Former Director of the Gender And Sexuality Resource Center Moans and Complains About Removal of Mural of Terrorist

This blog broke the story, and it went national: a mural of cop killer and domestic terrorist Assata Shakur in the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center at Marquette. Quickly, the mural was painted over, and the Director of the Center, Susannah Bartlow, was fired.

She has now published an article on the issue in Feminist Studies, Vol. 41, No. 3, “Gendering Bodies, Institutional Hegemonies” (2015), pp. 689-697.

The mere title gives away the fact that this is going to be an example of the arcane and stilted rhetoric common among academic feminists. And indeed it is.

As the founding director of the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC), my job was to build an academic support office for women’s, gender, and LGBTQ+ education and empowerment. In the center’s third year, Amanda Smith (a Marquette senior) and Jeanette Martín (a community artist and program assistant at the center) envisioned, planned, and executed the Assata Shakur mural project as a way to invite greater community interest. In my role as director of the center, I supported the project, communicated it to senior leaders, and spread the word about the community-painting day in late March 2015.

So it wasn’t Bartlow’s idea. But she knew perfectly well who Shakur was, having signed a petition requesting that President Obama take Shakur off the Most Wanted Terrorists List. And she approved the project anyway.

Her claim to have “communicated it [plans for the mural] to senior leaders” is interesting, since if she informed “senior leaders” about who Shakur is, and they approved the mural, they are responsible and Bartlow was a mere sacrificial lamb.

Faced with a similar claim months ago, we wrote Bartlow, asking for details of what was communicated to higher-level officials, and she did not respond.

Defense of the Mural

Bartlow continues:

Over the six weeks it was on display at the center, the mural invited people into a quiet space off a hallway, and it had sparked discussion among staff, faculty, and students who used the space. The mural was one of very few images of a black woman anywhere on Marquette’s campus, and it contributed to a sense among many students of color that the GSRC was a space in which they were welcomed and safe and where they could be comfortable.

Yet in the distortions of white supremacy, the mural looked like a threat, rather than an intellectual and community representation central to the university itself.

So it’s “white supremacy” to object to object to a mural of a cop killer?

Did the mural “invite” people into the Center? If so, why was a mural of a cop killer particularly “inviting?” Does the clientele of the Center think killing cops is fine?

If one wants an image of a black woman, we can think of a lot of black women who have not killed any cop, and are not on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists.

As for the mural looking like a “threat,” this is what psychologists call “projection.” Politically correct feminists and other leftists are always claiming to feel “unsafe” when they face arguments and facts they find inconvenient. So they assume that other people feel “threatened” (rather than merely appalled) by an image of a black militant cop killer.

Bartlow goes on:

What happened specifically to this mural and to my job is also connected to the charged context of contemporary racialized violence. What happened to the mural is really a minor symptom of the full-on assault against poor people, people of color, queer people, and others who cannot access or play by the rules of twenty-first-century social dominance. No words fit the loss of life and the daily violations against black, brown, and poor people: in Milwaukee, where Marquette is located, more than 100 of the 105 homicides reported so far in 2015 involve black or Hispanic victims.

The chutzpah here is astounding.

Painting over a mural is part of the same phenomenon of black people getting killed?

Worse still is the assertion that 100 of the 105 homicides thus far this year had black or Hispanic victims. Is she implying that cops killed all these people? Klansmen?

No breakdown of victims by race of offender for Milwaukee is available at the moment, but national statistics pretty much tell the story. In 2012 (the last year for which tabulations are available), of 2648 blacks murdered, 2412 were murdered by other blacks. That’s 91 percent.

And the map of the locations of murders in the city of Milwaukee, published by the Journal-Sentinel, also tells the story.



It shows murders concentrated in black neighborhoods on the north side, and Hispanic neighborhoods on the near south side.

More Arcane Verbiage

Bartlow continues:

Our choice of Assata Shakur—a powerful, controversial black leader, an uncompromising woman, for better and worse—came out of a year-long process of supportive, consensus-based, power sharing between students and staff at our center. The mural was visible evidence that our feminist collaborations were working.

So she thought the process was great. But the outcome of the process was odious.

Why could not a “supportive, consensus-based, power sharing” process have produced a mural of a black woman that almost everybody on the campus could admire, and a mural that the Administration could have supported (rather than having to distance itself from). Quite simply: Bartlow and her collaborators were political extremists who didn’t particularly mind black militants killing cops.

