Amid chaos over an event in which white students and staff were asked to leave campus, an Evergreen State College professor is condemning one of his colleagues who refused to participate and praising those students calling for his resignation.
A May 29 open letter from a faculty member at Evergreen State College scolds progressive professor Bret Weinstein for his portrayal of the sequence of events that led him to hold his biology classes off campus.
Weinstein has faced a furor on the Olympia, Washington public college campus after he refused to participate in the school’s annual “Day of Absence,” which, this year, asked all white community members to leave campus.
Writing in defense of the student protesters that called for Weinstein’s resignation, professor Peter Bohmer condemned Weinstein for his portrayal of the events and his appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program to discuss the incident.
Bret Weinstein has demonstrated on more than one occasion a very limited understanding of the pervasive institutional and systemic racism that continues to be pervasive in U.S. society as the election and program of Donald Trump demonstrates. That he believes in racial justice in an abstract way is not a sufficient excuse. His comments both before and especially on and after, May 23rd, 2017 demonstrate a pattern of not taking seriously the needs and safety of Black students and staff at the Evergreen State College. On Friday, May 26 th, Weinstein appeared on Tucker Carlson’s program on Fox News and accepted and did not challenge the misinformation put forward by Carlson, e.g., that whites were forced to leave campus during the “Day of Absence” in April of this year. The focus of this day was learning to understand racism more deeply and how to challenge it. In reality, 200 white students were asked to volunteer, not forced, to leave campus for this discussion, a minor departure from previous years where students, staff and faculty of color had left campus for one day.
However, Weinstein made it quite clear, both in his original email that sparked the chaos and in his appearance on Tucker Carlson, that initially no one was forced to leave campus. In his original email, Weinstein wrote that he considered it unfair that one group is “encouraging another group to go away.” For his stance, Weinstein has faced calls for his resignation and a formal call for a suspension without pay.
Despite the treatment that Weinstein has received, Bohmer praised the protesters who called for his resignation, claiming that he stands in “solidarity with and support for the student-led movement at the Evergreen State College, ‘Those Who Are Not Often Heard.'” He goes on to suggest that Weinstein has not been treated unfairly:
The winning of these demands would lead to a far more inclusive and just campus. Most of the media attention has focused on faculty member, Bret Weinstein, and his supposed mistreatment by some students. Only one of the twelve demands mentions Bret Weinstein, and this demand calls for his suspension, not firing. This movement is about far more than Bret Weinstein.
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