Political commentator Heather Mac Donald to speak on campus
November 8, 2019
On Thursday, Nov. 14, author and political commentator Heather Mac Donald will speak at the University as part of the “Campus Politics and the Liberal Arts” speaker series. The event is sponsored by the Bucknell Program for American Leadership and Citizenship (BPALC).
Mac Donald currently serves as the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She is also a New York Times bestselling author and has written articles for a number of other publications. Her most recent book, “The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine our Culture,” was published in 2018. According to the Manhattan Institute, the book “argues that ideas first spread within higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture.”
Professor of Sociology Alexander Riley, a faculty affiliate of BPALC, said that the organization decided to bring in Mac Donald in part because of her broad reach to students and the community. “We have a responsibility not only to be a resource to our students, obviously, but we want also to play a role in the community and have events that will be useful and meaningful and productive for people outside of Bucknell as well,” Riley said. “We’re looking forward to having a good-sized crowd and have people from both on and off campus and all over the place in terms of their politics and what they think about what Heather Mac Donald has to say.”
While students and faculty have shown mixed reactions to Mac Donald’s upcoming visit, some have demonstrated support for her regardless of whether they agree with her arguments. They note that Mac Donald is not the first controversial speaker to address students so far this semester. For instance, the University’s Humanities Center brought in Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” to campus to speak in September.
“As a firm supporter of viewpoint diversity, I think it is essential that Bucknell brings in voices from both sides of the spectrum to foster debate. You cannot have a debate with only one view being represented on campus. Earlier in the semester when the Antifa speaker came, there was no pushback like this and the Antifa speaker is directly advocating for violence, which is worse,” Mickey Arce ’20 said. “I was uncomfortable with the Antifa speaker coming, but I did not engage in resistance to suppress his voice. I think that student reactions to Mac Donald are unfair, and it is a part of this larger trend to diminish and attack conservativism.”
On the other hand, some members of the University community have taken issue with Mac Donald’s visit, citing her remarks on rape culture and racial diversity as reasons for their opposition. For example, in the aftermath of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Mac Donald wrote that “According to the #BelieveSurvivors platform, the reason why most researcher-classified rape victims don’t report their rapes is because the reporting process is too anti-female and re-traumatizing. In fact, most researcher-classified rape victims don’t report because they don’t think what happened to them was serious enough to report — another conclusion inconceivable in the case of actual rape.” On race, some point to her recent comments about Georgetown University’s handling of diversity, such as that “the only barriers to student success are the result of Georgetown’s own diversity policies” as problematic.
Those opposing Mac Donald’s talk have demonstrated a variety of perspectives on the matter. “I have no issue inviting a right-wing speaker to this campus. I do have an issue inviting a speaker whose dangerous rhetoric goes against the kind of campus Bucknell allegedly seeks to shape — namely, one that is safe and inclusive to students of all identities and experiences. And I know, as a victim-survivor of sexual assault, I refuse to remain silent knowing members of my own community invited a speaker to this campus who rejects the existence of rape culture — who rejects the validity of my story and the story of so many others,” Lauren Ziolkowski ’20 said.
“It’s odd for the administration to pay with one hand for sexual assault training and provide counseling services and advocates for victims and then with the other hand pay for someone to come say sexual assault isn’t a problem on campus,” Professor of English Michael Drexler said.
Drexler’s response reflects the mixed reactions that some have shown to the funding itself for Mac Donald’s appearance. Associate Professor of Political Science Chris Ellis, one of the BPALC’s faculty affiliates, notes that the funding for Mac Donald’s visit and other events in the “Campus Politics and the Liberal Arts” speaker series “comes from the President’s Fund, which as I understand it is a pot of funds allocated or donated directly to the President’s Office, to be used at the discretion of the President.” According to Ellis, this philanthropic fund goes to a wide variety of causes, from student playoff basketball tickets to financial support for faculty research.
Some argue that the Office of the President should not be playing its current role in helping to fund the event. “I don’t see how her presence here makes campus better,” Drexler said. “But if there are people who wish to give her a platform, let them take responsibility for paying for it themselves. And don’t expect the campus not to react negatively.”
Bess Murad ’21 echoed these sentiments. “I believe deeply in free speech on college campuses as well as the value of viewpoint diversity, but I think the viewpoint that Heather Mac Donald is presenting is an unacceptable view considering the University’s funding of her visit. The University’s sponsorship of Heather Mac Donald is the sponsorship of beliefs that go against core values of our University and beliefs that can endanger the ability for many women and minorities to feel safe on this campus,” she said.
Supporters of Mac Donald’s talk argue that those in opposition should attend the event, both to affirm their own opinions and challenge those held by Mac Donald. “I think there’s more to be said about the students that come to the event,” Isabella Carrega ’22, one of the BPALC’s student associates, said. “Even if her opinion or her response or viewpoint is still not congruent with that of your own, you’re at least hearing the opinion firsthand and finding ways to go about bettering your own argument because you’re listening to someone [who disagrees with you].”
“If I could wave a magic wand tomorrow and have this campus be changed in one fundamental way, it’d be in that sense. It’d be to say that everyone, from faculty all the way down to students and everybody else on campus would recognize that we’ve all got a responsibility to be informed and to be measured and to be mutually respectful and civil when we have disagreements rather than to have immediate snap judgments and opinions about things that we don’t know anything about,” Riley said.
“It is certainly not wrong, problematic, or outside the mission of the university that Heather Mac Donald will be giving a talk next week,” John Angileri ’20 said. “Though I don’t agree with her, I will be going to the talk. I feel that critical analysis and conversation is more beneficial than shouting down, shunning, or ignoring in just about every scenario.”
Despite calls for civility and for listening to Mac Donald’s perspective regardless of one’s opinions, some students do not want to engage with the event. “Heather Mac Donald is an incredibly divisive provocateur. Her sensationalized articles threaten marginalized groups by turning issues of equality and equity into a zero-sum game in which there are only winners and losers,” Otis Skitch ’22 said. “This rhetoric turns the struggle for equality into a tribalistic fight rather than a liberation where we all benefit.”
Arce suggests that a lack of intellectual diversity at the University undermines conservative viewpoints. “Liberal students on this campus should learn more about conservatives and their worldview before diminishing and suppressing it,” Arce said.
Murad, on the other hand, said, “I will not be in attendance but rather attending the alternate event hosted by Speak UP in order to stand with victims of sexual assault on this campus rather than empowering somebody who is victim-blaming them.” This event, “Scholars Speak Up,” is being held at the same time as Mac Donald’s talk to provide students with an alternative event.
Mac Donald’s talk will take place on Thursday, Nov. 14 in Bucknell Hall at 7 p.m. The Bucknellian will provide further coverage of this event in the Nov. 22 issue.
Kathryn Nicolai and Sarah Baldwin also contributed to this report.
Jaclyn Romano • Nov 22, 2019 at 12:58 am
After watching Heather Mac Donald’s talk I was slightly disappointed due to her very far right ideals and commentary on sexual assault and racism on college campus. I have been a student of Professor Riley for two years and still some of the comments that students are leaving are just as bad as what Heather Mac Donald preaches. Professor Riley may have some very conservative views but his views have helped me to understand the other side of the argument( I myself, am Liberal) and through many debates and discussions with Professor Riley one thing became apparent: A persons views don’t define a person. Professor Riley is hard headed to a fault, but loves to hear the other side of an argument and understand why another person thinks the way he/she/they do. He has taught me to never fight without concrete evidence and has overall made me a much better student at Bucknell. You may not agree with everything he says, I know I don’t but one thing you have to understand is that he is still a person, and once you sit down and get to know him, or take one of his classes and pick his brain you’ll understand that under the hard headedness there is kindness, empathy, and an overall love for his students and their opinions. @Alexanderriley
Alexander Riley • Nov 18, 2019 at 9:47 pm
Heather Mac Donald’s Bucknell talk can be viewed here:
https://mediaspace.bucknell.edu/media/Heather+Mac+Donald+11+14+2019/1_20osz4db
Fletcher Jones • Nov 17, 2019 at 3:48 pm
The he said/she said minutiae in some of the article makes it easy for one to miss the forest for the trees. There is one side here advocating for academic and intellectual freedom and for everyone to be treated equally while the other advocates for speech codes, violent protests and shouting down people with whom one disagrees. Liberty dies when debate is stopped or when an educator actually believes that “hate speech” is anything more than an attempt to shut down dialogue with which one disagrees. With each encroachment freedom withers until it is lost completely.
