A book thread coming up... But before that, some context.
I have wondered about the insanity exhibited by some university students who seem to protest with a degree of violence and unhinged behavior that seems very unnatural.

I have suspected that perhaps these students and even some intellectuals in Indian media seem to be doing little more than parrot some slogans and catchphrases imported from like-minded institutions.

I recently read this book that I cannot recommend enough. Not only is it very well-written, it also seeks to strike a balance without resorting to monkey-balancing.
I will reproduce some excerpts from the book - only a few - since the entire book is a must-read.

"A student named Olivia, whose parents emigrated from Mexico to California before she was born, wrote an essay in a student publication about her feelings of marginalization and exclusion. ... She wrote that she felt like she had been admitted to fill a racial quota."

"“Our campus climate and institutional culture are primarily grounded in western, white, cisheteronormative upper to upper-middle class values.”"

(“Cisheteronormative describes a society in which people assume that other people are not transgender and not gay, unless there is info to the contrary.)"

"Mary Spellman, dean of students at CMC,sent her a private email two days later. the entire email:
"Olivia—
Thank you for writing and sharing this article with me. We have a lot to do as a college and community. Would you be willing to talk with me sometime about these issues? ""

""They are important to me and the [dean of students] staff and we are working on how we can better serve students, especially those who don’t fit our CMC mold.
I would love to talk with you more.
Best,
Dean Spellman""

"Olivia posted Spellman’s email on her Facebook page (about two weeks after receiving it) with the comment, “I just don’t fit that wonderful CMC mold! Feel free to share.” Her friends did share the email, and the campus erupted in protest."

"In one scene, which you can watch on YouTube, students formed a circle and spent over an hour airing their grievances—through bullhorns—against Spellman and other administrators who were there in the circle to listen."

"Spellman apologized for her email being “poorly worded” and told the crowd that her “intention was to affirm the feelings and experiences expressed in the article and to provide support.”"

"But the students did not accept her apology. At one point a woman berated the dean (to cheers from the students) for “falling asleep” during the proceedings, which the woman interpreted as an act of disrespect."

"But it is clear from the video of the confrontation that Spellman was not falling asleep; she was trying to hold back her tears."

Next excerpt:
"Erika Christakis, a lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center and associate master of Silliman College (one of Yale’s residential colleges), wrote an email questioning whether it was appropriate for Yale administrators..."

"... to give guidance to students about appropriate and inappropriate Halloween costumes, as the college dean’s office had done. Christakis praised their “spirit of avoiding hurt and offense,” but she worried that …"

"...“the growing tendency to cultivate vulnerability in students carries unacknowledged costs.”"

"She expressed concern about the institutional “exercise of implied control over college students,” and invited the community to reflect on whether, as adults, they could set norms for themselves and handle disagreements interpersonally.""

"The email sparked an angry response from some students, who interpreted it as an indication that Christakis was in favor of racist costumes."

"Erika’s husband, Nicholas Christakis, was the master of Silliman. When he came out to the courtyard, students demanded that he apologize for—and renounce—his wife’s email. Nicholas listened, engaged in dialogue with them, and apologized several times for causing them pain,..."

"one student screamed at him: “Who the fuck hired you? You should step down! It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! It’s about creating a home here. . . . You should not sleep at night! You are disgusting!""

"Erika resigned from her teaching position Nicholas took a sabbatical from teaching for the rest of the year, and at the end of the school year, the pair resigned from their positions in the residential college."

Does this look familiar?
"Erika later revealed that many professors were very supportive privately, but were unwilling to defend or support the Christakises publicly because they thought it was “too risky” and they feared retribution."

Next excerpt:
"“Identity politics” is a contentious term, but its basic meaning is simple."

"Jonathan Rauch, a scholar at The Brookings Institution, defines it as “political mobilization organized around group characteristics such as race, gender, and sexuality, as opposed to party, ideology, or pecuniary interest.”

"There has never been a more dramatic demonstration of the horrors of common-enemy identity politics than Adolf Hitler’s use of Jews to unify and expand his Third Reich."

"the main line of argumentation fell squarely within the large family of Marxist approaches to social and political analysis. It’s a set of approaches in which things are analyzed primarily in terms of power."

"Groups struggle for power. Within this paradigm, when power is perceived to be held by one group over others, there is a moral polarity: the groups seen as powerful are bad, while the groups seen as oppressed are good."

And this is perhaps the most important part, with great relevance for India:
"One of the most important Marxist thinkers for understanding developments on campus today is Herbert Marcuse, a German philosopher and sociologist who fled the Nazis and became a professor..."

"... at several American universities. His writings were influential in the 1960s and 1970s as the American left was transitioning away from its prior focus on workers versus capital to become the “New Left,”"

"In a 1965 essay titled “Repressive Tolerance,” Marcuse argued that tolerance and free speech confer benefits on society only under special conditions that almost never exist: absolute equality."

"He believed that when power differentials between groups exist, tolerance only empowers the already powerful and makes it easier for them to dominate institutions like education, the media, and most channels of communication. Indiscriminate tolerance is “repressive,” he argued"

"For Marcuse, writing in 1965, the weak was the political left and the strong was the political right. Even though the Democrats controlled Washington at that time..."

"... , Marcuse associated the right with the business community, the military, and other vested interests that he saw as wielding power, hoarding wealth, and working to block social change."

