I should have been clearer that none of this was aimed at you, but at your commenters. You were telling a story about what happened to you, so there was no reason for you to include examples like the ones I give. I think you deserve a lot of credit for being a liberal POC at a conservative Christian school, and I salute you for it. I think you handled that situation pretty well, although I might have handled it somewhat differently.

My objection was to the commenters who:

1) insisted that you should have flunked the student, when they would have sided with the student if he had refused to read a book being condemned by the Wokerati. I have examples of this in the link at the end of my previous comment.

2) Decry this student as typical of the conservative mindset, when this argument was born in lefty blogs, and only recently co-opted by the right. The idea that “I shouldn’t be forced to read or think about something that upsets me” is the motivating principle behind campus riots against conservative speakers on campus. I know you are correct in stating that it is not professors who assert this principle. Most professors are against it, but not enough them speak out against it. (Not surprising when most of us are not tenure track, and students are seen as customers who must be pandered to.)


I am a philosophy prof myself (now emeritus) and have frequently been described as “ very liberal” by my students at a very liberal school. But we need to be willing to recognize the difference between the baby and the bath water if we want our ideas for social change to be taken seriously.