BY JOHN K. WILSON
Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times today jumps up on his high horse to inform us all that the real problem in America today is not that a bigoted, lying, idiotic right-wing conspiracy nut will soon be president; no, the real problem is that liberals are outraged about it and need to shut up: “I fear that liberal outrage at Trump’s presidency will exacerbate the problem of liberal echo chambers, by creating a more hostile environment for conservatives and evangelicals.”
From the echo chamber of the New York Times op-ed pages, Kristof sternly informs us that the millions of students and faculty are too scared to encounter ideas they don’t like. “To be fully educated, students should encounter not only Plato, but also Republicans.” Oh, what condescending crap that is. College students (and faculty) encounter a lot more Republicans than Nicholas Kristof does.
Kristof is right to argue that conservatives should not face discrimination in campus hiring. But he offers us nothing but false equivalences to attack leftists for the crimes of conservatives: “We’re seeing an uptick in hate crimes in society tied to Trump’s rise, and the last thing we need on campuses is reciprocal illiberalism, this time led by liberals.” It’s a bizarre kind of analysis: Muslims are under attack, so we should stop criticizing conservatives.
This kind of false equivalency is evidence in another New York Times article embracing “safe spaces” for conservatives at colleges in the wake of attacks on Muslims at the University of Michigan.
The University of Michigan Division of Public Safety and Security reported that “a student was approached by an unknown man, who demanded she remove her hijab or he would set her on fire with a lighter. She complied and left the area.” In another police report, another student “was approached by two men, who yelled at her about being in America, made reference to religion and then pushed her down a hill.”
So a New York Times article on conservative students demanding “safe spaces” included this remarkable line about the University of Michigan: “Bias incidents on both sides have been reported. A student walking near campus was threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab. Other students were accused of being racist for supporting Mr. Trump….”
Welcome to the shrine of false equivalency, where a threat to light you on the fire is the same as being called a racist.
To be fair to the New York Times, the fault here also belongs to University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel, who engaged in exactly this kind of false equivalency in a letter to campus:
In the days since last Tuesday’s election, people in our community have experienced hateful attacks, both on an individual level and as members of groups. As leaders of our campus, we want to speak out against these behaviors and express our hopes for moving forward.
We saw a threatening message painted on the rock near our campus; a student walking near campus was threatened with being lighted on fire because she wore a hijab; another student left his apartment to go to class and found a swastika with a message telling him to go home. Some students have also been shouted at and accused of being racist because of their political views.
No, being called a racist is not a bias incident. It is not a hateful attack. It is not the same as a threat to be burned to death. It is not the same as a swastika telling someone to go home.
Amanda Deletka, political director of the College Republicans at the University of Michigan, accused the University of Michigan president of catering to liberals and suggesting “their ideology was superior to the ideology of their peers” because he wrote a letter to the community after the election listing various campus events, including a student-organized vigil, even though the letter announced “We are at our best when we come together to engage respectfully across our ideological differences; to support ALL who feel marginalized, threatened or unwelcome.”
According to her, “When I received President Schlissel’s email endorsing the vigil, I was appalled.” She wrote in an open letter and petition, “all I can currently focus on is the hate the University of Michigan is fostering.” No, you’re the one who fostered the hate. The University of Michigan is just fostering debate, or at least it was until the president sent out a warning that talking about racism might be a hate crime.
One of the most bizarre parts of the University of Michigan student newspaper story on the topic is this line: “LSA junior Molly Grant wrote that she has received more verbal attacks and insults this past week than she has in her entire life for her Republican viewpoints, and that she fears for her life walking into her classroom and sharing her viewpoints.”
Fears for her life? The problem here isn’t the so-called “snowflakes” of the left crying out about a horrifying president. It’s the snowflakes of the right who think they’re entitled to vote for a bigot and get applauded for it.
In a free university in a free society, people will sometimes hear ideas they don’t like. But it’s the job of a newspaper and a university to tell the honest truth, even if it hurts the feelings of powerful people. The message of the University of Michigan and the New York Times, that liberals need to shut up about the election to protect the feelings of conservatives, is a fundamental violation of that mission to be a free and open society where people seek and speak the truth.
