Universities Elevate Former Oppressors as Leaders, Fueling Student Discontent

Luke RosiakMay 3, 2024

The review of academic papers reveals that universities facing student ⁢unrest have a history of‌ appointing leaders focused on⁢ oppression issues. Examples include UCLA’s Provost Darnell Hunt and Sacramento State’s President Luke⁣ Wood. The‍ unrest‌ reflects a broader ideological conflict ⁢within academic ⁣institutions, raising questions about the relevance of such work in real-world settings. ⁣Similar confrontations have occurred at Rutgers and Portland State University.

The universities that selected presidents with academic track records that consist largely of political screeds about racial oppression and other identity groups are now melting down because of students who say they’re oppressed, a review of academic papers shows.

At UCLA, Provost Darnell Hunt donned a mask and sat on the ground with protesters, who told him that police are on the side of “Zionists,” and that police are going to commit “brutality” against them. After he said he had “to go,” they screamed “shame” at him.

MUST WATCH FOOTAGE: This is UCLA’s Provost, Darnell Hunt, trying to negotiate with the UCLA Encampment Activists.

They effectively lecture him and when he tries to briefly clarify something, they get mad at him, so he decides to leave. The Encampment Occupiers laugh at this… pic.twitter.com/fKJRcXHykQ

— Stu (@thestustustudio) May 2, 2024

Hunt made his career opining on purported police brutality and racism in the aftermath of riots triggered by purported police brutality against Rodney King, writing a book called “Screening the Los Angeles ‘Riots’: Race, Seeing, and Resistance.” The titles of his academic papers, below, give an idea of his area of expertise:

Reclaiming UCLA (lamenting that “a county that is 9.8% African American — now has a lower percentage of black freshman than either crosstown rival USC or UC Berkeley”)
Channeling Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America
Birth of a Nation’hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson Case

And at Sacramento State, President Luke Wood went back on a threat to remove an anti-Israel encampment, instead allowing them to remain “indefinitely.” Wood has made his career writing about student activism and the oppression of blacks, authoring the book “The Sources of American Student Activism” and papers such as:

Political Consciousness and Student Activism
Racelighting Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in Education
Treat Them Like Human Beings: Black Children’s Experiences With Racial Microaggressions in Early Childhood Education During COVID-19
I Love My Hair: The Weaponizing of Black Girls Hair by Educations in Early Childhood Educations
Black Men in Higher Education

The review suggests that the unrest on college campuses is not the result of a subversive faction, but rather one in line with the ideology of those installed at the highest ranks of the institutions. The papers, focused heavily on social sciences, also raise questions about the real-world value of work conducted at even the highest levels of academia.

At Rutgers University, an anti-Semitic protester told a Jewish student that “Hitler would have loved you.” Rutgers leadership went on to give in to many of the protesters’ demands, such as agreeing “to develop a plan for the creation of an Arab Cultural Center with designated physical space and a hiring plan for administrators and staff,” and to “develop training sessions on anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim racism for all RU administrators and staff.”

Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway — a former professor of African American Studies at Yale — has contributed to the academic world through papers such as:

Race, slavery, and Ideology in Colonial North America
Resistance and African American identity before the Civil War
The Black Body As Archive of Memory (which “considers the film Shaft and how it was, from beginning to end, one extended middle finger to white America”)
How to Read The Souls of Black Folk in a Post-Racial Age

Rutgers – Watch as a campus protestor tells a Jewish student “Free Palestine, Hitler would have loved you.”

Just another example of what this is all about – Jew hatred.

Plain and simple Jewish hatred. pic.twitter.com/syUOz7tY4z

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) May 2, 2024

At Portland State University, occupiers seized the campus’ main library, fighting with janitors and police, destroying rare books, painting it with communist symbols, and smashing a historic sculpture based on the Torah.

Today: Portland news station KGW captured the moment the Antifa “guards” for the @Portland_State library occupation pushed someone down the stairs. Far-left extremists have seized the entire Millar Library “for Gaza” and are destroying it inside. pic.twitter.com/PoeeNyhYJJ

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) May 2, 2024

The university’s president, Ann Cudd, made her career off of lamenting oppression, publishing papers such as one simply titled “Oppression,” which cites Karl Marx, and another titled “Sporting Metaphors: Competition and the Ethos of Capitalism,” which explains that “whole subcultures live among us that avoid sports or capitalism, such as academics.” Her other papers include:

Analyzing Oppression
How to Explain Oppression
Oppression: The Fundamental Injustice of Social Institutions
Psychological Harms of Oppression
Psychological Mechanisms of Oppression
“Merit” In University Admissions
Feminist Philosophy’s Dependence on the Facts
Strikes, Housework, and the Moral Obligation to ResistanceAgainst Capitalism As Theory And As Reality
Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics
Missionary Positions
Harassment, Bias, and the Evolving Politics of Free Speech on Campus

At Northwestern University, the President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate disbanded after members quit over President Michael Schill giving in to anti-Israel protesters’ demands without consulting them.

The concessions included full-ride scholarships to “five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern” and that the school would “provide and renovate a house for MENA/Muslim students.”

President Schill is the author of papers like:

Black, Brown, Poor & Poisoned: Minority Grassroots Environmentalism and the Quest for Eco-Justice
Race, the Underclass, and Public Policy
The Special Bias of Federal Housing Law and Policy: Concentrated Poverty in Urban America
Polarization, Public Housing and Racial Minorities in US Cities

At Columbia, radicals took over a campus building and covered it in communist symbols, with a female PhD student demanding the delivery of food as “humanitarian aid.”

Reporter grills Columbia student after she demands the university help feed protestors occupying Hamilton Hall:

“It seems like you’re saying, ‘we want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now would you please bring us some food’.” pic.twitter.com/vNczSAM4T1

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 30, 2024

At Barnard College, Columbia’s women’s college, president Laura Rosenbury is the author of papers like: