The Weaponization of Feeling ‘Unsafe’

“I don’t feel safe,” says a Harvard student in a video.

What threatens her? The dean of her Harvard dormitory, law professor Ronald Sullivan, agreed to be part of accused sexual harasser Harvey Weinstein’s legal defense team.

Sullivan and his wife were deans of the dormitory for years, but no matter. Now the professor is apparently an evil threat.

A group calling itself “Our Harvard Can Do Better” demanded Sullivan be removed from his dean job.

Sullivan is black, but black activists joined the protest, too. On the videotape, one says, “Dean Sullivan told me to my face that I should view his representation of Harvey Weinstein as a good thing because that representation will trickle down to black men like me who constantly face an unjust justice system.”

Seems reasonable to me. But the privileged Harvard students laugh and clap when the protester goes on to say, “F— that!”

Colleges don’t show much courage when pushed by student activists. Harvard administrators removed Sullivan and his wife from the residence hall.

Do the students really “feel unsafe”?

“They’re lying,” says Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz in my newest video. “Anybody who says they feel unsafe in the presence of a lawyer and his wife are looking you in the eye and committing the equivalent of perjury. They don’t feel unsafe. They’ve learned the language of the new McCarthyism.”

In other words, people call themselves “victims,” knowing they can get results they want by saying they are traumatized by the presence of their enemies. Schools and other businesses, wanting to avoid protracted fights and accusations of sexism, racism or “insensitivity,” rush to comply with activists’ wishes.

Dershowitz is mad about what’s happened at his school: “The mantra of the day is ‘We feel unsafe.’ Well, that’s just too bad! Learn to deal with it. You’re going to have to live in the real world in which your neighbors, friends, relatives are going to disagree with you. If you start using the criteria of ‘unsafe’ in your life, you’re going to be a failure.”

Worse, he adds, “You’re going to impose restrictions on the rest of us.”

I told Dershowitz that the students protesting Sullivan were mostly young women. Some had been sexually assaulted. Isn’t it reasonable that they not be reminded of that?

“No, it’s not reasonable not to want to face the reality that due process requires that everybody be represented,” replied Dershowitz.

Harvard didn’t fire Sullivan from his professor job, only his dean job.

So I said to Dershowitz: “Don’t students have a right to say, ‘Look, we’re living with this guy. He creeps us out because of what he does. Get somebody else’?”

“If they could say that,” replied Dershowitz, “they could say it about somebody who supports Donald Trump for president, somebody who is a Muslim, who’s gay, who’s Jewish, you name it.”

Sullivan, who like Dershowitz has defended clients considered monsters by the general public, has long argued, “For the rights of all of us… to be protected, we have to live in a system where we vigorously, vigorously defend the guilty.”

“You get the right to counsel no matter how despicable you are thought to be,” explains Dershowitz. “These students would have fired John Adams. They would have not allowed him to come to the Constitutional Convention or write the Declaration of Independence because he defended the people who were accused of the Boston Massacre.”

The new McCarthyism requires that everyone bow to demands of “victims.” That’s a lot of people.

On the videotape, one student says she worries not just about her own safety, but the well-being of “survivors, transgender and gender nonconforming people, BGLTQ people, undocumented, DACAmented and TPS people, indigenous people, first generation low-income people…”

I don’t even know what some of those words mean.

Most of us want to protect genuine victims. But it makes little sense that America, a country where even poor people live longer and better lives than almost anyone in history, has become a place where spoiled children paying $60,000 tuition consider themselves “victims.”

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Edinburgh University’s LGBT network resign en masse amid row over Julie Bindel talk

Edinburgh University’s LGBT network has resigned en masse after they were told they could not block a talk by the veteran feminist Julie Bindel.

The event, titled “Women’s Sex-Based Rights: what does and should the future hold?”, took place on Wednesday evening despite calls for its to be stopped on the basis that it was “transphobic”. 

The university’s LGBT staff network and students launched a petition calling for the event to be cancelled immediately on the basis that it would put transgender people “at risk of physical and psychological harm”.

The event gives a platform to speakers with a “transphobic agenda”, the petition said.

“We disagree with the notion of transphobia as a legitimate academic debate," it went on. “We ask that the University of Edinburgh reconsiders hosting an event that will be so damaging to trans and non-binary people, as well as damaging to our wider academic community.”

The event, which was run by the university’s education, teaching and leadership institute, featured a panel discussion with feminist academics and Bindel as the keynote speaker.

Jonathan MacBride, who was the chair of the university’s LGBT staff network until the entire committee’s resignation this week, said the university had not consulted with them before approving the event and  "instead of supporting us, supporting our position, they chose to censor us".

He said another reason for the committee's resignation was that the university failed to “give out any statement of support of its trans staff and students”. 

An Edinburgh University spokesman said: “The University places great importance in the Staff Pride Network and its valuable job in representing the University’s LGBT+ community.   

“We regret, therefore, that its committee members have felt the need to step down.  Senior managers from the University have offered a meeting with them to discuss their concerns.”

Following the event, Bindel said she was “attacked” by one of the activists who “lunged” at her and had to be restrained by security guards.

She wrote on Twitter: “I took part in a really brilliant event tonight at Edinburgh University, speaking about women’s sex-based rights. I was physically attacked as I left the event at the airport” adding: “This kind of intimidation has to stop.”

An Edinburgh University spokesman said that following an “incident”, security staff acted “swiftly and professionally” to ensure no one was harmed.

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This Is How Colleges Become Nannies

Students are not coping with university life. The situation is reaching crisis proportions, causing college administrators to have a coping problem of their own.

Most of the problems involve anxiety and stress at levels unknown to past generations. Many of the nation’s 21 million college students also lack social skills finding it difficult to interact with others.

Consider these facts. A recent survey showed that over the past year, some three out of five students suffered from overwhelming anxiety. Two out of five students reported depression to the point of being unable to function. In addition, substance abuse is rampant, which inhibits their ability to interact and learn. 

The problem is made worse by the fact that most affected students do not seek help. As a result, many university counseling centers are readjusting their strategies to look for ways to reach out to these students and address their needs, reduce suicide risks and diminish drug use. Many schools are adopting radical approaches that go beyond the normal safeguards needed to deal with unruly youth.

These new problems challenge the whole system. Dysfunctional students impact the entire university community and weigh down the learning process. However, all too often, the well-intentioned administrators deal with symptoms, not causes.

The Nanny State University

Indeed, the university is reduced to a nanny institution caring for grown-up children. It cannot take the place of parents. It will not exercise discipline or affirm moral principles.  Instead, the university will introduce childish programs or implement rigid stopgap measures to help the students, now adults, learn what they should have learned as children.

University administrators are now teaching the bare bones basics to help students cope with the stress that comes with independent college life. They are asked to help students manage friendships and emotions. To create certainty, schools offer problem-solving and decision-making programs. Existential problems must also be resolved as students need to find life purpose, meaning and even identity.

This crisis forces many schools to go beyond the much-ridiculed safe spaces and coloring books, although they still may be offered.

Some Services Offered

The new programs and services vary from shallow to invasive.  Illinois’ Northwestern University, for example, offers a simple app called “Breathe” as a stress management tool. Students access guided meditations and breathing exercises to de-stress and instill confidence and well-being.

Some campuses focus on breaking through the loneliness and isolation by creating feel-good opportunities for students to interact with others, and thus reduce mental health and suicide risks.

Thus, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) holds a Random Acts of Kindness week, which encourages self-centered students to connect with kind acts like pinning happy messages on backpacks and giving out flowers to people. MIT Libraries encourage old-fashioned letters by providing stationary, postage and envelopes to students to write to people anywhere in the world. One MIT course gave out five dollar credits in campus cash accounts under the condition that students spend the money on things for someone else.

Involving Others to Monitor Students at Risk

The programs are not limited to services extended to students. They also involve the training of others to identify and act upon students at risk of anti-social or suicidal behavior. University officials are enlisting the help of residence hall staff, faculty, advisors and even fellow students to identify and intervene in cases of crisis.

The University of Pennsylvania developed its I CARE program as a means of building an interactive network of students, faculty and staff trained to intervene.

Other campuses are resorting to 24/7 crisis phones or chat lines that deal with mental health issues and suicide attempts. In keeping with the times, the University of California, Davis is using, not a hotline, but a Crisis Text Line (CTL) that provides instant mental health assistance via texting. The CTL features a digital toolkit and website that publicizes university services.

The “Means Restriction” Option

There are even more radical measures being implemented. It is not enough to monitor students or make treatment accessible.

There is what is called “means restriction.” This consists of limiting or removing access to places, things and other means that might lead others to self-harm. Dangerous things include access to arms, chemicals, rooftops, windows and high places. Campuses are encouraged to do an “environmental scan” to identify any place that might have a remote chance of proving lethal or dangerous to unstable students.

New York’s Cornell University has restricted access to problem areas near campus, even to the point of installing safety nets under city-owned bridges.

Addressing Causes

No system can ever be completely safe. Unbalanced minds will find ways of circumventing any programs that are put in place to guarantee their safety. Real solutions must address the causes of unbalance. 

Something is seriously wrong with the formation of these students in their earlier years.  They lack those life skills that are normally taught in the home. Small children gradually learn to deal with the proportional problems that prepare them later to tackle bigger problems.

There is also a lack of social skills because so many children are self-centered and are not taught to think in terms of helping others. Indeed, they are immersed in the frenetic intemperance of a culture that seeks gratification. Such conditions are the natural breeding ground for mental health and substance abuse problems.

Worst of all, young people are not taught to embrace sacrifice and suffering that they all must eventually face. Many do not recognize an objective moral law that defines right and wrong and guides their actions with meaning and purpose. They are not accustomed to having recourse to a loving God Who can aid them in their afflictions.

Thus, when they leave home, they find themselves alone and unable to cope. Given that most universities will exclude a moral solution, the problem will only get worse. 

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