It is difficult not to cackle with irony at the possibility
of President Trump -- he of the monosyllabic vocabulary, odd sentence
structures, and Joe Six-pack mentality -- forcing Ivory Tower elitists to
raise their sights above their current postmodern descent.
Instead of fiddling while Berkeley burned, Trump quickly
responded to the anarchy that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking after
an invitation by the campus Republican Club. Upon witnessing scenes from the
spectacle, which included thousands of protestors, numerous fires, smashed
windows, and at least one vicious beating, the President tweeted:
If
U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent
people with a different point of view -- NO FEDERAL FUNDS?
Milo, for those still unaware of his emergence as a public
figure, is an outrageously flamboyant gay Breitbart editor who is the most
popular speaker on college campuses nationwide. He, along with Trump, is a
leading figure in the fight to end the overbearing political correctness in
speech that stifles the national dialogue.
Milo adoringly refers to Trump as “Daddy,” which may be a
truly appropriate moniker. Intellectuals and pundits (including myself) can
discuss the free speech issue ad
nauseum, citing the most learned philosophers, jurists, and Founding
Fathers. But Trump’s reaction was instinctive, from the gut and to the point:
when Junior drives the car into a ditch, he loses the car keys. When he buys
thousands of dollars worth of pornography on the Internet, he gets his credit
card taken away. And when he shouts over everybody else at the dinner table, he
gets a sharp rap on the knuckles with a butter knife.
The actions of the Berkeley rioters went far beyond those
out-of-control teenagers. According to a CNN article:
Black-clad
protesters wearing masks threw commercial-grade fireworks and rocks at police.
Some even hurled Molotov cocktails that ignited fires. They also smashed
windows of the student union center on the Berkeley campus where the
Yiannopoulos event was to be held… More than 1,500 protesters had gathered at
Sproul Plaza, chanting and holding signs that read: "No safe space for
racists" and "This is war."
But the real problem is
not the illegal activity of the protestors and rioters -- they were clearly not
acting in the school’s name. The problem is academia’s ongoing failure to
ensure that varying viewpoints can be expressed on public campuses. In a remarkably ironic twist, while Berkeley is an
esteemed institution for many reasons, it is best known as the home of the
1960s “Free Speech Movement.”
In this case, Berkeley’s chancellor, Nicholas Dirks,
initially tried to live up to his school’s free speech legacy by rejecting
calls to cancel Milo’s appearance. But he did
so in such condemnatory language that he may have helped to stoke the impeding
protest even further: “In our view, Mr. Yiannopoulos is a troll and provocateur
who uses odious behavior in part to “entertain,” but also to deflect any
serious engagement with ideas. He has been widely and rightly condemned for
engaging in hate speech directed at a wide range of groups and individuals… we
have also clearly communicated to the BCR that we regard Yiannopoulos’s act as
at odds with the values of this campus.”
Dirks also said the school was providing extra security and
that the school would “not stand idly by while laws or university policies are
violated, no matter who the perpetrators are.”
But in the final analysis, rather than taking all the steps
necessary to ensure Milo’s appearance came off, the Berkeley administration
caved in to the pressure and canceled it.
Afterward, the school issued
a statement condemning the
rioters, but overall, the school’s defense rings hollow. There were many signs
that rioting was a near-inevitability in the build-up to Yiannopoulos’s
appearance. For instance, members of the Berkeley Republicans had their
addresses posted on the Internet and were inaccurately called white
supremacists and fascists -- an overt act of intimidation. It was clear that
Milo was not going to be facing an ordinary protest, but hard-core radicals
hell-bent on silencing him.
And it also appears that the university was more concerned
about empowering the protesters than promoting the marketplace of ideas. The
event was scheduled for 6:00 p.m. Things were out of hand well before then --
it was cancelled at approximately 5:00 -- and the school called for help. According
to the university newspaper, “Mutual aid officers from the city of Oakland
and from Alameda County arrived at Berkeley around 7:45 p.m. to assist UCPD and
Berkeley city police.”
Then university made an astonishing admission: “No arrests
had been made by UCPD as of 9:30 p.m.”
In other words, the school was clearly not doing everything
possible to stop the violence and punish perpetrators. Instead, it was giving
them tacit approval, managing their rampage rather than stopping it. It thereby made
a different statement: that, while the administration pays lip service to
free speech, conservatives are not really welcome at Berkeley.
President Trump heard that message and he cut through the
academic fog with a simple tweet. There are so many ways academia has left the world of reason, civility,
prudence, and practical common sense behind, to the detriment of the nation.
For every sensible college president, such as Purdue’s Mitch Daniels or
UNC-Wilmington’s Jose Sartarelli, there are dozens -- or even hundreds -- who
are tools of the political left. Board governance has proven ineffective on so
many levels. Faculty bodies are often dominated by their most radical elements.
So the nation has two choices. The first is to accept the
status quo and adopt a Panglossian “this is the best of all possible worlds”
attitude, as has been the case up until now. Or, we can follow Trump’s lead and
use the last line of defense in the culture war: the power of the government
purse.
And it can be a powerful weapon indeed. Except for a few private
schools, academia feeds primarily at the public trough, through financial aid,
state appropriations, and research funding. Although nobody wants it to
come under government authority more than it already is -- it provides many
worthy services and employs many worthy scholars and scientists -- certain
segments of the Ivory Tower have been steering the academy into an intellectual
ditch. Financial waste abounds as well.
Americans have
shown their disapproval with the direction the left has been leading the
country by voting Republicans into office in overwhelming numbers. It is time
for those elected to act instead of sitting on their hands as they have done.
And to recognize that it is their job to ensure that universities spend their
government funds wisely and to ensure that public academia maintains a vibrant
intellectual atmosphere instead of both expressly and implicitly silencing
alternative views.
Despite his rough-hewn manner of speaking and unintellectual
unfamiliarity with lofty theories, it may be that “Daddy” really does know
best.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/daddy_should_drain_the_academic_swamp.html