Anyone who believes in minority rights and the value of the individual – the smallest minority that exists – should oppose those who want to enforce their view of the world by stifling debate. Those who support using fascist techniques of speech codes, violence, and intimidation while cloaking themselves in the rubric of being “anti fascist” need to purchase a mirror.
The debate here between shouting people down versus allowing discussion has gone on for millennia and it is quite simply phrased as that between liberty and authoritarianism. Whether that authoritarianism takes the form of socialism, fascism, communism or some other totalitarian form is irrelevant because the goal is to enforce doublethink and stifle debate. Kind of like the person above who wants to foster diverse opinions by stopping someone from presenting an opinion. Those who want power to dominate win when debate is ended and when one no longer has the right to the products of one’s own life.
What matters is the diversity of ideas, experiences and ones character, not the false diversity of eye color, hair color, gender or skin color. That is tribalism at its worse and demagogues through the ages have used it to divide, conquer and then rule.
By the way, the ageism inherent in the “ok boomer” and “shhhh” responses above is disgusting and the posters should be ashamed of themselves. Of course, that would require self-awareness and the ability to read and comprehend the responses above, so perhaps “ok boomer” is the best we can expect.
Alexander Riley • Nov 14, 2019 at 2:11 pm
Katelyn,
Which of the ‘views’ I’ve expressed here do you find ‘pathetic’ and ‘very telling’? Can you be more specific? And is it ‘pathetic’ and ‘very telling’ in your view for me to sincerely reach out to John (and the offer extends to any other willing student) to offer to help him understand things he clearly does not at present very well understand? I think of that as perfectly consistent with my calling as an educator.
And btw, it’s not as though I’m the only faculty member ever to participate in the comments section of the Bucknellian. Not even the first one to do it on this particular news story. Are you, for example, calling the intervention of our Bucknell colleague who “use[d] the comment section of the student newspaper as an outlet for [his] views” here ‘pathetic’ too? https://bucknellian.net/94932/opinion/no-we-dont-have-to-listen-to-heather-mac-donalds-perspective/. If not, why not? How is that not an example of the same thing you’re condemning here?
I think more dialogue is better than less dialogue. Do you disagree with that?
Katelyn Allers • Nov 13, 2019 at 2:27 pm
@Alexander Riley It’s pathetic (and very telling) that you choose to use the comment section of the student newspaper as an outlet for your views.
Alli Meehan • Nov 12, 2019 at 3:02 pm
@Alexander Riley
shhhhhhhhhhhh.
Alexander Riley • Nov 10, 2019 at 1:45 am
John,
You and the other Bucknellian opinion writers, along with the faculty critics of Mac Donald here at Bucknell, have still got all your work ahead of you to make a convincing case that Mac Donald or anyone else BPALC has invited to campus can in any reasonable way be classified as engaged in “reactionary politics of the far right.”
When you and others do what you just did here, you are playing Mark Bray’s game. This involves calling people you disagree with “fascists” or “white supremacists” or “reactionaries of the far right,” in the total absence of any demonstration that you even know what they think, and relying on moral opprobrium to justify the fact that you can’t be bothered to do the work of examining and understanding the content of the thought of the person you want to vilify.
I’m guessing you’ve learned this from a few of my faculty colleagues, as they too play this same game with some frequency when they are faced with some idea they don’t like. If you look around on the social media of some of your likely faculty friends, you will find them calling me these same names, and with the same lack of argument and demonstration you’re engaging in here.
