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.
I wish I could introduce these silly children to my granduncle, Toby, who unfortunately died in 1991. During the war, when he was still a minor, he got a little bit creative in altering his birth certificate to make himself a bit older, and joined the Navy. When he went off to war in the Pacific, he was necessarily younger than any of these entitled individuals who are making unreasonable demands, including a demand to threaten the livelihood of a man with whom they have a philosophical disagreement. Here is my uncle, still a teen, in his uniform: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/62992172/tobias-g_-melville#view-photo=66636748
Andrea………he must have been a great guy!
Another college to add to the “No Hire” lists of future employers
There are other candidates available without the drama and risk associated with these troublemakers.
The tuition there is almost 55 grand a year. Sheesh. Who can afford that? Certainly not the young, erm, ‘adults’ who are making these ridiculous demands. Sarah Lawrence College also dropped its SAT test score submission requirement in 2003, and accepts 53% of its applicants. Right now it has 1377 undergrads and 398 graduate-level students. I wonder what the parents of these silly children think of these demands?
Where I once worked, about 1/3 of the student body were from families that paid full freight. It’s discounted for most students. Over the whole array of private institutions, the actual charges levied on students and their families average $25,000 per academic year (tuition, room-and-board, and mandatory fees), some financed through family resources, some added to the student’s loan balances.
Like others that have passed through history the Diaspora Coalition too is a movement that specializes in theatrical and provocative protests.
Together with many other leftist authoritarian groups circling about on the fringes and demanding the kind of intolerance they say they reject they need only the emergence of a charasmatic Führer with a “My Struggle” kind of narrative to tell for them all to coalesce into a single National Socialist Movement.
These demands are bogus and excessive.
They are leftists college students.
They have absolutely no use for detergent.
I love it when racist students virtue signal. Don’t you?
It’s a mistake to blame the students for all this nonsense. They’re just children testing limits like all children do. It’s the responsibility of adults – the faculty and administration – to impose those limits. It hardly matters what goes on in these private liberal arts colleges, anyway. Let them have all they craziness they want. It’s the public colleges that should be a matter of public concern.
yyy:
Alexander the Great conquered most the known world at age 20 and legend has it, killed a lion with only a spear at age 11 in a darkened chamber. My uncle enlisted in the army at age 17 and fought in two theaters during WW2.
The emotional cripples at SLC aren’t children. They’re adults wanting to stay children.
With an exception here and there, they’re not adults in any functional way. They’ll be on their way in a couple of years. Even if earning a living, they may not be free of the misconceptions which addle them now.
TIAx2:
They have functioning cerebral cortices even if still not fully developed. They have the ability to vote, serve in the military, drive cars and buy guns and amunition. Society deems them competent for important decision-making and responsibility. That fits the definition of “adult'” if only barely so.
This phenomena is a continuance of the Why Johnny Can’t Read to Why should Johnny be required to read to Johnny will be easier to capture if he can’t read and we tell him where to put the X on his voting ballot. It’s socialist incrementalism in it’s last spastic in it’s last now ludicrous attempts to save it’s failed revolution.
So if I resurrected a version of their last howl of unreasoning
Johnny can be drafted and sent to war at 18 but cannot vote until 21 which for fairness added all at age 18 and Johnny should get tuition assistance loans because he can be drafted and sent to war and would be much more valuable with an education but extended that to those who have no requirement to do anything to get the same assistance i.e. the second class citizens known as baby factories (using that very old line of once practical reasoning.
Note the amount of fallacies that have incrementally been repeated until they are no longer questioned.
Instead read it and think about it as the death rattles and moans of a system that has been rejected throughout the world and now used in less than ten countries.
Think of the current versions. No Oath of Office Required. Open disdain against our system of government regardless and now sensing their
How each one of those statements and many more have been built into an unworthy house of straw cards needing only a sllight puff of from a very large laugh.
Thus they play their Ace (other spellings permitted) in the hole card with as straight a farce as possible
The future without them. Educated citizens and a lot less wars.
Farce of the day. We must demand by force of law an increase in pay.
The Economics 101 way. When there are not enough workers available employers will bid on the open market for the the best they can afford. Until students prepared to enter the job market as graduates will correct the imbalance. Thus more employed with higher salaries increases the overall economy… assuming the increase is not stolen or O’Casiod, Schumered or Pelosied.
They will always be waiting in the wings to attempt another raid on the product of our work fueled by the unwillingness to work.
EXCERPTS FROM NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED..
WRITTEN BY PROFESSOR ABRAMS LAST OCTOBER
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.
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.
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.
Edited from: “Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators” by Samuel Abrams
THE NEW YORK TIMES, 10/16/18
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
In this op-ed piece, Professor Abrams argues that college administrators are disproportionately liberal in their political views. Abrams feels this imbalance is distorting higher education in favor of liberal political agendas.
However true this imbalance might be, Professor Abrams offers no specific remedies. In fact, one is hard-pressed to imagine what remedies might exist. Should universities implement quota systems to ensure a political balance of left and right-leaning administrators? Would such a quota system be workable in any way?
One might reason that college administrators tend to be liberal-leaning because they tend to be well-educated. Well-educated people tend to be well-traveled. Therefore people fitting this description are less likely to hold views typical of small town Christian conservatives.
The same is true with journalists, another profession conservatives claim is dominated by liberals. Big league journalists tend to be well-educated and well-traveled. They also tend to live in the biggest cities. Again, people fitting this description are less likely to hold views typical of small town Christian conservatives.
Ewww…”small town Christian conservatives”. Cooties everywhere. amirite, Pete?
