Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The #DePaul Debacle

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May 27, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

36:39

The #DePaul Debacle

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	I mean, I mean, hello darling.
	So Marlon Yiannopoulos is continuing his dangerous faggot tour around universities in the United States, triggering all kind of special snowflakes and generally making a nuisance of himself, which is wonderful.
	The latest incident of note has been at DePaul University in Chicago Illinois, where this happened.
	Sir, please, sir.
	Do you need some help?
	Sir, please.
	I have to get a please.
	Sir, please.
	Sir.
	Sir
	we have heard enough of this foolishness okay every time you hear this foolishness it's followed by the blood on somebody else's hands dump the trump dump the trump dump the trump dump the trump dump the trump dump the trump dump the trump dump the trump
	so the stage was taken over by these two very oppressed black lives matter activists you can tell they're oppressed because they look so pleased with themselves and they decided to interrupt and eventually end up shutting down this talk we'll explore who these terribly oppressed people are in a minute but for now we'll look specifically at the actions that depaul university should really be considering taking action against
	As you can see, our terribly oppressed lady there goes up to Milo and decides to fight the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy by screaming in his face and almost punching him.
	And at some point, as the man jumped on the stage before he got the microphone, he'd threatened to punch Milo as well.
	Needless to say, if there's any victim narrative here...
	it's not with our protesters.
	Now, DePaul University of course has a code of conduct for the students, specifically covering disorderly, violent, intimidating or dangerous behaviour to self or others.
	Quote, students are not to engage in behaviour that threatens, harms, or causes to place in harm themselves or other persons, or to exhibit behaviour that is illegal, destructive, lewd, indecent, obscene or disorderly.
	including disrupting the peace, impeding classes, causing significant emotional harm, bullying, and or endangering the safety, health or life of any person on the campus through actions or words.
	After interrupting his talk and threatening and intimidating him on stage, there is no doubt that these two students have broken this code of conduct.
	The consequence of breaking these rules are sanctions, where they say, the university has an obligation to help the students come to a deeper understanding of how their behaviour impacts the campus environment.
	These sanctions range from a university reprimand to outright dismissal, and there is no doubt that some action must be taken against these protesters.
	According to the university's own rules.
	But it gets better.
	The Huffington Post of All Places published a first-hand account of the event from Michael Sitfer, who was in attendance when the protest happened.
	He said, Until yesterday, I never realised that forcibly shutting down a private speaking event was considered free speech.
	I was also surprised to learn that assaulting a police officer is now a form of protest.
	It certainly never occurred to me that making violent threats towards a speaker was a constitutionally protected right.
	In fact, I was pretty confident all three of these acts were illegal.
	Yet, yesterday, I saw radical protesters do all three of these things without consequence.
	DePaul University administrators looked on dispassionately, as if this was an everyday occurrence.
	Watching all this unfold, I had to wonder for a moment whether DePaul administrators were defending some bizarre form of free speech I had never heard of.
	I watched from the front row yesterday, as a whistle-blowing protester stormed the stage of an event featuring conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, with about a dozen more radicals following behind him.
	The event was privately organised by students, requiring months of planning and painstaking fundraising, but that never even factored into their heads.
	Administrators have handed them a bubble, a safe space, where they don't need to consider the impact of their actions on other students.
	While an invited speaker was harassed and harangued by protesters, DePaul administrators cowered indecisively in a corner.
	Faced with a serious challenge to First Amendment rights on their campus, they were visibly frightened of confronting the protesters, who tied themselves to the Black Lives Matter movement.
	Only days before the event, administrators had demanded that DePaul College Republicans, the club that hosted the event, pay hundreds of extra dollars in security costs.
	This was a clear breach of contract, but the organisers paid the fee under threat of cancellation.
	Yet, after ordering a dozen security officers, the administrators prevented them from restoring order, forcing them to stand down.
	I talked to a few of the dozen Chicago police officers eventually called to the building and they were irate.
	They were well trained and well equipped to handle scenarios such as this.
