^^My guess is that until someone told them (very recently) about Woodrow Wilson’s bigotry and prejudice they flat out didn’t know or care that they didn’t know. If it really had been an issue for them then they had the choice not to apply to Princeton in the first place. It has become an issue because it has been made an issue. They could have approached this in a different and in my opinion more effective manner if their goal was to promote Black participation in higher education. The group could offer their services to tutor SES HS kids in the area. This would accomplish two things it would help kids who need it and provide an example showing that one can create their own opportunities. It would garner them respect and sympathy and prove through their very presence that Wilson’s beliefs were wrong. Their current strategy divides and is largely symbolic in nature. They may win the battle but lose the war so to speak.
No sure if this has been mentioned… but there is an opposing view now gaining traction on campus that opposes the minority student protest… It seems like some attempt at open discourse is happening. This is a good thing…
also this group is on facebook at /PrincetonOpenCampusCoalition/
All this talk of “liberals” and “conservatives.” Some of my opinions about various subjects would be considered very conservative. On other subjects, my attitudes would be considered quite liberal. So which am I? I don’t think I’m the only one who cannot be pegged into one label. I’m betting a lot of people are like me, yet based on one singular issue, they will be forever labeled with one of these descriptors.
@Nrdsb4 Excellent Point. Not everybody can be put into neat boxes. My point is that whatever your take on a particular issue, whether conservative or liberal, if you are at a University, you should expect to have your views openly challenged, even mocked, as long as you are not threatened physically, bullied or harassed (and the bar should be set pretty high on these). Your ideas are not entitled to any “safe harbor” clause. A University is not a “home” as one Yale student put it, where you will be coddled. It is the place to debate and have a free exchange of ideas, unfettered by political correctness or ideology, conservative or liberal.
American Universities used to be places where this was considered a settled issue. Increasingly though when it comes to certain topics, an increasing number of University administrators even at “prestigious” universities are abandoning this principle because they don’t want somebody to call them “racist”, “anti-woman” “culturally insensitive” etc. Intellectual discourse is becoming lazy and decidedly totalitarian on certain campuses. Universities are pulling invitations from “celebrities” because a vocal minority gets offended that they have been invited to speak. Comedians that mock others are increasingly being subjected to shaming tactics in the media and some are now unwilling to even appear on certain campuses. These are not healthy trends in my opinion.
There should be clear guidance given to entering students that they don’t have a “fundamental right” not to get offended when they set foot on campus. If you (not you per se, just a figure of speech) are so thin skinned, find an “echo chamber” and stay within it. That is your right. But if you step outside your echo chamber, be prepared to be “offended”, “ridiculed” and “challenged”.
I couldn’t agree more.
Actually… even at “Home” kids are not necessarily always coddled and insulated from bad-feelings resulting from the exchange of ideas. How many of us parents have had our teenagers stomp off angry that we disagreed with them on some topic or idea? Sometimes the disagreements can cause crying and angry responses from both parties. Nevertheless, we as parents are not subjected to the thought police of political correctness, nor are we at risk of losing our parent jobs for hurting anyone’s feelings. Life is not always going to agree with our kids and their views. Its best to be challenged and experience such confrontations in safe environments like college or at home, but to disavow any chance of bruised egos just because maybe it may make you uncomfortable in your political views is very shortsighted and unlikely to help these kids deal with life in the real world which will not care if someone says something ‘hurtful’ or contrary to the prevailing pc-speak…
“My guess is that until someone told them (very recently) about Woodrow Wilson’s bigotry and prejudice they flat out didn’t know or care that they didn’t know.”
I would posit otherwise . I believe they were quite aware of this for over a year. They emailed Eisgruber about it in the past. Eisgruber likely refused with his own arguments. They decided to occupy his office during the wave of student protests across campuses.
"The group could offer their services to tutor SES HS kids in the area. This would accomplish two things it would help kids who need it and provide an example showing that one can create their own opportunities. It would garner them respect and sympathy and prove through their very presence that Wilson’s beliefs were wrong. Their current strategy divides and is largely symbolic in nature. They may win the battle but lose the war so to speak. "
The mission of the group is to fight against perceived injustices. I would assume that there are outreach programs at Princeton to tutor Low SES HS kids. There might be overlap in membership or there might not.
While there are likely a few, Princeton and most of the surrounding area is overwhelmingly upper/upper-middle class with the high real-estate prices to match.
Lower SES families or heck…even middle-class and some barely upper-middle class families are unlikely to have the financial means to afford the cost of living and buying/renting a home in the area…or paying the property taxes to stay there if they owned a place.
That combined with its remote location to areas with greater numbers of job opportunities…especially cities* means with the exception of those working for Princeton and a few local businesses, it’s mostly a bedroom community for the well-to-do professionals willing to put up with a long commute to their jobs.
- It's a minimum of an hour and half drive from/to NYC each way during non-peak traffic time.
There was a quote in post 693 from Stephen Moore. Paul Krugman from the NYT referred to him as a “charlatan and a crank” The Kansas city Star wont run pieces from him because his numbers are wrong. He referred to the students as self righteous complainers. I think the Kansas city Star got it right
Do you have evidence that this is the case otherwise in secular academic environments? The original Yale email endorsed freedom of expression and only asked students to think before they express while providing a framework for what could be perceived as offensive. Christakis read something very different based on her opinions and personal beliefs. The Yale students conjured demons from what could be argued to be an innocuous email though to be frank pointless email from Christakis about intellectual freedom.
