Identity Politics

Let’s Talk About Black Lives Matter UK

Samuel Hooper9 Comments

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Black Lives Matter UK should be ashamed of their childish behaviour and wanton ‘cultural appropriation’ of an American struggle

I had a friend at Cambridge who – like many students – loved nothing more than a good protest. The reason behind any given demonstration and the people involved in it were largely immaterial to him; what mattered was the marching along and shouting and getting to feel brave and revolutionary while enjoying the added bonus of missing lectures.

On one occasion (quite possibly because I was high at the time of asking) he convinced me to accompany him on one of these jaunts, and so one morning we set off on a coach down the M11 and piled off in central London, collected placards and went to join the fray. Honestly, I forget what the protest was actually about – it may have been something to do with poverty, but it was certainly domestically focused. So I was rather surprised when my friend decided that we should merge with a particularly unwashed group of protesters and start shouting “victory to the intifada!”

At the time, the Second Intifada was warming up quite aggressively. As a young student, while having every sympathy with the plight of ordinary Palestinians, I tended to take the side of Israel, supporting a fellow democracy while reserving the right to criticise their excesses and missteps – pretty much the same position as I hold now, in fact. And since I had no desire to stomp around London cheering for the suicide bombing of innocent Israelis, I took leave of my friend and went to sojourn on the south bank instead – but not before making the observation that nearly everyone around me at the march was white, upper middle class (though some affected other carefully crafted personas) and about as far removed from being personally vested in the Israel-Palestine conflict as it was possible to be.

Why bring this up? Because the same tiresome event is now playing out all over again with the childish, irresponsible and petulant antics of Black Lives Matter UK, whose members give dreary new meaning to the term “a rebel without a cause”.

From the Telegraph:

London City Airport was brought to a standstill today after a group of Black Lives Matter activists stormed the runway protesting against the UK’s ‘racist climate crisis’.

Police said nine protestors [sic] chained themselves to a tripod in the middle of a runway to ‘highlight the UK’s environmental impact on the lives of black people’.

The demonstration, which began at 5.40am and lasted around five hours, meant dozens of flights were cancelled while incoming planes were diverted to Gatwick and Southend airports.

The incident triggered safety concerns amid reports the demonstrators bypassed security by sailing a blow-up dingy [sic] across the Royal Docks.

Police arrived at the airport minutes after the demonstration began but it was several hours before any arrests were made. Scotland Yard said they had to wait for ‘specialist resources’ needed to unlock the protestors [sic].

“This is a crisis” reads the banner unfurled by Black Lives Matter UK at their edgy airport disruption attempts. And so it is. But in Britain it is certainly not a crisis of black killings by the police. It is a crisis of intellect, of character and of proportionality, all of which have been thrown out of the window by a bunch of primarily millennial young adults who look at the impassioned protests currently taking place in the United States and developed a severe, gnawing case of FOMO (fear of missing out).

This most coddled and privileged generation in history (particularly the middle class types who showed up to London City airport) cannot plausibly claim that black people in Britain are being frequently and systematically killed by the police, which is the genesis of the original Black Lives Matter movement in America. Most British police are unarmed for a start, and while there has been an historic problem with institutional racism and there remain isolated concerns, the problem is simply not as severe on this side of the Atlantic.

So what is an enthusiastic young protester to do? They can’t go to the trouble of invading an airport runway for a cause which barely registers as a problem in this country (though in terms of avoiding looking ridiculous, BLM UK may well have done marginally better to frame their protest as a “sympathy strike” to highlight the “plight” of black Americans). They need to find some reason for their theatrics.

And thus we get the rather bizarre statement that airports are fair game for Black Lives Matter UK because environmental pollution apparently disproportionally affects black people to such an extent that it constitutes an act of racism. That is seriously what this protest is about.

From BLM UK’s own Twitter account:

This is competitive victimhood at its most extreme. To call the claim that environmental pollution is a deliberate act of oppression aimed at black people “a bit exaggerated” does a disservice to a whole pantheon of overstatements, contortions and implausible stretches. The argument is simply ludicrous, a complete non sequitur.