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Intolerance in certain aspects of American life is a sad reality. Some seem to forget that at one time under the Constitution, People of Color were 3/5ths of a person, that during World War II, Americans of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and interned in Concentration Camps, not for national security reasons, but based on racial bigotry. Currently, misogyny and bias against Muslims have risen, but not necessarily as a result of the result of the recent election. Intolerance can be the product of events external to college campuses, from the World Trade Center attack to campaigns against a woman’s right to make her own reproductive rights decisions.
I do not fault Nicholas Krystoff here, but recognize his acknowledgement of hypocrisy, particularly in some liberal circles. Certainly, intolerance is quite real and will upset many, yet it can originate in the left as well as the right. I recall having one professor, whom I happened to agree with ideologically, but who was so rigid in his thinking that he put off other students. Had I been a conservative at that time of life, I would have likely rebelled against him. Yet on today’s campuses, intolerance against “the other” prevails. Pro-Israel and Jewish students face provocations from anti-Semitic organizations, such as “Students for Justice in Palestine,” which regularly disrupts pro-Israel events, explicitly rejects a negotiated solution to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, favoring perpetual war against Israel, irrespective of how many Palestinians and Israelis die in protracted conflict. SJP chants “From the River to the sea, Palestine will be Free,” ignoring the indigenous nature of the Jewish people of Israel. These provocations have been pervasive, particularly in the University of California System.
The issues of “Safe Spaces” and “Trigger Warnings,” arising more recently, leaves one questioning whether American students are so intellectually weak and overly sensitive that they cannot tolerate the “N-Word” in literature, such as in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” where it occurs with regularity, reflecting the era in which it was written. Yet, many People of Color adopt it to mitigate its sting, just as the LBGTQ community has adopted the word “Queer,” or old Hippies, like myself, adopted the word “Freak.” In my college days in the early 1970’s, the major controversies were the Vietnam War (I am an anti-war veteran of that quagmire!) and the Impeachment of Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate cover-up. In that era, there was little if any race-baiting, misogyny, or expressions of homophobia, the primary expressions of intolerance of that era.
Yes, we need to call out and expose all forms of bigotry, whether Islamophobia, Homophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, misogyny and all other forms based on national origin, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, sexual identification (Transgendered Persons) and any other basis. But we must also be tolerant of political and ideological differences, which do not promulgate intolerance of others. In my undergraduate majors of Political Science and Administration of Criminal Justice, I studied ideologies ranging from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” to Marx’s “Das Kapital” and come to understand many of the primary ideological origins of modern bigotry. I’ve also seen it in our Armed Forces of that era, in their treatment of Vietnamese civilians, in which General William Westmoreland opined that “Asian lives were cheap.” I also saw bigotry in the treatment of People of Color and Hispanics in our courts as an Assistant Public Defender. It is too soon to condemn those who voted for and otherwise supported Donald Trump and other conservative causes. We need to watch what they do and condemn acts of bigotry as they arise, rather than condemn them for what they think. There are no “Thought Police” in this country, as there are in some other nations, and we must be as tolerant of other individuals as we want them to be toward us as individuals.
Let me note that Donald Trump and many conservatives do not forget Japanese internment camps during World War II, but cite it as justification for discrimination against Muslims. And blacks were not considered 3/5ths of a person by the Founders, they were not considered fully human at all (hence, slavery), and the 3/5ths figure was simply a method for the South to increase the political influence of white voters.
As for the Thought Police, we see troubling indications that Trump’s administration might do this to some degree. However, it’s important to note that criticizing what people believe is not the Thought Police, but the essence of a free society. Obviously we all condemn acts of bigotry, but I believe it is absolutely right to condemn white supremacists for what they think. Tolerance does not mean that we must refuse to criticize bigotry, but that we do not use the power of government or force to punish those we believe to be bigots.
Kristoff says, “To be fully educated, students should encounter not only Plato, but also Republicans.” That should include Abraham Lincoln and other Republicans from that period. As documented by John Nichols in “The S-Word”, Lincoln not only worked for freedom and equality and preservation of the union, but believed strongly in the superiority of labor over capital. He could justifiably be called a socialist. It would be interesting to study how the party of “Honest Abe” evolved into the party of “Dishonest Don”.
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2016/12/police_say_no_evidence_muslim.html
It’s a link to the story in which police state the ‘set your hijab on fire’ story was a hoax. False report.