If students don’t like your views, shut up or get out

Evergreen State College in Washington is the latest of our institutions of higher education at which some have stepped forward and said, look at us. We play ideologically, socially awry, morally confused games and are proud of it. Get in the way and watch us snarl.

If you doubt the fierce intent, meet Bret Weinstein, a biology professor there who had a problem with reinvented racial segregation. He politely spoke out, was lambasted by fellow professors and visited by some 50 angered, wide-eyed yelpers screeching names at him outside one of his classes.

He came to feel threatened as rioters carried bats around and did $100,000 worth of damage to school properties. Campus police were once told to back off. The college president met varied demands even after protestors shouted abusive four-letter words at him at a meeting in his office.

This virulent protest, not exactly one of a kind, comes on top of other higher education worries. A brief list: safe spaces, political correctness, trigger warnings, speech squelching, devastating tuition, grade inflation, classroom deflation, play over study, dehumanizing post-modernist professorial bunk, lack of due process for guys accused of sexual assault, contempt for Western civilization and political diversity ranging from far left to not so far left.

Such generalizations as the last one, of course, are packed with exceptions and subtleties, and there is no small amount of excellence mixed up in all of this. But a drift into excess at too many schools seems more and more to be a dive into pandemonium. The Evergreen story gives one a special shiver.

Here’s a school radical from its start in the 1960s. It has been invested in some interesting teaching techniques, has been focused intensely on social justice and is a place where black students would voluntarily leave campus once a year for some questing discussions.

This past year, Evergreen’s thousands of white students were encouraged to do the vacating. Weinstein, a liberal politically, objected, calling it a form of segregation. Dozens of professors signed a letter saying he needed disciplining, although he more or less got it when the protestors showed up at a class.

They shouted down his explanations, called him a racist and made it clear they had no tolerance for views other than their own. They soon called for him to be fired and were furious about a video that exposed their behavior on Facebook. The whole thing got so badly out of control — violence could be on the way, protestors said — that Weinstein and his biology students met off campus in a park for their explorations. This year’s graduation ceremony was moved off campus as well, and state legislators talked about defunding the school, letting it go private.

George Bridges, president of Evergreen since 2015, wrote a letter to The Seattle Times that spoke of misinformation and threats from off campus. The nation is caught up in an era of polarization that requires adaptation, he said as he allowed that there had never been so much “fear, emotion and invective” at Evergreen before, that steps had been taken and that more were needed.

The worry from where I sit is that not a few at our higher education institutions are helping foment the polarization. The record on free speech has been deplorable lately, and the rudiments of what this country of ours is all about have been neglected. As much was shockingly illustrated by a history test of seniors at some of our top colleges and universities. Administered by The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, it showed 65 percent did not know what a high school student should have mastered.

Yes, steps must be taken if the American future is to bloom instead of fizzle.