Jail time? Expelled? Sure, but think of the “Learning” and “Development”!
By Stanley K. Ridgley, PhD
[This is an expanded version of a piece that originally appeared on the site of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal here]
The student unrest that roiled the nation’s campuses in the first half of 2024 was most often associated with the “encampment,” a visible tent-manifestation of masked and keffiyeh-swaddled support for the governing of Gaza by the terrorist group Hamas, as well as many other expressions of rank anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism.
But was it really “student” unrest?
University administrators might be surprised (or perhaps not) that much of today’s campus chaos originates, as it always has, with the college’s employees. Both faculty and staff have for decades mobilized students for protest, activism, and, at times, illegal activity.
Today’s pro-Hamas student movement, as with so many past movements, is not organic in any reasonably understood sense of the word. Between sympathizing college employee agitators and the vagabond non-student crowds-for-hire that trespass onto campuses, actual students often constitute a minority of the players at any given protest, and a not-very-well-informed minority at that.
At times, they appear as little more than puppets—inarticulate, awkward, and angry about something that they cannot express outside of screeching a few clichés. All the while, puppet-master college employees assure them that they are learning “leadership” and are progressing in their “student development.”
Let’s take this occasion to assess how university employees use their power and access to students to engage in malfeasance—mobilizing students to risk their futures in the name of a cause that the students dimly understand, on behalf of the pet projects of faculty and staff who risk little to nothing.
Mobilizing and Duping Students
Many “student” movements are actually manifestations of radical faculty and staff pet causes. These activists, mostly student affairs support staffers, actually say this openly in their journal articles and public posts.
In their public-affairs messaging, bureaucrats give no hint that “student development” and “student learning” include faculty and staff mobilizing students into movements to “create change,” i.e., to demonstrate, to protest, to violate university regulations, to vandalize university property, to illegally occupy buildings, to harass other students, to jeopardize their academic standing and chances at future employment, and to put themselves at risk of arrest, with the resulting criminal record.
This is their thin fig-leaf justification. They certainly do not acknowledge that such “curricula” often constitute the aiding and abetting of criminal activity.
The guise, of course, is the great con-game of “student development” and “student learning.” Such phrases are where the social-justice cause du jour nestles, comfortably hidden. This scam vernacular has become such a ubiquitous and frequent tool of the fake “educators” of Student Affairs that when you hear or see it, it signals 1) the person using it is not to be trusted, 2) it’s an even bet that the term is masking some ludicrous, noxious project, and 3) you should probe deeper to investigate what is invariably an educational fraud perpetrated by the unqualified.
The use of students as proxy foot-soldiers for faculty and staff social activists may strike you as unsavory at best. But these campus characters relish it, presenting “student activism” as a positive contribution to “student development,” criminal record and all.
Needless to say, student-affairs professionals and their fellow travelers may even enjoy the vicarious thrill of seeing handcuffs placed on their charges, since they have no intention of risking anything. They’re happy in their role of academic saboteurs, encouraging others to sacrifice.
Even Harvard administrators are beginning to recognize this. For instance, take Harvard Dean of Social Science Lawrence Bobo, who came out in June of 2024 against egregious faculty activism that endangers students:
Is it acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member to encourage civil disobedience on the part of students that violates University policies? Faculty advocacy for actions clearly identified as in violation of student conduct rules is extremely problematic. Doing so after students have received official notification of a potential serious infraction is not acceptable. Such behavior should have sanctionable limits as well.
Dr. Bobo distinguished between today’s attacks on his university by faculty and those “heroic” protests of the past, such as those who “burned draft cards in protest of the Vietnam War” or who “sat down at segregated lunch counters.” Today’s BDS protests that target the university have an “indirect-at-best relation to the protesters’ core grievance.”
Bobo explicitly called to account those faculty who encourage and even instruct students to violate university policy:
Even this commitment to instruct students on protest, however, is not without justifiable limits. If we are prepared to sanction our students for a line of action contrary to our codes of conduct, then I believe professors or administrators who encourage and advocate for such actions should also face parallel consequences.
Academic Saboteurs
No, they don’t call themselves academic saboteurs. They’ve crafted a shady euphemism instead. They are “tempered radicals,” and they constitute the cadre of subversives envisioned by the neo-Marxist Herbert Marcuse decades earlier. This cadre is the living implementation of Marcuse’s 1972 call for a Long March through the Institutions, which still inspires today’s far left.
Many of us, who believe that the university must be restored, worry about the wrong things. One of these “wrong things” is the idea that radical faculty, who coopt departments of sociology, history, and English and then transmit their groupthink in a lockstep pedagogical project. This is partially true, as we see here, here, and here. But this is hardly the entire story in the 21st century. It is not even the major part of the story.
In fact, the cliché of radical faculty controlling the agenda has served to mask the actual threat, which involves the real foot soldiers of social justice. These men and (mostly) women fill the ranks of clerks, enrollment managers, advisors, ResLife directors, and “student success” counselors, thus forming a largely anonymous bureaucracy that has assumed more influence in the first quarter of the 21st century than any campus outsider imagines.
This phalanx of ancillary support staff has arrogated to itself the moniker “student educators.” Working in the guise of “student development” and “student learning,” they engage in a systematic undermining of university policies and missions in service to an alien orthodoxy called social justice.
“Social Justice,” in fact, is the catchall decanter of a raft of actions, policies, and sabotage designed to “boldly transform” the university into an institution alien to the American and Enlightenment experience. Practitioners believe themselves to be “college educators” like faculty, and they frequently call themselves “scholar-practitioners” or “scholar-activists.” You can read about their pretentious role-playing in books such as Rise Up!: Activism as Education, We Demand, and Identity-Based Student Activism.
Elsewhere, I have written on these far-left bureaucrats and their thought-reform attacks on college students. Their abuse is almost ubiquitous on college campuses, with a significant student-affairs presence in politicized education schools.
Such persons originate and propagate their causes, then mobilize college students as unwitting dupes for the “social-justice” protest movement du jour. At the University of Miami (Ohio), for instance, several “scholar-activists” established what they call the “Mobilizing Anger Collective” to recruit students into activism for social justice.
While “Mobilizing Anger” is surprisingly straightforward, these saboteurs often mask their ideological agitation under the euphemisms “student development” and “student learning,” as previously noted. These phrases are a con-game vernacular. They constitute proxies for a crypto-Maoist, Freirean-inspired ideology.
Such phrases serve as red flags to identify the con-game being played. Here is one particularly egregious piece by Chris Linder that reveals the scam vernacular of “development” and “learning” to be a thin mask for recruiting students into social-justice causes. (Linder: “I argue educators must understand power, privilege, and oppression to effectively support and guide learning and development among student activists.”)
The unfortunate truth is that some faculty and many staff on American campuses guilt students into working for “social justice,” encourage them to neglect their studies in favor of “doing the work,” and ask them to embrace protest movements they barely understand, to demonstrate publicly instead of attending class, to break university regulations, and to put their futures at risk.
But again, faculty and staff generally risk nothing. They have their own websites and off-campus non-profits to steer them away from trouble, including “courses,” which offer advice such as:
When is providing such guidance or engaging in direct action by faculty and staff protected expression?
What is out of the reach of institutional sanctioning, and when may the institution take disciplinary action, including suspension or termination of employment?
Where exactly is the “line that cannot be crossed” without triggering consequences?
Dr. Adrianna Kezar is “Deans Professor of Leadership” at the University of Southern California and the author of a highly influential piece on faculty and staff, who manipulate students in the guise of collaboration, “student development,” and “student learning.” She observed that
because faculty and staff are part of the institution, they risk their jobs if they push too hard for changes. Students are less at risk if they picket, contact the media, boycott, rally, or engage in other forms of overt activism. […] [W]hen a topic gets too hot on the campus, students can maintain a leadership role when faculty and staff have to step aside.