Thus the hiring of Bartlow stands as a major fiasco. Perhaps the Administration will be more careful in the future. If so, this débâcle has served a useful purpose. But given the current administration’s habit of pandering to the activists, we have our doubts.

Not All College Students are Intimidated

From the Wall Street Journal:

Not least among those welcoming the respite of Thanksgiving must be the nation’s college and university administrators. After student protests evicted Tim Wolfe as president of the University of Missouri, officials at other institutions of higher learning (if we may still call them that) were harassed by shouting or otherwise threatening students. At Princeton University, students occupied the office of the school’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, demanding that he throw Woodrow Wilson down the memory hole.

Even at the remove of several weeks, it is remarkable to recall that the disturbance at Yale University was over “offensive” Halloween costumes. But amid the protests, some important principles are now at risk, notably free speech. We asked at the time where the adults were on campus—either school presidents or boards of trustees? The answer, so far, is that most have caved like wet cardboard. The most hopeful adult response has come from 18- to 22-year olds—the students themselves.

At Claremont McKenna, where a dean was driven from office over a supposedly objectionable email, the student editors of the Claremont Independent published “We Dissent.”

The editors took themselves to task for not speaking out earlier. But no more. Their editorial ended: “We are not immoral because we don’t buy the flawed rhetoric of a spiteful movement. We are not evil because we don’t want this movement to tear across our campuses completely unchecked. We are no longer afraid to be voices of dissent.”

This political courage may be catching on. At Princeton last week, students under the banner of the Open Campus Coalition sent President Eisgruber their own strong statement of dissent. It describes a student body intimidated to silence by the likelihood of being vilified, in public or on social media. It ends: “Princeton undergraduates opposed to the curtailment of academic freedom refuse to remain silent out of fear of being slandered.” They signed their names and class years, and we hope their professors don’t dock their grades for thinking for themselves.

With campus administrators and faculty cowed by political correctness run amok, these students are shaping a movement of principled, civilized dissent. Let’s hope it grows.

So where are the dissenters on the Marquette campus? Turning Point USA has an honorable history. The College Republicans have hardly been heard from. Where are other conservative student groups?

In fact, we know the answer: campus leftists are aggressive and intolerant, and it takes a lot of guts to face them down. Most students don’t want the grief, so they speak up when anonymity is guaranteed, in such places as the Climate Survey and Yik Yak. But like most people most of the time they simply withdraw in order to avoid the bullies.

But the few who don’t count as heroes.

Marquette’s Climate Survey: Conservatives Get a Voice

We were naturally suspicious of the Marquette “Climate Survey,” since such exercises usually have a politically correct “diversity” agenda, and are designed to allow campus victim groups to air their grievances which in turn allows campus bureaucrats to expand their empires with more “diversity” initiatives.

The survey had its limitations (only about 30% of eligible students, faculty and staff participated), but the results were not as the campus race, gender and sexual orientation hustlers would have liked (although they can be expected to ignore that fact). And the analysis from Rankin and Associates was fair enough.

One politically incorrect finding was that there is considerable unhappiness among conservative and Catholic members of the Marquette community with the secular, liberal and often intolerant climate on campus.

To quote a few of the findings:

Pg. 86: “Many respondents cited their Catholic or conservative values being marginalized, saying ‘Conservative Catholic views on the expression of human sexuality are not respected – not even room for dialogue.’ And that ‘There is an ongoing sense of disrespect, anger and assumptions related to the Catholic identity of our university.’”

Pg. 135: “Fifty-four respondents discussed Catholic and conservative views when discussing unfair or unjust employment-related discipline or action. Several discussed John McAdams’ suspension and dismissal, noting that ‘His only crime, sin, whatever you want to call it was telling the truth’ and that ‘A professor was fired for being critical of the University.’ People believed that ‘It seems MU protects liberal views (they can say and do anything) more than conservative ones (they will get fired if they speak out)’ and ‘If you are a conservative, you are not welcome at MU.’”

Pg. 294: “However, numerous other respondents noted that ‘this university has become Catholic and Jesuit in its name alone.’ And ‘ I don’t want to see . . . the Catholic and Jesuit tradition watered down or discounted in an effort to make others feel welcome.’ One such respondent wrote ‘Stop having Catholic students feel condemned for their CATHOLIC BELIEFS,’ and another noted that ‘As someone strong in my Catholic faith, I have been very disappointed with how little influence the Catholic Church seems to have here.’ The general sentiment from these respondents was that ‘MU has divorced the idea of social justice from Catholicism and, as a result, has embraced radical ideas … The Jesuit tradition has been secularized and that is a shame.’”

