Acad. Quest.
DOI 10.1007/s12129-014-9408-5
INEQUALITIES
Staged Emergencies:
How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
Ashley Thorne
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
In many colleges today, teaching is but a subdivision of a larger mission,
namely, to promote a vision of social justice. According to this vision,
teaching about the world is not as important as changing it.
Social justice’s two-century-long history—in the tradition of Catholic
social teaching; the Protestant Social Gospel; and competing perspectives in
political philosophy (held by John Rawls, Friedrich Hayek, Robert Nozick,
David Miller, and others), economic policy, and international human
rights—has not given colleges and universities much pause. For in academia
today, social justice is extolled as a movement toward “equality and
solidarity,”1 “fairness,”2 “human rights,”3 and “giving voice to communities
who have been forced into silence.”4 The ironic dark side of social justice,
however, is that it can be used to justify systemic unfairness, including racial
preferences in hiring, admissions, and scholarships; heavy taxes on the
successful; and mandated political and social perspectives in debates about
same-sex marriage, solutions to poverty, and environmental conservation. In
1
“What Is Social Justice?” James Madison University, Community Service-Learning, Learn About Service
Learning, https://www.jmu.edu/csl/learn/social_justice.shtml.
2
“What Is Social Justice?” Roosevelt University, About, http://www.roosevelt.edu/About/SocialJustice.aspx.
3
James Madison University, “What Is Social Justice?”
“United, Undocumented, Unafraid!” Humboldt State University, Nineteenth Annual Social Justice Summit,
March 1–2, 2013, Summit Registration, http://www.humboldt.edu/summit/registration.html.
4
Ashley Thorne is director of the Center for the Study of the Curriculum, National Association of
Scholars, 8 West 38th Street, Suite 503, New York, NY 10018-6229; [email protected].
Thorne
other words, social justice activism forces egalitarianism and suppresses
freedom of conscience. Those who uphold the new social justice orthodoxy
see little need to delve into the difficult questions about natural law, the
origins of rights and responsibilities, the principle of equity, the role of
redistribution, and the many other aspects of justice that philosophers have
struggled with through recorded history. Rather, they seem to assume that
they simply know what is and isn’t unjust, and proceed directly to the
question of how to impose their understanding on everyone else. On its
College for Public Health & Social Justice website, for example, Saint Louis
University astonishingly declares: “Social justice is not a concept to define; it
is an action to be taken.”5
Freed from the encumbrance of contemplating the complexities of right
and wrong and the often ambiguous and sometimes irresolvable nature of
evidence,6 colleges urge students into activism and make it their mission
to eradicate particular biases on campus. As Williams College president
Adam Falk declared in a speech to the student body in November 2011,
“Our task has been, must be, will be, to create a Williams that is free of
racism, that is free of sexism, that is free of homophobia, and that is free
of fear.”7
How Colleges Cultivate Political Correctness
“Social justice” has thus become the rubric for what we have learned to
call politically correct thinking. The ways in which social justice (and
political correctness) is advanced on campus have been evolving into a set of
routines bordering on ritual that kick in when college administrators descry a
“bias incident.” The stage for these staged emergencies is set very early.
“What Is Social Justice?” Saint Louis University, College for Public Health & Social Justice, About the College,
https://www.slu.edu/college-for-public-health-and-social-justice/about-the-college/what-is-social-justice.
5
6
The ambiguity of evidence in so-called hate crimes has recently been underscored by two events. George
Zimmerman, accused of a hate crime in the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, was acquitted by a Florida
jury in July 2013 after he presented a case of acting in self-defense. And perhaps the most famous case of
an allegedly homophobic hate crime—the death of Matthew Shepard stemming from a gruesome attack in
Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998—has been reopened by a new book by Stephen Jimenez, The Book of Matt:
Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard (Steerforth, 2013), that presents evidence that Shepard
was killed by his former gay lover in a dispute over drugs. See James Nichols, “Matthew Shepard Murdered by
Bisexual Lover and Drug Dealer, Stephen Jimenez Claims in New Book,” Huffington Post, September 9, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/12/stephen-jimenez-matthew-shepard_n_3914707.html.
7
“President Adam Falk Addresses Williams College Community,” YouTube video, 8:34, address
responding to racist incidents on campus, posted by “WilliamsExpedition09,” November 14, 2011,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rLbIQah1lM&feature=youtu.be.
Staged Emergencies: How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
From the moment they enroll (and sometimes even before), students are
surrounded by messages about what they should believe. Everywhere, they
see student groups poised against “hate,” presidential emails affirming
“inclusivity,” courses on critical race theory, speakers with stories about
overcoming “barriers,” protesters with “stop hate speech” signs, campus
centers for social justice. They learn to adopt attitudes that, if not already
picked up from junior high and high school, are ready-made for them in
college.
Faculty members and administrators supply much of this. They provide
examples of social justice, teach courses and seminars on how to become a
“change agent,” and enjoin students to seek “the common good.” Freshman
summer reading programs are one venue that administrators use to inculcate
certain perspectives in students. The summer reading program formula
presents the author as an inspirational hero whose example students should
follow. At Sweet Briar College, for example, first-year and honors students
were asked to participate in microloan assistance projects, taking their cue
from Nicholas D. Kristof, who advocates microfinance for impoverished
women in his book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for
Women Worldwide.8 Yvonne Smith, cochair of Purdue University’s Common
Reading Program, which had assigned No Impact Man—an account by Colin
Beaven of his year without toilet paper and other wasteful possessions9—urged
students to “see what they can do for the environment” and “engage in social
issues” as they begin their college careers.10
While fostering activism in progressive causes, colleges also prime
students to find bias everywhere.
