Franklin Einspruch on art, censorship and impossibly delicate feelings: 

On December 8, in response to a conversation with the artist in which he expressed contrition but not enough for her liking, [third-year doctoral student, Kayla] Wheeler cried out, “The artist triggered me again. I’m hyperventilating. I literally can’t breathe right now… I’m being verbally attacked by this man. I’m shaking and crying. Please make it stop.” 

Kevin Williamson on private life versus pseudo-moral grandstanding: 

The profoundly stupid “black brunch” protests, during which racial-grievance entrepreneurs disrupted meals at places that seemed to them offensively Caucasian (“white spaces”) are a different species of undertaking… The message these protests send is that there is no private space — and, therefore, no private life — so far as this particular rabble is concerned… That the people at brunch have no real direct connection to the events motivating the protesters is beside the point. They were targeted on racial grounds: These were detestable “white spaces,” and the people there were to be punished for being white — even if they were not, in fact, white, their presence in “white spaces” makes them guilty by association. That the protesters were themselves largely white goes without saying: Protests of this sort are a prestige performance for stupid white college kids, mainly. 

Peter Wood on leftist academics who find violence titillating: 

Eric Linsker, an adjunct professor of English composition at [the City University of New York], was arrested on December 13, after he had carried a large garbage can onto a walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge, apparently in an effort to drop it on the heads of police officers below. Linsker was ordered by the police to put it down but fled the scene, dropping his backpack, with two hammers inside, and, among others things, his CUNY ID. Cindy Gorn and Zachary Campbell were among the academics arrested for assaulting police on the Brooklyn Bridge in an effort to help Linsker escape. Gorn is a graduate student at Columbia University… Her “areas of work” are “geography from the perspective of Marxist philosophy, social movements, autonomous labour movements, health, and the environment.” 

Somewhat related, Jim Treacher notes the lively goings-on at a concert for non-violence. 

And further to this, Robert Tracinski on dishonest narratives and apologies not forthcoming: 

But it’s clearly time to apologise — for every activist and journalist (but I repeat myself) who bought into the simplistic, self-serving “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative and broadcast it far and wide based on false testimony; who reflexively dismissed [police officer, Darren] Wilson’s side of the story as preposterous and unbelievable; who doggedly upheld a wider narrative that slanders police officers across the country as murderous racists. Don’t apologise because I shamed you into it, or because I’m trying to sell you on my advice for how to avoid debacles like this in the future. Do it because if you want to hold others accountable for their action, you need to first make sure you are accountable for your own.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for. 

Keili Bartlett reports from the cutting edge of Canadian academia: 

Women should be heard first in the classroom, a forum on misogyny at Dalhousie University heard on Thursday. “Men should not be allowed to monopolise these forums,” management professor Judy Haiven said.

Readers are invited to see if they can spot any male persons on the non-monopolistic panel in question.

Her idea that women should always speak first in classroom discussions and at public events was brought up several times during the forum. Haiven said she already tries to apply this idea in her own classroom… “In the management department, women get to speak first.”

How chivalrous. Though of course the professor means male students aren’t allowed to speak first. Because gender condescension is the path to utopia. 

Haiven’s idea was met by a round of applause,

Of course it was.

but not everyone agreed with her suggestion.

Oh, calamity. Do I hear a rumble of dissent?  

“I think that women of colour should speak first in class,” [gender and sexual resource centre outreach co-ordinator, Jude] Ashburn said.

Whew. That was close.

Sadly, however, Total Ideological Correction™ remains just out of reach. Perhaps more panel discussions are needed. Panels in which stern and pious ladies confuse gender with temperament and depict women as timid, delicate creatures who struggle to raise their hands and can’t quite master speech. In a cosseting environment where women are a majority. 

Update, via the comments: 

Christopher Snowdon on nicotine and the prohibitionist’s dilemma: 

In scenario number two, you are a journeyman public health advocate picking up a nice, steady wage from the government every month. You hold lots of meetings and you go to lots of conferences. You and your colleagues developed a plan of incremental prohibition in the early 1980s and you have it all mapped out… And then something comes along that you didn’t expect. A new product that gives smokers a way to enjoy nicotine without the health risks of smoking cigarettes. You didn’t come up with the idea. The government didn’t come up with the idea. It came from the private sector, and private businesses are making money out of it. Worse still, after a few years of monitoring the market, the tobacco industry buys up a few companies and now they’re making money out of it. Sure, lots of people are giving up smoking as a result, but not in a way that was part of The Plan. Where does this leave you?

Brendan O’Neill on a popular conceit: 

The idea that there is a… culture of hot-headed, violent-minded hatred for Muslims that could be awoken and unleashed by the next terror attack is an invention… The thing that keeps the Islamophobia panic alive is not actual violence against Muslims but the right-on politicos’ ill-founded yet deeply held view of ordinary Europeans, especially those of a working-class variety, as racist and stupid. This is the terrible irony of the Islamophobia panic: The fearers of anti-Muslim violence claim to be challenging prejudice but actually they reveal their own prejudices, their distrust of and disdain for those who come from the other side of the tracks, read different newspapers, hold different beliefs, live different lives.

Thomas Sowell on milking pretentious guilt: 

Our schools and colleges are laying a guilt trip on those young people whose parents are productive, and who are raising them to become productive. What is amazing is how easily this has been done, largely just by replacing the word “achievement” with the word “privilege.”

And again, on the equality racket. 

And Daniel Hannan chats with some unhappy, scowling socialists:  

Don’t make the mistake of judging socialism as a textbook theory but judging capitalism by its necessarily imperfect outcomes. Judge like with like. In the real world, you find me a functioning socialist country that has delivered more than a free-market alternative.

As always, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.

Not in the Guardian, as is generally the custom, but in the Spectator, thanks to Carola Binney, an undergraduate history student at Magdalen College, Oxford, who “writes on student life.” In keeping with tradition, the headline is bold:

Cloakrooms should be free to stop young women freezing to death.

If the thought process behind the headline (and its missing comma) is somewhat unobvious, Ms Binney elaborates:

As I wiggled into my tights in preparation for an end-of-term night out, I was faced with the perennial clubbing question: should I take a coat? Logic, and my mum, would say the answer was obvious. My outfit was hardly cosy, and a tipsy walk home at 2am in December is an adventure best braved from within my wardrobe’s most wind-proof, water-proof and fur-lined offering. But the question wasn’t just one of insulation – I had a financial decision to make. The cloakrooms at most Oxford clubs cost between one and two pounds: what did I want more, healthy circulation or a Jägerbomb?

Ah, the life of the mind. Our thoughtful undergraduate goes on to share Dickensian tales of underdressed drunkenness, thereby illustrating the seriousness of her latest cause:

25-year-old Bernadette Lee, for example, died of hypothermia last January after going on a night out in the Kentish snow with no coat.

“Coats,” she informs us, “are especially essential on nights out, because alcohol, although it makes you feel warmer, makes you more vulnerable to hypothermia.” From this, she concludes,

If local councils are looking for a way to protect young women on nights out, they ought to make a free cloakroom a condition of a club’s license.

Readers may wish to take a moment to process Ms Binney’s mindset of entitlement, a mindset not uncommon among our brightest and best. Specifically, the belief that coat-wearing in winter can only be achieved – say, by students at Magdalen College, Oxford, which, incidentally, boasts its own deer park – if local nightclubs are forced to provide storage for these items entirely free of charge. On account of the reluctance of said students to part with one, possibly two, whole British pounds. Money that might otherwise be spent on roughly one half of a tasty and nutritious Jägerbomb. You see, they can’t be arsed to pay. Therefore someone else should. 

Via the ever-vigilant Mr Eugenides. 

Speaking, as we were, of academia’s efforts to eradicate stoicism, self-possession and any residual sense of proportion, here’s Noah Rothman marvelling at the pretension and self-flattery of a third year student at Harvard Law School. A student whose acute political consciousness has driven him to the brink of nervous exhaustion:

“Our request for exam extensions is not being made from a position of weakness, but rather from one of strength and critical awareness,” wrote William Desmond in the National Law Journal… “The hesitancy to recognise the validity of these psychic effects demonstrates that, in addition to conversations on race, gender and class, our nation is starving for a genuine discussion about mental health,” he continued. “But to reduce our calls for exam extensions to mere cries for help exhibits a failure to understand the powerful images of die-ins and the booming chants of protestors disrupting the continuation of business as usual in cities across the country.” 

You see, you simply fail to comprehend the impact of chants and reclining as expressions of civil disobedience. Their moral gravity eludes you.

If the quotes above lead you to believe that Peak Hyperbole™ must surely have been reached, and camped upon in triumph, I should point out that Mr Desmond, our tearful hero, is barely getting started. 

Tissues and fainting couches are available at the back. 

Update:

And on the subject of student fortitude, another attempt to escape exams on similar grounds proves equally revealing. Della Kurzer-Zlotnick, a freshman activist at Oberlin College, invoked the “significant trauma” of unspecified “students of colour,” on whose behalf she presumed to speak, as grounds for delaying scheduled exams. Apparently, these traumatised students are “tired” and “hurting beyond belief,” and focussed not on their studies but “on their survival” in a racially oppressive environment. Ms Kurzer-Zlotnick’s own “privilege” as “a white, middle-class person” was dutifully confessed.

When her demand was refused, Ms Kurzer-Zlotnick rushed to Facebook to share her deep, deep feelings:

TRIGGER WARNING: Violent language regarding an extremely dismissive response from a professor. This is an email exchange I had with my professor this evening… We are obviously not preaching to the choir. Professors and administration at Oberlin need to be held accountable for their words and actions and have a responsibility to their students.

The violent and triggering language used by her professor, for which he and the entire college must be held accountable? One word:

No.