In Spring of 2017, professor of evolutionary biology, Brett Weinstein, a Jewish-American and life-long liberal, found himself pinned against a hallway wall at Evergreen State College, cornered by a crazed mob of shouting students calling him a racist for failing to leave campus during Evergreen’s annual ‘Day of Absence.’ In years past, the ‘Day of Absence’ had been a day in which ethnic minority students at Evergreen would voluntarily leave for the day in order to demonstrate the social impact of their felt absence on campus. This year, however, the minority students had decided that it would now be all of the white students and faculty exclusively who would be ‘strongly encouraged’ to leave campus for the entire day instead. Failing to go along with this new overtly racist initiative and openly speaking out against it, Weinstein inadvertently garnered the attention and ire of the student mob hellbent on establishing this new campus precedent. Later that same day, after having temporarily left the campus for reasons unrelated, campus police cautioned Brett that gangs of students were now roving the campus brandishing baseball bats looking for both Brett and his wife, fellow professor, Heather Heyring. Brett and Heather never returned to campus that day and would later win a $500,000 settlement against Evergreen.[1]
A year prior, in 2016, at the University of Cape Town, a group of activist protestors known as the ‘UCT Trans Collective,’ stormed and disrupted a UCT art exhibit dedicated to the anti-colonialist ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ initiative, posing naked and smearing red paint all over both themselves and the anti-colonial artwork on account of the exhibit’s excessively ‘cis-white-hetero-normative’ nature and its failure to explicitly include supposedly marginalized ‘trans’ voices.[2]
In April of 2018, Eric Clanton, professor of ethics at Diablo State Community College in California, was recorded on camera clad in an all-black uniform and black ski-mask, assaulting 7 different people with a U-shaped bike-lock, leaving one of his victims with a major laceration in his head requiring 5 staples. For his unorthodox teaching methods and use of his bike-lock-of-tolerance to ‘open minds,’ Clanton garnered a mere 3-year probation sentence after 4 separate felony assault charges for that single day.[3]
In March of 2017, at Middlebury College, professor Allison Stanger was hospitalized for whiplash after an angry student protestor yanked on the back of her hair as she and controversial speaker, Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, fled to her car after being rushed by a violent group of student protestors.[4]
In, October of 2021, outraged students at Oberlin College took to social media to complain about feeling existentially threatened by the ‘cis-hetero-normative’ white male HVAC workers who entered their dormitories to fix their heaters.[5]
In 2017, in an effort to phase out the “oppressive” gender binary, the University of Nebraska-Omaha provided students with a handy guide to “queer and trans community language.” The glossary includes a "Gender Unicorn" worksheet that students can use to determine exactly where they fit on the gender-identity spectrum.
In 2019, at a Young America Foundation talk at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, conservative political commentator Michael Knowles, was assaulted by a group of ‘trans’ students who threw a bottle of mystery liquid at his face and eyes during his highly controversial speech titled, “Men Are Not Women.”[6]
In January of 2022, administrators at Dartmouth College decided to unilaterally cancel the live event appearance of independent journalist, Andy Ngo and libertarian activist, Gabriel Nadales, focused on discussing the topic of left-wing violence in the United States, after repeated threats of violence from the far-Left communist group Antifa. Citing information from local law enforcement, Dartmouth administrators required organizers to move the event to an exclusively online platform for reasons of security and safety.[7]
In June of 2021, in a New York Post interview, North Korean defector, Yeonmi Park, commenting on the excessively ‘politically correct’ climate of contemporary American universities stated, ‘even North Korea isn’t this nuts.’[8]
In 2017, the University of Arizona published a classroom dialogue guide encouraging professors to use the “Ouch/Oops method,” where students who are offended in class say “ouch” and the offender responds with “oops.”
In 2016, Hampshire College removed all of its American flags on campus after students pulled down the flag the night before Veteran’s Day, and set it on fire. As a direct consequence of this act, the president of Hampshire College announced, ‘Henceforth, no American flags will be flown on campus. Getting rid of the flag will enable us to instead focus our efforts on addressing racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and behaviors.”[9]
In 2019, the University of Kansas began offering an ‘Angry White Male Studies’ course, a 3-credit course examining "the rise of the 'angry white male' in America and Britain since the 1950s, exploring the deeper sources of this emotional state while evaluating recent manifestations of male anger."[10]
At Yale, in 2015, students cornered Professor Nicholas Christakis for telling them that they were adults and could make up their own minds about which Halloween costumes to allow during their private dorm parties. For this grave injustice, the students berated him on video for several hours during a group struggle session in the Yale courtyard, verbally mocking him, humiliating him, and abusing him like a human pinyata.[11]
In February of 2022, Former UCLA ‘Philosophy of Race’ lecturer, Matthew Harris, was arrested for threatening to commit mass shooting against white members of the UCLA Philosophy department, issuing specific threats against specific faculty members in his 800-page manifesto.[12]
In 2017, Bates College published a faculty guide on “creating an inclusive classroom environment”, advising faculty members to use terms like “partner” in place of “husband or wife.”