“There is nothing more important than the safety of our community,”
President Falk told Williams’s student body in the speech cited above. “Not
our classes, not our sports, not our activities, nothing. And that’s why we’re
here, right now, today, having stopped everything, until we get this right.”11
8
Janika Carey, “Common Reading to Inspire Action,” Sweet Briar College, News, June 20, 2013,
http://sbc.edu/news/y1/common-reading-inspire-action/. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the
Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (New York: Vintage Books, 2009).
9
Colin Beaven, No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and
the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2010).
10
Jim Bush, “Purdue Selects Colin Beavan’s ‘No Impact Man’ for Common Reading Program,” Purdue
News, February 20, 2013, http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q1/purdue-selects-colin-beavansno-impact-man-for-common-reading-program.html.
11
“Falk Addresses Williams.”
Thorne
Cancel-and-Cling
Stopping everything has become a surprisingly frequent occurrence at
colleges. When something happens on campus that appears to some to be an
act motivated by racial, sexual, or homophobic bias, quite a few schools
cancel classes and take the occasion to cling to their positions on “tolerance.”
The result is a skillfully guided and calculated performance of cancel-and-cling
reaction. The goal is to make things “right.” In the wake of “hate crimes” comes
a rush to establish specific moral principles. This morality play must
demonstrate, first, that poisonous bias exists; second, that it must be expelled;
and third, that the members of the community must examine themselves for
conscious and unconscious forms of discrimination, then purge these festering
thoughts by forcefully enunciating their commitment to diversity.
An incident of perceived “hate”—a racial epithet written on a wall, for
example, or a rope in the shape of a noose found on campus—can galvanize
the zeal that colleges cultivate. What happens next is sometimes hard to link
to particular actors, but a general pattern has emerged in the outraged
reaction that follows “hate crimes.” The administration casts itself as
supportive of “the students”—as if the students have collectively suffered a
grave indignity. The administration says in essence, and in a tone more
reassuring than authoritative, “We agree with your righteous anger at what
has happened and we stand with you in solidarity.”
Often the president, deans, and faculty show their support by canceling
classes and planning activities in their place that will supposedly help the
community process what has happened. Frequently these programs include
outside lecturers or performers brought in to educate students on creating a
culture of acceptance, social justice, and “healing.” By that point, however,
the students have already been trained to agree with such messages.
From Dartmouth to Oberlin to Bowdoin to Princeton Theological
Seminary to Williams, a pattern has emerged: The administration pushes
politically correct attitudes on students and students adopt them; a “hate”
incident occurs and the campus reacts with outrage; the administration
replaces classes with diversity vigils.
Real Talk at Dartmouth
In April 2013, Dartmouth College’s Office of the President booked Jessica
Pettitt, “a social justice and diversity consultant and facilitator,” for a day-long
Staged Emergencies: How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
teach-in that replaced all classes.12,13 A series of episodes had thrown the
campus into turmoil. It all began at an event for prospective students that
was interrupted by a group of current students calling themselves RealTalk
Dartmouth, who drowned out the program chanting, “Dartmouth has a
problem!” (More specifically, the group shouted that Dartmouth was plagued
by “homophobic and senseless graffiti,” “a racist Indian mascot,” and
“sexual assault.”)14
In the days following the demonstration, some students, writing on a
private website for the Dartmouth community that allows users to leave
anonymous comments, criticized those who had hijacked the event. Some
comments were antagonistic and some sounded violent. One commenter
asked, “Why do we even admit minorities if they’re just going to whine?”
Another wrote, “Wish I had a shotgun. Would have blown those [expletive]
hippies away.”15 Dartmouth’s interim president Carol Folt, along with four
deans, the directors of security and of athletics, and the interim vice provost
subsequently sent a letter to the Dartmouth community to announce that
classes would be canceled the next day, which would be spent on “alternative
programming,” including a faculty meeting, a message from Jessica Pettitt, a
community gathering, a complimentary lunch for the community, and
faculty- and staff-led teach-ins.16
The backlash at Dartmouth attracted national attention and is an instance
of a campus that saw a need for an intervention by way of social justice
training. It is an example of activism that started out student-led and became
administration-run. Students participated in, but did not lead, the day of
programming. The chairman of Dartmouth’s board of trustees, Steve Mandel,
wrote later that week that the decision to cancel classes “was made to address
12
Joseph Asch, “BREAKING: Classes Cancelled to Discuss Value of Diverse Opinions,” Dartblog, April
23, 2013, http://www.dartblog.com/data/2013/04/010783.php.
Bill Platt, “For Dartmouth, a Day of Reflection and Understanding,” Dartmouth Now, April 25, 2013,
http://now.dartmouth.edu/2013/04/for-dartmouth-a-day-of-reflection-and-understanding/.
13
14
“Another Dimension at Dartmouth,” YouTube video, 2:39, posted by “DartmouthRealTalk,” April 19,
2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2qx30XBSft0. Dartmouth, which
was founded as Moore’s Indian School and originally taught only Native American students, has an
Indian as its school symbol.
15
Cited in Ann Schnoebelen, “Dartmouth College Calls a Timeout after Student Protest Draws
Hostile Reactions,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 24, 2013, http://chronicle.com/article/
Dartmouth-College-Calls-a/138753/.
16
Carol Folt et al., “Community Message Regarding 4/24 Arts & Sciences Class Change,” Dartmouth College
Office of Public Affairs, Statements and Media Advisories, April 23, 2013, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~opa/
statements/classchange042313.html.
Thorne
not only the initial protest, but a precipitous decline in civility on campus
over the last few months, at odds with Dartmouth’s Principles of
Community.”17,18
In response to “bias” incidents on their own campuses, other institutions have
had reactions similar to Dartmouth’s cancel-and-cling routine.
Solidarity at Oberlin
In the middle of the night in early March 2013, a person was spotted on
the Oberlin College campus who appeared to be dressed as a Ku Klux
Klansman. By 3:00 a.m., the academic deans were meeting to investigate; by
5:00 a.m., Oberlin’s president had canceled the day’s classes; and by 5:30
a.m., working groups were organizing a rally. One dean gave the protesters
money to buy coffee and breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts. Another dean
announced that student workers would have no consequences for not coming
in to work that day.19 The college issued an announcement that a “Day of
Solidarity” would replace regular classes. The day included a teach-in led by
the Africana studies department, a march to demonstrate “solidarity,” and a
“We Stand Together” convocation in the chapel.20 By coincidence, the Day of
Solidarity had actually been scheduled in advance as a response to other words
written on flyers and campus walls during the previous month. These were
documented by Oberlin Microaggressions, an anonymously authored website.21
Students brought homemade posters to the Day of Solidarity. One read,
“‘AND THEN OBERLIN SAID F*** HATE.’ THAT WILL BE OUR
LEGACY.” Another read, “ONE DAY IS NOT ENOUGH.”22
Sy Mukherjee, “Dartmouth College Threatens to Discipline Students for Protesting Sexual
Assault,” ThinkProgress, April 27, 2013, http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/27/1930821/
dartmouth-board-of-trustees-chair-equates-protests-with-rape-threats/.
17
18
Dartmouth’s “Principles of Community” state that “each student is expected to be sensitive to and
respectful of the rights and interests of others.” “Principles of Community,” Dartmouth College Student
Handbook 2013–2014, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~deancoll/student-handbook/principles.html.
19
Students of the Africana Community, “An Open Letter from Students of the Africana Community,” Oberlin
Review, March 6, 2013, http://www.oberlinreview.org/article/open-letter-students-africana-community/.
20
Office of Communications, “Classes Canceled: Monday, March 14, 2013,” Oberlin OnCampus, March
4, 2013, https://oncampus.oberlin.edu/source/articles/2013/03/04/classes-canceled-monday-march-4-2013.
21
Oberlin Microaggressions, http://obiemicroaggressions.tumblr.com/.
Will Passannante, photograph, posted on Dan Avery, “Liberal Oberlin College Hit with Wave of Homophobic
Racist Incidents,” Queerty.com, March 7, 2013, http://www.queerty.com/liberal-oberlin-college-hit-with-waveof-homophobic-racist-incidents-20130307/. AJ Churchill, “Students Create Anti-Racism and Homophobia
Posters,” photograph, Flickr, March 4, 2013, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajchurchill/8527917267/in/
set-72157632923416140/.
22
Staged Emergencies: How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
The marchers chanted “No justice! No peace!” Afterwards, a professor of
politics who had been part of the march reflected on the slogans from the day
and suggested that they lacked force. He wrote in the Oberlin Review that the
campus community needed to clarify what it was that they actually wanted:
“We reaffirmed our values—justice, equality, diversity—but what do we
mean by them?…What counts as justice in this context?…From whom do we
seek justice?”23 He wasn’t asking the Oberlin community to rethink their
clichéd demands, but rather to do a better job defining them.
On the day of the rallies, one student breathlessly confided to the
Huffington Post, “In all of my feelings of frustration and anger, I’m feeling
just driven and motivated to make progress, and I think I can definitely speak
for some of my cohorts and some of my peers that that’s definitely where
we’re trying to channel a lot of our emotion: in pressure and you know, a
requirement from the administration to be accountable and to make
something happen now, fast, and something tangible.”24
When Oberlin’s board of trustees met for its regular meeting later that
week, it set aside time to make a unanimous resolution applauding those who
had participated in the Day of Solidarity.25
Although one student had reported seeing a person in a white hood and
robe, another told the police that at about the same time he had seen a person
walking around wrapped in a blanket against the cold.26 No person in KKK
regalia was ever found, and the police suggested that the reported sighting
may have been mistaken.
Not until August 2013 did the story come out that the preceding month-long
series of supposed hate crimes were perpetrated by two pro-Obama students,
Dylan Bleier and Matt Aldan. Bleier admitted to campus police at the time, “I’m
doing it as a joke to see the college overreact to it as they have with the other
racial postings that have been posted on campus.”27
23
Jacob Schiff, “What Does ‘Solidarity’ Mean? Oberlin Review, March 15, 2013, http://www.oberlinreview.org/
article/what-does-solidarity-mean/.
24
“Oberlin Cancels Classes for a Day of Solidarity,” HuffPost Live, video interview of Eliza Diop and
Tyler Kingkade by Jacob Soboroff, 6:09, March 4, 2013, http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/oberlinday-of-solidarity-cancels-classes/512d3460fe34445f430000d0.
25
Office of Communications, “Trustees Respond to Bias-Based Incidents,” Oberlin OnCampus, March 13,
2013, https://oncampus.oberlin.edu/source/articles/2013/03/13/trustees-respond-bias-based-incidents.
Trip Gabriel, “Police Unsure of Klan Garb at Troubled College,” New York Times, March 5, 2013, http://
www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/education/oberlin-cancels-classes-after-reported-klan-sighting.html?hpw&_r=2&.
26
27
Chuck Ross, “Meet the Privileged, Obama-Supporting White Kids Who Perpetrated Cruel Oberlin Race
Hoax,” Daily Caller News Foundation, August 22, 2013, http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/22/meet-theprivileged-obama-supporting-white-kids-who-perpetrated-cruel-oberlin-race-hoax/#ixzz2dMkloUMp.
Thorne
Police reports shortly after each incident revealed that these two students
were the culprits, and had acknowledged committing acts of vandalism,
which they saw as “a joke” for the purpose of “shock value.” Another student
who knew them said that Bleier and Aldan were “troublemakers” but not
racists, and that “considering they were trolls [people who anonymously stir
up conflict], they were kind of getting what they wanted out of people getting
so upset about it.”28
Bleier and Aldan were suspended in the spring, soon after they were
caught, but Oberlin did not inform the campus community that the incidents
were pranks rather than real threats until the Daily Caller broke the story in
August. Oberlin’s communications staff then issued a public statement
saying, “These actions were real. The fear and disruption they caused in our
community were real.”29
But the fear could have been dispelled much earlier. Why did the
administration go on letting the campus believe that the epithets were written
out of racist hostility?
