The fracas at The Evergreen State College (TESC), which I think has permanently ruined its reputation, continues to gain traction in the mainstream media, though most left-wing venues have resolutely ignored the story. (Exceptions are the Washington Post and the New York Times.) I still think this is some kind of turning point that will hurt the reputation of Regressive and Authoritarian Leftists on American campuses, as the videos clearly showed them for the bullying thugs they are. Before Bret Weinstein was hounded off campus as a “racist” for writing a polite email refusing to vacate the campus on the Day of Absence in favor of black students, hardly anybody knew about TESC. Now a lot more people do, and criticism of the thugs is coming from both the Right and Left, though the Right seizes on the story more readily. That’s a pity, as freedom of speech is a progressive value.
The bullying is particularly odious as Weinstein has a long history of anti-racist work, and is about as far from being a “racist” as you can imagine, But in these days of Purity Tests, a simple email has branded him for life, at least on his own campus. It is the videos more than anything that have shown the students—and the professors who have happily indoctrinated them with postmodern ideas—for what they really are: fascists.
Here’s a new article in The Weekly Standard, a conservative paper: “The whole world was watching“. An excerpt:
The first of the videos featured the May 23 invasion of Weinstein’s classroom at 9:30 a.m. by about 50 angry students provoked by what they characterized as Weinstein’s racism. He had objected to a college-sponsored Day of Absence on April 10, when white students, faculty, and staff had been encouraged to make themselves scarce on campus. This video was excised from YouTube for violating the site’s “harassment and bullying” policy after protesters complained it had been selectively edited to make them look like harassers and bullies. Fortunately for the curious, the much-copied video [JAC: the link is to a shorter video I found] is available in whole elsewhere on the Internet (the website Heterodox Academy claims to offer a 12-minute “unedited” version) and in snippets on YouTube of a 6-minute interview that Weinstein gave to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on May 25.
The 12-minute video shows the husky, bearded Weinstein, clad in an outdoorsy-biology-prof black T-shirt, trying patiently to engage the students who have shut down his classroom in a “dialectic,” as he called it. Weinstein later described himself to Carlson as a “deeply progressive person” who had supported socialist-leaning Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primaries. But the Evergreen students captured in the May 23 video were having nothing to do with Weinstein’s attempts to lift the conversation to a high-minded, fancy-word “dialectic” plane:
“This is not a discussion—you lost that one! You said racist s—! Now apologize!”
Weinstein responded: “I did not!”
“Stop telling people of color they’re f— useless! You’re useless!”
“Yeah, resign!” screamed another student.
“Resign!” screamed yet another.
The story is accompanied by a nice cartoon of George Bridges, the invertebrate College President being both cowed and filmed by the thugs who cornered and humiliated him (see video here).
After 58 Evergreen professors and 23 staff signed a “statement of solidarity” with the students, demanding a “disciplinary investigation” of Weinstein, and he and his family were threatened so severely that they had to leave their home, he and his wife Heather Heying, also a biology professor, have received lots of support from outside the College. Yet only a lone professor of biology, Mike Paros, has issued a statement of support for Weinstein. The story is in the local paper, the Olympian, and you can see it by clicking the screenshot below:
Paros’s letter of support was published in full at The Heterodox Academy; here’s an excerpt from that letter. Like Weinstein, Paros is a brave man:
This is a story of how a Democrat voting veterinarian working with mostly Republican livestock owners became a “bigoted” professor at a left wing progressive liberal arts college. It is about a collection of professors that are so blinded by their advocacy, that they cannot fathom different viewpoints. It involves a newly appointed President who believes in ideological safe spaces who endorsed a strategic equity plan that will hurt the very students it is trying to help.
I recently met with a student who was angry that she was told to shut up at a student rally, based solely on the amount of pigment in her skin. She did not comply, and was called a racist. I asked her if this bothered her. She said: “No, because I am not racist.”
To the faculty, too afraid to speak out: I urge you to walk toward the fire. After all, if this brave student is a bigot, then I guess I am too. They are just words. You will not lose your job, but you might lose your dignity.
