A Simple Way To Stop Protest Madness At Universities – OpEd

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Barely a month since I came back after a short trip to Oxford, I read about Yale students protesting against their English courses; the courses being too colonial and White. The organisers of this movement, are helped and organized by a faculty professor, newly appointed, named Dr Jill Richards, her claim to fame is having done pioneering research on Queer resistance cells during Second World war and attending a “Commie camp”.

Without pointing out the statistically insignificant effect of any Queer resistance cells anywhere in any time, affecting the broader geopolitics, it is ironic that she rallies and encourages students against the same “Western civilization” which fought against the epitome of state terrors in both Marxist and Nazi societies, when they were systematically killing people on the basis of their freedom of speech and sexuality. But there’s a broader significance in all of it.

In Mizzou, the protesters were aided and their rage channelized by Professors, notable among them is the now discredited Dr Melissa Click, herself with post-structural far-leftist sympathies. In this side of the pond, the BBC’s new Midsummer Night’s Dream is unashamedly edited and altered in the light if the narrative of a director with a distinct and vocal social agenda. White lecturers cannot attend equality conference, simply because they are white, In UK. I am not white by ethnicity, and I say this now, if this is not racism, I don’t know what it.

Without going into any further orotund circumlocution, here’s the simple hypothesis. 

This is an orchestration on both sides of the Atlantic, wherein we see a minority of academics, with a distinct post-structural Foucaultist ultra left view, selfishly instigating students to gain greater control of academia in order to promote their world view. The students who are protesting are being mere pawns in this bigger game.

It is beyond nonsensical to call Shakespeare colonial; someone who wrote about a romance between an ethnic Moor and a European noble woman five hundred years back. Nor is it worthy to point out how hypocritical it is to protest “Western civilization” while essentially appropriating the agencies and culture which guarantees this free speech and rights to protest. But it is clear, there’s just one way to stop this madness from snowballing further.

Cut the funding, kick them out.

There’re a handful of people, students and professors who are behind this disruptions everywhere. Find them out, cut their scholarships, and replace them. As a foreign born doctoral researcher who is in love with the Western values and grateful for the scholarships and life it offers, I can assure that, many more professors, young academics and students will be more than willing to fill their places.

Sumantra Maitra

Sumantra Maitra is a Doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK. He spends way too much time on Twitter, @MrMaitra

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