To begin reading Heather Mac Donald’s new book, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture, is to step inside a nightmare.

In the first chapter she describes what she endured last year while attempting to deliver two speeches on California campuses concerning her previous work, The War on Cops. In the first instance, at UCLA, the event was disrupted after she’d delivered her talk, but before the question and answer period had commenced:

Protesters stormed the front of the classroom, demanding control of the mic and chanting loudly: “America was never great” and “Black Lives Matter, they matter here”…After nearly ten minutes of shouting, the organizers managed to persuade some students to line up for questions…At 8 PM, the organizers decided to end the event, and I was hustled out of the room with a police escort.

In the second instance, upon arriving at Claremont McKenna College, Mac Donald was immediately taken to “what was, in effect, a safe house: a guest suite for campus visitors, with blinds drawn.” Chanting, drumming protesters had surrounded the auditorium in which she was scheduled to speak. An account in a campus newspaper reports these students declaring “We are here to shut down the fucking fascist,” and insisting that CMC – the initials of their institution – was how “you spell racist.”

The newspaper article further reports that a professor was physically barred by these protesters from entering the auditorium. A video showing that encounter, posted on Facebook, may be seen here. Neither the police nor school officials intervened:

David DeMetz, a Sergeant for the Claremont Police Department, said, “We’re there to ensure everyone’s safety, even the people that may not be happy with the police’s presence. … We have to … remain neutral and objective.”

…Several administrators attended the protest and stood to the side. They told [the newspaper] that they saw their role as ensuring student safety, but they also sympathized with the protesters’ views. “Black Lives Matter is really at my heart,” said Pomona Associate Dean Jan Collins-Eaglin.

Mac Donald had been scheduled to meet with students during a meal prior to her talk, but the “massive hall…was empty – the mob…had succeeded in preventing anyone from entering.” She was then advised that administrators had decided she should deliver her talk, via video live streaming, to that same empty room:

I completed my speech to the accompaniment of chants and banging on the windows. I was able to take two questions from students via live streaming. But by then, the administrators and police officers in the room, who had spent my talk nervously staring at the windows, decided that things were growing too unruly outside to continue…Walkie-talkies were used to coordinate my exit from the…kitchen to the exact moment that a black, unmarked Claremont Police Department van rolled up.

When visiting speakers require police escorts on campus, something has gone terribly wrong.

LINKS:

The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture Heather Mac Donald

• my previous commentary on similar matters: Indoctrination 101
• Taught to Think Like Censors
• Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Hear
• They Call This Higher Education?

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