Coming out as a conservative at Harvard, but very late in the game
Is this young woman courageous, or not, or something in-between? I suppose in-between:
Carine Hajjar dealt with ideological homogeneity at Harvard University for three-and-a-half years mostly in silence, but in the spring semester of her senior year, she finally came out as conservative. She said she has no regrets…
…Hajjar said what she experienced after coming out as conservative by becoming a columnist for the Harvard Crimson in her final months as a student at the Ivy League school in the spring of 2021 was camaraderie.
She received a lot of quiet agreement from peers, friends, teaching assistants and professors, including private emails, texts, and even people coming up to her in person expressing their approval and concurrence.
She also said some of her very liberal friends thanked her for writing her column, as they felt like they “couldn’t say anything anymore” due to today’s stigma and intense analysis of everything people say. Others told her to make sure she continued to write it, saying a contrarian point of view was sorely needed.
This shows a lot of people are fed up but are too scared to speak out due to the “progressive orthodoxy that’s a very vocal minority that rules over discourse,” she said.
But she already knew that, because for the bulk of the four years she was there, she was one of them: too scared to speak out. I’m not unsympathetic, but why did she take the easy way out for so long? Why so very much fear? I understand fear, but isn’t the cost of pretending to believe something you don’t believe way too great? Is status in the Harvard world, and the jobs that go with it, really worth that sort of moral compromise?
I don’t go round advertising my views to everyone; I pick and choose my battles. But I never have spoken or written something with which I disagree, just to get ahead. Of course, I never got that far ahead – my ambitions were rather muted. But even in graduate school in the 1990s, by which time my views were already somewhat to the right of the norm in academia, it never occurred to me to shut up and shy away from a fight, although I don’t like fighting.
Back then I saw other students be silent on issues and then come up to me privately and say they agreed with what I’d said but didn’t want to speak up themselves because of potential harm to their careers. The issues were smaller back then and the stakes lower, but they still were afraid. Nor am I holding myself out to be some brave Profile In Courage. By that point in time I simply didn’t care. I was middle-aged and I was not the support of an entire family, so I could afford not to care.
But something about the youngest generation as described in that link seems craven to me. Hajjar says:
“People are just afraid. It’s not that there are necessarily rules against saying conservative things; there’s just a social structure and an unspoken speech code that makes people really scared to express their views,” she said.
“It goes to show that there is probably a silent majority that is still liberal but thinks that things have gone too far on campus.”
If it’s a silent majority that thinks things are too far gone, then with their acquiescence they have allowed the unsilent and highly vocal radical minority to silence them.
More from Hajjar:
Hajjar also said many students are too scared to argue against loud, progressive voices in their classes due to the fear of being canceled if they said the wrong thing.
“It’s so easy just to take an extremely progressive stance. You know you’re never ever going to get in trouble for it, everyone has to nod along; instead of doing the hard thing and putting yourself out there,” she said.
It’s a cliche to say these people have been coddled all their lives and are afraid of any conflict or stress or what they call “harm”. I really don’t know if that’s true, though. I see the younger generation as having had a tough time: little to look up to and admire in government or the press or so many of our institutions, families that commonly feature divorce, drugs readily available, the sexual standards and mores that protected children in my day declining, social media pressures, arts that are so often decadent or empty – and that’s hardly an inclusive list.
I don’t envy them anything except their youth.
Dennis Prager had a young woman who was a student at either Harvard or Yale (can’t remember which) as an intern a year or so ago and she would do a segment with him talking about what it was like to be a conservative at one of these places.
Wow, why such contempt/puzzlement about “waiting so long?”
I’ve seen this same theme elsewhere on the topic of this person.
Was she supposed to burst onto the Harvard scene as a freshman and announce that there’s a new sheriff in town and start taking names and kicking butt?
Sometimes, even in adultworld, you have to build credibility and confidence before you start attacking the status quo.
This is so Rightwing, when one of us does something excellent (like this woman did) and everyone else gathers around to run them down for irrelevant nonsense.
I remember being at Brown in the 80s and there were a lot of stupid lefty controversies (like, galactically unbelievably stupid) but they were actually running people off for commenting on them so I kept my head down. I couldn’t afford to start over at a new college and Brown still had a good rep back then.