The tale is about two men trying to save Evergreen. One is an absolute coward (Bridges) and the other is an ultimate hero (Weinstein). Who should be forced to resign? Weinstein reluctantly went on Fox News, because no other news source would pick up his story. His excellent op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal followed. Videos don’t lie, Weinstein’s logic prevailed, and cognitive dissonance set in amongst Evergreen faculty. This was the first time that I found out that those who watch Tucker Carlson are the “alt-right”. I should probably tell my family. Objections were made about whether Weinstein had mischaracterized Day of Absence/Day of Presence as “forcing” white students off campus. He didn’t, but why would this detail negate everything else that Weinstein wrote? When one is confronted with truths that contradict closely held beliefs, the mind begins to make outlandish rationalizations. The faculty email response will someday be used in psychology textbooks as a case study in group thinking.
Then our college President saw his opportunity. Evergreen administrators sent out ominous notices, labeling “free speech” advocates and persons who simply do not agree with “official” campus opinion as potentially violent. It was a desperate move, using fear tactics to rally the masses and prevent students from thinking clearly. This morning was the first time that I was actually nervous coming to campus. Not because of threats of white supremacists, but because I was worried that someone on campus would think that I might be one of them. And then we got the alert on campus. I could see the fear in some of our students faces, as I helped escort a student of color to her dormitory. Then I decided to stay on campus for a while. An administrator approached, and asked: “How did we get to this point?”
I guess safe spaces can be dangerous places.
Note that he accurately calls Bridges an “absolute coward”. I wonder if he’ll leave. I’ve predicted that Weinstein and Heying will, and it’s possible that TESC’s biology department will be gutted.
Finally, a few bits of news:
Evergreen students write letter of support for Weinstein (you can see the full letter here).
A group of 17 students, referring to themselves as Concerned Students of Evergreen, posted an open letter Tuesday condemning The Evergreen State College’s administration and some protesters for their actions and responsibility “in making this campus unsafe and inaccessible.”
“We reject the McCarthy-esque witch-hunting which has taken place,” the letter stated. “Simply crying racist has become sufficient to destroy credibility and empower accusers. This has been accompanied by vigilante action against those dubiously accused of racism, and this behavior has not been reined in by the administration.”
Evergreen faculty holds classes off campus.
Some students have refused to return to the campus, which has been coping with racial tension and outside threats in recent weeks. In response, several faculty members are using coffee shops, churches — even a community theater — as emergency classrooms and offices, Eltantawi said.
There are faculty and staff members who are worried about their safety too.
Evergreen’s commencement ceremony moved:
The Evergreen State College will move its commencement ceremony to Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium because of safety issues, college officials confirmed Tuesday.
Evergreen traditionally has an outdoor commencement ceremony in its Red Square on campus. [JAC: !!!] Cheney Stadium is about 35 miles from the Olympia campus.
In an email sent to graduating students and faculty obtained by The Olympian in a public records request, college president George Bridges wrote: “Evergreen’s commencement is a celebration of achievement, and a high point of the year for our graduates, their families, and our whole community. In consideration of recent events, and in consultation with the Evergreen Board of Trustees, I have decided we will celebrate commencement at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, on Friday, June 16.
“The stadium is a great, central venue, which is secure and offers plenty of seating and parking to accommodate our community,” Bridges wrote. . .
Bret Weinstein sets up a Patreon account.
I suspect this arose because he wants to tell his story to a wider audience, and of course his family’s financial future is now unclear. As of this morning, there are 180 out of 250 supporters initially envisioned, but I hope there will be more. There are rewards at various levels for contributing, including lectures on evolution. Consider supporting him. An excerpt:
Here’s what you can expect:
The Evergreen story is the tip of a very large and important iceberg. I am quickly going to move off of the details of Evergreen’s absurd descent into madness, and shift to discussing the larger implications for academic institutions, and the breakdown in discourse across civilization that it mirrors.
Many are also telling me that you want to hear deep, evolutionary analysis. My wife and I have been hearing from students for 15 years that this material must be brought into public view, because it is transformative. I don’t believe in fate, but I am a huge fan of serendipity. If you want to know why living things, including humans, are structured as they are and behave the way that they do: Stay tuned. The story is a surprising one, and many Evergreen students have found it revolutionizing of their world view.
Here’s my TEDx talk on the personal responsibility vortex.
Later today I’ll direct you to a nice Quillette piece on the causes and wider implications of the Evergreen State affair.
Can someone explain what was behind the “Day of Absence in favor of Black students”? Why was it thought a good idea? Who thought of it? Who authorised it? And how common is such a “Day of Absence in favor of Black students” at US taxpayer funded (?) colleges and universities? Have others been authorised in the past, and not been noticed because all non-‘blacks’ obediently did what they were told to do and stayed away? Has there ever been a “Day of Absence in favor of Hispanic students”? Or – heaven forfend – a “Day of Absence in favor of White students?
To answer your question directly. There is an office on campus for people of color, trans, ect.. pretty much covering everyone but “cis white males” for “safe spaces” and such. There are many events and days that people will consider odd in the working world…
It was approved because, why wouldn’t it be in a college? This is not a liberal or conservative issue, these are college kids and since when have you not seen these things at school? It isn’t new, and my time at Evergreen this was/is the norm. This also happens at UW and WSU. It’s only blown up because it is on video and the professor (which I still call them instead because they earned it) reached out to the media.
I will give them this, Evergreen is still a great school. It is a you get what you put into it experience. I was able to do Graduate level research as an Undergrad, learn what I, very important, I wanted to learn and continue to have great experiences with people from Evergreen. There just happens to be a larger percentage of misguided youth that will just regret their decisions later in life like most do.
I think it was high time someone reached out to the media.
Thank you, Steve, for your reply. As for “It was approved because, why wouldn’t it be in a college? ” – because it has nothing to do with education, and deprives some of the students of the education they are at Evergreen to get.
How typical there is no “campus office” for heterosexual ‘whites’. And that is not racist or sexist?
As for ” It isn’t new, and my time at Evergreen this was/is the norm”, how can you call it “a great school”? To me that sounds like excusing all the guillotining of the French Revolution on the premise that the revolution was desirable in the first place.
Regarding “There just happens to be a larger percentage of misguided youth that will just regret their decisions later in life like most do”, would what they are doing be right if fewer students were doing it?
Never having been to college/university, allowing such anti-authority acts is beyond me. Or is their authority the failure to stop them?
“There just happens to be a larger percentage of misguided youth that will just regret their decisions later in life like most do . . . .”
I’m reminded that there is an old pop song, “Blame It on My Youth.” Too bad one can’t use that excuse throughout life.
Haven’t you noticed, “Blame it on my youth” is exactly what many defendants say in court – rspecially when charged with some sex crime. “Blame it on what my [usually] father did to me.”
The event evidently started as a Day of Absence for non-white students, faculty, and staff, based on a play of the same name. This year there was a change to suggesting that all white people stay off campus for a day. Weinstein’s email (available at https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/05/27/this-weeks-witch-hunt/ among other places online) was addressed to Director of First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services, Rashida Love. It’s not clear if Love was the instigator or simply the person who raised it at the faculty meeting.
Weinstein’s core points are worth repeating:
“There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles (the theme of the Douglas Turner Ward play Day of Absence, as well as the recent Women’s Day walkout), and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.
You may take this letter as a formal protest of this year’s structure, and you may assume I will be on campus on the Day of Absence. I would encourage others to put phenotype aside and reject this new formulation, whether they have ‘registered’ for it already or not. On a college campus, one’s right to speak — or to be — must never be based on skin color.”
So what we have is life imitating art? And is not all current art predominantly left-wing?
If you can find Weinstein’s interview with Rubin you can hear him explain that this was a traditional event that was usurped by the crazy people and turned into a “punish white people for being white” day.
