UNREASONABLE CAMPUS PROTESTS: THE JOHN SILBER METHOD

Ken Berwitz


With major thanks to the Wall Street Journal, via Seven Hayward\’s article at powerlineblog.com, here is how former Boston University President, the late John Silber, said he handled unreasonable campus protests when he was there:

\’\’..they put up the shacks. I told the police, “Go ask them three questions: \’Do you have a title to the property?\'(They built them on our property, not theirs.)\’Do you have a building permit?\’ We have to have building permits. \’Have you got a clearance with the historical commission, because this is a historical district?\’ If the answer is no to those three questions, then you tell them, \’We\’ll give you about 15 minutes to remove your shanty. And if you don\’t, you\’ll be arrested.’ I said,  Now, none of them are going to remove their shanty, so you\’re going to have to arrest them. But I want you to be very gentle, and I want you to take them to the paddy wagon singing, \’It\’s just a shanty in old shanty town.\’  Because one point I want to get across to these students is, I do not take them seriously. This is not some very deeply felt, high moral cause on their part; this is showboating of a very insincere kind by most of these students, and I want them to understand that I see through their pretensions.”

That, folks, is the way you handle a ridiculous, based-on-nothing “protest”, which is really just an opportunistic attempt to take over the University for the purpose of morphing it into a radical left wing base of operations.

Not incidentally, this is the polar opposite of what now-former University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe did.  

Mr. Silber regained control of his school.  Mr. Wolfe resigned, based on having done exactly nothing wrong, and the Academic brownshirts have taken over the University of Missouri.

Which do you think is a better result?

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