Rebel News Podcast - SPECIAL! Rob Shimshock of Campus Unmasked： Three craziest college news stories of 2018

00:00:00.000 Tonight, it's a new year. What is in store for our college campuses?

00:00:05.020 A feature interview with Rob Shimshock of Campus Unmasked.

00:00:08.720 It's January 1st and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:16.620 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:20.420 There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:24.140 You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.

00:00:27.100 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:00:37.680 Well, 2018 was an incredible year and I think one of the things that characterized it

00:00:43.980 was that the insanity from university campuses started to spill out into the general world.

00:00:51.740 In Canada, that happened most remarkably through the prime minister's office.

00:00:55.920 He can't touch anything, whether it's the budget or our military deployment to Mali,

00:01:01.920 without looking at it through a gender equity lens. 0.85

00:01:05.840 The guy's gone mad.

00:01:07.220 But it's a madness that is commonplace on universities.

00:01:10.440 And I don't know if you know this, but we have a specialty website on The Rebel.

00:01:15.060 It has its own URL, its own domain, campusunmasked.com.

00:01:21.820 And it does just what the name promises.

00:01:23.420 Every day, our reporter, Rob Shimshock, unmasks some campus craziness in Canada or the United States.

00:01:32.340 And we've asked him to do a special show today.

00:01:35.120 We're going to take the whole episode to talk about some of the craziest stories from campuses in 2018.

00:01:42.880 And then maybe afterwards to think about what we might expect in the year ahead.

00:01:46.620 And joining us now via Skype from Washington, D.C., is our friend Rob Shimshock.

00:01:50.920 Rob, great to see you.

00:01:52.720 Ezra, thanks for having me.

00:01:54.020 Well, it's a pleasure.

00:01:55.620 And you are sort of your own remote outpost there.

00:01:59.820 And you're probably about 70 years younger than me.

00:02:03.560 So you're still in touch with the kids.

00:02:06.260 But seriously, though, you are in a heavy campus beat.

00:02:10.360 You work for us.

00:02:11.300 You work for campus reform.

00:02:12.940 And all you do every day is study political correctness on campuses, right?

00:02:18.080 Yes, that's true.

00:02:19.200 Left-wing bias and abuse, yep.

00:02:21.640 Well, it's so important.

00:02:23.360 And I'm pleased to say that your videos on our specialty page, campusonmass.com, have been seen, last I checked, over 2 million times cumulatively.

00:02:35.820 I don't have the exact number at my fingertips.

00:02:38.400 But they're very popular.

00:02:40.020 And you're really building up a track record.

00:02:43.340 You've covered so many different campuses in both Canada and the United States.

00:02:46.960 It would be in the dozens now, the number of different campuses.

00:02:49.660 Am I right?

00:02:51.080 Yeah, if not more so.

00:02:52.420 I think I was giving you the numbers a couple months ago.

00:02:54.860 And we had, like, over 200 stories.

00:02:57.240 And half of them were from different campuses.

00:02:59.900 Wow.

00:03:00.120 So that's probably at least 100 from different campuses.

00:03:03.080 Yeah.

00:03:03.380 I mean, we here in Canada think that we're really socialist and we're really far gone.

00:03:07.780 But some of the craziest campuses are actually in the United States.

00:03:11.820 Even though you've got the First Amendment there, even though I think as a country you're more conservative than we are, your campuses are more leading edge.

00:03:19.920 I mean, Berkeley has always been insane.

00:03:21.760 Is it true that your campuses, you've got the best campuses in the world by some measures, but in terms of the grievance industry and political correctness, would you say America also has the worst in the world?

00:03:34.360 Well, I would say so.

00:03:36.420 Well, and I think no other campus captures this dichotomy more than Harvard University, which has been in the news for perhaps discriminating against Asian-American applicants.

00:03:45.100 You have them trying to ban single-gender groups.

00:03:47.820 So they've definitely taken a stand against such valued principles as free speech, freedom of association.

00:03:53.880 And they're, you know, considered the premier institution worldwide.

00:03:57.440 Yeah.

00:03:58.140 That's a great point.

00:03:59.200 I mean, it's the best and the worst.

00:04:01.240 We sometimes talk to Jordan Peterson.

00:04:03.180 We haven't had him on in a few months.

00:04:04.480 He's been so busy with his tour.

00:04:05.700 But he, considering he's a PhD professor at U of T and, you know, he's a fairly prestigious guy, he often recommends against people going into the humanities, even though that is where he himself teaches.

