If there is anything Black Lives Matter activists might enjoy even more than a downtown rally, it’s a campus rally. The social media-driven network of incendiary racial politicians is now a presence at colleges and universities across the U.S., conducting “anti-racist” campaigns against chosen targets. Case in point: the University of Kansas. Since November, black students at Kansas, inspired by BLM, have intimidated people they deem racist, aware that the feckless administration will do next to nothing to discourage them. The catalyst for all this was a claim by a black co-ed that several white males assaulted her at an off-campus Halloween party and that local police brushed off her complaint. Evidence suggests this was a hoax. The larger issue is academic freedom – and not just at KU.
The higher education gambit by Black Lives Matter, also known by the Twitter hashtag “#BlackLivesMatter,” requires context. For the group’s influence in the academic sphere would be virtually negligible were it not for acquiescence, and even support, by campus authorities. The events of the current academic year seem to have come out of the blue. Yet they are the end result (so far) of nearly 50 years of hard-Left proselytizing and aggression. And they may be an omen of things to come. Yes, campus vandalism and violence during the late-1960s and early-1970s were far worse. But vandalism and violence aren’t the only ways to make a revolution. For the most part, today’s radical students don’t have to resort to such tactics so long as they can exact concessions from campus administrators. Indeed, many administrators themselves are drawn from the ranks of radicalism. Why knock down doors that already are open? It is human nature to avoid unnecessary confrontation.
The tactics may have changed, but the overall mission remains intact. The philosophical principle of “the perfect is the enemy of the good” comes to mind. When people fixate on an ideal set of social outcomes, and believe those outcomes to be within one’s grasp, they tend to become highly intolerant of anyone representing an obstacle to the potential glorious future. This trait often characterizes religious as well as ideological ones. Perfection appears most achievable when the enemy appears most vulnerable to overthrow; that’s pretty much why people start revolutions in the first place. Our country is not in a revolutionary situation. But radicals, who habitually pride themselves in getting to the “root” of a problem, are doing everything to create such a situation. Their goal: complete equality of economic and social condition, a world in which humanity – at least in the West – is scrubbed clean of every vestige of racism, sexism and homophobia. Legislation, bureaucracy and courts, coupled with organized attitudinal retraining, can bring about this revolution. Violence won’t be necessary if the enemy succumbs out of fear.
“Working within the system,” however, has its limits. It’s hard to affect change without a defining grievance capable of attracting widespread public support. Whether the grievance might not be legitimate is less important than the fact that its appearance can be a tool for winning support and morally disarming opponents. To do this, activists must project an image of inevitability, of an unstoppable moral force on behalf of the oppressed of the earth. And they also must invent or at least distort facts. Chants, placards, songs, speeches, marches and, on occasion, threats are useful tools in creating a bandwagon effect.
Black activism, unlike that of whites, is driven by identity politics. Whereas the white radicalism of yesteryear sprung from opposition to the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, blacks have focused on collective self-interest. They have more to gain. And the racial spoils system known as affirmative action guarantees them a presence on campus that can be used as a vehicle to attain power. A reported egregious wrongdoing by a white or group of whites against a black all too often becomes exploited as part of a larger pattern of injustice. Blacks use the rhetoric of civil rights to gain the moral upper hand in the aftermath of such “incidents.” Those who oppose them, even inadvertently, may find their career prospects severely diminished. A growing phalanx of well-paid campus bureaucrats – people whom authors Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate back in the late Nineties called “the shadow university” – stand ready to limit academic freedom for the sake of Promoting Diversity. The shadow has continued to grow. Call it “soft” totalitarianism, but it is totalitarianism all the same. And it has made most whites on campus skittish about what they say and write in public, as a single faux pas may be cause for punishment. Waging character assassination campaigns against known “racists” is not that hard in the age of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Externally- and internally-imposed censorship goes hand in hand. Non-ideological whites, most of all, clam up. That way, anti-white activists have free reign.
For radicals, the college campus is a crucial staging ground for affecting a regime change. College students generally are young, naïve and receptive to simple rhetorical appeals to “justice” and “fairness.” Even those who don’t join aren’t likely to provide opposition. Financially dependent and career-oriented, the last thing any student wants is to be suspended, expelled or denied scholarship aid on account of a “racist” gesture. Campus officials, especially those with job titles containing the words “diversity” and “inclusion,” exercise tremendous leverage in such a climate. In the spirit of Parkinson’s Law, they justify their jobs by expanding the definition of unacceptable and hence punishable behavior. Offenses nowadays include benign expressions that might be taken badly by blacks, Hispanics, women and gays. Even if the details of a reported offense don’t support the claims of the accuser, campus thought police may take action anyway. Black students, knowing this, act with impunity. From their standpoint, why not invent a “hate crime” out of thin air? Why not express deep “hurt” over an innocent comment by a white professor or student? They have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Outside a campus environment, America has seen plenty of unverifiable allegations (by blacks) of “hate crimes.” Recent examples include: eyewitness claims that a large black assailant, Michael Brown, said “Hands up, don’t shoot” to an arresting officer in Ferguson, Mo. in August 2014 just prior to being fatally shot; eyewitness claims that a violent black suspect, Jamar Clark, last November had been shot by Minneapolis police while handcuffed; and an allegation last month that a “Trump supporter” scrawled Nazi-style graffiti on the walls of a black cultural center in Seattle, an accusation that dissipated when the arrestee turned out to be a former volunteer at the center, an East African black male, who had been fired for theft. Tawana Brawley and Crystal Gail Mangum are in good company.
Black-instigated campus hoaxes also are becoming common. Typically, they take the form of unsubstantiated claims, wild exaggerations, and false projections of motive. In each case, blacks rally around an accuser without questioning the veracity of the claim, declaring themselves to be “offended” and then demand an investigation that morphs into a witch hunt for guilty whites. These campaigns have nothing to do with civil rights. They are power grabs cloaked in the language of moral righteousness. And their end game is the resignation of white campus officials who “allowed” the offense to occur. Examples during the current academic year include:
Ithaca College. Located in Ithaca, N.Y., in the shadow of Cornell University, Ithaca College has been in the headlines lately, and not in ways its officials covet. Black students last fall were up in arms over a party invitation sent by a fraternity that contained a reference to “crooks,” a word which apparently fostered negative stereotypes. Moreover, they were incensed that two white male participants at an alumni panel discussion did not respond favorably to a young black female participant who had expressed, in her words, a “savage hunger” for success. Ithaca College President Tom Rochon apologized for the whites’ comments and issued a call for unity. “In general, the college cannot prevent the use of hurtful language of campus,” he stated. “Such language, intentional or unintentional, exists in the world and will seep into our community. We can’t promise that the college will never host a speaker who could say something racist, homophobic, misogynistic, or other otherwise disrespectful. Even so, we reaffirm our commitment to making our campus an inclusive and respectful community.” The groveling wasn’t enough to save his job; this January, Rochon announced he would step down in July 2017.
University of Missouri. Last September, the black student body president and supporters on the main campus in Columbia, Mo. lodged a complaint over a “slur” allegedly shouted by a passing motorist at a black individual. The storyline was vague; the black might not even have been a student. Not long after, a tiny swastika was discovered on the wall of a dorm bathroom, though without reference to blacks. Egged on by Black Lives Matter activists, black students denounced these incidents as symbolic of “systematic oppression.” One black student, Jonathan Butler, staged a hunger strike. Other black students demarcated a portion of the campus as off-limits to whites. Most significantly, the Missouri football team, with about 30 black players, announced it would boycott the remaining games of the 2015 season as long as University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe remained in office. To make its point, the team forfeited its next game to Brigham Young. President Wolfe, now feeling heat from the university’s Board of Curators, resigned in November. His interim replacement: former University of Missouri Deputy Chancellor Michael Middleton, a black, who had begun his career as a civil rights lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department. Also announcing his resignation was University of Missouri, Columbia Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, who in an act of obsequiousness beyond the call of duty, openly praised the hunger striker, Jonathan Butler. Black Lives Matter might as well have hung up a sign that read “Mission Accomplished.”
University of Virginia. The student government at the University of Virginia main campus in Charlottesville had a proposal before them: whether or not to fund a student group comprising illegal immigrants. That such individuals should not even be in this country apparently was beyond the bounds of discussion. Ultimately, the student government decided not to recognize the organization because six of its members had abstained rather than voted. One UVA student, Erich Reimer, celebrated this outcome on his Facebook page with the hashtag “#conservative.” This gesture triggered a storm of criticism from campus Social Justice Warriors. He apologized, to no avail. The illegal immigrant group circulated a petition that read: “This apology means nothing to us. There is no way that we can be reassured that this will not occur in the future.” The group demanded Reimer’s expulsion from the university. Further, it called for the creation of an administrative committee to “scrub for xenophobic representatives who have been placed in office.” The student government action remains in force (for now) because the group’s application was filled out incorrectly. In other words, an injustice was avoided only because of a technicality.