	They wanted to do their job and remove the protesters, but the administrators demanded they stand passively and watch.
	Once again, violence prevailed over free speech on a liberal college campus, and the administration was 100% complicit.
	DePaul's president decided to come out publicly and instead of being a neutral arbiter and protector of the students and guests' well-being, he decided to attack Milo.
	Generally, I do not respond to speakers of Mr. Yiannopoulos' ilk, as I believe they are more entertainers and self-serving provocateurs than the public intellectuals they purport to be.
	Their shtick is to shock and incite a strong emotional response they can use to then discredit the moral high ground claimed by their opponents.
	Milo is indeed a provocateur, but the moral high ground his opponents do not have.
	They were thugs.
	They burst in, they caused a ruckus, they intimidated a guest speaker and other students, and the administration is defending them.
	He continues by saying, this is unworthy of university discourse, but not unfamiliar across American higher education.
	There will always be speakers who exploit the differences within our human community to their own benefit, blissfully unconcerned about the damage they leave behind.
	Oh yes, how dare Milo lower the level of university discourse to a conversation on a stage.
	Sorry, I forgot, this was the level that he was dragging people down from.
	That's right, a one line chant with whistles in the background.
	Have you no fucking shame, Dennis Holtchneider?
	Milo is having a conversation with about 500 people who want to hear him talk.
	A bunch of Black Lives Matter thugs break in, steal a microphone and start blowing whistles into it while shouting a one-line slogan in order to censor him.
	And you say he is reducing the level of discourse.
	I can only assume you are a fucking racist who thinks that black people cannot be expected to control themselves.
	Anyway, the plantation owner complains that Milo argues that there is no wage gap for women, which is apparently a difficult position to maintain in light of government data.
	Oh yeah, let's talk about that sometime, Dennis.
	As a gay man, he's claimed that sexual preference is entirely a choice, which he hasn't.
	He claims that white men have fewer privileges than women of people of colour, whom he believes are unfairly privileged in modern society.
	A statement that is immediately suspect when white men continue to occupy the vast majority of top positions in nearly every major industry.
	That's not what privilege means, you monkey.
	Privilege is something that is unearned.
	If you have earned something, it's not a privilege.
	It's an earned reward.
	For example, male students are a minority in DePaul University, and so when a woman comes in and starts threatening to punch Milo in the face, that is an act of systemic oppression against him by a woman using institutional power.
	But then, I wouldn't expect you to hold the Negro to any standards that you'd hold a white man to, probably because you've got some cotton that he's picking, haven't you, mate?
	But he did say that yesterday's speaker was invited to speak at DePaul, and those who interrupted the speech were wrong to do so.
	Well, I'm glad you think so, and I look forward to hearing how these students are going to be punished.
	He says, I was ashamed for DePaul University when I saw the student rip the microphone from the hands of the conference moderator and wave it in the face of our speaker.
	You mean threatened to smash him in the face with it?
	Just, I mean, let's not downplay it.
	She was obviously trying to intimidate him.
	And unlike you, I don't think that's okay because they're black.
	I wouldn't try to downplay that.
	If it was white on a white person, I'd be like, shit, look at this.
	If it was black on a white person, I'm like, shit, look at this, because it's the act itself that is bad.
	It doesn't matter who is doing it.
	Do you get it, Dennis?
	We at DePaul have some reflecting and sorting out to do.
	Well, you've got some students to be expelling, I think.
	I've asked student affairs to reflect on how future events should be staffed so that they proceed without interruption.
	Well, I tell you what, how about you have it so that the security guards you charged Milo for are allowed to do their job without the administration standing in the way?
	That would be the first thing I would recommend.
	And in fact, it's such a no-brainer, I think you can just write it down and just call it a day.
	Expel these students, tell the administration never to prevent a security guard from expelling a protester, and then you're good.
	But he also wants to improve how protests are to be more effectively assisted and enabled.
	No, no, no, you shouldn't be assisting and enabling protests.
	You are meant to be the authorities of the university.
	You should be the thing being protested against.
	And how the underlying differences around race, gender and orientation that were made evident in yesterday's events can be explored in depth in the upcoming academic year.
	I mean, I don't know how to tell you this, Dennis, but women and black people are not inferior.
	I'm presuming that Dennis Holtzchneider is part of the alt-right.
	Given the lack of control and fairness of application of the rules at DePaul by the administration, it's unsurprising that thousands of people decided to go to their Facebook page and give them a one-star review.
	If the administration won't listen to their concerns, the public at least will have their voices heard.
	So let's find out who those poor oppressed black protesters were, the ones that had to fight against the white supremacist patriarchy with nothing but the institutional power of MASA to back them up against a speaker in a conference room.
	So the lovely lady who was sitting with her legs apart and punching Milo in the face was Kayla Johnson.
	She's the daughter of Juanita Johnson, who serves the Chicago Police Department's Director of Administration.
	She is apparently an African and black diaspora studies major at DePaul University.
	You know, something that's really going to pay well when she's finished.
	Her mother, Juanita Johnson, serves as the Director of Administration second for the Chicago Police Department.
	So, you know, upper middle class, if you can believe it.
	But she's not really the interesting person here.
	The interesting person here is the man who initially stormed the stage.
	That's a chap called Edward Ward.
	And his is a very interesting story.
	Ward is a church minister who had previously been homeless before becoming an active leader in his local church.
	He is apparently a political science alumnus of DePaul University and a youth organiser at Blocks Together, a community organising group in Chicago.
	After graduating from DePaul, Ward founded Men of Vision and Empowerment, a youth empowerment group in the same city.
	He was the subject of a glowing profile in DePaul's online student newspaper, which tipped him for state office.
	So just by this brief bio, you can tell that he's a man who's had a bit of a tumultuous life.
	So let's take a look at who his political science professor was.
	Meet Dr. Valerie C. Johnson, DePaul Unity Professor Chair of the Department of Political Science.
	She seems like a reasonable person, right?
	Well, what do you know?
	She's in complete support of this protest.
	She thinks what they're doing is fucking great.
	Valerie C. Johnson is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at DePaul University.
	Her teaching specialization is urban politics, African American politics, American government and the politics of urban education.
	Research specialization in urban education, school finance reform and school discipline policies, African American politics, African American suburbanization, African American leadership and juvenile incarceration.
	She teaches a course on race, ethnicity and housing.
	This course examines the migration and residential patterns of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States with a particular focus on African-American migration, just coincidentally, from the south to northeastern and midwestern cities.
	Residential patterns have a crucial impact on the life chances of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States.
	Where one lives determines the ability to access quality educational opportunities, healthcare and employment.
	It also impacts proximity to crime and the development of mainstream cultural competencies.
	Although residential patterns are typically explained as a result of choice, chief factors include a history of racial discrimination and violence, and biases in federal government housing policies and mortgage lending practices.
	The result has been continuing socioeconomic disparities between whites and racial and ethnic minorities.
	Of course that's what she's teaching, and she's obviously completely unbiased on this issue.
	She's been rated an overall 3.7 in quality on ratemyprofessor.com.
	You might think, well that's quite middling.
	It's like, yeah, but that's not because she's getting lots of threes.
	She's getting lots of fives and lots of ones.
	Let's see what people have to say.
	She's amazing.
	Keep up with the readings because they are essential.
	Super interesting to listen to her opinions.
	She always has great discussions going and encourages participation.
	Just follow her guidelines for assignments and there's no reason you shouldn't get an A. She's intelligent and makes it very clear from what she expects from you.
	Well, she sounds great.
	Do not take this professor.
	Completely racist towards whites and definitely has an agenda.
	Take her class if you want to deal with an insane professor.
	Completely awful professor.
	Indoctrinates students.
	This professor does not believe in free speech.
	You will not grow intellectually under her.
	I am shocked and appalled at the behaviour of Starter students at DePaul.
	If you want to take a class with a biased, racist, bigoted professor, here's your chance.
