Political Hypersensitivity, a.k.a. “Political Correctness”
Published at 16:13 on 3 November 2018
A bunch of people are flying off the handle at Sarah Lawrence College in suburban New York because one of the professors there happens to be politically conservative (or at least not liberal or leftist) and penned a mildly-worded op-ed in the New York Times. This basically proves that left-wing political correctness on campus is not a total myth.
The off-campus reaction to it further proves that right-wing political correctness isn’t a myth, either. Cue Reason magazine, which claimed “Abrams’ office door was vandalized” in response to the op-ed, but furnishes absolutely no evidence of this claim. They do show pictures of an office door covered in signs and notes, some using strongly-worded (but still nonthreatening) language. Sorry, taping notes and signs to a door is not “vandalism” by any stretch of the word.
It is still an overreaction, however. If Prof. Abrams had opined that LGBT students or students of color had no right to expect fair and equal treatment (he did not), and as such should basically like it or lump it (again, he did not), then plastering his door with notes that he should shut up or leave would have been appropriate. It would have been giving an intolerant bigot a taste of his own medicine.
It’s not the first time Abrams has penned such an op-ed, and it probably won’t be the last. If your ideology (wherever it falls on the political spectrum) is so fragile and weak that the only way it can prevail is if competing ideologies are not allowed at all, then your ideology is basically useless. There’s no way it can prevail in the big, bad world off campus.
What would have been a fair response? Prof. Abrams’ most recent op-ed contains a bunch of claims about statistical sampling Abrams has done, without divulging anything about how the sampling was done. Skepticism is certainly in order here: Abrams should be challenged to show his homework and furnish evidence that the sampling he did was conducted in a rigorous fashion. And if Abrams refuses the challenge, he should be dismissed as a hypersensitive right-winger with a persecution complex who is prone to blow smoke.
But, as it stands, his critics are the ones that have done the most to demonstrate hypersensitivity.