{"id":463,"date":"2017-06-18T15:50:05","date_gmt":"2017-06-18T19:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zatzallfolks.wordpress.com\/?p=463"},"modified":"2017-06-18T15:50:05","modified_gmt":"2017-06-18T19:50:05","slug":"the-left-keeps-turning-revisiting-evergreen-through-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/2017\/06\/18\/the-left-keeps-turning-revisiting-evergreen-through-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"The Left Keeps Turning – Revisiting Evergreen Through FAIR"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this post, I am going to go back to the Evergreen State College controversy, described in detail in my post \u201cWhen The Left Turns On Its Own<\/a>.\u201d FAIR, a left-wing media criticism site, recently covered this situation and I am interested in their take on the story.<\/p>\n

The article begins with a discussion of issues of on campus free speech. According to the article, the news media is quick to anger about censorship of right-wing speakers but is silent or near silent about censorship of left-wing activists. He points out the preponderance of media coverage of Ann Coulter being prevented from speaking and the lack of coverage surrounding the perspective of the Evergreen State College student protesters. According to the author, campus free speech is treated differently \u201cwhen you\u2019re on the left.\u201d<\/p>\n

After this, the author gives some background to the Evergreen State College controversy. This account is different from that of the New York Times<\/em> in that it clearly supports the student protesters over professor Weinstein. The author says that \u201cmarginalized communities suggested white students and faculty leave campus\u201d for the annual Day of Absence, and then goes on to talk about how much \u201cfun\u201d the Day of Absence is for participants. The author places all blame for the heated atmosphere at Evergreen on those who didn’t agree with being told to leave:<\/p>\n

Some in the Evergreen community, however, heard the call for the altered event as a demand – and their reaction made things worse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The author clearly does not like Bret Weinstein, the biology professor who refused to leave on the Day of Absence. Weinstein did not appreciate being told to leave, and let the Evergreen community know his position. The article goes on to talk about how Fox News, the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, and the New York Times<\/em> all covered Weinstein\u2019s side of events but never the student protesters. Personally, I can see why it would be hard to ask students for their position; usually a protest like this won\u2019t have a central voice and will have many internally conflicting opinions. However, that does not mean that student protesters should not be given the chance to speak their mind.<\/p>\n

Overall, I was not as impressed with this article as the one in the New York Times; <\/em>for one thing,\u00a0it is hypocritical. It talks about how no media outlet has talked to the student protesters, then still only focuses on Weinstein and not the students of Evergreen. The middle of FAIR\u2019s article was somewhat suspect in that it draws a link between a white supremacist attack and the events on Evergreen\u2019s campus (also suspect is the author\u2019s insistence on repeatedly mentioning unrelated Palestinian activism while clearly pejorative of a Jewish man, but I won\u2019t get into that). After my last post, I was intrigued to find out more about the students\u2019 perspective, and I am still left in the dark. I am still only seeing mudslinging from one side of the argument to another with no input from students at Evergreen. This particular article seems to be highly critical of a singular figure, with criticism of the news media taking a backseat.<\/p>\n

I am not impressed with this particular piece from FAIR. Hopefully, the next piece will be more illuminating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this post, I am going to go back to the Evergreen State College controversy, described in detail in my post \u201cWhen The Left Turns On Its Own.\u201d FAIR, a left-wing media criticism site, recently covered this situation and I am interested in their take on the story. The article begins with a discussion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[30,31,40,45],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assigned-posts","category-post-count-all-posts","tag-evergreen","tag-fair","tag-media-critic-site","tag-on-campus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoe.zatz.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}