Sarah Lawrence College students have demanded issued a list of demands from the ” the Diaspora Coalition” to address “the injustices imposed on people of color by this institution on a daily basis.” What is striking about the list is the inclusion of scholarships that would bar white students and an action targeting a member of the faculty because they disagree with his views. While the college is pledging to work with the students to reach a compromise, the demands reflect the growing intolerance of opposing views and free speech rights on campuses — as well as a call for the awarding of scholarship on the basis of race. They also demand special benefits for “first-generation students” as well as mandatory training sessions for all students on “intellectual elitism and classism.” They also include demands for free food, free detergent and free student storage.
The students also demand “at least three more courses offered in African diasporic studies taught by Black professors.” Thus, the college is expected to bar academics based on their skin color in a return to the race-based practices preceding the Civil Rights movement.
Yesterday, Sarah Lawrence College President Cristle Judd praised the students for helping the school “seek to ensure a truly inclusive environment of respect and support at Sarah Lawrence, especially for students of color and low-income students.” However, she declined to join the mob in targeting the faculty member.
The professor is Samuel Abrams and the demand for his firing or punishment shows the anti-intellectual and anti-free speech sentiments that run through some of these protests. I have previously discussed how Antifa and other college protesters are increasingly denouncing free speech and the foundations for liberal democracies. Some protesters reject classic liberalism and the belief in free speech as part of the oppression on campus. The movement threatens both academic freedom and free speech — a threat that is growing due to the failure of administrators and faculty to remain true to core academic principles. Dartmouth Professor Mark Bray, the author of a book entitled “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” is one of the chief enablers of these protesters. Bray speaks positively of the effort to supplant traditional views of free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase… that says I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” He defines anti-fascists as “illiberal” who reject the notion that far right views deserve to “coexist” with opposing views.
In this case, Professor Abrams is being targeted for an op-ed:
On October 16, 2018, politics professor Samuel Abrams published an op-ed entitled “Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators” in The New York Times. The article revealed the anti-Blackness, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-woman bigotry of Abrams. The article specifically targeted programs such as the Our Liberation Summit, which Abrams did not attend, facilitated by the Office of Diversity and Campus Engagement. The Sarah Lawrence community deserves an administration that strives for an inclusive education that reflects the diversity of our community. Abrams’ derision of the Black Lives Matter, queer liberation, and women’s rights movements displays not only ignorance but outright hostility towards the essential efforts to dismantle white supremacy and other systems of oppression. This threatens the safety and wellbeing of marginalized people within the Sarah Lawrence community by demonstrating that our lives and identities are viewed as “opinions” that we can have a “difference in dialogue” about, as if we haven’t been forced to debate our very existences for our entire lives. We demand that Samuel Abrams’ position at the College be put up to tenure review to a panel of the Diaspora Coalition and at least three faculty members of color. In addition, the College must issue a statement condemning the harm that Abrams has caused to the college community, specifically queer, Black, and female students, whilst apologizing for its refusal to protect marginalized students wounded by his op-ed and the ignorant dialogue that followed. Abrams must issue a public apology to the broader SLC community and cease to target Black people, queer people, and women.
It is a glimpse into the intolerance for opposing views that has become an article of faith with some groups on our campuses. While President Cristle is to be commended for her refusal to negotiate on that point, it would seem that a more direct and instructive response was warranted rather than just point to the academic freedom policies of the school.
The mixing of free detergent with the evisceration of free speech captures the tenor and thought behind these demands. Colleges and universities are facing an existential moment in these anti-intellectual protests. We cannot ignore the rising threat to free speech and free thought posed by such demands.
here’s what got Prof abrams in trouble. Thoughtcrime!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/opinion/liberal-college-administrators.html
Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators
The ideological bent of those overseeing collegiate life is having the biggest impact on campus culture.
By Samuel J. Abrams
Dr. Abrams is a professor of politics.
I received a disconcerting email this year from a senior staff member in the Office of Diversity and Campus Engagement at Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach. The email was soliciting ideas from the Sarah Lawrence community for a conference, open to all of us, titled “Our Liberation Summit.” The conference would touch on such progressive topics as liberation spaces on campus, Black Lives Matter and justice for women as well as for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and allied people.
