If you wanted to encapsulate what is wrong with our universities today into a single op-ed in a campus newspaper, you need look no further than what UC Irvine's New University is running this week. It is a reflection on the recent pro-Hamas encampment and police action at UC Irvine, and it is written by two-you guessed it- professors. Even though the words "By opinion writer" appear beneath the title, it appears the op-ed was penned by Anneeth Kaur Hundle, 2023-2024 Associate Professor of Anthropology and Aaron Bornstein, 2023-2024 Assistant Professor of Cognitive Sciences.
I have picked out just a few paragraphs for comment, but the entire op-ed is chock full of the tired old leftist rhetoric about the "military-industrial complex", the "US-backed military occupation and genocide in Gaza", etc. It's all anti-US, anti-Israel, and anti-police.
Let's dig in.
"Such administrative emails reduce student activists — and to be more specific, a particular subset of the student body who have been peacefully exercising their rights to free speech, assembly and protest — as potential disruptors, who constitute a seeming problem to be managed."
Peacefully? I visited the UCI encampment just days before the police finally were called in. What I witnessed was a quad area surrounded by classroom and research buildings taken over by pro-Hamas students and other outside agitators. Activists were leading chants on bullhorns, nonstop, and some guy was beating on a drum. They were disrupting the operation of the university and interfering with the ability of teachers and students in the classrooms to go about the business of teaching and learning.
"Recommendations for de-escalation and then returning to normalcy after a “disruption” also construct student activists as irrational beings prone to violence, from whom nothing is to be learned. "
What conclusion is the public supposed to draw after witnessing the scenes from UC Irvine, UCLA, Columbia, and so many other universities? At UCI, the encampment lasted almost three weeks, and finally, the little rascals decided they were going to enlarge their area of control by taking over an adjacent building. That's when UCI's weak-kneed chancellor, Howard Gillman, finally decided enough was enough. The students ignored repeated orders to disband and resisted police when officers began to dismantle the encampment.
Black and brown? Knuckleheads of all races have been represented in these pro-Hamas protests, both on and off campus. Similarly, those arrested in these protests represent all races including the usual collection of white anarchists and Antifa types. The police who are arresting people who go far beyond peaceful protests are grabbing them as they see offenses committed. They are not singling out black and brown protesters.
"Furthermore, the UCIPD is involved in other kinds of violent acts against students, including the meting out so-called “interim suspensions” to student activists without due process and on the basis of student protest being constructed as an “imminent threat to safety.” Some faculty associated with FSJP, for example, have documented the ways that upper administration has largely misled others in campus leadership on the actual impacts of these suspensions on students, including students’ lack of access to housing and other vital campus resources, the inability to take final exams or even attend their graduation commencement ceremony."
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So a suspension is now defined as violence? Returning to the real world, suspensions are supposed to have consequences. At least they did when I was a student back in the 1950s and 1960s.
In typical academic fashion, the writers have ticked off every box imaginable when it comes to leftist talking points. But then again, it's all about "intersectionality", you know.
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