The vast majority of college campuses have been liberal bastions for decades, but those politics have now morphed into a “victimhood olympics” that threatens people not affiliated with an allegedly oppressed group and even puts the future of our nation in doubt.
Colleges are making headlines on a regular basis for reasons unrelated to the curriculum. Efforts by minority students to rename buildings, demand safe spaces, and intimidate free speech seem to be an every day occurrence.
“There is a case of this happening at nearly every college campus,” said Daily Caller Deputy Editor Scott Greer, author of the new book “No Campus for White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education into Hateful Indoctrination.”
“You can look at pretty much any campus and there is a major microaggression that started protests,” said Greer, who says campus activism is essentially a competition among aggrieved minorities to prove they are the most oppressed.
“The reason why all these students are rushing to compete in this victimhood olympics is that on college campuses there is a new moral culture arising called victimhood culture,” said Greer.
“In this culture, people are not assigned status and value based on being very honorable and having a lot of accomplishments or simply the dignity that comes from being an American citizen or a human being. It comes from who can demonstrate they’ve been the most oppressed, who’s been the biggest victim,” said Greer.
Greer says this is a sharp contrast to the typical liberalism found on campus for many years.
“Colleges have always been historically home to pretty crazy leftism, but now the angle on all these protests is very racial in nature. It’s getting more anti-white in its character as well,” said Greer.
Greer traces the issue back more than 50 years to the dawn of Affirmative Action instituted under President John F. Kennedy. He says the policy made a lot sense at the time as many colleges and universities were blatantly slamming their doors in the faces of black applicants.
But over time, says Greer, efforts to help students based on race colored their perceptions of their own identities.
“This encourages students to think in a way that doesn’t see themselves as an American or that they’re being judged on the content of their character, but that they’re being judged on their skin color and their ethnic background,” said Greer.
“That encourages them to gravitate towards that identity for the rest of their four years. If they got this benefit of getting into college based on racial identity, why not carry it on for the four years and see what happens,” said Greer.
However, he says the movement is that often pushing for special rights rather than equal rights.
“We saw last week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where students are now advocating for free tuition for African-Americans and other minorities. It seems against the American character and American values, where they’re judged by the content of their character,” said Greer.
As the protesters make their demands, a common cycle plays out where college administrators initially resist the protests but ultimately cave in to the students. Greer says there are multiple reasons for the weak resolve of those leaders, starting with ideological sympathy for the demonstrators.
“A lot of the administrators and professors cave in because all of them believe, ‘Oh, as a white person, I inherit all these bad things from the past. Even though my ancestors weren’t even in the United States, I’m still responsible for slavery and colonialism and all these other terrible things that have happened in the past,” said Greer.
Greer says the next problem is administrators don’t know what to do when the demands come pouring in.
“Secondly, they’re spineless because they have a very easy job. It’s the part of the job they don’t want to deal with because it’s the most difficult. It’s a very easy job being a college administrator. You have a two-hour lunch break. You really just sit in meetings all day. It’s not a difficult job,” said Greer.
Finally, he says administrators give in because the campus liberals are the only ones in their faces.
“They’re the only pressure group they have to deal with in their job. They don’t have to deal with conservative students [complaining about not having more conservative speakers]. They don’t have to deal with because conservative students typically ask politely and go through the proper methods. Campus leftists will barge in their office and start screaming and shouting for an hour,” said Greer.
“They have to deal with that so they just cave in,” he added.
With liberals have a stranglehold on the vast majority of college campuses, Greer says it’s up to conservative politicians to make sure the liberal students aren’t the only voice in the ear of administrators.
“They control the purse strings. They can demand – when administrators do something stupid like mandating white privilege courses for all students – to come before a committee hearing and explain themselves as to why they’re pushing this ridiculous and harmful ideas on students,” said Greer.
Greer says reversing the trend is essential because the race-based victimhood culture on campus is no longer a fringe but the dominant culture on most campuses.
“These are very well going to be your next senators, your next judges and maybe even your next president,” said Greer.
“It would be a terrible path for our country where we have congressmen, sitting on the House floor, competing over who is the bigger victim and determining public policy based on these silly notions. But that well could happen unless we change. This is definitely the path we’re going to go down unless something happens to change course in higher education,” said Greer.