As a conservative-leaning professor who has long promoted a diversity of viewpoints among my (very liberal) faculty colleagues and in my classes, I was taken aback by the college’s sponsorship of such a politically lopsided event. The email also piqued my interest in what sorts of other nonacademic events were being organized by the school’s administrative staff members.
I soon learned that the Office of Student Affairs, which oversees a wide array of issues including student diversity and residence life, was organizing many overtly progressive events — programs with names like “Stay Healthy, Stay Woke,” “Microaggressions” and “Understanding White Privilege” — without offering any programming that offered a meaningful ideological alternative. These events were conducted outside the classroom, in the students’ social and recreational spaces.
The problem is not limited to my college. While considerable focus has been placed in recent decades on the impact of the ideological bent of college professors, when it comes to collegiate life — living in dorms, participating in extracurricular organizations — the ever growing ranks of administrators have the biggest influence on students and campus life across the country.
ADVERTISEMENT
Today, many colleges and universities have moved to a model in which teaching and learning is seen as a 24/7 endeavor. Engagement with students is occurring as much — if not more — in residence halls and student centers as it is in classrooms. Schools have increased their hiring in areas such as residential life and student centers, offices of student life and success, and offices of inclusion and engagement. It’s not surprising that many of the free-speech controversies in the past few years at places like Yale, Stanford and the University of Delaware have concerned events that occurred not in classrooms but in student communal spaces and residence halls.
Intrigued by this phenomenon, I recently surveyed a nationally representative sample of roughly 900 “student-facing” administrators — those whose work concerns the quality and character of a student’s experience on campus. I found that liberal staff members outnumber their conservative counterparts by the astonishing ratio of 12-to-one. Only 6 percent of campus administrators identified as conservative to some degree, while 71 percent classified themselves as liberal or very liberal. It’s no wonder so much of the nonacademic programming on college campuses is politically one-sided.
You have 1 free article remaining.
Subscribe to The Times
The 12-to-one ratio of liberal to conservative college administrators makes them the most left-leaning group on campus. In previous research, I found that academic faculty report a six-to-one ratio of liberal to conservative professors. Incoming first-year students, by contrast, reported less than a two-to-one ratio of liberals to conservatives, according to a 2016 finding by the Higher Education Research Institute. It appears that a fairly liberal student body is being taught by a very liberal professoriate — and socialized by an incredibly liberal group of administrators.
Editors’ Picks
How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood
When the Dominatrix Moved in Next Door
For Larger Customers, Eating Out Is Still a Daunting Experience
RELATEDOther Opinion pieces about political ideology on campus.
Opinion | Samuel J. Abrams: There Are Conservative Professors. Just Not in These States.July 1, 2016
Opinion: The Indoctrination MythMarch 3, 2012
Opinion | Neil Gross: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?May 13, 2016
The severity of this trend varies among different types of academic institutions. My research found that two-thirds of administrators at public institutions and schools with religious affiliations self-identified as liberals, which was lower than the three-quarters of administrators at private, secular institutions who did. I found no real differences among school types, such as small, private liberal arts colleges as compared with large research universities. School ranking did make a small difference, with administrators at more selective institutions reporting a higher percentage of liberals than did lower-ranked schools.
ADVERTISEMENT
The most pronounced difference was regional. New England has the most liberal college administrators in the nation, with a 25-to-one ratio of liberals to conservatives. The West Coast and Southeast have ratios of 16-to-one, whereas the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes all have ratios closer to 10-to-one. The only region with anything close to a balanced ratio is the Southwest, with two-to-one.
This warped ideological distribution among college administrators should give our students and their families pause. To students who are in their first semester at school, I urge you not to accept unthinkingly what your campus administrators are telling you. Their ideological imbalance, coupled with their agenda-setting power, threatens the free and open exchange of ideas, which is precisely what we need to protect in higher education in these politically polarized times.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
we could try reasoned debate? lol we all know that won’t work.
or we could run them out on a rail and tar and feather them? Or maybe public floggings? I know, that would be improper etc etc etc. But they don’t believe in free speech, just for themselves, so what’s the point in talking to them? they may find themselves wishing they hadn’t had abused their privileges!
but, just firing them might be a good start.
You let these people take over, it’s like the Cultural Revolution in China. It’s letting the lunatics take over the asylum. Time for “Reaction” to start flexing its muscles!
The Op-Ed is sufficiently bland that the neuralgic response of the youths in question seems quite bizarre. How much you want to bet they were manipulated by student affairs staff into staging this ‘protest’?
