Rod Dreher's Blog, page 635

False Neutrality & the Left

Alan Jacobs knocks it out of the park with his analysis of that obnoxious Vox article on conservatism and guns (I blogged on it yesterday in this post about Vox and “bitter clingers”.) If you read the post, you’ll see how Jacobs reframes the same information from the point of view of someone who considered conservatism normative, not liberalism. And then he says:

Precisely the same conclusions — but notice how differently the argument reads when it treats liberalism as a deviation from conservatism rather than the other way around. Note that the article says that the conservative response “might exhibit differences” — but from what? From the norm, of course. The assumption that liberalism is the default (and presumably rational) position, and that any deviation from that position is what requires scientific explanation, not that position itself, is deeply embedded in the article, and indeed in the ideological framework of American social science tout court.

Haidt bait!

Here’s a related example, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, sent in by a reader. Journalism professor David R. Wheeler writes that people like me, who praised President Everett Piper of Oklahoma Wesleyan for telling students that they are not at a day care, but a university, are all wrong. Here’s Wheeler’s essay, in which he, as a graduate of a similar school, proclaims that he “can usually smell conservative-evangelical hypocrisy a mile away.” Well, golly. Let’s hear more:

Piper’s letter begins with a bewildering story of a student who said he felt “victimized” during a chapel service at the university. The sermon featured a reading from 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13 — the “love is patient, love is kind” passage. “I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen,” Piper wrote. “That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience!”

Be more loving. Right. What reasonable person would disagree with that? But has Oklahoma Wesleyan taken that advice? Does it, for instance, love transgender people? You tell me, after reading this quote from Page 8 of the university’s 2014-15 student handbook: “We maintain that a person does not have the right to alter one’s sexual identity, for surely this would be a defilement of the body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 6:19).” For those not familiar with Christian scripture, that’s 1 Corinthians, Chapter 6, Verse 19. So, if you’re a transgender person who has undergone gender-reassignment surgery, you’re not welcome at Oklahoma Wesleyan. You have “defiled” your body. And yes, that’s the same book of the Bible that Piper cites as the reason for the student’s seemingly outrageous claim of being offended. If you’re appalled by the fact that a school would use the same biblical passage to both encourage love and to shame transgender people, you’re starting to understand conservative evangelical colleges.

Wait, that’s his evidence? To be “loving” the college has to abandon its Christian convictions about sex, gender, and human nature? And what on earth does that have to do with Piper’s claim that the purpose of a university is education, not therapy?

Wheeler goes on to point out that Oklahoma Wesleyan doesn’t support gay marriage, and has very conservative expectations of its students in terms of behavior, e.g., a curfew, a ban on frequenting “dance clubs”). This is supposed to be evidence that Piper is a hypocrite? Oklahoma Wesleyan is far more restrictive than I personally would like, but its policies on student conduct say next to nothing about its educational philosophy. If you don’t want to go to Oklahoma Wesleyan, fine. But if you attend, you are to understand that you’re not there to stay out late dancing, but to get an education. So what?

We get to the meat of the matter: David Wheeler resents his conservative Evangelical education, and believes that it’s scandalous that students can use federal student loan aid to “attend a college that not only discriminates against legally married gay students, but also forbids students from dancing.” More:

Evangelical colleges are struggling. My own alma mater, Asbury University, I’m ashamed to say, has a “human sexuality statement” that forbids gay marriage. The day after the Obergefell decision, a former president of Asbury, John Oswalt, publicly called for $100-million in new fund raising, in part to survive the day when the government requires accredited colleges to admit transgender and gay students. “I think it is a very, very real possibility that within 10 years, maybe sooner than that, a college will not be able to distribute federal funds unless they sign a nondiscrimination pact with regard to gender,” he said in remarks recorded for posterity during an alumni reunion. “That means that Asbury [University] needs an endowment of about $100 million. … You as alumni of Asbury have to step up to the plate here.”

More hypocrisy, according to David Wheeler — who evidently wants to do exactly what John Oswalt fears liberals are going to do!

What is interesting to me about David Wheeler’s essay for the Chronicle is not that he despises colleges like Oklahoma Wesleyan, but that he assumes that pointing out that they are not progressive on LGBT issues, and have a restrictive student code of conduct, is sufficient to prove that they are “hypocrites” when their leaders dismiss PC trendiness among college administrators. It’s all non sequitur, and entirely about progressive virtue signaling. The thing is, if I were an editor at the Chronicle, I would have rejected this piece, not because I wanted to protect Evangelical colleges from criticism (I don’t), but because the piece does not remotely justify its claim. The only thing it proves is that a conservative Evangelical college is conservative and Evangelical, and that David Wheeler thinks they are a bunch of poopyheads who ought to be forced off the federal teat for being politically incorrect.

It’s just a really weak column. But David Wheeler, who teaches journalism (ahem!), apparently knows his audience at the Chronicle‘s editorial office, and what they find to be reasonable analysis. It seems reasonable to assume that within the ideological framework of the Chronicle of Higher Education, an op-ed piece as feeble and petulant as Wheeler’s makes sense. I hope that the undergraduates who study journalism under him learn how to argue more effectively.

 

 

Obama Stokes The Flames

The Obama administration’s priorities:

The Department of Justice is investigating the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old Muslim boy whom police took into custody when he brought a homemade clock to his school in Texas, the U.S. Attorney General said Thursday.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed the investigation at the annual Muslim Advocates dinner in Arlington, Va., the Dallas Morning News reports. “We have, as you may know, opened an investigation into the case of the young man in Irving, Texas,” Lynch told Farhana Kher, Muslim Advocates President and Executive Director, during an interview. “So we will see where that investigation goes.”

Unbelievable. As you will remember, I said when it happened that Ahmed the Clock Boy was treated badly and unfairly by the authorities in Irving. I lost sympathy for him when more information came out making him seem less victim than troll, and, even though his travail made him a national celebrity who was invited to the White House, he filed a $15 million lawsuit. 

But now the federal government is getting involved. Of all the things the Justice Department could be investigating, an alleged civil rights violation involving this brat strikes me as not remotely significant. I say that even as I concede that it’s possible, and perhaps even likely, that the local authorities overreacted. But if that same event went down today, after San Bernardino, I think more Americans would cut the Texas local authorities slack. I know I would.

Another case of the federal government alienating itself from ordinary people. Again, it is possible to believe even still that Ahmed was mistreated, but does this really rise to the level of a federal civil rights investigation? Then again, this is an administration whose Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights pressured an Illinois public school district to let transgenders change openly, without barriers, in opposite-sex locker rooms. Now the school district is considering reneging on its agreement with the feds:

Just one day after a suburban school board approved a historic agreement to settle a transgender student’s claims of discrimination, the district is now threatening to retract the settlement with the federal government amid accusations that the agency acted in “bad faith.”

The Township High School District 211 board voted after 12:30 a.m. Thursday to allow the student, who was born male, to use the girls’ locker room — an issue that prompted passionate debate on both sides.

But now district officials have angrily accused the federal Office for Civil Rights of “blatant disregard for the facts” of the settlement. The student had filed a complaint with the office, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education.

“We are outraged by the mischaracterizations” about the agreement, Palatine-based District 211 said in a news release Friday afternoon. “It is wrong, it is an act of bad faith and our school district will not let it stand. … Citizens have a right to expect more from a federal agency than smoke and mirrors.”

Priorities, people. Those are the administration’s priorities. If Ahmed were a transgender clock boy, he would be a secular Democratic Party saint.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post featured text copied from what was purported to be a Bill O’Reilly Talking Points Memo about ISIS and Islam. It showed up in the in-box of a conservative friend, who forwarded it to me. A couple of you eagle-eyed readers pointed out that it is likely a forgery. I did some checking, and I think you’re right: O’Reilly has sent out a Talking Points Memo since Friday. I apologize to Bill O’Reilly for falling for that (extremely well done) spam, and to you readers. I have updated this post to reflect that. Thank you, readers, for catching my mistake and offering the correction.

UPDATE: From Steve Sailer’s analysis of Obama’s Oval Office speech:

So, a few observations on the implicit ideology:

– “American exceptionalism” mandates American national self-dissolution.

– Civil rights require that we not discriminate against any foreigner in the world who wishes to move to America.

