{"id":28898,"date":"2014-11-26T07:44:24","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T12:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28898"},"modified":"2014-11-26T07:44:24","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T12:44:24","slug":"the-rising-tide-of-microaggression-activism-at-ucla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/11\/26\/the-rising-tide-of-microaggression-activism-at-ucla\/","title":{"rendered":"The rising tide of microaggression activism at UCLA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heather Mac Donald<\/a> looks at what she calls “The Microaggression Farce” at UCLA:<\/p>\n

In November 2013, two dozen graduate students at the University of California at Los Angeles marched into an education class and announced a protest against its \u201chostile and unsafe climate for Scholars of Color.\u201d The students had been victimized, they claimed, by racial \u201cmicroaggression\u201d \u2014 the hottest concept on campuses today, used to call out racism otherwise invisible to the naked eye. UCLA\u2019s response to the sit-in was a travesty of justice. The education school sacrificed the reputation of a beloved and respected professor in order to placate a group of ignorant students making a specious charge of racism.<\/p>\n

The pattern would repeat itself twice more at UCLA that fall: students would allege that they were victimized by racism, and the administration, rather than correcting the students\u2019 misapprehension, penitently acceded to it. Colleges across the country behave no differently. As student claims of racial and gender mistreatment grow ever more unmoored from reality, campus grown-ups have abdicated their responsibility to cultivate an adult sense of perspective and common sense in their students. Instead, they are creating what tort law calls \u201ceggshell plaintiffs\u201d \u2014 preternaturally fragile individuals injured by the slightest collisions with life. The consequences will affect us for years to come.<\/p>\n

UCLA education professor emeritus Val Rust was involved in multiculturalism long before the concept even existed. A pioneer in the field of comparative education, which studies different countries\u2019 educational systems, Rust has spent over four decades mentoring students from around the world and assisting in international development efforts. He has received virtually every honor awarded by the Society of Comparative and International Education. His former students are unanimous in their praise for his compassion and integrity. \u201cHe\u2019s been an amazing mentor to me,\u201d says Cathryn Dhanatya, an assistant dean for research at the USC Rossiter School of Education. \u201cI\u2019ve never experienced anything remotely malicious or negative in terms of how he views students and how he wants them to succeed.\u201d Rosalind Raby, director of the California Colleges for International Education, says that Rust pushes you to \u201creexamine your own thought processes. There is no one more sensitive to the issue of cross-cultural understanding.\u201d A spring 2013 newsletter from UCLA\u2019s ed school celebrated Rust\u2019s career and featured numerous testimonials about his warmth and support for students.<\/p>\n

It was therefore ironic that Rust\u2019s graduate-level class in dissertation preparation was the target of student protest just a few months later \u2014 ironic, but in the fevered context of the UCLA education school, not surprising. The school, which trumpets its \u201csocial-justice\u201d mission at every opportunity, is a cauldron of simmering racial tensions. Students specializing in \u201ccritical race theory\u201d \u2014 an intellectually vacuous import from law schools \u2014 play the race card incessantly against their fellow students and their professors, leading to an atmosphere of nervous self-censorship. Foreign students are particularly shell-shocked by the school\u2019s climate. \u201cThe Asians are just terrified,\u201d says a recent graduate. \u201cThey walk into this hyper-racialized environment and have no idea what\u2019s going on. Their attitude in class is: \u2018I don\u2019t want to talk. Please don\u2019t make me talk!\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heather Mac Donald looks at what she calls “The Microaggression Farce” at UCLA: In November 2013, two dozen graduate students at the University of California at Los Angeles marched into an education class and announced a protest against its \u201chostile and unsafe climate for Scholars of Color.\u201d The students had been victimized, they claimed, by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,13],"tags":[35,912,720,99,764],"class_list":["post-28898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-usa","tag-california","tag-privilege","tag-protest","tag-racism","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7w6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28899,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28898\/revisions\/28899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}