Posted on 11/25/2017 11:19:51 PM PST by DeweyCA
Bret Weinstein is the former Evergreen State College biology professor who became the focus of a social justice witch hunt on campus earlier this year. Weinstein and his wife later sued for several million dollars but agreed to a settlement for $500,000 in exchange for leaving the school. All that to say, Weinstein is the voice of experience when it comes to the mob of social justice warriors on campus.
In this brief interview recorded late last month, Weinstein argues several interesting points. First, he believes the social justice warriors are winning their battle to control campuses. “I don’t think that we can say that the entire educational apparatus is a failure,” Weinstein said. He continued, “But we can say that the part of the apparatus that is a failure is taking over more and more territory.
“The number of classes in a university that are immune to this extremely broken way of thinking is ever smaller. And I think we can even see from here the day in which it will be no classes that are immune because every class is going to be subject to some set of rules that is built around this very naive notion of privilege and white supremacy and all of that. So that day is coming.”
This all goes back to one of the reasons Weinstein became a pariah among the far left on his former campus. He objected to a new “equity” platform introduced at the college which would have made social equity a factor in all future hiring decisions. He argued at the time that professors teaching in STEM fields should be hired based on academic qualifications without regard to social justice concerns. And as we all know, he was eventually branded a racist and students demanded he resign.
“If there’s one thing that people fail to appreciate about the social justice movement where it interfaces with the academy is that just because what is being said is crazy to the point of absurdity does not mean that the strategic plan is absurd,” Weinstein said. He added, “The strategic plan is far more effective than you would expect based on the sophistication of the ideas that are being promulgated.”
This is an interesting distinction. As I’ve pointed out before when writing about this topic, the goal of this movement is often vague, the leadership difficult to pin down. What is always clear however is the demand for attention and dominance. When SJW’s shut down a conservative speaker (aka no platforming) the talking points are all about students safety and their feelings, etc. But the real goal is dominance, i.e. to claim ownership of the space and with that ownership the right to exclude the unwanted.
Going back to the Occupy movement, one of the popular chants was “Whose streets? Our streets!” Today that has been replaced with “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” and of course “Shut it down.” In both cases, the goal is dominance and exclusion.
In August I wrote about a professor at Evergreen State College who, in the midst of the student takeover there, had students surround her and demand to know where she was going. When she tried to talk to them, they refused to engage in a conversation. “The only thing which they would accept was my obedience,” she later wrote of the experience. At the same exact time, white students were being told they were not allowed to speak at a student meeting in the campus library because they were white. Again, the goals are dominance and exclusion.
As to how the SJW movement has become so powerful on campus, Weinstein has an interesting theory about that as well. He suggests the left’s talking points have undergone 25 years of evolution.
“Heather and I encountered the post-modern stuff in 1992 at the University of California Santa Cruz,” Weinstein said. He went on to say, “Those ideas have been morphing and bubbling through a quadrant of the university system since that point and of course a bit before.
“Each cohort [of students] that has encountered them has wielded them in some circumstances. And those arguments that were hard to defeat persisted and those arguments that were easy to defeat have perished. Which means that the new crop of students shows up and they’re handed this toolkit of argument that are incredibly hard to confront, not because they’re true but because of the way that they’re structured.
“Each of these definitions can’t be pinned down. You can’t figure out what they mean be equity. On the other hand, if you start asking questions about equity you’re going to run afoul of a booby-trap that’s gonna have you portrayed as a white supremacist.”
At this point, Benjamin Boyce who is conducting the interview interjects, “It’s brilliant!” Weinstein agrees, “It’s brilliant, but it isn’t brilliant on the basis that those who are wielding it are brilliant. It’s brilliant on the basis that selection has weeded out those parts that didn’t work.”
I think he’s got a point. Going back to what I was saying about the call for dominance and exclusion, I think the “booby-trap” is another step that helps complete the SJW’s vicious arguments cycle.
1. Demand for dominance/compliance (because of lack of safety/perceived threat). 2. Dominance exercised through the exclusion of perceived threat. 3. Non-compliance/questions trigger accusations, i.e. racism, sexism, etc. (the booby-trap). 4. Accusations become proof of lack of safety/threat. 5. Return to step 1 and repeat.
This is the core of the SJW movement. It will continue to spread because few people in college leadership positions are willing or able to stand up to the mob.
In fact, the arguments are easily done away with, but it means being politically incorrect to a great extreme.