– The ongoing massacres and expulsions of Christians in the Middle East can elicit our help, by, say, giving Christians the bulk of refugee spots, except in directly equal measure to our assisting the Muslim perpetrators with admission to America. The Christians of the Middle East have Christian Privilege.

Shocking Numbers for Benedict Option

Here is some striking news, from YouGov.com:

Over recent decades, particularly the past ten years, the United States has undergone a wave of social change to become a more liberal and secular society. The vast majority of Americans (67%) say that the United States has become less religious over the past 25 years, and with recent victories on same-sex marriage and other issues social conservatives have faced a string of political defeats. These defeats and the apparent reality of an America where the ‘majority’ is no longer ‘moral’ are forcing social conservatives and religious leaders to reconsider their role in society. Conservative intellectual Rod Dreher has gained an increasingly large following in arguing for the ‘Benedict Option’, saying that in today’s world Christians should withdraw from public activism and seek to preserve their morality by strengthening their ties and forming a robust Christian sub-culture.

Here are the numbers:

Mind you, that’s something of a false choice. I don’t think it’s an either-or, but rather a matter of emphasis. I see nothing wrong with Christians working to change society, but I believe their (our) prime emphasis should be on forming stronger internal links. Here’s the Benedict Option FAQ if you’d like a clearer idea of what I’m talking about.

This result shocked me. I would have guessed the number of BenOp supporters among the most committed Christians to be 20%, tops. Not sure why that number, but that was what my gut told me. Turns out it’s nearly double — and slightly more than the Christians who favor doing what we’ve always done, but accepting that we’ve lost on SSM (that is, the Wilberforce Option). Twenty-nine percent are undecided, and therefore persuadable.

Bottom line: This poll is the first solid evidence I’ve seen from a non-partisan source documenting that the Benedict Option is something real, and important. 

I also find it interesting that the term “Benedict Option” has now crossed over into the mainstream. When a secular polling firm starts using it, you know that it’s not just a concept from the margins.

I read a couple of pieces over the weekend that offered insight into the need for the Benedict Option, though neither piece uses the phrase. The first is a very strong blog post by Dustin Messer, a Reformed Christian who lays into the weakness of trendy, megachurch Christianity. It begins like this:

Several days ago, Kent Dobson, successor at Rob Bell’s famous Mars Hill Bible Church, stepped down as teaching pastor. He opened his announcement/sermon by reading the Scriptural story which gives name to the church, the account at Mars Hill. Dobson says when he first came to Mars Hill, he was animated by Paul’s example of cultural engagement. Paul quoted the poets of the people; he spoke their language. Dobson said he understood Paul to be preaching a traditional gospel message but using different, more relevant, packaging.

Likewise, he said the church was meant to have the same gospel but deliver the message in a more hip way. Specifically, he wanted a “cool church” with “cooler shoes” than the traditional church down the road. However, Dobson said he not only began to question the packaging of traditional “church,” but also the message – the gospel. To fully understand his evolution he says, “you’ll have to read my memoirs.” The CliffsNotes version, for those of us who can’t wait, goes thusly:

“I have always been and I’m still drawn to the very edges of religion and faith and God. I’ve said a few times that I don’t even know if we know what we mean by God anymore. That’s the edges of faith. That’s the thing that pulls me. I’m not really drawn to the center. I’m not drawn to the orthodox or the mainstream or the status quo… I’m always wandering out to the edge and beyond.”

Messer hits hard and true:

To his church, he paints himself like a modern-day Ferdinand Magellan, ready to explorer the great spiritual unknown. Motivated by nothing but curiosity and bravery, he’s boldly setting his sails toward the choppy waters which stand between what is and what could be. This is the point at which I take issue. When was the last time Pastor Dobson talked with someone on a college campus, in a gym, or in a coffee shop? Does he really think the “open” and “inclusive” vision he’s casting is novel? Is the “status quo” really Christian orthodoxy among Dobson’s peers? As a young, fit, white, upper-middle class male, Dobson’s sermon is not a rebellion to his culture. It’s a product of his culture. The mystery and romance he attempts to conjure around his spiritual evolution is laughable to anyone with a television. He’s not moving forward into the unknown; he’s sitting perfectly still in the safe, cozy space where Oprah is queen, tolerance is the law, and anyone with a firm opinion on just about anything is suspect.

And:

These days, the real adventurers are those who set sail for the risky land of Christian orthodoxy. The real brave men and women are those who consistently go to church, observe the sacraments, hear the word, and submit themselves to the discipline of the church. In an age of autonomy, it’s those who subject their thoughts, behaviors, and passions to an exclusive Sovereign that are the brave few. Those may not be the memoirs we’re interested in today, but they’ll be the ones that last tomorrow.

Preach it, brother. Read the whole thing.  This is a time of testing, of winnowing. The churches of the future in America and Europe will be smaller, but they will be stronger, because being a Christian is going to cost something. Russell Moore, as you probably know, is optimistic about the future of the faith, because these post-Christian times are finally freeing the churches of the illusions of civic Christianity. More and more these days I’m hearing from friends and readers — conservative Christians — who tell me how frustrated and concerned they are with the lack of substance in their churches. Not long ago, I was talking about this stuff with a couple of folks who are part of a conservative denomination, and told them they’re lucky to be where they are.

Au contraire, they said, explaining that however conservative their denomination may be theologically, where they live, the church itself is all about emotional uplift. They are especially worried that their kids are being acculturated into a form of Christianity that may be conservative in principle, but is in practice, at the local level, is nothing more than Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

They are right to be concerned.

In October, I wrote a piece framing the Benedict Option as key in the struggle of Christian memory against forgetting. In it, I talked about a book called How Societies Remember, by a social anthropologist called Paul Connerton. Excerpt from my blog post:

Connerton says that modernity is a condition of deliberate forgetting, of choosing to deny the power of the past to affect our actions in the present, so as to create a new condition of existence marked by the individual’s freedom of choice. Capitalism requires this deliberate forgetting, and facilitates it, and rites we invent in modern times “are palliative measures, façades erected to screen off the full implications of this vast worldwide clearing operation.” Here is the core [of Connerton’s theory]:

“Under the conditions of modernity the celebration of recurrence can never be anything more than a compensatory strategy, because the principle of modernity itself denies the idea of life as a structure of celebrated recurrence. It denies credence to the thought that the life of the individual or a community either can or should derive its value from the acts of consciously performed recall, from the reliving of the prototypical. Although the process of modernisation does indeed generate invented rituals as compensatory devices, the logic of modernisation erodes those conditions which make acts of ritual re-enactment, of recapitulative imitation, imaginatively possible and persuasive. For the essence of modernity is economic development, the vast transformation of society precipitated by the emergence of the capitalist world market. And capital accumulation, the ceaseless expansion of the commodity form through the market, requires the constant revolutionising of production, the ceaseless transformation of the innovative into the obsolescent. The clothes people wear, the machines they operate, the workers who service the machines, the neighborhoods they live in — all are constructed today to be dismantled tomorrow, so that they can be replaced or recycled. Integral to the accumulation of capital is the repeated intentional destruction of the built environment. Integral too is the transformation of all signs of cohesion into rapidly changing fashions of costume, language and practice. This temporality of the market and of the commodities that circulate through it generates an experience of time as quantitative and as flowing in a single direction, an experience in which each moment is different from the other by virtue of coming next, situated in a chronological succession of old and new, earlier and later. The temporality of the market thus denies the possibility that there might co-exist qualitatively distinguishable times, a profane time and a sacred time, neither of which is reducible to the other. The operation of this system brings about a massive withdrawal of credence in the possibility that there might exist forms of life that are exemplary because prototypical. The logic of capital tends to deny the capacity any longer to imagine life as a structure of exemplary recurrence.”

What does this mean? He’s telling us that in modernity, the market is our god. It conditions what we imagine to be possible. We can’t dream that life should be ordered by rituals that bound and define our experience, and link it to the past, to a sacred order. There is no sacred order; there is only the here and now, the tangible. The world exists to be remade to fit our desires. There are no ways of living that we should conform our lives to, no stories that tell us how we should live. When Connerton says that in modernity, and under capitalism, we can hardly “imagine life as a structure of exemplary recurrence,” he’s saying that we can no longer easily believe that we should live according to set patterns of thought and action because they conform to eternal truths.

In my post, I said that you have right-wing versions of this, and left-wing versions of this, but they both function to sever us from historical iterations of the Christian faith. Ultimately, Christianity cannot help but dissolve in the Zeitgeist. Rootless, we will be swept away by the overwhelming currents of modernity. More:

It occurred to me while reading this that the most dangerous enemy we face is not the State, and what it might yet do to individual Christians and their institutions and businesses. The most lethal foe is the Empire of Amnesia, which induces us at every turn to forget who we are, to forget who God is, and to forget what He wants from us. The Empire of Amnesia does not force us to forget our sacred Story as the Soviet empire did to believers; rather, it entices us to forget so we can set free our passions. So we can have our best life now. So we can be as gods. And as Ross Douthat once wrote, “no conservative dream, in the 400 years from Francis Bacon until now, has proven strong enough to stand in its way.”

This is the mission of the Benedict Option: to turn away from the Empire of Amnesia, to build “new forms of community” that can offer sustained resistance to it, and to give ourselves, our children, and our communities resilience in the face of its power, and ultimately to create, over time, the conditions for the resurrection of Christian civilization.

Whole thing here.

Now, Kevin Flatt, an Evangelical and academic historian, writes powerfully about “lessons for an amnesiac society.” From his essay:

Civilizational amnesia is not only a condition of professional historians or intellectual life, however. It also forms and deforms our patterns of institutional life together— our social architecture. This is perhaps obvious in the realm of democratic politics, where few people apart from political scientists look much further back than a few election cycles, and in the business world, where the passwords of the hour are entrepreneurship, rebranding, and disruptive innovation. Amnesia’s influence, however, is also felt in more subtle ways right across the variegated institutions of civil society.

Take, for example, our churches. (I draw examples from North American evangelicalism both because that is what I know best and because, notwithstanding its considerable virtues, it may be the form of Christianity most susceptible to institutional amnesia.) Over the past thirty years an emphasis on novelty has come to dominate our worship services, with the longevity of the latest worship song continually dwindling toward the brief shelf life of a hit on the Top-40 charts. Every decade or so a revolutionary new “model” of church growth and vitality—the Willow Creek model, the Purpose-Driven Church, the Simple Church— sweeps away existing patterns of congregational life. Indeed, in recent years hosts of evangelicals have been led away by supposedly cutting-edge “emerging” or “postevangelical” movements that would immediately have been recognized by their grandparents as barely warmed over Protestant liberalism. Even churches with a relatively robust inherited sense of historical continuity have been drawn into the current of relentless change, novelty, and reinvention.

He faults North American Evangelicalism, but I tell you from experience, the richness of liturgy, teaching, and tradition present in Catholicism and Orthodoxy are no vaccine against this rootlessness. The form of worship may be stable, but if church leaders and congregations don’t fill those forms with knowledge, spiritual substance, and engagement, the forms will be useless. For example, I’ve had Catholic university professors tell me that their classes are full of graduates of Catholic high schools who arrive knowing little or nothing about their faith. This is not an Evangelical problem, a Catholic problem, an Orthodox problem: it is an American Christian problem. 

A bit more from Flatt:

The restless tide of late modern amnesia thus continually washes against our institutions and, unless they possess a certain solidity, erodes their foundations. For those of us who care about the health of our social architecture, how do we resist this erosion? And, just as importantly, how do we go beyond mere erosion resistance—which can too easily degenerate into curmudgeonly stubbornness— to the constructive task of building resilient institutions that remember forward, harnessing the memory of the past for the visions of the future?

That is a central question for the Benedict Option. Read the whole Flatt essay.

Do I think 37 percent of the most committed Christians in the country think about cultural theory, religious history, and the deep crisis of modernity? No, I do not. I don’t think any but a fraction of those people have ever heard the term “Benedict Option.” But they will. And they know the most important thing right now, in their hearts: that we can’t keep living this way. That these are not normal times. That the center is not holding. That status quo Christianity is doomed. In the first chapter of my upcoming book on the Benedict Option, I write:

Being faithful in a post-Christian world is going to cost us something. Cultural Christianity is dying, and nearly dead. There is no conservative arcadia in which to make our retreat. The day is coming, and coming fast, when there are no more effective arguments to be made in the public square. The only arguments remaining to us will be the witness of our lives. We are going to have to become a church that knows how to suffer – and how to suffer, as the early church did, with a mysterious kind of joy. We are going to have to hear Jesus’s words in the Beatitudes – “blessed are you when they persecute you” – and believe them, and live them.

One Christian professor, deeply closeted as a believer at an elite American law school, told me that “Alasdair MacIntyre is right.” Christians should “surrender political hope” – that is, the expectation that politics can save us, or even protect us – recognize that culture is far more important than politics, and get busy pioneering the Benedict Option. There is no time to waste. There will be no “taking back our country”; the country is lost to Christianity for the foreseeable future. Voting Republican is at best a stalling tactic to enable Christians to establish institutions and build networks for the long resistance ahead.

I am very encouraged by the evidence of this YouGov poll that there are so many committed Christians in this country who are open to the Benedict Option. This is not going to be easy, laying the groundwork for this project, but the time is right, and people are far more ready than even I had thought.

Below is an image I shot in the piazza of Norcia, the Umbrian hometown of St. Benedict. That is a statue depicting him, and behind him is the basilica and the monastery. Be of good cheer! It is a place of light in this present darkness. 

Guns: Same Planet, Different Worlds

David Roberts of Vox explains at length why gun-rights conservatives are mentally challenged by nature, why their beliefs on guns are a result of their insanity, and why only “overwhelming political force” will overcome their obstinacy. Excerpt:

Let us imagine, then, a conservative gun owner — an older white gentleman, let’s say, in his 50s, living in the Rust Belt somewhere. When he was growing up, there was living memory of a familiar order: men working in honorable trade or manufacturing jobs, women tending home and children, Sundays at church, hard work yielding a steady rise up the ladder to a well-earned house, yard, and car.

That order was crumbling just as our gun owner inherited it. The honorable jobs are gone, or going. It’s hell to find work, benefits are for shit, and there isn’t much put aside for retirement. The kids are struggling with debt and low-paying jobs. They know, and our gun owner knows, that they probably aren’t going to have a better life than he did — that the very core of the American promise has proven false for them, for the first time in generations.

It’s a bitter, helpless feeling.

Bitter clingers!

I would like liberal readers to imagine for a moment that a conservative had written a piece trying to explain deep liberal devotion to defending same-sex marriage rights by analyzing them as mental defectives who are beyond reason, and contending that conservatives need to understand that only “overwhelming political force” will be able to overcome them.

The thing is, I think there really is something to be said for how guns are embedded in the psyche of some people (I would say in the American psyche), in such a way that makes it very hard to reason with them. But that is true of all people on issues and causes that matter most to them. I realized a long time ago that reason played no role in the same-sex marriage debate, that liberals considered themselves paragons of reason on it, but when it came right down to it, they would say that marriage rights are non-negotiable. And you know, if it’s a matter of rights, that position makes sense. Second Amendment defenders may well feel the same way: that their Second Amendment rights are not up for debate.

As reader DSP indicates in the comments, Vox is the a mainstream liberal Beltway voice. The Bitter Clingers™ surely know that it’s not paranoid when they really are out to get you.

Ross Douthat’s column on Sunday puts some good gun-debate questions to liberals. Excerpt:

With 300 million guns in private hands in the United States, it’s very difficult to devise a non-intrusive, “common-sense” approach to regulating their exchange by individuals. Ultimately, you need more than background checks; you need many fewer guns in circulation, period. To their credit, many gun control supporters acknowledge this point, which is why there is a vogue for citing the Australian experience, where a sweeping and mandatory gun buyback followed a 1996 mass shooting.

The clearest evidence shows that Australia’s reform mostly reduced suicides — as the Brady law may have done — while the evidence on homicides is murkier. (In general, the evidence linking gun ownership rates to murder rates is relatively weak.) But a lower suicide rate would be a real public health achievement, even if it isn’t immediately relevant to the mass shooting debate.

