Matt Johnson

*This article was originally published on The News Hub, February 18, 2016

A little over two years ago, I attended an orientation for new graduate teaching assistants at the University of Kansas. Near the end of the last seminar, our instructor decided to answer a few questions. Instantly animated by this opportunity to open her mouth, the girl in front of me flung her hand in the air with what looked like shoulder-dislocating force, stood up, and announced, “I’m a firm believer in the ‘one-step-forward-one-step-back’ principle.”

The room was silent for a moment before the instructor delicately asked what she was talking about.

“If you’re a privileged student, you should be quiet and let others speak.”

“I don’t think…hmmm. Anyone else?”

I’ll never forget that exchange. It was the perfect encapsulation of the mutually corrosive relationship between young, priggish social justice warriors and the grown-ups who refuse to call them out. It was a reminder that censorship and pseudo-intellectual rot could be found on any campus – including mine. And it demonstrated the natural consequence of identity politics: a discriminatory obsession with race, gender, sexual orientation, and wealth. This girl – who was about to start teaching at a major public university – intended to treat her students unfairly. Needless to say, she didn’t belong in front of a classroom.

Over the past few months, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to recite this miserable anecdote. Like Yale Girl, the soon-to-be teacher at the seminar represents much of what has gone wrong on American campuses in the second decade of the 21st century. Identity politics and censorship are overtaking the values of equality and free expression that college students used to accept as axiomatic goods. University administrators are touting the academic benefits of racial segregation. Incoming freshmen just can’t wait to start banning everyone and everything in sight. And rattle-wielding, pacifier-sucking, diaper-soiling students are scurrying off to their “safe spaces” whenever scary ideas float into their bubbles.

I’m not one of those jaundiced 26-year-old curmudgeons who believes the world is falling apart before our eyes. Steven Pinker disabused me of my default pessimism a long time ago. But in the realm of free speech, we really do seem to be going backwards.

A week ago, Milo Yiannopoulos delivered a lecture at Rutgers University. When the perfunctory campaign to ban him didn’t work, a few “activists” interrupted his talk by screaming at him and smearing fake blood all over themselves. These clearly weren’t people who wanted to have a conversation. In fact, they didn’t even want to win an argument. They just wanted Yiannopoulos thrown off campus. Failing that, they were content to slather themselves in red goop, wail for a few minutes, and exit the building before the Q&A session. As Matthew Boyer (a senior at Rutgers who helped organize the event) notes in the linked article, this ignominious retreat should tell you something. Despite all their fist-pumping and yelling, the blood-soaked protesters didn’t have the courage to get into a real debate. A hysterical spectacle and a few mindless chants were enough for them.

A lone, shrill voice launched the Rutgers outburst with the requisite mix of sanctimony and hyperbole: “This man represents hatred!” If she was honest, she would’ve shouted, “This man represents things I don’t agree with!” Like the teacher who wanted to silence everyone who didn’t fit into her pre-conceived mold of victimhood, the kids at Rutgers tried to silence a speaker because they don’t care for his opinions. Yiannopoulos loathes third-wave feminism, affectionately refers to Donald Trump as “daddy,” supports unrestricted freedom of expression, and once described the Black Lives Matter movement as “petulant, hypocritical, ineffectual, and riddled with tantrum-throwing grievance-mongers, race-baiting bullies, and odious professional attention-seekers.”

Some people may think Yiannopoulos is an “odious professional attention-seeker” himself, but at least he’s never tried to shut them up.

Here’s the point: Yiannopoulos is a provocateur. Just look at the guy’s Twitter account – he calls himself “the most fabulous supervillain on the internet,” tweets hashtags like #feminismiscancer, and constantly promotes his “Privilege Grant” – “a bursary available exclusively to white men, in support of their post-secondary education.” Isn’t it a little difficult to take him seriously? If you disagree with him, great. Send him an email. Challenge him at one of his events. Write an article about him. Try to be funny. But if you think he’s dangerous enough to warrant a grassroots resistance movement, you need to get a grip. He’s just an agitator who enjoys controversy more than anything else, and you’re giving him everything he wants by making a spectacle of yourself at his events.

In the 20th century, college students protested the carpet bombing of Cambodia, racial segregation, and the development and proliferation of apocalyptic weapons. Now they’re screeching about trigger warnings, microaggressions, and sneering trolls who delight in their outrage. I suppose this is something to celebrate – there just aren’t as many flagrant injustices to challenge these days (seriously). But God, it makes for some boring activism.