There is almost no reason to believe that such people are interested in or capable of civil debate, as they have demonstrated over and over again–and they’re doing it again now over the Mac Donald visit–that they are far more interested in Mark Bray’s game than in a hard, real effort to mutually investigate and explore contentious issues with those with whom they disagree.
It’s sad and disappointing to see how much of that view you’ve apparently accepted. Bucknell has not served you well if we’ve taught you that this is an intellectually productive and responsible way to behave in the world, and it won’t at all equip you well for dealing with the many, many millions of people in the country who agree with much of what Heather Mac Donald or Laura Kipnis or Victor Davis Hanson or Allen Guelzo express in their work.
Just going immediately to the epithets in responding to them can work well in some corners of the university, for the reasons I’ve already given regarding the hegemony of woke leftism.
But the world outside Bucknell is rather something else.
The fact that you seem to believe it a priori true that e.g., socialism is “grounded in reality to a much higher degree” than the thought of speakers we have brought here says everything about the range of thought to which you’ve been exposed at Bucknell. What about e.g., the critics of the Bolshevik revolution BPALC brought here two years ago? http://bpalc.blogs.bucknell.edu/2017/12/13/1917-2017-symposium-on-the-legacies-of-communism/ Did you attend any of the talks in that symposium? Or were you as confident then, as you are with Heather Mac Donald, that reading what folks like that write and listening carefully to what they say could teach you nothing?
I’m a bit perplexed as to how I’m supposed to think you sincere in eagerly anticipating what a great educational opportunity it would be for you to be treated to a ‘debate’ between me and one of the people who has helped you come to the conclusion that Heather Mac Donald is a “reactionary of the far right,” when you can’t be bothered to take advantage of the much greater educational opportunities I gave you to read Mac Donald collectively with a group of others and to discuss it with me one-on-one. If we’ve taught you here that education is about passively watching other people ‘debate’ instead of taking responsibility for your own learning, wrestling honestly and openly with ideas, especially those one finds difficult or contrary, in real intellectual and moral effort, then, again, we have failed you.
Another point on sincerity: what to make of the fact that as you continue to talk about how interested you are in organizing a ‘civil debate’ in this corner of the internet, in another (i.e., on your Twitter account, to which one of your fellow students just alerted me) you’re retweeting things that scoff at the very idea of civility, while also accusing me of “peddl[ing] myths.” See https://twitter.com/TheTattooedProf/status/1188966257493708800 and https://twitter.com/johndavidian/status/1192801765642702850.
So, I’m peddling myths. OK. And what reason do you have to believe that what you’ve said here (socialism is more grounded in reality than conservatism; Heather Mac Donald is a “reactionary of the far right”) is more substantial than myth?
Someone who believes the sentiment you retweeted about civility is almost certainly not someone who fully understands and values ‘civil debate.’ It’s that simple. I know as a matter of fact, because I’ve heard them say it, that some of those who likely are most responsible for shaping your worldview here at Bucknell believe that sentiment, and it’s what makes the idea of a ‘civil debate’ with them a non-possibility. They reject the very idea. I’ve had them say it to me explicitly, in language much like what you retweeted. Instead of civil debate, they call those they disagree with names, sometimes vulgar names. I’ve seen it on the faculty listserv. And they have no replacement for the virtue of civil and mutually respectful debate that they despise and want to dismantle. They simply demand that other people agree with them, on pain of being called a ‘fascist,’ or a ‘racist,’ or a ‘white supremacist,’ or a ‘reactionary,’ or whatever strikes their fancy at the moment.
The proof of how interested BPALC is in real civil dialogue between those with very different views is in the fact that arguably the single most pure example of this phenomenon at Bucknell in recent memory was at an event we organized. This was the visit of Robert George and Cornel West two years ago. Were you there, John? If not, you can still see the video here, which includes my introduction of Cornel West: https://on-demand.wvia.org/video/what-is-the-point-of-a-liberal-arts-education-9mknfg/
Note well how attentive both George and West are to civility, to courtesy, to mutual respect and even admiration, and to searching for common ground, while still substantively disagreeing. This is how it is done. It is however impossible to do this if one side in the discussion insists on doing the kind of thing the Bucknellian opinion writers and the woke faculty at Bucknell have been doing with respect to BPALC. Just impossible.
If however you think you know someone among the left Bucknell faculty who can look at the George-West discussion and honestly say they admire that and they want to model it in their own intellectual life, and they can sincerely say that they admire and respect Robert George as much as it is clear I admire and respect Cornel West from the introduction I gave him here two years ago, have them write me directly and we’ll see what happens. I’ll try to be hopeful.
Let me close with one final effort, John, to get you to take responsibility for your own education in viewpoint diversity. (A first step will be to stop putting scare quotes around it and to recognize the value of sincerely endeavoring to see and understand really different perspectives—if you can’t get there, further progress is unlikely).
You’ve clearly had sufficient exposure to woke leftism over your time here, to judge by the catchphrases and descriptives you use (“neoliberal” this, “reactionary” that, “far right” thus and such). Why don’t you consider taking a course with *me* in your last semester here, so you can get some exposure to another perspective, one which you have made it patently clear you don’t understand at all, and which you have no chance of learning anything substantive about in an hour long ‘debate’ in which one side is just calling the other a ‘racist’ repeatedly? You might have a real chance to learn something about it if you sit down with me, along with other students–or in an independent reading course, I’m game for that too–and spend a semester thinking hard.
You’ll have to do some real work, I grant. It won’t be as easy as trying to set up some bogus ‘debate,’ but it offers much more possibility for actually learning something valuable. And the valuable thing is not necessarily the content of what I have to tell you. It’s the ability to seriously and respectfully and sincerely open yourself up to a different worldview, and to understand that epithets (‘racist,’ ‘white supremacist,’ ‘reactionary,’ ‘peddler of myths’) are, in contemporary universities at least, too often a way to avoid understanding and to refuse to engage with the full humanity of people.
You know my email address if you want to follow up on this. I hope I’ll see you next week in Bucknell Hall for Heather Mac Donald’s visit.
Alexander Boyer • Nov 9, 2019 at 11:28 pm
We won’t discuss thinly veiled racism no matter how nicely it presents itself. Doctorates must be pretty easy to get these days if you can copy the sentiment of a 20th century phrenologist and still get a degree.
John Davidian • Nov 9, 2019 at 10:27 pm
Professor Riley,
Leftist thought *does* continually need to justify its presence within neoliberal institutions of power. The reason that liberal and even centrist thinking often don’t (and socialism etc. shouldn’t), is that all are grounded in reality to a much higher degree than are reactionary politics of the far right.
This exchange is why I, as a student, want to see a debate between you and a colleague; not on Mac Donald, but on the issues themselves. What an educational opportunity that would be, as well as an ode to your lofty ideals of “free speech” and “viewpoint diversity.” Again, let me know. I’m happy to help set it up. I could even see if one of my so-called “faculty friends” would be interested.
Uchechukwu • Nov 9, 2019 at 7:55 pm
@Alexander Riley
Ok boomer.
John Angileri • Nov 9, 2019 at 4:41 pm
An excellent article!
John Angileri • Nov 9, 2019 at 4:35 pm
Heather Mac Donald’s views are wrong, and may even impede the pursuit of racial and gender equity in our society. However, those who say her talk should be canceled do more harm than that. They chip away at the engine of this pursuit: the spirit of freedom of expression that empowered civil rights and feminist advocates to speak out in the face of power aligned against them. Mac Donald not speaking on campus may help your efforts in the short-run. But in the long-run, when censorship has become the mode, what guarantee is there that the power to suffocate political sentiment will always be in good hands?
Alexander Riley • Nov 9, 2019 at 2:39 pm
John,
I contacted you after you wrote your opinion piece on Mac Donald–which gave every indication that you had not understood even some basic elements of what she argues (e.g., she does not, as you claimed in your piece, deny racial disparities)–to invite you to the reading group on her work that met last week and also to invite you to come talk with me about the arguments she makes and how they sit with respect to scholarly knowledge. This would have given you an opportunity to learn more about what she actually argues and its basis in evidence.
You turned down both offers.
The reading group has already happened, alas, but the offer to talk more about this during my office hours remains open.
The idea that Heather Mac Donald’s visit and the perspective from which she argues need to be framed by an external ‘debate’ as to whether or not those are legitimate ideas to express on a campus is deeply flawed by the very framework I just described in my comment above.
That premise is already mired in the partisan skew of the contemporary academy. It is not a coincidence that the left on campus only wants to have such debates about speakers on the right, but they feel there is no need to debate the contribution made to university life by speakers like e.g., Mark Bray, the advocate of violence the Humanities Center had here in September, or to the myriad other speakers on the far left who parade in and out of Bucknell virtually daily, talking about e.g., the ‘toxicity of whiteness’ and ‘structural racism’ as the obvious and only cause of all racial disparities and the deeply corrupt nature of the entire American project and the like.
The right, that is, is always to be forced to justify its existence, while the left deftly avoids ever having to do so, and it is assumed to be the starting point of all inquiry. It is the sea in which we swim in the academy. In this sense, academia is accurately described by Steven Pinker as ‘the Left Pole.’ At the North Pole, everything else is to the south. In academia, everything out of step with the narrow orthodoxy of the contemporary woke left is to the right and requires justification for its mere presentation in the Left Pole. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYAXkkm4g7A.
When you and others on your side of this discussion show some interest in organizing debates on whether or not Mark Bray and all the other speakers on the far left contribute anything useful to university culture, I’ll perhaps see the idea of debating Mac Donald’s utility in a different light than I see it at present.
As it is, such a thing would be little more than an acknowledgement that her critics at Bucknell–almost all of whom–including you–have done little more than call her names (‘racist,’ ‘lazy,’ ‘anti-intellectual’)–are correct in painting her as beyond the pale. She is not.
But civil debate is certainly possible.
Indeed, it is just what is offered at every single BPALC event that we’ve held and every single one that is scheduled for the future. I noted this over and over to you in our exchange, and it’s rather odd that you seem not to have heard it despite the repetition.
If you or some of your faculty friends would like to pose hard questions to her, there will be a Q & A after her talk next week. You all have an open invitation to come and join the debate. Some Bucknell students and faculty members have availed themselves of this opportunity and they have found it quite beneficial.
I would again encourage you and anyone else who disagrees with Mac Donald’s book to take full advantage of the resources provided to you by life at the university.
John Davidian • Nov 8, 2019 at 7:44 pm
Professor Riley, thanks for adding more of your thoughts here. To my colleagues in the Bucknell community, I’d just like to add that I respectfully asked Professor Riley if he’d like to engage in a civil debate with one or more of his faculty colleagues on these issues of free speech, rape culture, structural racism, etc., but he demurred, saying that the idea has “next to no utility.” I’m very curious about what, if anything, he is hesitant about debating publicly, away from Bmail, and away from the comment section of the Bucknellian. If anyone else is interested in joining me in pushing for such a debate, please email me. I’d be happy to help coordinate.
Alexander Boyer • Nov 8, 2019 at 6:58 pm
ok boomer
Alexander Riley • Nov 8, 2019 at 5:25 pm
Holly, we’ll need a lot of money to fund all of that! 😉
This is of course the subtext of this entire conversation that none of the critics of Heather Mac Donald want to acknowledge. (Very few of those critics I’ve heard and read in the Bucknellian
seem to have read more than a line or two of her work–as a service to them, if they can’t be bothered to read her, they might want at least to hear her summarize the recent book here on “Uncommon Knowledge”: https://youtu.be/ffIpRC9cSUc?t=10 ).
Your point is also a succinct demolition of Griffin Perrault’s opinion piece in today’s Bucknellian. If some left-leaning students and faculty are concerned about intellectual equal time and think they need ‘kindness rocks’ sessions and alternative viewpoint lectures every time a speaker on the right comes to campus, what do they think about providing similar alternatives for right-leaning students for e.g., every single Humanities Center event, every single Griot event, every single CSREG event, every single speaker brought in by most departments in the social sciences and the humanities, and a very large percentage of the courses offered in many departments in the humanities and the social sciences?
