Not all the news is cautionary. Here and there are refreshing, springlike notes of renewal. Take the educational establishment. We have long been inured to the spectacle of American colleges and universities squirming in the lavender grip of wokeness. Name the issue and you could predict the consensus. Moreover, at most institutions, it was not just the faculty and the students who had boarded the train of luxury beliefs, the Greta Thunberg Express, towing a caboose of transsexual activism and a buffet car full of anti-Israel, “anti-racist,” and anti–“white privilege” condiments. The presidents and chancellors of these institutions were the conductors checking tickets and firemen stoking the engines.
Lately, however, there have been some hiccups, some minor derailments even, as reality has slipped in among the switches and precipitated a few pileups. All across the country, students have been demonstrating against Israel, harassing their Jewish confreres, and generally making nuisances of themselves. At most institutions, administrators have turned a blind eye to the disruptions. But at Vanderbilt University last month, the disruptors found themselves disrupted. Some thirty students had occupied the chancellor’s office building to protest the cancellation of a vote to prevent student-government funds from going to businesses that work with Israel. According to Campus Reform, “Three students were charged with Class A misdemeanor assault after they pushed a Community Services Officer and a staff member who offered to meet with them while they forcefully entered Kirkland Hall.” Some students were expelled, while several others were suspended. Good.
The waking from wokeness, which involves the rediscovery of the spine, is not confined to Vanderbilt. At Pomona College in California, Gabrielle Starr, the president, has taken decisive action against students who stormed an administrative building and refused to leave. At least eighteen students were arrested. Quoth Starr: “Any participants in today’s events . . . who turn out to be Pomona students, are subject to immediate suspension.”
As the New York Post observed, Starr’s response at Pomona suggests “colleges are starting to rethink broad campus free speech policies that have allowed universities to became daily staging grounds for pro-Palestinian student demonstrators since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.” The University of Michigan has also experienced an awakening after Santa J. Ono, its president, was shouted down and prevented from speaking at a convocation event in March. His response was swift and definitive. The university promulgated a new “disruptive activity policy” that imposes new penalties for students who disrupt official proceedings. “No one is entitled to disrupt the lawful activities or speech of others,” Ono explained in a statement announcing the new policy. “Because the university is a public institution, not only are we prohibited from interfering with lawful speech, we are required to intervene when we become aware that others are interfering with or disrupting lawful speech on our campus.”
A few swallows do not a summer make. But these welcome little eruptions of sanity, though as yet isolated, are heartening. We hope they are only the beginning of a general instauration.
