John Daniel Davidson devotes a Federalist column to the impact of the Paris terror attacks on the recent college campus protests.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks Friday night in Paris that left 129 dead and hundreds wounded, we can safely say the U.S. student protesters’ 15 minutes of fame are over. The protests, which began at the University of Missouri and Yale and quickly spread to other schools drawing national media coverage, were always quixotic, seemingly conjured out of thin air.
Vague accusations that minority students are systematically oppressed carried demands for “safe spaces” and an end to “microaggressions,” as if American college campuses today are enclaves of the Jim Crow South. Throw in calls for student debt forgiveness, free tuition, and a $15-an-hour minimum wage for all college employees, and you more or less had a series of Bernie Sanders rallies on campuses from California to Massachusetts.
The Paris attacks, perpetrated by a violent global movement animated by a fanatical interpretation of Islam, have unmasked these students’ claims for what they are: the narcissistic phantoms of a coddled and privileged generation. Oppression and bigotry are real, but you won’t find much of it on our college campuses. …
… In reality, the supposed oppression of minority students from Amherst to Mizzou appears to be for the most part nonexistent—at best aspirational. But little wonder that if you’re taught to see racial injustice everywhere, you’ll find it anywhere: rumors of black students being turned away from a Halloween frat party, an innocuous reference to fitting the “CMC mold” (for which Claremont McKenna College’s dean of students was forced to resign), or some yokel driving by flying a Confederate flag. Such is the weight of “systematic oppression” on American college campuses today.
Compare these microaggressions to the macroaggression unleashed on unsuspecting Parisians. For the terrorists who slaughtered concertgoers and bombed the soccer stadium, bigotry and hatred and oppression are not theoretical playthings but vital parts of a demented religious creed.
