Since signing my oath as one of the newly appointed trustees, I have spent many hours in communication with administrators, faculty, students, and alumni. Many of these people have whispered to me about the “culture problem” at New College. They have described something resembling a hostage situation on campus, in which left-wing activist students have mobilized a grievance narrative and exploited the DEI-style bureaucracy in order to isolate, shame, intimidate, and expel anyone who dissents from the politics of social justice.
As an institution, New College has long known about the problem. A consulting firm hired by the previous university president pointed out that the campus had become an “echo chamber,” with left-wing students creating a hostile political atmosphere and using the college’s online forum to launch polemics against conservative and religious students.
And yet, little has been done. The adults have effectively ceded authority to the most aggressive, intolerant, and ideological members of the community, who wield the language of “trauma” and “diversity” in pursuit of a suffocating left-wing orthodoxy, which they use to justify a perpetual campaign to silence and exclude anyone on the wrong political end of the intersectional hierarchy.
The hostage dynamic is notable, and perhaps even more powerful, because it is unspoken. All of the New College employees with whom I have spoken acknowledge the “culture problem” in private—but none has been willing to raise the issue in public. They are afraid.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member