Remember back when at least some politicians still had balls?
I think I could vote for this guy just watching his response to being attacked from behind.
https://www.infowars.com/australian-senator-slapped-with-egg-by-teen-after-criticizing-mass-immigration/
Their demands are racist and totalitarian. If they don’t want to attend the college, they should drop out. College is supposed to be for higher education, not social justice battles.
Universities should be a meritocracy, in either the education or athletics tracks. As someone who worked hard to be admitted into college, and worked during college to pay for school, I found it deeply offensive how the elites shoved someone deserving aside so their own kids could get a place. One of the daughters in question posted a video about how she wasn’t even going to show up for her first week of school at USC because she would be in Fiji working, I assume modeling.
You don’t respect what you didn’t work for. Even if you got a scholarship and don’t pay for school, you worked for many years to achieve that accomplishment.
Our youngest generation entering college have been taught to constantly gauge their current victimhood status. Their limbic system is in a constant state of agitation, triggering fight or flight responses to oppositional ideas, or the proximity of someone with different ideas. Every time there is an officer involved shooting of a minority, it triggers their absolute assertion that it’s racist, facts be darned. They fight for the superiority of their own ideas and emotions at the expense of others. Anyone with a different point of view must be sacked and never able to work again.
It’s madness, and such self-centeredness has been coddled long enough. I would like it if a University would not consider such demands in future. Have some backbone, and call out the racism in their demands for what it is.
As further evidence of their disconnect with ethics, they issued the following demand:
“All campus laundry rooms are to supply laundry detergent and softener on a consistent basis for all students, faculty and staff.” This would increase every paying student’s costs to supply laundry detergent and softener to everyone regardless of socioeconomic status. Why in the world would you expect a struggling student, working their way through college, to pay more so that the rich professors could have free detergent?
If you need laundry detergent, or food, or clothing, or feminine products, and you cannot afford to buy them, apply for Welfare benefits.
If they want all students to learn more about slavery, may I suggest a 101 history course on slavery? It would include the global presence of slavery in virtually all cultures since before recorded time. Native Americans commonly engaged in the slavery of their enemies, including sex slaves. The Barbary pirates were infamous for enslaving whites. There was a preference for kidnapped, enslaved white women in harems, as well. The course would discuss how African tribes sold their enemies as slaves to European slavers, as well as that slavery still exists on the African continent today.
The course could also examine how Great Britain and the US were at the forefront of abolishing slavery in the Western World. It could show maps of modern day slavery hot spots, which do NOT exist in the US. (https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-where-modern-day-slavery-is-the-most-prevalent-2014-11) African foreign exchange students could have families back home who actively own slaves today, as well as have been slaves themselves. In fact, this is the state of Africa today (https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/02/11/africas-forever-wars/). The violence in the region is indescribable. Boy, would that turn BLM rhetoric on its head.
It illustrates the poor state of our public education system that the US is one of the countries that experiences the least slavery in the planet, but we are punished the most for slavery. A very small minority of the US population ever owned slaves. 620,000 mostly non-slave owning men died over bringing an end to slavery in the US. Families starved and children died. Whole towns were razed. Crops burned. Family and friend turned on each other. We spilled blood and brought famine. If that’s not enough to wipe the slate clean, then nothing ever will.
Slavery was evil. It was universal across time. It still exists outside of the United States. If they want to make slavery a topic of undergrad education, let’s. But make it accurate.
The Civil War did not wipe the slate clean, and the fact that our nation facilitated and enabled those few slave holders, and that many non-slaves who did not own any benefited financially from slavery, including the slave trade, makes the US responsible and culpable. England was a major player in the slave trade, with Liverpool as a center.
The guilt of others, both in the present and past, does not absolve the US of the evils of the past. Since we continued segregation up into the recent past, and other less overt forms of racism still exist here. we should refrain from the back patting.
Anon……If I may intrude here, you might want to read some black intellectual, conservative authors and philosophers. Thomas Sowell, for one. He has said that the “American blacks today would be worse off if their ancestors had not been brought here. The terrible fate of their ancestors has benefitted them”.
I know Democrats seem to be stuck in the 60’s and 70’s and do not embrace much that is being discussed, promoted and written by the “recovering” liberals…turned conservative, blacks. For one thing, they are not interested in the cash cow called race-baiting. They want to enjoy and celebrate the opportunities given them and be productive, proud citizens.