In September of 2017, at the University of Berkeley, right-wing provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos, was prevented from speaking due to security concerns caused by roughly 150 masked agitators who committed various acts of vandalism, arson, and violence, resulting in the harm of several innocent Berkeley students and local citizens and totaling around $100,000 in property damage.[13]
In the fall of 2016, Campus Republicans at the University of Minnesota painted a mural backing “Trump Pence in 2016,” with the slogan, “Build the Wall.” Within an hour the painting was defaced student protesters chanting “Hate Speech is not Free Speech.” University, President Eric Kaler, condemned the vandalization of the painting and reaffirmed the school’s commitment to free speech. However, when Kaler set up a public meeting to discuss the campus climate, 100 chanting protesters stormed the stage and ended the event, condemning Kaler for protecting “hate speech.” Later that same year, College Republic President, Madison Faupel was “doxed” by the far-left communist group Antifa (i.e. her personal information and physical address were published in order to facilitate anonymous harassment).[14]
In 2017, the University of Maryland began instructing students to avoid terms with ‘man’ in them, such as ‘freshman’ and ‘chairman’ because such phasing suggests that women cannot perform in these roles.
In February of 2019, at UC Berkeley, campus authorities arrested Zachary Greenberg, who is not a UC Berkeley student, after video surfaced of him and another man confronting conservative student activist Hayden Williams, pushing him repeatedly and punching him in the face.[15]
On September 26, 2016, at Reed College, more than 400 marching “Reedies Against Racism” boycotted classes and briefly disrupted Reed’s Hum 110 lecture, its famous Western Civilization requirement for entering freshman. Two days later, protesting students began surrounding the Hum 110 lecturer on stage during each class session.[16] Caving to the mob pressure, in 2018 Reed officially announced it would be majorly overhauling the content of the Hum 110 requirement.[17]
In 2017, the University of Connecticut’s “Rainbow Center” stated that it wants to create a “new campus norm where everyone shares their pronouns with their name,” stating that students should avoid “utilizing only binary language” like “sir,” “you guys,” and “ma’am.”
In 2018, at Queen’s University in Ontario, during a speech delivered by best-selling author and free-speech advocate, Dr. Jordan Peterson, a mob of dozens of students pounded on the stained-glass of the Victorian-Romanesque building within which the speech was being given, breaking one of the windows. The mob then blocked the front and back doors of the hall with recycling bins, while one woman yelled, “Lock them in and burn it down!” to the cheers of the other protestors. Police were eventually called to the scene.[18]
In January of 2022, at the American Philosophical Association national conference in Baltimore, ‘pronoun sticker’ stations were put out in the open, displaying stickers for ‘He’, ‘She’, ‘They’ and ‘Fill-in-the-Blank’, as ‘a show of solidarity’ and a means of making divisional meetings a ‘friendly and safe environment for all.’
In 2017, The University of Dayton provided students with a guide on “gender neutral language,” saying phrases like “gentlemen’s agreement” should be substituted for “informal agreement” or “contract” while “spouse, partner, [and] significant other” should be used instead of “husband” and “wife.”
In February of 2022, law students at Georgetown University Law Center demanded officially-designated cry space and to have catered food brought to them, paid for by the university, while staging a sit-in protest to promote the firing of professor Ilya Shapiro.
In 2018, Dr. Peter Boghossian, Dr. James Lindsay, and Dr. Helen Pluckrose intentionally published several bogus ‘grievance’ journal articles in various post-modern peer-reviewed academic journals in the areas of ‘queer’, ‘race’, ‘gender’, ‘fat’, and ‘sexuality’ studies. Out of the 20 papers submitted, 4 were published, 3 were accepted but not yet published, 6 were rejected, and 7 were still under review at the time when the hoax was revealed and ended. Among the articles that were successfully published were arguments that male dogs engaged in rape culture at local dog parks, that men could reduce their levels of transphobia by intentionally anally penetrating themselves with sex toys, along with a re-publishing of various sections of Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf re-written using popular feminist buzz words.[19]
Later on, in June of 2018, at Portland State University, someone triggered the fire alarm during a conversation between Dr. Boghossian and cultural critic Carl Benjamin, and in October of 2018, an activist pulled out the speaker wires to interrupt a panel with former Google engineer James Damore. The university did nothing to stop or address this behavior and no one was officially punished or disciplined.
By summer of 2021, after repeated incidents of harassment from students, to include being spit on by passersby, the drawing of swastikas with his name under them in campus bathrooms, bags of feces being left on his office doorstep, and the spreading of baseless accusations that he was beating his wife and children, Boghossian published an open-letter condemning such rampant illiberalism on college campuses, explaining his reasoning for officially quitting Portland State University.[20]
In July of 2021, London School of Economics Gender Studies Department official website frontpage posted grad student Matt Thomson’s claim that,“if TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) think trans is an endemic threat to feminism, let us be the threat to feminism…Picture this: I hold a knife to your throat and spit my transness into your ear. Does that turn you on? Are you scared? I sure fucking hope so.”[21]
In 2017, Emerson College officially stated that it now considers the term “homosexual” to be an offensive reference to gay or lesbian people, counting only the latter two terms sufficiently inclusive.
In April of 2017, at Claremont-McKenna College, approximately 250 student protestors physically blocked other students’ access to the school auditorium to hear pro-police, scholar, Heather MacDonald, forcing MacDonald to livestream her talk instead because of concerns over her physical security.[22]
In 2017, at the University of Arkansas, administrators began officially asking students to avoid referring to millennials as “lazier than previous generations” because such phrasing could be “seen as offensive” and “biased.”
In October of 2021, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a leaked audio recording revealed mandatory training for all fraternity and sorority members on campus whereby students were strongly advised to make a repeated habit of recognizing that they were ‘on stolen land’ in their daily lives. Ms. Parle, the leader of the presentation, also asked students their feelings about ‘the system’ and whether or not they were ‘ready to dismantle it.’ Students at the mandatory training session were also instructed to write their intersectional identities according to sex, gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, body size, and race.[23]
In 2017, the University of Maryland created an official website to welcome illegal immigrant students and teach the campus community to use "inclusive language" so as not to offend them.
In November of 2021, Boise State professor, Dr. Scott Yennor, received a series of hate-filled phone-call threats after giving a talk at the National Conservative conference critiquing feminism and its deleterious effects on the nuclear family. Among some of the calls received by Yennor was one young man who challenged Yennor to a fistfight and another woman who articulated her hope that Yennor would be ‘attacked and killed with sticks.’ [24]
In March of 2019, 3.a.m. Magazine interviewed feminist philosopher, Holly Lawford-Smith, who made the controversial claim that transwomen are not women. Shortly after this, and due to massive internet harassment, the magazine quickly withdrew the interview online, causing the resignation of senior editor, Richard Marshall.[25]
Later, in April of 2021, at the university of Melbourne, a large student mob gathered in the main campus courtyard to agitate for the sacking of Dr. Lawford Smith. After screaming in the faces of several diminutive, female students, one giant, obese male tranvestite student, who claimed to actually be a woman, began the chant ‘TERFs off our campus’ which was then repeated loudly by the entire student mob. Among the demands of the student mob were the firing of Dr. Lawford Smith, the forcing of her to take down her website critiquing transgenderism, and the abolishing of all feminist literature from the student library and student curriculum.[26]
As of 2017, Appalachian State University’s Writing Center has advised students to include disclaimers on academic papers indicating that they are using gender-neutral pronouns in an effort “to be inclusive.”
In December of 2020, University of Sussex professor of philosophy, Kathleen Stock, was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Shortly thereafter, a group of 600 academics criticized her official appointment, arguing that Stock’s previous writings and statements critiquing transgenderism constituted ‘harmful rhetoric’ contributing to the marginalization of transgender people. In October 2021, she resigned from the University of Sussex after a widespread student campaign calling for her dismissal along with allegations that Sussex was engaging in ‘institutional transphobia.’[27]
In 2017, the administration at University of Wisconsin, River Falls began cracking down on potentially offensive language by telling students to “check yourself” before using terms such as “illegal alien,” “ugly,” or even “you guys.”
In October of 2020, Cambridge porter, Kevin Price, was forced to resign from his job due to mounting student pressure for refusing to say that ‘transwomen are women.’
In 2021, the University of North Carolina’s writing center began asking students to refrain from using masculine terms such as “manmade” or even “sir,” instead suggesting more gender-neutral words like “machine made” in their place.