The path of least resistance and of being non-confrontational appeals to many, as does the fear of ostracism (for having the “wrong” opinions or ideas), along with a longing, amongst many young persons, to be “in with the ‘in’ crowd”, in the words of the old pop song. In addition, the therapeutic culture which permeates our academic institutions (analyzed very well by Frank Furedi both in books and in articles) creates a strong aversion to any honest (and thus possibly contentious) debate on topics deemed to be “harmful” to those who are “marginalized.” Finally, since so many lucrative careers await those who have simply “gone along”, a small “moral compromise” must seem, to many, a modest sacrifice indeed.
AMartel;
I have no contempt for her. I don’t have a whole lot of admiration, though. Nor did I say anything here indicating I expect people to speak up the minute they arrive.
However. She was there for 4 years and only spoke out in her last couple of months there. That’s a very long silence. And of course some people remain silent much longer than that.
And some aren’t just silent. They support and voice views that are the opposite of what they really think. That’s even less admirable.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
By the standards of this blog, I’m a younger poster, although not nearly as young as the student in the story. I’m 34, and am actually in grad school, so I’ve had the opportunity to compare college culture today compared to my undergraduate experience back in 2007-2011. Even in that relatively short time window between degrees, the university system has changed more than I had anticipated. The students and professors are of course still left-wing, but it’s the administration that is really different. The higher education bureaucracy has become much larger, much more encroaching, and extremely zealous in advancing progressive initiatives in all elements of campus culture.
Respectfully, I think the older generations don’t appreciate that the cost of dissent has risen. When I entered college in 2007, to dissent was to risk social ostracism from one’s peers. Today, the risk increasingly is to not be in alignment with professional expectations of authorities. I have opinions that if expressed out loud, I’m not sure if I would be permitted to stay in the program. (My chief example would be LGBT issues). Regrettably, corporate culture has trended in the same direction as the universities.
What Fr. Paul Shaughnessy, SJ said. In any human organization, 5% are heroes, 5% are villains, and the others keep their head down trying to do their jobs. In a healthy organization, the heroes set the overall tone and the villains are disciplined. In a corrupt organization, the object of leaders is to avoid bad publicity. Higher education is ‘sociologically corrupt’ in this way. She would be a common type among the employees. Note, the young tend to be more conformist ceteris paribus, especially young women.
Something Steve Sailer has called attention to: the metrics used to sort applicants are at a place like Harvard are too dull to complete the task. Even if Harvard dispensed with it’s patronage programs, there would be subjective judgment or randomness introduced into the process. The use of discretion has manufactured these monocultures in the student body. (Though I have little doubt the applicant pool is horribly skewed ex ante).
Prager talks of this, school or a business you know is so woke if you speak out your life will be living Hell.
Thankfully this never happened to me.
The higher education bureaucracy has become much larger, much more encroaching, and extremely zealous in advancing progressive initiatives in all elements of campus culture.
Again, the problem here is trustee nonfeasance. It would help some, I think, if trustees were elected in postal ballots supervised by the state board of elections. The voters would be alumni registered to vote in the state in question. It would also help if boards were made much smaller – 9 members, not 60 members.
Cameron:
I really appreciate hearing from younger readers.
I am indeed aware that the costs have risen, and I’m not unsympathetic. That’s why I wrote the last 2 paragraphs of the post.
Even back in the 90s when I was in grad school I saw very few people willing to speak up, and the costs were lower then.
But I think it is necessary to take big risks and speak up, or the current state of affairs will only worsen. Few will speak up, but more need to take that risk, although it’s very very hard.
Skip:
But she said her life was fine after she spoke up. At least for her, the reality was much better than her fears.
The Lives of Others…coming to a school, college or company near you.
…Or government, which is becoming THE problem: witness the “leaders” becoming the led.
As for “lucrative careers”, not if “Biden” can help it.
It boils down to courage, nor am I sure anyone would know what he/she would do were they in such a menacing and hostile situation, even if they KNOW what they’d like to do.
It’s all very perplexing, but we have descended, for a variety of reasons—mostly, I believe, due to high tech and the instantaneity of social networks, but not only—into a tribalist society, which if not checked AND then overcome will destroy the great advances of Western civilization.
I went to university after the military and working. I was 10 years senior to my classmates, going for a BBA in Accounting (2000). I didn’t broadcast my politics. I didn’t shy away from controversy about my political leanings, but I wasn’t in college to make friends, so it didn’t really matter.
