It’s time to break out the tissue paper, because tears of sympathy will flow after you learn about what Duke University students have to endure. Sure, they may have the resources to pay for a four-year college education priced over $200,000. And yes, they may have the privilege of attending one of the most elite universities on Planet Earth. But there is “an insensitivity and disturbing lack of awareness” on campus that causes some students to “feel unsupported, if not unwelcome at the university.” That’s according to Duke’s new Task Force on Bias and Hate Issues, which recently released a 70-page report analyzing the university’s alleged racist, homophobic, and anti-LGBTQ underbelly.
To change campus culture, the Task Force recommends, among other things: requiring students to take more diversity-themed courses; allowing students to leave class during “important campus events” [read: protest for progressive causes]; and creating an environment in which people do not “laugh at insensitive jokes.” And so we’ve arrived. Higher education’s brave new world of microagressions, “white privilege” shaming, and ultra sensitivity now requires universities such as Duke to waste resources creating mind-numbing reports and “bias response teams” to placate the small subset of students and university bureaucrats who believe that these are real issues. Stephanie Keaveney analyzes this dangerous trend, which she says threatens free speech and academic freedom, in today’s Pope Center article.