And the incredible thing they have going for them is found in the one word liberals eschew: Forgiveness.
That’s an oxymoronic contradiction in terms.
What you meant to say was artificial intellectuals aided and supported by the crutches of forced busing, generational welfare, “Affirmative Action Privilege,” Obamacare, quotas, food stamps, unconstitutional and unfair “Fair Housing” laws, unconstitutional and discriminatory “Non-Discrimination” laws, WIC, TANF, HAMP, HARP, HUD, HHS, etc., etc., etc.
Charity is voluntary industry conducted in the free markets of the private sector.
Interestingly, the freed Israelite slaves were out of Egypt before the ink was dry on their release papers. What happened?
A modicum of truth please?
George……Huh? Have no idea what I said that is wrong or untruthful.
I’m not real bright, so be gentle.
Seriously – black and intellectual in the same sentence? Please re-read.
Can we get rid of the unconstitutional and artificial crutch and false support of generational welfare and affirmative action, etc. and “…make money the old fashioned way – earn it…” – through merit?
George…Thats what I was saying.
Maybe your eyes blur when a woman is writing her opinion.
It happens.
That was a very astute observation. They do. Because women have a big job and they’ve abandoned it. Women literally make the physical nation – the people. Women got the vote; women got abortion. America got a death sentence. The population is imported. In 100 years, there won’t be an American left in America. The birthrate is in a “death spiral” as it is in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It’s one of life’s little ironies – women are the true misogynists who hate pregnancy, childbirth and nurturing. America and Americans are vanishing into extinction because of the rejection by women of their natural duty; a duty assigned not by those pesky men but by nature or God. Apparently, America and Americans were created to disappear if women are to be believed. The hatred of the Feminazi misandrists is literally killing Americans and America. They love it.
George – you paint with a broad brush. Not all women are extremist misandrist feminists. I love being a Mom and an American. I don’t consider myself a feminist in the modern definition. I believe in equal opportunity, which feminists most emphatically do not. They believe in quotas, and forcing girls to act like boys and boys to act like girls, against their will.
One group cannot be counted on to be beneficent towards another, powerless group over which they have total control. That is why women required suffrage. There are no brain cells in gonads.
What is important is values and common sense. Some men and women have it, and some do not. I am sure you will acknowledge that a great many SJW males are working diligently to undermine capitalism and prosperity in America. You will recall that many prominent Democrat men publicly defended the full term abortion bill and even defended infanticide of survivors.
I realize I will not change your mind about women. I have never changed anyone’s mind about anything, and such beliefs are entrenched and resistant. But perhaps one day you will respect a lady’s right to participate in our government.
I enjoy reading Thomas Sowell. He has a very reasonable, encouraging approach.
I find the far Left’s rhetoric to be very discouraging and full of animosity towards their fellow Americans.
What has this got to do with anything going on at Sarah Lawrence College?
TIA x3 …. Second paragraph, kiddo.
And congrats on your promotion to X3.
What?
Sorry, absurd. I though your question…”what does this have to do with Sarah L.? ” was addressed to me….so I explained that Civil Rts / Africa were mentioned in 2nd paragraph of the post.
then trying to be humorous, I commented on your move from X2 to X3.
Anon, you touched on something significant. Liverpool was the center of the slave trade in the 17th & 18th Centuries. But in all fairness to Great Briton, Portugal was first in transcontinental slave trading.
Slavery was the business model that made it possible for ‘investors’ to start a plantation. Investors had to be capable with guns and whips. Yet a heartless SOB could build a Virginia plantation and set his family up for life.
The business model of slavery allowed investors of 17th Century England the chance to own estates they could never afford in England. What’s more England suffered decades of civil war and violence throughout the 1600’s.
So investors had a strong incentive to leave England in the 17th Century.
Slaves performed the tasks of modern earthmoving equipment. Moving land was essential for constructing plantations and colonies. No investor could do that work himself. No local labor force was available for hire.
Slaves also functioned as an unwitting security force protecting the investor. Their physical presence on the land kept Native Americans at bay. The slaves and their dogs provided an alarm system alerting the investor.
None of these factors clouds the moral stain of slavery. But slavery was the business model in centuries when most White people were European peasants. Investors, over time, could attain the wealth of aristocrats back home.
