T
here is a crisis of cowardice on US college campuses. And it’s the adults — the college presidents and fellow administrators — who are failing their students.
As detailed by Heather Mac Donald of City Journal, college presidents grovel before students — aggressively bullying others and shutting down speakers — in the name of protecting the protesters’ safety. At the same time, Jewish students are subjected to intimidation and raucous demonstrations designed to maximize their discomfort on campus, according to Carly Pildis in Tablet.
Peter Salovey, president of Yale University, is an early contender for most craven. In 2015, Yale sociology professor and master of one of Yale’s undergraduate residential colleges Nicholas Christakis was surrounded by screaming students for two hours after his wife Erika penned a letter suggesting that college students should be old enough to pick their own Halloween costumes without guidance from college bureaucrats warning against “cultural appropriation.” One female student cursed at him and shouted, “You should not sleep at night! You are disgusting!” When Christakis demurred to the claim that free speech is a cover for campus violence against minorities, he was loudly informed, “It doesn’t matter whether you agree or not…. It’s not a debate.”
After a meeting with the protesting students, Salovey expressed his appreciation: “I have never been as simultaneously moved, challenged, and encouraged…. You have offered me the opportunity to listen and learn from you.” The female student who shouted “it’s not a debate” and another student tormentor were awarded at graduation that year an award for fostering better race relations at Yale.
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