Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at New York University, argued in a recently published essay that while its traditional “telos” (end or goal) has been truth, within the last few decades the university has assumed another: Social Justice.
The university, however, can only have one telos.
The conflict between these two goals has raged for decades, Haidt claims. Last year, though, it became unmanageable when student groups at 86 universities and colleges around the country issued “demands” to administrators, demands for Social Justice that, by and large, were met.
The following statement is posted at BlackLiberationCollective.org:
“We demand at the minimum, Black students and Black faculty to be reflected by the national percentage of Black folk in the state and the country.
We demand free intuition for Black and indigenous students.
We demand a divestment from prisons and an investment in communities.”
A statement of “principles” follows. The Black Liberation Collective (BLC) opposes “anti-Blackness;” “sexism;” “ableism;” “capitalism;” “White privilege;” “inequality;” and “heteronormativity.” It rejects as well non-violence considered as a principle in contradistinction to a tactic.
“Anti-Black racism is woven in the fabric of our global society,” says the BLC. “When social systems are racialized by white supremacy, whiteness becomes the default of humanity and Blackness is stripped of its humanity, becoming a commodity, becoming disposable.”