Does that make “getting to Australia” a compelling long-term goal for liberalism? Maybe, but liberals need to count the cost. Absent a total cultural revolution in America, a massive gun collection effort would face significant resistance even once legislative and judicial battles had been won. The best analogue is Prohibition, which did have major public health benefits … but which came at a steep cost in terms of police powers, black markets and trampled liberties.

Douthat calls on liberals to use reason about what it would really take to achieve what they want, and to stop clinging bitterly to their shibboleths. Read the whole thing. 

Two Kinds of Bad Speeches

The first kind is the one President Obama gave on Sunday night from the Oval Office. What was the point of that thing? Thirteen minutes of boilerplate about how the terrorists are not going to win, and how everybody had better remember to be nice to Muslims. OK — fine, but did that require a national presidential address? If you’re the president and you take the extraordinary opportunity to address the nation live, you had better have something to say. Was anyone reassured, moved, or convinced by that speech? Did it change anyone’s mind? It was weak all around.

On the other hand, we had this appalling moment the other day from the Christian president of a Christian university, talking to his students after the San Bernardino massacre:

Jerry Falwell Jr. encouraged his students to arm themselves by obtaining a state concealed carry permit. I cannot quite believe that a Christian university president urged undergraduates to buy guns, learn how to use them, and bring them to campus (where they have been approved by the Liberty U. board). And by the way, he was carrying a pistol in his pocket when he made the speech! Falwell clarified his remarks in an interview with the Washington Post:

“I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in,” he says, the rest of his sentence drowned out by loud applause while he said, “and killed them.”

… Falwell said that when he referred to “those Muslims,” he was referring to Islamic terrorists, specifically those behind the attacks in Paris and in San Bernardino. “That’s the only thing I would clarify,” Falwell said. “If I had to say what I said again, I’d say exactly the same thing.”

Undergraduates packing heat. That’s just what college campuses need. Leaving aside the rather large issue of whether or not it’s appropriate for the head of a Christian university to say such things, as a practical matter, seriously, who wants their kid going to a university where any number of the students could be armed in the classroom and on the quad, at the explicit encouragement of the administration? It beggars belief.

 

Deranged Daily News

The New York Daily News has apparently committed itself to and editorial policy of hating Christians. First we had the prayer-shaming cover, then the cover calling the NRA chief a “terrorist” who is just as bad as mass killers. Now Daily News columnist Linda Stasi has written a piece saying that a right-wing Christian who was slaughtered by the Islamic terrorists in San Bernardino was as evil as they. No kidding. Excerpts:

They were two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees interacting in one department. Now 13 innocent people are dead in unspeakable carnage.

One man spent his free time writing frightening, NRA-loving, hate-filled screeds on Facebook about the other’s religion.

The other man quietly stewed and brewed his bigotry, collecting the kind of arsenal that the Facebook poster would have envied.

What they didn’t realize is that except for their different religions they were in many ways similar men who even had the same job.

Read the whole thing. What kind of person writes this? What kind of newspaper publishes it? Nicholas Thalasinos, the dead man, sounds like a man with deeply unpleasant, even repugnant, views. But here’s the thing: Thalasinos did not pick up a gun and massacre anybody, not even the people he hated. In fact, he died as a victim of fanatics who did.

It is vile, utterly vile, that Linda Stasi and the Daily News would speak of a murdered man that way. So, what, does the Daily News now reserve the right to look into the opinions of all murder victims, and if they don’t like what they see, publish columns saying that they are no better than the man who slaughtered them?

Stasi here reminds me of the old black-humor joke: “Sure, Hitler hated the Jews. But to be fair, the Jews also hated Hitler.”

When Robert Lewis Dear murdered people at that Colorado Springs abortion clinic, no newspaper in the country would dared to have published a column saying that the abortionists (to clarify, if he had killed any) were just as bad as the man who murdered them. Had that newspaper done so, it would have been a disgusting act. Even if one believes such a thing, it is indecent to speak such words. The Christian-hating Daily News keeps hitting bottom, and digging.

UPDATE: Alan Jacobs prophesies the discovery of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Saddleback.

College Killed His Love of History

Another testimonial from a refugee from academia:

            I’m unsure how interesting this email will be to you, but with the recent discussion on your blog about the current state of academia I thought my story might be of some relevance.

As long as I can remember, I’ve had a deep love of history. It began in elementary school when I would devour any book I could find about ancient and medieval armies- the English Longbowman, the Egyptian Charioteer, the Frankish Knight- I still remember the vivid hand-drawn pictures and descriptions from those thin hardback books in the library.  In high school I was blessed to have some wonderful history teachers that fanned the flames even more. It was then that my interests moved on from exclusively military history to theology, politics, and economics- I loved it all. On the bus to away football games, while all the other players were listening to rap on their Ipods, I would sail the seas with Patrick O’Brian’s captain Jack Aubrey or fight in the trenches with Arthur Conan Doyle’s White Company.

After enrolling at the local state college in 2008 I eagerly selected history as my major- for four years, my only job would be to think about the past! It seemed too good to be true. The first course that stood out to be was a 3-hour credit on the Crusades. I bought the required reading and read it all weeks in advance, ready to come in and talk about Raymond of Toulouse, Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, and all the rest.

The professor of the class was a wispy, thin woman with thin black hair and eyes that looked like they could break into tears at any moment. She began the class with a line that I would hear all too many times in the next four years: “We’re not really interested in specific dates or people in this class.” For the rest of the semester, she talked. I use the indescriptive word “talked” because I’m not entirely sure what she talked about. I remember snippets- Christian violence against Jews and Muslims, multiculturalism in Outremer. All I know is that by the end of the class no one had gained any knowledge about the Crusades themselves. And I was certain that I was the only student who had actually read the required reading.

The next four years were a bit of a blur- I know I showed up to all my classes. I know I paid attention. I can also look at my transcripts and see almost all As with a smattering of Bs. But just like in that first class, I couldn’t tell you what we actually learned about. It was a strange experience for me- It seemed like the professors weren’t actually speaking English, or if they were it wasn’t a dialect of English I was fluent with. I was too ignorant at the time to really understand what was going on- of course, now I do: they were speaking the language of politics, of race class and gender, of theory. “Academic History” as opposed to the “Buff History” that I loved. As I reflect I suppose that my previous knowledge and love of history was in a way an inoculation against it. These professors weren’t interested in history- they were interested in politics and social change. They were far too busy with the present to give a whit about the past.

I had the same experience reading the academic journals in the library. I would stare at those articles and read the pages over and over and not glean anything. At first I thought that my reading comprehension must have been poor. It was only later that I realized I couldn’t read them because something in my system was resisting the indoctrination, and those articles could only be read by the initiated.

I do remember the change that came over my classmates. What was an even 50/50 split between males and females became more like 30/70 as we entered junior and senior year. The males were transferring into the business college or focusing exclusively on pre-law classes. How I wish I joined them. The professors also had cults of personality about them; at the end of each class there would always be a gaggle of girls that followed them back to their office hours. They often had strange hair colors like bubble-gum pink or light blue. They wore ear gauges and were often much fatter than they were freshman year. (It was only later that I realized I was witnessing proto-SJWs) I never joined these little groups- as a white, Christian, conservative male I felt very much the outcast.

I would like to say that most of the professors weren’t like this, but I can only remember one that taught real history. He was an older guy with a specialization in Catalan independence movements. I didn’t really have much interest in Iberian history, but what made him notable was that he could talk intelligently about other fields: about English Luddism, the French Revolution, the Greek Sophists… He was a true academic. I attended his office hours, always alone, and would be entranced as he simply talked. He seemed like he was just happy to have someone to talk to. It was later that I learned he once had written for a conservative think-tank; he was as much an outcast as I was.

As it came time to apply for grad school, I never even wrote an application. It wasn’t just my disinterest in academia, but I had mostly lost my love of history. I wasn’t reading the way I used to- I probably read more unassigned books in one summer of high school than I did in all of college. I had also become intellectually incurious. I started drinking more than I should. I spent most of my free time playing video games. If engaging in the battleground of ideas was anything like I was experiencing every day in class, I wanted nothing to do with it.

After graduation I took the only job I could get with a fairly worthless history degree- teaching Middle School Social Studies. I’ve come to actually enjoy it, and my interest in history has returned in full force.

Every day I get to teach about Hernan Cortes, the Ancient Greeks, Charles “The Hammer” Martel (a class favorite- they think he’s Thor), the debate between Hamilton and Jefferson, the Civil War; I’m doing history again. Real history, not theory.

