Here’s a story that provides a cautionary tale for conservatives, like David
Horowitz, who believe they can outwit their opponents on campus by fighting fire with fire.
In a classic Horowitz-style campaign, Michelle Malkin and other conservatives took up the cause of students who complained about an instructor at Bellevue Community College in Washington. The instructor had asked a math question which included these words: “Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300-foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second.” Outraged conservatives around the country bombarded the campus with phone calls and emails.
The conservatives won … but at what cost? Seizing on the controversy, like a typical entrepreneurial college administrator, President Jean Floten turned it into an opportunity to expand the power of the administration. While she sanctioned the professor, even prompting him to request “cultural sensitivity training,” her other changes will enable the campus diversity policemen to impose even more of their one-sided PC indoctrination on all students, staff, and faculty.
Promising to “redouble” the college’s “efforts to improve racial and cultural sensitivity,” Floten announced more diversity training and the hiring of new staff for this purpose. Most ominously, for those of us who believe in academic freedom, she said that Bellevue will add a diversity (“pluralism”) component to “program review and employee evaluations.” This looks like some sort of loyalty oath. Some victory!