One section of the survey ask respondents whether they “personally had experienced exclusionary, intimidating, offensive, and/or hostile conduct” and if so on what basis. The report notes that:

19% (n = 791) of respondents indicated that they personally had experienced [such conduct]. Of those respondents who reported having experienced such conduct, 22% (n = 171) indicated that the conduct was based on their gender/gender identity, 19% (n = 146) on their racial identity, 18% (n = 142) on their position, and 17% (n = 138) on their political views; 15% each felt that it was based on their age (n = 119) and on their religious/spiritual views (n = 116). (pp. viii-ix)

It seems that relatively few members of the Marquette community (about one fifth) had experienced any such conduct, and no particular group was the target. It is impossible to tell, from the published tabulations, what percentage of those who experienced exclusionary, intimidating, offensive, and/or hostile conduct because of their political views were conservative, or what percentage experiencing such conduct because of their religious views were orthodox Catholic or evangelical Protestants. But terms like “many” and “numerous” clearly imply a substantial number of people.

What the survey appears to have done is to give “voice” to the voiceless, allowing students who don’t rant about “white privilege” or demonstrate blocking traffic on Wisconsin Avenue to register their views. The same goes for faculty and staff who didn’t complain when a mural of murderer and terrorist Assata Shakur was painted over.

Unfortunately, these are not the voices Marquette wants to hear, and therefore they will likely be ignored.

California Professor Under Attack for Politically Incorrect Views on Parenting

From the (liberal) Huffington Post: the story of a professor (Robert Oscar Lopez) who favors traditional ideas about parenthood, and is under attack from a student who disagrees with him.

The persecution of Dr. Lopez began when an unidentified student complained about an October 2014 International Children’s Rights Conference called The Bonds that Matter, organized by Lopez. The conference featured noted speakers on divorce, third party reproduction, and adoption. The complainant alleges she was “coerced” to attend the conference that was held forty-minutes off campus at the Reagan Library. Lopez presented documentation indicating that none of his students had to attend the conference. It was one of two options offered to students in the course, and one that most students chose. The complainant further claims that it was triggering for gay and lesbians and caused her to break down “in tears, crying.”

Austin Ruse is president of the Center for Family & Human Rights, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute in Special Consultative Status with the UN Economic and Social Council. He is also a bi-weekly columnist with Crisis Magazine. According to Ruse Lopez’ accuser claimed that speakers at the conference explained that “all women who use sperm banks are evil” and that “gay people cannot be good parents.” She also complained about a brochure produced by the Ruth Institute she picked up at the conference aimed at the “victims of the sexual revolution” including those who tried the gay life and now want out.

Lopez says there was no mention of same-sex marriage or any “gay issues” at the conference and he presented video of all sessions to prove it. Ruse reports:

There was one exchange between Newman and one student who asked about gays and surrogacy, but the student turned out to be the complainant. So, the only person who brought up the gay issue at the conference was the student who complained the conference slammed gays.

Lopez was formally charged with “discrimination,” one of the few charges that can result in revocation of tenure and dismissal. However:

After a year-long investigation, the university returned a report to Lopez on October 16. The charge of “discrimination” had disappeared. In its place was a charge of creating a “hostile learning environment,” something that appeared for the very first time in this document, and the charge of “retaliation.”

The young woman charged that even though Lopez gave her an “A” in the class, he did not nominate her paper for an award because there was “bad blood” between them. There was no proof of such a assertion, only her word against his, but the university has determined that her credibility is superior to his and so they have found he is guilty of retaliatory acts and they are now considering what to do with him.

Lopez believes the student making the complaints had long been investigating him, reading his work in The Federalist and First Things and asking questions about him. She was likely also aware that three years ago Lopez wrote in an academic online journal The Public Discourse, revealing that he is bi-sexual and was raised by lesbian mothers. Lopez’s negative feelings about his own upbringing, and those of others unhappy with having been raised in same-sex households, are the impetus of his personal campaign against same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption and same-sex surrogacy.

Thus, one student who disagrees with Lopez has engaged in a jihad against him, and with the help of university bureaucrats, has put his career in jeopardy. The woman in question is a crybully, claiming such emotional fragility that she can’t bear to hear arguments with which she disagrees, all the while trying to punish a professor who disagrees with her.

