Mon 23 Oct 2017
Word that You’re Looking for is a Racist
Posted by David Dudley Field '25 under UL at 7:16 am
From MassLive:
A “standard liberal” feminist author Williams College hosted this week ran afoul of some students in her audience, who ended up branding her “racist” and “white supremacist.”
Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, shared her views on feminism and identity politics at the Western Massachusetts institution.
Some of the attendees, including several students in the gender and women’s studies department, took issue with her talk.
Video was shot of the tense question and answer section featuring several students’ profanity peppered rants, insults on the Brandeis University alum’s scholarship and disruptive, derisive snickers.
1) I hope that the Record will provide thorough coverage of this event. Kudos to Zach Wood ’18 and Uncomfortable Learning for arranging the event!
2) In my fantasy world, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies paid for, or at least sponsored, the talk, all in the best spirit of uncomfortable learning. Odds of that being true?
3) It is good news that Williams, as an institution, is still bringing alternative viewpoints to campus. Very few among the powerful alumni who matter want Williams to turn into Swarthmore, much less Oberlin. Alas:
One student expressed frustration that Sommers was allowed to share her “harmful” message at the school and another, with contempt, referred to “people like you” before accusing the registered Democrat of being a white supremacist due to her chosen reading.
Over the last 15 years, the opinion that certain views — almost always views on the right — should not be allowed at Williams has grown shockingly common. I did not predict this trend. Did you? Yet the trend seems to be, if anything, getting stronger. How long before someone like Sommers (or Charles Murray) is prevented from coming to Williams?
To be fair, there is a bit of quote-mining going on above. It is not clear that this student really wants to prevent Sommers from speaking at Williams. Also, the Williams students in the clip are well-spoken. However, they also want to get rid of “capitalism!”(Start around minute 8:00.) And that get fairly angry toward the end . . .
The finger-snapping is annoying. When did that become common?
More video:
Zach does a nice job moderating and moving on to the next questioner.
Great question to Sommers at the end (paraphrased): “If US society is as fair toward women as you claim, then why aren’t, for example, women 50% of all Fortune 500 CEOs?”
In reply, Sommers declines to offer students the red pill . . . Does she even know about it? John Derbyshire would have given a very different answer to that question . . .
All-in-all, it is a good thing that Williams put on this event, bringing an outside speaker with a very different viewpoint to campus and making some students, at least for a bit, uncomfortable.


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8 Responses to “Word that You’re Looking for is a Racist”
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sigh says:
“Red pill?” you mean the men’s rights activist/alt-right bs term used obliviously to reference a movie series written by trans-siblings?
good god.
October 23rd, 2017 at 12:01 pmDDF says:
“used obliviously”? I believe that the alt-right is well aware of the origin of the term, and of the gender status — if that is the correct terminology — of the screen-writers.
alt-right != anti-trans
October 23rd, 2017 at 12:04 pmDDF says:
The “red pill” answer would have pointed to genetic differences between men and women which correlate to some attributes connected to CEO skills/ladder-climbing. The AEI-approved answer is much more James Demore-type (true!) comments on differences in male/female interests.
October 23rd, 2017 at 12:06 pmsigh says:
ephblog: now fully embracing its MRA/alt-right worldview. disaster. once again, i wonder why i ever came back.
adios, again.
October 23rd, 2017 at 12:17 pmJohn Drew says:
I voted for Trump because I believe Democrats have contempt for Christians and the white working class. I think the MassLive video provides us with a chilling reminder of pure hatred manufactured by leftist, intersectional, feminists. Donors and parents associated with Williams College should watch this video to see how crazy things have gotten over there. This doesn’t look like a healthy environment for anyone seeking to learn the truth or challenge Democrat party orthodoxy.
October 23rd, 2017 at 2:37 pmFendertweed says:
The finger snapping may come from “West Side Story”… ;-)
JCD, what a comic whopper. Trump has very little respect for any particular religious belief, and surely is as failed a Christian as one can imagine. And yet he’s got you slurping his … well, you know
Sad!…
October 23rd, 2017 at 3:59 pmThis sucks says:
The students in the video were speaking after Hoff Summers delivered her talk; they did not shout it down. Also, one video clip does not show the entire event.
That being said, shouting and screaming like that in an academic environment is god damn disrespectful. It sounds like the student doing most of the talking is just quoting someone else, or reading off a paper full of buzzwords. I am liberal AF and I still can’t stomach how disrespectful this is.
It is the height of privileged ignorance to think you can get an accomplished, fairly run of the mill think-tank person like Hoff Summers to engage in dialogue with you when you are literally shouting at her and saying shit like “I can’t believe you can come here and talk about bell hooks the way you did.” Please. At least college is one place where you learn to take a DEEEEP breath before you spout off some god damn nonsense like that.
However, DK, you are still worse, because you are still pandering to your audience with this shit.
October 23rd, 2017 at 4:55 pmalum 11 says:
its not really an alt-right thing, and you don’t even need to talk about something as abstract as “genetic differences”, the fact is you can’t perpetuate the human race without women getting pregnant, and that really takes a toll on them. just read about pregnancy side effects, and you need to do that twice just to have replacement population. seems totally obvious to me why on average women care less about becoming CEO; if women didn’t care as much about babies as they do, the human race would be extinct.
October 24th, 2017 at 10:52 pm