And for those of us implacably opposed to the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics, the emergence of Black Lives Matter UK as a risible and unjustified presence on the British political scene has also provoked the delicious accusation by other SJWs that BLM UK’s white, middle-class eco-warriors are “culturally appropriating” a movement which is primarily about the treatment of African Americans by the police in the United States.

From the Huffington Post (naturally):

Black Lives Matter demonstrators have been accused of “appropriating someone else’s struggle” for their “embarrassing” protest at London’s City Airport today that affected thousands of passengers.

However, the response to the action has been largely negative, with people criticising its relevance, disputing claims the action would only impact the wealthy, and questioning why the group did not appear to have any black members at the protest.

One person described the protesters as “hipster-looking flower-crowners”.

[..] Joanne Marie was annoyed by claims that the action would only affect the well off.

She wrote: “I earn under £30k and I live in Newham. I use City Airport several times a year to fly home to Ireland to visit my sick and elderly parents. I pay around £100 return – slightly more than it costs to fly from Stansted on Ryanair. Should I not visit my parents to placate a bunch of self-righteous white people with placards who think they represent the BME community?

And that’s one of the inherent flaws in the whole social justice / politically correct movement. Because the “social currency” within this tribe of people is intimately connected with how much one is able to play the victim card and speak from a position of being “oppressed”, competitive victimhood is rife. In order to feel good about themselves, cult members must continually assert their own vulnerability at the hands of those with more “privilege”, while showing very public solidarity and deference to those higher in the hierarchy of oppression.

Thus we have seen young social justice warriors in Britain try to take down even progressive champions like Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell for daring to stand up for the free speech of those who question the new orthodoxy on transgender theory.

Peter Tatchell – a tireless warrior against discrimination in all its forms – found himself in the crosshairs of some jumped-up young student union activist who saw the opportunity to aggrandise herself by publicly accusing him of heresy. Why? Because Fran Cowling, LGBT+ Officer of the National Union of Students, saw the opportunity to burnish her own Tolerance Credentials by shrieking that Peter Tatchell holds such intolerable and dangerous views that she could not possibly share a stage with him. Her goal: to make her peers think “Wow! Fran Cowling is so pure and virtuous that even Peter Tatchell, with all his many accomplishments, looks like dirt next to her”.

This kind of thing happens all the time. Just as perverse incentives lead politicians to over-promise and bankers to take undue risks, in the social justice community – already a demographic teeming with many of the most insufferable people in the country – the fact that victimhood equals social status is encouraging people to exalt in their vulnerability, exaggerate it wherever possible and see everything through the distorted lens of race, gender and sexuality.

And that is how, in a sick culture full of people who are encouraged to make exaggerated claims of victimhood – together their sanctimonious “allies” – it came to pass that London City Airport was shut down this week because of the past actions of allegedly trigger-happy cops in America.

Globalisation no longer simply means that the components in your iPhone come from all over the world – going forward we can expect to be picketed, lobbied, harassed, delayed and otherwise inconvenienced thanks to disputes which originated thousands of miles away in other countries – especially if those disputes have their roots in the toxic sludge of identity politics.

Welcome to the future.

 

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Top Image: Guardian, Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

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The Cult Of Social Justice: Many Students Do Not Want To Be Coddled, But Universities Give Them No Choice

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

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Would you rather your child went to a university which promotes rigorous debate and the search for truth, or a coddling daycare centre which seeks to shelter young adults from contradictory opinions and unpleasant facts while enthusiastically validating their every life choice?

In this short, entertaining lecture delivered to American high school seniors preparing for college, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (and co-author of “The Coddling Of The American Mind“) switches between characters to portray two different university recruitment speakers, one representing Strengthen University and the other attempting to attract students to Coddle University.

Strengthen U. is described in these terms:

We are kind of a cult. We worship truth – this is our sacred value. We will throw anything overboard if it conflicts with this sacred value. In fact, the one act of sacrilege in our school is dishonesty.

