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No Campus for White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education into Hateful Indoctrination
No Campus for White Men shines a bright light on the growing obsession with diversity, victimization and identity politics on today's college campuses, and shows how it is creating an intensely hostile and fearful atmosphere that can only lead, ultimately, to ever greater polarization in American society.
Across the country, ugly campus protests over speakers with dissenting viewpoints, as well as a preoccupation with "micro-aggressions," "trigger warnings," "safe spaces" and brand-new "gender identities," make it obvious that something has gone terribly wrong with higher education. For years, colleges have pursued policies favoring students based not on their merit, but on their race, gender, and sexual orientation. The disturbingly negative effects of this culture are now impossible to deny.
Scott Greer s investigative work links such seemingly unrelated trends as "rape culture" hysteria and Black Lives Matter to an overall campus mindset intent on elevating and celebrating leftist-designated "protected classes" above everyone else while intimidating, censoring, and punishing those who disagree with this perversely un-American agenda.
In No Campus for White Men, Greer broadens the usual media focus well beyond coverage of demonstrations by easily offended college students, to spotlight the darker forces at work behind the scenes that are feeding higher education s metastasizing crisis and how all this results in sustained animosity, first and foremost, toward white men. Greer also documents how this starkly totalitarian culture is not isolated to higher education, but is rather a result of trends already operating in society. Thus, he shows, today's campus madness may eventually dominate much more of America if it is not addressed and reversed soon.
"
Across the country, ugly campus protests over speakers with dissenting viewpoints, as well as a preoccupation with "micro-aggressions," "trigger warnings," "safe spaces" and brand-new "gender identities," make it obvious that something has gone terribly wrong with higher education. For years, colleges have pursued policies favoring students based not on their merit, but on their race, gender, and sexual orientation. The disturbingly negative effects of this culture are now impossible to deny.
Scott Greer s investigative work links such seemingly unrelated trends as "rape culture" hysteria and Black Lives Matter to an overall campus mindset intent on elevating and celebrating leftist-designated "protected classes" above everyone else while intimidating, censoring, and punishing those who disagree with this perversely un-American agenda.
In No Campus for White Men, Greer broadens the usual media focus well beyond coverage of demonstrations by easily offended college students, to spotlight the darker forces at work behind the scenes that are feeding higher education s metastasizing crisis and how all this results in sustained animosity, first and foremost, toward white men. Greer also documents how this starkly totalitarian culture is not isolated to higher education, but is rather a result of trends already operating in society. Thus, he shows, today's campus madness may eventually dominate much more of America if it is not addressed and reversed soon.
"
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 4, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 12, 2017
Details the reverse discrimination towards White guys on campus and how we're all regarded as priveledged. Demonstrates how Liberals indoctrinate campuses to believe that everything is the fault of White men and therefore, it's ok to hate us. While Lib's won't admit it, that attitude is called prejudice and any actions to bring a disadvantage to people of a particular skin color (White) is racism, or against a specific gender is called sexism.
September 11, 2017
No Campus for White Men reads like a battle cry for white people especially those who uphold conservative values who are tired of political correctness, identity politics, and victimhood. However, ironically, just like Milo Yiannopoulos' book (Milo also writes the Forward to this one), Scott Greer is guilty of the same victimhood for white people, which he criticizes for minorities.
Greer also gets it wrong on affirmative action. He thinks affirmative action benefits undeserving people of color when it actually levels the playing field for deserving candidates. No Ivy League school is going to take on any student of any color with low grades unless you have rich parents with connections. Just because someone benefits from affirmative action does not mean they are there at the expense of a better white candidate. Greer implies that people of color are inferior in intelligence (seriously) and need to accept this inferiority by applying to schools where they can benefit from a less strenuous curriculum. This idea alone is racist and fosters white supremacy rather than seeking a more nuanced position where many white people benefit from better neighborhoods with greater resources than their non-white counterparts. Greer likewise either forgets or doesn't know that white people were the first beneficiaries of affirmative action. Most of the New Deal programs benefitted white people and brought many of them into the Middle Class while people of color were left out. It was only during Lyndon Johnson's presidency and thereafter that there was an attempt to rectify this through the affirmative action we know today. There is still more work to be done. A recent New York Times article shows Greer's argument to be nothing more than white paranoia: "Affirmative Action Yields Little Progress on Campus for Blacks and Hispanics: After 35 Years, Racial Gaps Widen at Top U.S. Colleges, an Analysis Shows" (August 25, 2017). The article title says it all.
Greer also makes an argument that diversity is not good, citing a Harvard study by Robert Putnam. The study found that in diverse neighborhoods, people are less trusting, less altruistic, and have fewer friends. This goes for people who are most like each other. In these neighborhoods, white people will not trust other whites, black people with other blacks, and so on. Nevermind that a simple Google search reveals that Putnam believes his study has been twisted. Greer is arguing by implication for segregated neighborhoods and schools. I'm guessing he hasn't been around people different from him much or that he has nostalgia for an America from say, the 1950's.
