Very bad things are happening on college campuses across the nation. Not the systemic racism of which so many complain. Not the never-ending stream of rapes allegations. Not the dethroning of college presidents or apologies of college administrators whose crime is failing to adhere to the orthodoxy of the Academy.

These may all be bad things, to the extent they’re true (and I have no doubt that there is truth in there; we may have come a long way in battling racism, but racism remains). But these aren’t the bad things of which I write. The bad things are the dumbing down of thought, of rights, of words. And they make it impossible to fix the other bad things as we’ve lost the ability to distinguish, and in some instances care, between real harms and empty whining.

I was asked yesterday how it’s possible I can be as concerned as I am about the killing of black men by police, yet so callous about the racism and sexual assault claims on college campuses. Which side am I on? The only answer I can give is that I’m on the side of real harms rather than “senses” of anything. At HuffPo College, a statement by Yale senior, Reine Ibala, a founder of the Black Ivy Coalition, said:

“To the students of color at Mizzou, we stand with you in solidarity. To those who would threaten their sense of safety, we are watching. #ConcernedStudent1950 #InSoliarityWithMizzou.”

And that’s what this is about to college students, threatening their sense of safety. This is a double wiggle, yet they don’t realize it. Or can’t see it. The juxtaposition of Black Lives Matter with Concerned Student 1950 couldn’t be more clear, and yet it eludes them. The former is about people being murdered. The latter is about people feeling hurt, sad and uncomfortable. They are not equivalents in fact, but even then, the latter is reduced to meaningless drivel based upon conclusory allegations and claims of “pain.”

When discussing why cries of rape by feminists are no longer credible, it’s because rape is a conclusory term, the meaning of which has become so watered down, so fuzzy, so ridiculous as to provide no insight into what, in fact, happened. It no longer conveys a fact, but some vague sense. The cries at colleges of systemic racism have now been similarly reduced to meaninglessness.

In contrast, when there’s a dead body lying on the ground, there’s no need for empty rhetoric to manufacture a claim of harm. A dead body speaks for itself.

At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf was under attack by Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker for this same apparent inconsistency. He explained it well.

Our diverse critiques of the campus left are not a sign that we care too little about fighting racism, advocating for justice, opposing prejudice, or protecting civil rights, or that we’ve yet to be enlightened by the right theorists. They are, rather, a sign that these issues, and concerns that they touch on, free speech among them, are too important to be ceded to a narrow, ideologically insular subculture as prone to blind spots, mistakes, wrongdoing, and excesses as any other; and too fond of jargon that more readily facilitates evasiveness than analytic clarity. The activist left on campus no more benefits from blanket deference than any other political movement, and their defenders should stop conflating criticism of their means and contested assumptions with opposition to or a desire to distract from widely shared ends.

Not only have teams arisen that demand blind adherence to their party line, but they’ve developed battle lines based on words devoid of meaning. Yet, their members believe, and repeat words that mean nothing, “too fond of jargon that more readily facilitates evasiveness than analytical clarity.” In other words, the words of the battle defy evidence that they’re true or real. A “safe space” is no dead body.

Among the demands at Mizzou is the removal of a statue of Thomas Jefferson, because he was a racist rapist.

The Thomas Jefferson statue that sits on the quad of the University of Missouri campus delivers a nonverbal code which affects me emotionally and psychologically.

In the context of today’s norm of racial and gender outrage, it’s certainly true that he was a racist rapist. But that’s “presentism,” viewing historical fact through the lens current social norms rather than in context. It’s wrong and ignorant. You wouldn’t like an America had there been no Thomas Jefferson. Or the rest of the founding fathers, all of whom were evil under today’s standards.

But worse, the cry is that “it affects me emotionally and psychologically.” There’s no dead body here. All the talk of nurturing, feelings of safety, validation and feeling valued is crap. Dead bodies are real. The world affects you “emotionally and psychologically”? Welcome to life, pal. Glad your world is so spectacularly safe that you feel empowered to raise such an insipid issue.

Back to Conor Friedersdorf:

Had Cobb included the very next sentence in his excerpt from my article, they would have seen that I actually asserted that students were catastrophizing not when arguing with their professors, but when, having failed to secure the apology they demanded for an email, they reportedly declared that “they cannot bear to live in the college anymore,” and one Yale student claimed that friends had stopped eating and sleeping and were having breakdowns.

This is why you have no credibility, and why grown-ups who are concerned about racism won’t join your team. This is inane fragility, and when any words that don’t validate your feelz cause you to stop eating and sleeping, have breakdowns, the problem is that your life is too good, too secure, that you can be in college with the grasp and sensitivity of an infant, and have no clue how absurdly delicate you are.

There are dead bodies lying on the ground, but all you can worry about is your own unduly sensitive feelings of emotional and psychological pain. And anyone who doesn’t validate your childishness is your enemy. Dead bodies versus your feelz. That’s why. Grow up.

As for the college grown-up enablers of this stunted infantilism, either shut this nonsense down or it will swallow you. You will never be able to do enough to sate the outrage machine. Your duty is not to let children have their own way, but to help them mature into adults. By enabling them to remain misguided infants, you are more culpable than they are. Children are expected to be stupid. You are expected to be better.

Via Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Rausch proposes a new “trigger warning” for all involved.

Warning: Although this university values and encourages civil expression and respectful personal behavior, you may at any moment, and without further notice, encounter ideas, expressions and images that are mistaken, upsetting, dangerous, prejudiced, insulting or deeply offensive. We call this education.

Now students, go back to class. Study hard. Learn and prepare yourselves for adulthood. And professors, teach or get out.