You had me until you got to this part:
You’re basically admitting what Princeton activists already know: that the whole “free exchange of ideas” maxim is often an excuse for doing absolutely nothing. The reality or realpolitik of the situation is that Princeton is NOT a democracy. No plebiscite is going to be held on whether to change the name of the School of Political Science. The trustees will decide it, behind closed doors, after being inundated with lots of heated rhetoric from both sides. If there are students and alumni who feel just as strongly that Woodrow Wilson’s name should stay on the doors to the building entrance, then - by all means - let them organize their own sit-ins.
I think one major issue is that people conflate subjective vindictive hateful speech with well argued elegant intellectual discourse. In the former people have a personal bias, they create an argument for that bias and they stick to it. They try to make peoples lives miserable with it.
If you look at things from an alternative standpoint you would realize the Yale protesters did challenge Christakis’ views of “Free-Speech” and where exactly it is suitable and relevant. Even then Its not like if everyone in the world is free to say what ever we want. Our speech is modulated directly or indirectly by various societal mechanisms. I can easily present you in over 50 examples the hypocrisy and double-standards of free-speech and censorship within academia that have nothing to do with race or sex.
The Yale student you referenced never ever said the University was a “home”. He/She said Siliman a “residential (note residential)” college was meant to be a home. Universities have residential colleges and they have classrooms. Discourse is well alive in the class room even pseudo-intellectual arguments that are used to mask homophobia, sexism and racism or whatever “ism” is in vogue. Some students want to be able to come back home and take a break from those arguments. Is such a request too much to ask for? Must someone be permanently dipped in intellectual discourse? Should there not be a time and place for certain types of speech?
Believe me offensive discourse happens in all secular universities. Whether anything valuable to humanity can be gleaned from such discourse is a topic for another thread.
There was nothing suitable or relevant about the student screaming at the professor at Yale. Nor were the protesters “challenging” the professors views. The protestors were attempting to invalidate the professor’s right to even hold an opinion. That is kinda the point.
The university is a train stop from Trenton which is quite run-down relative to the posher environment at Princeton and more diverse. Lots of Low SES students there and they already do outreach to Trenton and actively look for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to attend.
Exactly. I think this is my issue with claims that a “vocal minority are trying to make something happen”. Like seriously as if anyone except the trustees have a final say. The students forced a debate that Princeton was dodging quite cleverly.
No one is stopping people with an alternative view point from gathering support, signatures and providing arguments. I would not recommend a sit-in since the President has likely taken steps to close any disciplinary loopholes that would allow students to occupy his office.
No one has prevented on a large scale people’s free speech. Agreed your opponents might look at you weird if you devolve into biased diatribe and generalizations like “Why are all ya people applying for Rhodes Scholarship and Churchill scholarships funded by imperialists.” But this is not because they are intolerant of your views. They just think you are stupid.
In all it is likely nothing will come out of this. The alumni control the purse and the trustees are not going to risk losing donations.
@sefago There is a steady stream of news from different colleges that you can check out on Google, but here is an interesting debate on this issue where one of the teams provides some examples
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlF2gstvLAY
Whichever way you lean, it definitely is something people are waking up to.
Not that I think the protesters should necessarily be tutors instead, but the city of Trenton, where tutoring opportunities would abound, is a 20 minute car ride from Princeton. In addition, the nearby town of East Windsor has a very high Hispanic immigrant population that may need literacy services. Princeton itself has low income housing, just like many other towns, so I am not convinced that no one at Princeton High School could use some academic help. There would be no need to go to NYC, cobrat.
@circuitrider Princeton is a private institution and has many stakeholders. A few pissed off students cannot dictate policy or demand changes, no matter how convinced they are of their position. Other students, alums, employees, trustees etc all have say in the matter, whether the BJL likes it or not. And now some students are indeed fighting back
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/11/princeton-students-fight-back.php
To the best of my knowledge, I understand the signatories to the above letter include one black man, one black woman, two white women, four white men (one gay, one Jewish), one Asian man, and one blind Hispanic woman.
What the protesters already knew is that they can’t win the argument through debate and they are too impatient to work the process to change the opinion of other stakeholders, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.
I could have understood that approach if there was some “egregious violation of rights” going on where immediate strong action was the only way to do it because the authorities were “clearly tone deaf”.
I don’t think the Princeton situation remotely qualifies, in my opinion.
And, that’s their right under The Constitution. Neither you nor anybody else gets to dictate their tactics, their tone of voice, their decorum or anything else so long as it is within the limits of the law.
Many eons ago the students at Harvard were lobbying to get Harvard to divest from South Africa. There were plenty of noisy demonstrations. A substantial portion of our class refused to participate in the class gift. It took too long but eventually we organized a write-in candidate for the Board of Overseers (which the alumni elect) and amazing she was elected and not too long after that Harvard actually did divest. But the noisy demonstrations raised awareness of the issue. It wouldn’t have happened without that happening first.
One interesting aspect to the divestment issue is that the older URM HS classmates who attended Princeton in the '90s were stunned at the seemingly high number of White college classmates who were against the divestment movement and apparent nonchalant acceptance of that view in a period when it was already considered a settled issue in favor of divestment in most other campuses/mainstream US society.
In contrast, only the extreme conservative/libertarian-right fringes were still acting in that manner at H or other campuses when I visited in the same period. And they were regarded by most of the respective campuses as cranks* still stuck in the '50s/early '60s regarding race relations and other related issues.
It was also ironic as the boycotting SA/divestment issue was at the forefront of even my young life several years before considering my Catholic elementary school was one of several elementary schools active in raising awareness and encouraging us to participate in protests encouraging the boycotting of Apartheid era SA.
- Most HS classmates and friends attending H at the time found out or heavily suspected most of them were Final Club members. This perceived retrograde attitude was one factor in why association with Final clubs or campus fraternities weren't favored by most of the H students I knew from that period.