Our motto actually comes more recently, from Thomas Jefferson: “For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

[..] So at Strengthen University, we offer hard classes. Everybody doesn’t get an A. You might even get some Ds, you might even fail a course. At Strengthen, we will not do anything to bolster your self esteem. We will teach you skills, we will give you opportunities to succeed, and if you do, you will feel very proud of yourself, you will deserve your self esteem. But we will not build it for you.

We will give you no safe spaces. We do not buy Play Doh and put it in safe spaces for students who feel “threatened”. We will never give you a trigger warning. When you are in a course, if the professor assigns a book we expect that you will not be destroyed by reading the book. If it has ideas you don’t like, we hope you’ll object.

At Strengthen, our sacred value is truth. And what that means is that we are very vigilant – that we never allow a climate in which our students feel they are walking on eggshells. If everybody is afraid of saying something, afraid that if they open their mouth and say what they think they’ll get pulled over by PC Principal [..] that is just death for free inquiry. So we will not allow that to happen.

So here’s the most dangerous thing you need to know about Strengthen University. Adults will not get involved in your relationships. Now think about this: what are you gonna do if somebody insults you? What are you gonna do if somebody uses a racial slur? What are you going to do if someone uses the N-word?

Now, for thousands of years – up until the 1990s – students dealt with this on their own. They might fight back, they might shame the person, they might talk to the person. Since the 1990s there have been speech codes that give adults authority to punish people who commit hate crimes or who use hate speech. What I’m telling you is that we are currently fighting the Department of Education on this, and we expect to win [..] and we expect that we will be legally allowed to stay out of your relationships. We expect you to handle it yourself.

While Coddle U. is pitched to the students in this way:

It’s a wonderful school, a very safe school, supportive school, I urge you to come. We were founded in 1965 based on the ideas of Herbert Marcuse, who was a German sociologist and political philosopher. He came to America – fleed the Nazis, did much of his work at Brandeis and many other schools.

At Coddle, our sacred value is Inclusion. We create a safe, welcoming space for all students. Any colour, any gender, any gender identity, whatever it is, we want to include you. Our sacrilege – the worst thing you can do at Coddle – is blame victims. We will not allow this, that is a violation of our sacred value. We don’t want anyone to feel excluded.

We have very good justification for this policy because the works of our founder, Dr. Marcuse. He wrote this wonderful essay in 1965, it was published in a book “A Critique of Pure Tolerance”, in which Marcuse explained why it is that things should not be tolerated if they impede “the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery”. Of course that’s our goal – don’t we all want the world to be free of fear and misery? So if certain kinds of actions and speech impede the creation of that world, why should we tolerate them?

[..] He goes on to describe what he calls “liberating tolerance”, which would mean intolerance against movements from the Right – because they are intolerant – and toleration of movements from the Left. We will make space for any movement from the Left, but we will not allow movements from the Right at Coddle University.

[..] We are based on a very simple psychology which is that people are fragile. People are so easily hurt. Anything that upsets you could trigger trauma, repressed trauma, unrepressed trauma, trauma that you somehow put up there in the closet and forgot to take – there’s trauma all over your mind and your memory. And we don’t want to trigger your trauma. That could damage you.

And this is especially true for members of the six protected classes [women, African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ, differently abled, and Native Americans]. If you are a member of one of the six marginalised and oppressed groups you are especially vulnerable. You’ve been traumatised and oppressed your whole lives. Microaggression theory teaches us that when people repeatedly cut these little nicks, these little insults, these little exclusions, they don’t develop calluses, they bleed to death. And so we will not let you be cut while you are at Coddle. We will protect you. Now don’t try to do it yourself, that’s very dangerous. WE will protect YOU from aggression.

At Coddle University we offer access to therapists 24/7. Just dial 811 from any phone, or we have this new feature – just raise three fingers, go like this [he gestures] and we have sensors all around campus, go like this and a therapist will be airlifted right into you. We are a campus-wide safe space, there is no risk of exposure to non-progressive ideas. You will not find it in our curriculum, that would be triggering.

Watch the whole thing when you have a chance.

As amusing as this short video is, it is remarkable how little Jonathan Haidt had to exaggerate his pastiche of a modern liberal university campus. Save for the drones buzzing around, ready to winch fully-trained therapists down to soothe your emotional crisis at a moment’s notice, everything which Haidt talks about is already the norm on many campuses.

Non-progressive groups are banned or their speakers disinvited from campus.

The curriculum is mutilated in an attempt to replace the western canon with “marginalised voices” of dubious lasting value.

Those who do not go along with the progressive orthodoxy are subject to violence and intimidation.

However, there are just a few encouraging signs that we might finally be approaching Peak SJW, that the sheer intolerance of academic freedom and debate shown by the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics is becoming untenable within an academic environment. At the University of Missouri, scene of campus protests, sit-ins and hunger strikes in sympathy with the Black Lives Matter movement, new student enrolment is significantly down and financial crisis beckons. Turns out, many parents have qualms about sending their kids off to shrill social justice indoctrination factories when they could be getting a rigorous education elsewhere.

Jonathan Haidt’s presentation distils the issue neatly, and asks a group of young school-leavers what kind of institution they think will best serve their future interests – the overbearing, 24/7 watchfulness of Coddle U or the resilience and antifragility-building environment of Strengthen U.

It is a question which needs to be put to more school leavers as they make their decisions over which universities to apply to. Though the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics is hard at work subverting secondary/high schools, for now it remains the case that most school leavers will not yet have been indoctrinated into the cult. There is a narrow, precious window to reach these young people to emphasise the importance of academic freedom, and Jonathan Haidt’s lecture should be required watching for all school-leavers.

In fact, combining thought-provoking talks like this with better information as to the state of academic freedom at different institutions (as with Spiked‘s Free Speech University Rankings) could help many students make better, more informed choices about which institution they choose to spend the next three or four years of their lives.

And while a pervasive hostility to conservative ideas and contempt for free speech may matter less to most students than a lively social scene and the prospect of cheap beer, those students who value academic freedom and robust debate should be given the information to vote with their feet.

 

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Ian McEwan On Identity Politics

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

Ian McEwan

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Only this immensely privileged generation of students can afford the luxury of being Social Justice Warriors

In the course of an interesting interview with the Guardian’s Decca Aitkenhead promoting his new novel “Nutshell”, author Ian McEwan digresses on the subject of identity politics.

From the feature article:

“Where I get a little critical of it is where selfhood becomes all of your politics, in a world in which we are more troubled than at any point I can remember in my adult life.”

Do identity politics look like decadent narcissism to him? “It feels like that, coming to the university aspect of it. These children have grown up in an era of peace and plenty, and nothing much to worry about, so into that space comes this sort of resurgence that the campus politics is all about you, not about income inequality, nuclear weapons, climate change, all the other things you think students might address, the fate of your fellow humans, migrants drowning at sea. All of those things that might concern the young are lost to a wish for authority to bless them,” he says, “rather than to challenge authority.”

My emphasis in bold.

Doesn’t that just perfectly sum up the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics? A generation of students raised at a time of great material abundance, peace and prosperity arrive at university to find most of the great injustices of the past already slain by previous generations of campaigners. Bereft of purpose but still feeling the strong student urge to embrace a cause, they crank up their sensitivity settings to perceive any slight or inequity, however small or unintentional, to be evidence of the systematic oppression of one or more classes of prescribed victim groups.

McEwan’s last sentence is particularly profound – the idea that today’s young people no longer rail against authority in the way that student activists of old did, but rather make tear-stained appeals to authority figures to intercede on their behalf. This is the victimhood culture, clearly distinct from an honour culture (which would encourage the individual to stand up to minor sleights or “microaggressions” and confront the issue themselves) or a dignity culture (which would only sanction involving authorities in case of grave injury).