Thank you, Anne. I have found the origin of the “Day of Absence” – a very un-nuanced, very black and white play – a piece of fiction.
At Evergreen it has been turned into fact. That it has been going on at Evergreen for decades and no one has objected to its racist nature is disturbing. But that is the nature of most if not all racism.
One fascinating and potentially beneficial aspect of this is that the wider public may not just be made more aware of the current epidemic of regressive political bullying on campus, but may be exposed for the first time to the intellectual and ideological deficiencies of postmodernism. Much credit to Weinstein for steering the conversation in that direction in his TV and podcast appearances.
From experience I can say that awareness among the general public that some university faculty do not believe in an objective knowable reality and the existence of correct and incorrect answers to questions, is basically zero. They can scarcely believe it, because it is so seemingly absurd – how can someone supposedly dedicate themselves to the accumulation and furthering of knowledge in a field if they don’t even believe in the objective existence of said knowledge?
The sooner this gets out and is hopefully dealt with the better, because postmodernism, taken to its logical conclusion, negates the case for universities, and indeed disciplines, to exist at all in the first place. If we’re all just going to make declarations based on how we feel about something, and how perceive other people to feel about something, then we don’t need universities for that.
I hope Weinstein can stick it out. He’s shown courage
before. I assume you’ve also seen
the article on The College Fix discussing the declining enrollment at TESC (quoting The Seattle Times)? Currently, that are 300 students short of their funded enrollment target of approximately 4400. I read in another article that they accept 98% of applicants.
I was the 145th Patreon supporter. I hope others will join.
I can see the point of a day of absence to highlight the contribution of a certain sector of society by showing what happens when they are not there. A day of absence by lecturers, canteen staff, janitors, security guards, etc. is going to teach students not to take their work for granted. But an absence by students themselves? All that does is give lecturers a smaller class to deal with. Students are the recipients of services, not the providers. An absence just draws attention to that fact. I should imagine that, given the sort of students Evergreen has attracted a day of absence by them would be greeted as a carnival for those left on campus.
Flipping that round and demanding white people stay away just highlights the contribution white faculty make. If the message is supposed to be ‘Look how well we do when white people arebt around’ that’s not providing the lesson these students think it does.
Let’s be honest. The Day of Absence is not about lessons or messaging. It’s theater. It’s rudimentary theater, poorly done at that – crude and naive with cartoonish villains (cis het white males) and valiant heros (green haired baseball bat weilding “woke” children). What has upset them so much are the lousy reviews.
It was theater in its origin. Day of Absence was a play, originally, and the day of absence / day of presence activity on the campus was inspired by it. See here for example: http://evergreen.edu/multicultural/day-of-absence-day-of-presence
I really see nothing wrong with the activity. The problem is when a supposedly ‘voluntary’ thing suddenly becomes involuntary.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with with it but make no mistake- those students did not face racism or oppression at TESC. They are play acting. With baseball bats.
“Of course there’s nothing wrong with with it”
What morals do you have to say that? Ask Prof Weinstein if they did nothing wrong.
Please do not question another readers’ morality. You can make your case without that. Please read the posting rules on the left.
Why is there nothing wrong with it? Aren’t there issues of responsibility here? If I were taking a course and my professor cancelled a class because he decided that, as a Republican for example, he was entitled to absent himself for the day to teach me to value him, I would object. I think that this really is a mild abuse of the lattitude that professors enjoy in their work schedule. Isn’t there *something* wrong with that?
Late to the response. When I said “of course there’s nothing wrong with it” I was referring to the play that began all this nonsense.
Sorry for any confusion.
Well said. Those students need to study how good theater is done. But that would require them attending class instead of marching around with baseball bats.
I listened to Weinstein’s 2012 TEDx talk PCC(E) linked to (at the end of his post) – The personal responsibility vortex [it’s about climate change]. It’s an interesting one. At the beginning Weinstein says that we (most of us) have been peeling bananas from the wrong end. Though he does not explain why? Can anyone here fill me in on this?