Marquette to Students: Rat Out “Bias Incidents”

From Marquette Wire:

“Marquette, along with a lot of colleges and universities around the country, and in particular Jesuit universities, created a bias incident reporting system as a place for students to go when they have either experienced or witnessed an act of bias on campus,” William Welburn, associate provost for diversity and inclusion, said in an email.

While the decision to implement a bias incident reporting system may have been influenced by other colleges, the initial idea and final format came from an introspective approach.

“Bias incidents have historically fallen between the cracks, especially when they don’t rise to the level of being hate crimes or blatant violations of conduct,” Welburn said. “But that doesn’t lessen the sting of aggressive or even micro-aggressive behavior toward a student because of that student’s social identity or group association.”

If a student feels victimized by a biased incident or has witnessed biased actions affecting others negatively, they have the option to fill out a bias incident report which is then sent directly to the Office of the Provost for review.

“When we get them, our interest is in support, referral or just information-gathering,” Welburn said.

So Welburn implies this is quite benign. But then the article goes on:

The system is not meant to directly handle all proceedings associated with a possible hate crime or conduct violation, but instead the Bias Incident Review Team has the ability to make appropriate referrals to other departments based upon the severity of a reported action.

Translation: if you are a Marquette student and say something that some student with a chip on his or her shoulder thinks is “biased” or a “micro-aggression” or feels “stung” by, you can be in big trouble.

Of course, on a modern university campus, comments that are merely politically incorrect are routinely condemned as racist or sexist or homophobic and punished. Statements such as “America is the land of opportunity” or “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” are condemned.  At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, terms such as “man up” and “third world” are condemned.

At Marquette, leftist activists have labelled as “racist” a variety of comments on Yik Yak, most of which are not at all racist (Facebook login is necessary to see the page).

This, combined with the new rules about “harassment,” send a clear message to students: if you have any politically incorrect ideas, stifle. You can get in trouble if you disagree with the race and gender and gay hustlers on campus.

Condoleezza Rice & Jenny Oaks Baker Play “Amazing Grace”

Marquette’s New Rules: Enabling Repression on Speech, Sexual Accusations

This is an era in which college campuses are becoming more and more repressive. First, campus speech is coming under attack, with speech codes so broad that they could be used to silence perfectly legitimate expressions of opinion. Students who express opinions that aren’t politically correct face bullying and harassment, and have to retreat to the anonymity of Yik Yak to avoid repercussions.

Secondly, a moral panic has surrounded sexual violence on campus. Males accused of sexual assault are assumed to be guilty until proven innocent (and sometimes presumed to be guilty even after being proven innocent). Bogus rape claims at places like Columbia and the University of Virginia create a huge national furor. Males accused of sexual assault are deprived of basic due process protections.

Could we expect a supposed “Catholic university” to buck these trends? If the university is Marquette, most certainly not.

At Marquette

Marquette recently released a new “Title IX Sexual Harassment, Discrimination and Sexual Misconduct Policy.” Here is the policy, as captured from Marquette’s website on this past October 15th.

A comparison of the previous policy, captured by Archive.org on September 15th shows a number of changes.

Sexual Violence

The previous policy addresses “1. Non-Consensual Sexual Intercourse (or attempts to commit)” and “2. Non-Consensual Sexual Contact (or attempts to commit).” Then the issue is: How is “consent” defined.

The policy is as follows:

Consent is the equal approval, given freely, willingly and knowingly of each participant to desired sexual involvement. Consent is an affirmative, conscious decision – indicated clearly by words or actions – to engage in mutually accepted sexual contact. A person compelled to engage in sexual contact by force, threat of force, or coercion has not consented to contact. Lack of mutual consent is the crucial factor in any sexual assault. Consent CANNOT be given if a person’s ability to resist or consent is impaired because of a mental or physical condition or is there is incapacitation due to drugs or alcohol or if there is a significant age or perceived power differential. Providing alcohol or drugs to facilitate sexual activity is a violation of this policy. Use of alcohol or other drugs will never function to excuse behavior that violates this policy.

A person may not consent if s/he is:

• unconscious
• frightened
• physically or psychologically pressured or forced
• intimidated
• impaired because of a psychological condition
• intoxicated by use of drugs or alcohol

Most of this is just fine, although we note a couple of problems. The policy seems to embrace the questionable “affirmative consent” standard, but it makes clear that “actions” an be construed to imply consent.

If a girl goes up to a guy’s apartment, takes off her clothes and gets in bed with him, that pretty clearly means “consent” even if she never says “we can have sex.”

Of course, the traditional rule was different. Consent could be implicit. A guy was allowed to try to “steal a kiss.” He could kiss a girl without asking, but was expected to move slowly enough such that she could avoid it if she wanted to. Similar rules applied to other forms of sexual contact.

The “psychologically pressured” language is equally suspect. A lot of women have been “pressured” into having sex. A guy who would pressure a woman to have sex is not a gentleman, but if he uses no force or threat of force (and she is not incapacitated) , he’s not a rapist.

In the real world of sex and dating, pretty much the same rules apply today. A woman who lets a guy kiss her (or have sex with her) is not going to run to campus authorities and accuse him of assault — usually. But if the relationship turns sour, or she finds the experience unsatisfactory and convinces herself she really didn’t want to do it, the guy could be in trouble. Something like this appears to have happened to Mattress Girl at Columbia.

The New Code

What does the new code say?

In order for individuals to engage in sexual activity of any type with each other, there must be clear, knowing and voluntary consent prior to and during sexual activity. Consent is the voluntary, clear, actively given, positive agreement between the participants to engage in a specific sexual act or activity. Previous relationships or consent does not imply consent to future sexual activity. Consent can be withdrawn at any time once given, so long as that withdrawal is clearly communicated.

What is missing? The language that says that consent can be “indicated by actions.” Thus, a girl quite voluntarily getting into bed with a guy does not meet the standard for “consent.” This opens the door for the prosecution of any guy who had sex that was consensual, but not verbally agreed to.

Harassment

We have blogged on Marquette’s absurd and repressive “harassment training” which was imposed on all employees and staff in the fall of 2014.

The previous code defined harassment first in terms of quid pro quo harassment (“you’ll get something of you submit to my advances”) and then went on to add:

. . . conduct [that] is sufficiently severe and pervasive so as to alter the conditions of, or have the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with, an individual’s academic performance or work by creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive educational, residential, or working environment.

That’s not very precise, but on its face it seems reasonable.

The new code deals (likewise) with quid pro quo harassment, and adds things that might also reasonably be called “harassment” such as “Epithets, slurs, negative stereotyping, or threatening, intimidating, or hostile acts.” But then it goes into dangerous territory, adding:

Placing on walls, bulletin boards, email, social networking websites, or elsewhere on the University’s premises graphic material that shows hostility or aversion to an individual or group (as listed above) because of an individual’s race, color, national origin, religion, age, disability, sex, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, predisposing genetic characteristic, or military status or any other characteristics protected by this Policy and/or law, under any of the circumstances described in this section.

(“Listed above” are the same groups listed in this paragraph.)

This, obviously, includes a lot of things that would be protected by the First Amendment in a public university. But often such expressions involve legitimate discussion at any university.

Social Networking Sites

Extending the policy to social networking sites is a major expansion.  It’s one thing if somebody puts up an anti-Muslim or anti-gay poster in a workplace, where all employees are necessarily exposed to it.  But nobody has to visit Facebook or Twitter, and if they do, they get to pick whose posts they see.  This policy means that campus authoritarians can search around social networking sites looking for statements they find “offensive” and then use them to get students in trouble.  

Can one criticize Islam for its treatment of women? That shows an “aversion” to a “group” on the basis of religion. And indeed criticism of Islam (and Baltimore rioters) recently got a student at Texas Christian University suspended for his posts on Twitter and Facebook.

Suppose somebody says of black people:

Their entire culture just isn’t conducive to a life of success. It just isn’t. The outfits. The attitudes. The behavior.

This statement was on a list of posts on Yik Yak that a bunch of feminist and “civil rights” organizations believed should be punished.

 What about a statement like:

Call me a preppy white kid again and I’ll protest you black people for racial profiling.

This appeared on a list of Yik Yak posts in the wake of a demonstration by the Coalition of and for Students of Color at Marquette University blocking traffic on Wisconsin Avenue. The person who compiled the posts (Zoe Del Colle) called them “racist.” (Facebook login required to see the page.)

Thus the language Marquette has adopted could easily be used to punish students who make legitimate (but politically incorrect) comments on public issues. Sometimes groups defined by race, religion, or such can legitimately be criticized.

And one can’t imagine anybody on a college campus getting into trouble for saying that conservative Christians are “bigoted” or that whites are “blinded by their white privilege.”

When people start punishing speech, they never ever do it in a viewpoint neutral way. They only do it to shut up expression they don’t like.

Current Marquette Administration

The nature of Marquette’s current administration engenders no confidence that free expression will be respected on campus, since it is in full “pander” mode toward the student activists.

Marquette Wire, for example, reports on a demonstration on campus last Thursday in sympathy with University of Missouri demonstrators:

Those that gathered were of various races and included faculty, staff, students and Milwaukee community members. University President Michael Lovell, Provost Daniel Myers and the mother of Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed black man who was killed by a white Milwaukee Police Officer, were also in attendance.

Lovell said he went to show support for the students and community. Myers added it was a proud moment to be a part of Marquette.

In another recent meeting, administration officials seemed apologetic for painting over a mural of black militant terrorist and murderer Assata Shakur.

Provost Myers, faced with a demand that Marquette apologize for painting over the mural said:

I want to change things. I came here to change things. I am really committed to this.

Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion William Welburn likewise pandered. According to Marquette Wire:

“I believe very strongly that we are not going to have processes like this again, especially when it comes to issues of how this campus handles diversity and inclusion,” Welburn said. “Whatever we do moving forward, we have to think about women, women of color, African-American women specifically because of this incident. We have to think about the damage.”

Marquette’s administration seems no more willing to stand up to activist bullies than other university administrations.

It’s an open question how much of this is the result of politically correct attitudes on the part of administrators, and how much is due to a timid desire to defuse trouble coming from the activists.

Either way, Marquette is becoming a more and more oppressive place. Not only is any notion of “Catholic identity” junked when it contradicts political correctness, secular notions of free expression are pushed aside too.

Alan Dershowitz on Hypocrisy, Bigotry of Campus Protesters

Amherst Students Demand Apology For Support of Free Speech

And They are Demanding it From Administrators Who Did Not Even Endorse Free Speech

From the Daily Beast:

Students protesting at Amherst College have issued a list of demands to administrators that includes making them apologize for signs that lament the death of free speech.

A group calling themselves the Amherst Uprising listed 11 demands they want enacted by next Wednesday. Among them is a demand that President Biddy Martin issue a statement saying that Amherst does “not tolerate the actions of student(s) who posted the ‘All Lives Matter’ posters, and the ‘Free Speech’ posters.”

The latter posters called the principle of free speech the “true victim” of the protests at the University of Missouri.

Going further, the students demand the people behind “free speech” fliers be required to go through a disciplinary process as well as “extensive training for racial and cultural competency.”

The Ivy League

1942: Yale student George HW Bush joins US Navy, shot down over the Pacific in battle and rescued 2015: Yale students scared of Halloween

— olliander (@ollieblog) November 10, 2015

Hoax Racist Incidents on Campus: A Roundup

From the Daily Wire. We won't repost the entire article, but you can read the whole thing here. But we will list the headlines, so you can get the flavor of what is happening.

• ‘Confirmed’ KKK Presence At Mizzou
• Racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism at Oberlin
• KKK is Coming to Berkeley High... Or Not
• Hangman Graffiti
• ‘White Only, Black Only’ Signs
• Students Sends Racist Text Messages to Himself
• Students Target Themselves With Racial Graffiti
• Students Target Themselves With Hurtful Messages
• Fabricated Case of Police Harassment
• Student Posted Racist Facebook Messages to Himself

The number of such faked incidents has become massive. They are the result of the fact that university administrations are easily manipulated by any claims of racial grievance.

Of course, when those bureaucrats try to redress the claimed racism, the policies they implement have no plausible connection to any real racism on campus (and there is very little real campus racism). They respond by hiring diversity bureaucrats. They respond with mandatory “diversity training” (read: Stalinist thought reform). They respond with “programs” that cater to minority students.

Of course, any real racist on campus is not going to repent because of any of this. On the other hand, students who aren’t racists come to resent being marginalized, subjected to indoctrination, and watching institutions treat black activists as privileged characters.

But the entire charade gives the minority students a feeling of power. Unfortunately, it teaches them that articulating grievances (rather than studying, learning and achieving) is the way to get ahead.

It also grows the bureaucratic empires of the campus bureaucrats. Which is part of the reason they react so supinely.

The other reason is that they are scared to death of being called racist. Real racial progress requires that people be willing to stand up to the racial bullies. Principled people might be surprised at how easy it is to endure charges of “racism” now that the term has become so debased, and now that so many people know how debased it is.

Free Speech: Under Attack at Marquette as Well as Missouri

From Wisconsin Watchdog, an article by Matt Kittle based on an interview we did with WIBA in Madison.

Marquette’s attempt to fire this blogger is simply part of a larger pattern of national academic intolerance.

Missouri Protests Based on Fake Incidents

From the Daily Wire:

Show us the evidence of systemic racism at Mizzou.

So far, it doesn’t exist.

According to press accounts, four specific incidents drove the ouster of the liberal president of University of Missouri, Tim Wolfe. Three of the four have no evidence to support them, and the remaining incident was rightly investigated by Wolfe’s administration.

Here are the crucial racial incidents that brought down the top official at a major publicly-funded university.

The First N-Word Incident. On September 12, student government president Payton Head alleged that a red pickup truck of young white people slowed and began screaming the n-word at him. Head posted the story on social media along with a litany of supposed slurs experienced by various groups of Americans (“Many of you are so privileged that you’ll never know what it feels like to be a hijab-wearing Muslim woman…You don’t have to think about being transgender and worrying about finding a restroom…”). He then told the press, “this story is not just something that happens here. It’s not a Mizzou issue. It’s a societal issue.” He added, “This happened to me, but it happens all the time, not only here, but everywhere.” According to the campus police, the incident happened near campus, not on it, and the Columbia Police Department did not receive a report on the incident from Head. In other words, other than Head’s social media post, there’s no evidence the incident occurred.

The Second N-Word Incident. On October 5, members of the Legion of Black Collegians were confronted by a drunk white man who called them the n-word. The group issued a public statement: “At about 12:45 AM, we noticed an obviously intoxicated white male staggering down Conley Ave. on the sidewalk…while still on the phone he says ‘These n*****s are getting aggressive with me.’” Members of the campus administration and the police received reports, and the young man in question is reportedly living off-campus and is under investigation. The administration responded with mandatory diversity training on October 8.

The Car Bump. On October 10, Concerned Student 1950 protesters blocked the homecoming parade, and attempted to confront Wolfe by surrounding his car. Graduated student Jonathan Butler said, “We disrupted the parade specifically in front of Tim Wolfe because we need him to get our message.” Butler then alleged that the car had hit one of the students (tape shows no such thing) and went on a hunger strike. Wolfe apologized for asking the police to remove the protesters.

The Feces Swastika. On October 24, officials supposedly found a swastika drawn in poop on the floor and wall in the bathroom. Resident Halls Association president Bill Donley said, “After this event, it has become clear to me that the inclusivity of our residence halls has been threatened.” But according to Sean Davis at The Federalist, “No evidence of the alleged incident…has ever been made publicly available.” Donley refused to respond to requests, and other RHA staffers said they hadn’t seen the poop swastika. There are no public photographs of the swastika. The University of Missouri has now been hit with a public records request by The Federalist.

So there you have it. Four racial incidents, three of them evidenceless, and one of them taken care of by the administration.

Obviously something was rotten at Mizzou, but it isn’t systemic racism by the administration.

Of course, none of this really matters. The entire point is to bully university administrations, and get more politically correct initiatives on campus (“diversity training,” more campus bureaucrats to pander to politically correct groups).

This is all made worse by affirmative action, which admits students who aren’t really qualified and thus struggle academically. Add to this professors and campus bureaucrats who pamper and pander to minorities, and encourage a sense of grievance, and you get a bunch of bullies who seek a sense of power in the hothouse that is campus politics.

[Update]

The Federalist has turned up evidence that the poop swastika actually existed. Of course, a swastika would seem to be more an expression of hatred of Jews, rather than blacks.

Further, a real swastika might have been yet another of the hoax hate crimes that have proliferated on college campuses.

[Further Update]

The Federalist has been all over this. It seems that the key suspect is a student who “has also been reported to have made anti-Semitic remarks to the members of a Jewish fraternity.” This suspect has not been (and probably will not be) charged, but this seems more an anti-Semitic than an anti-black incident.

Fake Victimization Stories Accepted by Media

From NewsBusters, a list of fake victimization stories: bogus incidents stated by members of some “marginalized group” in order to claim victimhood.

We won’t repeat the entire article here, since you can read the original. But we will list the cases.

• Gay bar owner’s business burned down in 2012, he complained he was ‘targeted’ because of his sexual orientation.
• Lesbian couple had spray painted anti-gay slurs on their own garage before burning their house down and blaming it on their neighbor.
• June 2015: Gay pizza shop owner robbed, assaulted, mutilated….by himself.
• Oct. 2012: Black woman claims she was burned by KKK for wearing Obama shirt.
• April 2014: Muslim man kills wife; sets up her murder as an ‘Islamophobic’ hate crime.
• June 2015: Muslim cleric’s suspicious soda tale.
• Nov. 2013: Gay server receives hate note on receipt, snubbed with no tip.
• March 2013: Oberlin ‘KKK’ Hoax.
• February 2012: Hate notes outside dorm rooms target minorities.
• Gay men injured themselves, fake ‘hate crimes’ to cover up for embarrassment.
• October 2014: Racial Profiling Viral Video Staged.

As NewsBusters notes:

The left loves to portray the right as bigots who hate minorities, women, Muslims, and gays. So the media latch onto any claim of perceived discrimination or hate, real or not, and report it with glee (forget investigation and due diligence!).

Obviously, crimes do occur that are genuinely motivated by someone’s ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. But many are simply hoaxes committed by liberal activists for the cause of furthering their agenda. The media makes no distinctions in figuring out which ones are real and which are staged.

University of Missouri Student Activist: Cast Aside First Amendment

Fascists: Leftist Students at University of Missouri Impede Press Photographer

It’s a stunning display of arrogance and intolerance.

And these are the kind of people, remember, who got the President of their university fired.


[Update]
Most people would consider this behavior unacceptable. But not the student activists, who care little about press freedom. And not one student activist who talked to MSNBC:

Naomi Collier, a student activist at the University of Missouri, defended the treatment of a journalist who was attacked while trying to cover the unfolding events on campus.

On Monday, Tim Tai, a student journalist contracted with ESPN trying to cover the protests on campus, was accosted by the school’s Greek Life director and protesters.

When Tai approached students in the protest to get their opinion he was told he needed to go. The situation escalated and one protester asked for “some muscle” to remove Tai.

Collier told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell it was a “peaceful protest” and Tai was just a victim of the “backlash” from “fed up” students. Collier also said the student journalist was “insensitive” to the “feelings and emotions that [were] present at that time.”

“Is there a way to get back to some sort of civil discourse here or there is still so much tension,” Mitchell asked Collier.

“Definitely,” Collier said. “I do believe that we are getting back to that civil discourse. I believe the whole thing was civil. At no point did anything get violent, everything was a peaceful protest, even with the camp-out. There was nothing that got, in my opinion, out of control. The students are fed up.”

“As far as the media’s concerned, at times they can be overwhelming and insensitive to the feelings and emotions that are present at that time. I think what that photographer experienced was kind of the backlash of that, and again, he may have just been ignorant or uneducated about how that particular group of students were feeling at the time and again.”

More Yik Yak: Missouri Students Show Resentment Toward Race Hustlers

From MSNBC (who doubtless think all these posts are terrible), a compilation of Yik Yak posts critical of the racial activists (and their white allies) who forced the resignation of the school’s president.

According to the network:

MSNBC took a look at Yik Yak, which uses geolocation to display messages in a certain area or around a certain university, and viewed messages posted by users at the University of Missouri campus. As of noon EST, these were some of the most popular messages on Yik Yak at the University of Missouri campus. Popularity is determined by users voting up or down on messages they like or dislike. The number of upvotes is displayed to the right of each message.

Here are the most popular ones, but read the rest.

One can see why campus race, gender and gay hustlers would like Yik Yak shut down, or at least allow posters to be identified so they can be punished for their politically incorrect attitudes.

This is social media giving a voice to the students who are ignored by the media, ignored by university administrations, and derided and demeaned if they should speak out openly.

More Bogus Campus Date Rape Statistics

Oil Price Demagogues

Conspiracy? Two perspectives on oil price fluctuations via @Mark_J_Perry, inspired by @WSJ https://t.co/e1glBh0kZI pic.twitter.com/If8WrzMkmh

— AEIdeas Blog (@AEIdeas) November 9, 2015

Donald Trump Superlatives

From National Review, a wry look at Trump’s claims about his extraordinary abilities and accomplishments.

Self-Criticism in the Muslim World

An organization called MEMRI (Middle Eastern Media Research Institute) records and translates TV broadcasts in the Middle East. Their specialty has been chilling videos of fanatical Muslims (and even Muslim children) discussing the need to kill Jews.

However, that’s not the whole story. In some parts of the region self-criticism of Islam is seen on TV, and real intellectual debate happens. Here are a few examples.



OK, this one is an entertainer, so one might be inclined to claim this is a lot like (say) Kim Kardashian offering a critique of U.S. society. But (1) people like this may have more effect on the culture than intellectuals, and (2) her observations are sensible.