The first thing that one needs to understand about the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) is that it exists in its own dimension of reality. It’s called “Planet UMass” for a reason. The second thing that one needs to understand is that much as federal law supersedes state law, university policy supersedes all laws, and the third thing to understand is that 2 + 2 equals whatever UMass wants it to at the time.
UMass is corrupt in a way that only an institution where no one is ever accountable for anything can be. It’s very much like the former Soviet Union, where things are actually run by a shadow government and where there are ideological values that can be neither questioned nor challenged.[1] First, it was “political correctness,” then it became “social justice” and now it is “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI)—it’s the same quasi-religious concepts to which one must give feality to be in the Student Affairs profession.[2]
I will never forget the 50-person departmental meeting that quickly became a shouting match between the persons of color and the gays and lesbians over who was more oppressed. It was something right out of the Jerry Springer Show, and part of me was wondering if we would have chairs flying through the air.
It was triggered by a series of assaults on undergraduate student workers—some were black, some were gay, some were neither—I knew them all personally because I was in charge of the judicial system, and I had put in more than a few hours of unpaid overtime trying to do something about this. And I took all of this rather personally because they were all basically decent kids who had been largely abandoned by the very people who were shouting at each other.
So I stood up and said, “These are interesting issues, but can we set them aside for a few minutes and agree that we aren’t going to allow our RAs to be used as punching bags? Any of them?”
“That we are all standing behind each and every one of them, and that we are not going to let this stuff—the assaults—be done to anyone, and particularly not to people whom we are sending out into harm’s way every night?”
No, we couldn’t.
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That said a lot to me—it told me that none of this was about “social justice” or even right and wrong—it was nothing more than the Kremlin power struggles that I had read about in my Soviet Studies classes. It was tribal politics, where your personal career would be advanced if your tribal group was elevated over the status of other tribal groups.
And the other thing I realized that day was that I was the only person in that room who was white and male and heterosexual. Absolutely everyone else was in one of the three protected categories; many were in more than one. And, not surprising, my job was not renewed the following fall.
Thirty years ago, UMass was somewhat of a unique purgatorial cesspool, but the people who were there then have now gone upward and outward throughout academia—they’ve infected every place else.[3] And they’re not going to go quietly into the night—truly eliminating DEI will likely be as tumultuous as the enrollment of James Meridith at Ole Miss, which wound up taking 31,000 federal troops.
That said, President Trump is not a traditional President; you must go back to Franklin Roosevelt or Andrew Jackson to see someone like him. But in complaining about his purported administrative overreach, the institutions show their hypocrisy—that it’s only overreach when Trump does it.
No one said anything when the Clinton Administration published—and quickly rescinded—some quite unconstitutional hate speech regulations without telling anyone that the photocopied pages of the Federal Register that were being widely circulated throughout academia didn’t officially exist.
No one said anything when Clinton’s Office of Civil Rights then removed the OCR’s hate speech regulations from the Federal Register, where “Congressional aides could find them,” and instead shifted them to the Field Manuals of the Regional OCR Offices—put them in books that most people didn’t even know existed and were in distant cities as well[4].
No one said anything when the Obama Administration imposed the infamous “preponderance” standard and otherwise made it virtually impossible for a male student falsely accused of rape to sucessfully defend himself in the campus kangaroo courts. Forget the right to confront ones accuser, accused male students were not even told who was accusing them of rape—and had to somehow defend themselves about accusations they didn’t even know about. Many other people objected, but no one inside the higher ed establishment condemned eliminating every established principle of basic fairness.
No one said anything when the Obama Administration then proceded to create the Behavioral Intervention Teams (BITs), which are secretive star chambers where students, and now faculty, are tried and sentenced in absentia.
And no one said anything when Biden appointed Catherine Lhamon as Assistant ED Secretary for Civil Rights. A lot of other people objected—she was only approved 51-50 when Vice President Harris broke the tie—but no one in the higher ed establishment said a word.
But now it’s a hysterical “Orange Man BAAAAADDDD!”
And I think the biggest hypocrite of all is B. Hussain Obama.
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Yes, in a recent speech at Hamilton College, former President Obama encouraged institutions to openly defy Trump’s orders. “We’ll stand up for what we believe in,” Obama said, “and we’ll pay our researchers for a while out of that endowment, and we’ll give up the extra wing or the fancy gymnasium—that we can delay that for a couple of years because academic freedom might be a little more important.”
Would this be the same academic freedom he and Biden stomped on for 12 years?
Above and beyond the financial irresponsibility of presuming that the Democrats will win in 2028, it took these institutes of higher education 50 years or more to build up to their current level of federal largess–who says that they will instantly return in the same amounts even if the Democrats do win in 2028?
We can argue if Trump is right or not, but he’s referencing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which has civil and criminal penalties of its own. So, if federal funds are pulled for violating this law, what’s to prevent Attorney General Bondi from also criminally prosecuting college administrators? Sure, it’s never been done before, but we also never had the FBI going through a former First Lady’s underwear drawer, either.
And you have to admit that a dozen FBI agents arresting the university president in the midst of a faculty senate meeting would make great theater.
But is this the same academic freedom that Clinton, Obama, and Biden stomped on for 20 years?
[1] See Silverglate and Kors, Shadow University for a better development of this concept.
[2] Technically, everything outside the classroom—my field was housing.
[3] The National Association of Scholars did a report on it.