Philosophy 101 was interesting (the professor did pretty well in remaining neutral, but it was usually me against 30+)
Did have to drop two classes (English/British Literature and Management) due to irreconcilable differences with the professors.
And numerous other classes that I had to suffer through with an ideological bent.
With the exception of the management class, my business classes were fine. I’d guess that 50% or more of the non-business classes were left-leaning.
It’s admirable that she spoke out at all, especially after almost 4 years in the madhouse. Harvard is expensive. It’d be a shame if you had hundreds of thousands in school debt and no good way to pay it off.
Interesting article in Vanity Fair about the New Right written by a leftist. JD Vance is featured and he makes the point that why is it that everyone at Harvard and Yale think alike.
He’s also in favor of knocking the big universities down a notch; especially re; their endowments. Of course, he’s the Left says he’s anti-intellectual.
In other news, Creighton has a stupid sustainable initiative to placate the students.
I agree with your “in between” assessment.
Courage – Cowardice isn’t a binary equation, it’s a bell curve.
There are a few truly courageous people and a few abject cowards and the rest of us are somewhere in the middle of that curve.
It’s really easy for someone watching on the sidelines to tell the person actually involved what they “should have done”. In my experience, it’s a bit more difficult when you’re actually the one living it.
With that said, while her “coming out” at this point isn’t particularly brave, she still has a story to tell and can still contribute to understanding what it’s like for a conservative in higher educationlandia.
AMartel:
Harvard is expensive for those who pay full freight. Not all that many do, however. Unlike a lot of schools, one doesn’t need a special scholarship to get a lot of help at Harvard with finances – and I don’t mean loans.
Take a look:
Looking back on my college years, I think there are several factors that make it harder for contemporary undergraduates to speak out:
1) The power of social media: the woke on any campus can pillory (or doxx) an individual student on any of a number of Internet platforms and summon a goon squad from all over the country. When I was in college (1966-1970), the absolute worst that could happen in regard to a political disagreement would be one or two letters to the editor of the campus newspaper. What happened on campus almost always stayed on campus, and this was during the escalation of opposition to the Vietnam War.
2) Administrative metastasis: when I was an undergrad, the entire college had only three deans, and none of them were diversicrats whose salary depends on drawing up and imposing speech codes on the students and faculty.
3) The privileging of “feelz” above rational analysis. When I was an undergraduate, anyone who got a case of the sniffles over hurt feelings would have been advised to transfer to a party school, which, as Wikipedia says, “is a college or university that has a reputation for heavy alcohol and drug use or a general culture of licentiousness at the expense of educational credibility and integrity.”
4) The loss of the Western classical heritage, which at one time offered a common intellectual framework for all educated people across a range of occupations and professions. I had to offer either Greek or Latin when I was applying to several selective liberal arts colleges in the fall of 1965. The present-day fetishization of diversity and the insistence that one must “stay in one’s own lane” makes it increasingly difficult as well as risky for current undergrads to speak their minds.
5) The fact that the cost of college has risen much faster than the cost of living in general since the 1980s. The entire cost of my freshman year at the private college I attended was $1750, which my mother thought was high. But it was still possible in the late 60s and early 70s to work one’s way through school– something that today’s students can’t do. We had a discussion on one of Neo’s posts last week about Biden’s proposal to forgive student loans, and the predicaments that students get themselves into by taking out loans that they will never be able to repay, given the jobs available to them when (and if!) they graduate. Financial worries are another factor, I think, weighing on current undergrads.
I hope Cameron will accept that at least some of us old fogies DO understand that the cost of dissent in 2022 is as inflated as tuition. In the words of Cicero, O tempora, o mores!
neo,
I understand the need to speak out, but millennial/Gen Z dissenters are going to have to play a different game than Baby Boomer dissenters did. At this point, the university system is a lost cause. As progressive institutions have become larger and more intrusive into people’s lives, they have become much more focused in obliterating anyone that tries to build counter-cultures within their domain.
There is consequence to being a public dissenter, but there is also the consequence of isolation to being a private dissenter. I think for a 18-22 y.o. person, the goal should be to be outspoken enough to signal yourself to likeminded people. Build friendships with people where you are more comfortable exploring non-progressive ideas. Grow together. I do not recommend trying to build anything meaningful within the university system’s structure. If you feel passionate enough to build something, build it outside of the university.
