Any person 10 years or more removed from college can look back and see how ignorant they were at the time. So on the one hand, we should all expect a good amount of nonsense coming from college campuses. There is just no shortcut to life experience.
On the other hand, what we are seeing in college and university campuses all over the country today looks and feels worse than in years past, doesn’t it? The level of boldly ignorant, liberal cowardice is simply remarkable.
The sort of antics we are seeing would be laughable if they weren’t so destructive personally for a considerable amount of people (usually conservatives) but also for society as a whole. College campuses should be leading the way in the good-faith effort to engage in the exchange of ideas. When they fail as miserably as they are today, the impact on the rest of culture is very real, and we become less free.
In this Feb. 24, 2015 photo, students walk through the Warren College and Moore College area at Vanderbilt University on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
The shameful petition to silence Professor Carol Swain at Vanderbilt University is the perfect example.
I want my children to grow up to be “Carol Swains.” A professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University, Carol Swain grew up as the second from the oldest of 12 children in the rural South. To simply say she was poor does not do justice to the challenges of her childhood.
Living in a two-bedroom shack with no running water. Sleeping on the kitchen floor. All children bathing from the same bucket of stove-top heated water. Digging through dumpsters for food. All while dealing with an abusive stepfather. Fully dependent on the welfare system. A high school drop out.
Her “way out” was to marry at just 16. But the difficulties continued into her twenties when she tried to end her life through suicide. She would start to change when she heard the doctor treating her tell her things she had not heard before, that she was attractive, had potential, and could do more with her life.
But six specific words would dramatically change her life. After taking a job as a nurse’s aid, she recalls an orderly from Sierra Leone telling her, “You ought to go to college.”
She got her GED, earned an associate degree from Virginia Western Community College, and went on to Roanoke College where she earned her bachelors Magna Cum Laude. She then went to Virginia Tech for her Masters, University of North Carolina for her Ph.D., and finally Yale University Law School.
She became an Assistant Professor at Duke, then Associate Professor at Princeton, and finally a distinguished Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University.
I mean, seriously, this is the American dream. This is the story we all want to have. Prof. Swain embodies hope. She should be celebrated and lifted up as an example to all our young people.
But, she doesn’t toe the liberal line, you see. “Burn her at the stake!”
Here are the sort of things Prof. Swain says that have prompted the little brats at Vanderbilt to rebel against her:
My accomplishments didn’t come easy. It was through hard work. It was perseverance. A “can-do” spirit that I attribute to the grace of God. It is so amazing what a little encouragement and direction can do. But the system itself doesn’t encourage people to better themselves. The social welfare programs that we have in America put a band aid on the problem but it does not fix it. The only thing these programs do is create, in the long term, a sense of entitlement that results in the loss of self-worth for the individual. The truth is people feel good about themselves when they can work and provide for themselves and for their families.
What! She said, What? No, no, no, no, no. Remember, Swain is African-American (did I mention that?); how dare she omit the fact that the system is rigged and there is nothing African-Americans can do to succeed as long as “the white man” is in charge?
Doesn’t she know the Democratic Platform? Actually, she knows a bit too much about the Democratic Party, and that has caused her to distance herself from it. The Democrats’ sordid history supporting the slave trade is being exposed now in Dinesh D’Souza’s Hillary’s America, in which Prof. Swain is featured revealing how the Democrats were the party of slavery. It was Republicans who rose in opposition.
Can you imagine a distinguish professor, with a Ph.D. in political science, having the gall to actually talk about history just like that, with no warning or anything? Yes, it’s all true, but it’s about more than that. This is why we need safe spaces.
So to recap, in the warped views of today’s college campuses, Prof. Swain is an exemplary role model, but she doesn’t agree with Black Lives Matter, so she must be silenced. To be celebrated, she should join the chorus of liberal African-American voices calling America as racist as ever, calling each other the “n”-word, women the “b”-word and voting for Democrats, no matter what.
Pathetic.
Mario Diaz, Esq. is Legal Counsel at Concerned Women for America, the nation's largest public policy women's organization. His book Be Spent: Winning the Fight for Freedom's Survival is available now at Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @legalblurbblog.
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