Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Consequences at Last?

Consequences at Last?

by Steven Hayward in Academic left

Several news items of note on campus protests and general leftism.

Last Monday, October 7, a group of pro-Hamas students at Pomona College occupied the main administration building (Carnegie Hall—I had some graduate classes in that building way back when, and it is often used in Hollywood movies when they want an exterior that looks like an Ivy League college), expelled its workers and injured a public safety officer, and then proceeded to vandalize the building. According to one account, protestors spray painted the inside of the building and they “also cut electrical cords inside classrooms, sliced a projector screen, and spray-painted over a bust of William Johnson, a former Pomona trustee.”

Yesterday Pomona’s president, Gabi Starr, announced that 12 students were being evicted, suspended (and likely expelled), banned from campus, and cut from their meal plans, with more students to be sanctioned in due course. Most of the first 12 sanctioned, according to one report, are first-generation, low income, BIPOC students—the most protected class on college campuses today. Pomona is a very left liberal arts college, and as such this step shows that the limits of “tolerance” are being reached at last.

Meanwhile, at the University of Kansas, professor of social psychology Phil Lowcock was placed on administrative leave after he said in his classroom that men who didn’t support Kamala Harris should be take out and shot. “Line up all those guys and shoot them,” he was recorded on tape, before thinking better of the statement and asking for it to be deleted.

Apparently the University of Kansas took the matter seriously enough such that it announced the following day that Prof. Lowcock “has left the university.” The statement did not make clear whether he left voluntarily or was fired.

I hope he was fired. (It appears he was untenured and thus fireable.)

The distressing part here is that a number of conservatives have come to the defense of Prof. Lowcock on grounds of free speech and academic freedom. I take a different view.  Maybe it is starting to dawn on college administrators and trustees that they need to clean house of the hack leftists they have allowed to dominate their faculties. Let is start with Prof. Lowcock, and let’s hope this spreads to other campuses soon.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/10/consequences-at-last.php

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