In November of 2017, at Wilfred Laurier University, graduate student, Lindsay Shepherd, was accused of creating a ‘toxic climate’ at the university by screening a televised debate discussing gender-neutral pronouns. She was later called into a surprise 40-minute struggle session with the university’s ‘Rainbow Center’ representative, Adria Joel, and her academic program advisor, Herbert Pimlott, (which she secretly recorded) where she was audibly brought to tears and accused of intentional harassment and ‘problematic’ behavior.[28]
In, 2017, Cornell University’s Law Review officially stated its encouragement for the “use of gender-neutral language” in all submissions.
In November 2019, at the University of Washington, the militant communist group Antifa assaulted several college Republicans by throwing paint all over them, their banner and table.[29]
In 2017, Harvard’s Extension School officially provided students with “four easy steps” to using inclusive language, stating that such language is “essential to any high-functioning workplace.”
In August of 2019, in Atlanta, the Democratic Socialists of America national convention, student organizers erupted over fundamental disputes over appropriate pronoun use, loud noises, and ‘sensory overload.’[30]
In December 2019, moral and political philosopher, Anca Gheaus, was invited to speak at an academic workshop in Barcelona on the concept of ‘gender.’ Brilliantly, the ‘trans’ speaker was allowed to speak first, followed by Gheaus, whom the ‘trans’ student mob then completely silenced with acts of protest and social disruption, preventing Gheaus from giving her talk and causing the rest of the workshop to be abruptly cancelled.
In June of 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd riots, student and professor activists at the University of Southern Maine, ‘strongly encouraged’ fellow community members to sign a Black Lives Matter ‘anti-racism pledge’ in order to keep track of all students and professors who did not sign the pledge.[31]
In 2019, at the University of Oxford, liberal students actively blocked the entrance to the Oxford student Union Hall, preventing other students from entering the Oxford Union auditorium to hear conservative speaker, Steve Bannon.[32]
In fall of 2021, at the University of Pennsylvania, ‘transfemale’ swimmer, Lia Thomas, won the women’s 1650-yard freestyle, shattering the national college record by more than 38 seconds. Thomas also won the 500 free in addition to capturing the 100 and 200 that same weekend.[33]
In fall of 2015, at the University of Missouri, a series of racially insensitive incidents, to include the alleged drawing of a ‘poop swastika’ on one of the student bathroom stalls led to a series of mass protests and calls for radical overhaul of the racial climate on campus. The incident resulted in the stepping down of R. Bowen Loftin, the university’s chancellor, followed soon thereafter by the stepping down of Tim Wolfe, the university’s president.
In November of 2015, also at the University of Missouri, assistant professor, Melissa Click, was caught on film calling for ‘some muscle’ to physically remove and prevent an independent reporter from taking photos of the campus protests.
In 2017, at Bethel University, administrators encouraged faculty-members “to be clear in our Christian witness” by eschewing masculine terminology, despite the Bible consistently referring to humans as “man” or “mankind.”
In April of 2018, Fresno State professor, Randa Jarrar, in a foul-mouthed open discussion group, called for members of the left to quit being ‘gentle’ and for folks to blow up white nationalist , Richard Spencer’s, house with grenades.[34]
In October of 2020, following the police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia, student activists at Bryn Mawr College, going by the name of ‘Bryn Mawr Strike Collective’ began a multi-week student strike and sit-in, claiming that their extremely progressive campus had been overrun by a dangerous climate of racism that quite literally threatened the survival of black students. After submitting a 23-page list of demands, which took them over an hour to read, the student strikers we able to pressure President Kim Cassidy to meet many of their demands as she officially praised them for compelling the college community to “face our history in new ways, to confront persistent institutional barriers to progress and commit to change.”
In 2017, the University of California, Davis, published a glossary of popular social-justice themed terms plainly asserting that only white people are capable of racism.
In April of 2017, leading feminist philosophy journal, Hypatia, published a controversial article by philosopher Rebecca Tuvel, arguing for the legitimacy of ‘transracialism’ from the starting premises of ‘transgenderism.’ By early May, 830 signatories of an open-letter called for the retraction of the article based upon its transphobic, racist, and highly insensitive remarks. Hypatia associate editor, Cressida Heyes, issued an apology shortly thereafter as Tuvel received mass amounts of online harassment causing her severe psychological and emotional stress.[35]
In late 2014 and early 2015, comedians, Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld, both announced that they would no longer play college campuses because the students were too politically correct and too sensitive.[36]
In December of 2017, Drexel professor of political science, George Ciccariello, posted on twitter that ‘All I want for Christmas is white genocide.’
