This is why the ratio changes so much more dramatically when we look at fields that are associated with addressing social justice concerns. In Jon’s field, academic psychology, the left-to-right ratio was between two to one and four to one from the 1930s through the mid-1990s, but then it began to shoot upward, reaching seventeen to one by 2016.44 The ratios in other core fields in the humanities and social sciences are nearly all above ten to one. The imbalance is larger at more prestigious universities and in New England.45 The only field among all of the humanities and social sciences that is known to have enough political diversity to allow for institutionalized disconfirmation is economics, where the left-to-right ratio found in a study of the voter registrations of professors was a comparatively low four to one.46
The loss of political diversity among professors, particularly in fields that deal with politicized content, can undermine the quality and rigor of scholarly research. Six social scientists (including Jon) wrote an academic article in 2015 that explains how.47 For example, when a field lacks political diversity, researchers tend to congregate around questions and research methods that generally confirm their shared narrative, while ignoring questions and methods that don’t offer such support.
The loss of political diversity among the faculty has negative consequences for students, too, in three ways. First, there’s the problem that many college students have little or no exposure to professors from half of the political spectrum.48 Many students graduate with an inaccurate understanding of conservatives, politics, and much of the United States. Three days after Donald Trump’s widely unexpected electoral victory, the editors of Harvard’s main student newspaper made exactly this case in an editorial invoking Harvard’s motto, Veritas—the Latin word for “truth”—calling on the administration to give them more political diversity:
The pursuit of “Veritas” which undergirds our intellectual life demands not only that each member of our community be able to debate politics freely, but also that we attend to the multitude of political views that exist in our nation. Stifling this discussion on campus is a disservice to our peers in the campus political minority, and to our own educational growth.49
Second, the loss of viewpoint diversity among the faculty means that what students learn about politically controversial topics will often be “left shifted” from the truth. There is a range of reasonable opinions on many factual questions. (For example: How much does raising the minimum wage cause employers to hire fewer low-skilled workers? How much of an influence do prenatal hormones have on the differing toy and play preferences of boys versus girls?) But students in politically homogeneous departments will mostly be exposed to books and research studies drawn from the left half of the range, so they are likely to come down to the “left” of the truth, on average. (For example, they are likely to underestimate the elasticity of labor demand, especially if they attended prestigious universities in New England.) Sometimes the left-leaning view turns out to be correct, sometimes it’s the right-leaning view, but on average, students will get closer to the truth if they are exposed to debates among credentialed scholars who approach difficult problems from differing perspectives.
To compound this second problem, during the same period in which the faculty were becoming more politically homogeneous, so were the students. Surveys of incoming freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute show that roughly 20% of incoming students identify as conservative, and that figure has held steady since the early 1980s. Self-described “moderates” made up roughly half of all incoming students in the 1980s and 1990s, but that figure has been dropping since the early 2000s—it’s now in the low forties—as the percentage of progressives (self-described “liberals”) rises into the high 30s.50 The shift has accelerated since 2012.51
We are not saying there is anything inherently wrong with the increasing number of left-leaning students on campus. But we are saying that viewpoint diversity is necessary for the development of critical thinking, while viewpoint homogeneity (whether on the left or the right) leaves a community vulnerable to groupthink and orthodoxy. If both the faculty and the students have been losing moderates and gaining progressives since the 1990s, and if this shift among students has accelerated since 2012, then we would expect to see some changes in the culture and social dynamics of American universities, especially after 2012.52
This is the third problem. It is the Durkheimian problem. It is the risk that some academic communities—particularly those in the most progressive parts of the country—may attain such high levels of political homogeneity and solidarity that they undergo a phase change, taking on properties of a collective entity that are antithetical to the normal aims of a university. A collective entity mobilized for action is more likely to enforce political orthodoxy and less likely to tolerate challenges to its key ideological beliefs. Politically homogeneous communities are more susceptible to witch hunts, particularly when they feel threatened from outside.
Welcome to Evergreen
The Evergreen State College, a small public college an hour’s drive south of Seattle, has long had a reputation for quirky progressivism. The college is located on a nature reserve and has its own organic farm. Instead of grades, students receive narrative reports. It has been listed as one of the ten most liberal colleges in the country.53 In 2011, the college changed its mission statement to include this: “Evergreen supports and benefits from local and global commitment to social justice, diversity, environmental stewardship and service in the public interest.”54 In May of 2017, Evergreen slipped into a state of anarchy that is difficult to explain without the help of Durkheim.
