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Hey! Ever notice that the NYT opinion columnists are bizarrely fixated on what happens on college campuses? I have, and now I wrote a piece about it. Enjoy!https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/06/04/how-bret-stephens-and-bari-weiss-have-taken-ny-times-campus-concern-trolling-new-heights-just-2/223855 …
Leading up to the 2016 election, there was no shortage of campus-related pearl-clutching by the NYT columnists. Douthat and Brooks were all over that! Douthat even compared college students to Kim Jong-un!pic.twitter.com/uDaExtgfb9
Then, after the election, they brought on Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss from the Wall Street Journal, and WHEW, the "liberal students are silencing speech on campus!" beat got a lot more crowded.
Examples of Weiss' work at WSJ includes a piece about "campus rage," one about "the PC police," and another article denouncing "social justice warriors" for outrage (I honestly don't remember seeing outrage about this at all, but ok) about the movie "Sausage Party."pic.twitter.com/G3zP7eutiw
Her opinions on the supposed overreach of liberal activists/the online commentariat regarding social issues isn't *that* much different than Douthat or Brooks. This was not some expansion of viewpoints at the Times.
And that's the theme I kept finding across multiple topics. For instance, Stephens' most recent solo piece is about the utterly inane Sohrab Ahmari vs. David French kerfuffle. Douthat's most recent piece: the same.pic.twitter.com/bbkxifkJkR
Is that a topic that needs TWO SEPARATE PIECES from NYT columnists? Almost certainly not. If you're not familiar with that... basically one guy called for the overthrow of social order because drag queens make him sad. Here's a thread:https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1135676855145684992 …
There's so much repetition. And sure, Stephens has published more than 200 pieces since joining the Times, so it's understandable that he might occasionally write what is essentially the same article twice, as he did with his July 2018 and May 2019 "How Trump Wins" piecespic.twitter.com/ZgNVOE8xku
Stephens has written *many* articles about campus issues, almost always framed in the same sort of "those mean ol' sjws are trying to shut down speech!" kind of way.pic.twitter.com/es1tG3JVUV
So, speech is good. Disagreement, also good. Shouting people down, bad. Except... just to stay with Stephens as my example here, it becomes clear that when he talks about the importance of disagreement, he's referring to the need to protect speech *that he agrees with*.
Take, for instance, his "On Venezuela, Where Are Liberals?" piece. It's essentially a critique of *what* causes protesters throw their efforts behind. If he agrees with them, they're "worthy." If he doesn't... well, look how he talks about people pushing for Palestinian rights.pic.twitter.com/xy3OqY6H7b
Talk of Palestine makes Stephens very angry. And whatever, that's his view. He's pro-free speech, no hypocrisy so far.pic.twitter.com/9QPCCDbIGA
In "The Progressive Assault on Israel," Stephens says it's "profoundly unsettling" that many progressives opposed a bill that included a ban on federal contracts going to companies that boycott Israel.pic.twitter.com/qpsJSdGJDz
This goes beyond just saying that you *disagree* with the motives, strategies, or effects of the BDS movement. This is about declaring some views unacceptable — which would be fine had so much of your reputation not been built on the importance of views you disagree with.
(Also, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with that movement, though I do disagree that participating in it should be *outlawed* — I am not a participant in that, etc. etc.)
This kind of hypocrisy, a bit of a reverse on that "I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" quote always misattributed to Voltaire, is also a running theme.
Supposedly, there's this GIANT campus speech crisis. However... Stephens and Weiss (especially) pick from the same handful of examples. Weiss has something of a campus speech rogues' gallery made up of her "intellectual dark web" profilees.
She referenced Dave Rubin in "We're All Fascists Now" and "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web" (though she had to delete the reference in the former because she cited a fake/parody antifa Twitter account).
Ben Shapiro was cited in the "Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web" piece, but also in a rather fawning profile months before that titled "A Political Conservative Goes to Berkeley."
Bret Weinstein, a professor who was protested by students at Evergreen State College, appears in the "Renegades of the..." piece, and is also the subject of "When the Left Turns on Its Own."
Christina Hoff Sommers shows up in "Renegades of the..." and "We’re All Fascists Now." Sommers is an interesting example, though, which I think speaks to an underlying unwillingness of Weiss to lay out her arguments in entirely honest terms.
Here’s a video of students protesting Sommers at Lewis & Clark Law School. There seem to be... roughly a dozen(?) students taking part in the demonstration (which sure, is disruptive, and by design)pic.twitter.com/lZ2gwPJQxr
On Twitter, Weiss compared the demonstration to the public executions carried out during the Spanish Inquisition. Unless there's a VERY graphic piece of context that followed the end of this video, that seems to be a tad hyperbolic.pic.twitter.com/l3mbTz8xtI
In any case, here's how Weiss describes Sommers in "We're All Fascists Now" - Feminist - Democrat - Has a Ph.D. in philosophy - Wicked sense of humor - Thinks men and women are different - Thinks sexism doesn't entirely explain the wage gap - Thinks schools favor girls, not boyspic.twitter.com/TmE3fP7PGz
Reading that, your takeaway might be "Yeah, seems like someone I probably won't agree with, but let's hear her out!" Here's how she described the students protesting CHS:pic.twitter.com/KjYMTlEt56
Here's the letter those students sent. Highlighted in yellow were things Weiss made zero mention of in her piece. And whether you agree or disagree with the protest (seems over the top in a lot of ways, imo), Weiss probably had an obligation to describe the reasons behind it.pic.twitter.com/PUNdXbDDzc
So in my article, I point out her tendency to soften the framing to make someone seem more sympathetic and others unreasonable. That's a normal impulse for most of us. Same goes for referring to Rubin as "a liberal commentator." That's misleading, no matter how he IDs himself.pic.twitter.com/lRh6FerM0E
There are stories worth telling here. An honest telling of CHS's views could have been the jumping off point for a piece about the perceived reaction/overreaction of students if she wanted. Instead, she turned students into caricatures.
So now let's combine both of those points — hypocrisy and favorites.
You'll notice that even among the writers who aren't named Weiss, Stephens, Brooks, or Douthat, that articles by columnists that address campus speech rarely (if ever) touch on conservatives shutting down speech.
Frank Bruni wrote a column wondering whether or not colleges should have some sort of affirmative action program for conservative professors to correct a supposed imbalancehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/28/opinion/sunday/colleges-flunk-trump-101.html …
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Andy Ngo