Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Heather Mac Donald, 'Get Up, Stand Up'

Following-up from yesterday, "Heather Mac Donald Shut Down by 'Black Lives Matter' Thugs at Claremont McKenna (VIDEO)."

Here she is, at City Journal, "All who cherish free expression, especially on campuses, must combat the growing zeal for censorship":
Where are the faculty? American college students are increasingly resorting to brute force, and sometimes criminal violence, to shut down ideas they don’t like. Yet when such travesties occur, the faculty are, with few exceptions, missing in action, though they have themselves been given the extraordinary privilege of tenure to protect their own liberty of thought and speech. It is time for them to take their heads out of the sand.

I was the target of such silencing tactics two days in a row last week, the more serious incident at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and a less virulent one at UCLA.

The Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna had invited me to meet with students and to give a talk about my book, The War on Cops, on April 6. Several calls went out on Facebook to “shut down” this “notorious white supremacist fascist Heather Mac Donald.” A Facebook post from “we, students of color at the Claremont Colleges” announced grandiosely that “as a community, we CANNOT and WILL NOT allow fascism to have a platform. We stand against all forms of oppression and we refuse to have Mac Donald speak.” A Facebook event titled “Shut Down Anti-Black Fascist Heather Mac Donald” and hosted by “Shut Down Anti-Black Fascists” encouraged students to protest the event because Mac Donald “condemns [the] Black Lives Matter movement,” “supports racist police officers,” and “supports increasing fascist ‘law and order.’” (My supposed fascism consists in trying to give voice to the thousands of law-abiding minority residents of high-crime areas who support the police and are desperate for more law-enforcement protection.)

The event organizers notified me a day before the speech that a protest was planned and that they were considering changing the venue from CMC’s Athenaeum to one with fewer glass windows and easier egress. When I arrived on campus, I was shuttled to what was in effect a safe house: a guest suite for campus visitors, with blinds drawn. I could hear the growing crowds chanting and drumming, but I could not see the auditorium that the protesters were surrounding. One female voice rose above the chants with particularly shrill hysteria. From the balcony, I saw a petite blonde female walk by, her face covered by a Palestinian head scarf and carrying an amplifier on her back for her bullhorn. A lookout was stationed about 40 yards away and students were seated on the stairway under my balcony, plotting strategy.

Since I never saw the events outside the Athenaeum, which remained the chosen venue, an excellent report from the student newspaper, the Student Life, provides details of the scene...
Sounds like a freakin' war zone. Sheesh.

Keep reading.

BONUS: Here's her book, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

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