Cameron:
I was in grad school in the mid-1990s. I was there with plenty of people twenty years younger than I; I was one of the oldest people if not the oldest in my classes. In the 1990s it was already clear that the university had gone down the tubes, with many of the trappings of today’s university already present.
In previous posts I have described some of the battles I fought. My fellow students would come to me and say how brave I was and how they agreed with me but would not speak up publicly for fear of hurting their careers. It was not as bad as today, because there was no social media, but there definitely were risks and I was one of the only Boomers around so I saw firsthand how it was for the next generation.
Now it is a generation or two later, but I still keep abreast of what’s going on and I’m quite aware of the differences. But it was already bad when I was in grad school and people were already quite silent. It was very frustrating for me to have virtually no public support but a lot of private support.
Neo,
I paid for my college degree though I did get some scholarships along the way. This informed how I reacted to the campus orthodoxy and mainly kept my head down, and how I feel now about running down someone in their early 20s for not taking on that orthodoxy earlier. People go to college to get an entre into their professional life and, especially at pricey private institutions, the point is to make friends and start building a network that will stand you in good stead later. I feel such sympathy for conservatives who are in college these days because it’s even more expensive now and even if they are getting assistance they’ve still probably got a lot of debt. This kid seems like she’s well supported but she’s an intern at NR so I wouldn’t expect that to pay well or last too much longer! She sounds like she’s headed for a life of Establishment Conservatism which (I hope) is something that will go extinct and I’ll criticize her for that but not for throwing away a very expensive educational opportunity by burning a bunch of bridges.
The Harvard motto should be changed from, “veritas” to “conformitas.”
AMartel:
Harvard’s assistance as I described in my previous comment does not take the form of loans. Of course, students might take out loans to cover the difference, but Harvard gives (not loans) a lot of money even to students whose parents are far from poor.
Foreign students are not eligible, but all US students are and admissions are needs-blind.
Most people are unaware of these facts.
but why did she take the easy way out for so long? Why so very much fear?
Because the lynch-mob mentality of the wokists is coddled and ignored and more or less encouraged by the ‘administrators’, and wokist brutality is never held immediately and strictly to account in todays .edu circles. She’s been outnumbered and outgunned for her whole college career, and where she’s been located, the concept of ‘justice’ has long been inverted to mean the opposite of equal justice under the laws and regulations. She’s played Brer Rabbit to good effect.
“By the standards of this blog, I’m a younger poster, although not nearly as young as the student in the story. I’m 34, and am actually in grad school, so I’ve had the opportunity to compare college culture today compared to my undergraduate experience back in 2007-2011.”
I went to college a little at a time while on active duty in the military. I earned the associate degree I have in 1999 at the age of 35. I never went on to finish my 4 year degree because I was able to attain my goals without it and why pay tens of thousands of dollars for something I don’t need?
Anyway, when I was in college, the majority of the professors were liberals (versus pretty much all of them today); but back then even the liberal professors actually encouraged discussion and dissenting opinions. I’m not the kind of person to keep quiet about things that I strongly disagree with and regularly got into heated (not uncivil, but definitely…um…energetic) discussions in and after class with the professors.
There was no courage involved in this, I had no expectation that such discussions would impact my grades and they never did (unless they conferred my degree with a 4.0 GPA out of spite).
One of my most notorious nemeses…an English Lit professor who was a militant feminist…asked me toward the end of the semester if I’d ever considered a career in teaching literature.
It shocked me because one of our biggest arguments was over my opinion that if we have to “interpret” what the author was trying to say by reading between the lines, we’ve got a very, very big chance of being wrong about it – that our interpretations are nothing more than reading our own worldview and experiences into the white space between the author’s words. There was just as much possibility that this poem about rabbits hopping around in the woods is nothing more than the author saying “hey…look at those cute bunnies.”
When I expressed my bewilderment about her encouraging me to enter her field, she said something along the lines of, although she disagrees with pretty much everything I said all semester, my points were well thought out and articulated and she thought I could bring a valuable alternative viewpoint to the table.
Fortunately for generations of students from then to the end of eternity, I’ve never had any desire to teach English literature to anyone in any capacity…but I digress.
My point is: yea…things have changed. A lot.
Wonder if Elon Musk’s spectacular launch into “the fray” will shake things up a bit and give others courage…
“…Musk Tosses Tactical Nukes At ‘Ministry Of Truth’ And Trust-Fund Journo”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/musk-goes-nuclear-over-nbcs-republicans-are-nazis-narrative
Well, I couldn’t rate her courage as being on a level with, say, Hans and Sophie Scholl, but I would rate it as being higher than most people.
