The demands of “woke” groups that all our institutions be scrubbed clean of anything that offends them are being heard at colleges and universities. Most often, the administrators happily cave in, which merely triggers more demands.
At Washington & Lee University, the cave-in led to the creation of a group of alums, students, parents, and others who don’t want the social-justice warriors to reshape the school. They call themselves “The Generals Redoubt” and in today’s Martin Center article, Jenna Robinson writes about their battle with the forces of PC.
She writes: “The group’s July 2019 newsletter explains that ‘A redoubt is a military term designating a temporary defensive position from which offensive operations can be launched. We thought the term aptly described what our group was trying to do.’”
The trouble, of course, is that the school’s history is entwined with people who owned slaves. Social-justice types never miss an opportunity to demand that a school with such a history cleanse itself in order to prove that it wants diversity and inclusion.
Robinson continues, “Tom Rideout, president of the Generals Redoubt, is particularly concerned about the effect of recent changes on Washington and Lee’s students. ‘Students are disadvantaged in their educational preparation for the world at large,’ Rideout said. ‘And the focus on diversity, inclusion, and identity bloats the staff and payrolls and divides the students.’”
The Generals Redoubt is also fighting recent changes in the curriculum that are meant to placate the left.
Robinson concludes, “The zeitgeist at many universities calls for completely erasing the sins of the past from every campus building, quad, and sign, taking with them the university’s place in history. Washington and Lee, with direction from the Generals Redoubt, can show that there is another way. It can set an example of how to live with the ambiguity of the past. Although Washington and Lee is unique, lessons from its experience can inform all of our historic universities as they learn to acknowledge and understand the past.”