The answer is that they largely do not think about it at all because the ideological hegemony of the left in contemporary universities, including at Bucknell, is so practically complete that what is objectively a huge partisan skew in virtually everything we do is seen by them as just the normal mode of operation.
Those of us who study this question know that the exaggerated reaction that emerges whenever a speaker who questions aspects of woke hegemony appears on campus is an indication of how jealous they are of their near-total control of what happens on most campuses, and how much their political worldview has morphed into a kind of quasi-religion. See e.g., https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/08/woke-totemism. In the woke faith, it is morally intolerable that anyone should be permitted ever to publicly challenge any of their most sacred cows, and when the impure do so they are responded to as though they were literally physically assaulting people or worse.
Of course, no one in BPALC and no one invited by BPALC is physically assaulting anyone or calling for any physical assaults, and all of us universally reject the absurd idea that physical assault can be included in the range of legitimate responses to arguments.
There is, however, one speaker in recent memory at Bucknell who has advocated physically attacking people with ideas he doesn’t like. This is Mark Bray, who was brought here in September by the Humanities Center. See e.g., https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/09/bucknell-university-to-host-antifa-leader-who-promotes-political-violence/ and https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=13813.
Some of the same faculty who are most charged up by the ‘threat’ to ‘Bucknell values’ that Heather Mac Donald supposedly represents were involved in the decision-making that led to bringing to campus a man who thinks it’s okay to violently attack people over political debates. Indeed, in his Antifa book, which he discussed while at Bucknell, Bray says straightforwardly that the goal of Antifa is to make any American who votes for a candidate Antifa dislikes (and we know who that is, right?) a potential target for violence.
So, a guy who says ‘it’s fine to punch people you disagree with politically,’ he’s apparently perfectly compatible with Bucknell values, according to our woke campus contingent. But not someone who points out all the many ways that the race/gender/sexuality-centric dogmas dominant in much of modern academia have weakened institutions of higher education and harmed the very people those dogmas claim to champion. That endangers our ability to feel safe on campus. Words and arguments endanger your safety, but not physical threats of violence (which, in Antifa’s case, have very frequently been backed up by actual acts of violence).
If those are Bucknell values, we’re all of us in trouble.
Michael Drexler says he personally doesn’t see any utility in Mac Donald’s talk. Fine. Others on the faculty and staff and many students clearly do, and they have the same right to make appeals through the accepted processes here for funding activities that he or anyone else does. The Antifa professor Mark Bray’s visit to campus, as well as myriad other far left events and speakers, received funds through the same sources that BPALC has drawn on over the past three years. There’s nothing extraordinary or confusing or scandalous about this. There are many interests and many perspectives in a university.
What’s the bottom line here? Bucknell faces a big question going forward, nicely capsulized in a video presentation by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt: are we going to model Strengthen U. or Coddle U.? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj5QmZPzvlQ&t=5s
The people who think just listening to Heather Mac Donald (and attendance at her talk, I remind you, is voluntary) will be ‘traumatizing’ for them think students are so fragile that they can’t handle the kind of debates that are an everyday part of reality outside Bucknell. I think the idea that grown people cannot hear arguments contrary to their own without collapsing in a faint and requiring emotional therapy is not an idea to be taken seriously, and I think people in educational institutions who foist such non-serious ideas on students are doing those students no service.
I also think a university based on such a notion of students and of intellectual debate is not a university worth having.
In my experience, Bucknell students are perfectly capable of engaging in this essential aspect of living in a world in which not everyone has the same viewpoint on serious issues and of civilly debating with those with whom they disagree, and I’m going to keep working toward a Bucknell that sees its mission as contributing to preparing students for that world.
Holly • Nov 8, 2019 at 11:01 am
Since they are now offering an event for liberal students that don’t want to attend Heather’s talk, I want to know if they will now be offering a conservative speaker at the same time for every liberal speaker that comes. If not, this is just another example of how this University shoots down any possible chance of actual viewpoint diversity on campus.