Crushing Dissent at UMass Amherst

For John, BLUF:  While I have my doubts about academic freedom over the years, it has always been a conceit of the academics that academic freedom existed.  Maybe it does, somewhere.  As for UMass Amherst, it is doubtful.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Criminalizing Dissent

The funny thing is it is the student who is being attacked for dissent, dissent against the current political orthodoxy of the faculty.

From The American Thinker, by Lawyers Karen D. Hurvitz and Ilya I. Feoktistov, 16 February 2020.

Here is the lede plus one:

Louis Shenker, a 21-year-old junior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, just wanted his MAGA hat back from the graduate student who ripped it off his head on campus.  He wore the hat to a December 6, 2018 protest organized by the university’s graduate student union against Trump and local police.  Video shows that when Louis, who is 5’6’’ and 140 pounds, arrived wearing the MAGA hat and holding a large sign, he was immediately surrounded by a hostile mob of older grad students cursing at him and calling him a white supremacist.  A woman lunged from the mob and snatched Louis’s MAGA hat.  Careful not to get caught on camera hitting Louis with their hands, they instead mobbed him like a colony of enraged penguins, using their bodies to push him from all sides, occasionally pecking at his head with their cardboard signs, and chanting in unison:  “THE PEOPLE, UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED.”

“Get the f**k out of here, you shouldn’t be in an anti-racist march!” screamed the hat thief.  A soft-spoken professor in the crowd warned Louis:  “It’s actually dangerous for you to come by yourself like that.”  As the protesters began to march and Louis tried to keep up while pleading for his hat, many of them, including several graduate student union members dressed in United Auto Workers gear, elbowed Louis into walls, lampposts, and other obstacles.  “You act like a Nazi, you’re going to get treated like a Nazi,” a female protester yelled at the Jewish grandson of Holocaust victims.  Louis left without his hat.

A month later, Louis was horrified to recognize the woman who stole his MAGA hat as Beth Peller, a 36-year-old grad student who would be teaching his mandatory freshman writing class.  Louis could not change his schedule, so he shaved his head and mustache, prayed that she would not recognize him, and wrote the essays she assigned with the correct leftist opinions she all but demanded.  Beth regaled her students with war stories about her time organizing violent anarchist movements, but never recognized the seemingly complaisant student as her victim from the protest.  Louis got an A.

And on it goes, until the University made it impossible for him to take his finals and he was, effectively, expelled from the University.♠  At least he has lawyers and the basic Rights of Englishmen still apply.

Shouldn't UMass Amherst be working on changing its name, as it changed its mascot due to being embarrassed by the past actions of Field Marshal Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, KB, after whom the whole shoot'ed match is named.

As a Massachusetts Resident, and as an American, I am embarrassed by UMass Amherst.  What is the head of the UMass System, President Marty Meehan, doing here?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠ On the other hand, it may be lucky for him.  He could end up going to a serious university.