00:04:21.760 Before we get into you, you've selected three crazy stories that I want to get into.

00:04:26.420 We'll play the video clips and I'll ask for your commentary.

00:04:29.020 But before we do, would you agree with Jordan Peterson when he encourages young people not to go to university?

00:04:40.140 He doesn't say that as a blanket statement.

00:04:41.920 I think he still believes in engineering and other practical educations, even career education.

00:04:47.640 But just to get $100,000 in debt, to go through four years of grievance studies, would you agree with Jordan Peterson that there's a better way to be a young person?

00:04:57.940 Well, I think it all depends on your priorities, Ezra, because, of course, most people, whenever they're going to college and they're making that huge capital and time investment, they're looking for a huge payoff.

00:05:09.200 So if you're looking to go into a really lucrative industry, you know, one of the STEM fields perhaps is still not infiltrated by social justice.

00:05:16.640 However, we do need people like myself, like other great reporters at Campus Reform and other places for which I've worked to cover these, who perform like a watchdog mission.

00:05:28.480 And so I think that that could serve some value if you want to major in the humanities.

00:05:32.100 If you find that, you know, writing or some other such skills still suits your purpose, we can definitely use some more watchdogs out there who perform my kind of work and who also keep tabs on other institutions.

00:05:44.860 Well, you're so right that we need more watchdogs.

00:05:47.960 But just for someone who's not an activist, not a public personality, not someone who wants to have a political mission life, but just, you know, someone turns 18, they graduate from high school, just a normal person who wants to leave a normal life.

00:06:00.140 Would you recommend that they go to even an Ivy League school to take a humanities degree?

00:06:05.980 Would you still say that's worth them doing?

00:06:09.320 You know, I would.

00:06:10.480 And I think it's because I still see some value, you know, like my favorite thing to read in my pastime would probably be Shakespeare or something like that.

00:06:20.900 And so I do see some value in getting that kind of just like more of an aesthetic pursuit out of it.

00:06:26.760 But I think if you do want to contribute value to the world increasingly so, you can get that same experience through your internships, through actual job experience, being out in the field.

00:06:38.540 And in some cases, the technical colleges, which are less expensive and will often take less time to get a degree.

00:06:44.260 So definitely there are alternatives depending on, you know, if you want to make a lot of money or if you're particularly passionate about shaping change in a certain part of the world.

00:06:52.940 Yeah, you definitely could save yourself a bundle as well.

00:06:55.680 Yeah. You know, I remember when I took an English class in my first year university and like you, I loved Shakespeare, couldn't get enough of it.

00:07:05.420 I only studied a little bit of in high school. I thought this is going to be wonderful.

00:07:08.360 We're going to. So I sign up for an English class at University of Calgary and I was stunned.

00:07:15.180 And this is and I'm much older than you. This was 20 more than 20 years ago, almost 30 years ago.

00:07:21.440 We didn't study Shakespeare. He was considered a dead white man.

00:07:24.520 We didn't even really study true literature. It was all critical theory and a feminist analysis.

00:07:30.060 And I was so heartbroken. You know, frankly, I think if you want to learn Shakespeare, you're probably going to do it better online or just with chums than than in some Marxist directed study.

00:07:42.880 But listen, I called you on today and I'm so grateful for your time, not just to opine on things, although it's good to catch up.

00:07:49.400 But to review, we asked you for three of the craziest stories from 2018 and you selected them.

00:07:57.740 I want to start off with the first one. Maybe you can set it up.

00:08:01.440 A professor. I mean, a professor who got violent.

00:08:07.700 And I'll let you tell the story.

00:08:09.580 Boy, I want to tell it. But you you know the story inside and out.

00:08:12.840 Tell us about Eric Clanton and then we're going to play a clip from your video.

00:08:15.740 So Eric Clanton used to be a professor at Diablo Valley, Diablo Valley College.

00:08:23.480 And during one of the incidents at Berkeley in which there was a bit of an altercation, he was present and he was masked.

00:08:29.720 He had black sunglasses on, a hoodie.

00:08:31.960 And he actually took a bike lock and, you know, just spiked a Trump supporter's head with it.

00:08:37.920 Now, of course, we can get into later what actually happened to him.

00:08:42.280 But probably the most ironic part of this story, just off the bat, is that he used to be an ethics professor.

00:08:48.360 All right. Well, let's play a little excerpt from your video on the subject.

00:08:51.880 Take a look.

00:08:52.660 You go right. You go right.

00:08:55.740 I'm filming you.

