Notes from the College Apocalypse (3)

I have heard a number of left-leaning professors dismiss tales of ideological craziness and extremism on campus as just “isolated incidents”—mere anecdotes to be dismissed as little more than a craze that will pass like the Hula-Hoop. But at some point, the plural of anecdote is “data,” and I wonder just how many “anecdotes” of campus insanity are necessary before the “pattern recognition” of social science or anthropology kicks in.

Heather Mac Donald does us the service in the Wall Street Journal today of explaining the latest expansion of the diversity bureaucracy by Yale’s president Peter Salovey, who is giving George Bridges of Evergreen State a run for his money to be the worst college president in America. Rather than just decry the nature of the problem, Heather lays out the problem by the simple expedient of listing the senior management of all the diversicrats at Yale:

These new positions come on top of Yale’s existing diversity bureaucracy: a deputy provost for faculty diversity and development; the president’s committee on diversity and inclusion; the president’s committee on racial and ethnic harassment; the diversity and inclusion working group; the Yale College Intercultural Affairs Council; the director, representative, and support specialist of equal opportunity programs; the chief diversity officer; the associate dean for graduate-student development and diversity in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the assistant director of diversity in that same school; the associate dean for graduate student development and diversity in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; the assistant director of diversity and inclusion in the Law School; the director of community and inclusion in the School of Management; the deputy dean for diversity and inclusion in the School of Medicine; the assistant dean of community and inclusion in the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies; the associate vice president for student life (a diversity function); the Student Advisory Group on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; sundry Title IX coordinators; and the directors of the Afro-American Cultural Center, the Asian American Cultural Center, the Latino Cultural Center and the Native American Cultural Center.

In addition to the new hires, the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration will receive further funding for diversity events and speakers.

These are just the top-line senior administrators and programs, all of which doubtless command six-figure salaries and additional expenses—funds that could go to faculty raises and scholarships for low-income students.

Meanwhile, the Middlebury story isn’t over. Someone surreptitiously recorded a “crisis meeting” of Middlebury diversicrats and some students aggrieved by the campus visit of Ryzard Legutko, and posted it to YouTube (below). If you have seven minutes, you can see the depths to which the Middlebury wokerati have sunk. Jennifer Kabbany at The College Fix adds some additional reporting based on a longer 40-minute recording of the whole meeting:

The three administrators at the meeting were Sujata Moorti, the incoming dean of the faculty, as well as Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor and Renee Wells, director of education for equity and inclusion. During the meeting, students voiced frustration at the fact that Legutko was invited to campus and at “white male” professors for the so-called educational violence they inflict, among other topics. . .

“You are absolutely right, me apologizing is not going to cut it,” an administrator told the students. “We have to change, and it’s not up to you to engage, it’s up to us … you should be frustrated. I’m just really frustrated too, and again that doesn’t make this right, doesn’t absolve me of my responsibilities in any shape or form, but we’re going to keep at it, because this is not the institution we want.” . . .

I can’t answer what specifically what will be different, but I can assure you something will be different … or I won’t be here anymore either,” an administrator said. “So one of the things that we will be working on is saying we need to be having very intentional conversations about how we got to this place and be accountable for that, and be also accountable about what we are going to do. … I am willing to put every ounce of energy I have into the conversation, and will hold people accountable who are not playing into the conversation the way they need to …”

Translation: We’ll do our best to prevent conservative speakers from coming in the future.

Middlebury costs over $70,000 a year to attend. One student at the meeting said: “I don’t need to pay money to have someone that trivializes our identities to come here.” 

It is time for two things (at least) to happen: A Federal Trade Commission investigation, and some consumer fraud suits, of colleges that in fact are running day care centers rather than educational institutions. Day care ought to be a lot cheaper than this.

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