.
Maybe they are the best and brightest of that particular subset of academia.
That’s the media issue again. With an actual objectively neutral media there would be a range of reporting on these incidents, but when the media, almost entirely, are DNC operatives with bylines* then expect the truth to be smothered with a pillow 24/7.
*I think Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame was the first to use this phrase.
The professor also accuses Ben Shapiro, a speaker who’s been on the receiving end of student thuggery, of advancing “racist rhetoric,” while omitting any evidence to support this claim.
Don’t tell me, he forgot.
The thinker of these deep thoughts, Charles H F Davis, a professor of education at the University of Southern California and the director of USC’s Race and Equity Centre,
There’s your problem.
There’s your problem
It’s perhaps worth noting that students who pursue a major in Education, perhaps with a view to reaching the dizzying mental heights of Professor Davis, tend to have some of the lowest SAT scores, along with enthusiasts of Angry Studies. And these same students are likely to find themselves being graded very generously, more so than in any other field of study, with an uncanny number of ‘A’s.
Excellence for everyone!
Again, why do we continue to fund these people with our tax dollars? US Congress is working on budget/tax/spend issues this very week. Where are the politicians saying, “Cut here”?
They’re too busy soiling themselves. I mean, we’re talking about a mob that threatens and beats people for the ‘crime’ of uttering unpleasant truths. Can you imagine what they’ll do when their gravy train is threatened?
Physically coercive tactics are, says Professor Davis, employed only in desperation by “those… willing to labour in the name of justice”
Funny how the ‘protestors’ are *always* desperate.
Has anyone bothered to look at his photos?
Lots of photographers take pictures of street kids. Here, for example: http://www.michaelsegalphoto.com/world-gallery/
But, this guy’s real genius is using his vacation to take pictures of middle class local kids in poorly composed, low contrast, digital black and whites. He is clearly pushing the boundaries – literally daring his audience to fight off bouts of narcolepsy while looking at his pictures.
I mean, really, could you get ANY more pedantic? A black professor, in a made-up field, with no academic publications, who styles himself as a cross-fit competitor, a narcissistic clothes horse, a pretentiously shitty photographer. Sheesh.
Funny how the ‘protestors’ are *always* desperate.
How dare you question their sincerity. These are beings of pure light. You see, their “very minds, bodies and spirits” depend on no-one being permitted to hear Ben Shapiro argue about policy and statistics. According to another noted educator, his words are a “physical threat” to students and likely to induce post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ditto notorious bruiser Christina Hoff Sommers.
And Heather Mac Donald.
And Charles Murray.
And Janice Fiamengo.
And Jordan Peterson.
And…
Well, we’ll be at this all day.
The retaliation ALWAYS gets punished, even if the instigation never is.
That’s my fear. The vehicular homicide during the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville is muddled enough that it’s gone down the memory hole. It’s not getting used as fuel for the fire.
But in a Bernhard Goetz moment – where an otherwise sane, reasonable, severely normal citizen at one of these rallies draws a gun and shoots dead one or more antifa protestors who are demonstrably threatening him in what in any other circumstances would be a legal, justified shoot, and is unapologetic about it – that’s going to be the shot heard ’round the world that starts the next American Civil War.
By the way, speaking of history, this is precisely what happened to the Christian Armenians in eastern Turkey when Muslim Turkish soldiers commenced the Armenian genocide.
The Armenians fought back to defend their families.
The Turks came at them even more fiercely and ended up killing 1.5 million Armenians – women, children, babies, and the elderly.
The Muslim Turks saw (and still do today) themselves SUPERIOR – culturally, morally, religiously – to the Christian Armenians and how dare those Christians fight back. The Muslim Turks punished those Christians all the more severely.
That professor, Charles H. F. Davis, considers himself SUPERIOR – e.g., morally – to conservatives, Republicans, Trump supporters, etc., and how dare they fight back. They will be punished all the more severely.
Thus, what we see in the physical violence on campuses is nothing new.
Genghis is right (bad-a-boom *tish*), Prof. Davis’ photography is pants; poorly framed, composed and focussed and quite banal.
I wonder if the parents who pay $67,000 USD per annum for their child to attend the University of Southern California are aware that they are paying for this idiot…
Stripped of its pretensions, Professor Davis’ article is basically a demand that the behaviour of leftist students, and minority leftist students in particular, be unconstrained and free of normal consequences, including the code of behaviour to which they agreed as a condition of their welcome as students on campus. They must, it seems, be free to act with impunity. Which suggests something beyond mere narcissism and approaching sociopathy.
And remember, the Clown Quarter is the left’s fiefdom, where its ambitions and fantasies thrive largely unopposed. It’s a prototype utopia.
And then of course there’s the professor’s Twitter feed.
Missed the fundraiser but I’ve dropped a few bucks in your tip jar.
I wonder if the parents who pay $67,000 USD per annum for their child to attend the University of Southern California are aware that they are paying for this idiot…
Nearly $68 million of US Federal Government money went to fund student loans at USC in 2104. It’s not just the parents who are funding this idiocy.
http://about.usc.edu/files/2014/12/FY-14-USC-Financial-Report.pdf
dropped a few bucks in your tip jar
Bless you, sir. Much appreciated.
“We have White Supremacy, Professor, because for 2500 years we, whites, have produced the best minds on the planet, the greatest flourishing of the arts and sciences ever seen, the most complex and organized societies. We have White Supremacy, whatever exactly it may be, because we have been the earth’s most successful race. No other has come close. Deal with it.
We put probes on Mars and invented the thousands of technologies needed to do it. We developed the symphony orchestra, the highest form of musical expression. We invented the airplane, the computer, the internet, and tennis shoes. Putting it compactly, we invented the modern world. A degree of privilege, however you may conceive it, goes with the territory.”
Fred Reed, found here.
Off topic (but not really)…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/21/victimhood-narrative-taught-schools-fuels-anxiety-young-women/
Off topic (but not really)…
No, it doesn’t seem off-topic at all. If you inculcate victimhood, and do it culturally and institutionally, at every turn, both as a universal excuse and as a kind of competitive piety, a marker of status, then dysfunctional behaviour will follow. And fantasists and hustlers who exploit that dysfunction will thrive and multiply.
The worst part of the victimhood narrative’s effect on anyone making a STEM program so-to-speak more diverse is that it stifles success in those who actually belong there. To illustrate, a female student with a knack for chemistry in a chemical engineering program or a black student in an electronics engineering program will already have faced some difficulty *within their group* for being outside an expected norm, and there’s not one thing “The Patriarchy” could have done to affect those in-group reinforcements and discouragements. They don’t have the right, you see. Been told repeatedly.
So here you have the atypical student from group X, often shy or otherwise introverted or disjoint from their group norms, and you’re going to tell them that not only does their peer group hate them, any possible place they might succeed in hates them too? They’re a victim, can’t succeed, must be angry, and reject any idea of normalcy and professionalism? Now you have an atypical person who’s already low in confidence and under social pressure, and you’re telling them to fight a war on two fronts: the war they want to fight against everything they’ve encountered telling them they can’t succeed, and another war entirely on behalf of the first group, tearing down the strictures and structures of their new home, their new temple.
It sets them up for failure, and fail they will – and it’s Whitey’s fault. Naturally.
“Don’t break the stack!”
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/372132.php
Some highlights from his CV:
“PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES
Exploring the multiple marginality of a non-native born Black Muslim on a predominantly white campus
A critical race analysis of Black undergraduate student success at an urban university
In search of progressive Black masculinities: Critical self-reflections on gender identity development among Black undergraduate men
They (don’t) care about education: A counternarrative on Black male students’ responses to inequitable schooling
BOOK CHAPTERS
Peer Pedagogies of occupation and resistance: Structural and invasive disruption as sites of possibility for learning
Black data matters: Connecting education research to the movement for Black lives
Wrestlers gone wild: Gay porn starring University of Nebraska student-athletes
Engaging college men of color
RESEARCH REPORTS, SYNTHESES, REVIEWS & ANNOTATIONS
Black on campus: A status report on contemporary student activism in college
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Hence, This Is Racist
Eight Actions to Reduce Racism in College Classrooms
The Story of Trayvon Martin and Resurgent Social Justice Among HBCU College-Goers
MANUSCRIPTS IN PREPARATION
Instagramming, culture jamming, and new media organizing practices of contemporary college students
[Multi-sited] ethnography and the off-campus imaginary: Studying contemporary student activism in higher education.
Peer pedagogies of resistance, communities of memory, and protest infrastructures in contemporary student organizing in college
Revolutionary infrastructure: Institutional resources and incubating off-campus student activism
FUNDED RESEARCH, GRANTS, AND CONTRACTS
2014 – 2017 $550,000 Contracts for campus racial climate assessments and equity audits at colleges and universities across the United States,
mostly through the Penn Center for the Study of Race & Equity in Education.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2014 – 2015 Instructor, Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania
Served as an instructor for the Aresty Institute of Executive Education and the Master of Business Administration Program at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. Educational modules include:
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Decoded
Diversity and Unconscious Bias in the Workplace
Managing and Retaining Diverse Millennial Talent
2012 – 2014 Instructor, Africana Studies, The University of Arizona
Served as a course instructor of undergraduate students in African Studies and African American Student Affairs. Courses included:
AFAS 399 – Media, Fashion, and Black Feminist Thought
LASC 393 – Student Affairs and the Black College Experience
LASC 394 – Black Student Identity and Leadership Development”
Hmm…U Penn again. And Wharton, no less.
“Such is academia’s Clown Quarter, where the best and the brightest are nowhere to be seen.”
Such is academentia’s Clown Quarter, where the best and the brightest are nowhere to be seen.
FTFY