EYE ON THE NEWS
The Institutional Hostage Crisis
America’s leaders have ceded their moral authority to the mob. It needs to stop.
Christopher F. Rufo
January 23, 2023 Politics and law
American institutions are in the midst of a hostage crisis. But the new hostage-takers don’t use tape, wire, or cuffs. Instead, they wield the even more powerful restraints of guilt, shame, and identity, which have allowed a small minority of left-wing activists to establish their ideology—notably, critical race theory—at the highest levels of institutional life.
For the past two years, I have explored the dynamics of ideological capture in a series of articles for City Journal that document the rise of critical race theory and coercive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs in America’s schools, corporations, and government agencies. Now, I’m observing the same phenomenon from the inside, as a participant in Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s recently announced initiative to recapture the Sunshine State’s smallest public university: New College of Florida.
Since signing my oath as one of the newly appointed trustees, I have spent many hours in communication with administrators, faculty, students, and alumni. Many of these people have whispered to me about the “culture problem” at New College. They have described something resembling a hostage situation on campus, in which left-wing activist students have mobilized a grievance narrative and exploited the DEI-style bureaucracy in order to isolate, shame, intimidate, and expel anyone who dissents from the politics of social justice.
As an institution, New College has long known about the problem. A consulting firm hired by the previous university president pointed out that the campus had become an “echo chamber,” with left-wing students creating a hostile political atmosphere and using the college’s online forum to launch polemics against conservative and religious students.
https://www.city-journal.org/institutional-hostage-crisis
