We recently covered conservative icon Thomas Sowell’s views on the “madness at Swarthmore” College.

Now, Dr. Robert Paquette, Ph.D., a prize-winning historian who co-founded the independent Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, shares his views on its institutional narcissism.

….It bears rereading, especially in light of the seemingly inexhaustible contemporary examples on elite college campuses of the powers that be, including trustees, kowtowing to narcissistic adolescents and their faculty allies, who with shop-worn displays of self-righteousness use disruption and intimidation to chill the educational environment for students who do not share their theology for the cause du jour.

For a particularly vivid case in point, have a look at two videos: one posted on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Med0treVE ); the other on National Review Online (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348110/swarthmore-spinning-out-control-videos). Each video records minutes of a recent performance by activist students in a group called Mountain Justice at Swarthmore College, ranked perennially as one of the top two or three finest liberal arts colleges in the country. One suspects that business has not been usual at Swarthmore for some time, for the clips, shot on 4 May, put on full display the abject cowardice of leaders at Swarthmore as they sit dripping like milquetoast while a boisterous band of privileged adolescents commandeer a meeting designed to have two undergraduates and two members of Swarthmore’s Board of Managers speak on the issue of whether the college should divest itself of fossil-fuel stocks.

Newspapers report Rebecca Chopp, Swarthmore’s president, at the scene in a front-row seat sitting on her hands.  In the second video, she appears to be the person, the woman in the red dress (no pun intended), to whom one courageous student, identified as Danielle Charette, is pleading— to no avail— to do something, to, at the very least, stand up and demand that the meeting be called to order, so that her voice and the voices of others like her will not be silenced as the juvenile brown-shirts hijack the proceedings.  Having filed in a long line on stage, the activists openly thank Ms. Charette for her efforts by clapping down her voice.  Despite the damning visual evidence, President Chopp, in explaining her absent presence, announced to the world that the “open meeting was a beginning, not the end, of fruitful—if tough—dialogue [my emphasis].”

Paquette concludes:

First, if I were the leader of a Fortune-500 company, I would make it a point to find the home address of Danielle Charette, that courageous and, as it turned out, singular young woman at Swarthmore’s May 4th circus and sign her up for employment on a fast-track to an executive position. Second, if I were a parent with a high-school-age son or daughter, I would take Swarthmore off the map of targeted schools. … Mountain Justice did not initiate a takeover of the campus; it followed one orchestrated on campus by politicized Ph.Ds. years ago.