Perhaps kudos are in order for the usually left-leaning Daily Beast for a piece today headlined, "P.C. Police Tearing Apart California’s Claremont McKenna College."
Writer Emily Shire shines a light on some of the nuttiness transpiring on Left Coast liberal arts school, including how an Asian student was bullied by an angry crowd at a campus demonstration for stating what should be a non-controversial assertion of fact (emphases mine) :
The last few days at Claremont McKenna College in California are giving Yale and the University of Missouri a run for their money in campus unrest, with both a dean and student government leader resigning over charges of racial insensitivity in under 72 hours.
The Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students Mary Spellman stepped down Thursday after she became the object of a student hunger strike for an email deemed by many at Claremont McKenna to be racially insensitive.
Spellman wrote to a student, Lisette Espinosa, after reading Espinosa’s article in The Student Life about her frustrations as a minority on campus.
“We have a lot to do as a college and a community. Would you be willing to talk to me about these issues?” Spellman wrote in her email. “They are important to me and the DOS staff and we are working on how we can better serve students, especially those that don’t fit our CMC mold.”
Those last words—“CMC mold”—kickstarted a campaign to force Spellman out.
Angry students, like Taylor Lemmons, said the phrasing represented larger failings under Spellman’s leadership.
Lemmons declared she was going on a hunger strike until Spellman resigned (another student later joined her) in an essay published Wednesday
Shire then detailed how Ms. Spellman attempted to clarify her remarks but the angry campus mob was having none of it. At one point, Shire notes, student activists turned their ire on an Asian student for daring to say that, yes, black persons can be racist just as much as whites can:
A voice from the crowd cut Spellman off and asked her to explain the term as she was trying to do so. She conceded the phrase was part of “a poorly worded email that was intended to support a student. I apologize again.”
While the crowd focused their anger on Spellman, few in the crowd or the Claremont McKenna administration dwelled on an Asian female student who was attacked during the protest for talking about a racist incident in which a black person shouted “go back to your home.”
The Asian student said, “We should not distinguish people on their race. Black people can be racist.” An audible sense of horror overcame the crowd with murmurs of “Oh no” heard in the background.
A young black woman is seen approaching her, gesturing for the Asian student to leave and rolls her eyes on the sides. “How is this relevant to the college failing to provide a space for people of color?” a person is heard shouting.
Claremont McKenna College President Hiram E. Chodosh was ambivalent about this exchange and did not denounce the students who sought to quiet their peer.
“On the one hand, I feel very uncomfortable when anyone in the community is precluded from saying what they want. On the other hand, I would be equally uncomfortable when a group of students organized a particular message and counter messaging, from their view, disrupted their ability to provide that message,” Chodosh told The Daily Beast.
“I think there was an ambiguity in the nature of the forum that took place. I think that if the forum were clearly an expression of protest by students who wanted to voice their pain and their self-empowerment through a certain point of view than obviously voices that are dissident to those are disruptive.
“If the purpose was an open forum where anyone was able to speak, the dissuasion or the elimination of any particular voice would have been inappropriate,” Chodosh explained.
Chodosh’s comments suggest that despite the protest’s image as an open forum for students, it wasn’t actually so open.
It seems the quest for a "safe space" doesn't extend to students who don't toe the line of the campus mob and, as usual, timorous college bureaucrats are doing nothing to speak up and stand up against the madness.
Kudos to Shire for exposing yet another weak-kneed college bureaucrat who lacks the courage to defend freedom of speech and freedom of thought from the ravages of self-appointed social-justice warriors.
You can read Shire's story here.