In contrast with honour cultures and dignity cultures, victimhood culture encourages the individual to exaggerate their own vulnerability and the “harm” which other have inflicted in them through careless words or gestures, and to seek redress from external authority figures not as a last resort but as the first and default option.

Sadly, our generation is primed for this culture. We millennials have often been raised from birth to believe that we are unique, precious and perfect snowflakes worthy of praise and validation from dawn til dusk, that sticks and stones may break our bones but mere words can kill us stone dead, and that there is no greater goal in life than self-actualisation – living life according to our every passing whim, based on an “identity” we create for ourselves which is declared by Social Justice Warriors to be above any questioning, reproach or criticism.

In fact, I’m certain I made the very same point as Ian McEwan on this blog not long ago:

This is an attempted coup by an utterly coddled and spoiled generation of students who know almost nothing of hardship, deprivation or prejudice compared to their predecessors even just a few decades ago.

These tinpot student dictators arrive on campus at the age of eighteen to find most of the really hard battles already won for them – ironically, by genuinely brave radicals like Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell. But these students must find some outlet for their youthful “idealism”, and so they latch on to the growing Politics of Identity, assimilating its intricacies and genuinely persuading themselves of its core message – that what matters is not the content of one’s character, but rather one’s arbitrary lived experience as a member of a defined and segregated subgroup.

And so rather than simply accepting that they have it rather good, even compared to their parents and grandparents, these student snowflakes go on the march. They find ever-smaller slights or “microaggressions” and protest them ever-more loudly and hysterically in an attempt to assert power over university administrations – many of which meekly submit without so much as putting up a fight.

Throw in the fact that their social hierarchy is based on a purist adherence to the Politics of Identity – with members gaining social currency for flaunting their own tolerant nature or identifying and persecuting anyone whose behaviour happens to violate one of the many invisible lines restricting our speech and behaviour – and you have a potent and deadly combination.

I have always been a fan of Ian McEwan‘s novels. Saturday was edgy, evocative and incredibly well researched, Solar was inventive and at times hilarious, On Chesil Beach made a four-hour flight from Cyprus to London so exquisitely awkward that I wanted to blow the emergency exit and jump out of the aircraft while The Children Act remains shamefully unread on my bookshelf, part of an ever-growing backlog.

But I also admire McEwan’s forthrightness and willingness to speak his mind rather than toe the establishment line on all social matters. McEwan recently caused a ripple of scandalised headlines when he questioned whether people should be free to choose their gender identity:

In a speech to the Royal Institution, the Booker prize-winning writer asked whether factors such as biology and social norms limited our ability to adopt a different gender.

“The self, like a consumer desirable, may be plucked from the shelves of a personal identity supermarket, a ready-to-wear little black number,” McEwan said. “For example, some men in full possession of a penis are now identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges, and the right to change in women’s dressing rooms.”

In a Q&A after his speech, one woman asked McEwan, 67, to clarify what she called his offensive remarks, the Times reported. “Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men,” he said. “But I know they enter a difficult world when they become transsexuals and they tell us they are women, they become women, but it’s interesting when you hear the conflict between feminists now and people in this group.

“It’s quite a bitter conflict. Spaces are put aside, women are wanting to put spaces aside like colleges or changing rooms, and find from another side a radical discussion coming their way saying men who want to feel like it can come in there too. I think it’s really difficult. And I think there is sweeping through American [university] campuses a kind of strange sense of victimhood and a sense of purposeful identities that we can’t actually all of us agree with. Of course sex and race are different, but they also have a biological basis. It makes a difference whether you have an X or Y chromosome.”

Cue the kind of response one has come to expect when anybody dares to give voice to such thoughtcrime.

His new novel, Nutshell, is narrated from the perspective of a foetus still in the womb, and is likely to raise all kinds of hackles from staunch free right campaigners and militant free choice protesters alike.

But on the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics, McEwan hits the nail on the head. How different the university campus must seem to him now than it was when he was a student. One wonders whether McEwan would even be allowed to set foot on the campus of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where he received his Masters in creative writing – the university has received a “red” rating in Spiked’s annual university free speech rankings.

