Bates College in Maine used to be one of America’s most prestigious colleges. It has lost some of its prestige, but should have lost a lot more, given how bad its intellectual climate is, and how stifling and conformist its left-wing student body and administration are. It was once rated among the top ten liberal arts colleges, but now is not among the top 20. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education gives Bates College a code Red rating, a warning that it has policies that “clearly and substantially” restrict freedom of speech.
A recent article in The Federalist chronicles how professors at Maine’s Bates College are afraid to disagree with the assertions of left-wing students out of fear of being reported to the college’s DEI — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — office. Bates College alumnus Roy Matthews describes how he corresponded with several Bates College instructors and learned from them that its DEI office is being used to intimidate instructors into compliance with its left-wing ideology.
Keith Taylor, a geology professor, was subjected to a “mock hearing” led by Dean of Faculty Malcolm Hill due to challenging a student to “provide evidence that […] Bates is anti-black and based in white supremacy” after alleging just that. At the hearing, “activist students voiced their accusations of racism and silenced other students, who wanted Taylor to finish his class because of upcoming final exams.”
Taylor was “ordered to apologize” for supposedly exhibiting “racial insensitivity,” but he declined. As a result, he was fired.
As The College Fix notes,
Audio of the “hearing” is a must-listen. Dean Hill’s introduction touches on just about every DEI soundbite extant, such as “centering” DEI into every aspect of the campus, students’ “lived experiences,” and that there’s always “more work to do.”
Hill expresses “shock” and “disappointment” at Taylor’s comments to the student, saying they provoked a “profound visceral” reaction in him.
When a student challenges Hill on freedom of expression and the chilling effect the “hearing” would have on classroom discourse, Hill replies Taylor’s comments “raise questions about what kind of position is the professor occupying in this space.”
Anthropology Professor Loring Danforth similarly was reprimanded by Hill for challenging a student’s assertion that Bates sits on “stolen” Native American land.
“Do you mean legally? Technically? Morally? Historically? Traditionally?” Danforth had asked the student. He then asked “Do Native Americans own the land your parents’ house in Connecticut is on, or do your parents own it?”…
Economics Professor Paul Shea told Matthews incidents like Bates students getting angry at a single photo of a College Republican in a school Instagram series on student voting make him “fear for the future” of the institution.
That one photo led to a protest attended by “hundreds” of students, and Bates eventually deleting the entire voting photo series.
Shea said “More and more departments seem comfortable infusing their curricula with specific forms of activism and ideology and those that do not are met with hostility or, in some cases, a loss of resources.”
T. Glen Lawson, a now-retired Bates chemistry professor, said the school’s “environment is toxic and freedom of expression and academic freedom have both been suppressed in the past few years.”
In other news, left-wing students offered money to kill Jews, in video taken in December 2023 at one of America’s most radical colleges, San Francisco State University.
That was not the first time left-wing college students have shown support for terrorist violence. In a 2021 video, Ami Horowitz asked students at the University of California, Berkeley to pledge money to the Taliban so that it can mount terrorist attacks inside the United States. The students happily pledged their money to enable that. They belong to a woke, self-hating academic culture that is reshaping our society.