One might reason that college administrators tend to be liberal-leaning because they tend to be well-educated.
Bwahahahahaha. The modal type in the student affairs apparat has an MEd. degree, Peter. That’s education in the same sense that bourbon and liquid plummer are both fluids you can drink.
Tabby, feel free to post documentation illustrating how little education these people actually have. That way we don’t need to only take your word for it.
Tabby, feel free to post documentation illustrating how little education these people actually have.
Here’s a suggestion, Peter Shill. Pick 30 institutions characteristic of the array of institutions out there – research universities public and private, state colleges, common-and-garden private colleges, and colleges with cachet. You have a mess of each type where I’m from. Look at the websites for the Dean of Students and his staff, and see if you can find curriculum vitae. I’ve known of lapsed or failed academics, a failed lawyer one place, and the usual MEds. The snotnose forced out at Yale for her liberal use of the term ‘white trash’ was a failed academic. The dean of diversity one place I know of was a pleasant man who sequed into a position in the student affairs apparat when he realized that tenure wasn’t coming his way. Don’t think he bought into the blather at all; just coming in from the cold. Same deal with his deputy. These people aren’t distinguished by their erudition. Some of them just want to earn a living, and colleges have satisfactory fringes. Others are social ideologues. Others haven’t gotten over high school and the markers delineating in-groups and out-groups.
There are, of course, an array of things you can do to take chunks out of the regime in higher education. You’ll find institutional establishments understand their interests very well when any one of them is suggested.
Tabby, not surprisingly your response is a series of dismissive put-downs that adds up to very little.
No, what it added is not what you want to hear.
A large fraction of faculty are nothing if not vain, and ‘we think this way because we are educated’ is something which dovetails with their amour-propre. You’re just giving everyone here the consignment shop version.
Education does not equal intelligence.
Isn’t SLC nothing more than a finishing school for young ladies waiting to meet and marry a rich man? So, all they really need is the free soap so they will be sufficiently clean for him, right?
No, that was Finch College, which closed more than 40 years ago. Its two most famous alumnae were Grace Slick and Tricia Nixon Cox.
About 30% of the student body at Sarah Lawrence is male and about 3/4 of the students finish their program in four years. The school has no occupational majors. It’s academics and the arts all the way.
The school administration needs a door. Get out you dumb schmucks!
Sarah Lawrence was the name of a woman who owns a cathouse in Amsterdam. When faculty members came over from the Sarah Lawrence school she ranted at them for stealing her name. They wore name tags at the time.
The ‘awarding of scholarship on the basis of race’ will destroy higher education.
A “more direct instructive response” would have been: Sit down,, shut up or transfer to another school.
When western culture can no longer defend itself it is no longer viable. Either close up shop or end this nose dive into irrelevancy.
That’s your choices to keep irrelevancy.
The obvious choice is to get rid of irrelevancy and ensure the irrelevants are given a bath in the waters of the oceans as part of their deportation travel itinerary.
Objectivism wins over subjectivism every time.
“Get lost, wankers” – that’s pitch-perfect, whatever your real name is. (FWIW, I think not identifying yourself is most regrettable.)
to borrow a similar phrase from the land down under the description of the Pelosians, Schumites, and Ocasials is YW as in Yank Wanks. It’s not a polite phrase however it is an accurate description
Who are these “Diaspora” bozos? Why does anyone think they have the power to force the administration to meet their “demands”? The administration is taking a risk by letting them think they’re winning. The real risk is that a number of Sarah Lawrence students are only waiting for the school to throw out these jerks. But they won’t wait forever. The “Pro-fa” bunch are more than ready to make their own demands. They will show the school that they can play the same game, and it won’t be pretty. The administration had better start exercising the powers they have under the charter and the law.
I’m waiting for that rare breed, the brave college president who says, Suck it up, buttercups.
Sarah Lawrence College has 1,700 students. A typical private college that size has about 160 FTE worth of faculty manpower. If the college is entirely devoted to academics and the arts, it’s not responsible husbandry of the institution’s revenue to erect and maintain degree programs which would command the interest of < 2% of the general run of students who wish to study academics and the arts. You might make exception for certain venerable (but low-census) disciplines, but these would be allocated an austerity provision of < 4 FTE. Victimology programs are not venerable. They're only 'respectable' because faculty culture stinks.
Subjects likely to have a critical mass in the performance disciplines are studio art, music, theatre / dance, and film / photography. Disciplines so likely among the academic arts and sciences are English, speech communications and rhetoric, political science, sociology, history, economics, psychology, biology, computer science, mathematics, chemistry, and perhaps anthropology. Subdepartmental concentrations should be mandatory in political science, sociology, history, psychology, and biology. Psychology and biology generally attract a large enough clientele to establish subdepartmental majors.
Colleges shouldn't cross-subsidize to many museum pieces. And they're duty bound to not cross-subsidize cr!p.
Yesterday, Sarah Lawrence College President Cristle Judd issued 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.”
This woman is unfit to occupy the position she does. Heckuva job, Sarah Lawrence trustees.
1. These obstreperous blowhards are commonly agents of institutional policy. When they’re not, they’re agents of the worst elements on the faculty and administration.
2. It’s a reasonable wager they’ve been stoked to do these sorts of things for years, and no one has ever treated them with condign disdain. The proper response to these ‘demands’ is ‘Get lost, wankers’. That’s not the response they’ll ever get.
3. It’s also a reasonable wager that about 2/3 of these youths were admitted consequent to performance standards being relaxed. They suffer day-to-day distress brought on by their encounter with the curriculum, and respond by recriminating.