Certainly McEwan, one of UEA’s most distinguished alumni, would never be welcome at the Students’ Union with its blanked restriction on “imagery or language which reinforces a gender binary”. Having expressed his own personal views on the subject of transgender issues, McEwan’s presence would clearly create an oppressive and highly unsafe space for the delicate flowers now following in his footsteps.

What’s really concerning is this: Ian McEwan is now something of a grandee in Britain’s cultural scene, yet even he was ultimately forced to apologise for airing his own personal views on transgenderism, effectively reversing his earlier statement under duress and confessing “biology is not always destiny” and that a person’s decision to change their gender must be “celebrated”.

If one of Britain’s most successful and respected authors cannot hold a contrary or agnostic position on hot-button social justice issues where conformity without exception is demanded and expected, what hope is there for new, up-and-coming artists or academics to question the new orthodoxy or admit to holding an unpopular opinion? Who will be rash enough to dynamite their own career before it has gotten off the ground  by admitting their heresy or reflecting it in their work?

And what future for the rich and vibrant British artistic and cultural scene when the Social Justice Warriors finally get their way and browbeat everybody in the land into thinking, saying and “celebrating” the same things?

 

Ian McEwan - Transgender comments

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Bottom Image: Guardian

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 40 – The University Of Chicago Fights Back

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

University of Missouri - Mizzou Hunger Strike

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Yes, some things – like academic freedom – are more important than the delicate feelings of new undergraduate students. Kudos to the University of Chicago for making their incoming freshman class aware of that hard fact up front.

In a refreshing contrast to the usual depressing tales of faculty capitulations to the whining, self-involved voices of the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics, the University of Chicago decided to make a bold stand for academic freedom.

From Heat Street:

The University of Chicago, one of America’s most prestigious and selective universities, is warning incoming students starting this fall not to expect safe spaces and a trigger-free existence during their four-year journey through academia.

In a letter sent to the class of 2020, university officials said one of the defining characteristics of the school was its unwavering commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression. Civility and mutual respect are vital to the campus culture, the letter states, but not at the expense of shielding students from unpopular opinions or ideas.

“Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own,” the letter states.

Expect the University of Chicago to be rewarded for their courage and integrity through greater application and enrolment numbers, as well as higher levels of achievement from the incoming undergraduate class as those delicate snowflakes too enraptured by their own vulnerability and completely unable to process dissenting opinions decide to study at other, more large-L liberal schools.

Already we have started to see a backlash against those institutions and university leaderships which are too quick to capitulate to petulant SJW demands to alter the curriculum, suppress free speech, disinvite conservative speakers and turn the campus from being a place of fearless debate to one of infantilising self-affirmation and victimhood.

The University of Missouri, roiled by campus protests last year in which marauding Social Justice Warriors forced the resignation of the university president for failing to treat black students like helpless victims, has seen its enrolment and profitability fall off a cliff. Good. If there is any justice, enrolment at Mizzou will dwindle until there is nothing left but tumbleweeds and the shrieking activists who drove out reason from a place of learning. And closer to home, the University of Oxford’s Oriel College had to frantically appease angry alumni donors who were ready to cancel their donations to the college in protest at Oriel’s limp capitulation to the Rhodes Must Fall movement.

In this very “Tales From The Safe Space” series, we have previously highlighted other examples of academic institutions standing up to their crybully students rather than rolling over and letting them seize control – the uncompromising example set by Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is particularly encouraging.

As Dr. Piper memorably warned his students:

If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.

At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don’t issue “trigger warnings” before altar calls.

Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up.

And flatly reminded them:

This is not a day care. This is a university.

A long-overdue reminder for some students.

And so the University of Chicago’s stand against the SJWs did not happen in isolation; nor was it possible without a rigorous examination of the negative trends in campus life and the various ways in which academic freedom is under attack. And that is precisely what they did – back in 2014 the university commissioned a report on the state of freedom of expression at universities nationwide and reaffirming their own commitment to the timeless value of free speech over and above any passing social fashion.