There are few redeeming qualities for No Campus for White Men. For example, Greer's chapter on hoaxes is disturbing, although showing multiple examples doesn't prove an epidemic on our college campuses. The chapter on rape culture was interesting insofar as the statistical figure of 1 in 5 female college students will be raped in college to be largely a myth. If that was the case, more men would be arrested for rape across the country. That is a high figure for a country like the United States as opposed to say a third-world country. Colleges are safe for women, even more so than outside it. To be clear, rape is wrong and evil no matter if it's one case or many cases. However mostly this book is pure drivel, disturbing in many places, and just wrong on affirmative action and other topics. The fact that Tucker Carlson recommends this book says a great deal.
Greer also gets it wrong on affirmative action. He thinks affirmative action benefits undeserving people of color when it actually levels the playing field for deserving candidates. No Ivy League school is going to take on any student of any color with low grades unless you have rich parents with connections. Just because someone benefits from affirmative action does not mean they are there at the expense of a better white candidate. Greer implies that people of color are inferior in intelligence (seriously) and need to accept this inferiority by applying to schools where they can benefit from a less strenuous curriculum. This idea alone is racist and fosters white supremacy rather than seeking a more nuanced position where many white people benefit from better neighborhoods with greater resources than their non-white counterparts. Greer likewise either forgets or doesn't know that white people were the first beneficiaries of affirmative action. Most of the New Deal programs benefitted white people and brought many of them into the Middle Class while people of color were left out. It was only during Lyndon Johnson's presidency and thereafter that there was an attempt to rectify this through the affirmative action we know today. There is still more work to be done. A recent New York Times article shows Greer's argument to be nothing more than white paranoia: "Affirmative Action Yields Little Progress on Campus for Blacks and Hispanics: After 35 Years, Racial Gaps Widen at Top U.S. Colleges, an Analysis Shows" (August 25, 2017). The article title says it all.
Greer also makes an argument that diversity is not good, citing a Harvard study by Robert Putnam. The study found that in diverse neighborhoods, people are less trusting, less altruistic, and have fewer friends. This goes for people who are most like each other. In these neighborhoods, white people will not trust other whites, black people with other blacks, and so on. Nevermind that a simple Google search reveals that Putnam believes his study has been twisted. Greer is arguing by implication for segregated neighborhoods and schools. I'm guessing he hasn't been around people different from him much or that he has nostalgia for an America from say, the 1950's.
There are few redeeming qualities for No Campus for White Men. For example, Greer's chapter on hoaxes is disturbing, although showing multiple examples doesn't prove an epidemic on our college campuses. The chapter on rape culture was interesting insofar as the statistical figure of 1 in 5 female college students will be raped in college to be largely a myth. If that was the case, more men would be arrested for rape across the country. That is a high figure for a country like the United States as opposed to say a third-world country. Colleges are safe for women, even more so than outside it. To be clear, rape is wrong and evil no matter if it's one case or many cases. However mostly this book is pure drivel, disturbing in many places, and just wrong on affirmative action and other topics. The fact that Tucker Carlson recommends this book says a great deal.
April 14, 2020
Written by a white man who can't see his privilege from the top of the mountain he's on. The book is nothing but brietbart right wing drivel.
December 19, 2021
8.75/10.
I finally understand what "postmodern Nietzscheanism" means. The concept is this:
Morality in the West has been transformed into what Nietzsche called "slave morality". Essentially, the "victims" of society create a morality to make themselves morally superior than those who are above them. Unlike any other morality, which prizes good character, good deeds, honesty, courage, virtue, et cetera, slave morality prizes the ontology of the victim, i.e. you being a victim. This leads to Oppression Olympics, with victimhood competitions going on in the sphere of race, gender, sexual preference, and disability.
"Slave morality" is not defined by positive actions, but by the big No. And who do postmodern Nietzscheans say No to? The straight, White male. He is the One to Be Condemned. He cannot protect his identity. But anyone else can — nigh, they can implement segregated spaces and living spaces to do so! Why? Because it is not their actions that matter, just their ontology.
This book is actually quite erudite. It is not just a listing of grievances of the White Man — it takes philosophy and applies it to the modern political situation. For example, Carl Schmitt defined the political as opposition to some "Other", some group that is fought against in order to protect one's identity. The Other for Schmitt meant nation-states, but for our SJWs it is none other than the White Man. He is the root of all evil: the colonizer, the enslaver, the oppressor, the phallogocentric Original Sin. He and his customs must be gotten rid of. SJWism is a Postmodern Puritanism, as Greer says. The silly "Conservatives" say the Left has "moral relativism", whereas if they would just open their eyes they would see moral totalitarianism. And who shalt that moral system be against? None other than the Christian, Heterosexual White Man. Those who oppose Schmitt's Other in modern society are either ontologically oppressed, or are "allies" who must atone for the Original Sin all the days of their life.