Michelle Malkin, an Oberlin alumna who has chronicled dubious hate
crimes and hoaxes, including numerous ones at Oberlin in the 1980s and
1990s, returned to Oberlin in 2006 to give a speech in which she said,
“[L]iberals see racism where it doesn’t exist, fabricate it when they can’t find
it, and ignore it within their own ranks.”30 After the 2013 incidents at
Oberlin, Malkin wrote that hoax hate crimes are often performed by minority
students engaged in “raising awareness about hate by faking it.”31
By hiding the truth about the pranksters’ identity, Oberlin actually
perpetuated “fear and disruption,” and gave the hoaxers what they wanted.
Beyond the Bowdoin Hello
At Bowdoin College in early 2011, the N-word was found written on a
whiteboard on a student’s dorm room door. Soon afterward, Dean of Student
Affairs Tim Foster sent an all-campus email condemning the graffiti and
28
Ibid.
Communications Staff, “Oberlin College Statement on Bias Incidents,” Oberlin College, News Center,
August 23, 2013, http://news.oberlin.edu/articles/oberlin-college-statement-bias-incidents/#.Uh9ZLhufi0V.
29
Jon Beckhardt, “Michelle Malkin, Alumna Pundit, Lambastes the Left,” Oberlin Review, February 26,
2006, http://www.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/2006/02/17/news/article4.html.
30
31
Michelle Malkin, “The Coddling of College Hate Crime Hoaxers,” Michelle Malkin (blog), March 6,
2013, http://michellemalkin.com/2013/03/06/the-coddling-of-college-hate-crime-hoaxers/.
Staged Emergencies: How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
inviting students to a town-hall meeting to discuss it.32 Over two hundred
students attended the discussion, and a group of them organized a rally called
“I Am Bowdoin” in which students, faculty, and staff stepped forward
one-by-one to declare their identities, which mostly pertained to race,
gender, sexual orientation, and religion.33 The Bowdoin Orient Express quoted
Dean Foster expressing his support for “I Am Bowdoin” in advance:
“In my experience, student culture shifts because of the efforts of
students, not because ‘the administration’ says it will be so,” he wrote in
an e-mail to the Orient. “I’m glad to see students stepping up and taking
initiative and I plan to be there to support them.”34
After the rally, Bowdoin’s president Barry Mills wrote in a Bowdoin Daily
Sun column:
We should encourage our students to continue to grapple with all of this,
and it is essential for the leadership of the College to be a part of the
effort. Our faculty and staff are also critical participants, but I am
personally motivated to encourage our students to take the lead role. We,
as a College, should not try to socially-engineer away these tensions, nor
should we take over for our students.35
President Mills then met with a group of students and offered one among them,
Nylea Bivens, a paying job to work over the summer planning a ten-day
program called “Beyond the Bowdoin Hello: Act, Listen, Engage.”36
The program took place in January 2012 and was sponsored by the Office
of the President, the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs, the Office of
Multicultural Student Programs, residential life, and student activities, as well
as several academic departments and programs—Africana studies, gay and
lesbian studies, gender and women’s studies, the sociology and anthropology
32
Zohran Mamdani, “Bias Incident Strikes 15th Floor of Tower,” Bowdoin Orient, March 4, 2001,
http://bowdoinorient.com/article/6192.
“I Am Bowdoin Demonstration,” Vimeo video, 17:59, posted by “Bowdoin Cable Network,” March
2011, http://vimeo.com/22619161.
33
“Protest Scheduled for Wednesday Afternoon,” Bowdoin College, Orient Express, March 8, 2011,
http://bowdoinorientexpress.com/post/3735531619/protest-scheduled-for-wednesday-afternoon.
34
Barry Mills, “Barry Mills: Demonstrating Community,” Bowdoin Daily Sun, March 31, 2011,
http://www.bowdoindailysun.com/2011/03/barry-mills-demonstrating-community/.
35
36
“Nylea Bivens ’12 on Moving Beyond the Bowdoin Hello,” interview by Rebecca Goldfine, Bowdoin
Daily Sun, January 23, 2012, http://www.bowdoindailysun.com/2012/01/nylea-bivens-12-on-gettingbeyond-the-bowdoin-hello/.
Thorne
department, the philosophy department—and a number of student-led
organizations, including the Bowdoin Student Government.37
Among the guest speakers38 who participated in “Beyond the Bowdoin
Hello” were Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, a book about
her experiment in living on minimum wage;39 Tim Wise, whom Cornel West
once called, “A vanilla brother in the tradition of (antiracism and antislavery
fighter) John Brown”;40 and Steve Wessler, a “human rights educator, trainer
and advocate” who “works with schools, colleges, non-profit organizations,
healthcare institutions, law enforcement agencies, work places and communities
to prevent bias, harassment, discrimination and violence.” 41 Ehrenreich, Wise,
and Brown are all professional speakers who make a living at least partially from
paid engagements at Bowdoin and other institutions.
Bowdoin’s programming in reaction to one offensive word fits the wider
pattern. That pattern begins with an incident (which in many cases is not even
investigated to find the individual perpetrator), centers on soul-searching for the
entire community, and culminates in further social justice inculcation.
