Drawing the Line, At Last

[Valin]

City Journal

A few university presidents have shown backbone and common sense against the hysterical demands of campus radicals.

Heather Mac Donald

April 22, 2019

To appreciate the significance of recent events at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts and at the University of Arizona in Tucson, it helps to recall briefly some landmark moments in the College Administrator Hall of Shame.

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On many other campuses, such tactics would have been greeted by either dead air from the administration or an expression of concern for the University of the Arts’ wounded “survivors.” President David Yager, however, denounced the repressive mindset spreading from American campuses to the culture at large. The suppression of speech “simply cannot be allowed to happen,” he wrote in a campus-wide email the day after the shutdown. “I firmly believe that limiting the range of voices in society erodes our democracy. Universities, moreover, are at the heart of the revolutionary notion of free expression: promoting the free exchange of ideas is part of the core reason for their existence. . . . Artists over the centuries have suffered censorship, and even persecution, for the expression of their beliefs through their work. My answer is simple: Not now, not at UArts.” While his email did not mention the protest or the fire alarm activation, which would have been ideal, the protesters understood that Yager was referring to them.

The university should identify the individual who pulled the fire alarm and subject him to discipline. Otherwise, students may conclude that there is no downside to disrupting speakers, even if they don’t wrest an apology from the administration for having allowed such pariahs onto their campus. Indeed, the Paglia opponents have now launched the usual self-engrossed Change.org petition demanding that Paglia be fired and replaced with a “queer person of color.” Yager must also apologize for his “wildly ignorant and hypocritical letter,” and the administration must sit down with a group of “survivors” and trans students—a group that “must include students of color”—to discuss “how they can best be supported moving forward.”  (Judging by the photo of the anti-Paglia sit-in, however, the administration will be hard-pressed to come up with “students of color” to join the delegation desperately in need of support.) The petition ends with a stiff admonition: “UArts: you are disrespecting your students and putting them in danger. Do better.”

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The University of Arizona has gone one better than Yager. On March 19, two agents from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol were giving a presentation at a job-recruiting fair, having been invited by the undergraduate Criminal Justice Association. Protesters invaded the room and continuously screamed “murder patrol” and “murderers,” preventing students from listening. “We won’t stop until you get off our campus,” the protesters shouted, as they hounded the agents into their cars. In a sharp departure from the norm, the campus police have filed criminal-misdemeanor charges against the disruptors, for “threats and intimidation” and “interference with the peaceful conduct of an educational institution.” And the university president, Robert Robbins, after issuing a bland statement about “ensuring safety” for students and respecting others’ right to speech, followed up with a far more explicit denunciation. The “incident with the Border Patrol officers” was a “dramatic departure from our expectations of respectful behavior and support for free speech on this campus,” Robbins wrote. “Student protest is protected by our support for free speech, but disruption is not.” The administration was reviewing potential violations of student and employee codes of conduct, he said. Robbins’s turnaround followed criticism from the National Border Patrol Council and Judicial Watch, but as Stanley Kurtz has observed, the important thing is that the university is now pursuing sanctions, regardless of the impetus.

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