Trying to Be Fair to Jeff Sessions

Attorney General Jeff Sessions

“Colleges Are Creating ‘a Generation of Sanctimonious, Sensitive, Supercilious Snowflakes,’ Sessions Says.” Such is the headline for a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education [if the article is behind a paywall, you can access it via Curmie’s Facebook page] about remarks by Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a high school summit sponsored by the conservative group Turning Point USA, one of whose core “aims” is to “Effectively push back against intolerance and bias against conservatives in higher education.” Same old, same old, right?

Let’s face it, Jeff Sessions is one of the dimmer bulbs in the considerably less than brilliant firmament that is the Trump cabinet. No, he’s not the worst of the lot, but Curmie isn’t entirely certain that putting Godzilla in charge of HUD wouldn’t be one of the better appointments of this administration (he'd certainly be better than Ben Carson). And Mr. Sessions knows about as much about higher education as Curmie does about quantum mechanics: he knows that such a thing exists.

That said, it’s time to be fair. Sure, his speech was laden with what the Chronicle’s Chris Quintana calls “well-worn stereotypes,” and yes, there was the obligatory fluffing of Sessions’s boss, but whereas such sycophancy might be a little more de rigeur now than in previous administrations, all this stuff is pretty much boilerplate. Moreover, it’s curious that few on the right seem terribly concerned with the free speech rights of people who disagree with them. OK, fine.

But, unless he deviated significantly from his prepared script, his speech wasn’t all that bad. No, he didn’t handle the “lock her up” chant very well: he looked embarrassed and tried to say something non-committal rather than telling the assembled adolescents to shut up and move on, i.e., precisely what Trump’s supporters tell his political adversaries all the time. (To his credit, Sessions did note after the fact that he should have brought up presumption of innocence.  Not as good as saying it on the spot, but partial credit.)  Nor did he choose to moderate a perfectly good rant by recognizing that (for example) even wealthy colleges can’t afford to pay for security for the likes of professional assholes like Milo Yiannopoulos every time the College Republicans will chip in for his speaker’s fee. And he sort of conflates a judge’s decision not to throw out a lawsuit with ruling in favor of the plaintiff.

But he certainly didn’t complain about being “a persecuted conservative student in Alabama,” as Quintana would have us believe. Not even Jeff Sessions is stupid enough to claim that conservatives were an oppressed minority in 1960s Alabama. He said that he was one of a small group Republicans who opposed the likes of Democrats like George Wallace. (Sessions implies without saying outright that it was Wallace’s segregationist stance that led to Sessions’s opposition, thus avoiding an outrageous lie and merely misleading the audience in, shall we say, a Clintonesque manner.) This would have been in the nascent years of the Southern strategy, during which time racist white Democrats became racist white Republicans (e.g., Strom Thurmond) without missing a beat, but thereby reformulating the national (especially Electoral College) political calculus.

More to the point, he didn’t actually say that “colleges” (in general, per the headline) or “Many of the nation’s colleges” (per the article) are “creating and coddling ‘a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes.’” He said that “some schools are doing everything they can to create” such… erm… crystalline ephemeralities. "Some," not "most," and certainly not "all."  Like it or not, he’s right. Just look at the litany of examples he provides:

At Brown University, a speech to promote transgender rights was cancelled after students protested because a Jewish group cosponsored the lecture. Virginia Tech disinvited a conservative African American speaker because he had written on race issues and they worried about protests disrupting the event…. 

Through “trigger warnings” about “microaggressions,” cry closets, “safe spaces,” optional exams, therapy goats, and grade inflation, too many schools are coddling our young people and actively preventing them from scrutinizing the validity of their beliefs. That is the exact opposite of what they are supposed to do. 

After the 2016 election, for example, they held a “cry-in” at Cornell, they had therapy dogs on campus at the University of Kansas, and Play-dough and coloring books at the University of Michigan. Students at Tufts were encouraged to “draw about their feelings.”

These episodes, however isolated, are the stuff of headlines, and however well-intentioned their proponents may be, they're embarrassing: to the university, to progressive thought, and to education writ large.