Symbols at Princeton Theological Seminary
At Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) in 2011, the student group
Seminarians for Life distributed a series of flyers around campus that aimed
to show connections between abortion and racism. The group had planned a
screening of the documentary Maafa 21; the poster for the film that they put
up was titled, “Black Genocide in 21st Century America.”42 Around the
same time, the group posted another flyer, “Klan Parenthood,” published by
the pro-life organization Life Dynamics, the cover of which featured a
drawing of an abortion doctor wearing a Klan hood.43
37
Peter Wood and Michael Toscano, What Does Bowdoin Teach? How a Contemporary Liberal Arts
College Shapes Students (New York: National Association of Scholars, 2013), 18, http://www.nas.org/
images/documents/What_Does_Bowdoin_Teach.pdf.
38
Sam Miller, “Town Joins College in Week-Long Diversity Series,” Bowdoin Orient, January 27, 2012,
http://bowdoinorient.com/article/6931.
39
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Metropolitan, 2001).
40
Tim Wise: Anti-Racist Essayist, Author, and Educator, About, http://www.timwise.org/about/.
41
Steve Wessler, http://www.stevewessler.com/.
“Black Genocide in 21st Century America,” poster for Maafa 21 (www.maafa21.com), http://
www.maafa21.com/pdf/poster-2.pdf.
42
“Klan Parenthood,” flyer created by Life Dynamics (www.lifedynamics.com), http://www.lifedynamics.com/
Abortion_Information/Pro-life_Product/Enlarge.cfml?ID=139/. The Seminarians for Life member who posted
the flyer indicated to me that the image of the aborted baby wasn’t on the version SFL distributed.
43
Staged Emergencies: How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
A student acting on her own behalf put up two other flyers several months
later. One, by Human Life Alliance, quoted Margaret Sanger, the founder of
Planned Parenthood, who once wrote, “We don’t want the word to go out
that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”44 Encircling this quote
box was a picture of a noose. The flyer also contained a cartoon that sought
to draw a parallel between slavery and abortion. It showed a slave girl on a
platform getting her teeth checked by a potential buyer, and someone in the
crowd saying, “I know it’s wrong, dear. But we mustn’t impose our morality
on others.” The other flyer was a Black History Month bulletin that quoted
Deuteronomy 30:19, “So that you and your descendants may live, CHOOSE
LIFE,” accompanied by an image of a black father embracing his infant son.
On the back it read: “SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR ALL.”45
The flyers ignited outrage on campus—not at the racism associated with
abortion, but at the images and quotations used. In response, PTS held an
evening gathering called, “Know the Facts: Race and Symbols in American
History,” sponsored by the Student Government Association, the Women’s
Center, and the Association of Black Seminarians.46 Ironically, the images on
the event’s poster contained similarly inflammatory images, including a
photograph of Klansmen and a burning cross, and drawings of a slave ship
and a slave auction.47
It’s worth noting that this episode was a rare instance in which the
offending party was already known. Perhaps the lack of an anonymous
culprit explains why the campus did not shut down: the fear factor—the idea
that “it could be any one of us”—was absent.
I attended this event and observed that it was set up as both a therapy
session and a rehearsal of racial grievance. One of the panelists introduced
herself as a multicultural counselor and declared that she was there to help
provide “healing.” Another speaker, a PTS professor of African American
religion and literature, said that the images on the flyers were intended to
“mock, degrade, instill fear, and insult.”
44
Margaret Sanger, cited in “Did You Know?” advertising supplement for Human Life Alliance
(http://www.humanlife.org/), 2010, 3, http://www.humanlife.org/publications/DidYouKnow.pdf.
45
As of the publication of this piece, the link to this flyer is no longer live: https://secure.rtl.org/catalog/
node/57.
46
“A Community Bulletin,” Topics in Brief, Town Topics, March 23, 2011, http://www.towntopics.com/
mar2311/other4.php.
47
“Know the Facts: Race and Symbols in American History,” poster advertising Princeton Theological
Seminary Town Hall Discussion, March 23, 2011, http://www.nas.org/images/articles/PTSEvent.JPG.
Thorne
No one (at least overtly) encouraged censorship or advocated that the
Seminarians for Life or the student who put up the flyers be punished. But it
was clear that everyone thought they had acted in the wrong and were to
blame for “much, much damage.”
Although the images and quotations were meant to encourage African
Americans to choose life for their unborn children and to see that abortion
had been deployed against their flourishing in the past, somehow the actions
of the Seminarians for Life were turned into racism. The rehearsal of racial
grievance hinged on the word “amnesia,” which the panelists repeated
several times. When asked why some black people supported the
Seminarians for Life,48 the panelists said that these African Americans had
“historical” or “cultural” amnesia, and that they had accepted a set of false
memories propagated in American history. Several white students embraced
the anger. Calling themselves allies in the fight against “white privilege,”
they said they wanted to “know when I’m being racist” and requested the
help of their black friends to do so.
Ultimately the moral outrage at PTS was a pretense that the images were
racist when the flyers were clearly pro-African American. Behind the charade
was a turf war for the terms “racism” and “social justice,” which appeared in
the Seminarians for Life flyers.49 The academic Left will not cede this
rhetoric—or images representing “social justice” and “racism”—to a
conservative cause. Not once were any points about African American
abortions from the flyers discussed. One speaker said, “The issue was not about
abortion. It was about the images.” In focusing exclusively on the images, the
panelists foreclosed any opportunity to discuss issues surrounding abortion,
which made it clear that the PTS community should follow suit.
Outside Princeton, that turf war is heating up. In the blogosphere in recent
months, feminist writers have published posts with titles such as “Hijacking
Social Justice Language” and “5 Ways Anti-Choice Organizations Are
Co-Opting Social Justice.”50 These essays are full of scorn for conservatives
48
Students for Life of America, “National Pro-Life Leaders and Black Community Respond to Student’s
Persecution at Princeton,” news release, Christian News Wire, March 23, 2011, http://www.christiannewswire.com/
news/1124816552.html.