[4] I was explicitly told this in a phone conversation with an ED bureaucrat in DC circa 1996. I didn’t cite it, and my research has been destroyed, so I don’t know his name, but he identified himself as the person who dealt with “hate speech” at ED.
Image: “International daily newspaper from Thursday 5th November 2020 – Le Monde (France) & The New York Times (USA) – After the election report. Made with analog vintage lens, Leica APO Macro Elmarit-R 2.8 100mm (Year: 1993)” by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Thank you for your comment. You raise three different issues which I will attempt to address in turn.
First, you are correct that Obama is currently advocating that people not shout down those with whom they disagree — he said some of the same things in his address at Hamilton College. I didn’t quote him on that because that wasn’t what I was writing about, but yes he is saying this. Now, but a decade ago, ummm…
In fairness, not as much was known about Catherine Lhamon when Obama appointed her as the head of OCR in 2013, and she wasn’t Russlynn Ali. She wound up being worse, but that wasn’t known at the time. And while I had a pretty good idea what the Behavioral Intervention Teams would become because I knew how the Soviets abused psychiatry to silence dissidents, I’m not sure how widely that was known at the time. (Or even now.)
But I don’t remember Obama giving a speech like this while he was President.
Second, as to what I was writing about — I’ve been in this field for forty years and I’ve *always* known that you have to jump through the Fed’s hoops if you want to continue to receive the Fed’s money. Russlynn Ali and Catherine Lhamon were a bit, umm, active in making that point although it has always been that way since the 1965 Higher Ed Act was passed. And the ability to make people jump through hoops was upheld by the US Supreme Court in the case of _South Dakota v. Dole_ — if you don’t have a 21 year old drinking age, you don’t get Federal highway funds.
Obama is free to say whatever he likes about defying the Federal government he once led, but I say he is a hypocrite for doing so — he was, after all, at least the nominal supervisor of Ali and Lhamon. The Trump Administration isn’t doing anything his didn’t do.
Third, as to Nicholas De Genova, I will go with what Daniel Pipes wrote at the time: Something has gone terribly wrong at Columbia. See: https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/has-something-gone-terribly-wrong-at-columbia-univ
As to advocating the deaths of American servicemen in time of war, I’d suggest looking at what Woodrow Wilson (who had been President of Princeton) did during WWI. Forget merely being fired, De Genova would be looking at twenty years in prison for his wish for “for a million Mogadishus.”
This was supposed to be a reply to Marc Domash — I don’t know how it wound up here.
As an aside, here is an article on the case of US v. Spirit of ’76. I’m not a fan of Woodrow Wilson but the issues of (a) limits on freedom of speech in wartime and (b) what constitutes wartime are legitimate questions to ask.
For example, many of us have heard the expression “loose lips sink ships” but not the context of the expression. During the initial days of WWII, there were German subs sinking cargo ships off the east coast and Japanese subs off the west coast doing likewise. (But for abysmally poor marksmanship, Japanese sub I-17 would also have done significant damage to a California oil refinery.)
It was pretty clear where these ships were going — the ones on the west coast were going to Hawaii, the ones on the tankers on the gulf coast were going to either New York or Boston, and the ones on the east coast were going to Halifax (Canada) where the convoys to England originated. (It was the tankers being sunk that created the gasoline shortage on the east cost that necessitated gasoline rationing.) And it was known how fast these ships could travel.
So if you knew when they would leave port, you could arrange for a sub to be out there waiting for them, and hence the “loose lips” (people gossiping about when ships would leave port) “sinking ships.”
I don’t have a definitive answer on the extent to which free speech should be limited for the war effort, but I do think that De Genova’s wish for “for a million Mogadishus” was beyond the pale.
While I agree with you that Democratic (and Republican–google Nicholas de Genova and the political pressure put on Columbia during Bush the Younger’s presidency) administrations have set the stage for the Trump interventions (and like everything else Trump does, it is chaotic and has a showman’s touch). But Obama has been supporting free speech on campus even during his presidency. It’s better to have a strong man argument than a straw man argument–things are bad enough without distorting history.
Here’s some evidence:
From https://www.newsweek.com/obama-be-tolerant-listen-let-your-opponents-speak-457966 (Commencement speech of May 7, 2016 at Howard):
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So don’t try to shut folks out. Don’t try to shut them down, no matter how much you might disagree with them. There’s been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view or disrupt a politician’s rally. Don’t do that—no matter how ridiculous or offensive you might find the things that come out of their mouths.
Because, as my grandmother used to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own ignorance. Let them talk. Let them talk. If you don’t, you just make them a victim, and then they can avoid accountability.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t challenge them. Have the confidence to challenge them, the confidence in the rightness of your position.
There will be times when you shouldn’t compromise your core values, your integrity, and you will have the responsibility to speak up in the face of injustice. But listen.
So don’t try to shut folks out. Don’t try to shut them down, no matter how much you might disagree with them. There’s been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view or disrupt a politician’s rally. Don’t do that—no matter how ridiculous or offensive you might find the things that come out of their mouths.
Because, as my grandmother used to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own ignorance. Let them talk. Let them talk. If you don’t, you just make them a victim, and then they can avoid accountability.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t challenge them. Have the confidence to challenge them, the confidence in the rightness of your position.
There will be times when you shouldn’t compromise your core values, your integrity, and you will have the responsibility to speak up in the face of injustice. But listen.
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