William Jacobson Launches 'College Insurrection'

I read Legal Insurrection every day, multiple times a day. I'm proud to call William a friend. But for some reason I missed his announcement in June that he was launching a new blog, called "College Insurrection."

Here's the announcement, "Welcome to College Insurrection."

And here's the heads-up from June, "The next Insurrection":

Because most campuses are dominated by liberal adminstrators, faculty, and student activists, conservative/libertarian students often feel isolated and alone, and up against seemingly insurmountable forces which wield power over their lives.

For many students, the risk/reward ratio says to shut up and just go along so as not to be singled out and targeted.

In reality, they are not alone.  They are the silenced majority.  They are a youthful Army of Davids.  They just don’t know it yet.

So the next project will be …

Col·lege In·sur·rec·tion

More at the link.

One of the more interesting things, in my teaching experience, is the large number of conservatives students --- students with very traditional values --- who are laid back, quiet and low key. They listen a lot and hold back from the discussions. LBCC is a majority-minority institution, and for the bulk of black and Hispanic students, there's literally no questioning the hard-left line on politics, racism, or you name it. Sometimes, though, I like to have students think through their assumptions, or the assumptions they've been fed by the mass media. I followed the media stories on the Trayvon Martin shooting during classes last semester, and I swear some students where heartbroken to learn a different point of view, to find out the shooting was much more complicated than they'd heard. When ABC News posted images of George Zimmerman's injuries, which seemed to confirm his account that he'd been pushed to the pavement by Trayvon, some of my students went into shock. They really want to think that racism is everywhere and all-encompassing. A left-wing professor will of course encourage such thinking, for sure on my campus, especially in the history classes, and sociology and psychology, off the top of my head. I will often get only one or two conservative students who'll speak up with their opinions in class, because they don't want to deal with being heckled, or called racist. It does happen. A few years ago, I had a homosexual student who claimed in class that traditional marriage didn't matter. He said that anyone could get a sperm donor and have a baby. I asked him then why have marriage at all? He didn't go so far as to want to abolish it, but that was the implication of his argument. I was surprised when a young conservative student spoke up from the back of the class. He said something like, "Everything is about gay politics nowadays. The gay rights groups get whatever they want. And you can't criticize them or you'll be attacked. It's crazy." Needless to say the discussion was getting a little heavy, but that was a rare event. Most conservative students won't express their opinions like that because they're intimidated by a stultifying environment of political correctness.

As for "College Insurrection," there's still a lot I don't know about it, some further plans for the blog, additional goals, range of contributors, etc. But if it generates a critical mass of conservative commentary on academe it will be extremely helpful. And I'll be glad to help toward that goal.

Congratulations to William.

More on this later as things develop.