	Constantly made insinuations about harming white people.
	I'm an African American and I do not agree with her views.
	Seriously, fire her.
	She is mean-spirited and hateful.
	She does not want students to think for themselves, but instead to parrot her anti-white rhetoric.
	She is a self-proclaimed, quote, affirmative action baby and proud of it.
	Her class would have been great.
	She just rants about whatever she wants, barely citing our reading or outside facts.
	She also misuses words constantly, likes to throw around lots of political clichés, and is heavily biased to the left.
	Only take if you can roll with the bullshit punches.
	She is the best teacher I ever had.
	Her discussions were very interesting and she is very intelligent on all the subjects we discussed.
	So she's a bit of a mixed bag then, but we can already sketch an outline of her character.
	She appeals a lot to people who agree with her, and to everyone else, well, the comments speak for themselves.
	Dr. Johnson does not have tenure at DePaul and failed to get tenure at the University of Illinois.
	This is from 2007.
	Behind binoculars, Valerie C. Johnson cried.
	She watched from a car across the street on a cold day last February as her students, bundled in winter coats, shouted, marched and waved banners that read, Tenure Professor Johnson on the University of Illinois at Chicago's campus.
	I think that my burden of mentoring minority students is far greater than the burden white professors assume.
	I have got no doubt that you think that, Professor.
	It was because she failed to get tenure at the University of Illinois that she went to DePaul, and lo and behold, group of professors alleges racism at DePaul.
	An African-American female professor was denied tenure at DePaul University from November 2010.
	An African-American female professor was denied tenure at DePaul.
	Some of her colleagues claim that there's a culture of exclusion.
	Apparently a group of professors are standing beside her, alleging a pattern of institutional racism.
	The professor in question is Dr. Quinnetta Shelby, who went to Yale, University of Chicago and the University of Illinois, but she was denied tenure at DePaul.
	Guess who weighed in in their support?
	All white faculty who went up for tenure and promotion received tenure and promotion, but all of the denials were faculty of colour, said Dr. Valerie Johnson.
	Yep, it must be racism at work.
	And the thing is, this isn't anything new.
	I mean, she is a Black Lives Matter activist who has argued that a fully democratic society is impossible in the context of white privilege and has participated in race marches in Chicago.
	So this is exactly what one would expect.
	A nice long history of being proud that she's an affirmative action hire, thinking that she deserves to be tenured without doing any proper work, and being heavily, heavily biased and not even remotely objective about her own political causes.
	In fact, in January this year, she seemed to be directing and organizing protesters to disrupt profit centers.
	Marching on Michigan Avenue during Black Friday, blocking traffic in a major downtown intersection, and disrupting restaurants at Lincoln Park and Wicker Park are just some of the tactics being used by protesters trying to draw attention to police brutality and socio-economic issues in southside areas of Chicago.
	Following the release of a video in November that showed a Chicago police officer shooting LaQuand McDonald 16 times, protests have broken out across the city.
	While protests have remained peaceful, many of their tactics have been brought into question.
	But Valerie Johnson, chair of the political science department who has been active in the protests, said there is reasoning behind these tactics.
	They recognize that in order to really impact the powers that be, they've got to influence white liberals and white progressives, or be such a nuisance that they will be influential to white people who are pretty wealthy, she said.
	If you're expecting millions of dollars to come into your store and it didn't, you're going to be questioning it.
	It's time to wake people up on topics like police brutality and racial inequality.
	It forces the owners of companies to take responsibility as well.
	Johnson described these issues as systemic, including underfunded schools, dilapidated housing, access to healthcare and poverty.
	If that were not the sentiment, every citizen of Chicago would be out there because they would be so enraged.
	They're so anaesthetized to the issues involved here that they don't understand that this is pervasive so much that even me as a university of professor as chair of my department, as a person who is the right other kind of black person, the more acceptable version, even me, I'm damn afraid.
	When I ride down the street and I see a cop in the last year or so, I get uptight.
	Now, I just want to stress that I don't know whether the Chicago Police Department is or is not racist.
	However, given that Chicago is about 32% black and the Chicago Police Department is about 29% black, I'm going to guess that what these protesters are responding to are individual acts of racism rather than systemic racism.
	But I want to stress that I'm not saying they don't have valid concerns.
	They might, but to say that the Chicago police are institutionally racist is something that I think would need a great deal of investigation.
	And if I had to take a guess, I would probably say that Valerie Johnson isn't the objective investigator that is needed to discern this.
	So Valerie, I am terrified of the police Johnson, is the mentor of Edward Ward through her political science classes.
	And do you think that maybe some of the things she may have taught him have, I don't know, been internalized by Edward, and in fact, that is why he is acting in the way he is acting.
	For example, when he says that Milo threatens my safety and could cause massacres, talking about the Charleston shooting where Dylan Roof went into a black church and shot, I think it was eight people.
	Why does he think that Milo might be responsible for something like that?
	Apparently he claimed that Milo's controversial views on race and feminism are to blame for the Charleston shootings and has vowed to continue halting hate speech.
	Just to clarify, what was your subration now for shutting down the talk?
	Here's my thing.
	When you have someone like that, when I went, okay, I was hoping to listen to what was being said.
	I was hoping to listen and try and understand.
	But then it's coming from a point of ignorance.
	When you make these blatant statements about feminists, when you make these blatant statements about the LGBTQ community, when you make these blatant statements about black people, then this becomes a problem.
	Because when you do this kind of hatred, people like us end up dead.
	We end up dead.
	You get the Charleston, South Carolina, right?
	These are what you get as a result of his type of teeth and rhetoric.
	I see.
	It's not a point of shutting down free speech.
	It's the point of shutting down hate speech.
	Hate speech, okay.
	Okay, so you think My Label is any of his remarks will contribute to that.
	Edward, sorry, I think my phone just got dropped.
	So sorry, how do you remember?
	Well, I looked it up just online.
	It's actually online.
	You do a lot of community work, so it's just online everywhere.
	Be careful.
	What I was saying is this.
	All feminists are idiots, or you say that black women are mad because you fucked black men, like these issues become up to these.
	These statements become a problem.
	Because what you're doing now is you're devaluing the legitimate anger of people who've been an oppressed group.
	This is what is happening.
	You're devaluing this anger.
	You're looking at our struggle and you're making a mockery of it.
	There is nothing funny about being black in America.
	There's nothing funny about being black in the world.
	Looking in the deepest parts of antiquity.
	Okay, got it.
	So for me, I think about those people who've died at the hands of a racist who began this type of and few this type of rhetoric.
	That's what I think about it.
	And that's why I thought it was necessary.
	And that's why I will continue to do it so long as there is anything that's happening that threatens my safety.
	Dr. King says injustice anywhere is aggressive justice everywhere.
	What they did in the student center, what they did in room 120 was not okay.
	And we need people who will stand up and be unapologetic in it.
	Of course, I'm going to receive all types of backlash because there are people saying I violated their free speech where he is threatened.
	But when you say stuff like this, you're threatening our very safety.
	You have a bunch of white people who want to actually say a bunch of racist shit.
	And that's not okay.
	I see.
	So you want to say this racist shit, and then you have some people who are ignorant enough to act on this racist shit.
	So when I say what I say, when I stand up and do what I do, I'm doing this for the sake of my people and those who come after me.
	So collectivist horseshit then.
	Because someone else might do something because Milo has an opinion that is not racist.
	He must have his right to free speech violated.
	Everyone else in the room will have their right to hear what he has to say violated, all because of Edward's fear that something might happen.
	And that's what all of this stems from.
	A deep-seated fear.
	From Valerie Johnson's fear of the police to Edward's fear of a massacre happening.
	This is all based on fear.
	And this is incubated in Valerie Johnson's classroom.
	In February, the DePaul newspaper put out an article about Edward Ward called From Homeless to Leader, Student Eyes State Office.