It does take courage to go against the pack or the herd, and I think it especially takes courage for a woman, since their desire for group affiliation is generally greater.
Sailorcurt:
I think it really depended back then on the university or college, and on the particular professors and administration there. In the mid-90s when I was in grad school it was already pretty bad where I was (although I doubt as bad as today) and plenty of people were already quite cowed and only spoke to me privately about their agreement with things I said in class. The way professors dealt with me was to mostly ignore what I said if it didn’t fit the narrative.
Nowadays I have little doubt it would have been worse if I had attended later. But I think I would have still spoken out, although perhaps I’m fooling myself about that. I was always somewhat contrarian, though, and not all that practical about my “career.”
david foster:
I agree her courage is higher than most people – that’s why I give her partial credit for courage.
I’ve also heard that women on average have a greater “desire for group affiliation.” Jordan Peterson goes into that quite a bit. For whatever reason, I don’t share that desire – or maybe I learned early on that it was not possible for me, so I abandoned the desire for it.
}}} This shows a lot of people are fed up but are too scared to speak out due to the “progressive orthodoxy that’s a very vocal minority that rules over discourse,” she said.
I cannot grasp any of this. Either you have character or you don’t. Either you have integrity, or you don’t. Integrity and Character means taking a stand, when it gets to a certain level of problem. And it’s well beyond that point. I’ve always tried to make it clear when it’s gone beyond, and stated it politely and clearly.
No, there are no excuses. There is no middle ground on that. Both are like balloons. One little hole and there’s nothing left.
Yeah, it’s probably cost me at times, but I don’t have any issues with looking at myself in the mirror, and, while I’m sure I will be found wanting when I stand before Him, I think he’ll not fault me overmuch for not having sufficient integrity.
}}} We had a discussion on one of Neo’s posts last week about Biden’s proposal to forgive student loans, and the predicaments that students get themselves into by taking out loans that they will never be able to repay, given the jobs available to them when (and if!) they graduate.
First off — irrelevant. Yeah, it’s gotten a lot more expensive. Which only means that taking out loans to get a piece of paper that is useless when you get out is a really bad idea. If you’re going to take out loans, you need to be mindful of how you plan to pay them off… and if you take out 80k in loans, well, that 25k job that your BA in Survey of Underwater Basket Weaving, 1880-1920 will get you is pretty much not going to be much help.
Second off — also irrelevant. You don’t shirk a burden you have voluntarily taken on. Not saying you have to act as though your life depended on paying it off, but you do have to be of the attitude that, sooner or later, you’re going to pay it off. This attitude — be it student loans or parenting — is a clear problem these days.
Neo…”I’ve also heard that women on average have a greater “desire for group affiliation.” Jordan Peterson goes into that quite a bit. For whatever reason, I don’t share that desire – or maybe I learned early on that it was not possible for me, so I abandoned the desire for it.”
A woman at another blog, several years ago, remarked that the fear of being excluded from the Group felt to her almost as strong as the fear of death. To her credit, she realized that this emotion was bad and tried to fight against it, but it was still there.
A bit late here, we had a meeting with our builder..don’t ask… supply chain and Bidenflation.
Neo, you said academia had gone down the tube in the 90s. Then you have no idea of what a true hell it became in the last 15 years unless you’ve been inside it like I have. And as has been shown in many papers, Northeast private schools are the absolute worse. The harpies have the schools by the balls. They will relentlessly mentally, and sometimes physically attack those who do not toe the progressive line. Reminds me of ant colony attacking any intruder.
Give the girl a break…I admire her for what she’s done.
physicsguy:
Actually, I have a very good idea about the last 15 years.
When I say that the schools I knew had already gone down the tubes by the mid-90s, I meant it and mean it. It was already very bad. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t gotten much worse. It has. But it was already a lost cause in many schools back then. In fact, it already was probably a lost cause when Allan Bloom was writing in the late 80s.
There is no contradiction in saying that things were very bad then and they are very significantly worse now.
david foster:
I suppose it depends on what you think of the group. The girl groups I saw as a child weren’t all that admirable and so being excluded didn’t seem all that bad. I grew up in a somewhat truculent family atmosphere and had to learn how to fend for myself to a certain extent (emotionally, that is) at an early age. I always had some friends, though – fortunately.