00:08:56.780 Oh, I can't see who you are.

00:08:58.720 Because you have a mask on. Oh, shit. 1.00

00:09:00.740 Oh, motherfucker. 1.00

00:09:02.560 Oh, shit. He's bleeding. Yo, yo, yo. 1.00

00:09:06.380 Hey, man.

00:09:07.100 He's bleeding.

00:09:08.040 Hi.

00:09:08.920 Clanton, who used to teach ethics at Diablo Valley College in California, was facing 11 years in prison for that April 2017 assault and others.

00:09:18.200 And guess how much time he'll actually have to serve?

00:09:22.740 Zero.

00:09:23.260 Zero.

00:09:24.580 Huh.

00:09:26.700 So was that some Antifa riot or something?

00:09:29.520 I mean, there's been a lot of that kind of street fisticuffs.

00:09:33.340 Normally, you don't have a professor.

00:09:34.860 Normally, it's the radical students, not the radical professors.

00:09:37.680 And a bike lock, that's a weapon.

00:09:39.540 You don't bring a bike lock to a meeting unless you—like, it's not something you keep in your hand.

00:09:43.900 You leave it on your bike.

00:09:45.080 It would be like bringing a hammer to a protest.

00:09:48.480 You're not there to do carpentry.

00:09:50.800 It's clearly brought as a weapon.

00:09:52.240 Tell—how did that even happen?

00:09:54.220 What was that all about, that kerfuffle?

00:09:57.140 Right.

00:09:57.720 So earlier in 2017, there were, of course, a few—quite a few showdowns at Berkeley.

00:10:02.520 One was in the midst of a planned Milo Yiannopoulos speech back in February 2017.

00:10:07.660 During that event, of course, Antifa caused, I believe, $100,000 in damage to the city by bashing ATMs, setting things afire.

00:10:15.900 And this was another one of those occasions, and it was in April 2017.

00:10:19.820 Now, Eric Clanton was charged with three felony assaults with a deadly weapon.

00:10:25.320 He was charged with another felony for causing great bodily injury, I believe, and then two misdemeanors for a simple battery and wearing a mask to avoid getting ID'd upon committing a crime.

00:10:35.220 Now, he was able to enter a plea bargain with California in which they dropped all of his felony charges in exchange for Eric pleading no contest to one of the misdemeanors.

00:10:46.100 You know, just a few weeks ago, I saw news that a far-right-wing person who was punched in Charlottesville sued the person who punched him and got $1.

00:11:02.400 And it's so clear to me that there is a political color to prosecutions like that.

00:11:11.240 Like, our politics is so pervasive now.

00:11:14.100 And the fact that Eric Clanton, this professor who hit a bunch of people with a bike lock, gets off with no jail time because he cut a deal with, obviously, a Democrat prosecutor for talking about California.

00:11:25.960 And I have no sympathy for this far-right guy in Virginia who got punched, but I don't believe we should punch people.

00:11:33.960 Well, apparently, the jury or whoever it was thought, well, $1 is enough.

00:11:38.340 That's us pretending we care about the law.

00:11:40.380 But I find it really troubling that the left these days no longer believes in the rule of law.

00:11:46.320 Is this common on campuses or is this so rare that's why it's newsworthy?

00:11:51.480 How common is this?

00:11:52.860 Well, I think this was a particularly egregious instance, of course.

00:11:56.960 But you have to remember that it begins not with the actual act of swinging a bike lock, but with the actual ideology that's espoused in the class.

00:12:05.180 You definitely do see ideology that leads to this kind of stuff.

00:12:07.960 You see misrepresentation of the Israel versus Palestine conflict.

00:12:11.920 You see things like this that engender these kinds of false equivalencies wherein, like, hate speech.

00:12:18.260 Hate speech is suddenly actual violence.

00:12:20.680 And so I think it definitely begins in the classroom.

00:12:23.420 One thing back to Eric Clanton that was particularly astounding was I think we can all agree that it was a miscarriage of justice.

00:12:30.880 But it was really egregious in this sense because this wasn't a case that was investigated by the police initially, at least.

00:12:38.160 This was a case that average citizens on platforms like Twitter, Reddit, 4chan were looking into this professor.

00:12:44.720 Concerned citizens did the hard work of identifying this guy, and it was all for naught.

00:12:49.320 Yeah, I remember that people sort of used their own online sleuthing to find out who it was.

00:12:55.060 You know, you're so right to say that the actual final act of violence, it's the most tangible, obviously, and that's where the crime is committed.

00:13:05.680 But the seeds are planted with the normalization of violence against our political opponents.

00:13:11.440 And I remember on Donald Trump's inauguration when some liberal walked up to a racist named Richard Spencer and punched him right in the face on the street, broke his eardrum.

00:13:24.240 And I have no sympathy for Richard Spencer's views, but I don't believe that any American citizen or any Canadian citizen should simply be punched in the face because of their political views.

00:13:34.480 But this punch-a-Nazi thing became so ubiquitous.

00:13:40.020 And the trouble with that, Rob, is that there aren't a lot of real Nazis around. 0.83

00:13:44.480 So what this was is, punch someone you don't like, and then, after the fact, say, oh, well, he's a Nazi, so it's okay. 0.78

00:13:51.900 And this spread so much that it became cool. 0.69

00:13:54.340 Here's an awards show in Hollywood where some actor, cool, to the rapturous applause of the Hollywood lovies in the room, shouted, 0.98

00:14:08.340 it's time to punch some people in the face.

00:14:12.300 Do you remember this clip? 1.00

00:14:13.040 Here, take a look.

00:14:13.780 We will hunt monsters, and when we are at a loss amidst the hypocrisy and the casual violence of certain individuals and institutions, 0.98

00:14:23.720 we will, as per Chief Jim Hopper, punch some people in the face when they seek to destroy the meat and the disenfranchised and the marginalized. 0.99

00:14:34.760 Punch some people in the face. 1.00

00:14:36.060 This guy's talking about decorum, and he's calling for punching people in the face. 1.00

00:14:39.780 I think that we have a generation now that says, if you don't like someone, you can punch them in the face, because if you're a Trumpist, well, you must be a Nazi, because Trump is like Nazis, and wouldn't you punch a Nazi? 0.96

00:14:52.660 I think we've unleashed a dangerous force by saying it's okay to do violence to people you don't like. 0.95

00:14:59.440 What do you think, Rob?

00:15:04.660 Yeah, I think so, definitely.

00:15:06.020 And, you know, one thing that's particularly revealing about this is, as you were asking before, were there other cases in which professors were actually the agents of violence?

00:15:14.600 And one thing, of course, you know, I'm covering so many stories a day, I don't remember them right off the bat, but one that I do remember was, this was something, it was the feminist professor, and he attacked someone at a video game convention, and I believe he just, you know, kind of walked away.

00:15:30.200 I don't think things were actually, I remember I was trying to get the actual report, the police report filed by the victim, and there were witnesses to this assault.

00:15:37.440 But, yeah, I don't remember any repercussions on that one, either.

00:15:41.320 Well, you know, and we've seen this spilling out in the streets, very progressive city, Portland, Oregon, Andy Goh, who's a Vietnamese American, so he's a racial minority. 0.55

00:15:53.580 He covers Antifa thugs, who are invariably white, by the way. 0.61

00:15:57.800 I've got nothing against white people, I'm just saying, he's the minority, they're the white folks with mask faces. 0.98

00:16:02.400 They threaten him, they assault other people, and the Portland cops are clearly told to stand down. 0.89

00:16:08.100 I find it dangerous, but let's move on to the next clip, and this is about a University of Michigan professor, and I find this crazy.

00:16:17.020 Now, Michigan has a very high Muslim population, but this is not a Muslim professor.

00:16:23.020 His name is John Cheney Lippold, and, well, let me invite you to tell the story, and then we'll play the clip.

00:16:28.280 Yes, so there was this professor, John Cheney Lippold, who had agreed to write a recommendation for one of his students to study abroad.

00:16:37.040 Now, a couple of weeks later, whenever the student reminded him that he needed his recommendation,

00:16:41.860 the professor suddenly reneged on that agreement upon finding out that the student wanted to study abroad in Israel.

00:16:48.300 Yeah, well, okay, let's take a look at that clip right now.

00:16:50.860 Let me introduce you to Dr. John Cheney Lippold, a professor of American Studies at the University of Michigan.

00:16:57.140 His fields of study all end with studies, which has become quite the telltale sign for cultural Marxism in universities.

00:17:05.100 And his research areas include gender, race, and identity.

00:17:09.240 Cheney Lippold recently agreed to write a recommendation letter for one of his students, Abigail Ingber,

00:17:14.940 but then changed his mind after learning that Abigail was going to be studying in Israel.

00:17:19.720 He said, as you may know, many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel

00:17:26.060 in support of Palestinians living in Palestine.

00:17:29.820 What's a Palestine? 0.91

00:17:31.000 You say that as though it's a country or something.

00:17:33.460 This boycott includes writing letters of recommendation for students planning to study there.

00:17:38.040 What happens in that case?

00:17:42.380 Because clearly that's not a professor doing what they...

00:17:47.980 Either that student is commendable or not, and to withhold or grant an accurate observation

00:17:57.880 of the student's talents based on an irrelevant...

00:18:02.480 Either the student is worth recommending or not.

00:18:04.660 It's got nothing to do with an external political situation.

00:18:10.280 I can't imagine someone who wanted to go to communist China or even totalitarian Iran would

00:18:16.620 be treated this way.

00:18:17.420 How did that go down?

00:18:18.320 How did that end when it finally worked its way out?

00:18:21.880 Right now, what's really remarkable about this story, Ezra, is that the professor flat out

00:18:26.000 lied to his students.

00:18:27.360 He said that different departments at University of Michigan are boycotting Israel when it's

00:18:32.740 actually against U-Mitch policy to do this, and to refuse academic boons for students

00:18:39.440 based on your political persuasion.

00:18:42.020 And so the school did, fair enough, did sanction him by saying he won't get a merit raise for

00:18:47.760 this school year and won't be able to take a sabbatical for the next two years.

00:18:51.220 Yeah, it's just, I believe that a professor should be able to be political.

00:18:57.340 In fact, you know, professors might have a lot to offer in terms of politics, and I think

00:19:04.480 there are some courses of study where a professor's own politics are relevant to the class.

00:19:09.600 But to essentially bring in political standards over academic standards and to reward or punish

00:19:20.520 students based on the professor's own political proclivities, I think it's odious.

00:19:27.280 Frankly, I think it's so commonplace, though the only unusual thing here, Rob, this is my

00:19:32.680 opinion, I'd like yours, is that he was so open about it.

00:19:35.760 I think professors reward or punish students based on their ideology all the time. 0.99

00:19:41.260 I think they're normally just not stupid enough to put it in writing like this. 0.95

00:19:45.940 Right, and what's really peculiar here, Ezra, is you would think if you either support Israel 0.97

00:19:50.960 or you oppose Israel, the best way for your students to get information to support either

00:19:56.140 side of the argument is to actually experience Israel.

00:19:59.500 And of course, this is what the professor was preventing his student to do.

00:20:02.960 So this is kind of like a Streisand effect type situation, wherein if you ban something,

00:20:08.100 you A, make it all the more appealing, and B, inadvertently lend some credence to the side

00:20:14.080 of the argument that you oppose.

00:20:15.440 Yeah, it's very interesting.

00:20:16.820 I want to talk about one last story.

00:20:18.600 And I find this so odd because I remember my very first day of law school, if I can tell

00:20:24.260 you an old war story here, Rob.

00:20:26.280 Getting into law school is hard.

00:20:28.380 You have to take the law school admission test, the LSAT, as it's called, and you have to have

00:20:32.380 good grades and let us recommendation.

00:20:34.900 And some of the schools are pretty competitive.

00:20:37.120 I applied to the University of Alberta Law School, which is sort of competitive.

00:20:40.720 It's not like the top school in the country or something.

00:20:45.000 But more kids applied than got in.

00:20:46.980 So everyone who got in was sort of relieved and grateful, at least if it was their first

00:20:53.180 pick or something.

00:20:54.240 But I remember the very first day of school, the associate dean went through and said, well,

00:21:01.200 you're 49% male and 51% female, and this percent of you had a business degree, and this percent

00:21:07.240 had a nursing degree.

00:21:08.180 And I thought, OK, that's interesting.

00:21:09.540 And then the professor or the dean broke us down by race.

00:21:14.040 And I thought, well, I know how she knew all the other factors.

00:21:16.980 How did she know our race?

00:21:18.340 I never said our race.

00:21:19.600 And it was then, on the first day of law school, that I realized they had a race-based 0.64

00:21:24.700 affirmative action.

00:21:26.180 And I guess every person who was in there had made the cut.

00:21:29.720 But I immediately thought, well, imagine those people who were the best, but they lost out

00:21:34.340 because of this affirmative action.

00:21:36.040 I found very little sympathy, from my point of view, from my fellow students, because obviously

00:21:41.400 everyone in that room hearing that had made the cut.

00:21:45.280 The kids who lost out for reasons of being the wrong race weren't there to complain.

00:21:51.380 And that's a long preamble, Rob, to what has only grown in the 20 years since I've been

00:21:55.960 in law school, and that is that being a white student is demonized in political and academic

00:22:05.280 circles, but most vigorously by white people who hold positions of privilege.

00:22:11.780 Did you see my point, Rob?

00:22:12.880 And the reason I told you that anecdote is all these other white liberals who are saying,

00:22:17.060 oh, yeah, that's totally fine that we have anti-white discrimination, well, they say that 0.97

00:22:21.000 because they made the cut.

00:22:22.200 If they hadn't made the cut, they wouldn't be saying that.

00:22:24.720 Tell me about James Livingston, this crackpot professor at Rutgers, which is a good school. 0.97

00:22:30.760 He's a history professor who's as white as the Klan. 0.98

00:22:34.420 He's as white as a snowstorm. 1.00

00:22:37.580 But he puts on a big show of being anti-white. 0.98

00:22:41.000 Tell me about him.

00:22:42.660 Sure.

00:22:43.180 So this was a Rutgers University professor, which is in New Jersey, James Livingston.

00:22:47.240 He went to a fast food restaurant in his spare time.

00:22:50.140 So this wasn't in the classroom, but he did go to this restaurant and he saw some white

00:22:54.260 kids playing on the ground around him.

00:22:56.920 And so after this, what I guess was a very horrible experience, he proceeded to take to

00:23:01.760 Facebook where he launched some racially charged, profanity-laden attack against these white

00:23:07.240 kids. 0.98

00:23:07.720 He said he hates white people and he apparently resigned from his race in that post, too. 0.96

00:23:13.820 I didn't know you could resign from your race, but I guess if Rachel Dolezal can do it, surely 1.00

00:23:19.720 a professor from Rutgers can.

00:23:21.080 Exactly.

00:23:21.300 Let's take a look at the video.

00:23:22.840 Rutgers history professor James Livingston took to Facebook and said,

00:23:26.620 Now, up until this point, you might be like, hey, maybe he's just satirizing apartheid.

00:23:42.820 Maybe it's even a commentary on South Africa.

00:23:45.360 But that's until you reach the next few sentences, when he seems to blame the rambunctiousness

00:23:50.220 of children, not on their immaturity, but instead on their whiteness.

00:23:54.580 I just went to Harlem Shake on 124 and Lennox for a classic burger to go, that would be 0.98

00:24:00.460 my dinner, and the place is overrun with little Caucasian a**holes who know their parents will 1.00

00:24:06.360 approve of anything they do. 1.00

00:24:08.400 Slide around the floor, you little a**head. 1.00

00:24:10.940 Sing loudly, you unlikely moron. 1.00

00:24:13.280 Do what you want. 1.00

00:24:14.480 Nobody here is going to restrict your right to be white.

00:24:17.820 Right, so attributing rowdiness to the amount of melanin you have in your skin.

00:24:22.700 Is this the new progressive, Mr. Professor?

00:24:26.420 It's so weird.

00:24:28.260 I mean, I think it's cool or something.

00:24:32.440 But again, if he really wants to leave his whiteness, it's not the whiteness, the shade 0.99

00:24:38.560 or hue of his skin that's the problem, apparently.

00:24:41.420 It's the conduct or the power or the privilege.

00:24:43.180 Why don't ever any of these folks looking for affirmative action lead by example?

00:24:50.140 Reminds me of what Abraham Lincoln said.

00:24:52.580 He said, when I hear people promoting slavery, I have a hankering to see it tried out on them.

00:24:58.740 I'm paraphrasing.

00:24:59.700 And my message to this Rutger professor would be, if you really hate the power and privilege

00:25:08.940 of your whiteness, you can actually do something about it by giving up your position to someone 0.50

00:25:14.480 who's morally better than you.

00:25:17.220 They never do that last part, though.

00:25:19.060 They just virtue signal.

00:25:20.120 It's so weird. 0.94

00:25:21.060 And as you pointed out, it's just so bloody racist. 0.67

00:25:23.000 Exactly.

00:25:25.000 It's just like the celebrities who were claiming they'd leave the country when Trump got elected

00:25:29.240 or now, of course, with the migrant crisis, you know, say, you know, well, why don't we

00:25:33.420 let these people into the country? 0.99

00:25:34.920 Why don't we let illegal aliens in? 1.00

00:25:36.600 It's not into our houses.

00:25:37.820 You never see that volunteered.

00:25:39.820 And so back to James Livingston, though, after I broke this story, the restaurant did denounce

00:25:44.040 the professor and the school actually said that he violated the school's discrimination

00:25:48.900 and harassment policy.

00:25:50.440 But then, so their reasoning there was that a student in his class could reasonably feel

00:25:56.460 stigmatized by their race by taking a class with him.

00:26:00.520 But three months later or so, after the story died down a bit, Rutgers quietly reversed its

00:26:06.740 decision and the professor did not get sanctioned.

00:26:09.940 Yeah, that's a good point.

00:26:10.800 I mean, if you were a white student in his class, you could properly feel that he hated

00:26:16.460 you just based on your race.

00:26:18.460 It's so weird.

00:26:20.740 You know what?

00:26:21.540 I miss the days of racial equality when Martin Luther King Jr. told us to judge each other

00:26:28.480 by the content of our character, not the color of our skin.

00:26:31.300 That is the opposite of what's going on on campuses these days.

00:26:35.140 And what's so irritating is it's the obsession, is to think of yourself as a color, as a gender,

00:26:40.860 as a sexual orientation, instead of just as students or citizens.

00:26:46.520 I hate the fact that we're being atomized and then reformed along those identity politics lines.

00:26:54.200 I just don't think it's healthy.

00:26:55.860 Is that everywhere?

00:26:57.640 Are all campuses like this to a degree, Rob?

00:27:00.120 Yes, you definitely have these little hypocrisies springing up along a lot of different lines.

00:27:06.500 So, of course, you have the racial one, in which case, if this were James Livingston saying 0.82

00:27:11.180 these comments about black kids at a restaurant, I'm pretty sure he would have been sanctioned

00:27:16.880 for those.

00:27:17.720 And, you know, I think the sanctions would have been pretty rough for him.

00:27:21.520 And you see the same thing in Title IX cases in these campuses, wherein it's a kangaroo 0.99

00:27:26.740 court for the accused, often male students.

00:27:30.120 And Title IX, that's a male-female equality rule, isn't it? 0.85

00:27:35.380 Right.

00:27:35.700 Just for our Canadian viewers.

00:27:37.000 Okay, sorry, I interrupted you.

00:27:38.160 I just want to explain that because we don't use the phrase Title IX up here, but we have

00:27:41.640 the same thing.

00:27:42.200 It's basically feminism in law. 1.00

00:27:44.040 Sorry, keep going.

00:27:45.380 Yes, and this would apply to the kind of sexual discrimination cases or sexual assault in

00:27:50.140 many cases.

00:27:50.700 And so what often happens is the accused student won't get a fair trial.

00:27:55.620 Sometimes they'll be actually very disrespected by administrators.

00:27:58.700 I remember there was one story in which the administrator, the Title IX administrator, thought

00:28:03.760 that they had hung up on the student and then called him a vulgar word on the phone.

00:28:09.160 So you just see this kind of arrogance and really just intolerance for people based on

00:28:15.340 their identities.

00:28:16.720 And it's like, you know, these are the same people who are preaching that they want equality.

00:28:19.960 So where's the real equality, I'd ask you, Ezra?

00:28:23.300 Yeah, well, I think it's a whole industry that depends on inequality.

00:28:27.420 The whole point of these grievance industries is not to solve the grievance because then

00:28:30.460 they'd have to get a real job.

00:28:31.600 It's to perpetuate the grievance and monetize the grievance.

00:28:35.200 Well, I tell you, I find your videos depressing.

00:28:37.640 You deliver them in an entertaining way and in a way that makes, I think, a viewer laugh.

00:28:44.660 But I haven't watched all 200 of your videos.

00:28:48.600 I watch as many as I can.

00:28:50.860 And I have to say, I have come to the conclusion that if there is another way for a young person

00:28:57.220 to find a path in life that does not go through a humanities education in one of these politically

00:29:03.760 correct campuses, that would be a way I would try and choose.

00:29:08.140 I just think that it's so difficult for someone to hold their breath for four years to get

00:29:13.600 through it.

00:29:14.260 And you can't come out of the other end without being in some way tainted by it.

00:29:19.220 Do you think 2019 is going to be a year of backlash or the pendulum swinging back?

00:29:25.660 Do you think people are sick of this?

00:29:26.720 Or do you think, no, it's just getting going?

00:29:27.940 You know, I'm not so sure, Ezra, because if you had asked me this question a couple of

00:29:32.000 years ago and Donald Trump had just won the presidency, I would say, yeah, I think we

00:29:35.740 are going to have some kind of backlash.

00:29:38.380 But, you know, now we're two years into this.

00:29:40.260 We're still reporting some of the most insane stories.

00:29:43.900 I don't know if that's likely to happen.

00:29:46.120 I will leave you with this one anecdote.

00:29:48.360 And this was actually in my own experience through humanities at University of Virginia.

00:29:53.100 I took a class.

00:29:54.020 It was Latino media studies.

00:29:55.600 And I was getting a media studies degree on top of my English one.

00:29:59.280 And I remember my whole semester essay was pretty much an essay bashing Trump.

00:30:04.400 And in this class, what I really had to do was compartmentalize.

00:30:07.180 I was just coming off of an internship at Breitbart.

00:30:09.560 And I think my professor may have known that I didn't particularly agree with his point of

00:30:14.260 view on Trump.

00:30:15.900 But I, for that class, just bowed my head and I told him what he wanted to hear.

00:30:21.640 So I think oftentimes what the case has to be is if you are a student, you either have

00:30:25.880 to do that and, you know, parrot the same talking points, the same progressive talking

00:30:29.920 points, or risk getting a bad grade and have your future livelihood messed up.

00:30:34.480 Yeah, absolutely.

00:30:35.760 It's a shame.

00:30:36.660 And, you know, and I've talked to Peterson about this, about do, should a student lie?

00:30:42.220 And not lie in an express, like, tell a falsehood, but lie as in shape what they say in an essay,

00:30:50.860 shape their views to please the, I'm not calling you a liar.

00:30:54.520 I'm saying you complied, you submitted, you bent the knee to get through it without, because

00:30:59.080 is it really worth a moment of, you know, independent political thought to get an F?

00:31:04.200 Or if not an F, to get, to get, to be damaged academically in your grades, especially if

00:31:12.040 something turns on it.

00:31:13.600 And, and I'm not criticizing you.

00:31:15.800 I remember when, again, I was at law school and I would fight, I would fight all these

00:31:19.460 folks and no one would support me in class.

00:31:21.640 And afterwards they'd say, oh, we're behind you all the way.

00:31:23.600 I said, why don't you help me out when the professor's here?

00:31:26.620 And they say, Ezra, this is our only ticket.

00:31:28.600 This is our only chance out.

00:31:29.680 I remember one, one guy said, if I don't, if I don't get through law school, I'm done.

00:31:33.500 This is my only chance, economic chance.

00:31:38.040 So I think professors have a power imbalance.

00:31:42.300 And if they abuse it by treating students as political pawns, I think that, I think that's

00:31:48.260 abusive in its own way.

00:31:49.720 And I think it's morally corrupting to force young people to lie.

00:31:53.760 I think it's a terrible thing.

00:31:55.560 Anyhow, let's say, Rob, I really appreciate your work.

00:31:57.900 The website is called campusunmasked.com.

00:32:01.480 I'd have to check the viewer stats.

00:32:03.220 It's millions of views.

00:32:05.500 So I know you're making a difference.

00:32:06.620 Thanks so much for your great work in 2018.

00:32:09.220 And good luck to us all in 2019.

00:32:11.580 Thanks for having me, Ezra.

00:32:12.900 All right.

00:32:13.380 It's our pleasure.

00:32:14.460 Well, that's our friend Rob Shimshock.

00:32:16.720 As you heard, he's been doing the Campus Unmasked Beat for us.

00:32:21.180 He also works for Campus Reform, a U.S.

00:32:24.420 NGO with a similar mission.

00:32:26.440 And I encourage you to check out his videos, whether you're a student or know someone who is.

00:32:31.700 That's our show for today.

00:32:33.480 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,

00:32:37.680 good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:32:39.680 I'm going to show you guys.

00:32:41.940 Today, we'll be right back to Rebel World Headquarters.

00:32:47.000 Bye-bye.

00:32:47.520 Bye-bye.

00:32:48.620 Bye-bye.

00:32:49.780 Bye.

00:32:50.280 Bye.

00:32:50.880 Bye.

00:32:55.140 Bye-bye.

00:32:55.960 Bye-bye.

00:32:57.060 Bye-bye.

00:32:58.080 Bye-bye.

00:32:59.320 Bye-bye.

00:33:01.560 Bye-bye.

00:33:02.320 Bye-bye.

00:33:02.900 Bye-bye.

00:33:03.500 Bye-bye.

00:33:05.540 Bye-bye.

00:33:06.120 Bye-bye.

00:33:07.320 Bye-bye.

Rebel News Podcast - January 02, 2019

SPECIAL! Rob Shimshock of Campus Unmasked： Three craziest college news stories of 2018

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