Following suit, in October of 2021, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, Brittney Cooper, celebrated the decline of white birth-rates in America, calling white people ‘villains’, stating that, “we need to take the motherfuckers out!”[37]
And in July of 2020, perpetual ‘Debby Downer’ and Godfather of the Left, Noam Chomsky, along with British writer and feminist, JK Rowling, were vehemently condemned by the woke Leftist outrage mob for signing an open letter which criticized cancel culture and defended free speech and free debate within society.[38]
Three generations now of American higher education being largely an incubator for radicalizing young students and turning them into far-Left activists, imbued with a spirit of perpetual cause-seeking, perpetual norm-destruction, and perpetual revolutionary upheaval, the chickens, it seems, have now finally come home to roost, and the progeny of the 60’s counter-culture radicals are now cannibalizing not only their former mentors and leaders but also one another for reasons they can’t even articulate. Observing all of this from afar, any half-way awake student, parent, tax-payer, future employer, educator, or citizen would be well justified by now in questioning the virtue, integrity, and sanity of our present higher ‘education’ system.
Some of us might even be moved to write a whole book about it. But that’s another story.
[1] Evergreen event
[3] https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/08/08/eric-clanton-takes-3-year-probation-deal-in-berkeley-rally-bike-lock-assault-case
[7] https://www.thefire.org/dartmouth-forced-andy-ngos-event-to-go-online-only-despite-protesters-never-showing-up-fire-wants-answers/
[10] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/04/04/angry-white-male-studies-ku-college-course-criticized-congressman/3368437002/
[12] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/former-ucla-philosophy-race-lecturer-arrested-threatening-commit-mass-shooting-white-members-philosophy-department/
[13] https://time.com/4955245/milo-yiannopoulos-berkeley-free-speech-week/
[14] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/campus-free-speech-crisis-deepens/
[15] https://www.thefire.org/dartmouth-forced-andy-ngos-event-to-go-online-only-despite-protesters-never-showing-up-fire-wants-answers/
[16] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/campus-free-speech-crisis-deepens/
[17] https://www.wsj.com/articles/reed-college-bows-to-the-bullies-1524179901
[18] https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/absolutely-surreal-student-mob-smashes-window-in-protest-against-jordan-pet/
[19] https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/hoax-papers-the-shoddy-absurd-and-unethical-side-of-academia-1.3655500
[21] https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/gender-studies-and-sexualised-threats/
[22] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-macdonald-claremont-speech-disrupted-20170408-story.html
[23] https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2021/10/23/mandatory-woke-training-at-unc-chapel-hill-n424413
[25] https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2019/03/3am-magazines-radical-chic-motto-whatever-it-is-were-agianst-it-turns-out-to-be-bullocks.html
[26] https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/transgender-debate-a-free-speech-stress-test-for-melbourne-university-20210617-p581r8.html
[27] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2021/10/kathleen-stock-and-sussex-university-the-war-over-academic-freedom
[28] https://globalnews.ca/news/5012667/lindsay-shepherd-jordan-peterson-lawsuit/
[29] https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/police-college-republicans-assaulted-by-antifa-affiliate-group-targeted-for-second-day/734758203/
[30] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-socialists-convention-erupts-due-to-sensory-overload-gendered-pronoun-usage
[31] . https://granitegrok.com/blog/2020/08/university-in-maine-asks-community-to-sign-blm-antiracism-pledge-so-they-can-make-a-list-of-who-did-not
[34] https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article209454829.html
[35] https://slate.com/technology/2017/05/rebecca-tuvel-amy-cuddy-and-bullying-in-academia.html
[36] https://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/why-seinfeld-wont-play-college-campuses-bernie-reeves/
https://www.thefire.org/chris-rock-explains-doesnt-want-perform-college-campuses/
[37] NY Post
This is both depressing and infuriating to read, and i say that as someone who remembers the Sokal Hoax of 1996, and wondering back then if there would be any trustee, college prez, administrator etc who would at last stand up and pull the plug on the Victim Studies politics-disguised-as-scholarship cancer. Well, I guess we know how that turned out.
The malevolent metastasizing religion of Social Justice has eaten through our schools, colleges, culture, and soon it will eat through our polity and society.
I think for your next piece you should try to catalog all the excuses cowardly enabling liberals have made as they've surrendered every institution, field, and tradition to the Crit Theory cult aka the termites of civilization.
Off the top of my head:
Oh, these are just kids they'll grow out of it when they hit the real world;
Oh, these are just a few crazies at a few schools, nothing to worry about;
Oh, every new generation seems scary to their elders, yes they get carried away but the pendulum will swing back;
And, why are you so obsessed!!?
I'm sure there's a few I've missed....
Thanks!