“Actually, I have a very good idea about the last 15 years”
With much respect Neo, you don’t unless you have close relatives you have been there who could relate to you their experiences from a centrist or conservative viewpoint. I often spoke out and was attacked by faculty, students, administrators, and alums , and board members who demanded the president fire me. Called into the president office and told if there was any way to get rid of me she would immediately. I was a tenured faculty. Students are MUCH more vulnerable. All of this over not toeing the climate change orthodoxy. If they knew I supported Trump……
I am reminded of reading a letter to the Editor of National Review in the early 1970s. The letter writer, a student at Columbia, stated that though he was in the minority at Columbia, he was treated with respect when he stated his conservative views.
Two things caught my attention. 1)The letter writer was the younger brother of one of my high school classmates. 2) He was both Jewish and conservative. As his parents had fled Austria after the 1938 Anschluss, I was rather surprised. It turned out his parents were also conservative, or at least not big liberals. It took me a while to figure that out. Basically that Hitler was not a conservative. He had no desire to conserve or preserve. On the contrary, Hitler came to power promising that there would be some big changes made, and he kept his word. As such, it made sense for a conservative to oppose Hitler.
physicsguy:
I know people well who are professors and whom I talk to about it. Plus people with kids in college recently whose kids are conservative and who talk to their parents about it.
I also on occasion have gotten emails about it from conservatives in academia.
Gringo..”Basically that Hitler was not a conservative. He had no desire to conserve or preserve.”
One thing that is not widely recognized what the extent to which Naziism was a *youth movement*, wishing to destroy the old ways. See for instance the lyrics to the official song of the Nazi Youth:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_songs#:~:text=The%20rotten%20bones%20are%20trembling,For%20us%20a%20great%20victory.
david foster:
Don’t carry that thought over to Antifa, inconceivable cognitive dissonance might ensue (if you haven’t paid attention to what they say they are versus what they actually do). 🙂 Different kind of groomers?
As you are well aware. 🙂
Like Cameron, I’m in my mid-30s. I spent a few years at IU Bloomington in the music program, obviously heavily leftist. But I was pretty open about my conservative beliefs when they came up (I literally grew up in a log cabin in the foothills of the Smokies, so you can imagine how vast the political divide was between me and, well, nearly everybody there).
Two professors stick out in my memory. One was my political science professor (I think I took for fun? I can’t imagine it was necessary for a music performance degree), who took great strides to appear impartial the entire semester. On the last day of class, he took a poll of his students asking them to guess his true affiliation. Most people guessed he was a moderate, and the remainder were pretty evenly split between democrat or republicans. So I’d say he did a pretty good job of staying neutral. He never did tell us what his leanings actually were.
The other one was a sociology professor. She was super left-wing, I disagreed with pretty much every single word out of her mouth, and so many of her lessons seemed full of left-wing propaganda. Her lessons were not balanced in any way. However, we had to write an essay at some point, and while I forget what her instructions were, I remember that I chose to write about abortion, even though I was (and am) staunchly pro-life. I knew she was gonna fail me and rip my paper apart. But I just couldn’t bring myself to write a paper that went against my core beliefs. If I failed, I failed.
I got an A. I honestly didn’t see it coming.
Anyway, those were the ancient days of 2004-2008.
I wonder if either of those two professors are still there. And I wonder if either has changed their methods in today’s environment. Regardless, I would bet good money that you couldn’t find many professors like either of them much anymore. You certainly couldn’t find a neutral one – silence is violence, after all. And as for the one that spouted her beliefs proudly, but could still grade papers objectively….what’s the incentive to do that these days? If anything, I think even being objective is now risky as a professor. If you agree with BLM but still gave an anti-BLM paper an A, for example, I guarantee you would be roasted as a racist for “supporting” the “white supremacist” who wrote the paper.
Anyway, I say all that to say I don’t blame this girl for waiting till the eleventh hour to come out as a conservative. It’s been barely a decade since my college days, and so much has changed in that little time. Back then, you might risk a bad grade. Today, you risk getting doxxed and blacklisted from every possible employer you wished to seek out. Back then, no one ask for my pronouns. Today, you’d be kicked out for refusing to play along with that silly game.