In one of the last entries of my previous blogging persona, Curmie (then known as Mulcher4) extolled the “Virtues of Doubt”; that essay happened to have been about the murder of abortionist Dr. George Tiller, but the point was more universal. In that essay over nine years ago, I wrote, “Absolute self-confidence terrifies me, and not simply because my own neuroses are so manifest.” This is still true, even more so when that confidence/arrogance/hubris manifests in a post-adolescent.

Equally importantly, the very essence of education is to throw a lot of ideas into the ring and see which ones seem to fit the evidence. Recognizing the difference between fact and opinion matters. Free speech matters. This isn’t about simple politeness, which is generally a good thing, or about respecting others’ opinions, which is also generally a good thing. Nor is it about sitting in a circle and singing Kumbaya. It’s about fighting for the truth, not for a personal dictum that may or may not be grounded in rational thought. Above all, it’s a recognition that people who see the world differently aren’t inherently evil, and that what we see on that cave wall over there just might be a shadow instead of the full image.

Curmie identifies politically as a contrarian: whatever the political landscape in his area, he’s likely to be in opposition. After 17 years in East Texas, Curmie may be regarded as a lefty (and not merely because that’s the hand he writes with, although that’s also true: cue the Simon and Garfunkel, “communist ‘cause I’m left-handed, that’s the hand they use, well, never mind”), but plonk him down in Massachusetts and he might just move a little right-ward. More to the point, to quote myself from almost seven years ago, “alas, I must tell you that in my experience there have been more assaults on academic freedom and 1st amendment rights on campus from the left than the right.” This statement is, alas, more true now than it was then.

In case you hadn’t noticed, there are a lot more people on Curmie’s right than on his left, but if Curmie ever gets into trouble for having a big mouth or an over-active keyboard, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it’s for not being sufficiently “progressive” or “inclusive” or otherwise orthodox in his liberalism… you know, for crimes like suggesting that men are allowed to have ethical objections to abortion, or that people who voted for somebody I didn’t aren’t (necessarily) evil, or that casting a white girl as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame falls a little short of burning a cross while wearing a white hood and robe.

A couple of other points to make in passing:

• Curmie is a fan of both FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, mentioned with approbation in Sessions’s speech) and the ACLU for much the same reason: they care about the rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. FIRE is thought to be conservative, the ACLU to be liberal. But that’s only because their clients tend—by no means exclusively—to break that way. Not every case either organization takes up is necessarily worthy of the time and effort, but Curmie is grateful that both organizations exist.

• It was interesting to note that Mr. Sessions doesn’t really address university curricula or faculty as part of his critique, concentrating instead on administrators, particularly in the student services area. Could this be the beginnings of a recognition on the part of the right that university faculty (and their colleagues in public education in primary and secondary schools) aren’t responsible for everything that has ever gone wrong in this country, from the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby to the popularity of Nickelback? Nah, I didn’t think so. 

•  Fox News whines predictably that the gathering of a few hundred high school kids from around the country to listen to a gaggle of partisan speakers doesn’t get enough press coverage. “Charlie Kirk, the 24-year-old founder of TPUSA, now in its sixth year, told Fox News that a similar event for young liberals ‘would be streamed everywhere... and it would be glorified as a wonderful organization,’ calling the media bias ‘blatant’ and ‘corrosive.’” Curmie would like an example—just one, please—of an event for liberal kids, or even, God forbid, for outstanding high school kids regardless of their politics or lack thereof (!) which has received even comparable coverage. Curmie is a patient man; he’ll wait. 

• It does strike Curmie as a bit odd that a speech about free speech opportunities for all, and about the importance of engaging with “difficult or challenging ideas” should be delivered at an explicitly partisan gathering by an A.G. who is addressing them not really in his official capacity, and who was only one of a series of utterly like-minded speakers who fed them the same one-dimensional pabulum every day, all week. The message of the right is therefore just as hypocritical as that of the left: our side should have the right to express our opinions… and to stifle yours.

La la how the life goes on.