Sam Abrams, a conservative professor at Sarah Lawrence College, is about to become quite well known. Last fall he wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, moderate in substance but muscular in tone, charging that college administrators across the country, are creating one-side progressive programs for college students to push students to the left.
On his own campus, he noted programs named “Stay Healthy, Stay woke,” “Microaggressions,” and “Understanding White Privilege.” And these are not regular college courses. They are selected and created by administrators who are rarely singled out as those working to push students to the left. Abrams wrote, “Ideological imbalance, coupled with (administrators’) agenda-setting powers, threatens the free and open exchange of ideas.”
After the piece was published, student protesters demanded Abrams, a tenured professor, be removed from campus. Abrams wasn’t about to be bullied, so he wrote about the incident in The Spectator, Here are excerpts from “The dangerous silence in higher education.”
[How a Social Justice Mob Fired a Tenured Professor]
“Within hours, my office door and surrounding corridor were vandalized. Pictures of my family were taken, and bumper stickers that I had placed on the door to create a welcoming environment for students were stripped off. The vandals covered my door and surrounding hallway area with hateful paraphernalia intended to intimidate me into leaving the school. I received subsequent threats, and an alumna I have never met claims to be actively working on ways to ‘ruin my life’ while many others are demanding that my tenure be stripped all because I wrote a relatively tame article with which they disagree.
Following the defacement of my door, I was disappointed by the lack of a clear stand against violence and intimidation and the lack of support for academic freedom and diversity of thought I expected from the College administrators. In fact, a note I received from a College official described the act as ‘alleged vandalism.’
There is a culture at Sarah Lawrence College which is regularly reinforced by various students, faculty, and administrators: tacitly regulate what topics are open to debate and identify which questions should simply be overlooked for fear that asking them could lead to significant negative consequences.”
[How to Stop the Censoring Mobs on Campus]
Now Abrams is back in the news, the target of ‘’Students of Color” at Sarah Lawrence that is still demanding Abrams termination. The group generated nine pages of demands triggered belatedly by the “pain” caused by Abrams’ op-ed. According to reports, members of the group have been at a sit-in at the college president’s office.
This professor should be praised for his way of thanking. The students demanding his firing are the ones who should be asked to leave the campus. AND, a new Administration would be nice. I would jerk my child out of that liberal school in a minute.
The Church of Secular Modernism has found a heretic in their clerical ranks.
Of course he’s being asked, pushed, required to leave…and threatened if he refuses.
He’s a priest in the Temple of the 4-Headed God (Diversity, Inclusion, Equality, and Social Justice), for goodness sake! But, he’s refusing obeisance! Does he not know his job is to bow & scrape & make appropriate sacrifice? (The blood of some virgin chickens, perhaps….or maybe some Conservative Heretic or two?) Does he still not understand that there at Sarah Lawrence (et al) school’s out…forever? He was not hired as teacher, to inform, enlarge, illustrate & educate — rather his is the role of the blessed acolyte, there to assist in liturgical services
But he doesn’t do that. He questions. He notes. He suggests that there just may be ANOTHER WAY to see the world than through the lens of Politically Correct Progressivism!
What a fool.
For what is being ‘taught’ there is not a curriculum. Rather it is Revealed Truth, to those already converted. And the message they sent was abundantly clear: get with the program or leave…or we’ll make you leave.
Nothing like a University if you’re looking for some open-minded dialogue, down that road to learn!
The overarching trend in the West in the last 50 years has been to progressively (pun intended) infantilize young people, in a number of ways. One such way has been for progressive educators and administrators (but I repeat myself) in the last 30 years to take seriously what was originally just a humorous title coined to sell a book: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Kids today are conditioned to believe that their childhood ignorance, moods and emotional swings are not to be grown out of but are actually the only authentic thing about them and should be preserved inviolate and pressed into service for “social change.” So the sort of temper tantrum let loose on this professor, perfectly evidenced by the juvenile venting of spleen graffiti, is what passes for enlightenment these days. The Chinese aristocracy long ago thought artificially stunted women’s feet the most beautiful thing imaginable; today’s progressive lords bind the minds and souls of children for the same reason.
Although I support FIRE, I differ with them in this instance and similar cases. I would summarily expel every kid who acted up toddler-like. The rest I would require to take a semester long course where the sole assignment would be to watch the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory until they finally understood what the Oompa Loompas were trying to tell them.