“I have opinions that if expressed out loud, I’m not sure if I would be permitted to stay in the program. (My chief example would be LGBT issues). Regrettably, corporate culture has trended in the same direction as the universities.” Cameron
“Today, you risk getting doxxed and blacklisted from every possible employer you wished to seek out.” NS
No doubt both sentiments above are currently true.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” neo quoting Edmund Burke
“Integrity and Character means taking a stand, when it gets to a certain level of problem. And it’s well beyond that point.” ObloodyHell
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul?” Mark 8:36
If there is no soul, then what possibility of an afterlife can there be? In which case, it really is a case of get all you can for you and yours and devil take the hindmost.
But if there is an afterlife, then some vehicle for interacting with that life must exist, known colloquially as a soul.
Better to be left with only janitorial work to sustain the body, than to lose our ‘vehicle’. For compared to eternity, we are here but for the briefest of moments.
This discussion got me thinking: The difference between the 1990’s and today is that in 90’s liberals didn’t condemn every Republican/conservative as a racist/white supremacist.
I was trying to figure out why that was. Then I remembered – They had to wait till Democrat Congressman and former KKK leader Robert Byrd died.
Dennis Prager does say courage is the greatest human trait..
Just as a side note have found two free movies on YouTube about resistance to Leftism
A Hidden Life about a Christian who is a conscious objector in Nazi Germany
https://youtu.be/qJXmdY4lVR0
Sophie Scholl, the Final Days – a student protestor in Nazi Germany.
https://youtu.be/nrbBlXqc1Is
Lived through this very thing in the late ’80s in a US midwestern denominational theological training institute. More than a few of the faculty were already on the road to endorsing/embracing Liberation Theologies of every stripe…basically Critical Race Theory in clergy garb.
When I refused to write my various papers or expound to meet those criteria I was certainly threatened by a portion of the faculty. I actually invited one of the more egregious to join me in the parking lot if he really felt he wanted to tangle…I was brash & a bit ridiculous back then. He declined and decided he really wanted me to graduate & go away…I did. I’m certain I would not be welcome there now nor would I even think about trying to go there nor recommend it.
I’m pleased the young lady has done her best to retain her integrity and with her the best. Not an easy place to be.
I hace no idea which, of the various possibilities, most concerned this young lady about the results of coming out.
However, decades after the events of one or another type, due to catching up with some folks and rethinking what would puzzle me if it ever came to mind, I found what I should have known then.
Women are more concerned about being assaulted in public than men are. Consciously, unconsciously, subliminally.
Which should make sense without much effort to people less dense than Aubrey.
I found it out when various folks said, “I was glad you were around.” Me? What for? Didn’t have anything heavy needed lifting….. No flat tire in that situation. Nothing I knew was likely to be useful.
It was because the circs had been dicey and having the big frat-jock guy around was a comfort. Wish somebody’d told me. Might have parlayed….oh…well. They had been…concerned. Even afraid.
So back to the young lady. She had seen much fuss on and off campus. Violence from one coast to another. Vicious self-righteousness with not the slightest restriction on potential behavior. Reluctance on the part of authority either to protect or punish, depending on political stance.
Could she, consciously or unconsciously, be completely free of the fear of physical violence as a result of coming out? She could not.
Can’t say that I blame her.
It has value that she spoke up. She did avoid retaliation at the college by waiting until near graduation. Don’t forget that she has chosen to carry the standard into a very woke work world.
Wonder if they can retroactively rescind her degree…or put an asterisk next to her name with the note, “Perp bamboozled us.”
(Wonder if they’ll try!)
File under: “Detritus”
Related:
“Read the Letter the Harvard Crimson Won’t Publish;
“A former Crimson president wanted to blast the paper’s decision to endorse BDS. Crimson president Raquel Coronell Uribe won’t publish his letter.”—
https://freebeacon.com/campus/read-the-letter-the-harvard-crimson-wont-publish/
H/T Powerline blog.
Opening graf:
‘The Harvard Crimson on Friday broke with the paper’s longstanding editorial position to endorse—in a lengthy but borderline illiterate editorial—the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that aims to economically isolate the Jewish state of Israel. The endorsement came at the tail end of an “Israeli Apartheid Week” hosted by the Ivy League school’s Palestinian Solidarity Committee, replete with an art show that equated Zionism with “racism” and “white supremacy.” (The Crimson editorial characterized this as “a colorful, multi-panel ‘Wall of Resistance’ in favor of Palestinian freedom and sovereignty.”)…’