This week’s episode of the Zero Books podcast features a conversation with Professor Pete Bohmer from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Evergreen has been in the news lately as students have protested professor Brett Weinstein over an email he sent to a private faculty list. In the email Weinstein objected to the students reversing what is traditionally called a Day of Absence wherein people of color leave campus voluntarily to demonstrate their importance to campus life. This year a call went out asking white people to leave. Brett Weinstein felt that this call abandoned a core principle of racial equality, namely that people should not be barred from participation in campus life based on the color of their skin. During the interview Peter Bohmer tries to reframe this, suggesting that only a small group of white students were asked to leave campus in order to participate in seminars, about 200 students,however it is my understanding as of this recording that all white students and faculty were asked to voluntarily leave and that some 200 students had the additional opportunity to participate in consciousness raising seminars off campus.
In any case, Weinstein has been called out as a racist for his email and campus protests around his email and other, sometimes more substantial, issues and demands have been made even as the students have damaged their reputation and the reputation of the college nationally. Videos of the protests have gone viral online and the college has become not only an embarrassment for the left but a target for the alt-right.
I want to thank Peter Bohmer for being a guest. At the end we discuss the possibility of an open debate on racism and free speech being held at Evergreen. I surely hope this happens and would recommend people who would like to see this email President George Sumner Bridges of Evergreen, to urge him to organize such an event.
It’s Wednesday, June 21st, 2017 and I’m Douglas Lain the publisher of Zero Books and the host of this podcast. I want to thank Zero Books Club members and encourage people who enjoy this podcast to sign up to the Zero Books Club in order to receive a second podcast every week. Right now you’re listening to Saint Pepsi’s Enjoy Yourself, but in just a moment you’ll be listening to Peter Bohmer and I discuss the Evergreen Struggle Session.