UMich targets Ben Shapiro with prof of Nazi history 'enwhitenment' talk

The University of Michigan’s history department and history club held an event called “When Provocateurs Dabble in History: Ben Shapiro and the Enwhitenment” on Tuesday night.

This event occurred at the same time as Shapiro’s UMich speech, according to The Daily Wire. UMich Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Angela Dillard, as well as history professors Anne Berg, Hussein Fancy, and John Carson served as panelists.

”Hear from faculty and student speakers about Shapiro’s attack on colleges and his problematic historical interpretations,” the UMich history department said in its Facebook announcement of the event, adopting a portion of the event description.

”I’m not an expert on the Enlightenment; I am actually a historian of Nazi Germany,” Berg said. “Think about this particular moment in time when facts have come under attack.”

[RELATED: Christian university cancels Ben Shapiro over ‘rhetoric,’ then changes course]

The professor began discussing Shapiro’s new book, “The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great.”

”The story that Shapiro seems to suggest, that there is a reason behind the West’s dominance that is to be identified with moral purpose and rationality, is, in my view, somewhat problematic and can only hold water if we ignore a very large part of the story, that the West became great or prominent or dominant because it did some other things also. Not that these things were perhaps irrational...but they were simply not particularly moral,” Berg noted.

The professor cited genocides perpetrated by the West, slavery, the “expertly administrated famine in India,” and more. She suggested that incidents like the Holocaust are not “aberrations” from the Enlightenment norm, but rather part of the pattern.

WATCH:

None of the other panelists’ presentations were available via YouTube in time for press and the University of Michigan stated on Facebook that the no recording was taken of the event.

”As an alumna of The University of Michigan, I’m ashamed of the history department for doing this,” Leslie Colbert Baker commented on the history department’s Facebook announcement. “This closed-mindedness, the belittling of differing viewpoints, and the far-left faculty members who are propagandizing students with their ideology are some of the main reasons I no longer donate money to the school.”

[RELATED: After Ben Shapiro speech, student gov mulls change to campus speaker rules]

”Actually we History faculty members believe that our students can think for themselves,” Carson responded to Baker. “The event did not belittle Ben Shapiro, but it did take issue with his viewpoint and try to bring to the discussion a broader array of facts about the past than Shapiro seems willing to admit.”

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @ShimshockAndAwe