That brings us to the University of Kansas. A well-regarded liberal arts research and teaching institution, KU has 28,000 students enrolled on five campuses, mainly in Lawrence, a city of about 90,000 located in the eastern part of the state between Kansas City and Topeka. It is also my undergraduate alma mater. While I admit to wanting to do a good turn for the old school now and then, this is a secondary motive. The primary motive is that the University of Kansas is emerging as a crucial Black Lives Matter battleground. And the organization’s supporters have prevailed, with the help of a tacitly supportive administration headed by its black chancellor, Bernadette Gray-Little (in photo).
Blacks currently make up only about 4 percent of the Lawrence campus student body. But this figure is misleading. Power, at least informal power, rests to a large degree on the ability to intimidate, with or without a majority. If black campus activists can silence critics, while winning the sympathy of the administration, they are assured of getting their way almost all the time. A mere insinuation of racism by blacks can induce an official crackdown on potential white “offenders.” Blacks at KU know that the administration, from Chancellor Gray-Little on down, will not punish them for trespassing, vandalism or making terror threats. They are the anointed 4 percent. It is the other 96 percent who are prohibited from expressing disapproval. Perhaps out of a desire for safety, a number of whites, especially in the KU student government, are siding with the blacks.
What lit this tinderbox was an alleged sexual assault occurring over five months ago. On November 8, 2015 a black female KU student, Kynnedi Grant, posted a message at her Facebook site claiming she had been attacked by several unnamed white males at a Halloween house party near the campus. Here is the unexpurgated text of what appears to be an early Facebook screen shot of Ms. Grant’s text. What follows is a brief but crucial exchange between Grant and Shegufta Huma, Vice President of the University of Kansas Student Senate:
Grant: On October 31, my night with 4 friends began at a house party on Kentucky Street, here in Lawrence, Kansas. All was well until my friend lost her wallet. Upon searching, I was confronted by two males who called me a “fat b****,” “ratchet black h**,” and other names. My friend was then verbally attacked as she was in the bathroom until a male friend intervened to (sic) our defense.
The situation escalated to us being assaulted by (a) group of white males. We all are black: We were called niggers, I was spit on, we were told “niggers didn’t belong here,” (and) a drink was thrown on me. As we tried to escape, a white male then pulled a gun on my two friends.
The police had been called, but what did they say when we got outside & reported? “Well, that’s the danger of going to house parties.” We are black. Our attackers & police are white.
Silence will kill me. I need you to hear our story.
#RockChalkInvisibleHawk
Here was the final and most telling portion of the post:
Grant: Is this good?
Huma: Better. I think we need more physical escalation before the gun to make it more believable. Also, declare (sic) there was no police report. Then I think we’ll be good on this.
To say that this storyline contains holes is an understatement. For Kynnedi Grant is describing felonies, not simply misbehavior. And in a criminal case, the standard of evidence is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The narrative here doesn’t come even close to meeting that standard. Consider several palpable realities.
First, Ms. Grant did not specify whether the white male assailants were active students. Surely, this is a highly relevant factor if she or anyone else is going to use this event as a pretext to put the entire University of Kansas on trial. Moreover, the alleged incident occurred in a house on Kentucky Street, which runs entirely off the campus. The party thus could not have been sponsored by the university.
Second, the idea that a group of white males, without provocation, would confront an innocent black female at a party and then assault her borders on ludicrous. Given the publicized trauma visited upon three Duke University lacrosse players a decade ago over what turned out to be a blatant hoax created by a local black female nonstudent, no sane white male college student today is going to invite the risk of being accused of a “hate crime” and become a national pariah. Think about it. Does it make any sense at all for a group of white guys to accost a group of black women whom they had never met before in their life and pepper them with racial insults? Does it make sense for one of the whites to pull a gun on one of the women, knowing it could land them in prison? And does anyone connected to the real world really believe that a black woman, having been “disrespected” by whites in such a fashion, will leave the premises without raising any ruckus? Far more likely, she and her friends would have done the escalating, possibly bringing boyfriends into the fray later on.