I hope that in some small way I can give my students their own inoculation against the beast. When they tell me they want to study history in college, I warn them against it. Not because I don’t love history, but because I love it too much.

Fight the power!

Please, readers, add your own stories to the comments thread here, or e-mail them to me at rod — at — amconmag — dot — com.

NYT Gun Control Grandstanding

Well, here’s news, of a sort:

The New York Times on Saturday ran an editorial on its front page urging lawmakers to tighten gun control regulations, the first time the newspaper has published an editorial on Page 1 since 1920.

The Times’ editorial board describes as a “moral outrage” and “national disgrace” that under Constitutional protections Americans are legally permitted to purchase deadly weapons that “kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.”

 

Think about everything that has happened in America and the world since the NYT’s last front-page editorial: the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II, the rise of nuclear weapons, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, the two Iraq wars, and 9/11 — which struck New York City worst of all! None of that merited a front-page editorial. But gun control does.

I can hardly improve on Jonah Goldberg’s short demolition of this grandstanding. Excerpt:

Third, while I have no doubt the authors are sincere in their desire to mount a national movement against guns (I also have no doubt they’ll fail), it is impossible to read this as anything other than an attempt to change the subject in the face of all the facts we learned today. These include, off the top of my head:

This was a terrorist attack, the most deadly since 9/11.
The killers were inspired by ISIS, a group the president has insisted is “contained” and only last week said posed no threat to the homeland.
No remotely plausible gun-control reforms would have prevented the Farooks from killing people.
The immigrant screening process let Jihadi murderer, Malik Tafsheen, into the United States despite the fact she gave a fake address. This happened at a moment when the president — and the New York Times – have insisted time and again that concerns about Syrian refugees amount to little more than xenophobia and know-nothingism.

Read the whole thing.

The Times‘s editorial response (the front-page placement, not the editorial itself, which is conventional Times-think) is so over-the-top, so unwarranted by the actual facts, that it is most plausibly interpreted in terms of psychology. It tells us little to nothing about gun politics in America, and nearly everything about the mindset of the New York Times editorial board. So, have at it, readers. What does the Times‘s editorial really say? Goldberg says it’s an attempt to divert the public’s attention from facts inconvenient to the newspaper’s preferred narrative. I think that if this is true, it’s not a conscious attempt, but rather a deep emotional impulse — which is itself pretty interesting to contemplate.

Another One Leaves Academia

A reader writes:

I don’t know if anyone has already posted this, but “The Demands” have been aggregated for some days at http://www.thedemands.org. As of the moment, the site includes a list of 72 universities where protests are taking place, the demands of the protesters, and the telling phrase, “These are living demands and will grow and change as the work grows and changes.”

In addition to the Campus Demands section, it also includes a section on National Demands. This includes the following header:

Michael Brown Jr. was murdered on August 9, 2014. This nationwide movement began as a response to his murder, highlighting the systemic and structural racism that allows Darren Wilson to remain free. These are our beliefs and our demands.

As far as I can tell, none of the demands include a call for a more challenging, well-rounded education.

Some years ago, I began my academic career. Lord willing, I shall complete a Ph.D. in my field this year. I had intended to carry on in academia, because I wanted to teach the things I love. I am glad to say that I am already teaching the things I love, but in a different setting. Working with some interested families who’d already organized a hybrid home school/private school for elementary and middle school students, we have developed a new high school as well. It’s not easy and not without its risks, but teaching at and administering a classical, Christian high school is both more engaging and more meaningful than my past experiences teaching at secular universities.

So I’m another fellow leaving academia, and I can’t say I’m sorry to do so. This kind of nonsense is endemic. I have posted here using a pseudonym since I’ve been an academic, fully recognizing the need to keep my head down and my mouth shut. (I could relate stories about the priorities of departments like my own, but those would be telling and I must still finish.) But that time may be drawing to a close for me, though not for others. I am thankful for what I have learned from the good teachers I’ve had, but I don’t think I’ll look back after I walk away. Things have become worse every year and show no signs of improving.

Administrations are only hastening the end to the charade that the modern university system. Colleges of Law, Medicine, Education, and STEM will surely survive. But I can’t see a way to salvage these bloated, indebted universities once families realize what they’re driving themselves into debt for.

Somehow, we have to save the humanities from the colleges and universities, and keep the light alive until more rational times return.

Emory: Faculty Thoughtcrime Tribunals

A group of black student protesters at Emory University in Atlanta issued a hysterical list of strident “demands” — their word — to the university administration, and demanded that they respond by December 4, or else. You know the drill: race radicals say “jump,” university administrators say “how high?” I have posted the students’ entire list of demands below, as well as the university’s full response. Both are extraordinary documents that deserve full reading. The students’ demands are mostly a wish list written by spoiled brats, and the university’s response is a capitulation to them.

I want to focus on one aspect, though, because it is so chilling. The Emory student who sent it to me said:

I’m sure some of your readers are fed up with the SJW stuff but this is INSANE and I am starting to seriously freak the f*** out. Like seriously. Read demand #4 (there’s a link to the google doc, I can email it to you separately if you can’t access it for some reason). I mean the whole thing is insane but they want thoughtcrime tribunals every semester.

What is Demand #4? This:

4. We demand that the faculty evaluations that each student is required to complete for each of their professors include at least two open-ended questions such as: “Has this professor made any microaggressions towards you on account of your race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, and/or other identity?” and “Do you think that this professor fits into the vision of Emory University being a community of care for individuals of all racial, gender, ability, and class identities?” These questions on the faculty evaluations would help to ensure that there are repercussions or sanctions for racist actions performed by professors.

We demand that these questions be added to the faculty evaluations by the end of this semester, Fall 2015.

So, how did the university respond to this outrageous request to put faculty on trial for ideological impurity? Like this:

Demand 4:  Faculty Evaluations

 Emory University, like most universities with multiple undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, does not have a unified course evaluation form. The course evaluation information is used for the annual evaluation of each faculty member as well as included in the dossier for each faculty member considered for tenure and/or promotion. Modifications to the course evaluation form are a core component of faculty governance in each school/college.

Each academic Dean will be asked to establish a process in the school/college to review and revise current course evaluations (e.g., add the recommended open-ended questions) [Emphasis mine — RD] as well as make other revisions identified as part of the review. Next, these revised course evaluations will be shared through existing mechanisms such as the Council of Deans, the University Senate, and the ongoing assessments on student learning.

As the 2015 fall semester is coming to an end, this work will begin in the 2016 spring semester with the intent to use the revised course evaluation from the spring and to consider the outcomes in the 2015-2016 annual faculty evaluations. The Office of Planning and Budgeting will collect information on the faculty annual evaluations as part of the annual reporting requirement for each school, specifically the nature and number of negative actions regarding faculty members.

In other words, the faculty of Emory University will now be held hostage by the judgments of these arrogant radicalized students. By surrendering to this threat, Emory declares itself a place that is too risky for any but the most ideologically rigid professors to teach, and therefore a place where students of all races who want to get a rigorous education must avoid. If a professor assigns a text that a black student (or fellow traveler) finds to be microaggressive, that professor will be written up for it, and that evaluation will affect their job. So much for academic freedom.

This is actually happening at an American university, without a shot being fired. How on earth are the faculty standing for this? How are the students doing so? The black students who make these demands at universities are without question the enemies of free thought, of intellection, of university education — but they have no power that has not been granted to them by craven university administrators — who are the real enemy.

Full text of documents below…



I. DEMANDS OF BLACK STUDENTS AT EMORY.



Preamble:

We, the Black Students of Emory University, demand an active change in University policy directed towards Black students.

Emory, a school that claims to pursue a community of care, does very little to demonstrate its commitment. Despite initiatives set in place to re-adjust the racial climate at Emory, we are dissatisfied with the lack of change that has resulted.

We, the Black Students of Emory, are still reeling at injustices made by the University and the lack of adequate action.

When the departments were sanctioned to close during the Fall of 2012, and were completely phased out after Spring 2016, the response from students and faculty alike were given little attention and made to seem as if there was miscommunication as opposed to the administration’s insufficient transparency.

