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.
And as a result American goes deeper and deeper into the cesspool of disaster.
“........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....”......
Seems it all started back when “welfare” first began.
They are going to need assistance. At 25 yards, we won't get splashed...
Whites in South Africa are being murdered. It’s only a matter of time before it is sanctioned here.
US colleges and universities are NFLing themselves.
“At this point, pretty much all arguments with these folks are futile.”
You’re correct. I simply call brainless leftists Nazis and watch their heads explode. Any debating points they may have made get completely blown up as they shriek that they’re not Nazis. It takes the conversation into the gutter where you’ll eventually be granted permission to smash them in the mouth.
The big question is: Why are the red state legislatures NOT cracking down on this insanity?
1) Universities are in a grotesque financial bubble that is going to burst. States need to stop inflating this bubble with their funding.
2) Vast number of graduates are being impoverished, their lives put on hold for decades because of usurious student loans, often for worthless degrees. This means they must back burner marriage, family, home ownership, and the rest of their future. States need to PROHIBIT such loans before they destroy society.
3) Universities are offering increasing numbers of “nonsense” degrees with ZERO potential for careers after graduation. And states are subsidizing these crap degrees instead of prohibiting taxpayer expenditures to support them and their parasitical academic proponents.
4) Universities are *mandating* expensive crap courses that waste student time and money, often delaying their graduation by a year or more. Many of these courses are just for political indoctrination, propaganda, and frivolous and stupid subjects of no inherent or even potential value. Stop funding these crap courses.
5) Enormous numbers of academics are not even teaching the courses they were hired to teach, or are diluting them so much with political soap boxing, bigotry, hatred and political correctness that the purpose of these courses are lost in the surfeit of nonsense. Stop paying them to do this.
6) The very purpose of state subsidies to “higher” education is so that graduates can make more money than can high school graduates. If this isn’t happening, than the basic purpose of these subsidies has FAILED. Compare degrees with job placements IN THAT FIELD within six months after graduation. If a degree results in ZERO placements several years in a row, it should NO LONGER BE OFFERED by universities in that state.
If students still want crap degrees, they need to pay for them out of pocket, and even forbidden from using student loans to pay for them.
State legislature begin this process, and Republicans who ignore these terrible problems, or do not wish to make these changes, are FAILING their state and its future.
It is like arguing with Brownshirts. We are now at the beginning of the final stage of the revolution - censorship and violence. This reminds me of a story of an anti-Nazi intellectual who fled the Nazi regime early. He was arguing with a Nazi acquaintance and the exasperated Nazi finally pulled a pistol out of his holster, waved it in the air and said, “This does my arguing for me!” The intellectual realized he would not last long as an honest, intelligent person.
Expect the Democrats to push hard for gun control and to nationalize the police forces.
Bingo. They may dominate on the grounds of the College, but that and $5 will get them a coffee at Starbucks. Liberals screw up everything they touch.
“At this point, pretty much all arguments with these folks are futile.”
Without a visible aggrieved group, the SJW movement dies. What? You mean cops and white rednecks aren’t really gunning down innocent persons of color in the streets? But...but...the Koch brothers! Russians! Squirrel!
SJWs = 1966’s SWINE (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything) from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner.
Terrified College administration finally sells the college to the MAFIA.
When the Hippie front tooth attacks the Mafia enforcer’s brass knuckles still gives me a thrill.
This will kill the colleges. They will become irrelevant thought ghettos. The sane will stay away.
The presentation can be read in PDF form by clicking here. It's easy reading that outlines the mindset of social justice warrior librarians and includes a bibliography of writings in the field.
Erratum; I wrote “bibliographic” in the first line but meant to write “bibliographic instruction.”
Ping
Good article. Weinstein has got the SJWs pegged. He understands them like a pathologist understands a viral strain. In fact, the way the SJW arguments have evolved through the generations to be highly effective (in a campus environment anyways) really does bring to mind the virus analogy. The SJWs have figured out how to stymie the natural defenses and are now taking over the host.
I wonder if he’s thought up any counter strategies against them. I wonder how many other liberal professors see it like does. I wonder how many would have the gumption to take any action.
I also wonder if he’s made the connection that what he’s experienced is a natural end result of the liberal ideas he subscribes to. I wonder if he gets that the SJWs are his fellow travellers or if he has managed to “other” them in his mind.
It has. First, let us stop funding it. Trump was spot on when he called for colleges and universities guarantee student loans (at least in part) instead of the federal government.
Not enough money, in my opinion. There should have been punitive damages as well as a servance and costs.
"The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution."
Yes, it's just that simple, especially when there is a power imbalance and the faculty can put you out of the program when you are two credits from graduating. Just talk to them; they'll recognize your superior intellect and give in!
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