And so please tell us the difference between slavery back then & all the Illegal Alein Invaders the plantation owners of today are flooding us with, if any?
Oky1, farmers and ranchers are currently finding labor scarce. Migration from Mexican reached a peak 20 years ago. Since the Great Recession it’s tapered off significantly.
The current ’emergency’ is mainly families from Central America. And Trump might be drawing them with threats to close the border. Many are probably coming with an attitude like, “We better get in while we can”.
P Hill,
Labor is scarce because the pay is artificially low being driven down by 3rd world slaves.
Last I’ve seen was the US Labor participation rate showed around 95 million Americans of working age were not in the work force.
If legal & illegal immigration were stopped all together wages would rise & many of those that could would likely rejoin the labor force.
IE: I’ve been watching a US company for years know shipping as much as their high paying IT worker’s jobs out of the US to India.
Everyone should consider this as a National Security Emergency.
TODAY’S N.Y. TIMES HAS ARTICLE ON FARM LABOR SHORTAGES
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/nyregion/ny-farmers-undocumented-workers-trump-immigration.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Those articles are a hardy perennial, and fraudulent every time. Reporters write in templates and are generally economic illiterates.
“Mark Nicholson of Red Jacket Orchards switched to using the legal foreign worker program last year. “We didn’t really have a choice but to use to H-2A,” he said”
OH BOY ! THE POOR FARMER BOSS MAN HAS TO ACTUALLY ONLY HIRE LAWFUL MIGRANTS NOW, VOILA! THATS GREAT NEWS THANKS PETER
This program is nothing new. There is an abudance of seasonal workers picking blueberries and cherries in Michigan every summer, and they come via these programs.
There are states where they blow this stuff off now however, like Texas, and they just kind of go back and forth like the border doesn’t exist, some of them .Well if that is over, GOOD!
Last I’ve seen was the US Labor participation rate showed around 95 million Americans of working age were not in the work force.
The employment-to-population ratio is as we speak about 0.60. That’s about the median for the last generation and higher than it typically was 60 years ago. The highest value recorded during the post-war period was 0.64, around 1999 and 2000. This ratio is computed by comparing the population currently employed to the population past their 16th birthday.
What happens if growers cannot get their bracero labor is that they raise wages, automate, switch crops, sell land to ranchers, or take land out of production. Not everything that can be grown here should be grown here. There’s nothing inherently wrong with importing fruit from Chile. I don’t wish to injure anyone’s business, but reconstituting the demographic balance of the United States to benefit a contextually small number of growers in California and some other western states is bizarre as public policy.
there is no problem. just go up the west coast of michigan this summer and any of these “U pick” blueberry places will have plenty of central american crews out there picking the other rows. they wear broad hats and gloves and pick very quickly so they’re distinguishable from the tourists milling about eating half their pick
i tell you what is driving a lot of the beef against the h 2 a program. the insight, which is completely legitimate by the way, that migrant workers DRIVE DOWN WAGES of full time resident workers (be they legal or illegal- you have to read between the lines to infer that but it’s there)…..
…… it’s funny how they dress this up in a lot of “social justice” talk but actually it’s the core union insight, that these workers are nearly impossible to organize, so the employers prefer them, aside from being cheaper
https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/sites/default/files/documents/7.2.a.6%20fwj.pdf
“:No Way to Treat a Guest: Why the H-2A
Agricultural Visa Program Fails U.S. and Foreign
Workers, a product of interviews with current and
former H-2A workers, information from media
exposés, lawsuits against H-2A employers, and
the experiences of workers and advocates over
the past 30 years, demonstrates that:
➜ Guest worker programs drive down wages
and working conditions of U.S. workers and
deprive foreign workers of economic bargaining
power and the opportunity to gain political
representation.
➜ The H-2A program’s protections for U.S.
workers and against exploitation of guest
workers by employers are modest; in fact, they
are similar to those in the Bracero program
(1942-1964), which was terminated due to its
notorious labor abuses.
➜ Once an employer decides to enter the H-2A
program, the law creates incentives to prefer
guest workers over U.S. workers. For example,
the employer must pay Social Security and
unemployment taxes on U.S. workers’ wages
but is exempt from paying these taxes on guest
workers’ wages.
