Glenn C. Loury, a professor of social sciences at Brown University, penned a response — a dissent really — to a “Dear Colleague” letter written by the president of Brown and joined by almost the entirety of the senior administrators. That letter was about the death of George Floyd and the resulting wave of civil protest.

It’s a blistering critique of the emptiness of virtue signaling.

Who cares what some paper-pushing apparatchik thinks? It’s all a bit creepy and unsettling. Why must this university’s senior administration declare, on behalf of the institution as a whole and with one voice, that they unanimously — without any subtle differences of emphasis or nuance — interpret contentious current events through a single lens?

City Journal kindly republished it. And it’s a reminder that you’re not alone, and that gadflys and contrarians are still out there, even as the public square is defaced by a hysterical conformism, which is what iconoclastic movements always turn out to be.

If you don’t know Glenn Loury, his reflections on current events are often hosted by my friends at Bloggingheads.tv