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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| The Witches of the Ivy League |
| 2015-11-30 |
| The rumpus over perceived racism at American universities, with its demands for "trigger warnings" against possibly hurtful statements, "safe spaces" to protect minority students against felt hostility, and "speech codes" which forbid statements that might offend self-styled victims, has turned into something of a circus. ...The targets are university administrators and faculty who without exception are commited liberals and professed enemies of racism, but who are insufficiently vigilant against "casual, everyday slights and insensitivities," as a US News commentary noted. It is one thing to revile the student protesters as "college crybullies," as my friend Roger Kimball did recently at the Wall Street Journal, and another to talk about rope in the house of the hanged. Kimball sees this as the triumph of the 1960s radicalism that took root in universities and now has become the reigning ideology of the academic establishment. A widely-read Atlantic magazine commentary by Prof. Jonathan Haidt blames the hysteria on changes in child-rearing practice during the 1980s. But the hysteria at American universities is instantly recognizeable as a commplace if neglected practice of European civilization (among others), namely the witch-hunt. The 20 victims of the 1692 Salem witch trials have become the stuff of American legend, but the inquisitors of Massachusetts hardly make the league tables: up to 100,000 presumed witches were executed in Europe between 1450 and 1750, during the rise of the Age of Reason. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |