Heather Mac Donald: 'Welling tide of hatred' consuming college campuses
Heather Mac Donald, "The Diversity Delusion" author, addresses being protested at the College of the Holy Cross and the "close-mindedness" being cultivated by adults on college campuses
Conservative speaker and author Heather Mac Donald said Thursday that there is a "welling tide" of "hatred" consuming college campuses.
Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with host Ainsley Earhardt, Mac Donald recounted her recent experience coming under fire from student protesters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.
"I was there to say to students: 'you are the most privileged individuals in human history. You have unfettered opportunity to learn," she explained.
Mac Donald said that 50 minutes into her talk, half the people in the auditorium stood up and started chanting 'my oppression is not a delusion,' 'your racism is not welcome,' 'your sexism is not welcome,' 'your homophobia is not welcome'...'you are not welcome...'
"So, I addressed what had just happened and said this is a perfect demonstration of the closed-mindedness that is being cultivated by adults, frankly, on campuses. And then proceeded with my talk to a half-empty room," she explained.
However, in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed, Holy Cross Dean Michelle C. Murray is now defending her students' behavior, writing that "...education requires them to wrestle with a wide range of ideas, which sometimes means engaging with controversial messages, as with Ms. Mac Donald. And sometimes, it means making use of their own free speech to combat objectionable ideas."
Mac Donald, a Manhattan Institute fellow, told Earhardt that one of the organizers boasted about their accomplishments after they were filed out of the room.
"No," she said. "They didn't accomplish something."
Earhardt asked Mac Donald why she thought it was dangerous for students to feel like they are oppressed and not privileged.
"Well, for one, it prevents them from seizing the boundless opportunities for learning that they have if they go around with a chip on their shoulder," she said. "Two: truth matters. It's simply good to accurately analyze your environment."
"And for them to not understand that there is no bigotry on a college campus is simply a profound misunderstanding of their world. If they can think that they are oppressed on a college campus ... they carry that idea with them into the country at large," Mac Donald added
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She said that America has had civil peace in this country because "we have transcended our differences" and "engaged with ideas in a rational matter" which has "given us freedom."
"But, what we see now is a welling tide of, frankly, it is hatred," she said. "We are a land of opportunity. People are coming from the world over in order to take advantage of our freedoms, and the students do not see that."
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