Student activists at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, are demanding the resignation of a professor who refused to participate in an event in which white students and staff were asked to leave campus.
Evergreen State College’s “Day of Absence” is an annual event at the institution in which minority community members leave campus for the day to attend seminars and discussions on what it means to be a minority in the United States. This year, organizers flipped the script and asked white community members to leave campus for the day.
Biology professor Bret Weinstein published his opposition to the “Day of Absence” via an email he sent to the organizers. In the email, Weinstein condemned the structure of the event, arguing that “on a college campus, one’s right to speak–or to be–must never be based on skin color.”
Weinstein argued that the event’s structure, which asks a group that did not participate in the event’s planning to leave campus, is “an act of oppression in and of itself.”
Student activists confronted Weinstein and demanded that he resign.
“I do not believe students of color are targeted in the sciences here, but maybe I misunderstand what you mean by targeted,” Weinstein said. “I do not believe that anybody on our faculty, with intent, especially targets students of color.”
Weinstein took to Twitter, claiming that the police told him that he wasn’t safe on campus. Despite the police department’s concern for his safety, Weinstein claims that no one from the administration reached out to him.
Weinstein also pointed out that his students were being shamed on social media for defending him. In a post, one student wrote that he or she had the “names and faces of students in bret’s class who were filming the class protest yesterday and who are actively defending him.”
According to a report in the school’s newspaper, hundreds of students surrounded the college president’s office on May 24 to demand action on “racist teachers” at the institution.
“It’s important. It’s necessary,” one student said. “It’s life or death for us.”
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, these racist teachers have got to go,” other students chanted.
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com