Today’s University Epic Fail

Just when you think universities can’t sink any lower, they manage to find a way. This afternoon news was announced that UC Berkeley has cancelled Ann Coulter’s planned appearance next week, citing security concerns after last weekend’s riots along with the feeble excuse that the university couldn’t find a room to accommodate her, along with other made-up restrictions on her planned appearance. I had already heard from my own sources last week that the administration was bringing less than subtle pressure on the College Republicans to rescind their invitation to Coulter. Now they have simply capitulated to the threat of a mob—surely a new low in college administration spinelessness.

But Coulter says she’s somehow going to go ahead with her speech at Berkeley. Maybe she will appear unannounced in my class, like I did two weeks ago when I snuck Charles Murray on to campus? You might very well think so; I couldn’t possibly comment.

Meanwhile, even as the dust remains unsettled at the Claremont Colleges in the aftermath of CMC’s disgrace over Heather Mac Donald’s recent appearance and the demand of black students at Pomona College (joined by Wellesley) that conservative opinions be censored, around the corner at Harvey Mudd College a full-scale meltdown is under way because some faculty have apparently expressed dissent from the diversity orthodoxy. Harvey Mudd is considered a rival to CalTech and MIT for its science and engineering chops, but even it isn’t immune to the furies of the infantile and nihilist left.

Inside Higher Ed has the story:

Monday and Tuesday this week, the California college will not hold classes, the cancellation following a student sit-in last week at the campus, where minority students issued demands to administration — among them to funnel more money into counseling services, specifically geared toward students of color, and to prioritize minority student groups with funding and other perks.

Students didn’t ask for a cancellation, but rather the college did so to allow students and faculty members time either to consider some of the persisting issues on campus or to recuperate after a tense few weeks, Maria Klawe, the college’s president, said in a phone interview. . .

Last month a controversial report regarding student workload and faculty opinion of students leaked to the student newspaper, The Student Life. A committee examining the college’s classroom environment commissioned a study from the Center of Inquiry at Wabash College in Indiana. Two representatives from the center visited campus and conducted focus groups with students and faculty members. . .

Some faculty members told the interviewers that students were not prepared for their classes, and that they’d observed deterioration in the quality of students accepted to Harvey Mudd over the years. They described students as wed to their phones and not committed to the sciences. [Emphasis added.]

Don’t those science faculty members know you’re not allowed to say this?

Now get a load of the student demands:

Later that week, students organized a march around campus and presented administrators with their demands. They want five new counselors for the coming academic year, with three of them being people of color, “to reflect the increasing need of health and wellness initiatives at Mudd to reflect and serve its diversifying student body,” the students wrote on a website detailing their requests.

Funding for mental health services should be boosted every year by 25 percent, they wrote, until the 2021-22 academic year. They called for a release of the student affairs office’s budget, and additional money — $3,000 each — for six student groups that represent minority interests on campus.

The administration also should carve out dedicated spaces in the college’s new academic building for each of these six groups, they wrote. When administrators didn’t respond to the demands, Klawe said, the students staged the sit-in April 12.

This will only add a tiny amount to the cost of attending Harvey Mudd, which, according to its website, is a mere. . . $74,428. (Yes, that’s just for one year.)

P.S. Naturally, Harvey Mudd’s president is a typical spineless invertibrate, as this passage makes clear:

Like with many institutions nationwide, the results of the presidential election upset the campus population, according to Klawe, and so, in a largely positive step, conversations on campus have become more “radicalized” and have centered more than ever on social justice reforms.

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