Campus tensions had already been rising when, on March 15, Bret Weinstein, a politically progressive biology professor, emailed a faculty listserv55 to express his concern about plans for that year’s “Day of Absence,”56 which was scheduled to take place the following month. Inspired by a Douglas Turner Ward play of the same name,57 staff and faculty members of color (and later students, too) had been spending one day off campus each year since the 1970s in order to make their absence—and thus the importance of their contributions—felt. In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, however, the organizers of the 2017 event decided to make a change: instead of the day being an opportunity for people of color to voluntarily absent themselves, this year, white students and faculty were asked to stay away from campus.58
Professor Weinstein thought this was wrong.59 He wrote, “There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles” and “encouraging another group to go away.”60 In a shared space, “one’s right to speak—or to be,” he said, “must never be based on skin color.” He also feared that white students and faculty who did not support the structure of the Day of Absence and chose to come to campus that day would be viewed negatively; their very presence might be interpreted to mean they did not support the goals of the event.61 Weinstein had expressed other concerns about the direction the college was taking when, a year earlier, the college president, administrators, and select faculty committed to a campuswide “equity” agenda, including a proposed policy that would require all new employees to have an “equity” justification. The president of Evergreen, George Bridges, had begun using the phrase “education-solidarity-inclusion” in his memos and mailings. He and his “equity council” had also undertaken various solidarity-building exercises, one of which included an event during which faculty were publicly pressured by name to get into an imaginary canoe, in which the faculty and administration then symbolically journeyed toward equity together (to the sounds of crashing waves and a Native American drumbeat).62 These rituals and talk of campuswide “solidarity” make sense from a Durkheimian perspective. They are ways to prepare a community for collective action.
The Day of Absence came and went “almost without incident,” according to Weinstein,63 altho
ugh not all white members of the community complied. But more than a month later, on May 23, after other instances of campus unrest, a multiethnic group of angry students marched to Weinstein’s classroom door, cornered him in the hallway, and berated him.64 They swore at him, calling him a “piece of shit” and telling him to “get the fuck out.” They claimed that he made racist statements in his email,65 and they demanded that he not only apologize but also resign. Weinstein disagreed with their assessment of his email as “harmful” and “racist,” and he refused to apologize. But he did try to engage the students in discussion or, as he called it, “dialectic, which does mean I listen to you and you listen to me.” The response was not positive: “We don’t care what terms you want to speak on . . . we are not speaking on terms of white privilege.”66
The students continued to blast the professor, and tensions mounted. Concerned for Weinstein’s safety, his students contacted the police, but protesters physically prevented the police from reaching him.67 Campus police requested backup from other police departments.68
Protesters, claiming to be “fearful for their lives,” marched on to the administration building, where they found and confronted President Bridges outside his office. Videos of the event show protesters saying, “Fuck you, George, we don’t want to hear a Goddamn thing you have to say. . . . You shut the fuck up.”69 The president agreed to meet with protesters along with the staff and administrators who supported them, and then assured them that, with respect to errant faculty in the sciences (such as Weinstein), “they’re going to say some things we don’t like, and our job is to bring them all in or get ’em out. And what I hear us stating that we are working toward is: bring ’em in, train ’em, and if they don’t get it, sanction ’em.”70 (Yes, that is the president of a U.S. public college, which is bound by the First Amendment to protect academic freedom, proposing to fire or punish professors who do not accept the teachings of a mandatory political reeducation program.)
Some of the protesters insisted that campus police chief Stacy Brown join the meeting—unarmed. Brown, who would not disarm in uniform, changed into civilian clothes and arrived to find students shouting expletives and slurs, some directed at her.71 Certain protesters were assigned to her and followed her to another meeting later in the day, attended by hundreds of others. At this larger gathering, protesters attached themselves to Brown, Weinstein, and a few other noncompliant faculty and students. At all times, the protesters controlled the exits.72 When Weinstein’s students overheard protesters say they had mace and planned to prevent Weinstein from leaving the building, they texted him to alert him. Weinstein texted his wife, Heather Heying, a fellow biology professor: “I am told I will not be allowed to leave,” and then, “Not sure what to do.”73
Video of that meeting is startling.74 Student protesters can be heard insisting that Weinstein be fired in order to prevent him from what one white protester later described as “spread[ing] this problematic rhetoric.”75 Students of color who spoke supportively of Weinstein, or who even asked to hear from people not in the protesters’ camp, were shouted down and called “race traitors.”76 (White students who were not protesting were told to stand in the back and were not allowed to speak.77)
Students repeatedly and publicly ridiculed the college president, even berating him for smiling. One student yelled at President Bridges (who often gesticulates with his hands), “Put your hand down!” while another student mockingly imitated his hand gestures, adding, “That’s my problem [with you], George, you keep making these little hand movements.” The president immediately put his hands behind his back as the student walked around him to laughter and applause, announcing that she was “decolonizing the space.” Bridges responded, “My hands are down.”78
The next day, May 24, protesters searched cars looking for Weinstein.79 They interrupted a faculty meeting and took the cake meant to celebrate retiring faculty, while asking, “Didn’t you educate us on how to do shit like this?”80 Then, according to the student newspaper, student protesters barricaded the main entrance to the administration building,81 and for several hours, having occupied the building and gathered together the leadership of the college, including President Bridges,82 they held them in an office. With the leadership team sequestered, the students prepared and later presented their demands. These included mandatory bias training for faculty, and permission for protesters to not turn in their homework on time.83
Outside the office, students video-recorded themselves making sure that the room had no escape routes and that there was enough student “presence” to prevent administrators from leaving. Bridges ordered the campus police not to intervene. One organizer of the protest told students there was a room for them to “rest” and advised protesters to “make sure you’re all taking care of yourselves in these moments.” Immediately after giving those instructions, the same organizer entered the president’s office and asked the administrators if they needed anything. Bridges is seen on video saying, “I need to pee.” The organizer replies, “Hold it,” as several people laugh. (Protesters later escorted Bridges to the bathroom.)84
Inside the president’s office, one student protester asked captive administrators, “Don’t you think it’s continuing white supremacy when the leadership is only white people?” Several administrators nodded and said yes, thereby validating the students’ grossly expanded definition of white supremacy.85 Outside the office, students chanted, “Hey hey/ho ho/these racist faculty have got to go.” That night, in an email to the campus community, an Evergreen media studies professor wrote approvingly that the protesting students were “doing exactly what we’ve taught them.”
