After all that political hoo-hah, time for something artistic.

Via sH2.

Optimism. // “Tightly holding the pelican by his mouth pouch” and other foreign euphemisms for masturbation. // From above. // Burglars on burglary. // How to teach a baby to climb a fence. // Here is today. // Proportional and sensible. // Ladies, look away now. // The cordless ice drill you’ve always wanted. // Attention, welding enthusiasts. (h/t, Julia) // Japanese water cake. // Why colour grading matters. // Then and now. // Art. // Untarnished. // How to cut string. // So many kinds of things in Star Trek: Voyager. // What metallic electrocrystallization looks like. // On Mandelbrotting and other effects for Doctor Strange. // The Japanese museum of rocks that look like faces. // And finally, VoCo is like Photoshop but for audio and speech. Stay with it, it gets a little odd. 

Here’s a footnote to Monday’s post on Ben Shapiro’s attempts to discuss free speech with Christina Hoff Sommers at DePaul University. And specifically, the claim that his visit would be dangerous, and therefore impermissible, because the university doesn’t have sufficient security staff to protect either the speakers or their audience from harassment and thuggery by its own students.  

Well, it turns out that DePaul did manage to scrape together 30 burly chaps in order to repel, as Shapiro puts it, “a 5’9” Jewish guy.” You see, in modern academia, you mustn’t be allowed to discuss censorship and intolerance in modern academia. Because of “security concerns.” At a lecture with no visible protesters. In case you’re wondering, Mr Shapiro ended up having to Skype Dr Sommers from several blocks away, at which point they had a brief online chat for the benefit of the audience, before relocating the event, along with the audience, to a nearby off-campus theatre, where the discussion could take place as intended. The Skype chat starts around 32:38. 

And do note the YouTube warning, informing us that the video is “unlisted” and that you should therefore “think twice before sharing.” 

Update:

Here’s more of Mr Shapiro, filmed last night at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where things got lively. And where leftist protestors tried to prevent non-students from attending the lecture, and then blocked the stage, before finally conveying their righteousness by pounding on the floor. And note Shapiro’s comment about the protestors’ evident privilege when it comes to disruption and impunity. Do we think that a conservative protest against a leftist speaker, with protestors acting in the same manner, using the same tactics and comparable language, would be accommodated in a similar fashion? Without consequences?

Rules are for the little people, you see.

Update 2: 

A white female journalist, Vicki McKenna, was covering the UW-Madison event. Here’s how she was treated by the leftist protestors. And again, note the behaviour of campus security.

Further to yesterday’s post and lifted from the comments, via sH2, a warning from anti-Trump protestors to Portland’s local press:

Or, “Do as we say and no-one gets hurt. Apart from the people we’re going to hurt while you’re not filming us, obviously.”

Emily Zanotti spies more campus censorship backed by the threat of thuggery: 

DePaul University’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom says they will defy an administration ban on “controversial” speakers, and go ahead with an event next week at the Chicago school featuring conservative speaker Ben Shapiro and “Based Mom” Christina Hoff Sommers. Late Friday, YAF issued an open letter to DePaul University’s administration, noting that they could no longer accept DePaul’s argument that Shapiro did not “substantively contribute” to campus discourse, and that “security concerns” warranted keeping him off campus. DePaul’s Vice President of Facilities, Bob Janis, issued the ban in August, telling YAF students that they could not host the author… [because] DePaul’s modest security forces simply could not handle the ensuing chaos.

“Given the experiences and security concerns that some other schools have had with Ben Shapiro speaking on their campuses, DePaul cannot agree to allow him to speak on our campus at this time,” Mr Janis wrote. Since then, however, Shapiro has spoken at several schools, including Yale and UT Austin, without incident — as has Milo Yiannopolous, whose “Dangerous Faggot” tour has criss-crossed several states. YAF argues that it’s DePaul’s students, and not its invited speakers, that create the problem. DePaul’s YAF branch also note that DePaul claims to have doubled down on its commitment to free speech and the open exchange of ideas on campus, creating a “free speech” speaker series that did not feature any conservative speakers. Hosting Shapiro, they contend, would be well in line with that commitment.

So, to recap. The university’s stated rationale for censorship is that it can’t protect either the speakers or their audience from disruption and thuggery by its own students, which is quite an admission, really. And as we’ve seen, the threat of physical intimidation and mob harassment – by these would-be intellectuals of the left – is quite real. What the university doesn’t admit, however, is that this problem won’t be solved by banning any speakers deemed remotely controversial – in this case, two speakers who prefer evidence and debate over threats and hysteria. It seems to me that the problem will only be addressed, or begin to be addressed, when leftist students no longer feel that mob censorship and physical intimidation are things they can get away with, and get away with repeatedly, without facing consequences. Say, being expelled.

Given the rich seam of psychodrama hinted at above, in which victimhood is professed with rumblings of mob intimidation, and “diversity” comes to mean intolerant mental conformity, it’s perhaps worth revisiting this earlier episode at California State University, Los Angeles, where Mr Shapiro was attempting to speak, and noting both the level of student thuggery and the participation of faculty. Specifically, one Dr Robert Weide, an assistant professor of sociology – a grown man who spends his time tearing down flyers for events he doesn’t like, who denounces those who disagree with him as “fascists” and “white supremacists,” and who offers to fight dissenting students in the university gym, boasting, “I lift bro.” Several videos of Dr Weide’s progressive protégés and their, um, physical vigorousness can be found here.