Colleges Being Remade Into "Repress U"?

The Nation has up a sobering article from its upcoming issue about how colleges and universities are being turned into homeland security campuses, in the name of preventing homegrown radicalization. Quoting: "From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention' — as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name — have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university."

Comments

Fearmongering works on both sides

[Malevolent Tester]

Can't say I'm a great fan of TWAT, but even so:

Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.

The Weathermen were a "peace and justice organization".

Many campus police departments are morphing into heavily armed garrisons, equipped with a wide array of weaponry, from Taser stun guns and pepper guns to shotguns and semiautomatic rifles.

Dear me, police armed with non lethal weapons? They have guns in a gun owning society? We're all doomed, I say, doomed.

Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out

Enforce the law against illegal immigrants? A horrific sign of incipient totalitarianism.

Take over the curriculum, the classroom and the laboratory

I'm shocked by this one, frankly (even more so than I was by the tasers). A government department wants to sponsor research within it's remit?

Privatize, privatize, privatize.

a) this has fuck all to do with repression of academia, just a left wing fear of the private sector
b) giving contracts to private sector companies is not privatisation.

The new homeland security campus has proven itself unable to shut out public scrutiny or stamp out resistance to its latest Orwellian advances

Protip: Orwell wasn't warning about the right in 1984. If the average reader of the Nation got their way, only the targets would change. Any kulaks here?

Free Speech Zones

[ProteusQ]

I was teaching at Wichita State before the Free Speech Zones. They had to implement them because Women's Studies majors were interrupting class by blowing an air horn to announce "Take Back the Night"-type events. So, the left-wing administrators had to find a way to kept the far-left-wing advocates from interrupting class and came up with the zoning scheme as the solution.

If the right is truly repressing speech on campus via federal reg's, it's double-plus bad ungood; however, I contend there's far more internal repression of speech, and hence of thought, from the left on campus and has been for decades. (Why? Because they believe that true diversity will be achieved once everyone agrees with them.) So, if we want free speech on campus, let's make sure all of the sources of repression are dealt with.

Sad but necessary

[Moryath]

I work on a University campus, so I know what's really going on. It's simple: too many people abused their "right" to free speech by making it impossible to hold classes, being rowdy and loud in the halls, preventing people from passing into buildings, etc. In essence, depriving the students of the very thing they paid for. End result? The university isn't about having "free speech all the time", it's where people pay for an education. So the Universities had to strike a balance, and they had to do something so that those who wanted to protest can do so, but WITHOUT DISRUPTING CLASSES.

You don't have the "right" to stand up and have a bitch-fest in a class you're signed up for, either - if you disrupt class, the professor has the right to order you out and call security if you don't leave. You don't have the "right" to prevent people from reaching classes either, and we had fuckwits from Code Pinko blockading the classrooms of engineering profs who had military service records and have some military research grants.

And that even includes the fuckwad professors who hold chemistry class bitching about Bush and why everyone should be antiwar, too. You want to protest them? Take it up w/ the Dean, in the student newspaper, in the courts, or on your own time - not in the class.

students at Hampton and Pace universities faced expulsion for handing out antiwar fliers, aka "unauthorized materials."

I don't care what you're doing - whether it's an anti-abortion flyer, a pro-abortion flyer, an antiwar flyer, a pro-war flyer, or an advertising for your frat/sorostitute group's drinking party. If you're trying to force it into people's hands, or putting it on their cars (which is what WE get all the time where I work)... no. If someone actively takes it from you? Fine. But you don't have the right to force crap into my hands and you don't have the right to fuck with my vehicle. And I'm 100% sure that's the bullcrap they are really referring to.

I also love this little gem:
1. Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
I'd trust the guys writing this so-called "report" more if those so-called "peace and justice organizations" weren't fronts for communist groups (ANSWER, International Socialist Workers Party, etc), anarchist groups, blatant racial supremacist organizations (MEChA and La Raza, motto "For the race, everything, for other races, nothing"), or international terrorist/genocide groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

I mean, really. We had a table of morons set up who were boldly collecting money that they admitted they'd be sending to Hezbollah. They should all have been deported for violating their visas - half of them had already dropped this semester's classes anyways, like they do every semester.

Re:Sad but necessary

[The Anarchist Avenge]

I'd trust the guys writing this so-called "report" more if those so-called "peace and justice organizations" weren't fronts for communist groups (ANSWER, International Socialist Workers Party, etc), anarchist groups That's interesting. You're implying that anarchists can't want peace or justice?

Re:Sad but necessary

[Artifakt]

Anarchy literally means NO Archy, as in No Hierarchy. No person set up over other persons, everybody equal, and so on. Technically, the phrase "A nation of laws and not men" fits this definition. A strict definition of the word equates to having "No rulers", but not necessarily or even likely having no laws.
      This is not just a matter of semantics. I wouldn't bother with this point if the vast majority of 'anarchists' were "Chaoticists" misusing the word to mean doing away with all law. The word is actually, very frequently used to mean no rulers. In the UK, there have been literally over 10,000 people put on lists of suspected anarchists because they oppose Monarchy (literally "One-archy"). They are people advocating getting rid of the British monarchy, including having no House of Lords, but many still support elections and laws, including having a House of Commons based parlimentary system. The U.S. gets these lists as part of establishing its own no-fly, and no-visit lists, and the US's intelligence services usually take the British anarchist designation as meaning "opposed to all government" so the U.S. is currently keeping "British anarchists" out of the country because they are people who don't support the current heir to the throne of George III. Funny, I thought the U.S. got started that way.

Re:Sad but necessary

[SteelAngel]

There's a difference between the right to protest grievances, and the right to protest wherever you damn well want to and in whatever circumstances you want to. One of these is an actual right.

Full disclosure: I am a 30 year old college professor at a small private school.

Disrupting classes, invited lectures or other campus-wide gatherings is not only rude, but it is nothing less than thuggism. The whole point of the academy is the free and open flow of ideas. You may agree or disagree with those ideas, but to shout them down or disrupt the educational process is beyond the pale. Engagement with those you disagree with is far more constructive than acting like a jackbooted jerk.

Before the late 1960s, hipsters were escorted off of campuses, student radicals were usually expelled. Professors who did not 'fit in' were routinely let go.

Today, the politics on campus has all but reversed itself from the 1950s. "The man" today is the Boomer-aged Administration and Faculty: leftists who promote speech codes and shut down campus debate, harass conservatives, excuse 'favored groups' antisocial activity, etc. There hasn't been a truly progressive bone in the corpse of campus leftism since I was an undergrad in the late 90's. All that is 'left' is a proto-totalitarianist mantra of thoughtcrime and newspeak (oddly enough, that was the name of our campus newspaper whilst I was there!)

To be a real 'campus radical' today is not to be a pot-smoking hippie; it is to be a member of the campus Republicans!

Re:Sad but necessary

[SteelAngel]

There were two separate segments of my post - one decrying pushy radicals, and the other pointing out an interesting inversion of what really is 'radical' on campuses these days. Apparently you missed the entire point (or are a successful troll). I am supportive of the free exchange of ideas - even repugnant ideas. However, there are times and places where it is appropriate to both present those ideas and to protest against them. Shouting down an opposing speaker is not debate, it is intimidation. Disrupting classes because you feel your protest is more important than anything else is not debate, it is narcissism.

If you think you work on a campus where the only available form of dissent is joining the Republicans, what are you doing about it?

I'm surprised that you were able to call my post incoherent, considering this thought process. Let me spell it out in a simple analogy: If "The Man" is a socialist, radicals are capitalists. All across the country in the 1950s, colleges stifled leftists - dress codes, speech codes, nothing is new under the sun. Today, colleges are doing the same thing, only the target is different. In between, there was a time when there was far more freedom of inquiry. Maybe we'll return to that state at some point during my lifetime.

Oh, that's right, your will is already completely broken by the man. You won't in a million years consider lifting a finger to fix this. You will just break the wills of those younger than you. Ah, the circle of academic life.

You are a sorry jaded little man, aren't you? Cynicism is easy.

Almost forgot:

[Moryath]

3. Keep an eye (or hundreds of them) focused on campus. Surveillance has become a boom industry nationally--one that now reaches deep into the heart of campuses. In fact, universities have witnessed explosive growth since 2001 in the electronic surveillance of students, faculty and campus workers. On ever more campuses, closed-circuit security cameras can track people's every move, often from hidden or undisclosed locations, sometimes even into classrooms.

I helped get this established on our campus. Why did we do it? It has nothing to do with "tracking everyone" and everything to do with crime. We have cameras on the parking lots because we kept having "neighbors" from the black-dominated slums nearby breaking into cars and carjacking people, and so they now have someone watching to dispatch a cop to a problem spot 24/7. We have cameras on buildings leading to classrooms, and even a few IN classrooms, because of people committing rapes and getting into fights.

5. Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out.
Yeah. Because enforcing the law is a problem... how?
The American Immigration Law Foundation estimates that only one in twenty undocumented immigrants who graduate high school goes on to enroll in a college--many don't go because they cannot afford the tuition but also because they have good reason to be afraid: ICE has deported a number of those who did make it to college, some before they could graduate.
When every one that gets in displaces a legal citizen, legal resident, legal visa-holder who had the RIGHT to apply... yeah. I applaud such efforts.

Re:Informative?

[DaveV1.0]

in many/most cases the shotgun is superior because it is less likely to cause unintended damage.

Um, do you have any experience with shotguns other than Doom/Quake? A shotgun fires a number of pellets that spread rapidly into a cone shape. After about 30 ft, the spread will be about 12 inches. With 00 buck shot, that is 8 pellets somewhere in a one foot circle. Think about a shoulder shot with 4 pellets missing the target entirely. They will be heading down range and can easily hit a bystander. Shotguns are great weapons for close in fighting, especially indoors and in heavy brush, due to limited range. At anything more than 60 ft, they loose effectiveness and are a danger to anything down range.

Oh, and shotgun pellets can go through walls just fine. Especially 0 or 00 buck shot at close range. The big difference is that the shotgun will put a 2-3 inch hole in the wall and create more shrapnel.

Re:Free Speech Areas

[rtb61]

'Er' no, it is meant to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people. In europe people readily do force the government to work in and preserve their best intrests. When the government does something for the people it is the people doing something for the people, not some mysterious alien force. When the government is corrupted it is private agencies, individuals who corrupt the government so it only serves the intrests of a greedy minority.

Rampant capitalism is simply feudalism and bonded servants. In the US it has been the dismantling of the good work done at the end of the depressions, the rules the constrained the worst excesses of corporations and the rich, the social services that were put in place that stabilised and produced a healthier society, and as a result a more complacent society. It was a complacent society that allowed the damage to be done starting in the 70 and culminating in the current disaster.

You can guarantee things will get worse if you create an even more ineffective social security net, allow fewer constraints upon the greed of corporations, less tax for the rich (they should pay the most, they benefit the most), fail to ensure free trade is actually fair trade (it ain't free trade if one side can cheat by underpaying workers, with poor and dangerous working conditions, use child slave labour, and polluting the environment). Failure to turn things around will ensure a path to a more primitive Mexican economy of the previous century that the Mexicans are now endeavouring to leave behind. A vote for even more necon capitalism is a vote for 'El Presidente de la República de los USA' , a vote for someone who fights for the workers, the majority of the people, is a vote to recreate a country the respects it's own constitution and the people it is meant to respect (don't think so, check out the social security net of Mexico that's what you are aiming for).

As for turning around private campuses, haven't you realised yet, that they are in fact trying to get rid of the smart arse free thinking individualists because they are buggering up the grade averages and making to hard for the spawn of the 'rich but ugly' and the 'pretty but stupid' to gain a passing mark ;).

Re:Free Speech Areas

[nine-times]

The real point of the Bill of Rights, in case you don't know, was to allow the people of the United States the ability to revolt in case the government turned bad. Seriously, that's what the Bill of Rights was about: preventing the government from quelling a general rebellion.

If you don't believe me, go back and reread the amendments in this light. During the American Revolution, the British government made laws about who could meet with whom. The made it illegal for people to have guns. They quartered soldiers in people's houses. They searched whoever and whatever they wanted. Bla bla bla... the point is that the British government did every one of those things with the intent of quelling rebelling and keeping people in line.

So the point was largely the writers of the Constitution saying, "Remember everything we went through to get free from Britain? Let's make sure that if our own government ever gets as bad as that, they won't legally be able to stop us from rebelling against it like we rebelled against England."