The following day, May 25, the police received information that protesters intended to target the campus police department building. Ordered to stand down,86 the police evacuated, setting up a post off campus and monitoring the highly charged situation using campus security cameras and a local law enforcement helicopter.87 Students who defended Weinstein were stalked, and were targeted by protesters in thinly veiled online threats. The campus police chief informed Weinstein that, out of concern for his safety, she thought it would be best if he left campus.88 He held all but one of his remaining classes that quarter off campus.89
Aside from his wife, Heather Heying, only one professor on the entire faculty,90 Mike Paros, a professor of veterinary science, publicly supported Weinstein.91 Weinstein later learned that several other professors were supportive but afraid to say so in public.92 With so little support, with the police urging him to stay off campus, and with no national media covering the story of Evergreen’s descent into anarchy and intimidation, on May 26, Weinstein accepted an invitation to be interviewed on the Fox News TV show Tucker Carlson Tonight.93
Once the story went public, it attracted attention from the political right and harassment from the alt-right, which we will discuss further in the next chapter. On Thursday, June 1, a man in New Jersey called the Thurston County emergency line and told the dispatcher he was on his way to Evergreen to “execute as many people on campus as I can get ahold of.”94 Law enforcement informed the school that there was no active threat, but as a precautionary measure, the campus was shut down until Saturday, June 3.95 On June 3 and 4, bands of students began to roam the campus armed with baseball bats and tasers, searching for “white supremacists.” They vandalized buildings and assaulted several students.96 The New Jersey man was arrested a month later.
How did this mess end? Who was held accountable? On June 2, roughly a quarter of the college’s faculty signed a letter calling for Weinstein to be investigated, blaming him for provoking “white supremacist backlash,” and claiming that by speaking about what was happening on Fox News TV, he “endangered” students.97 Weinstein and Heying rejected the assertion that he was to blame. As employees of Evergreen, they filed a tort claim against the college for tolerating, and even endorsing, egregious violations of the student conduct code—including criminal behavior�
��and for fostering a racially hostile work environment. In September 2017, the couple and Evergreen agreed on a settlement, and the professors resigned.98 Police chief Stacy Brown later made similar charges, claiming that “the hostile environment left her with no choice but to resign from the College.”99
President Bridges, who at the beginning of the school year had criticized the University of Chicago for its policy protecting free speech and academic freedom,100 agreed to many of the protesters’ demands.101 He announced that he was “grateful” for the “passion and courage” the protesters displayed,102 and later, he hired one of the leaders of the protests to join his Presidential Equity Advisors.103 One of their primary tasks was to rewrite the student code of conduct.
Great Untruth U
The events at Evergreen illustrate just about everything we’ve talked about in this book so far. The early stages illustrate Bergesen’s three features of political witch hunts: the movement seemed to come out of nowhere, it was in response to a trivial provocation (a polite email sent to a faculty listserv), and the provocation was interpreted as an attack on the entire Evergreen community. As the drama unfolded, it illustrated our fourth criterion: faculty and administrators who wanted to defend Weinstein were afraid to do so.
The protesting Evergreen students—and the faculty and administrators who encouraged them—repeatedly displayed all three of the Great Untruths. For example, one professor who supported the protesters addressed some of her faculty colleagues in an angry monologue that included a line similar to the Untruth of Fragility (What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker): “I am too tired. This shit is literally going to kill me.”104
The Coddling of the American Mind Page 13