Third, no law enforcement officer called to the scene of a sex crime is going to tell the female victim, “Well, that’s the danger of going to house parties.” Even if the cop in question did make this statement, he would have filled out a report anyway. That is standard procedure. As the alleged incident occurred in an off-campus house, one can assume that this was a local rather than university police officer. Whichever law enforcement agency gave the officer his badge, it is almost inconceivable police would not have acted immediately upon hearing a detailed account, especially if Ms. Grant had given names of friends and assailants. Even cops have jobs to keep.
Fourth, one would think that Kynnedi Grant would have called a lawyer. There would have been no shortage of takers. Black lawyers in particular, especially if friendly with Al Sharpton, would have jumped at the chance to take a case like this. If Grant’s account of events were plausible, this case would have the words “black lottery” written all over it. It would be the ultimate opportunity for a lawyer put criminal “trophies” on the wall and/or win an outsized pain-and-suffering civil settlement. Forget Facebook and other social media – the legal system is where the money is.
Fifth, the exchange between Kynnedi Grant and Shegufta Huma, though brief, is alarming. It strongly points to Grant as being more interested in public relations than criminal justice. Even worse was Ms. Huma, who quite obviously was coaching Grant on the fine art of deception. Her goal was not to publicize a believable story; it was to make an hard-to-believe story sound believable. If not to perpetuate a fraud, what then was her motive for telling Grant not to mention anything about a police report on her Facebook page?
Sixth, after a brief flurry of publicity, the alleged assault has all but disappeared as a public discussion topic. This is odd. Experience and common sense suggest that a woman physically assaulted by a group of males, regardless of her race, is going to pursue such a case for months and potentially years. She will not “move on” without closure. That Kynnedi Grant has seen fit to deflect discussion away from the event only weeks after its occurrence gives reason to suspect that she is fearful of public scrutiny and the possibility that her story will be unmasked as a hoax.
The flurry of publicity, at least, wasn’t long in coming. On November 11, three days later after her Facebook post, Ms. Grant, and a black campus organization she leads, Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk (a reference to a traditional KU student football chant and a perception among campus blacks that they are “invisible”), disrupted a campus forum on “racism” to go public with her claim. University of Kansas authorities, rather than encourage public discussion, imposed a media blackout. Bryan Lowry, a reporter for the Wichita Eagle, explained:
The KU administration had reportedly ordered media not to record the event…the University of Kansas kept broadcast journalists from recording a forum on race…KU officials told Kansas Public Radio and other broadcast outlets that journalists were welcome to attend a forum on diversity, but that they could not bring audio or video recording equipment into the event.
Kynnedi Grant, as it turns out, does have a broad agenda. She heads not only Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk (RCIH), but also the KU Black Student Union. The membership of each heavily overlaps. Grant, in fact, spent considerable time in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 to join Black Lives Matter-guided street protests demanding the prosecution of a white police officer for shooting (in self-defense) the “unarmed” Michael Brown. Her Facebook page background as of last fall featured a celebration of self-proclaimed black revolutionary Joanne Chesimard, aka “Assata Shakur,” who had committed a string of crimes in New Jersey during the 1970s, including the May 1973 murder of a white state trooper on the New Jersey Turnpike. Chesimard in November 1979 escaped from a women’s prison and eventually made her way to Cuba, where she lives to this day.
Ms. Grant may not be Joanne Chesimard, but she’s got that revolutionary way with words. And on November 18, 2015, under the cover of Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk, she presented a press release to the KU administration containing a list of 15 non-negotiable demands. The opening statement was a model of presumptuousness, accusing Chancellor Gray-Little and other administrators of ignoring the needs of “marginalized peoples.” The demands themselves, each with a brief accompanying explanation, generally ranged from ludicrous to totalitarian. Here they are, word for word:
Director of OMA (Office of Multicultural Affairs) hired by December.
Mandatory, intense “inclusion and belonging” training for all levels of students, staff, faculty and administration.
Issue Campus Climate Survey by February 2016.
Train and rehire IOA (Institution of Opportunity and Access) staff and implement accountability measures.
Increase consistent hiring of diverse faculty and staff.
Increase the percentage of underrepresented domestic and undocumented students.
Immediate amendments to the Senate election code.
Increase aid and assistance to active military and veterans.
Establish team of multicultural counselors to specifically address severe mental illnesses and the needs of students of color by Fall 2016.
