Insane Grievance Politics

Nowhere in the world is diversity more protected, more honored, and more encouraged than on the campus of an American university. Students of every color are coddled with "safe spaces," protected from ideas that they find abhorrent, allowed to scream hysterically about "white privilege", provided with the ability to take meaningless "courses" (often incorporating revisionist views of the world and of history) that lead to meaningless college degrees, allowed to silence free speech and debate, and otherwise act as an intolerant mob. Whether a real or imagined slight is tied to racism, gender identity, feminism, or any of the many, many victimization categories that the Left has created, student activists preen in their near totalitarian control of the campus.

The titular adults at an American university, administrators and faculty, fawn in the face of this idiocy. Rather than defending free speech and honest intellectual inquiry, they cave, remaining mute as activists scream insults, make (literally) insane accusations, and otherwise disrupt campus life. In a way, the current campus atmosphere is reminiscent of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when when chaos reigned on college campuses.

Heather McDonald comments on all of this:

The pathological narcissism of American college students has found a potentially devastating new source of power in the sports-industrial complex. University of Missouri president Timothy Wolfe resigned Monday morning in the face of a threatened boycott by black football players of an upcoming game. Wolfe’s alleged sin was an insufficient appreciation for the “systematic oppression” experienced by students of color at the university. Campus agitators also alleged that racial slurs had been directed at black students and feces had been smeared in the shape of a swastika in a dormitory.

The university’s board of overseers had convened in emergency session to discuss the football boycott; Wolfe resigned before meeting with them, issuing the standard mea culpa: “I take full responsibility for this frustration, and I take full responsibility for the inaction that has occurred.” According to the New York Times, the university could have lost more than $1 million had it forfeited its football game with Brigham Young University on Saturday. A group called “Concerned Faculty” had walked off the job in solidarity with the student activists and was calling on other faculty to join them.

There is no evidence that the University of Missouri denies equal opportunity to its black students; those black students, like every other student on campus, are surrounded by lavish educational resources, available to them for the asking on a color-blind basis. The university’s faculty and administrators are surely among the most prejudice-free, well-meaning group of adults in human history. Thousands of Chinese students would undoubtedly do anything for the chance to be “systemically oppressed” by the University of Missouri’s stupendous laboratories and research funding.

But Missouri’s political class has embraced the patent delusion that the university is rife with racism. Governor Jay Nixon called on college officials to “ensure the University of Missouri is a place where all students can pursue their dreams in an environment of respect, tolerance and inclusion.” In truth, the only barrier to such pursuit is a student’s own lack of academic preparedness.

One can only wonder what will happen when the student activists at Missou or Yale or any of hundreds of other colleges and universities leave the cocoon of their college campus and go out into the real world, where 'safe places' are few and far between, where (at least so far) people are more than willing to measure accomplishment at face value, where results, not intent still matter.

Then again, if the Democratic party continues to grow Big Intrusive Government (BIG), there may be a place for all of the campus activists. After all, BIG is a place where phony safe places are created, where a fabricated reality is promoted regularly,  where accomplishment matters little, and where intent is far more important than results.

Come to think of it, maybe a B.S. in Activism with an minor in Insane Grievance Politics might be the best path for "success" in the mid-21st century