Weinstein, Bret (probably). "No, I didn't misrepresent Evergreen's Day of Absence"r/samharris. 2020.
Someone purporting to be Weinstein, who probably is Weinstein, says in a Reddit post that the fact that an off-campus event allowed for only 200 participants demonstrates that there was broader pressure for all whites to choose to be off-campus on the Day of Absence. Specifically, Weinstein states: "But, you’d have to be incredibly gullible (or willfully ignorant) to think the organizers and the Bridges administration only wanted or expected 200 white people to participate in Day of Absence, 2017. They wanted ‘Full Participation’ and were clear about that. No one on campus was confused about the objective. White people were supposed to stay home or go elsewhere . . So, the short answer to the “200 seat” question is that it was for an event held as part of Day of Absence, but participation in Day of Absence was about absence itself—and everybody knew it.."
Compare this to this email from one of the coordinators of the Day of Absence responding specifically to Weinstein before the event: "No matter who you are, participation is,andhas always been, a choice. Every year there arePOCandWhitepeoplewho choose not to participate for various reasons. We are askingpeopletoregister for off campus programming because space is limited. No one is being forced to attend either event. There are however, manypeoplein our campus community who believe it worthy to dedicate 8 hours of their lives to engaging in conversations around racism, equityandinclusion. There is no need for a formal protest. Youandothers are free to choose otherwise."
In The Bibliographer's opinion, both of these statements are true, although they could appear to contradict each other. There was something akin to peer pressure for whites to consider being off-campus, even if they were not one of the 200 registered for the official off-campus event, to allow for a caucus of POC on campus. This, in less tendentious terms, is what Weinstein's main point is. However, it was clear in advance that this was not a mandate, and now, years later, thereare still no reports that whites on campus on the Day of Absence were in any way criticized, let alone punished. For further first hand commentary making this same point, see Dorman (2017), which, buried in the comments, includes this from a faculty member:"the campus was crawling with white people that day, and no one tried to make them feel unwelcome. A single off-campus event attracted less than 5% of the community. None of my students attended it. To honor DOA we read and discussed an essay by James Baldwin, a break from our regular study of water ecology and resource management in the Pacific Northwest."
Sachs, Jeffrey. "The US Faculty Termination for Political Speech Dataset (2000-2020)". 2020.
Sachs includes both Weinstein and Naima Lowe, even though there is no publicly available evidence that either faced any sort of disciplinary actionprior to their legal settlements and resignations, and both initiated their respective legal actions against the college. Their inclusion isconsistent with Sachs' own guidelines for inclusion in his database, since he includes those who "resigned as part of a settlement" . . . "due to speech perceived by critics as political". The inclusion of this category in the database is understandable, since it hints at an element of coerced termination, but it doesn't really seem to be quite right to call this a category of "termination for political speech".when the college is not known to have initiated any disciplinary proceedings or actions, and the faculty member initiates the legal suit that is eventually settled.
Perez, Lou. "How I Became a ‘Far-Right Radical’". The Wall Street Journal. 30 December, 2020.
Perez criticizes the preprint article "Evaluating the scale, growth, and origins of right-wing echo chambers on YouTube" for designating, without argument, public figures such as himself, Bret Weinstein,Joe Rogan, and Sam Harris as 'far-right'. Benjamin Boyce also made the far right list.
Ciccotta, Tom. "Bryn Mawr Parent: Student Strikers Bullied Peers and the College Let Them". Breitbart. 29 December, 2020.
A recycling of the anonymousQuillette article on the same topicof Dec 27.
"A Student Mob Took Over Bryn Mawr. The College Said Thank You". Quillette. 27 December, 2020
Slater, Tom. "The year the ruling class got woke". Spiked. 26 December, 2020.
The Evergreen protests aregiven as the prime example of an alleged ". . . rise of campus censorship and student intolerance . . .", itself a harbinger of 2020, when "wokeness in effect became the new religion of the ruling class."
Mandeville, Laure and Bastié, Eugénie. "«Cancel culture», «woke»: quand la gauche américaine devient folle".Le Figaro. 20 December, 2020. Paywalled.
Mandeville, Laure. "Bret Weinstein: «Tant qu’on n’affronte pas la gauche “woke”, on ignore combien elle est dangereuse»". Le Figaro. 17 December, 2020. Paywalled.
An interview with Weinstein framed by the Evergreen protests.
Kelsey, Darrin. "Archetypal Populism: The 'Intellectual Dark Web'and the 'Peterson Paradox'". In Kranert, Michael.Discursive Approaches to Populism Across Disciplines: The Return of Populists and the People. Palgrave MacMillan. 12 December, 2020. pp 171-198.
Analysis of the IDW with a focus on narrative and populism, but focus is on Peterson, only passing reference to Weinstein, Heying, and Evergreen.
Mikkelson, Drew. "Small Lewis County town expects large crowd Saturday for freedom rally". King5.com.11December, 2020
The article deals with Mossyrock WA, where the City Council voted to ignore state mandated COVID restrictions and Patriot Prayer organized a rally "to support businesses and a town not afraid to stand up to the state". Mikkelsen notes that "Patriot Prayer demonstrations have become violent events, like a 2017 rally on the campus of The Evergreen State College". Oddly, The UK's Daily Mail has the most substantial report on the rally itself, reporting that "On Saturday protesters were encouraged to bring money to spend in local stores and restaurants, with long lines outside as well as packed tables inside with people not wearing masks.". The Daily Mail also referencesthe 2017 Patriot Prayer event at Evergreen, saying that it had "become violent"..
Bogle, Ariel. "Sinister sounds: podcasts are becoming the new medium of misinformation". The Guardian. 11December, 2020.
Bogle is probably referencing Weinstein (during his June appearance on Joe Rogan) here, as she lists examples of misinformation that has been propagated on the most popular podcasts:
"During the pandemic, one of Rogan’s guests suggested the virus may have been “enhanced” and escaped from a lab . . ."
Beck, Chris. "Havoc At Haverford College". Splice Today. 10 December, 2020.
On the recent student strike at Haverford. Devotesone sentence to Evergreen: "When Evergreen State biology professor Bret Weinstein refused to play pretend in 2017, campus police told him to stay home because a mob of students was looking to hunt him down."
Hufendiek,Rebekka. "Beyond Essentialist Fallacies: Fine-Tuning Ideology Critique of Appeals to Biological Sex Differences". The Journal of Social Philosophy. Special Issue. 9 December, 2020.
A critique of the "essentialist fallacies" of evolutionary psychology and their popularization via the Intellectual Dark Web. The one sentence on Evergreen is incomplete but reasonably accurate: "Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying resigned from Evergreen State College after having opposed a “Day of absence,” in which white students were asked to leave campus for the day in 2017"
Walker, Jackson. "Ed Dept. launches ‘Free Speech Hotline’ to combat cancel culture on campus". The College Fix. 9 December, 2020.
Walker reports that "seven investigations have recently been launched into free speech violations on college campuses."
Walker also reports that "[s]peakers during the 'What is to be done?'event compared the rise in cancel culture to totalitarian governments throughout history, such as the USSR, and cited George Orwell’s dystopian classic “1984” frequently as a comparison to today’s censorship of speech on campus."
Anderson, Greta. "11th -Hour Policy and Politics."Inside Higher Ed. 9 December, 2020.
Useful, critical discussion of the new DoE 'free speech hotline'.
What Is To Be Done: Confronting a Culture of Censorship on Campus.United States Department of Education. 8 December, 2020.
Discussion during which a DoE "free speech hotline" was announced. Weinstein is interviewed at about the 30 minute mark.
Korn, Melissa. "Education Department Blasts 'Culture of Censorship' at Colleges, Sets Up Free-Speech Email Hotline to Report Violations." The Wall Street Journal.8 December, 2020. Evergreen Access:https://www-proquest-com.
Kaufman, Scott Barry. "Bret Weinstein on Uniting America [Video]'. The Psychology Podcast.4 December, 2020.
Evergreen protests are discussed, but nothing new here on the topic.
Lehmann, Claire. "Bosses tied in knots by social justice graduates". The Australian. 4 December, 2020.
Main argument: "The uncomfortable truth is that the social justice culture that has emerged from elite institutions of higher education in the US may not be wholly compatible with the values that underpin a liberal democratic society." Regarding Evergreen, Lehmann writes thatin 2017 "students took over Evergreen State College, effectively holding staff hostage".
Linning, Stefanie. "The newsletter platform challenging 'woke' newsrooms: How Substack is helping thousands of writers like The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald and New York magazine's Andrew Sullivan escape 'restrictive' publications" MailOnline. 9 November, 2020.