I could be wrong but I think it refers to reasons for our actions, individually, corporately and even nationally. Are we doing it for our own personal satisfaction without regard for overall benefit.
Perhaps because monkeys peel bananas from the other (non-stem) end. Try it, it is easier.
I have watched monkeys eat bananas. They usually eat them from the middle (they bite the skin and bend the nanana so the insides pop out. Then they nom). I’ve never counted but would bet stem side vs other side is close to 50:50. Often the non-stem side does peal easier but you need to use finger nails or, if you’re a monkey your teeth.
I’m with darwinwins
I have just tried opening a banana from the non-stem end & it is substantially easier
[1] pinch the non-stem end, with your fingers, as near the tip as possible
[2] the skin splits into two ‘leaves’
[3] grasp the two leaves & pull apart
[4] the skin unzips
Fingernails not required
OFCOL. I just tried one and did need my fingernail to open it. It was easy. For this banana. Monkeys don’t care. They eat them any way they can.
Then why did god place a tab at the top, just like a soda can?
I tried this on the banana I had with my lunch, and it was indeed easier to peel it from the non-stem end. However, pinching resulted in a small mashed part, which I don’t like (it’s not aesthetically pleasing).
But monkeys don’t care!
FWIW, The Weekly Standard is Bill (son of Irving) Kristol’s magazine. It’s essentially National Review with looser shoes and double the number of issues per annum.
Some very good points made above. The Ted talk by Weinstein is also very good. It could go on if allowed more time to show how this social and political evolution can be fixed but that may be another story.
In terms of Evergreen coverage, I read the Post and the Times.
The Washington Post has had better, more extensive coverage than the Times. In fact, the Post, I’ve noticed, is more open to coverage of events that contradict standard progressive narratives.
But in terms of the New York Times and Evergreen, I have seen 2 op-eds, but nowhere the kind of attention in its news section that you would expect given its usual topics. In fact, none at all.
I may have missed them….
Indeed, the student gangs roaming campus with baseball bats resemble nothing so much as the Brownshirts and Hitler Youth.
Maybe another Trump rally?
Yeah, sometimes it’s impossible to tell the pigs from the farmers.
Randy, are you saying that the bat wielders are people Trump supporters or are you suggesting that there should be a Trump rally? If your suggesting a Trump rally are you serious or is that a snipe at Trump supporters?
I contemplate roaming campus with a large wet noodle or plastic bat mocking them, but they might feel threatened and seek a safe space.
Reading Professor Coyne’s response to the Evergreen State events with some objectivity, one must conclude that the students are not the only ones over-reacting. Hyperbole, indiscriminate generalization, paranoia and “Chicken Little” end-of-the-world commentary does nothing to advance an intellectual approach to TESC protests. All this “protest” will likely pass with summer vacation. The motivations behind the protests seem admirable (opposition to racism). It is important not to over-react to controversial actions by college students, who for generations have often acted and reacted in ways intended to provoke a response. There is often a strange mix of sincere motivation, prankish mischief, and morbid spectator fascination that goes along with campus protest. Lighten up…
Read the Roolz and don’t tell me how to write on this site. I lived through the antiracist and antiwar protests of the Sixties, and was arrested for posting an anti-apartheid letter on the door of the South African Embassy in D.C. Those protests were nothing like the identity-politics craziness of Evergreen, Middlebury Collge, etc.
Now apologize for the last two words or you’re banned.
This is only one of many similar events. Have you not been paying attention?
lol Literally sending kids back to the churches
(at least for class) to get away from these insane racial tensions…crazy society…
I’m most chilled by so many faculty members wanting Weinstein to be “investigated”. Investigated? For what? Are they serious?
Yes, they are serious. Weinstein’s sin: he went to the media; he didn’t take shit lying down.
Good for Mike Paros. My brother in law is a vet and pretty grounded, so perhaps that is why it is a vet coming to Bret and Heather’s assistance.
I hope Evergreen gets back on the rails. Just looked at Bret’s course “The Evolution of War and the Discovery of Alternatives” and was fascinated by the course description, as I am a geoscientist working at a national laboratory in defense programs and also have been a reader of the history of war, but never thought of it from a biological perspective of evolution. These students don’t know how well they have it!
By the way, I had sent Bret an email a couple weeks ago in support of him and copied Pres. Bridges. But I see that the faculty directory is now behind a firewall. Bret and Heather, if you are reading this, all the best to you. Evergreen would be much the worse without you.
I think some children might need a spanking… oops. I mean. Uh.mm.. more loving kindness.
It is a remarkably broad definition of “left” that can accommodate both postmodernism and newspapers like Washington Post and the New York Times. In my eyes, neither are leftist, but then again I am a grumpy traditional leftie, so I may be biased here…
I have been reading the Times for 40 years or so.
It has changed, and I don’t mean merely in its having to “dumb” down the quality of writing. I meant that its coverage of identity politics is non-stop propaganda.
It remains, I think, very direct in its business coverage and its extraordinary investigative journalism.
But identity issues….it’s a real propaganda machine, just far more subtle than Fox, and at the other end of the spectrum.
I don’t think that the Times is only messed up in its coverage of identity issues, it’s only that the messed up nature of its coverage in that area cannot be missed.
If the universe were slightly more sane, the NYT would be recognized as a *conservative*, status quo paper on many topics, postmodernism would be a subject for the asylum, etc.
I perceive over the last twenty years or so NYT reporters inserting their bloody personal opinions into their reporting, primarily with their use of adjectives. Their introductory paragraphs are so bloody irritating. What kind of psychological mindset requires this “infotainment”?
I find myself whipping out the red ink pen and writing “fatuous reportorial bloviation and opinionating.” I take it that NYT editors are okay with it, as evidenced by their headlines. The world needs to give the NYT editorial board a quitclaim deed to its collective, so refulgently qualified is the editorial board to solve the world’s problems.
Then I grab myself by the scruff of the neck and try to give myself a rigorous, rational examination to determine whether I’m being too much the drama diva in my reaction.
Just today, the writer of Adam West’s obituary felt it necessary to describe his Bruce Wayne (“Batman” TV show) character as being “painfully” clean-cut. As opposed to what – “painfully” unkempt or disheveled or in need of a bath?
” . . . to its collective LIFE,” that is.
It’s been a day since 5 a.m. Time to go to bed.
I’ve seen that sort of style in many news stories (and on various wikis, which is odd in itself). I don’t think of it as “political” in any direction, but it does make for some odd readings.
I myself have attended Evergreen in the 80s and 90s. Thought I acquired a descent education. It especially sharpened my writing skills and ability to solve problems, by thinking outside the box. Now, in light of the promotion of anti white rascism in the form skin head tactics/McCarthism. Which appears supported by the current college administration. I no longer want my own children to attend TESC or to support it with my taxes. Of which I already conveyed to my state representatives.
IMO Weinstein is part of the problem. This is what happens. These people (the SJWs) eat their own. Weinstein is a Progressive, a Bernie supporter, he has probably promoted the same sort of nonsense that has led to the stupidity that is occurring now. He’s made his bed and now he can lie in it. I don’t feel sorry for him.
“Probably”, therefore he made his own bed?
I watched Prof. Weinstein’s TEDx presentation. I thought it was most impressive. He seems like a highly intelligent, courageous, articulate, thoughtful, humble, respectful person. I can’t imagine that he somehow deserves the lousy hand that he has been dealt by angry, snot-nosed kids, aided and abetted by spineless administrators and faculty. I wish that I had the opportunity to attend his classes. He deserves better than he is receiving, and the student rabble deserve nothing but contempt.
Thank God for Bret and going public. Only Mike to back him. What a cesspool this college and faculty had become. God Bless you two Men, as I am sure he will.
Just a note about the day of absence. In the times piece the first line of the story it states that white people were merely asked to leave and it was voluntary. If you are white and dont leave, its pretty obvious if you stay and are harrassed or insulted its the exact opposite of having a choice in the matter.