Liz Magill, until recently the president of the University of Pennsylvania, said that anti-Semitic speech should be restricted when it is “directed and severe, pervasive.”  Claudine Gay, still President of Harvard University,[1] said the line should be drawn when speech “becomes conduct” (i.e. action).  So, help me out.  Wearing a white sheet with eye-holes on a campus would be “speech,” but burning a cross would be “conduct”?  How about chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Judenrein”? 

John McWhorter[2] argues that a far lower threshold for action exists when it comes to Black people at a university.[3]  How so?  Discourse has long held that White people hold the power in American society.  Power makes them, if not invulnerable to affront, perfectly capable of absorbing a challenge and even fighting back.[4]  Blacks, however, are not seen as resilient. 

Administrations have learned to speak out and act out, against anything that may make Black people “uncomfortable.”  McWhorter cites the Ilya Shapiro incident at Georgetown[5] and the Dorian Abbot incident at M.I.T.[6]  This, says McWhorter, “means treating Black students as pathological cases rather than human beings with basic resilience who understand proportion and degree.”[7]  To “train young people, or any people, to think of themselves as weak is a form of abuse.”  Hence, the low expectations for Black people on many college and university campuses constitutes the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and even “racism.”  

To the contemporary historian, it could appear that political Progressives view Blacks as a group as having been damaged—perhaps irretrievably damaged–by slavery and the legacy of slavery.  Hence, Blacks today cannot be held to the same standards as other people.  This view is reflected in the different standards of taking offense and of resilience discussed by McWhorter.  It also appears in the outcome of some hiring decisions (notably in academia).  Then, public efforts to “assist” Blacks often turn out to be social welfare bureaucracies that merely “administer” Black clients.  The outcome of such “help” can be disastrous for the intended beneficiaries, especially when compared with the older Black tradition of struggling against the Powers-That-Be.[8]  Moreover, some Progressives view Asian-Americans with suspicion for showing what an oppressed people can do with the aid of strong families and a strong culture. 

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[1] I’m assuming that the Board at Harvard had some tight-lipped law firm run everything Gay has ever written or said through a plagiarism-detection program.  No more shoes to drop.  Still, see Carol Swain’s seething op-ed in the WSJ, 18 December 2023. 

[2] For the bare bones, see: John McWhorter – Wikipedia 

[3] John McWhorter, “Training People to Think They Are Weak Is a Form of Abuse,” NYT, 17 December 2023.  The “soft bigotry” bit is from a speech by President George W. Bush. 

[4] “Jews are seen in some quarters as white and therefore need no protection from outright hostility.”  Bunch of things to un-pack there.  First, “seen as white”?  Jews ARE white and always have been.  Second, “outright hostility” is OK so long as it is directed against Whites?  Who argues that position?  Asking for a friend. 

[5] See: Ilya Shapiro Quits Georgetown’s Law School Amid Free Speech Fight – The New York Times (nytimes.com)  McWhorter later refers to a 2020 incident at USC.  See: How USC’s Dr. Greg Patton Accidentally Ignited an Academic Culture War – LAmag – Culture, Food, Fashion, News & Los Angeles.  He does not cite the Joshua Katz incident at Princeton.  See: Joshua Katz (classicist) – Wikipedia 

[6] See: Dorian Abbot – Wikipedia  “The barrage of negative press and public outrage resulting from Abbot’s cancellation led MIT to hold two forums at which faculty were polled on two free speech questions. That a large majority felt that their voices are constrained at MIT revealed the need for decisive action.”

[7] See: Controversies about the word niggardly – Wikipedia 

[8] Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (1999).