49
Ashley Thorne, “Diversity Vigil at Princeton Theological Seminary,” National Association of Scholars,
March 24, 2011, http://www.nas.org/articles/Diversity_Vigil_at_Princeton_Theological_Seminary.
Lauren Rankin, “Hijacking Social Justice Language,” blog entry, A is For…, September 12, 2013,
http://www.aisfor.org/hijacking-social-justice-language/. Alexandra Lahey, “5 Ways Anti-Choice
Organizations Are Co-Opting Social Justice,” blog entry, Choice Words, September 23, 2013,
http://www.choiceusablog.org/5-ways-anti-choice-organizations-are-co-opting-social-justice/.
50
Staged Emergencies: How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
who would dare try to wield the rhetoric of social justice. That’s not to
say that the rhetoric is effective for conservatives; it may well not be.
But the Left is doing its utmost to keep social justice language exclusive
to itself.
Claiming Williams
Claiming Williams Day—a day of programs planned by a committee of staff,
faculty, and students—became an annual tradition at Williams College on
February 5, 2009, about one year after students found the N-word and images of
male genitalia scrawled on several doors on February 2, 2008.51 In response,
then-Williams president Morty Shapiro and some student council members had
called for campus-wide discussion.52 This discussion prompted students to
create a “Pact Against Indifference and Hate” on February 6, signed by more
than one hundred students affirming that they “see hatred and indifference here
and now.”53 A February 12 email to all Williams faculty requested that on an
appointed day they read the pact at the beginning of every class.54
Student gatherings also inspired an “awareness rally” and the birth of a
student group called “Stand with Us,” which went on to found Claiming
Williams Day. In May 2010, after the second annual Claiming Williams Day,
the faculty voted to have it added to the regular academic calendar.55
In November 2011, history repeated itself: Someone wrote “All N*****s
Must Die” on a fourth-four hallway in Prospect Hall. Again all classes and
events were canceled, and President Falk wrote a letter to the Williams
community condemning the “hate crime” and announcing an event that
“we expect all available students, faculty, and staff to attend.” He also
wrote that the cafeteria would not require swipe cards so that students
could eat lunch for free.56
51
Record Staff, “Claiming Williams Planning Finalized,” Williams Record, January 21, 2009,
http://williamsrecord.com/2009/01/21/claiming-williams-planning-finalized/. “Racial Slurs Found
on Williams Hall Doors,” Williams Record, January 16, 2008, http://williamsrecord.com/2008/01/
16/racial-slurs-found-on-williams-hall-doors/.
Claiming Williams, “Mission & History,” Williams College, http://claiming.williams.edu/mission-history/.
52
“Pact Against Indifference and Hate,” Willipedia, accessed December 6, 2013, http://wso.williams.edu/wiki/
index.php/Pact_Against_Indifference_and_Hate.
53
“Letter to the Faculty,” Pact Against Indifference and Hate, February 12, 2008, http://pactagainst
hate.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/letter-to-the-faculty/#more-18.
54
Claiming Williams, “Mission & History.”
55
Adam Falk, “Letters from the President, Important Message on Racist Hate Speech,” Williams College,
Office of the President, November 14, 2011, http://president.williams.edu/letters-from-the-president/1174/.
56
Thorne
At the event, Falk told students, “For me it was like being punched in the
gut” when he heard what had happened. “It’s our job now to respond, to heal
our community.”57 Writing on PJMedia in late December, Roger Kimball
indicated that anonymous sources at Williams told him that “the culprit is
known to students and is in fact a minority student,” but that the person’s
identity was not public knowledge.58
Claiming Williams Day continues to be observed yearly. On that day, in
place of classes, students attend lectures pertaining to race, class, gender,
sexuality, religion, disability, and other identities given by Williams faculty
and staff as well as outside experts. The 2013 guest speakers included
Melissa Harris-Perry, host of a self-titled show on MSNBC and national
speaker on race and gender issues, Carmen Ortiz, a United States attorney
nominated by President Obama, and Diane Rosenfeld, a visiting
professor at Harvard Law School and advocate for preventing sexual
assault on campus. At Claiming Williams Day Rosenfeld gave a
presentation based on her essay, “Who Are You Calling a ‘Ho?’ Challenging
the Porn Culture on Campus.”59
Recurring Themes
Common elements appear in each of these campus reactions. Perhaps the
first thing to note is that small liberal arts colleges seem to be especially
susceptible to shut-down in the wake of “hate” incidents. Such incidents also
occur at public and large universities—and brouhaha results on those
campuses, too—but it is logistically easier to bring a small school to a halt.
The missions of these schools may also play a role in the way they handle
anonymous incidents of presumed bias. The purpose of the liberal arts is
supposedly to make a person freer (as in the Latin liber). On the
“Philosophy” page of Roanoke College’s website is an explanation of
what a liberal arts education is intended to free the student from: “isolation
within ourselves…reliance upon received opinion…entrapment within the
WilliamsExpedition09, “Falk Addresses Williams.”
57
Roger Kimball, “Hate Crime at Williams?” PJMedia, December 22, 2011, http://pjmedia.com/
rogerkimball/2011/12/22/hate-crime-at-williams/.
58
Claiming Williams, “2013 Claiming Williams Schedule,” Williams College, http://claiming.williams.edu/
archives/schedule-2013/. Diane Rosenfeld, “Who Are You Calling a ‘Ho?’ Challenging the Porn Culture on
Campus,” in Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry, ed. Melinda Tankard and
Abigail Bray (North Melbourne, Victoria, AU: Spinifex Press, 2011).
59
Staged Emergencies: How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
conventions of our present place and time… superficiality and distraction…
purposelessness.”60 But for many liberal arts colleges today, the main
entrapments from which education must offer freedom are those of racism,
sexism, and homophobia.