➜ Violations of the rights of U.S. workers and
guest workers by H-2A program employers are
rampant and systemic. The U.S. Department of
Labor (DOL), which has primary responsibility
for administering the H-2A program, frequently
approves illegal job terms in the H-2A workers’
contracts. U.S. workers who apply for H-2A
jobs are rejected or forced to quit. Employees
at H-2A employers routinely experience wage
theft and other unlawful practices.
➜ Abuses in the recruitment of foreign
workers are endemic. H-2A employers and
their recruiting agents in Mexico and other
poor countries exploit the vulnerability of
foreign citizens. Many guest workers must
pay recruiters for H-2A jobs and enter the
U.S. indebted, desperate to work, and fearful
that the loss of their job will lead to financial
ruin. The H-2A recruitment system has led to
numerous documented cases of debt-peonage,
human trafficking, and forced labor.”
…. etc
Absolute “fake news” deliberately obfuscating the fact that slavery was entirely African. Without Africans selling Africans there would have been no European slave trade or American plantations. Africans started the slave trade. Africans made vast riches by selling Africans to others who subscribed to the very same ethics of the Africans.
Did anyone notice how the actual origin of slavery was deliberately and deceptively omitted from the previous comments.
_________________________
African Slavery
“Slavery was prevalent in many parts of Africa[16] for many centuries before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade. There is evidence that enslaved people from some parts of Africa were exported to states in Africa,…”
– Wiki
________________________________________________________________________________
African participation in the slave trade
Slave traders in Gorée, Senegal, 18th century
“Africans played a direct role in the slave trade, selling their captives or prisoners of war to European buyers.[18] The prisoners and captives who were sold were usually from neighbouring or enemy ethnic groups.[citation needed] These captive slaves were considered “other”, not part of the people of the ethnic group or “tribe”; African kings held no particular loyalty to them. Sometimes criminals would be sold so that they could no longer commit crimes in that area. Most other slaves were obtained from kidnappings, or through raids that occurred at gunpoint through joint ventures with the Europeans.[18] But some African kings refused to sell any of their captives or criminals. King Jaja of Opobo, a former slave, refused to do business with the slavers completely.”
– Wiki
Anon, the entire world, in virtually every culture, engaged in slavery since before recorded time. Slavery is still common in the African continent. The US was actually at the forefront of abolishing this evil industry.
Since every single culture engaged in it, every single culture benefitted from it. In addition, there is little way to trace among current African Americans who emigrated here from an ancestral tribe who was responsible for selling their enemies to Portuguese or Dutch slavers. Indeed, it is entirely possible that you could have two black students, both benefitting from programs and scholarships designed to help minorities, where one emigrated from a current slave holding family, whose ancestors sold, and benefitted from that sale, the other student’s ancestors into slavery.
I despise slavery. The very thought chills me to the bone. I’ve been to Rose Hall in Jamaica, and seen many displays on slavery with actual artifacts. If anything is haunted, such relics are. I do not understand the moral vacancy that would do such a thing, generation after generation. All I can say is that we learn as a society and improve.
I do not believe in constantly, and forever, being in debt because of slavery. Many Caucasian Americans emigrated here long after the Civil War. As I’ve said, slavery is ubiquitous, so you cannot find a single individual who did not participate it in some point on their family tree. In fact, Latinos might trace their ancestry to the Aztecs, who not only were slavers, they also practiced human sacrifice. There are enormous pillars made from the bones of men, women, and children, hundreds of thousands of them, sacrificed by the Aztecs. And that’s just the bones they used in that particular home improvement project. Do Latinos bear an eternal debt for the terrible evil their ancestors visited upon the world? Were it not for the Conquistadors, they could have spread throughout North America. Perhaps Native American North American tribes would have been wiped out at some point. Who knows?
620,000 people died over the issue of slavery, to make the US at the forefront of abolishing slavery in the entire world. Relatives of the fallen starved, sometimes to death. We spent billions of dollars on programs specifically designed to help African Americans. To some, it will never be enough. But why do they single out the US, who helped lead the fight against slavery? Why not go after the rest of the world where slavery still exists? Instead, to some, the sins of only some fathers can never be wiped out. Those who currently own slaves, however, are perfectly welcome to come here and benefit from programs designed to help minorities. It makes little sense.
As for how we compare with Africa, I would direct you to two areas. One is this article, https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/02/11/africas-forever-wars/. Read it and weep.
