Mizzou students (Photo: YouTube screenshot/Complex)
College students protesting alleged racism and hostile learning environments have no idea what hate or education even mean, according to a Vanderbilt professor who is herself the target of a petition from outraged students.
Over the past week, Yale administrators apologized to students for not providing a safe enough environment and for not speaking out in condemnation of offensive Halloween costumes or a possible racial bias in a fraternity’s invitation list. University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe resigned, and the school’s chancellor accepted a demotion after admitting they hadn’t responded effectively in the wake of multiple racial allegations. The dean of Claremont-McKenna also resigned this week in the face of student protests.
Those demonstrations were rampant this week, as students coast to coast demanded free public tuition, student debt forgiveness and a $15 minimum wage on campus.
As administrators scramble, Dr. Carol Swain, professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University, says those same officials only have themselves to blame for the students’ behavior.
“This is not my words,” Swain told WND and Radio America. “Someone else said it first, but they’ve created those little monsters and they can’t control them. They make a serious mistake, I think, when they cave in.”
She added, “They need to stand and fight, and the students need to realize not only that ideas have consequences but actions have consequences. They are adults, and if they break the law, if they defame someone, if they slander someone or libel someone and it’s done with malicious intent, then they ought to be held accountable.”
In additional to the racial and financial issues raised on campuses this week, a fierce debate over free speech is raging as well. When MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts asked whether the University of Missouri protesters were looking to make the school a place that censored or prohibited unpopular speech, Missouri Student Association Vice President Brenda Smith-Lezama stunned many First Amendment advocates with her answer.
“I, personally, am tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and other students,” Smith-Lezama said. “I think it’s important for us to create that distinction and create a space where we can all learn from one another and start to create a place of healing, rather than a place where we are experiencing a lot of hate like we have in the past.”
Swain is appalled.
“That student has no idea what hate is,” she said. “It’s sad that they have been led to believe that that’s what an education is about, helping them feel better and helping them heal. And as far as black students going to white schools and complaining that they feel uncomfortable, there’s plenty of historically black schools.
“If you don’t want to be around white people then, I don’t know, move to Africa, and there are white people there. If you don’t want to be educated around them, then go to a black school,” said Swain, who is black.
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Carol Swain:
Swain is not some distant observer to this debate. She is currently at the center of a firestorm at Vanderbilt, where students filled out a petition asking for her to be punished for views she expressed on radical Islam and same-sex marriage.
In January, after the terrorist attack against the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, Swain spoke out about the threat such actions and groups pose to Western culture.
“Islam is not like other religions in the United States, that it poses an absolute danger to us and our children unless it is monitored better than it has been under the Obama administration,” wrote Swain at the time.
Her thoughts were met with howls of protest at the time.
“At that time, the students protested me. The university sent out a campus-wide email through the dean of students office, telling them that they could have counseling services if they were injured by my speech,” said Swain, who contends she suffered a “barrage of harassment” at the time.
She is currently on a long-scheduled sabbatical but had been planning to return to the classroom next semester. But her status appears to be up in the air after students succeeded in gathering 1,000 signatures and turning the petition in to the chancellor’s office.
On Nov. 11, Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos issued a statement that largely seemed to sympathize with the students.
“I firmly believe that every member of our community – regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, religion, color, national or ethnic origin, age or disability – has the same right to participate fully in the Vanderbilt community and have access to all of the benefits and opportunities that Vanderbilt offers,” wrote Zappos.
“I am saddened any time I hear that any member of our community – in this case, as highlighted in the petition, our LGBTQIA community and our Muslim students, faculty and staff – feel excluded from our Vanderbilt community. This university is home to all of us, and all of us are entitled to feel at home here,” he continued.
Later in the statement, Zappos appeared to defend Swain’s rights to speech and academic freedom but then took a sharp turn.
“Vanderbilt also has a deep and longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and academic freedom, which are the foundations of our university’s scholarly activities. Such freedoms necessarily allow for the expression of unpopular and offensive views. However, speech whose sole purpose or effect is to discriminate, stigmatize, retaliate, offend, foment hatred or violence, or cause harm has no place in this university,” Zappos wrote.
Swain is firing right back.
“Did you notice what he left out, which would be political views, conservative views?” she asked. “That statement is not very accurate because Vanderbilt is the university that kicked about half of its Christian groups off campus because they would not sign a statement that they would open their leadership positions to persons who didn’t share their beliefs.”
She said the more Vanderbilt scrutinizes her, the worse it looks.
“This university that has been so open has been very hypocritical about the way they’ve handled me and they way they’ve handled Christian students,” she said. “I was not happy with his statement because his statement implied that there was truth in that petition. The petition was full of lies.”
One allegation was that Swain revealed a student’s information. She said that’s blatantly false, although she did share a nasty Facebook post someone made about her. In addition, Swain said no student who actually took her classes is involved in the petition drive, and the one leading the effort has largely recanted.
“The student who was the face of the petition has sent me a long letter apologizing and saying there were other people involved,” she said. “He heard me on a local radio program and realized that there was another perspective. He had never thought of my perspective and what I had to say about the purpose of free speech and the university.”
Swain said that student has also changed the demands on the petition multiple times.
“That same student has gone from having the petition say they wanted me fired to saying they wanted me to have permanent suspension, then temporary suspension, mandatory sensitivity training and now they are not requiring that I have mandatory sensitivity training,” she explained. “Now they’re saying that all faculty have mandatory sensitivity training.”
Would she accept such punishment?
“First, I’m going to laugh and once I finish, once I get up off the floor, then I’ll decide what to do,” Swain said.
While she waits for her own case to be resolved, Swain has advice for college administrators around the country.
“You have to fight back. You can’t just cave all the time,” she said, while also giving a stern warning to students.
“We hear a lot about diversity on campuses,” Swain said. “Diversity of opinion should be important. Diversity of religion should be important. We shouldn’t want an environment where there are bullies that are taking away everyone else’s liberties. Somehow, they think that what they feel matters more than other people’s rights.”
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