While these are certainly snares to be overcome, they are not the only or
even the main snares confronting modern American college students. Many
liberal arts colleges, however, treat them as if they are, and these schools
therefore define their goals in terms of social solidarity. Williams’s mission
statement extols “open-mindedness,” “commitment to community,” and
“concern for others.”61 Oberlin prides itself on its “commitment to social
engagement and diversity.”62 Bowdoin’s mission speaks directly to the issue
of bias, declaring a firm “commitment to creating a moral environment, free
of fear and intimidation, and where differences can flourish.”63 Princeton
Theological Seminary “seeks to engage Christian faith with intellectual,
political, and economic life in pursuit of truth, justice, compassion, and
peace.”64 Colleges with missions so centered on social inclusiveness seem to
be the ones with the strongest reactions to bias incidents.
Another common element is that while the administration and faculty
make a point of supporting students on one side of the issues, they leave
other students out. The students in the PTS Seminarians for Life were
exercising their rights to advocate for their cause when they put up flyers
drawing attention to an issue where faith and politics intersect. Their actions
were the very embodiment of the seminary’s mission, stated above. But the
students were portrayed as racist hate-mongers whose message was not even
worth considering. Nor was there any support at Dartmouth for the students
whose event was boorishly hijacked by protesters.65 Only when students
“Freedom with a Purpose: A Liberal Arts Education at Roanoke College,” Roanoke College, About
Roanoke, http://roanoke.edu/About_Roanoke/Freedom_With_Purpose.htm.
60
61
“Williams College Mission and Purposes,” Williams College Archives & Special Collections, Official
College Records, http://archives.williams.edu/mission-and-purposes-2007.php.
“Mission,” Oberlin College, About Oberlin, http://new.oberlin.edu/about/mission.dot.
62
“Mission of the College,” Bowdoin College, Office of Communications and Public Affairs, Bowdoin
Publications, http://www.bowdoin.edu/communications/publications/mission.shtml.
63
64
“Mission Statement,” Princeton Theological Seminary, http://www.ptsem.edu/index.aspx?menu1_id=
2030&menu2_id=2031&id=1237.
65
In his follow-up up email the day after classes were cancelled, Steve Mandel, chairman of Dartmouth’s
board of trustees, wrote: “Neither the disregard for the Dimensions Welcome Show nor the online threats
that followed represent what we stand for as a community.” Cited in Mukherjee, “Dartmouth College
Threatens.” This at least gave lip service to the idea that more than one party was at fault.
Thorne
wrote unpleasant things about the boorish protesters did the administration
decide it was time to intervene.
A third recurring theme in these staged emergencies is that they have a
budget. Speakers brought in to make presentations at a “Claiming Williams
Day” or a “Beyond the Bowdoin Hello” charge honoraria. As noted above,
one Oberlin dean gave student protesters money for a Dunkin’ Donuts
breakfast, another told students in an email that they didn’t need to report to
their campus jobs that day, and the presidents of Williams and Dartmouth
arranged for free lunches during days of “alternate programming” in lieu of
classes. Of course, such days have other costs that come with diverting
attention from academic pursuits. For a start, instructors have less time to cover
the semester’s material, and students get less instruction for their tuition.
Finally, colleges’ readiness to react and eagerness to show concern present
incentives for hoax crimes. As discussed above, the Oberlin culprits behind
the series of incidents in spring 2013 admitted that they did it for “shock
value” in order to “see the college overreact to it as they have with the other
racial postings that have been posted on campus.”66 As quoted above, a
student speaking about the Oberlin hoaxsters called them “trolls”—people
who stir up controversy just for the sake of causing a spectacle—and said the
vandals had gotten “what they wanted out of people getting so upset about it.”67
What happened at Oberlin is far from an isolated instance. Perhaps the
most infamous campus hoax crime is documented by Stuart Taylor Jr. and
KC Johnson in Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the
Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.68 Among the many
other documented campus hoax crimes in recent years are those committed at
Trinity International University (2005), George Washington University
(2007), the University of Virginia (2007), the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill (2011), Central Connecticut State University (2012), University of
Wisconsin at Parkside (2012), Montclair State University (2012), and Vassar
College (2013).69
Ross, “Meet Privileged, Obama-Supporting Kids.”
66
67
Ibid.
68
Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful
Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case (New York: Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s, 2007).
Allie Grasgreen, “Hate Crime Hoaxes,” Inside Higher Ed, July 31, 2012, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/
2012/07/31/hate-crime-hoaxes-present-burdens-lessons-college-campuses. Robby Soave, “EXCLUSIVE: Shocking
Discovery in Hoax Bias Incident at Vassar College,” Daily Caller, November 27, 2013, http://dailycaller.com/
2013/11/27/exclusive-shocking-discovery-in-hoax-bias-incident-at-vassar-college/#ixzz2nIjKH11b.
69
Staged Emergencies: How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
John Leo observed in a March 6, 2013, Minding the Campus posting,
“Fake rapes and fake attacks on minorities are no longer unusual on
campuses. One reason is the post-modern theory that there is no truth, only
voices and narratives. If the narrative is all-important, why bother with facts?
Why not sell the narrative directly?”70
People commit hoax crimes—both on campus and off—to sell a
narrative.71 They want, first of all, to present proof that racism or
homophobia is alive, rampant, and close to home. They also want to make
others see groups of people as perpetual victims who need increased
protection.72
Hoaxes are often but not always exposed—but by then the campus has
already accepted the narrative. Oberlin actually wasn’t far off when it said
that the damage “was real.” In some cases, students figure out that the
incident was a hoax, but the administration has become so invested in the
narrative it refuses to back down. This appears to be what happened at
Williams and Oberlin.
Going through the Motions
When a “bias incident” occurs on campus, the response process is ready-to-go.
College leaders spring into action with “this-is-not-a-drill” promptness to
activate a seemingly pre-established plan.