Also, apparently the best studies on "rape culture" on campus find that not 1 out of 5 women are raped, but that .03 of out 5 women are raped during college. No one will tell you that the "1 out of 5" figure comes from 2 universities and from researchers who explicitly said that their findings cannot be generalized.
I highly recommend that you give this book to your average "Conservative". You might just wake them up.
I finally understand what "postmodern Nietzscheanism" means. The concept is this:
Morality in the West has been transformed into what Nietzsche called "slave morality". Essentially, the "victims" of society create a morality to make themselves morally superior than those who are above them. Unlike any other morality, which prizes good character, good deeds, honesty, courage, virtue, et cetera, slave morality prizes the ontology of the victim, i.e. you being a victim. This leads to Oppression Olympics, with victimhood competitions going on in the sphere of race, gender, sexual preference, and disability.
"Slave morality" is not defined by positive actions, but by the big No. And who do postmodern Nietzscheans say No to? The straight, White male. He is the One to Be Condemned. He cannot protect his identity. But anyone else can — nigh, they can implement segregated spaces and living spaces to do so! Why? Because it is not their actions that matter, just their ontology.
This book is actually quite erudite. It is not just a listing of grievances of the White Man — it takes philosophy and applies it to the modern political situation. For example, Carl Schmitt defined the political as opposition to some "Other", some group that is fought against in order to protect one's identity. The Other for Schmitt meant nation-states, but for our SJWs it is none other than the White Man. He is the root of all evil: the colonizer, the enslaver, the oppressor, the phallogocentric Original Sin. He and his customs must be gotten rid of. SJWism is a Postmodern Puritanism, as Greer says. The silly "Conservatives" say the Left has "moral relativism", whereas if they would just open their eyes they would see moral totalitarianism. And who shalt that moral system be against? None other than the Christian, Heterosexual White Man. Those who oppose Schmitt's Other in modern society are either ontologically oppressed, or are "allies" who must atone for the Original Sin all the days of their life.
Also, apparently the best studies on "rape culture" on campus find that not 1 out of 5 women are raped, but that .03 of out 5 women are raped during college. No one will tell you that the "1 out of 5" figure comes from 2 universities and from researchers who explicitly said that their findings cannot be generalized.
I highly recommend that you give this book to your average "Conservative". You might just wake them up.
August 25, 2018
Lately I have felt a lot like Alice in Wonderland, as if I have wandered into some fantastical, surrealistic place where UP is down and DOWN is up. Reading this book helped me see some things I had not noticed before. For example, that the capital letter "I" in Identity Politics has translated into “I/Me-/Mine” instead of “we” or “us” together. This clarified for me how the I-I-I of Identity Politics has morphed over the years -- from initial efforts to achieve diversity into rules for protecting the diversifiers.
Gradually, color-blind meritocracy became a passe idea as diversity hip-checked all other goals (like encountering, considering, and debating divergent opinions). Soon the diversifiers wanted courses to be more representational of themselves, so colleges revised their curricula accordingly. Teaching English Literature, for example, was found to skew “too white” due to the reality that most of the people who wrote it were white men. In an online petition, students claimed that it is actively harmful to spend a year “around a seminar table where the literary contributions of women, people of color, and queer folk are absent.”
This book was like a walk through Wonderland for me -- a walk down myriad stepping stones that led to perceiving the dominant voice as oppressive, as the voice of old America, where the worst trait one could have was “privilege” and where all patriarchy, toxic masculinity, repression of women, and sinister lacks of diversity have now been banished forever. I found it an interesting factoid that comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher are no longer playing to college audiences. They say the kids are so politically correct that they don’t laugh at anything anymore. It sounds like Puritans in contemporary times: trigger-happy and eager to dash off on the next witch hunt.
People shouting OUR VOICE WILL BE HEARD have overwhelmed the underlying current of such American ideals as "E pluribus unum". Apparently the “I” that stands for “I” and for “Me” and for “Mine” frowns upon unity amidst difference. To say "We're all one race, the human race" is not considered respectful anymore. In fact, it’s considered hateful and even racist because it tries to minimize racial and ethnic experiences.
For me, this book exposes Identity Politics as divisive, not unifying, and the goal of diversity as a goal that promotes difference. Difference is division, and so this book generated a simple eureka: division divides.
Gradually, color-blind meritocracy became a passe idea as diversity hip-checked all other goals (like encountering, considering, and debating divergent opinions). Soon the diversifiers wanted courses to be more representational of themselves, so colleges revised their curricula accordingly. Teaching English Literature, for example, was found to skew “too white” due to the reality that most of the people who wrote it were white men. In an online petition, students claimed that it is actively harmful to spend a year “around a seminar table where the literary contributions of women, people of color, and queer folk are absent.”