	And this article was very revealing.
	Born and raised on the city's west side, Ward was a straight A student.
	However, as he transitioned to DePaul, a heightened awareness led to a shift in his academic drive.
	When I was in high school, I was surrounded by black students.
	I knew I was black, but I didn't have to think about it.
	The minute I got to DePaul, I was in a predominantly white class where I was the only black student.
	I automatically felt I wasn't smart enough to be here.
	I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but this is Ward's problem.
	It's not that he's not smart enough to be there.
	He was a straight A student.
	He's clearly smart enough to be there.
	Ward, being an individual who suffered from low self-esteem, began feeling very insecure about his racial status during his freshman year.
	As he struggled to find himself within the classroom, troubles at home began to grow.
	At this time, I was in the middle of an eviction.
	My mum was in and out of the hospital, so I had to take up the burden and go to court on my own, asking the judge to show mercy.
	They gave us a few weeks and we get nowhere.
	We were forced into the streets.
	A breakup with his girlfriend sent Ward into suicidal depression.
	My self-esteem has been shattered at this point.
	So this paints a pretty clear picture of a very confused young man who has very low self-esteem and very little going on in his life.
	He's pretty much at the bottom of the barrel, and so is it any wonder that he would be perhaps overly sensitive to things such as race that might not have the effect that he's thinking of.
	They might, I don't know.
	But being sensitive to this issue, I think it's quite likely that he'll probably end up attributing things to his race that aren't necessarily due to his race.
	Either way, this young man who is clearly at his lowest ebb is ripe to be manipulated by an authority figure with an agenda.
	Enter Dr. Valerie Johnson.
	Just when life appeared to be unbearable for the young undergrad, a hero by the name of Valerie Johnson came to his rescue.
	Johnson, who was one of Ward's professors during his freshman year, was able to notice his potential and start pushing him in the right direction.
	Edward was a diamond in the rough, but he needed to be refined.
	We all live our parochial lives in our various communities.
	You live in the hood, your world is the hood.
	You go out into a more diverse atmosphere and you can't use the same attitude.
	Edward is the perfect person to illustrate why education is important.
	Education refined Edward, and I've got no doubt that it did.
	But it didn't put into his head the idea that other people's rights are less important than your goals.
	Ward recalls the conversation he had with Johnson that altered his way of thinking.
	I was failing her class.
	She says to me, you can decide to drop out now, work a mediocre job and live a mediocre life and have mediocre babies.
	My situation wins.
	I don't win and I don't like losing, Ward said.
	Having this mindset, Ward began looking for inner peace.
	Escaping the reality of his environment on the West Side is what allowed that peace to start forming.
	When I had those moments that I needed peace, I would often walk to the lake and just sit there.
	I didn't have to deal with looking outside and seeing people going through the struggle.
	Being here on campus, it was a different world.
	Unsurprisingly, this confused young man who now has an authority figure to push him in the direction she wants him to go was lacking a father figure.
	Ward utilised the time on campus to also begin discovering aspects of his identity.
	Not having to micromanage his loved ones allowed time to freely start questioning his manhood, something that had been tainted due to a traumatic upbringing.
	A lot has happened that has really scarred me.
	I didn't grow up with a father.
	I was molested by a man who called himself a friend.
	I never connected with men, so I don't understand what it means to be a man.
	Now, I take this time on campus to think about who I am.
	If what Edward's saying is true, and I've got no reason to think that it's not, there's no doubt that he's had a rough life.
	It's no wonder that he has low self-esteem.
	It's no wonder that he is confused and hostile.
	It's no wonder that Valerie Johnson sees in him a vehicle for her own ambitions.
	He's obviously very intelligent, but emotionally traumatised, and looking for an identity.
	And Black Lives Matter, social justice, and feminism give him that identity.
	It's no surprise that on his LinkedIn profile, before he says anything else about himself, he says, I am an advocate of social justice.
	This gives him meaning.
	This is why he founded Move, an organization for probably fatherless young black men, to help them presumably avoid the gang culture they could otherwise so easily fall into.
