Boycott of English Department Collapses from Apathy and Disinterest

Looks like the student activists fighting the horrifying racism and violence of the Williams College English department just learned that sometimes your best just isn't good enough.

Given a report from Samuel Wolf '19 in the most recent Press Record podcast, it looks like the call for students to boycott all English classes that “do not engage substantially with race” has become a pathetic fractal failure - that is a failure at every conceivable level of resolution. (In other words, zooming in on any part of the fail reveals just as much fail as the entity of the whole.)

Chair and Professor of English Katie Kent ’88 confirms the failure of the boycott by reporting that pre-registration in the department was not substantially changed from previous years. “Our enrollments show no significant difference when compared to our usual averages over the last few semesters,” she said.

In the podcast, Wolf told Rebecca Tauber '21 that the entire effort only involved about 10 students, all of whom chose to remain anonymous. Reportedly, this was because they feared academic retaliation by the evil, white supremacists who haunt the English department, rather than the large number of amused readers who followed this laughable controversy through social media sites including Breitbart, The College Fix, Ephblog, Legal Insurrection, Powerline, Reason, Why Evolution is True and Williams Liberty among others.

The whole boycott was apparently sparked by a liberal, well-meaning English professor, John Kleiner, who apparently made the mistake of reading a quote including the word "nigger" in class. Unfortunately for the outraged boycott enthusiasts, the vast majority of his students were okay with saying the word "nigger" in class. Wolf indicated that there were 14 in Kleiner's class and of those eight responded to his inquiries. Of them, six were okay with Kleiner's comments. Kleiner himself sent in a letter to the Williams Record which cleared up the matter and made the student protesters look like Maoist idiots.

Of course, the failure of the boycott was a huge disappointment to all of us who sincerely hate identity politics and believe that Williams College has become little more than a leftist Marxist Madrasa kept afloat only by the historic good fortune of its endowment investments.
Watching leftists attack other leftists is wonderful entertainment. I was sorry to see this episode die out so soon.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.

WIFI Scandal Results in Williams College CC Loss of Power to Approve Student Groups

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - It looks like the most interesting Williams College news is now coming from the interviews done on the Press Record podcast.

In this latest podcast, Rebecca Tauber '21 interviews College Council (CC) co-president Ellie Sherman '20. Sherman reveals a number of interesting things that haven't gotten much attention in the Williams Record including a nascent movement for the CC to abolish itself. You can hear the whole podcast along with its nifty jingle by clicking on the link below.

https://soundcloud.com/williamsrecord/101119-restructuring-college-council

Most alarmingly, Sherman interprets the bigoted anti-white male tirade that marked the April 9, 2019 CC meeting as merely a conflict over funding for Black Previews. In contrast, most of the world saw this as an egregious example of the sort of anti-white harassment that is apparently routinely dished out to, and passively accepted by, white male students at Williams College.

Sherman indicates that a campus poll revealed that the student's top demand of the CC was the call for the abolition and restructure of the CC itself. Sorting through the code words, it looks like the aim of the abolition and restructure effort is to further advantage black students seeking free money by loosening the rules for obtaining funding and reducing the power of the white males who have apparently been standing in the way of dishing out the free money. According to Sherman, the CC is already working with "consultants" on this issue.

From the context of her comments, it is clear that these consultants are seeking ways to advantage black students like Isaiah Blake '21 who demanded money for a Black Preview event which would allow him and his associates to "fucking cook some fried fucking chicken and be niggers for once." Blake's complaint was that he did not like having to ask for this money, asserting it "is like sucking white dick every fucking day."

Apparently, Sherman and her fellow leftists fail to see that the CC would be better off hiring consultants to advice them how to properly conduct a meetings, maintain order, and implement thoughtful measures to guard against corruption. The CC, after all, has been the scene of highly questionable financial dealings in the past regarding the hoarding of CC money by student organizations and the failure of its treasurer to properly handle the CC's financial arrangements last summer.

Later, Sherman indicated that the CC had completely lost its power to approve or disapprove student organizations after the massive conflict over the approval of a student group called Williams Initiative for Israel which resulted in a Title IX investigation of Williams College.

The Press Record podcast also included some of the comments from anonymous students. They were asked what should be the biggest priority of the CC? The answers were interesting:

"Allocating funds."

"Rewriting the bylaws."

"CC should focus on abolishing itself. Rebuilding its foundations to be better in the future." 

"I want them to equally fund all student groups."

"Inclusion and diversity. No diversity, equity." 

"Abolish CC" 

"What does CC stand for?"

No Win for You: Student Member Asserts Sawicki Committee Report Was Not a Victory for Free Speech Watchdogs

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - In a recent Press Record podcast, one of the student members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Inquiry and Inclusion, Eli Miller '21, pushed back on campus watchdogs who believe the Sawicki report supports free speech to the extent that it would allow controversial speakers like John Derbyshire to appear on campus. Miller, a math and statistic major, was interviewed by a fellow student, Rebecca Tower '21.

Rebecca Tauber 

Do you have any last thoughts on the committee, their report, going forward? 

Eli Miller

I think my one concern is that this committee -- which I don’t think I’ve seen very much here, but I’ve seen sort of from like campus watch dogs -- is that this is seen as a victory for people who believe that free speech is like an absolute right and that people on college campuses who try to dis-invite people are like liberal snowflakes.  

That whole narrative is very popular, and my concern that this report gives those people a win.

I don’t think those people are correct in assuming this report supports them. But I think that definitely people have read it that way. And I guess I wish we had done more to resist that reading because I think it is a lot more nuanced and complicated than that. But I think at end of the day people are going to want to read what they want to read. 

As was reported in the Williams Record, the committee recommended the adaptation of both the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and PEN America frameworks for free speech, both of which give student groups the right to invite any speaker of their choosing without prior approval and allow the administration to disinvite speakers only in the “rarest of circumstances.”

Critics of the report including John Drew a former Williams College political scientist and Jerry Coyne a biologist with the University of Chicago, have decried the weakness of the report by pointing out that its recommendations allow for the censorship of campus speakers if those speakers should be a threat to "dignitary safety" or, more specifically, “the sense of being an equal member of the community.” As Coyne has pointed out, it is physically impossible to support both inclusion and freedom of speech. Eli Miller's comments verify the critics' views.

In a Williams Record article, Miller reports he was unhappy with the process because the group never attempted to reach a consensus on whether or not the administration should have had the authority to disinvite John Derbyshire, a political commentator for VDARE, who had been dropped by the National Review for a satirical piece he wrote for Taki's Magazine.

“It became clear that the goal of the committee was less to reconcile the differences that people have — on the most basic level — about whether John Derbyshire should’ve been allowed to speak on campus, and it was a lot more focused on taking the temperature of the campus and doing outreach to as many groups as possible,” Miller said. “It felt like the primary objective was just to calm people down.”

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.