(Steven Hayward)
Eventually I’m going to get around to thinking through and writing up my view that while misguided Millennials lean heavily progressive at the moment, the next generation of young people is going to swing sharply to the right out of rebellion against the stifling conformity of the progressive left that went into hyperdrive this year. In part I’m taking in the lessons of M. Stanton Evans’s first book in 1961, The Revolt on Campus, which argued a similar point. It is quite striking how well that old book holds up and applies today.
In the meantime, there are some signs of active resistance starting to occur. This week a fantastic lawsuit was filed in federal court aimed at mandatory “critical race theory” sessions in public schools in Nevada, alleging violations of First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The suit is being brought by SchoolHouseRights.org. The group appears to be brand new. You can read the whole 39-page filing here, but here are a couple of the key parts:
Incidentally, the plaintiff student, William Clark, is mixed race, but apparently his melanin level wasn’t sufficient to clear him of belonging to the Oppressor Class. Colin Wright of Quillette has a fabulous Twitter thread about the case here.
Meanwhile, there is one solid Victory over Communism to report on this front: a federal court in Texas is forcing the University of Texas at Austin to disband its speech police unit, known under the Orwellian name “Campus Climate Response Team.” The Wall Street Journal reported the story today:
Political speech is under attack these days from Beijing to Berkeley, so we’ll take victories where we can get them. One arrived Tuesday when the University of Texas at Austin agreed to disband its PC police and end policies that suppress speech on campus. . .
Students could anonymously report their professors and peers for “bias incidents” to the Campus Climate Response Team, which would investigate and threaten disciplinary referrals and “restorative justice” meetings with administrators. The university gave several examples of what constitutes an act of bias, including “faculty commentary in the classroom perceived as derogatory and insensitive,” and other behavior open to highly subjective judgments about what is offensive. . .
Circuit Court Judge Edith Jones blasted the bias-response team as “the clenched fist in the velvet glove of student speech regulation.”
As the saying goes, “punch back twice as hard.” Keep suing people!