Such plans are becoming just as important to colleges as other emergency
protocols. For instance, Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern
Poverty Law Center, provides diversity-related resources for teaching and
professional development. One of these is a set of suggested steps to take in
“responding to bias incidents.” After focusing on safety and conducting an
investigation, the college or school’s leadership should “Denounce hateful
acts and address fears,” while making sure to “Involve everyone—teachers,
John Leo, “What Happened at Oberlin? Maybe Nothing,” Short Takes, Minding the Campus, March 6, 2013,
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2013/03/what_happened_at_oberlin_maybe.html#sthash.
XnOKWx38.dpuf.
70
71
A recent example of a hoax perpetrated off-campus is the unfolding case of New Jersey waitress Dayna
Morales, a former marine who claimed she was denied a tip by customers because of her “lifestyle.” See
Haimy Assefa, Allie Malloy and Kristina Sgueglia, “Gay Waitress Loses Job after Investigation into
Whether Customers Denied Tip,” CNN U.S., December 8, 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/08/us/
new-york-gay-waitress-tip/.
72
Sometimes, however, a person will perform a hoax for personal gain, such as attracting attention, getting
out of school, winning a class election, or avoiding charges of plagiarism.
Thorne
counselors, staff, administrators, students, parents and community members—in
finding solutions.” Ultimately, the goal is to “Work towards unity.”73
With this kind of procedure in place, administrators swoop in and
orchestrate a response calculated to confirm the message they want students
to receive—a message many students learn to crave. The protesters
disrupting the Dartmouth event had internalized it. So had the students
organizing the I Am Bowdoin rally, the authors of the Pact Against
Indifference and Hate at Williams, the white “allies” at Princeton Theological
Seminary, and the Oberlin student who expressed “feelings of frustration and
anger” in her Huffington Post interview.
That same Oberlin student said that she and her peers were anxious to see
the administration “make something happen now, fast, and something
tangible.” The pressure to enact a histrionic response works both ways
between students and administration. College leaders know they must drop
everything and generate a reaction ritual. But it isn’t drudgery. For
presidents, deans, and other members of the campus bureaucracy of
enlightenment, a time of cancel-and-cling is a pinnacle moment—and the
perfect opportunity to teach the doctrines of political correctness in a setting
where students are susceptible to emotional manipulation.
Again, the narrative is all-important. As campus ideology moves from the
more passive “tolerance” movement—which calls for mere acceptance—to
the more assertive “social justice movement”—which calls for transformative
action, it has been easier than ever to convince students to take up the banner.
They already know there is a culture of hate and fear on their campus. The
only question is what they will do about it.
And so the staged emergency drill, drilled into students for years now, has
become second nature. Students and administrators alike play their parts in
the performance.
Repair
Staged emergencies, cancel-and-cling, and the general habit of ballooning
small incidents into institutional crises fraught with moral meaning are not
about to fade quickly from the landscape of liberal education. College
73
“Identifying and Responding to Bias Incidents,” Teaching Tolerance: A Project of the Southern Poverty
Law Center, Professional Development: Bullying, http://www.tolerance.org/supplement/identifying-andresponding-bias-incidents.
Staged Emergencies: How Colleges React to Bias Incidents
communities are, in some ways, made-to-order for witch hunts and mass
hysteria. In years past, college authorities attempted to model a level-headed
response to the excitable excesses of students.74 These days, the administration
seems more often to egg on the excitement, sometimes against the more sober
judgment of many of the students, who can see the excess plainly enough. The
administrations in these incidents ally themselves with small but vocal activist
factions among the students, and often fund those activists’ efforts to turn a small
incident into a “teachable moment.”
Perhaps because students circulate through the system in four years, they
lack sufficient historical memory to know that when these crises occur they
are being gamed by their college administrators, some of whom owe
their livelihoods to keeping identity group grievances alive and who
benefit directly in the form of professional recognition and additional
resources when trouble brews. Helping the pot boil over from time to
time may seem a small price to pay for raising campus consciousness of
social justice.
What can be done in these circumstances? Good responses can come
from many sources. It was an undergraduate student, Danielle Charette,
who stood up to the “Mountain Justice” students when they
commandeered a meeting of Swarthmore’s board of trustees.75 It was
the Amherst College chancellor who faced down a group of alumni
trying to censor a conservative faculty member whose views on abortion
and gay marriage they disliked.76 At Bowdoin, much of the resistance to
the administration’s grievance group dramaturgy has come from the
college’s alumni.
Probably the best long-term answer is simply persistent efforts to focus
public attention on the ready willingness of college administrations to bend
the truth, scant due process, and plunge their campuses into educationally
disruptive nonsense. The staged emergencies lose their punch when the
public laughs at them. Mistaking a shivering student for a Ku Klux Klan
74
On multiple occasions in the 1930s, for example, City College of New York president Frederick B.
Robinson expelled and suspended student leaders of protests. “Chronology,” The Struggle for Free Speech
at CCNY 1931–42, http://www.virtualny.cuny.edu/gutter/panels/panel2.html.
Danielle Charette, “My Top-Notch Illiberal Arts Education,” Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2013,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324216004578483080076663720.html. Stanley Kurtz,
“Swarthmore Spinning Out of Control (with Videos),” The Corner, National Review Online, May 13, 2013,
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348110/swarthmore-spinning-out-control-videos.
75
76
Carolyn A. Martin, “Free Speech and Institutional Responsibility,” Amherst College, About, President,
President’s Reflections, October 1, 2013, https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/president/reflections.
Thorne
member is a bit of hyperactive imagination in a student primed to see hate
lurking all around her, but it is an act of irresponsibility for campus officials
to jump to the conclusion that bucolic Oberlin is under siege by the forces of
racism. When social justice becomes the chief focus of a university, its
administrators immerse the campus in performance and lose sight of reality.
Public accountability can help them regain it.