Boycotts, bans, and burn books: 8 outrageous incidents of Ivy League leftism in 2020
The Ivy League is a group of the United States' eight most prestigious universities. The schools produce many of the nation’s future political leaders, businessmen, scientists, and engineers.
The Ivy League is also rife with leftism, as Campus Reform reported throughout 2020.
Students at Harvard asked administrators to ban Trump administration alumni from serving as faculty members, teaching fellows, and guest speakers.
An open letter to Harvard administrators said that although Harvard usually hires officials from outgoing presidential administrations, students are “extremely concerned” about the Trump administration’s impacts on “fundamental democratic institutions.”
The students request a “system of accountability” for “high-level political appointees and Trump administration consultants before they are invited as fellows or to teach or speak on campus.”
Harvard, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s second highest-ranked university.
Students at Cornell University can use their status as a “person of color” to exempt themselves from the university’s flu vaccine mandate.
“Students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC) may have personal concerns about fulfilling the Compact requirements based on historical injustices and current events,” said Cornell Health’s vaccine requirement FAQ.
Cornell, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s eighteenth highest-ranked university.
The U.S. Department of Justice concluded an investigation into Yale, stating that it illegally discriminates against White and Asian-American applicants in its undergraduate admissions process in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
White and Asian-American applicants have a one-tenth to one-fourth chance of admission compared with African-Americans who have the same or similar qualifications, according to the Justice Department.
Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Eric Dreiband stated that it is “past time for American institutions to recognize that all people should be treated with decency and respect and without unlawful regard to the color of their skin.”
Yale, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s fourth highest-ranked university.
Students at the University of Pennsylvania boycotted classes on Election Day in the interest of “wellness.” However, they also used the boycott to push demands oriented toward defunding the school’s police department.
One student told Campus Reform that canceling classes on election day is “unreasonable all around,” since it teaches students that “if you don’t get your way in something or don’t like the result of something, you can just avoid your responsibilities.”
The end result is a “breed of entitled citizens,” the student added.
Penn, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s eighth highest-ranked university.
More than 1,000 students, alumni, and faculty at Dartmouth signed a petition demanding that the school dissociate itself from the conservative student newspaper the Dartmouth Review.
The Review addressed the letter with an editorial entitled “An Overdue Response to the College Jacobins.”
“It was only a matter of time before the crosshairs would be set on The Review, and in the typical fashion, it manifested in an attempt to stifle rational discourse by appealing to a higher power,” the conservative newspaper stated. “It’s unfortunate that this type of intellectual cowardice has come about on campus, and I would argue that it is antithetical to the pursuits of liberal institutions such as our own wherein debate ought to be fundamental in the search for higher truth. I guess in the post-modern age, truth no longer matters much. Go figure.”
Dartmouth, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s thirteenth highest-ranked university.
Students at Brown created a “Burn Brown Book,” which contained a progressive wish list that included defunding the police and “free” college.
Written entirely in memes and slang, the book tells students — who pay nearly $60,000 in tuition each year — how to “dismantle” the institution.
A series of articles shows readers the necessary information to successfully carry out their insurrection. One essay argues that Brown should adopt Critical Muslim Studies and Critical Hawai’ian Studies departments as valuable “decolonial disciplines that unsettle white, liberal, secularism as normative.”
The Daily Princetonian — Princeton University’s student newspaper — published an editorial encouraging the university to punish “racist speech.”
“For too long, White people, and particularly White men, in this country and on this campus, have held the power to decide what constitutes acceptable speech and action,” says the piece. “They have consistently deemed racist, and particularly anti-Black, fictions acceptable.”
The Daily Princetonian suggests “anti-racist training for those who transgress the harassment policy.”
Columbia Law’s Human Rights Institute criticized the Trump administration on its website in a piece entitled “Human Rights Must be at the Top of the Biden Agenda.”
“The past four years highlight how calculated disregard for human rights at home and abroad disrupts lives, fuels fear and insecurity at our university, and leads to injustice in our communities and around the world,” said the group.
The group then suggested that the Biden administration undo Trump’s “regressive policies” that inflicted “significant harm.”
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft
