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Colleges Being Remade Into "Repress U"?

Posted by kdawson on from the don't-speak-out dept.

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."

5 of 527 comments (clear)

  1. Free Speech Zones by ProteusQ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Sad but necessary by Moryath · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Sad but necessary by Artifakt · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Who is John Cabal?
    2. Re:Sad but necessary by SteelAngel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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!

  3. Almost forgot: by Moryath · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.