University Administrators on the Rittenhouse Verdict

Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic) has a very good article on this; an excerpt:

Rather than encourage independent scrutiny, administrators on many campuses have issued statements that presuppose answers to hotly contested questions, and assert opinions about the not-guilty verdict in the case and its ostensible significance as though they were matters of community consensus.

The whole episode is an illustration of a bigger problem in academia: Administrators make ideologically selective efforts to soothe the feelings of upset faculty members and students. These actions impose orthodoxies of thought, undermining both intellectual diversity and inclusion. "Certainly," declared a statement by Dwight A. McBride, president of the New School, "the verdict raises questions about … vigilantism in the service of racism and white supremacy." In reality, many observers are far from certain that, when 12 jurors concluded that a white man shot three other white men in self-defense, they were saying anything about white supremacy.