"Mizzou’s Interim President Promises to Address Racism Immediately."

It's law professor Michael A. Middleton, who says: "The time has come for us to acknowledge and address our daunting challenges and return to our relentless adherence to the University of Missouri’s mission to discover, disseminate, preserve, and apply knowledge." Good luck!

How are the presidential candidates leveraging the racial unrest at college campuses?

1. Donald Trump: "I think it's just disgusting. I think the two people who resigned are weak, ineffective people... When they resigned, they set something in motion that's going to be a disaster for the next long period of time.... Many of those [demands by protesters] are like crazy."

2. Bernie Sanders: "I'm listening to the #BlackOnCampus conversation. It's time to address structural racism on college campuses." Sanders tweeted.

3. Hillary Clinton (retweeting something her staffer wrote): "Racism has no place anywhere, let alone an institution of learning. Standing w/ the students at Mizzou in my home state calling for change."

4. Marco Rubio: "I am concerned about a broader issue and that is — ah, maybe this is not related to Missouri — freedom of speech on campus seems to be under assault in some of the finest institutions in this country."

5. Rand Paul: "I think freedom of speech is very, very important. Does freedom of speech mean there will be boorish people who say things you don't want to associate with? Yes. But really in a free society, there's got to be a place for people to make their argument."

6. Chris Christie: "I think part of this is a product of the president’s own unwillingness and inability to bring people together.... When people think justice is not applied evenly and fairly, they take matters into their own hands. The lawlessness that the president has allowed to exist in this country just absolutely strips people of hope.... Our administration would stand for the idea that justice is not just a word, but it’s a way of life.... Laws will be applied evenly, fairly, and without bias to everyone."

Last night in Yale's Battell Chapel, crowds crammed "A Moment of Crisis: Race at Yale Teach-In."

Do you think of Yale as a religious institution? Up until 1926, Yale students were required to attend services at Battell Chapel:



Inside are stained glass windows depicting such characters as George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards. It's quite a venue.

Here's the the Yale Daily News report on last night's teach-in. Excerpt:

The forum... opened with two spoken word poems performed by black female students. The first highlighted the lack of support that black men offer their female counterparts. Both poems brought audience members to their feet in a standing ovation. 

I'd like to see video of that. Strange to begin with what sounds like an attack on black men. A real crowd-pleaser, we're told.

“I want to make sure that I’m moving towards the informed camp and moving myself away from the ignorant camp,” Molly Zeff ’07 SOM ’16 said. “This is a fight that’s only going to be possible if the people who most benefit from systemic racism, which include myself, are fully aware of the people who most suffer from systemic racism.”

Mojique Tyler ’19 expressed similar sentiments, adding that he could not sit idly by while his community is experiencing problems and challenges.... Describing himself as a black, atheist, agender and Jewish individual with one parent who is white, Tyler... said the struggle of identity that the forum touched upon was relevant to his own experiences....

"Whiteness studies" — college courses with titles like "The Problem of Whiteness."

"At some universities, there are classes dedicated to understanding the notions of whiteness, white supremacy and what the field’s proponents see as the quiet racism of white people," writes Yanan Wang in The Washington Post.

The syllabus [for the Arizona State University course called "The Problem of Whiteness"] described “Critical Whiteness Studies” as a field “concerned with dismantling white supremacy in part by understanding how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced.”....

“White supremacy makes it so that white people can’t see the world they have created,” [the professor Lee] Bebout told The Washington Post. It’s a culture so pervasive that living in it, subscribing to it and upholding it feel as natural to most Americans as breathing air....

Bebout, who is white, said he was promptly attacked for promoting discrimination against white people. Fliers appeared around his neighborhood which featured a photo of him and the declaration that he was “anti-white.”...

The word problem (in the course title) seems intended to provoke, but the actual course may very well have intellectual heft worthy of college-level study. But if universities are dedicated to creating a welcoming climate and overcoming racial strife, they might want to use less antagonistic sounding titles. If, on the other hand, universities want vibrant speech on campus and expect students to handle racial provocation, "The Problem of Whiteness" is no problem at all.

[Bebout] said the class is not a critique of white individuals, per se, but rather whiteness as a form of institutional racism, where the experiences of people of color are rarely validated. In Bebout’s words, this centers around the conviction that “my experience as a white male should be the experience of everybody else, and there is something dysfunctional about them if they don’t see the world in the way that I do.”

Don't let the "my" confuse you. He doesn't mean himself. He's talking about the subjectivity of others.

It can be challenging to teach the shift in perspective that this theory requires.

That's a red flag: There's a required perspective. [OR: Is there?]

While anti-racist in its intent, whiteness studies can often yield counterproductive outcomes.

“We all think of ourselves as decent people,” [said Terrance MacMullan, a philosophy of race professor at Eastern Washington University], “so it’s very disconcerting to see yourself as someone who benefits from systemic racism.... One problem inherent in whiteness studies is that it might become a white pity party.... Instead of talking about how whiteness is problematic, it becomes about the problems of white people.”

That's making it sound as though it's built into the course that you must think a particular way, and you're doing it wrong if you disagree. The professor is strongly dedicated to controlling what the students make of the material they are presented with. It's inherent in the nature of the course that the professor would have to feel that way. It's the problem of The Problem of Whiteness.

ADDED: A "Problem of Whiteness"-type course will have some special problems, I would think, if the university has a race and ethnic studies requirement for college students. I don't think the Arizona State University has such a requirement, but there is a requirement for undergraduates at my university.

"If you give into bullies, they win. The only way bullies are defeated is by standing up to them."

I don't get it. Didn't he give in to bullies?

Wolfe resigns!

The protest at the University of Missouri brings down the president.

ADDED: In his statement, which you can watch at the link, Wolfe says he doesn't think protests, like the hunger strike, are the right way to effect change. We should respect each other enough to have a conversation, he says, but that's not what is happening. But he takes "full responsibility," he says, apparently hoping that the resignation will be enough: "Use my resignation to heal and start talking again."

The football team really is more powerful than the university president:

The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players. #ConcernedStudent1950 GP pic.twitter.com/fMHbPPTTKl

— Coach Gary Pinkel (@GaryPinkel) November 8, 2015

AND: A threat to commit slow suicide compelled powerful authority to resign. What will that inspire?

"We will no longer participate in any football-related activities until President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students’ experiences."

"On Sunday, MU football coach Gary Pinkel seemed to throw his entire team’s support behind the protests, tweeting a picture of his players along with the protest’s #ConcernedStudent1950 hashtag and the message: 'The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players.' After meeting with the team this morning, it is clear they do not plan to return to practice until Jonathan resumes eating."

From a new article in The Washington Post titled "With $1 million at stake, U. of Missouri’s president now taking protests seriously."

For reference: here's the post from 2 days ago where we first talked about the hunger strike.

UPDATE, Monday morning: Wolfe resigns.

Some Yale students are hopping mad at 2 faculty members who didn't see the exquisite importance of repressing Halloween costumery.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education explains the multilayered outrage.

This email from Associate Master of Silliman College Erika Christakis is the main source of irritation. She had the nerve to address Yale students as intellectuals, drawing on her expertise — she teaches a class on "The Concept of the Problem Child" — and saying things like:

At the first link there's video of Yale students yelling at Erika Christakis's husband Nicholas:

“As your position as master, it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Silliman,” one student says. “You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?”

When Christakis disagreed, the student proceeded to yell at him. “Who the fuck hired you?” she asked, arguing that Christakis should “step down” because being master is “not about creating an intellectual space,” but rather “creating a home.”

To be fair, I'd like to know more about what representations Yale made to the students it lured into matriculating. Was a "safe space" promised? Part of the "marketplace of ideas" that the Christakises champion is the marketplace of colleges where students get their choice. What did the Yale packaging say? I can't really judge the anger and the urgency of these students without knowing what other offers they had and what they were led to think they were buying when they picked Yale. A vibrant "intellectual space" sounds exciting to me, but is that what they were told they'd get if they came to Yale? Maybe some other schools offered a challenging intellectual environment and they passed on it, preferring a caring, nurturing setting. Were they deceived?

There's a lot that could be said here, but I'll just say one more thing. Halloween is childish fun. If you're grimly serious about it, you've aged out. Maybe some of your classmates are still playing around, vacationing from their daily worries, indulging in this annual childishness. If you're too adult to join them, then do the adult thing and stay home and read. Complaining to the authorities is another form of indulgence in childishness — not childish fun but childish whining and tattling.

"The swastika appeared overnight, drawn with human feces on a college dorm’s brand new white wall...."

"Now a graduate student says he is on a hunger strike and is willing to die unless the school’s president steps down."

“I already feel like campus is an unlivable space,” said [University of Missouri student Jonathan L. Butler, 25], who is African American. “So it’s worth sacrificing something of this grave amount, because I’m already not wanted here. I’m already not treated like I’m a human.... It’s just gotten to the point on campus where it’s really not safe for black students or really all marginalized students. Me personally, I won’t feel safe on campus until there is an urgency that things need to change and be taken seriously. It’s just a very hostile environment for black students... We are facing a lot of negativity and oppression on a daily basis... And then you students go to a diversity forums, you see them write letters, you see them write e-mails and send tweets and do all these things, we bare our souls and tell very painful stories but … our lives are still not valued. At some point, after spending all that energy telling people that I deserve to be recognized as a human, like my existence matters, at a certain point you are putting people in a corner and you keep poking them with a stick, things escalate until people feel like they are hurt."

The linked article, in The Washington Post, describes some other incidents. The scrawler of the swastika is unknown.