The departments slated to close contained higher numbers of black faculty members. The methods for selection were unclear, leading a large portion of the community in protest of the closings to believe that the departments selected were chosen as a way of decreasing the numbers not only of black faculty, but potential black applicants to Emory University.

The University’s slightness towards the negative response to President James Wagner’s three-fifths compromise statement was another slap in the face to the Black community at Emory University. For the president of a University, built already on the backs of slaves, to praise a piece of legislature infamous for its “legal” establishment of the degradation of the humanity of blacks as three-fifths of a person as a metaphor for the already unpopular and seemingly unfair department closings, was unacceptable. The apologies given by President James Wagner and the other administrators on the Board were ingenuine [sic] and needlessly defensive. Our reactions to University are taken with a grain of salt, and are consistently ignored, belittled, or addressed as dramatic outbursts rather

than legitimate concerns.

After seeing the University’s quick response to the swastika painted on the Alpha Epsilon Pi House during the Spring 2016 semester, though the black community stood in solidarity with such an unacceptably insensitive act, we reflected on the difference in priority given to a traditionally Jewish fraternity’s sense of injustice. We ask that Emory University address its gross negligence.

Besides the larger indignances [sic] of Emory University to Black Students, during the daily life of Black Students, we experience micro- and macro-aggressions. Social media, namely Yik Yak, has become a hub for attacking students of color, but especially black students, primarily following any of our attempts to educate the general population of our struggles and attempts to foster solidarity with our community. We, Black Students of Emory University, do not wish to wait until the situation escalates to death threats for administrative intervention, and instead call for Emory University’s administration to be proactive in the interactions between students, concerning race that could be harmful not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. We call for the University to understand and then appropriately address the mental stress incurred by Black Students at this institution on a daily basis.

The following document lists the demands of black students at Emory University. This document reflects the adjustments we believe should be made to the University in both policy and practice.

The first draft of these demands were announced during a protest intended to stand in solidarity with Yale University, the University of Missouri (Mizzou), and all other schools that are openly expressing their experience of racial trauma. We want to build off of the momentum and energy circulating from protests at educational institutions like ours and unify the movement as a method of understanding this common state of unrest. These demands have been created, reviewed, and updated by Emory University students in an effort to establish a foundation for conversations with administration who reached out to us hours after the protest.

The demands are in no specific order. We expect a response with an action plan from administration, faculty and SGA and College Council to these demands by

December 4, 2015.

If we do not receive a response, and our demands are not met, we will take appropriate nonviolent actions which will escalate until our demands are met. A response does not involve being redirected to various individuals who could meet our needs, but instead means that immediate action is taken on the part of the individuals who can incite change in the administration. We will not hesitate to contact media to publicize our movement and our demands, and bring to light the treatment of students, faculty, and staff

of color at the Emory University.

Signed,

The Black Students of Emory

1. Emory University must recognize traumatic events that Black students

experience on campus via the campus-wide emails sent to Emory University affiliates with emory.edu email addresses. These events shall be reported to the Bias Incident report. We demand that the administration of Emory University make the broad contexts and situations reported to the bias incident report known to the entire Emory community via campus-wide emails in order to increase awareness to every community within Emory University about racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and other forms of injustice. In order to create a community of care the entire Emory University community (including all school divisions, faculty, staff, and students) must know the community’s ills and collectively work together to combat them towards justice for all.

2. The Bias Incident Reporting that Emory University has not been efficient

because they have not thoroughly tended to the concerns of those who have used the reporting system. The microaggressions and macroaggressions that Black students experience which lead to our trauma should not be regarded for the sole purpose of data collection but should be taken seriously and met with the highest level of urgency and care.

In order to demonstrate this urgency and care, we demand that the Bias Response Team email a personalized email to the reporter (the person who used the Bias Incident Reporting) within 1-2 days of a Bias Incident Report receipt. Also, we demand that the Bias Response Team send a personalized response (that includes action steps to take for self-care and details on how to properly sanction the offender to the reporter by the University administration) within one week of the Bias Incident Report receipt.

3. Due to the systematic oppression faced by Black students throughout the

world via colorism, racism, classism, mass incarceration, police brutality and all other injustices we need psychological services that cater to our unique psychological needs. Emory University prides itself on being responsive to the whole Emory University student (spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally), therefore, in order to include the Black student, we demand for the Emory University Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) to provide unique and alternative methods of counseling for Black students if they prefer to receive them. CAPS does not take into consideration that our psychic health is compromised due to systemic oppression (social, racial, economic, gender, etc). These alternative counseling methods include: Black spirituality methods, Black counselors, and counselors of color.

4. We demand that the faculty evaluations that each student is required to complete for each of their professors include at least two open-ended questions such as: “Has this professor made any microaggressions towards you on account of your race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, and/or other identity?” and “Do you think that this professor fits into the vision of Emory University being a community of care for individuals of all racial, gender, ability, and class identities?” These questions on the faculty evaluations would help to ensure that there are repercussions or sanctions for racist actions performed by professors.

We demand that these questions be added to the faculty evaluations by the end of this semester, Fall 2015.

5. Due to the historic and current systematic socioeconomic oppression of Black persons in America, we demand that Emory University institutionalize an academic support system for Black students. The history of limited educational attainment for Black students in America leads to the conclusion that not all Black students are adequately prepared for the rigor of Emory University. This ill preparation is not due to lower intelligence than their other racial counterparts, however; it is due to the limited resources (e.g. inability to afford private tutors, having to use outdated textbooks in their public schools, etc.) that most Black students have had to use when attaining their primary and secondary education.

Therefore, we demand an institutionalized academic support hub for Black students to have access to and to receive tutoring, specialized study skills,

and career mentoring. Emory University has not created a program in place to aid Black students who are unprepared for the academic rigor of Emory’s preprofessional academic track. In regards to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, The Center for Science Education along with the Hughes Undergraduate Excelling in Science (HUES) program will be shut down in December. The Multicultural Outreach and Resources at Emory (MORE) program has a limit on how many students can participate to receive the academic support and social mentorship of its program due to lack of funding allocated to OMPS. Therefore, we demand increased funding for the MORE program for Fall of 2016.

6. The Campus Life Compact which, yet again, came out of frustration with

lack of response by administration to racialized experiences on campus and President Wagner’s compromise comment asked for a program that “engage[d] the campus community in training, discussion, education, and promotion of the challenges faced by students of color on campus.” One such diversity initiative that was implemented as a result of the Compact, Creating Emory, which has been ineffective in its execution of these pre-agreed goals.

As a result, we demand that Black students and students/staff/faculty of color should be consulted when making any university-wide diversity initiatives. These diversity initiatives, including Social justice Week by College Council and the like, have been surface level and even when the input of students of color is requested, their suggestions are still marginalized. Diversity initiatives should not be made from the standpoint of the dominant group (white men and women) or to ensure the comfort of the predominantly white student population at Emory. We demand that the purpose of these initiatives should be to ensure the comfort of the black students population at Emory and to enlighten white students about systematic oppression.

7. Black staff, faculty, and administrators who advise Black organizations should receive an increase in their financial compensation or salaries. Changes should be made to the hierarchical structure of Campus Life which puts primarily white males at the top of the structure which lead to their increased compensation and salaries.

Also, we demand an increase of Black staff, faculty, and administrators to be in higher positions of power so that they can implement the changes that black students wish to see in the university. We align ourselves with the letter/petition addressed to the Advisory Committee of The Board of Trustees and the Presidential Selection Committee signed by many members of the Emory University communities of color. The people who are currently in positions of power have done minimal or no work for Black students, therefore they are not thoroughly knowledgeable about how to implement diversity initiatives that help Black students. Black/POC administrators and staff are overworked and underpaid, but they are the most influential on campus.

The staff needs to be paid more for the work and time that they spend ensuring that the Black community has what it needs in the areas of administration, food, maintenance and custodial services, etc.

8. Black administrators are told to stand by racist and problematic faculty in order to preserve the positive image of the University to media and investors. However, the fact that these threats are made point to the job insecurity that Black faculty and administrators face at Emory University.

We demand job security for Black faculty and administrators when they are earnestly working on behalf of Black students.