	It's sad.
	It's really sad that this guy's life has been so rough.
	Coming from a fatherless household in a poor area of Chicago cannot have been easy.
	And I don't blame him for wanting something that will give his life purpose.
	Anyone else who grew up in the same circumstances would feel the same.
	But this is no excuse for infringing upon the rights of others.
	When he got up on that stage and decided he was going to shout down and intimidate Milo and prevent them from holding their meeting, which was completely legitimate, he was in the wrong.
	And in my opinion, he should be reprimanded in some way.
	Not necessarily dismissal, but some kind of punishment.
	However, Dr. Valerie Johnson, the person orchestrating what he's doing, the person behind the scenes encouraging him and the other Black Lives Matter activists to do what they are doing, needs to be fired.
	Inciting your students to infringe upon the rights of others and then instructing them on exactly how to do it should be an offence that gets her dismissed.
	But she won't be dismissed, because as we've seen, the faculty are entirely complicit in this state of affairs.
	They think they are justified, and they think if they don't go far enough, then it's white supremacy and racism at work.
	In fact, look at this.
	Ada Cheng to the DePaul University on their Facebook page.
	Dear President, this is my last quarter at DePaul University.
	After 15 years of teaching, I have decided to leave the university.
	This is the first time I have ever emailed you and let you know my thoughts.
	Please read this note from a woman of colour faculty without dismissing it easily.
	Universities, like all institutions, are not neutral platforms.
	Universities are embodied institutions predicated upon social inequalities and dominant ideologies, privileging the participation and access of certain groups.
	In time of political crisis, universities have a responsibility to take a moral stand.
	To believe that universities are simply neutral platforms for equal exchange of ideas, the so-called free speech rooted in the market ideology, is delusional and that positional objectivity ends up reinforcing the exact inequalities and dominant ideologies upon which this institution is built.
	It is a hypocrisy to believe that one can promote diversity without tackling the racism that underlines all educational institutions.
	The incidents that took place during these past two days are just symptoms of the historical institutional racism embedded in this institution.
	The long history of extinguishing faculty of colour is a long-standing indication.
	Your handling of this case is shameful and embarrassing.
	It is a lack of moral courage in the disguise of intellectual objectivity and positional neutrality.
	The lack of position is a position, and your chosen position is to reinforce the existing inequalities.
	Shame on you.
	I am glad I will no longer be part of this institution and be complicit in the institutional practices that support our racist society.
	Ada Cheng, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology These people think the entire educational system is racist, because the entire society of the United States is racist.
	These people are lunatics.
	They have lost touch with reality and now they are inciting their students to go against the very constitutional rights of their fellow students.
	All based on the idea that everything and everyone is racist.
	They have to be stopped.
	They absolutely have to be stopped.
	I mean, look at this guy.
	Every picture of Edward Ward makes him look distinguished.
	It makes him look respectable.
	It makes him look like he is a young man with a future.
	Why is it that he says, when you look at me, the first thing that comes to mind is possible criminal.
	In what world does this guy look like a possible criminal?
	He's a straight A student.
	He's at university.
	He wears a suit and tie all the time and he's going to be going for office.
	This is not someone who looks like a criminal.
	However, I think his racist professors have taught him that all white people hate black people and therefore think of him as a potential criminal.
	Which isn't true.
	These professors have become so insular and ideological in their beliefs.
	They are literally teaching black people to feel bad about themselves.
	At some point we're going to have to categorize this as a form of emotional abuse.
	This young man should be feeling great about himself.
	He's doing great.
	Everyone in his peer group likes him.
	And yet he is now the subject of a viral controversy because of some bullshit his professors have put into his head.
	Now he is going to get reprimanded or at least should be reprimanded by his university, possibly ending in his dismissal for his unruly conduct and threats of violence towards a speaker at the university.
	This isn't doing anything good for these students.
	This is turning them into a Greek tragedy.
	A link to the petition to end these social justice courses will be in the description.

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