Ban concealed weapons from campus.
Remove all professors who assault, sexually harass or engage in abusive relationships with students. Apply this policy retroactively as well, specifically to Dr. Paul Stevens. Immediate expulsion of those that commit sexual assault.
Open investigation into Grant, Starling et al. case as hate crime beginning with IOA.
Reopen investigation into the murder of Rick “Tiger” Dowdell.
Establish Multicultural Student Government independent of current University of Kansas Student Senate.
Thorough plan of action from Administration by January 19, 2016.
The artificial crisis already was claiming a victim. On November 12, the day after Grant went public with her accusations, a graduate communications student, Abigail Kingsford, asked one of her professors, Andrea Quenette, to discuss campus racial issues. It was a classroom of about 10 students, mostly white. Professor Quenette, who is white, actually was supportive of the black radicals. She said that as a white woman she didn’t know what it is like to see the word “nigger” painted on a wall. She did, however, take issue with the assertion that black failure rates at KU can be attributed to racism. The student rat fink patrol evidently had at least one representative in her class. Shortly thereafter, communications students circulated a petition demanding she be fired; after all, she had blamed blacks for their failures and had the audacity to use of the “n” word (though to any sane person in the opposite context as her accusers had imagined). The university, terrified of appearing indifferent to racism in its midst, suspended Quenette, pending the results of an investigation. Fully four months later, campus officials exonerated her, but with the stipulation that she undergo “cultural competency training,” a euphemism for enforced thought control. And she remains without a workload. Quenette, shaken by the experience, now knows first-hand the meaning of the phrase “chilling effect.” She remarked: “I don’t believe I have much of a choice other than to be guarded. To be honest, I am afraid of engaging a discussion of race and diversity in a classroom…I believe it will be harder for me to respond to my students now because I am afraid of saying something wrong.” Instilling widespread fear of “saying something wrong,” of course, is the very essence of a police state.
This wasn’t enough for the radicals. Kynnedi Grant, along with Student Senate Vice President Shegufta Huma and the Student Senate Executive Committee, demanded that the top three student government officers Jessie Pringle, Zach George and Adam Moon – all white – resign for failing to support #BlackLivesMatter with sufficient vigor. Though the trio profusely apologized, predictably, the apology availed them nothing. Ms. Grant, along with Kansas Black Student Union members Caleb Stephens and Katherine Rainey, identifying themselves as Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk leaders, held a press conference to denounce University of Kansas “racism” against blacks. President Pringle and Chief of Staff Moon held onto their jobs – barely. The Senate Student Executive Committee had voted 6-3 in November to impeach them, but the full Student Senate, actually showing some courage, voted against moving forward on the issue. Zach George, student body vice president, resigned on March 2 to begin a full-time job in Washington, D.C. with the National Association of Counties. Having graduated in December, he should consider himself lucky to get out.
An actual rather than “almost” casualty was Paul Smokowski, dean of the KU School of Social Welfare. Smokowski, under intense pressure from black students, resigned his position, also on March 2. The signs of capitulation were already established. Less than 10 days earlier, School of Social Welfare students had called for the dean’s resignation. According to a press release, the demand was in response to “numerous obstacles and barriers” about diversity and inclusion. A spokesperson for the group, Trinity Carpenter, said that the dean has not done enough to make the school a real leader in social justice. What was this woman thinking – or perhaps drinking? Dean Smokowski had gone the extra mile for people like her; he even had established a separate black social work program within the School. Apparently, no good deed goes unpunished.
Sensing their prey could be conquered, the activists grew ever more predatory. On March 9, one week after Dean Smokowski’s resignation, the Student Senate announced that it would accede to black demands for a nonwhite student government, separate but equal in status. In other words, Demand Number 14 became a reality. One might have thought that the idea of “separate but equal” was anathema to blacks, but apparently not here. Maybe that’s because the project will be paid out of student activity fees. The Senate agreed to provide startup funds of $90,000, with more to come.
The six-and-a-half-hour meeting preceding the announcement was excruciating – at least for whites. In attendance with KU black radicals were some friends visiting from the University of Missouri who had driven MU System President Tim Wolfe from his job months earlier. One Missouri black female student told white KU Student Senate members to start “centering your privilege.” She bleated, semi-grammatically: “This whole presentation, what they gave, is like a form of oppression. They don’t need to come to you and explain why their blackness, their brownness, matters. I just find it very problematic that we’re even engaging in this conversation.”
The black demand for the immediate hiring of a director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs also has been met. The inquisitor-in-chief is one Precious Porras, an extremely corpulent woman who had begun working at OMA in 2005 as head of Hawk Link, an academic retention program to assist students of color and first-generation college students. (Translation: a program to prevent expulsions of nonwhite students for having excessively low grade point averages.) She had been promoted the following year to assistant director of diversity education, and in 2013 became associate director of diversity education and social justice programs. Ms. Porras specializes in coordinating workshops for faculty, staff and students. Naturally, she has expressed a desire for increased funding for new programs and staff members. Parkinson’s Law strikes again.
The signs of capitulation already were on the wall last October, before the November upheaval. The KU Student Senate by a two-thirds majority, voted to ban the use of gender-specific singular pronouns, such as “his” and “her,” from its official Rules and Regulations. Henceforth, the plural “they/them/their” will supplant the offending words. The stated purpose of this change is “to increase the inclusivity of the Student Senate and prevent microaggressions that gender pronouns pose to individuals who don’t use them.” Aside from the fact that almost everyone uses male and female pronouns during everyday speech, there is a totalitarian creepiness about rewriting language in this fashion that recalls George Orwell’s “1984.”
Higher education, at the University of Kansas and elsewhere, cannot continue along this path. Black Lives Matter and its sympathizers are pushing the nation’s colleges and universities ever further along toward the status of miniaturized anti-white police states, coating their intimidation with sanctimonious rhetoric about “justice,” “inclusion” and “diversity.” Decent people dedicated to higher learning at some point have to stand up to them. There are three practical ways of defeating these demagogues. None will be popular with feckless campus administrators or the “people of color” whom they coddle. But they are crucial to regaining institutional control in ways that serve the general public as well as serious students.
First, students who riot, vandalize, illegally occupy campus property or terrorize members of the university community (including fellow students) – or threaten to do these things – should be expelled. Moreover, campus authorities should report these individuals to local police, for such acts are felonies. There is absolutely no need to apologize for this. Education is not possible when students live in dread of losing their graduation prospects, careers and physical safety, and when faculty members fear being fired for uttering a “wrong” word during a lecture or discussion. Higher education officials must ensure their institutions are places where people are free to teach and learn.
Second, colleges and universities should dismantle the affirmative action edifice that assures black students a specified minimum percentage of admissions slots and imposes lawsuits and/or funding cutoffs for institutions not in compliance. Affirmative action (“diversity”) artificially boosts black enrollment and campus employment by lowering standards. In so doing, it ensures blacks, unserious as well as serious students, will have a major presence on campus. For decades, university administrators have supported this system. Time and again, they have defended U.S. Justice Department-enforced racial goals, timetables and quotas, especially if and when a rejected white applicant goes to court; the University of Michigan’s vigorous defense of its quota system a dozen years ago in the face of a pair of applicant lawsuits exemplified this determination. Affirmation action is a zero-sum game. One race necessarily benefits at the expense of another. It creates needless dissention on campus.
Third, students, parents and alumni should withhold financial support to any college or university that openly promotes groups such as Black Lives Matter. This is perhaps the most feasible way to affect change, for it does not directly put campus administrators on the spot. Students and their parents at the University of Missouri already have given indications of taking their tuition money elsewhere in the wake of the uproar of last fall; officials there project a revenue loss of $25 million for the forthcoming 2016-17 academic year. There is no reason to believe that potential University of Kansas applicants won’t behave similarly. As for alumni, wealthy or not, they should make future donations incumbent upon the university’s willingness to resist intimidation. Moreover, they should explicitly tell campus officials of their intent. This alumnus plans to practice what he preaches; I refuse to contribute any more funds to Old KU unless the people who run the place start showing some spine.
Black Lives Matter and the people who endorse this organization are discrediting the mission of higher education. Under the guise of “justice” and “fairness,” its leaders are intimidating dissenters, especially white dissenters, into submission. Even if Kynnedi Grant and her friends are telling the truth – and their claims more than ever look like a well-orchestrated hoax – they are doing nobody any favors by engaging in character assassination of the entire University of Kansas community. If Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little and other university officials accede to the whole list of demands, they will have completed the transfer of power and funds to these demagogues. College and university administrators everywhere should recognize that capitulation doesn't work. Courage and adherence to high principle does.
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