By John Kass
Chicago Tribune (TNS)
Northwestern University students are still being criticized by woke and unwoke scolds young and old, many of them working journalists, for how the student-run newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, shamed itself a few days ago.
It seems to me that both stern criticism of the young and motherly hugs of forgiveness are out of place here.
What happened to the editors of The Daily Northwestern is that they are students, they are young. And they have not yet grown the hard bark that, now more than ever, is necessary to do the job of a journalist.
They’re young people raised in the cancel culture dominated by the left, a culture that is all about feelings and shame, and the student editors did what their culture demanded.
They caved to the mob.
What’s been missing from some of the more simplistic criticism is an examination of the cancel culture that groomed the students so that they’d censor themselves and capitulate on demand.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a supporter of President Donald Trump, visited NU for a talk with college Republicans.
Predictably, student protesters shrieked and tried to disrupt Session’s speech. He said they were being stupid.
The Daily Northwestern reporters and photographers did their job. They properly covered the news, took photographs of protesters and contacted others who were there by going through the student directory. They did what journalists do. They properly covered a story without fear or favor.
But then the fear set in. Their peers complained that student reporters found them by going through the student directory, which is very much a college phone book. They didn’t like being photographed.
And the student editors didn’t have the spine to stand up to them. The editors apologized for doing their jobs.
University President Morton Schapiro released a statement, saying he supported Sessions’ appearance, but then turned and bemoaned the choice of Sessions as speaker.
Schapiro said Sessions wasn’t “the right speaker” for NU. Who would be the “right speaker”?
The motto of Northwestern University is “Quaecumque sunt vera” and means “Whatsoever things are true.”
Exactly. So, what is true here?
We’re told this is a great teaching moment for the students. But I see it as a teaching moment for the rest of us, a teaching moment to rub our noses in what adults have allowed to happen at high schools and at universities, where feelings count, where students must not be intellectually challenged lest they become “triggered” and upset, where the teaching of mathematics is twined with social justice warrior rhetoric.
And, where students have been taught to cravenly craft opinions to satisfy the political views of faculty.
Before we mock those Northwestern students for not doing their jobs properly, please understand where they come from. On social media, which is life and breath to many young people, and to old journalists, this is true:
The cancel culture destroys people and strips individuals of humanity, dehumanizing the brave ones to squash dissent. It herds the gullible. It invites the craven to bend the knee.
It does not tolerate diversity of opinion. It is Orwellian and it is relentless.
Journalism was once the province of the iconoclasts, but no longer. Now establishment journalism, in the main, serves the establishment. The cancel culture doesn’t shape journalists as much as it shapes propagandists, but ultimately this is not the fault of the students.
It’s our fault. They’re our kids. We let it happen.
The lesson of what happened at Northwestern University is this:
Report what you see, report whatsoever things are true and the mob will break you.
And then you may apologize.
John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Email him at jskass@chicagotribune.com
