At this rate I'd be wealthier than Elon Musk pretty soon, though.1
A Macalester College art exhibit reopened Monday after a brief closure to address concerns from Muslim students.
It’s the second time in recent months that Muslim students at private liberal arts colleges in St. Paul have raised objections to art displayed on their campus. Both artists, born 700 years apart, have roots in Persian culture. At Hamline University, a student objected to a medieval painting of the Prophet Muhammad; at Macalester, students criticized contemporary depictions of Muslim women.
But the dispute at Macalester, an elite college with a focus on internationalism, has so far played out differently than a similar controversy at Hamline, a mile-and-a-half away.
This university, to its credit, didn’t railroad any adjunct professors out of a job. Instead, it went for more of, shall we say, an Ashcroftian solution:
At Macalester, students objected to images in an art exhibition by Taravat Talepasand, a contemporary, feminist Iranian American artist based in Oregon. Some sculptures and drawings in the exhibit depict exposed bodies of Muslim women wearing hijabs or niqabs. The college responded by closing the exhibit for a weekend; holding a community conversation; temporarily shrouding the gallery in black curtains; and then reopening the exhibit with a content warning and frosted glass on some of the gallery windows.
The exhibition itself includes images like a woman lifting up her chador to reveal lingerie underneath. I’m pretty sure that happened at the end of Sex and the City 2.2 But I digress.
Jill Filipovic, a left-winger with some appreciation for classical liberal values like freedom of expression (yes, there’s still at least one left) drops the hammer:
The exhibition isn’t for everyone (what is?). But this exhibition has been challenged by a number of students at Macalester who say it’s offensive — and that because it’s offensive, it should never have been displayed in the first place, and should now be taken down. And the administration, briefly, ceded to their demands, hitting pause on the exhibition to listen to student complaints, before reopening it — but with black veils hiding its contents so as not to offend anyone who doesn’t choose to avert their eyes. This, the university said, was to prevent “non-consensual viewing.”
(I have some bad news for these students: If you are a person who has the gift of eyesight, life is a series of non-consensual viewings).
Nearly 80 students have signed a petition against the exhibition, on a campus of just over 2,000. And the petition is worth a read, because I think it tells us a lot about a troubling kind of intolerance and narcissism that seems pervasive among a particular set of self-identified young progressives. There’s an entitlement not just to an education, but to broad emotional safety and wide control over what happens on campus.
In the first paragraph of the petition, the author complains that “The Muslim community at Macalester was not contacted for input or consultation regarding the hiring of the artists and the content of the work being displayed.” This is odd — are students at a university typically consulted before schools bring art to campus? And it’s the kind of demand that can only come when you believe that you are an authority entitled to deference, not a student attending an institution in order to learn and grow.
Macalester junior Ikran Noor started the petition, saying some of the images support the Iranian Women Life Freedom movement. “But the ones that are particularly depicting hijabi women and niqabi women, I think those should be put down,” she told the Sahan Journal. She characterized the exhibit as “quite harmful.”
“It’s not like I’m saying, no one should see the art,” she said. “But take it elsewhere. As an institution, you have the right to say we don’t want to be associated with this sort of thing.”
If I were an administrator at Macalester, censoriousness, small-mindedness, and religious fundamentalism are the sorts of things I wouldn’t want to be associated with. And I would be very troubled if students at my institution believed that we shouldn’t be associated with art that challenges fundamentalism and embraces feminism.
[…]
Like in the Hamline case, the Macalester students who want this work censored don’t use the language of religious fundamentalism or blasphemy — although that is what they are, and that is what they are objecting to — but rather the language of social justice, therapy, and DEI initiatives. They talk about the “harm” caused by mere images of women with both breasts and headscarves. The sign that includes a QR code to sign the petition encourages viewers to “stand in solidarity” with them. The university uses this language, too, apologizing for “the harm it caused” and the lack of “cultural sensitivity and awareness of the possible impact of the art.”
Yes, this is a different, gentler kind of censoriousness than we see on the right. But it’s censoriousness nonetheless — and it’s frankly embarrassing that the school apologized or took any steps at all to placate students with unreasonable and profoundly illiberal demands.
What if these had been fundamentalist Christian students instead of Muslims? Filipovic actually has a compare and contrast for us:
Consider the case, raised by a Chronicle of Higher Education story about this current Macalester controversy, of a Christian student at Duke a few years back who objected to being assigned the book Fun Home. That student, Brian Grasso, wrote an op/ed in the Washington Post about his refusal to do something he considered “immoral”…
[…]
This student was immediately and roundly mocked by liberals and progressives. And in his defense, he was simply asking to individually opt out of a single assignment. If he had demanded that not only should he be allowed to read a different book but that Fun Home be removed from the reading list, or Renaissance art depicting sex be taken out of art history classes, or that Duke refuse any on-campus exhibition depicting a sexual act (or veil those exhibitions behind heavy curtains, and include content warnings and student petitions against them), I think liberals would be pretty universally appalled.
This is no different.
It’s at times like this I think right-wing Christians have been going about the culture war all wrong. Instead of passing laws against drag shows and stuff, they should adopt the enemy's own playbook and go all in on DEI and SJW terminology in support of their own censorious crusades. (I've never read it, but I'm pretty sure that's in Rules for Radicals somewhere.)
Would it work? Eh, probably not. Christians, especially yt ones, are near the bottom of the progressive stack. But the looks on their adversaries’ faces could off-the-charts unintentional comedy value.
Thirty-plus years on, it sure seems like the Ayatollah Khomeini won his battle against Salman Rushdie, doesn’t it?
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, say that seemingly good deed you’re doing is actually problematic and also try to get you cancelled because of stupid shit you said on the internet.3
At first I assumed people were criticizing Mr. Beast’s curing-people-of-blindness video because it was all about making himself look good and it’s “inspiration porn” and stuff. There’s also the criticism that people in the wealthiest nation on earth shouldn’t have to turn to rich YouTubers to pay for their surgery. (I actually agree with that point, as does Mr. Beast himself.)
But, no, “restoring blind people’s sight is bad actually” is a thing now. Maybe they’re upset because if they can see again they can actually gaze upon offensive Islamophobic art exhibits.
In advance of this evening’s big game,4 behold the most hapless offence in modern National Football League history: the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Not the winless 1976 team, but the 1977 version, which improved greatly on defense (hence its two wins at the end of the season, against the Aints and the “no, we’re the football team” St. Louis Cardinals) but whose offence made the first-year Bucs look like the Greatest Show on Turf era Rams.
The NFL won’t let me embed the video, but feast your eyes on the true greatness that was the team’s Creamsicle uniform. This alone is good reason to restore peoples’ vision.
Actually, with the moves he’s made lately, we all might be in any event.
That movie was grossly offensive in its own right. Not to Muslim women, but to anyone who watched it, amirite?
Incidentally, some people whom you wouldn’t expect to be friends with Taylor Lorenz, like Ben Dreyfuss and Jesse Singal, say she is actually very nice IRL and nothing like her online persona. It’s certainly possible. That online persona sure is toxic, though.
Obligatory: Chiefs 27, Eagles 21.