The College Fix

Life lesson: Adults have to take responsibility for their actions

The City University of New York committed an act of institutional cowardice last week when it opted to not punish a group of students for aggressively disrupting a conservative professor’s appearance on that campus. In one sense this is unsurprising: Colleges and universities are increasingly tolerant, if not outright encouraging, of thuggish, juvenile behavior in their student bodies. So long as the target is a conservative, it seems that campus administrations are a-ok with a sort of mob mentality among their students. It’s just a way of life now.

One small feature of this incident, however, stands out among the rest. The professor who was protested, Josh Blackman, reported on his blog that at one point a protester yelled at him: “You chose CUNY didn’t you. You knew this would happen.”

That accusation is a perfect encapsulation of the mindset of progressive campus radicals, who—along with more than a few pundits and commentators—seem to believe that these types of protests are essentially unavoidable: There seems to be a growing consensus that the regular incidence of unruly, sometimes violent mobs of campus activists is more or less a force of nature, something that is both uncontainable and ultimately unaccountable. “You came here to discuss conservative politics, what were we supposed to do?” appears to be the rallying cry of the day.

Of course this is silly nonsense. There is no reason at all that anyone has to get violently angry when Josh Blackman, or Ben Shapiro, or Heather Mac Donald comes to campus. There is plenty of room for debate and disagreement when it comes to national politics; nobody is arguing otherwise. But the default response mode for campus liberals, which usually operates as a cross between a lynch mob and a therapy puppy circle, is completely unnecessary. It’s just dumb.

Here is the truth, with which every wannabe protest maven should familiarize himself: If you want to show up at a well-respected and reasonable person’s speaking engagement, wave some signs, throw around some half-baked accusations about “white supremacy,” and disrupt the event and make others listen to your drivel, well, that’s your prerogative—and indeed your university may not even care if you do it. But don’t lie to yourself: You chose it of your own volition. Adults have to take responsibility for their actions, even if they are sometimes reluctant to do so.

MORE: Yale disgraces itself by honoring participants in student mob

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