This book was like a walk through Wonderland for me -- a walk down myriad stepping stones that led to perceiving the dominant voice as oppressive, as the voice of old America, where the worst trait one could have was “privilege” and where all patriarchy, toxic masculinity, repression of women, and sinister lacks of diversity have now been banished forever. I found it an interesting factoid that comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher are no longer playing to college audiences. They say the kids are so politically correct that they don’t laugh at anything anymore. It sounds like Puritans in contemporary times: trigger-happy and eager to dash off on the next witch hunt.
People shouting OUR VOICE WILL BE HEARD have overwhelmed the underlying current of such American ideals as "E pluribus unum". Apparently the “I” that stands for “I” and for “Me” and for “Mine” frowns upon unity amidst difference. To say "We're all one race, the human race" is not considered respectful anymore. In fact, it’s considered hateful and even racist because it tries to minimize racial and ethnic experiences.
For me, this book exposes Identity Politics as divisive, not unifying, and the goal of diversity as a goal that promotes difference. Difference is division, and so this book generated a simple eureka: division divides.
May 21, 2017
This is one of those books that is worth having for its bibliography. It is best viewed as a collection of sources that can be used to make arguments in greater depth and with greater seriousness. Although the arguments and facts contained within will not surprise anyone who has paid attention to what is happening on college campuses in the last few years, the author does cite numerous examples of campus craziness that you probably haven't heard of before. The various "false-flag" SJW attacks discussed in Chapter 8 make for interesting reading and will provide many examples that you can use in your next Facebook argument. Until I read this book, I was also not aware of the significant foil that fraternities and sororities apparently are for, let's say, the regressive or toxic left.
It's a good quick read, ultimately more valuable for its bibliography than it's content - but we should never underestimate the power of good bibliographies.
It's a good quick read, ultimately more valuable for its bibliography than it's content - but we should never underestimate the power of good bibliographies.
May 6, 2019
Reading this book makes me feeling grateful for not studying higher education in USA. For places that claim to be fostering inclusivity and honoring differences, the colleges in America are invariably leftist in their political leaning. Infested with SJWs enforcing safe spaces, inclusivity courses while browbeating the conservatives and their old college traditions such as greek fraternities, spreading hoaxes such as rape culture, yet playing the victim when proven wrong. High in their ivory tower, oblivious to the world outside, there is no doubt in my mind that higher education institutions in America played a part in polarization of America’s politics. No wonder that Democratic politicians such as Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren want to abolish college loans and tuition fees. The colleges ensure the Democrats of unlimited supply of young, radical, leftist voters.
February 5, 2017
****3/4
Great, essential reading which loses a quarter-star for a bit of cognitive dissonance in being unwilling to follow the argument to its conclusion or to the radical of the issues discussed.
Any other minor quibbles are easily forgiven in such a work which is true modern prophecy - it speaks on behalf of the eternal and immutable Truth to power - the slave morality 'power' of the faux-victims of victim culture, the thought police and SJWs, and the minority-identity political agitators who have replaced the old gods with new idols, Baalim and Asherah, in many of the halls of academia.
Great, essential reading which loses a quarter-star for a bit of cognitive dissonance in being unwilling to follow the argument to its conclusion or to the radical of the issues discussed.
Any other minor quibbles are easily forgiven in such a work which is true modern prophecy - it speaks on behalf of the eternal and immutable Truth to power - the slave morality 'power' of the faux-victims of victim culture, the thought police and SJWs, and the minority-identity political agitators who have replaced the old gods with new idols, Baalim and Asherah, in many of the halls of academia.
November 14, 2017
The author examines the depressing situation on college campus with their focus on radical identity politics where whites are made to feel guilty. In the chapter on rape culture feminism, the author offers some statistics to debunk that myth and also talks about hoaxes. This book is well referenced with end notes and index so the readers can double check his facts for themselves. The summary at the end questions: is college even worth it anymore? Very thought provoking and more than a bit scary.
June 15, 2018
The authors are uninformed on the topic upon which they write. Also, the writing style was definitely dry as heck.
February 5, 2026
Absolutely on the mark. An intellectual, almost scholarly dissection of the most vicious cancer on the American body politic.
American college campuses are almost uniformly hostile to white men. Although this is commonly known, the pervasiveness and insidiousness of the situation is easy to overlook.
Scott Greer is one of the founders of the libertarian online newspaper "The Daily Caller." He has written a systematic analysis of the problem. He investigates the intellectual history of the animus against white men and goes into significant detail about how it plays out on campus.
Greer does not include any personal experience in his account. He also fails to mention the low key, day-to-day hostility that a white male experiences on a modern campus. I experienced it firsthand when returned to the University as a graduate student in 2003, at the age of 60. At that stage in my life I was not looking forward to starting a career, so I could look upon the abuse I took with amused detachment. It was, however, quite real.
Race and sex are the two dominant themes in the anti-male campaign. The suppositions that can never be disproved or dismissed are that white men are inherently sexist and racist. The system is constructed in such a way that no amount of apology, reparations or groveling can compensate for the injustices supposedly suffered by the victims. Greer's chapter organization frames the discussion quite well:
1 Cult of Diversity
Without any proof, and in fact quite conspicuously evading any attempt at proof, campuses have adopted the premise that diversity is a good thing. Anybody who questions the premise is assumed to be a bigot of the worst sort. For an amusing incident that corroborates Greer's argument Google "Bucking the College Diversity Cult." For a well-written critique of the diversity phenomenon from a decade and a half back, see Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance.
2 Political Correctness in the Age of Microaggressions
The "gotcha" that campus progressives invariably use is the unfalsifiable claim. If they call you a racist, you are powerless to prove that you are not. The tag sticks and you are ostracized. Microaggressions are the same thing. If a member of some protected minority – anything but a straight white male – accuses you of saying something that they find offensive, you have no defense. Google "how to get offended unilad" for a satire on the topic.
Nonetheless, they take microaggressions extremely seriously on campus. I have been prompted to put trigger warnings on some of the stuff on my website. It is ridiculous, and I do it tongue-in-cheek, but that is where our society has gone.
The result has been to absolutely stifle discussion of controversial issues on the premise that even talking about them constitutes an aggression.
3 Victimhood Culture
Greer does a great service in this chapter by providing a probing analysis of the intellectual basis for the culture of victimhood. It goes like this.
Societies historically valued honor as a supreme virtue. In honor-based societies the man had to defend his reputation and that of his family, even to the point of deadly fights. Honor-based societies were characterized by weak or absent authority. The individual had to take the task of enforcing justice upon himself. The American West is the example that Greer sites.
Once government structures came in place, honor-based societies were replaced by dignity-based societies. We no longer fought one another, but we expressed our dignity through self-sufficiency and adherence to the law. Once again, reputation was paramount.
The third ethic is one which Greer calls the culture of victimhood. He traces its intellectual roots back to Nietzsche's "Slave mentality." In a culture of victimhood there is no hierarchy of moral or ethical values. It is a free-for-all of competing claims for special treatment to reverse past offences. The assumption is that straight white males have committed almost all of the offenses.
It is worth buying the book for this chapter alone. It explains why the problem is so dangerous and difficult to grapple with.
4 Identity Politics
Identity politics is the opposite of the melting pot theory. It was once assumed that we all came together into a single American polity and we would put aside our selfish, parochial group interests to seek the common interest of the country. Now it is the opposite – each group seeks its own gain, at the expense of the others.
Part and parcel of this theory is "white privilege." Because whites have supposedly been on top in the past, they and they alone are forbidden from looking out for their own interests. Every campus in America has a Black Student Union. No campus has a White Student Union – it would be supremely racist.
5 Guilty of Being White
Even Greer apologizes more than I think necessary for the darker chapters in man's history. While it is true that Europeans and Americans practiced slavery, it is equally true that just about every culture in the world did likewise. Moreover, a great many whites figured among the slaves in America, and a not insignificant number of Blacks figured among the slaveholders. Also incontrovertible is that the treatment of black slaves in the United States was far more humane than their treatment by Portuguese in Brazil –see my English review of [[ASIN:B003S8U6HS Historia Da Escravidão]] or by the Arabs. The Arabs, for instance, prevented interbreeding by the simple expedient of castrating their African slaves. Americans did not do that.
Forcing whites to apologize for being White, acknowledging their suppose it privilege has been going on since the 1960s. Read Tom Wolfe's [[ASIN:0312429134 Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers]]. It has worked extraordinarily well. Observe the way the Germans continually beg forgiveness for the Holocaust, whereas the people they victimized are singularly unrepentant about their genocides they have led in Ukraine and Palestine. See [[ASIN:1859844421 Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict]], [[ASIN:B005646E32 The Jewish Century]], and [[ASIN:0465031471 Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin]].
6 Rape Culture Feminism
The campus rape epidemic is a totally manufactured phenomenon. Rape has always been a factor wherever young men and women are together, but it was and remains less of one on campus than elsewhere. Though Greer does not make this argument, it is only common sense. Rape is strongly correlated with at least three factors: socioeconomic status, intelligence and race. The admissions process ensures that college men come from the demographics least inclined to rape by these measures. Google "The Color of Crime" for more detail.
The rape meme is already rather long in the tooth. For a picture of the situation in the 1990s, when the madness started, read [[ASIN:0316754323 The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism]], There was nothing there, there is nothing there, and yet the drumbeat is relentless.
It is a fact that campus athletes, predominantly African-American, have participated in a greatly disproportionate number of campus rapes. However, this is played down by all parties concerned. Administrators want to protect their football teams, and they want to protect the myth that rape is a white problem. That is the opposite of the case.
There have been a vast number of hoaxes with regard to rape: the Duke University lacrosse team, the Jackie Coakley hoax, and many other that Greer enumerates.