I have easily sorted out huge numbers of SJWs across the web by simply beginning every conversation by attacking the “myth of black victimization,” with a strong focus on black crime, and how it compares to Hispanic crime, Asian crime, etc etc., and also the extreme levels of black on white crime, and how all of this is out of proportion with their population numbers by an extreme degree. Emphasis should be made on explicit examples, such as grannies getting gang raped by gangs, or people being burned alive. These are objective facts which they can’t deny.
In their attempts to explain them, the SJW can take you for a wild ride. I had one a few weeks ago essentially make the point that the reason why blacks have such an extreme crime rate, score low on school tests, and in general are utterly dysfunctional, but Hispanics and other non-whites are not, despite all living in an oppressive anti-minority system, is because they’ve been oppressed so badly since the days of slavery that dysfunction is practically transmitted in the genes!
The real key to defeating them is basically moving to a point psychologically where you don’t care how they freak out or call you racist. You ignore the statements and obscene, even violent behavior, and when you force them to deal with the facts outside of their abstract theories, you win the argument and gain support from normal people.
I always point out that black community health measurements, as measured by the government, were nearly on par with whites until about 1960. I also point out that the freed slaves and their children built vibrant communities and institutions, largely by their own hand.
the goal is dominance and exclusion.
1. Demand for dominance/compliance (because of lack of safety/perceived threat). 2. Dominance exercised through the exclusion of perceived threat. 3. Non-compliance/questions trigger accusations, i.e. racism, sexism, etc. (the booby-trap). 4. Accusations become proof of lack of safety/threat. 5. Return to step 1 and repeat.
This is the core of the SJW movement.
This “social justice” mentality is much more widespread than people outside of the academy realize. They are coming closer to complete censorship. Their totalitarian authoritarian impulses are now being unleashed as they sense that they can finally achieve their goal of total domination of the universities.
At this point, pretty much all arguments with these folks are futile.
It would be like arguing with the Brownshirts.
More like the Maoists.
>irst, he believes the social justice warriors are winning their battle to control campuses.
Since the SJWs are the school administration, it’s really not a hard victory to achieve. The kids are sheep, the people directing the sheep is the admin and teaching staff.
Hey, what’s the dif?
You could reason somewhat with the brownshirts. The Germans didn’t want their culture destroyed, just socialism. They still valued their educational institutions or not.
Mao wanted China completely ignorant of its 5,000 year history and wanted all of it gone, if possible.
I dont know how that or not got at the end of my explanation of the brown shirts. It shoud not be there.
It appears as though there is a “red Guards” movement afoot on some campuses. Will we see liberal professors paraded through streets wearing dunce caps and confessing their political sins for the radicals? Time will tell.
The keys are hiring and tenure. The activists define their disciplines in terms of their agenda and build the groupthink right into the position descriptions, course descriptions and stated academic qualifications for open positions. The goal is to make every department a closed shop.
Lenin was wrong. We don’t sell them the rope. We give it to them in the form of taxpayer subsidies of so-called “higher education.”
Ground zero bought and paid for by soros and the globalists. Remember hearing an interview with one of their high ranking leaders explaining how their plans are working and their projections
Higher education has become a racket. It no longer educates, it only indoctrinated.
It appears that Hillsdale College and Liberty University are the only remaining institutions of higher education.
It is time to move engineering education to trade schools. A SJW engineer is a worthless degree.
Perhaps true “liberal arts” can become a subordinate part of a good trade school. But, “liberal arts” means the classics, true history and English. Psychology, Sociology and the rest of that drivel can be left in the ruins of the old colleges.
I’m of the opinion that every occupation be credited through professional organizations and the only thing post secondary institutions do is teach. Leave it to the professional colleges to recommend universities.
The only way to win this one is to remove the power of college degrees. We should move to a system of certifications, like computer certifications, such as MSCE, in every field.
Bkmk
Schools, such as Evergreen State College, have become “too stupid to survive”. It would be in their own interest to announce that no individual or group can prevent another person or group from exercising their 1st Amendment right of expression. To do so should result in immediate expulsion from the school.
Instead, the administrators of these schools are cowards, The SJWs know it, and freely push them around creating their own mini-version of the French Revolution Reign of Terror.
The result of allowing this uncivilized cancer to grow in these schools is declining enrollment and eventual financial failure and loss of accreditation. Ask University of Missouri.
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