A passing reference to Evergreen that is unexplained -- assumes that the story is so well known that readers will know exactly what a reference to Evergreen is intended to signify.
Lenoir, Luc. "Californie: un professeur de UCLA suspendu pour avoir refusé de favoriser les étudiants noirs dans leur notation". lefigaro.fr. 6 November, 2020.
McGraw, Phil. "Professor Claims Because Of Cancel Culture, He Was ‘Forced To Leave’ His Job".Dr. Phil. 6 November, 2020.
Thompson, Janna. "Friday essay: a new front in the culture wars, Cynical Theories takes unfair aim at the humanities". The Conversation. 5 November, 2020.
A slightly critical review of the book Cynical Theories, focusing at first on The Day of Absence at Evergreen. The opening gets nearly everything wrong:
In 2017, when a biology professor in a state college in Washington protested against a proposed day-long ban on the presence of white students on campus, radical students shut the campus down. . .White nationalist groups had invaded the campus, targeting black students and members of staff.
White students were not banned from campus. Radical students did not shut the campus down.
It is not quite right to say that "white nationalist groups had invaded the campus". This statement may refer to two events, both of which occurred after the Day of Absence and the protest against Weinstein, contrary to the implication of this article. Most famously, Patriot Prayer held a rally on campus. Patriot Prayer does not appear to be an explicitly white nationalist organization. This article from CrossCut gets at the nuances reasonably well, There does not seem to be any evidence that Patriot Prayer targeted black students. Various news outlets did report that the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division posted flyers at Evergreen in early June 2017 (again, after the Day of Absence and after the protest against Weinstein), with explicitly racist messages.
The critique of Cynical Theories is reasonable. The understanding of events at Evergreen is confused.
Ïsidorou, Angelo. "Bret Weinstein is being censored by big tech — CancelThis" The Post Millennial. 2 November, 2020.
The 2nd of 2 articles on the temporary deletion of Weinstein's Facebook account. The Post Millennial does not appear to have published a follow up concerning the reinstatement of Weinstein's account and Facebook's statement that it had been deleted in error by an algorithm aimed at locating "impostor accounts", although one could learn this by watching the associated 30 minute interview with Weinstein.
Rosen, Christine. "You Will Be Re-educated".Commentary150(3). October, 2020.
In an essay that begins with adiscussion of federal attempts to mandate the end of "training materials that promote critical race theory . . . ", Rosen gets a couple of things wrong in a brief account of the Evergreen protests:
In 2017, in a harbinger of what was to come,BretWeinstein, a biology professor at Evergreen State College, was harassed and threatened and hounded out of his job for the sin of raising objections to the college's "Day of Absence." The Day of Absence required white students to stay off campus and attend race-education training while nonwhite students were allowed to remain. Weinstein was effectively driven off campus by students who were aided and abetted by administrators intent on seeing his supposedly racist views punished (Weinstein is a self-described liberal).
Varney, James. "#WalkAway leader gains free-thinking followers". The Washington Times. 13 October, 2020.
Has one sentence on Evergreen, which includes a unique locutiontoshow how a voluntary event was in fact a ban on whites:"He cited the former Evergreen Community College in Washington, where professor Bret Weinstein was eventually forced to leave for asking whether Whites should be unofficially banned from campus for a weekend." Also, Evergreen is not a community college, it is not "former", and the Day of Absence referred to occurred on one day during the week, not on a weekend.
Pluckrose, Helen, and Lindsay, James. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody. Pitchstone Publishing. 25August, 2020.
Case, Spencer. "The Abusive-Boyfriend Left". The National Review. 20 August, 2020.
Several short paragraphs devoted to Evergreen protests. Wrongly states that "protesters surrounded the library building and barricaded the exits with furniture". Protestors were inside the building not surrounding it, and only one exitwas barricaded for a short time-- the library building is large and has many other doors which were not barricaded. People entered and exited freely.
Campbell, K.E. "Before too long, the woke will eat their own". American Thinker. 29 July, 2020
Hemingway, Mark. "A Push in States to Fight Campus Intolerance With 'Intellectual Diversity' Laws". RealClearInvestigations. 30 June, 2020.
Dyson, Tauren. "Joe Rogan: 'Media on the Left' Has Absolutely 'Ignored' Proof of Biden Mental Decline". NewsMax. 19 June, 2020.
