The Cheap Moral Indignation of Bowdoin College

Michael Toscano

Moral indignation is a powerful tool—and on today’s college campuses an increasing number of high-ranking officials are employed almost solely to wield it. Take, for instance, Bowdoin College’s Timothy Foster, dean of student affairs. On December 9, 2014, he issued a campus-wide e-mail to, as he put it, “express my personal frustration and my disapproval of harmful behavior by students who should know better.” Fourteen Bowdoin students had acted with “conduct unbecoming of a Bowdoin student.” They had dressed up as Native Americans and Pilgrims at a Thanksgiving party.

“What can we do?” Foster asked. “What can we do when we educate about prejudice, ignorance, and insensitivity but continue to have people who engage in behavior that is hurtful and demeaning to others?”

 
  • Share

Most Commented

March 24, 2025

1.

A Reckoning for Higher Education?

Are American colleges and universities finally getting their comeuppance?...

March 31, 2025

2.

Keeping Watch

Columbia's descent into chaos is by its own hand. Actions to right the university must be swift and tough....

January 27, 2025

3.

Exclusive Documents: UC-Boulder Breaks Civil Rights Law to Advance Racial Preferences

New FOIA documents grant a window into how the University of Colorado-Boulder, in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, discriminates on the basis of protected class and upholds a co......

Most Read

May 15, 2015

1.

Where Did We Get the Idea That Only White People Can Be Racist?

A look at the double standard that has arisen regarding racism, illustrated recently by the reaction to a black professor's biased comments on Twitter....

April 15, 2025

2.

Fighting Harvard and the Other Cultural Warlords

The academic bureaucracies and professoriate are so deeply committed to their radical program of replacing American society with their own vision of a new order that we have no real choice b......

October 12, 2010

3.

Ask a Scholar: What is the True Definition of Latino?

What does it mean to be Latino? Are only Latin American people Latino, or does the term apply to anyone whose language derived from Latin?...