From the report (my emphasis in bold):

Because the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn. Except insofar as limitations on that freedom are necessary to the functioning of the University, the University of Chicago fully respects and supports the freedom of all members of the University community “to discuss any problem that presents itself.”

Of course, the ideas of different members of the University community will often and quite naturally conflict. But it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. Although the University greatly values civility, and although all members of the University community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.

[..] In a word, the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose. Indeed, fostering the ability of members of the University community to engage in such debate and deliberation in an effective and responsible manner is an essential part of the University’s educational mission.

And it is that last part which presents such a challenge to many of today’s students – young people today are not only arriving at university unable to tolerate let alone contest ideas which they oppose, they are outraged at the very suggestion that they should learn to cope in such a way.

And not entirely through their own fault, for mine is a snowflake generation raised to believe that we are special, unique, perfect and above any reproach which might damage our self-esteem. We are taught not that sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt us, but rather that sticks and stones may break our bones but words can kills us stone dead.

From early childhood education on upward we are taught that hurting someone’s feelings is just as bad – if not worse – than physically assaulting them. And all the while we are told to present our tear-stained faces to the relevant authorities the moment that somebody upsets us, so that they can receive their just punishment. We are not taught self sufficiency, resilience and the power of reason, but rather are encouraged to exalt in our weaknesses and wear our fragility like a badge of honour.

Little wonder, then, that when my generation reach university and fall under the intoxicating presence of the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics (student protests always appearing edgy and cool, but this incarnation representing a dangerous shift in attitude and tactics) so many of us immediately buy in to the idea that our personal worldview and beliefs are never to be questioned.

The University of Chicago alone cannot do anything about the way that people in the English-speaking Western world raise their children or educate them at a young age. They cannot challenge the toxic rise of baby-centred parenting, where parents and adults contort themselves to conform to the whims and sensitivities of their historically pampered children rather than promoting respect, deference and anti-fragility. The University of Chicago is but one academic institution facing a tidal wave of consequences from years of bad parenting, educational and child-rearing trends in society.

But what the University of Chicago can do – what they did do, admirably – is boldly restate who and what they are as an organisation, and what they stand for as an institute of higher education. They can boldly restate their commitment to the timeless values of academic freedom, and the fostering of personal and intellectual growth through robust debate and the free exchange of views. They can tell their incoming freshmen that no matter how accustomed they are to getting gold stars simply for participating, or demanding positive affirmation of even their most questionable decisions, the days of coddling will end the moment they set foot on campus.

This is what the University of Chicago did. This is what every university in America, Britain and the entire English-speaking world needs to do now if they are to avoid regressing into nothing more than adult daycare centres where the Play-Doh and puppy videos are piled high while challenging books burn in a pyre outside the library.

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Top Image: Sports Illustrated, Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images

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Owen Smith’s “Threat” To Theresa May Reveals The Arrogance Of The Left

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

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Anyone can choose their words poorly under pressure. But the modern Left have made a habit of jumping on the verbal slips of other people and ruthlessly, cynically exploiting them for political gain using the weaponised language of identity politics. So forgive us for being less than sympathetic when one of their own makes the same mistake

In the ongoing, unwatchable carnival of stupidity that is the second Labour leadership contest in the space of a year, this week’s news coverage has been dominated by challenger Owen Smith’s poor choice of words when he spoke about his desire to take the fight to Theresa May and the conservatives.

From the Guardian:

Labour leadership contender Owen Smith has been forced to apologise after saying he wanted to “smash” Theresa May “back on her heels”, during a major speech to outline his policy ideas.

Smith said he wanted to “smash austerity” and pledged a raft of new measures including scrapping the Department for Work and Pensions in favour of a Department for Labour, plans to make zero-hours contracts unlawful and to end the public sector pay freeze during his speech in South Yorkshire.

Those announcements, pitched to the party’s left, were overshadowed by criticism of his choice of language. Arguing that Labour should be going after the prime minister’s policies harder, he said: “It pained me that we didn’t have the strength and the power and the vitality to smash her back on her heels. These are our values, these are our people, this is our language that they are seeking to steal.”

