Progressive pedagogues do have high standards…when you attack them. When they’re on offense it’s a different playbook.
Stanford Professor David Palumbo Liu took to the pages of The Stanford Daily to denounce the editorial staff at the alternative newspaper on campus, The Stanford Review. He claimed the Review’s treatment of his group–the Campus Antifascist Network–lumped it together with the more egregious acts of Antifa. For example, he takes issue with this characterization of himself which appeared in the Review: “their organization is undeniably a chapter of a terrorist group, championing the same kinds of violent resistance that have muzzled free speech across the country. [Campus Antifascist Network] aims ‘to build large, unified demonstrations against fascists on campuses when they come.’”
Liu writes, “Here’s the problem — just saying it’s ‘undeniable’ does not make it true. A responsible journalist would cite a source that validates that assertion.” Fair enough. And how does Liu himself show us such responsibility. Well, take a look at his treatment of our commander-in-chief: “We have a president who has called other countries ‘s***hole’ countries; called those nonviolently exercising their free speech rights ‘sons of bitches’; claimed that neo-Nazis are ‘good people’; attacked sitting jurists as ‘fake judges’; fired the director of the FBI and pardoned a sheriff convicted of criminal contempt; swept aside and evacuated decades of science; destroyed individuals and families through inhumane immigration policies; and so deregulated the financial world in a mad and terrifyingly effective transference of public resources into private wealth that the next crash will be 10 times worse than that of 2008.”