The other was an account I recall reading many years ago. There was a journalist who changed his name to an African name decades ago. He was angry and resentful at America because of the horrors of slavery his ancestors suffered. Then, he traveled to Africa for work. He said that he stood upon the shores of a river of blood. The death, torture, and constant, unending tribal warfare was horrific. The same tribal warfare that resulting in selling enemies to slavers still goes on today, and the enmity burns just as hot, in some areas. He learned slavery is still alive and well in Africa. He realized that this brutal, short existence would have been the fate of his ancestors, had they never been kidnapped and sold. Instead, because his ancestors suffered, he got to be born free in a Western civilization, with access to an education, the ability to do well in life, a safe place to live, and plenty to eat. The deprivation in Africa never seems to end. He returned to America a grateful citizen, and laid his anger to rest.
The past happened. It was painful to almost everyone involved. We are here now because that past happened, and we have to move forward.
The Left’s message is filled with division and hate. Identity politics and the victim mentality leaves people constantly looking for who to blame for the day’s problems. Everything is viewed through the lens of hate. Their fellow Americans are deemed guilty if they are too pale or too male. There is no cohesive community in their world view, but rather a Balkanization along the victim identity scale, where the more oppressed you are, the more you are worth.
Lay identity politics down and come together as a community. Constantly finding ways to be angry over what happened 150 years ago will never lead to a strong community.
Leftist gone wild, what in the world makes these people have the right to demand anything?
Feminazi White Shirts
Enough hysteria and incoherence.
Eliminate “Affirmative Action Privilege,” “Generational Welfare” and the rest of the communist welfare state in America.
LIST OF STUDENT DEMANDS..
SINGLES OUT PROFESSOR ABRAMS..
AND HIS CONNECTION TO THE KOCH BROS
Reject Funding or Involvement from the Charles Koch Foundation and Koch-Affiliated Organizations
From 2010-2017, Sarah Lawrence accepted $89,500 from the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation. Professor Sam Abrams is an alumnus of the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) at George Mason University (GMU), of which Charles Koch has served as chairman of the board for almost four decades. The IHS is linked to the League of the South, a neo-Confederate hate group that proudly “dared go to Charlottesville in August 2017” for the infamous white supremacist demonstration that resulted in the murder of 32-year-old anti-racist protester Heather Heyer. With this company, it is unsurprising that the Koch brothers wield their corporate influence to fight against free speech and progress, as documented by activists including the group Transparent GMU and news publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post. The fact that Sarah Lawrence utilizes money from the Charles Koch Foundation, at best, demonstrates a passive condoning of the violent ideology of the Koch brothers and their efforts to maintain the institutionalization of oppression against marginalized people. Accepting such money completely violates SLC’s “progressive” values and displays a gross indifference towards the suffering of marginalized students and faculty. Sarah Lawrence must confront how the presence of Sam Abrams, an anti-queer, misogynist, and racist who actively targets queer people, women, and people of color and is an alumnus of an institute with direct ties to a neo-Confederate hate group, affects the safety and wellbeing of marginalized students. Additionally, Sarah Lawrence will forfeit donations and interactions from the Charles Koch Foundation and never hire alumni from the League of the South-aligned Institute for Human Studies in the future.
Edited from: “Demands: Westland Sit-In, 50 Years Of Shame” Faculty # 2
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The above can be accessed from the link in Professor Turley’s column.
Apparently the Sarah Lawrence students believe that Abrams is connected to the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation by way of George Mason University. Though it is difficult to determine from this demand how direct that connection might be.
It is well-known, however, that George Mason University has been heavily influenced by Koch Bros money. That has been the subject of many articles since the so-called ‘Tea Party Revolution’. It is also well-known that the Koch Bros have sought to fund special chairs at many universities in an effort to offset the ‘liberal domination’ Professor Abrams wrote about in that New York Times op-ed piece.
One has to ask if students honestly want Koch money influencing their colleges. The Kochs have been directly linked to controversial activism such as Climate Change Denial, Right To Work Laws, Opposition To Obamacare and Tax Cuts For Billionaires. None of those causes resonates with younger, more educated Americans.
Reject Funding or Involvement from the Charles Koch Foundation and Koch-Affiliated Organizations
Why?
The IHS is linked to the League of the South, a neo-Confederate hate group that proudly “dared go to Charlottesville in August 2017”
The League of the South isn’t a hate group and there isn’t any particular association between the League and any public institution. It’s a private membership organization. The League also has nothing to do with Heyer’s death.
You’re really stupid.
Tabby, I”m just reporting the student’s demand and how links to the Koch Bros spark backlashes. I honestly never heard of the IHS before nor do my comments make any judgements on that organization.
Tabby, I”m just reporting the student’s demand and how links to the Koch Bros spark backlashes.
It doesn’t ‘spark backlashes’ at all. The talking point mills you consult and they consult think it’s sinister for people not like them to organize and promote their views and have been manufacturing fictions about the Koch brothers for a decade or more. The students have unreasonable complaints stoked by people like you.
Tabby, your comment here harks back to the time you wondered why urban voters won’t give Republicans a chance.
Urban voters have ‘no obligation’ to give Republicans a chance. Republicans have to ‘sell’ their brand to urban voters. The same applies to the Koch Bros. If their brand is an absolute turn-off to people under 35, that’s a failing of the Koch Bros. It’s not a failing of Millennials.
Tabby, your comment here harks back to the time you wondered why urban voters won’t give Republicans a chance.
You’ve confused me with someone else, perhaps one of the composites your imagination has manufactured.
Urban voters have ‘no obligation’ to give Republicans a chance. Republicans have to ‘sell’ their brand to urban voters.
Pretty funny the Democratic Party sells itself so well having spent the last 60 years turning core cities into latrines.
The same applies to the Koch Bros. If their brand is an absolute turn-off to people under 35, that’s a failing of the Koch Bros. It’s not a failing of Millennials.
Like every other person here who has to interact with you, the question is always ‘poseur or nitwit today?’. The vast majority of people do not follow public affairs and half of those who do are news junkies who do not remember much of anything. Among the young, this is more pronounced, in part due to the life cycle and in part due to cohort-specific factors. You’re not going to find one youth in twenty who’ve heard of Koch Industries or it’s philanthropic affiliates. You likely won’t find one-in-twenty in this crew who know anything. They are political tribalists who know when to cheer and when to boo.
The Koch’s aren’t selling anything (and even the knucklehead the Center for American Progress assigned to write about Koch Industries can’t make sense of their business). They are making philanthropic donations. Leaving money on the table is usually a perverse act and it certainly is when your reason for so doing is that some sorosphere outfit says Koch has cooties.
These youngsters are children behaving in ways normal for children. It’s just that they’re about a dozen years beyond the age when these tantrums disappear in ordinary children and the adults around them are pretending to take them seriously in the ongoing theater that is life in academe today.
Reject funding from the Koch brothers but not from Lori Loughlin?
here’s the question. WHO IS BEHIND THIS TARGETING OPERATION?
Not students you can be sure of that.
I mean who ID’d the target and organized the pressure campaign?
Find those creepy “social activists” out and target them just like they target others.
That’s the way to handle it. Raise the risks and costs for these smear ops, that’s what conservatives need to do.
Target with lawful pressure, I mean, of course! Nothing illegal, of course. These operations can be called “countering misinformation” and “public education” efforts.
nothing such as what is described in AC/DC famous song “dirty deeds.” Just lawful public education activities to cancel out the smears.
But it could devolve into a more negative situation in time. That happens too.
WHO IS BEHIND THIS TARGETING OPERATION?
The smart money says an employee of the dean of students. I’ve known a few SJWs employed by the student affairs apparat where I’ve worked. They have a network of retainers who have internships, campus jobs, and summer jobs in the office.
The “diaspora”? Last time I checked, airlines offer regular service to cities throughout Africa, a continent replete with regimes as regressive and repressive as these students wish to impose on their campus.
“While the college is pledging to work with the students to reach a compromise………………….” There’s a big problem right there……..you can’t compromise with fascists, warlord, tyrants, socialists and other assorted thugs. It is like assuming that an individual can compromise with somebody that wants to kill them.
As ridiculous and anti-democratic as these demands are, there’s something poignant about them also asking for detergent and storage… Alumni perks and sports scholarships are normal, but kids with basic needs go begging.
Sarah Lawrence is a predominantly female college which emphasizes academics and is located in the Bronx. It would be quite surprising were there any sports scholarships. Cannot help but notice that there were coin-operated washers and dryers in the student apartment buildings in which I lived, but you brought your own detergent and used your own coins. Institutionally-supplied laundry service is a convenience, not a need.
Curiously, the students didn’t demand free deodorant.