Greer does not mention the single headline case of rape which actually resulted in a conviction. Stanford varsity swimmer Brock Turner went to jail for raping a woman whose identity is still unknown. Social justice warriors celebrated the win, but were hugely disappointed that it resulted only in a three month sentence. They made a strong attempt to have the judge who handed out such a lenient sentence disempaneled.
Reading the details of the case on the Internet, one finds that both Turner and the woman had drunk far too much that night. She was unconscious. The two were lying on the grass someplace on the campus and he had her panties down and was fingering her genitals. It would be impossible to know whether or not his fingers penetrated – the textbook definition of rape – but DNA tests showed that nothing else did. I can assure you, dear reader, that 50 years ago this would have been no big deal. And even in 2017 it probably would've been no big deal except that Turner had the bad luck to become a Great White Male Defendant.
7 Greeks under Siege
The fraternity/sorority system is a legacy of the days in which white men dominated the American campus. It has been an institution that instilled civic values, gave young people an opportunity to rise to campus leadership positions, and gave young men and women of a certain social class a milieu in which they could meet and marry.
As an emblem of supposed white privilege the system is under siege on almost every campus. Campus administrations bend over backwards to persecute them, as in the Duke lacrosse team case. Greer provides a number of examples.
8 Art of the Hoax
Since white males do not reliably commit a sufficient number of egregious offenses, the victim classes feel obliged to make things up. The chapter on rape describes hoaxes in the realm of sex; this chapter covers mainly racially oriented hoaxes.
9 Whither Will Campus Insanity Take America?
This is the concluding chapter. The most optimism it can offer is that this is a passing phase. White men have to tough it out.
The first thing is to recognize that a college education is not the value proposition that it used to be. College educations are hugely expensive. Parents have to recognize that it involves a significant investment in a product of dubious worth while at the same time subjecting children to several years of intense brainwashing about social justice issues. Why would you pay for that?
Greer offers some alternatives. I recommend [[ASIN:B0099CUNIO Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will]] and [[ASIN:B00EZCR9S0 The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education]].
I also recommend from personal experience attending university far from America. Canada and Europe are not far enough. They are overwhelmed with the same race and sex issues, the same anti-male bias as America. I sent one daughter to college in Ireland only to have her emerge as a radical social justice warrior. No – you need to go farther. I would recommend Eastern Europe, where sex roles are still more or less traditional. Men are appreciated. I would even recommend Ukraine, where I now live. Granted that the degree will not carry much prestige in the United States, one can still receive a good education from the top universities here. The cost is extremely reasonable. But most important to a young man, the campus women are still feminine, still interested in marriage. A secondary benefit would be becoming fluent in another language. This is also a business opportunity.
Epilogue: Trump Win’s And Campus Insanity
Trump's win represents a sea change in America. He got 63% of the white male American vote – more than two thirds of the white male Gentile vote. America is fed up.
Europe is also fed up. One of the most encouraging books you can read [[ASIN:B00CS8PUG6 Generation Identity]] is, the call to arms of the Millennial revolt in Europe. Scott Greer is one of many voices making a similar call in America.
American college campuses are almost uniformly hostile to white men. Although this is commonly known, the pervasiveness and insidiousness of the situation is easy to overlook.
Scott Greer is one of the founders of the libertarian online newspaper "The Daily Caller." He has written a systematic analysis of the problem. He investigates the intellectual history of the animus against white men and goes into significant detail about how it plays out on campus.
Greer does not include any personal experience in his account. He also fails to mention the low key, day-to-day hostility that a white male experiences on a modern campus. I experienced it firsthand when returned to the University as a graduate student in 2003, at the age of 60. At that stage in my life I was not looking forward to starting a career, so I could look upon the abuse I took with amused detachment. It was, however, quite real.
Race and sex are the two dominant themes in the anti-male campaign. The suppositions that can never be disproved or dismissed are that white men are inherently sexist and racist. The system is constructed in such a way that no amount of apology, reparations or groveling can compensate for the injustices supposedly suffered by the victims. Greer's chapter organization frames the discussion quite well:
1 Cult of Diversity
Without any proof, and in fact quite conspicuously evading any attempt at proof, campuses have adopted the premise that diversity is a good thing. Anybody who questions the premise is assumed to be a bigot of the worst sort. For an amusing incident that corroborates Greer's argument Google "Bucking the College Diversity Cult." For a well-written critique of the diversity phenomenon from a decade and a half back, see Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance.
2 Political Correctness in the Age of Microaggressions
The "gotcha" that campus progressives invariably use is the unfalsifiable claim. If they call you a racist, you are powerless to prove that you are not. The tag sticks and you are ostracized. Microaggressions are the same thing. If a member of some protected minority – anything but a straight white male – accuses you of saying something that they find offensive, you have no defense. Google "how to get offended unilad" for a satire on the topic.
Nonetheless, they take microaggressions extremely seriously on campus. I have been prompted to put trigger warnings on some of the stuff on my website. It is ridiculous, and I do it tongue-in-cheek, but that is where our society has gone.
The result has been to absolutely stifle discussion of controversial issues on the premise that even talking about them constitutes an aggression.
3 Victimhood Culture
Greer does a great service in this chapter by providing a probing analysis of the intellectual basis for the culture of victimhood. It goes like this.
Societies historically valued honor as a supreme virtue. In honor-based societies the man had to defend his reputation and that of his family, even to the point of deadly fights. Honor-based societies were characterized by weak or absent authority. The individual had to take the task of enforcing justice upon himself. The American West is the example that Greer sites.
Once government structures came in place, honor-based societies were replaced by dignity-based societies. We no longer fought one another, but we expressed our dignity through self-sufficiency and adherence to the law. Once again, reputation was paramount.
The third ethic is one which Greer calls the culture of victimhood. He traces its intellectual roots back to Nietzsche's "Slave mentality." In a culture of victimhood there is no hierarchy of moral or ethical values. It is a free-for-all of competing claims for special treatment to reverse past offences. The assumption is that straight white males have committed almost all of the offenses.
It is worth buying the book for this chapter alone. It explains why the problem is so dangerous and difficult to grapple with.
4 Identity Politics
Identity politics is the opposite of the melting pot theory. It was once assumed that we all came together into a single American polity and we would put aside our selfish, parochial group interests to seek the common interest of the country. Now it is the opposite – each group seeks its own gain, at the expense of the others.
Part and parcel of this theory is "white privilege." Because whites have supposedly been on top in the past, they and they alone are forbidden from looking out for their own interests. Every campus in America has a Black Student Union. No campus has a White Student Union – it would be supremely racist.
5 Guilty of Being White
Even Greer apologizes more than I think necessary for the darker chapters in man's history. While it is true that Europeans and Americans practiced slavery, it is equally true that just about every culture in the world did likewise. Moreover, a great many whites figured among the slaves in America, and a not insignificant number of Blacks figured among the slaveholders. Also incontrovertible is that the treatment of black slaves in the United States was far more humane than their treatment by Portuguese in Brazil –see my English review of [[ASIN:B003S8U6HS Historia Da Escravidão]] or by the Arabs. The Arabs, for instance, prevented interbreeding by the simple expedient of castrating their African slaves. Americans did not do that.
Forcing whites to apologize for being White, acknowledging their suppose it privilege has been going on since the 1960s. Read Tom Wolfe's [[ASIN:0312429134 Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers]]. It has worked extraordinarily well. Observe the way the Germans continually beg forgiveness for the Holocaust, whereas the people they victimized are singularly unrepentant about their genocides they have led in Ukraine and Palestine. See [[ASIN:1859844421 Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict]], [[ASIN:B005646E32 The Jewish Century]], and [[ASIN:0465031471 Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin]].
6 Rape Culture Feminism
The campus rape epidemic is a totally manufactured phenomenon. Rape has always been a factor wherever young men and women are together, but it was and remains less of one on campus than elsewhere. Though Greer does not make this argument, it is only common sense. Rape is strongly correlated with at least three factors: socioeconomic status, intelligence and race. The admissions process ensures that college men come from the demographics least inclined to rape by these measures. Google "The Color of Crime" for more detail.
The rape meme is already rather long in the tooth. For a picture of the situation in the 1990s, when the madness started, read [[ASIN:0316754323 The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism]], There was nothing there, there is nothing there, and yet the drumbeat is relentless.
It is a fact that campus athletes, predominantly African-American, have participated in a greatly disproportionate number of campus rapes. However, this is played down by all parties concerned. Administrators want to protect their football teams, and they want to protect the myth that rape is a white problem. That is the opposite of the case.
There have been a vast number of hoaxes with regard to rape: the Duke University lacrosse team, the Jackie Coakley hoax, and many other that Greer enumerates.
Greer does not mention the single headline case of rape which actually resulted in a conviction. Stanford varsity swimmer Brock Turner went to jail for raping a woman whose identity is still unknown. Social justice warriors celebrated the win, but were hugely disappointed that it resulted only in a three month sentence. They made a strong attempt to have the judge who handed out such a lenient sentence disempaneled.
Reading the details of the case on the Internet, one finds that both Turner and the woman had drunk far too much that night. She was unconscious. The two were lying on the grass someplace on the campus and he had her panties down and was fingering her genitals. It would be impossible to know whether or not his fingers penetrated – the textbook definition of rape – but DNA tests showed that nothing else did. I can assure you, dear reader, that 50 years ago this would have been no big deal. And even in 2017 it probably would've been no big deal except that Turner had the bad luck to become a Great White Male Defendant.
7 Greeks under Siege
The fraternity/sorority system is a legacy of the days in which white men dominated the American campus. It has been an institution that instilled civic values, gave young people an opportunity to rise to campus leadership positions, and gave young men and women of a certain social class a milieu in which they could meet and marry.
As an emblem of supposed white privilege the system is under siege on almost every campus. Campus administrations bend over backwards to persecute them, as in the Duke lacrosse team case. Greer provides a number of examples.
8 Art of the Hoax
Since white males do not reliably commit a sufficient number of egregious offenses, the victim classes feel obliged to make things up. The chapter on rape describes hoaxes in the realm of sex; this chapter covers mainly racially oriented hoaxes.
9 Whither Will Campus Insanity Take America?
This is the concluding chapter. The most optimism it can offer is that this is a passing phase. White men have to tough it out.
The first thing is to recognize that a college education is not the value proposition that it used to be. College educations are hugely expensive. Parents have to recognize that it involves a significant investment in a product of dubious worth while at the same time subjecting children to several years of intense brainwashing about social justice issues. Why would you pay for that?
Greer offers some alternatives. I recommend [[ASIN:B0099CUNIO Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will]] and [[ASIN:B00EZCR9S0 The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education]].
I also recommend from personal experience attending university far from America. Canada and Europe are not far enough. They are overwhelmed with the same race and sex issues, the same anti-male bias as America. I sent one daughter to college in Ireland only to have her emerge as a radical social justice warrior. No – you need to go farther. I would recommend Eastern Europe, where sex roles are still more or less traditional. Men are appreciated. I would even recommend Ukraine, where I now live. Granted that the degree will not carry much prestige in the United States, one can still receive a good education from the top universities here. The cost is extremely reasonable. But most important to a young man, the campus women are still feminine, still interested in marriage. A secondary benefit would be becoming fluent in another language. This is also a business opportunity.
Epilogue: Trump Win’s And Campus Insanity
Trump's win represents a sea change in America. He got 63% of the white male American vote – more than two thirds of the white male Gentile vote. America is fed up.
Europe is also fed up. One of the most encouraging books you can read [[ASIN:B00CS8PUG6 Generation Identity]] is, the call to arms of the Millennial revolt in Europe. Scott Greer is one of many voices making a similar call in America.
August 4, 2019
This does a good job of summarizing the excesses of affirmative action and cultural changes which have made college a "victimhood culture" and openly hostile to many people (even if the changes started from good intentions). Does a reasonable job of citing specific incidents (including famous cases which turned out to be hoaxes), but feels cherry-picked in that these incidents might not be representative of the overall trend. (I believe AA has hurt the admissions policies, particularly low-income white and Asian applicants as well as Asians overall, but that outreach, reasonable programs to help students adapt, etc. are definitely positive)
March 4, 2017
Well done and very informative about the identity politics that ravage the modern college campus. The squelching of free speech by the liberal/left on campus along with the dilution of real curriculum with subjects with dubious intellectual foundations calls into question the value of present day American higher education. Greer is a very clear and engaging writer who rigorously references his work.
March 15, 2017
Well, what a rude awakening. If you want to understand why a majority of college students are acting the way they are, this is the book for you. Makes you wonder if sending your children to college is even worth it. Definitely an eye opener.
July 6, 2017
A look at the hysteria plaguing college campuses, this book offers insight into what's wrong with the college campuses today and how we can handle them in the future.
February 4, 2018
The writing is workmanlike, but the message is important and Greer does a good job in publicizing what is happening in universities.
February 5, 2018
Some of the author's examples of political correctness run a muck on college campus' would be funny..... if they weren't so sad.
March 3, 2019
A summary of the politization, indoctrination and the rise of tirbalism and totaliarism in universities in USA, as a result of identity politics and increasingly repressive demands for overt political correctness. Unfortunately, as is often the case of contemporary cultural phenomena, this too has been slowly creeping into universities across the western world in general. The rise of Donald Trump and nationalism across Europe has much more to do with the general societal trends outlined here, rather than any globalization-driven despair of the middle class or diminishing role of christianity in societies.
September 3, 2018
This was a very interesting book about the growing issue of political correctness on college campuses as well as the unfair treatment of conservatives in liberal academia. While diversity is good, too much can be a bad thing and hurt academia overall. Very thought-provoking read with most of the statistics and research surprisingly done by incredibly liberal professors.
June 27, 2019
shoddy overall, though with a good point or two. still I wonder; did this writer catch on to irony of deciding that in the “victimhood Olympics”, white men deserved the Gold Medal?
March 27, 2020
Everything about this book you need to hear can be summarized in this interview between Greer and Carlson on Fox News. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qDro...
July 17, 2020
*Audiobook review* The narrator of the audiobook was awful and a bit of a distraction. The content was well researched and interesting, although not exactly groundbreaking.
February 22, 2018
Interesting perspective that is obviously right-wing. But helpful to reflect upon the political correctness that can also do a disservice to higher education.
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