States that "Weinstein was pushed out of his job at Evergreen State College after he failed to obey a call for a "Day of Absence" for white people on campus.".
Rogan, Joe. "Joe Rogan Experience #1494 - Bret Weinstein". Joe Rogan Experience. 18 June, 2020.
Barents-von-Hohenhagen, Axel Kaiser.La neoinquisición: Persecución, censura y decadencia cultural en el siglo XXI .Deusto. 26 May, 2020.
Devotes 2-3 pages to the Evergreen protests. Misleading at first in its claim that Weinstein "tuvo que renunciar a seguir impartiendo clases", but then acknowledges that Weinstein left the collegeas part of an agreement reached to settle a legal claim brought by Weinstein himself.
Booker, Chistopher.Groupthink: A Study in Self Delusion. Bloomsbury Continuum. 19 May, 2020
Devotes a page to Evergreen. On the upside: Booker goes beyond the usual singular focus on Day of Absence, recognizing that the story starts earlier than that and involves other equity issues and initiatives on campus; also places events at Evergreen in the context of events nationally and even internationally. On the downside: packed with overwritten descriptorslike "rampant", "wildly partisan", "fearful", "mass hysteria"'; totally confused about what happened when, in ways that matter; and contains falsehoods, including that in the week during which Weinstein's class was disrupted, there were "occasional acts of violence against dissenters", and that Weinstein received "death threats" (I don't believe that he has ever claimed to have received death threats during that week, if ever). Booker also implies that the college fired Weinstein, not mentioning that there is no evidence that the college ever took any action against Weinstein. Booker never mentions thatWeinstein initiateda tort claim against the college and then resigned as part of a settlement of the claim that he initiated..
Rubin, Dave. Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason. Penguin Random House.26 April, 2020.
Devotes about 3 pages to Weinstein and the 2017 protests, but only skims the surface, failing to mention factors other than the Day of Absence (Weinstein himself always tries to broaden the focus beyond Day of Absence, and had even done so on Rubin's own show more than once, so Rubin's lack of interest in getting this right in his own book suggests reason for skepticism about the rest of the book) Rubin wrongly states that protestors "stopped traffic and searched cars while carrying baseball bats." There was at least one report of cars being stopped during one of the protests unrelated to Weinstein, but no reports of baseball bats or other threatening behaviors involved.. About 2 weeks later, one small group of students carried baseball bats for a day or two, and there were reports of one or twoaltercations with other students..
Brooks, Michael.Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New RightZero Books. 24 April, 2020.
Broadside against the Intellectual Dark Web, heavy on adjectives like "ridiculous", "embarrassing", and "ludicrous". Includes a bit of 3rd hand speculation about the Evergreen protests.
Weinstein, Bret and Heying, Heather. Dark Horse Podcasts. Ongoing since about April?
50+ episodes, some of which presumably mention Evergreen.
Proser, Jim.Savage messiah : how Dr. Jordan Peterson is saving Western civilization. St. Martin's Press. 21 January, 2020..
A strange hagiography of Peterson, as indicated by the title. There is apage or so on Evergreen, but it is so oddly written that it is hard to evaluate. Proser clearly exaggerates when he writes of Weinstein that "[i]t soonbecame clear that he could never return safely to his classroom, or set foot again on campus". In fact, we'll never know what would have happened if he had returned to his classroom, since he sued the college over the summer and agreed to resign as part of a settlement. He did return to campus more than once (safely, apparently), even asking questions at a campus lecture.
Weissman, Sara. "Two Years After Protests, Evergreen State College Works to Boost Enrollment, Retention".Diverse Issues in Higher Education. 21 January, 2020.
Focuses on recent initiatives at the college, but along the way, provides one of the more accurateshort descriptions of The Day of Absence in 2017:
"Traditionally, on this day, students of color leave campus to discuss diversity and equity issues. They also leave to demonstrate what campus would be like without them. That year, the event’s planners decided to change things and asked that White students voluntarily leave campus to talk about race issues."
Editorial Board. "A Lesson in Campus Consequences; Social-justice drama has students shunning Evergreen State.".The Wall Street Journal. 16 January, 2020. Evergreen access:https://evergreen.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.evergreen.idm.oclc.org/newspapers/lesson-campus-consequences-social-justice-drama/docview/2338734063/se-2?accountid=11199