Smith initially defended the comments as robust political language, but a spokesman said later the remarks were “off-script and, on reflection, it was an inappropriate choice of phrase and he apologises for using it”.

A spokesman for the campaign of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said: “We need to be careful of the language we use during this contest as many members, including many female Labour MPs, have said they feel intimidated by aggressive language.”

One can feel for Owen Smith. Clearly he has absolutely no desire to walk around the despatch box, cross the floor and physically punch Theresa May in the face, knocking her off her heels. In fact, the Left has a loud and angry tradition of wanting to “smash” anything and everything it happens to find objectionable, be it austerity, racism, sexism or Tory rule, without necessarily wanting to physically do so. It is fairly understandable how such language might therefore have crept in to a speech by this inexperienced leadership contender.

And yet. And yet…

One cannot help taking a small measure of satisfaction from watching somebody from the Party of Identity Politics – a vicious political clan who think nothing of smearing and ruining other peoples’ reputations with allegations of racism, sexism or any other “ism” they can think of when doing so offers them some slight political advantage – come a cropper by falling victim to the very same culture which their actions promoted.

Nobody seriously thinks that Owen smith wants to literally smash Theresa May and knock her off her feet, heels or no heels (in fact it was the heels reference that is actually the slightly more “sexist”, if one must call it that, rather than the threat of violence). But modern Leftist politicians like Owen Smith often end up self-detonating, and deservedly so, after stepping on one of the very same linguistic or cultural land mines that they love to lay across our language and political discourse. And if you make it unacceptable to say enough things, eventually you will trip over your own rules and find yourself convicted of accidentally infringing one of those very same edicts.

If any Tory MP spoke of smashing, say, Liz Kendall back in her heels, you can bet that Kendall would be touring the news studios that very evening, faux-earnestly warning of the violent misogynistic rhetoric being used by mainstream conservatives. But when one of their own does the same thing, as Comrade Smith did with his unfortunate remarks about Theresa May, nobody utters a peep. And while it certainly became a news story, Conservative MPs were not queuing up to make political capital out of the event, let alone those Labour MPs who fancy themselves champions of women.

Smith is too important to centrist Labour’s flimsy plot to prematurely terminate the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn to be brought down by his own violent rhetoric, you see. Besides, everyone knows that Labour are the good guys and that any racist, sexist or anti-Semitic remarks uttered by one of their own must simply be well-intentioned jokes taken out of context by people with sinister motives.

One would hope that Smith’s brush with political danger might force some kind of rethink within the party as to whether weaponising identity politics and making the English language a veritable landmine of things you can’t say / imagery you can’t adopt is really the best way to go. But of course there will be no such rethink. The next time a hapless Conservative MP talks about crushing the enemy or “targeting” Labour MPs, some weepy party apparatchik will be wheeled out to sob to the media about how terribly threatened and triggered they feel. Labour simply stands to gain too much from weaponised identity politics to consider giving it up, even as it poisons our politics and chills our public discourse.

But let us be magnanimous and take heart that Owen Smith does not seem to have suffered unduly from his amateurish speechwriting error. There are many reasons why Smith does not deserve to win the Labour leadership contest – starting with the fact that his 20-point policy pledge seems to be a condensed version of Labour’s disastrous 1983 “longest suicide note in history” manifesto, while the man himself seems to be nothing other than a younger version of Jeremy Corbyn minus the adoring fans.

We all know, those of us with brains and consciences, that Owen Smith does not harbour secret fantasies of karate kicking Theresa May across the floor of the House of Commons. It was an awkward turn of phrase, not a Freudian slip revealing deep-rooted male chauvinism.

And though Owen Smith’s party will never in a million years extend to us the same courtesy and benefit of the doubt, let’s stop talking about this pointless distraction and move on to matters of substance.

 

Owen Smith - Labour Party Leadership Coup

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Bottom Image: Independent

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