9. Black student organizations are underfunded and over-policed. Forcing

black organizations to collaborate with predominantly White organizations that are interested in surface level interactions and superficial celebrations of diversity is violent to the Black community at Emory University. Black student organizations are often told that their events are exclusive. These claims are unfounded because events are created specifically for Black students because they do not exist anywhere else on campus. Therefore, Black student organizations need more funding in order to help accomplish Emory University’s mission to create a “community of care”. Also, throughout Black organizations have been severely policed which has led to their expulsion from Emory University’s campus for reasons that most organizations on campus are guilty of.

We demand that there is a fair trial with a jury consisting of faculty, staff, and administrators of color, for each Black organization that may be suspended or expelled from campus.

We also demand that there be a press release given to the entire Emory community (affiliates with emory.edu email addresses) after a Black organization is suspended or expelled from Emory University.

10. Currently, Emory 6.8% of faculty at Emory are black. Most faculty of

color are comprised of African American studies professors and lecturer/adjunct professors.The African American studies department has been a great resource to Black students, however, they too can be overextended with their various appointments in other departments.

Other faculty of color are adjunct professors/lecturers, who do not have job security and are not valued in their positions in their departments. Thus, we need black professors in all disciplines, traditional and nontraditional.

We demand that there be an increase in the amount of black and Latino full time, tenure-track professors to 10% by the year 2017 in other departments/disciplines besides the African American Studies department. We also demand that better records are kept of faculty and staff of color demographics and are easily accessible by the student body.

These statistics of professor’s ethnicity are important for increasing accountability.

We also demand that Black professors when in non-traditional or traditional disciplines must not be abused by the overwhelmingly white academy. Professors, too, need protection for the violent, racist and sexist incidents that they endure from their white colleagues in their departments.

11. Acknowledging foremost that all kinds of speech are not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” Emory University shall not protect the privilege of students to vocalize hate speech. The social app Yik Yak has been utilized on Emory’s campus to post messages similar in sentiment to the following posts: “So Black people can complain about their fucking microaggressions and whatever but if I as a white person feel unsafe or uncomfortable for any reason, I’m ignorant. Fuck that”, “I’m about to jack off to ebony porn to help race relations”, and “Let’s be real. Black lives matter is a sham. It’s not because you’re black. It’s because you’re selling crack and ran from a police officer.”

This is hate speech, which is defined by the American Bar Association as “speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits.” Whereas, this fits the description of the aforementioned posts as it did to the Swastika painted on the fraternity house of Alpha Epsilon Pi (which was swiftly removed by the authorities), it is illogical for Emory to remain impartial in the matter at hand. On October 11th 2015, Emily Sacamoto was arrested on Emory’s Oxford campus for posting “I’m shooting up the school. Tomorrow. Stay in your rooms. The ones on the quad are the ones who will go first.” Though the federal Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. § 2701) prevents Yik Yak from disclosing the account information of a user without an official request from law enforcement, it is impermissible to allow racist students to terrorize Black people on any form of media and the anonymity that Yik Yak provides is a breeding ground for behavior of that sort. Hence, we demand that Emory University Information Technology Services formally request that Yik Yak, Inc. install a geofence covering the zip code 30322 in order to protect our students from subjection to intolerable and psychologically detrimental material.

12. We demand that there be a student led GED program or opening Emory classes to black workers at Emory (DUC, Cliff, Maintenance). We would like for workers to take classes at Emory but understand that they have limited break time and other restrictions due to their demanding, undercompensated and under-rewarded labor. We, from our own observations, do not like the mistreatment and exploitation of DUC/Cox workers, who are also forced to endure extreme

discomfort. We demand that there is better treatment of the DUC/Cox workers and more comfortable conditions for them to work under.

13. Emory University does not currently have a General Education Requirement

that focuses specifically on the histories and experiences of people of color. The Campus Life Compact for Building an Inclusive Community at Emory (written Fall of 2012) states that the Office of the Provost and academic Deans will: 1) Consider creating a Global Citizenship & Diversity General Education Requirement and 2) Expand the range and quantity of course offerings specifically related to race relations, racism, ethnicity, etc.; encourage departments to make hires with these areas in mind whenever possible.

This has not happened. Simply put, we demand that Emory University follow through on this recommendation and create a General Education Requirement for courses that explore issues significantly affecting people of color, and this course should be implemented in the fall of 2016.

II. EMORY UNIVERSITY’S OFFICIAL RESPONSE

Dear Emory Community:

We thank our Black student leaders for advancing planning and action to address the serious concerns presented in their student demands document. They are initiating the kind of dialogue that is essential to cultivating a more socially just campus community. We firmly support their commitment to progress and look forward to meeting with them to fully address their community concerns.

This letter is written in the spirit of providing an immediate response to very complex and important matters. We acknowledge that there is much work to be done. A number of the issues raised and the associated work will require meetings and further discussions for understanding, agreement, and action plans. These dialogues are being planned in an expedited way and began with a meeting on December 2 during which student leaders and members of our administration developed an agenda to address concerns articulated in the demands with relevant Academic Affairs and Campus Life administrators at a retreat scheduled for January 22. Some immediate responses in the areas listed below serve as a foundation for the planning discussions going forward.

We wish to emphasize three points at the start. First, some concerns and responses below overlap and some may apply to more than one area of concern. Second, none of our responses below are intended to be final. Third, academic policy is determined by faculty governance structures within each of our nine schools. As mentioned above, we look forward to further examining with Black student leadership how we can work together to address the concerns outlined in their demands. As previously mentioned, although many of the demands will be addressed during a retreat scheduled on January 22, several of the systemic issues articulated in the demands will be addressed through mutually agreed upon and/or existing structures.

Demands 1 and 2: Bias Incident Reporting

The Bias Incident Reporting program is a relatively new system that was initiated in fall 2013 to provide a platform to share our community values and expectations, establish a reporting structure for students to document bias incidents, and form a team of staff members trained to respond to bias incidents.

We will review with our Black student leaders the challenges and successes of this system and implement changes to better support the needs of the community. Their input and that of other students is essential.

Demand 3: Counseling and Psychological Services

The demands raise the issue of resources available to Black students through Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). Recognizing that mental health is an important part of student success, last spring we created a new executive-level position to lead the CAPS office. This senior staff member represents mental health concerns on Emory Campus Life’s Executive Leadership Team and participates directly in Emory Campus Life strategic policy formation.

The CAPS staff is fully committed to examining how we can best address the concerns expressed regarding support for Black students. Currently, half of the CAPS staff are people of color and 43 percent of the clients served last year were students of color, including 13 percent who identified as Black or African American. We are committed to broadening our approaches for engaging with students, providing a safe space for Black students, and creating partnerships to connect with students from marginalized groups who may feel hesitant to come to CAPS.

Demand 4:  Faculty Evaluations

 Emory University, like most universities with multiple undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, does not have a unified course evaluation form. The course evaluation information is used for the annual evaluation of each faculty member as well as included in the dossier for each faculty member considered for tenure and/or promotion. Modifications to the course evaluation form are a core component of faculty governance in each school/college.

Each academic Dean will be asked to establish a process in the school/college to review and revise current course evaluations (e.g., add the recommended open-ended questions), as well as make other revisions identified as part of the review. Next, these revised course evaluations will be shared through existing mechanisms such as the Council of Deans, the University Senate, and the ongoing assessments on student learning.

As the 2015 fall semester is coming to an end, this work will begin in the 2016 spring semester with the intent to use the revised course evaluation from the spring and to consider the outcomes in the 2015-2016 annual faculty evaluations. The Office of Planning and Budgeting will collect information on the faculty annual evaluations as part of the annual reporting requirement for each school, specifically the nature and number of negative actions regarding faculty members.

  Demand 5: Academic Support

Enhancing academic support will require ongoing collaboration between Campus Life and the schools/colleges. We look forward to working with Black and other student leadership to generate ideas on how to expand and strengthen existing programs, several of which are described below, as well as identify new programmatic opportunities.

Academic advising and mentoring are essential to the success of all our students, including undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. Despite significant advances in academic support, there is a need for further investments to ensure that students from historically marginalized groups, including Black students, receive the kind and level of support that will yield success at Emory and beyond.

Similar to the structure for revising course evaluations, each academic Dean will be asked to establish a structure in the school/college to review student academic support via engagement of students, faculty, and staff and grounded in the school/college governance structure. The Deans will be expected to work with their respective constituency groups to implement improvements in a timely matter and to provide a progress report, including evaluations as appropriate, as part of the annual reporting structure.  Council of Deans meetings will allow for sharing and comparisons across schools/colleges.