Kezar doesn’t elaborate on why faculty and staff must “step aside,” nor why students do not “have to step aside.” If you believe that this is on the up-and-up, Kezar explains the deception and duplicity involved:
On the most politically charged issues, faculty and staff worked behind the scenes, invisibly with students on campus. To stakeholders across campus, the effort was purely a student activist issue; no one would know about the faculty and staff involvement. However, faculty and staff were instrumental and directly involved in mentoring students, helping them to determine strategies, helping them to negotiate with the administration, and assisting them to overcome obstacles and navigate power conditions.
All while faculty and staff stand in the clear.
Too Close to the Fire and getting Burned
When faculty actually do show up on the fringes, as they did at Emory University this year, they discover that their surreal enthusiasms are severely divorced from reality. Take Emory philosophy professor Noëlle McAfee, who was arrested on April 25 at Emory for exercising what she called her “superpower.”
McAfee said: “I know the police, and I was very careful to have a nonconfrontational posture, to look calm. It’s a superpower of mine.” McAfee asserted this in a bizarre interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, in which she spun the illegal pro-Hamas encampment as a Summer-of-Love manifestation: “Before this it was sunshine. Students were chanting. It’s so peaceful. Faculty were gathering around just observing. It’s just a beautiful day. Then the Georgia State Patrol just run in and attack.”
McAfee’s sense of self-importance oozes from her interview as she shares her interaction with the police after her arrest. She harrumphed, “You know, I have an external review going on. I was just standing there. I have a meeting. Can you just give me a ticket and let me go, and I’ll go to court?”
You see, the officious McAffee had things to do.
Many faculty seem to believe that while it might be okay for students to be arrested, their own status as faculty should somehow insulate them from those pesky consequences. “I’m a professor!” squealed Emory economics professor Caroline Fohlin as she was wrestled to the ground after approaching an officer from behind while he was in the midst of a forcible arrest, tapping him on the back of his head while his pistol in its holster was clearly visible.
Another would-be heroine of the movement du jour is Indiana University anthropology professor Sarah D. Phillips, who penned a breathless piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, which has become the outlet of choice for the faux “academic freedom” brigade. We generally understand that university faculty are not renowned for good judgment, but even in this company, Phillips’s reckless behavior stands out.
Phillips recounts how she heard that police were moving in to enforce university policy at Dunn Meadow, a green space on the campus. I get these kinds of university notifications periodically; an admonishment to avoid the area typically accompanies them. And that, indeed, is my natural reaction.
But not Phillips.
She said: “After receiving social-media messages reporting a heavy police presence at a student rally, I rushed to the public gathering space on campus known as Dunn Meadow.”
This was her first mistake. Or was it really a mistake? Perhaps it was a chance to get in on the action, make some headlines, earn her spurs, generate something dramatic to write about in the Chronicle?
Phillips certainly seemed to believe she was acting in a film as she pumped up her description: “State police vehicles have swarmed the town and campus since Thursday, alongside two armored vehicles. Police helicopters and drones circle the skies over campus.”
Then, her moment came:
I saw my students among unarmed peaceful protesters. I saw state police in riot gear approaching them with batons. I saw still more police toting assault rifles. I could not believe my eyes. A few moments later, I had a riot shield pressed against my face. I was forced to the ground and told to roll onto my stomach. My wrists were cuffed tightly behind my back. I looked to my left — there was my student, likewise prone, battered, and cuffed. I looked to my right — another student, prone, battered, and cuffed.
Strangely, Phillips never tells us what she did to result in being forced to the ground. She leaves that part out here as well. “My instincts just kicked in,” she said.
We are left to wonder what those “instincts” led her to do.
“A few moments later,” she continued, “I found myself on the ground, handcuffed and being marched with some students and other faculty to a bus that was ready to take us away to the local jail.”
She also omits the part where IU has banned her from campus for one year for her actions. This is all so unjust, you see, as she opines on the utopian character of the illegal encampment. She described an idyllic scene from some kind of community akin to the Eloi in H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine.
The students peacefully protesting at Dunn Meadow are still there, and they keep their encampment organized and orderly. They observe quiet hours to allow for rest, sleep, and prayer [this addition of “prayer” into the activities of agitators is an interesting development, and one eagerly anticipates the recognition of “prayer” in descriptions of, say, pro-life demonstrations and such like]. Alcohol is strictly prohibited. Protesters are instructed not to engage with hecklers. They’ve organized a Popular University featuring open-mic lectures and a lending library. Students take care of one another’s needs through an ethos of mutual aid. Concerned faculty, staff, fellow students, and community members — who may or may not agree with all of the protesters’ stances and views — contribute a meal, bring sunscreen, report on police movements, give a lecture, write and sign petitions, organize legal aid, play board games, and teach the students age-old protest songs and learn new ones from them.
This type of magical utopian narrative doesn’t even merit the locution of putting lipstick on a pig, because it insults the pig. This was an illegal protest to support a terror organization, and these occupants of the campus Elysium refused orders to dismantle the “encampment.”
But Professor Sarah Phillips wasn’t alone in her high umbrage.
The Stink of Performativity
Still another member of the faculty, unidentified, decided she would venture to the Indiana campus protest site, argue with officers, and then posture as ersatz hero defending her students. The stink of performativity is all over this woman.
This video, beginning at the 50-second mark, provides a poignant snapshot of the mentality of persons who contrive events whereby they can then pose as victims. Heroic victims.
It’s likely that the professor in this video lacks the self-awareness that would reveal how her Vaudevillian theatrics appear insufferable to normal folks — to the people who struggle to pay their mortgages, who struggle to support their families, who know the fundamental difference between good and evil, and who possess the moral clarity to understand that it is only the bottom-feeders of any society who support terrorists who brutalize women and children and who mutilate, murder, and rape.
In sum, we can see that the managed drama of the “encampments” and carefully staged faculty “support” is almost unwatchable in their risible theatrics, stale sloganeering, infantile criminal vandalism, and thuggish harassment of Jewish students and faculty. We can also assume that this kind of faculty “support” is much more narcissistically satisfying than to advise students to return to their classes to receive the expensive education that they and their parents borrow huge sums to pay for.
This disruption of the work of the university and of the lives of the vast majority of faculty and students, whose presence on the campus is devoted the Enlightenment activities that propel our society forward? Well that’s the whole point of primitive performance, isn’t it?
But kudos to Emory University President Gregory L. Fenves and to Indiana University President Pamela Whitten, whose strong leadership curtailed the disruption at both schools. Their swift actions did so briskly and in such a way that should have been highly instructive to the louts who believed themselves immune to the consequences of their hooliganism.
Whether they learned a lesson is anybody’s guess, but what all of this indicates is what many outside of academia have long suspected and what many of us inside academia know as fact: Shifty faculty and staff, with their own crusades, mobilize students for “activism” to accomplish goals that the students themselves only dimly understand.
The fig leaf for all of this is that students “benefit” in vague ways suggested by the scam vernacular of “student development” and “student learning.”
The sooner parents, students, and senior administrators understand that this nonsensical verbiage masks a subversive agenda clearly articulated in the literature of the far-left, the sooner forceful steps can be taken against the culprits. Those culpable include some radical faculty, most “educators” of “Student Affairs,” and many off-campus guilds such as ACPA, NASPA, and NACADA. Without question, the issue merits vigorous exploration by conservative legal minds.
A college or university risks legal and financial exposure in permitting such behavior, and it’s not difficult to understand why. Might faculty and staff who explicitly encourage and guide college students to abandon their studies for social causes be legally responsible for the damage that follows? Are those faculty and staff who “mobilize” students for their own causes guilty of malfeasance at the very least? It would prima facie seem so.
Perhaps more importantly, can faculty and staff who use their positions to influence college students to engage in illegal activity be held personally and financially liable for their actions?
I’m not a lawyer, so I cannot say for certain. But it would be immense fun to find out.
Stanley K. Ridgley, Ph.D., IMBA, is clinical full professor at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. He is a former military intelligence officer with a Ph.D. from Duke University and has taught in Russia, China, India, Spain, Singapore, and Colombia. He is the author of Brutal Minds: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities and of Strategic Thinking Skills from The Teaching Company.