http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/safe_space_is_safe_only_for_thugs_and_morons/Conor Friedersdorf on the tyranny of the “safe space” movement:
At the University of Missouri, student activists succeeded this week in forcing the resignation of President Timothy M. Wolfe, charging that he has not done enough to address persistent racism on campus. Tim Tai, a University of Missouri student, got a freelance assignment from ESPN to photograph the reaction of victorious activists at the tent city they set up in a public area of campus…
But student activists did not want their tent city or the people in it photographed, and forcibly prevented him from taking pictures. “We ask for no media in the parameters so the place where people live, fellowship, and sleep can be protected from twisted insincere narratives,” a Twitter account associated with the activists later declared, adding that “it’s typically white media who don’t understand the importance of respecting black spaces.” Tim Tai is Asian American…
In the video of Tim Tai trying to carry out his ESPN assignment, I see the most vivid example yet of activists twisting the concept of “safe space” in a most confounding way. They have one lone student surrounded. They’re forcibly preventing him from exercising a civil right. At various points, they intimidate him. Ultimately, they physically push him. But all the while, they are operating on the premise, or carrying on the pretense, that he is making them unsafe.
It is as if they’ve weaponized the concept of “safe spaces.”
“I support people creating ‘safe spaces’ as a shield by exercising their freedom of association to organize themselves into mutually supporting communities,” Ken White wrote prior to this controversy. “But not everyone imagines ‘safe spaces’ like that. Some use the concept of ‘safe spaces’ as a sword, wielded to annex public spaces and demand that people within those spaces conform to their private norms.”
Yesterday, I wrote about Yale students who decided, in the name of creating a “safe space” on compass, to spit on people as they left a talk with which they disagreed. “In their muddled ideology,” I wrote, “the Yale activists had to destroy the safe space to save it.”
South Park lampoons this valorising of the intellectually passive-aggressive moron:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXQkXXBqj_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv2ZMN3T18E UPDATE
There is something of Salem about this:
Dr. Dale Brigham, considered one of the most beloved professors at the University of Missouri, has resigned after initially refusing to cancel an exam for students who claimed to feel “unsafe.”
“If you don’t feel safe coming to class, then don’t come to class,” Dr. Brigham told his students. “I will be there, and there will be an exam administered in our class,” he continued, imploring his students to stand up to the bullies on campus. “If you give into bullies, they win. The only way bullies are defeated is by standing up to them.”
Dr. Brigham was sharply criticized in the media for requiring his students to attend class and take their exam. Salon ran a story with the headline “White Missouri professor shames black students for heeding violent threats."The Washington Post featured similar coverage of “a white professor” who “challenged his students to come to class.”
Those upset with Dr. Brigham’s decision to hold class took to Twitter calling for Brigham to be fired and calling him “a failure as a human being.”
And so much of it based on fake scares, professional offence takers, victim politics and lies. For instance:
It was a rough night on the campus of the University of Missouri, thanks in large part to Student Body President Payton Head. Head posted on Facebook earlier in the night that the KKK was confirmed on campus and that he was working with “the MUPD, the state trooper and the National Guard.” Here’s a screenshot:
http://blogs.news.com.au/images/uploads/alec1_thumb.jpg
The only problem with that terrifying statement is it wasn’t true and Head was forced to delete the post and apologize...