"I keep being invited to talk about free speech on college campuses and every time I’m invited I make the same point: that this isn’t about free speech and this is only tangentially about college campuses. This is about a breakdown in the basic logic of civilization, and it’s spreading. College campuses may be the first dramatic battle but of course, this is going to find its way into the courts; it’s already found its way into the tech sector. It’s going to find its way to the highest level of governance if we aren’t careful, and it actually does jeopardize the ability of civilization to continue to function.
~Bret Weinstein
Mike Nayna’s documentary on the Evergreen State College Affair, from which I transcribed the above quote from Bret Weinstein, is a riveting watch.
No matter how closely you followed the debacle at the time, there is really no substitute for this fascinating glimpse behind the scenes.
Evergreen academics can be seen meekly and repeatedly submitting to ideological manipulation and on a number of occasions terrified senior faculty offer transparently insincere professions of faith in the hope of evading the vengeful fury of their mindlessly sloganeering student tormentors.
The barely contained thirst for violence as the means to an end is palpable.
It is sobering to imagine oneself confronted with such an uprising, and if Weinstein is right, then this alarming phenomenon may be about to spill out of the university campuses to which it has hitherto been largely confined.
This problem has already taken root in academia in the UK.
Quillette editor-in-chief Claire Lehmann recently wrote about the un-personing of Noah Carl, whose crime was proposing that controversial research should not be suppressed, even though he had not engaged in any himself. “Imagine what would happen,” Lehmann invites us to wonder, “if the behavior of St Edmund’s College become a new norm.”
It is now creeping into corporate and government life too..."
Read all.
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