Over the past 25 years, the Emory Campus Life Career Center has co-sponsored “Reality Is… ” This networking event, specifically for Black students, is provided in collaboration with the Caucus of Emory Black Alumni (CEBA) and the Office of Multicultural Programs and Services (OMPS). The Career Center has also conducted workshops for the OMPS Multicultural Outreach and Resources at Emory (MORE) program the last two years. We look forward to exploring with Black student leaders the expansion of career support initiatives for Black students at Emory.

One of Campus Life’s organizational restructuring efforts this year that speaks to concerns expressed in the student demands is our creation of the new Office of Student Success Programs and Services. This initiative includes the 1915 Scholars Program, Emory Advantage, and The Gates Millennium Scholars Program, which collectively assist students with meeting academic, social, and financial challenges. This organizational change was created to increase program synergy, effectiveness, and efficiency by bringing several related initiatives under the same umbrella.

The Office of Student Success also encompasses the Student Intervention Services (SIS) Team working closely with Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and Student Health Services (SHS)– which houses psychiatry and other campus offices – to create additional synergy among services as we work together to support students and help them achieve success. Because Student Success is a new department, it is especially important that we establish a student advisory board to determine future programming, especially as it relates to supporting Black students at Emory, and we welcome the participation of Black student leaders.

We also recognize the importance of mentoring programs that involve peer and staff/faculty/alumni initiatives. The Office of Multicultural Programs and Services (OMPS) currently facilitates several programs designed to provide mentoring and support for Black students. These programs – Men of Distinction at Emory (MODE), Multicultural Outreach and Resources at Emory (MORE), and Building Leaders and Cultivating Knowledge (BLACK) – support meaningful relationships and promote student success. However, we recognize that we have work to do to make our community even more supportive of Black students’ academic and social success. We look forward to working with Black student leadership and other student leaders to strategize next steps for programmatic support for our mentoring programs. We are committed to expanding programs and services to meet the needs of the community.

Demand 6: Planning Diversity Initiatives

Black students and other students representing historically marginalized groups will be invited to participate in the planning process for Creating Emory and other Campus Life diversity training and initiatives. In addition, the Office of Equity and Inclusion will work with Campus Life to identify committees that currently do not have student representation.

We will also work with the Advisory Council on Community and Diversity (ACCD) to ensure that each Division is committed to inclusion as demonstrated in the annual reports to the ACCD. Conversations already are underway to expand reporting of the ACCD beyond the university administration to the University Senate, the governance body of the full university, representing students, faculty, and staff.

Demands 7, 8, and 10: Increase in Black Staff, Faculty, and Administrators 

Each year, the university’s Office of Equity and Inclusion prepares and maintains an Affirmative Action Plan (AAP) in accordance with federal regulations. The process of maintaining this plan allows us the opportunity to identify areas for growth and change. Annually, the plans are shared with key stakeholders at the university and monitored for improvements. Emory’s Affirmative Action Plan is more than a shelf document. Implementation of this plan serves as guiding principles for the community. This plan allows us to: 1) implement educational programs aimed at increasing diversity in our workplace; 2) conduct federally mandated workforce analyses; 3) develop affirmative action programs and best practices; 4) document best effort; 5) guide the work we do to engage self-analyses for the purpose of discovering barriers to equal employment opportunities; and 6) monitor our progress over extended periods of time.

As part of the school/college annual reporting, as well as of Emory’s Affirmative Action plan, we conduct an annual evaluation of the composition of our faculty. This includes benchmarking for underrepresented faculty, including Black faculty, based on national trends and the pipeline. The analyses include a comparison between the current and expected faculty composition by type of appointment and rank. When a school/college is below the targeting representation, the Dean of that unit is charged to rectify the situation. In addition, the review compares the faculty composition to the Emory goals for each school/college, and this is where we must continue to make progress, as the proposed goals are not being met in all schools/colleges or across disciplines.

Two years ago, the Office of the Provost created a Faculty Diversity Fund to assist the deans to achieve faculty diversity goals as defined by discipline/area of focus with the understanding that progress is measured both in numbers and most importantly an improved culture for faculty diversity. The latter includes recognition of contributions to committee work and other institution-building activities.

Faculty recruitment and retention are a priority for all of academic affairs at Emory. Part of the January retreat will focus on developing a shared understanding of how dedicated recruitment and retention currently occur, how recruitment and retention can be enhanced, and how these actions will yield increased diversity.

To improve faculty retention and with an emphasis on faculty diversity, the Office of Equity and Inclusion within the Office of the Provost established, in partnership with one of the Senior Advisors to the Provost and a Faculty Advisory Committee, the Best Practices for Faculty Recruitment. Work is underway to establish Best Practices for Faculty Retention, also with an emphasis on faculty diversity.  Workshops on unconscious bias for faculty searches were initiated in fall 2015, and training to expand the number of faculty who can provide these workshops is underway.

 Although Emory Campus Life is a diverse organization, we are not satisfied with our current levels of staff diversity, professional development opportunities, and recruitment and retention strategies – all of which we are committed to improving.

Campus Life recently appointed a Senior Director/Senior Associate Dean of Learning and Innovation, who provides leadership, management, and direction to nurture professional development of Campus Life staff. Along with the Campus Life Human Resources Manager, the two departments lead learning and development efforts in a range of programs, including our ongoing commitment to recruitment at every level that supports a staff representing the broad diversity of our campus community. In partnership with Emory Human Resources, we will conduct a new comprehensive review of Campus Life staff compensation and recruitment and retention strategies for staff of color and other historically marginalized groups.

 The Class and Labor Committee provided 62 recommendations on staff, and these have been addressed through an implementation committee that was part of the University Senate. The report on faculty from the Class and Labor Committee has been delayed but is expected to be ready in early 2016. Once received, recommendations also will be shared with the University Senate and other key constituency groups. The expectation is to establish a University Senate standing committee for implementation regarding Class and Labor recommendations for staff and faculty.

Demand 9: Trials for Black Organizations

Campus Life’s Office of Student Conduct has two recent appointees as Director and Assistant Director. In collaboration with students, the staff members in the Office of Student Conduct will review our policies and protocols and develop recommendations to further enhance the entire system.

Demand 11: Geofence for Yik Yak

 Through a partnership between Information Technology Services and the University Senate, a task force will be created to examine the feasibility of a geofence covering the zip codes for Emory University, including Oxford College.

Demand 12: Establishment of GED Program  

Emory Human Resources will recommend strategies to enhance the working conditions of DUC/Cox workers and explore the possibility of establishing GED course offerings for staff members.

Demand 13: General Education Requirement Addressing Issues Affecting People of Color

The General Education Requirement is offered in Emory College of Arts and Sciences and Oxford College. This demand will be further discussed at the upcoming retreat with the appropriate faculty governance representatives.

Conclusion

This document describes current areas of engagement that already address to some extent the concerns expressed in the Black student demands, as well as several initiatives scheduled for spring semester. We are committed to participating in a process that explores a full range of efforts now underway, as well as students’ ideas on how we might enhance existing programs and consider possible new initiatives where needed.

It is our hope that, following the January 22 retreat, a comprehensive document will be developed that identifies a timeline, action steps, and accountability measures for each demand.Meanwhile, Emory Campus Life staff members are partnering with student leaders to co-facilitate special programs to help students successfully complete the current semester.

The Wall of Love, which took place November 23, was led by students and supported by the Office of Multicultural Programs and Services (OMPS) as a space for healing in light of racist comments on social media. In addition, a program is scheduled to take place before finals to help students prepare for exams and engage in self-care. For spring semester, the Office of Health Promotion (OHP) is developing a Happiness Boot Camp for Black students as part of Flourish Emory.

We support what we understand to be the overarching goal of the demands document – to ensure that Emory’s Black students, like all our students, receive the support they need and deserve to succeed. Know also that we are committed to working with Black student leaders and our entire community to achieve that goal.

We look forward to further dialogue and collaborative planning on these issues in the very near future.

Sincerely,

Ajay Nair

Senior Vice President and Dean of Campus Life

Claire E. Sterk

Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs