Whitman College Professor Blames Bret Weinstein for Evergreen Chaos

In a column for Inside Higher Ed, Whitman College Professor Christopher Liese blamed Evergreen State College Professor Bret Weinstein for the chaos that forced him to relocate his family off campus due to safety concerns.

In a June 29 column for Inside Higher Ed, Professor Liese blamed that the way in which Weinstein voiced his objections to Evergreen’s “Day of Absence” event for the backlash he received.

“Yet an Evergreen biology professor, Bret Weinstein, chose to voice his objection in an unfortunate form, sparking an already charged campus community into an explosion,” Liese writes. “As a faculty member at a liberal arts college, Weinstein might have chosen not to chide but to question the student leadership encouraging the participation of white people in absenting themselves from the Evergreen community.”

Bari Weiss of the New York Times called the “Day of Absence” exercise “a day of racial segregation.” On the other hand, how did Weinstein respond? He wrote an eloquent email in which he pointed out the distinction between “a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles…and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away.”

Comments on the article condemn Professor Liese for suggesting that Weinstein’s actions somehow justified the backlash. Some accused him of “victim-blaming.”

“Since when is clearly-worded criticism of an idea the same as objecting to something in an unfortunate form? Because that’s all he did in his e-mail–he criticized an idea and explained why it warranted such criticism,” one commenter wrote.

“I’ve read the email from Weinstein that apparently sparked this whole thing. It’s completely even-tempered and not at all inflammatory. If you really see this as an attempt to “castigate,” then I don’t know what to tell you, other than this comes across as victim-blaming,” wrote another.

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