"Someone who accepts this framing—that the right is powerful (and therefore oppressive) while the left is weak (and therefore oppressed)—might be receptive to the argument that indiscriminate tolerance is bad."

" In its place, liberating tolerance, Marcuse explained, “would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left.”"

"In a chilling passage that foreshadows events on some campuses today, Marcuse argued that true democracy might require denying basic rights to people who advocate for conservative causes, or for policies he viewed as aggressive or discriminatory..."

Absolutely chilling justification for totalitarianism:
"... , and that true freedom of thought might require professors to indoctrinate their students:
The end goal of a Marcusean revolution is not equality but a reversal of power. Marcuse offered this vision in 1965:..."

""It should be evident by now that the exercise of civil rights by those who don’t have them presupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise...""

""..., and that liberation of the Damned of the Earth presupposes suppression not only of their old but also of their new masters.""

"In the decades after “Repressive Tolerance” was published, a variety of theories and approaches flourished on campus in humanities and social science departments that offered ways of analyzing society through the lens of power relationships among groups."

"(Examples include deconstructionism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and critical theory.) One such theory deserves special mention, because its ideas and terminology are widely found in the discourse of today’s campus activists."

You must've seen zombies in India parrot this word - "intersectionality":
"The approach known as intersectionality was advanced by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a law professor at UCLA (and now at Columbia, where she directs the Center on Intersectionality & Social Policy Studies)"

"Intersectionality is a theory based on several insights that we believe are valid and useful: power matters, members of groups sometimes act cruelly or unjustly to preserve their power,"

"...and people who are members of multiple identity groups can face various forms of disadvantage in ways that are often invisible to others.""

"These interpretations of intersectionality teach people to see bipolar dimensions of privilege and oppression as ubiquitous in social interactions."

"More generally, what will happen to the thinking of students who are trained to see everything in terms of intersecting bipolar axes where one end of each axis is marked “privilege” and the other is “oppression”?"

" Since “privilege” is defined as the “power to dominate” and to cause “oppression,” these axes are inherently moral dimensions. The people on top are bad, and the people below the line are good."

"The combination of common-enemy identity politics and microaggression training creates an environment highly conducive to the development of a “call-out culture,”"

"..in which students gain prestige for identifying small offenses committed by members of their community, and then publicly “calling out” the offenders.""

"One gets no points, no credit, for speaking privately and gently with an offender—in fact, that could be interpreted as colluding with the enemy. Call-out culture requires an easy way to reach an audience that can award status to people who shame or punish alleged offenders."

Final excerpt: where gang-violence is right, bullying is necessary, and arson is celebrated: University of California, Berkeley:
"On the night of February 1, 2017, the University of California’s Berkeley campus exploded into violence."

"An estimated 1,500 protesters surrounded the building where Milo Yiannopoulos, a young, British, gay Trump supporter, was scheduled to speak."

"UC Berkeley officials claimed5 that only about 150 of the protesters were responsible for the vandalism and violence that ensued—knocking down a light generator; shooting commercial-grade fireworks into buildings and at police officers; smashing ATMs; setting fires;..."

"... dismantling barricades and using them (as well as bats) to break windows; throwing rocks at police officers; and even hurling Molotov cocktails."

"The property damage (exceeding $500,000 for the university and town combined) was less chilling, however, than the physical attacks on students and others who attempted to attend the speech."

"One man carrying a sign saying “The First Amendment is for everyone” was hit in the face, leaving him bloody. Others also suffered bloodying blows to the face and head as protesters attacked with fists, pipes, sticks, and poles."

"Masked Antifa protesters clad in black used flagpoles to batter a woman & her husband as they were pinned against metal barriers,unable to get away. The woman,Katrina Redelsheimer,was clubbed on the head, & her husband,John Jennings, was struck in the temple and began to bleed."

"Immediately afterward, other protesters blinded the couple and three of their friends by spraying them in the eyes with mace. As the friends cried for help, protesters punched them and hit them in the head with sticks, until onlookers pulled the victims over the barricades."

"Meanwhile, five or six protesters dragged Jennings a few feet away, where they kicked and beat him until bystanders pulled attackers off him as he lost consciousness."

"Meanwhile, Pranav Jandhyala, a UC Berkeley student journalist and self-described “moderate liberal,” who used his cell phone to record events as they unfolded, was attacked by protesters, who tried to take his phone."

"When he fled, they chased him, punching him in the head, beating him with sticks, and calling him a “neo-Nazi.”"

"One UC Berkeley employee bragged on social media about beating Jennings—even posting a photo of Jennings unconscious on the ground—and several Berkeley students admitted that they had participated."

"One student who wrote about having joined Antifa explained in an op-ed that “black bloc tactics” (dressing in black, wearing black gloves, and masking faces) were used that night “to protect the identities of the individuals in the bloc,”"

" and asserted that “behind those bandanas and black T-shirts were the faces of your fellow UC Berkeley [students].”"

"The failure of UC Berkeley to openly discipline any of the students who engaged in violence or vandalism during the mayhem—even those who publicly admitted participating—and the fact that the police arrested just one person that night (for failure to disperse)..."

"... seems to have taught the protesters an important lesson: Violence works. Unsurprisingly, the Antifa activists built on their success by threatening more violence in response to campus invitations to conservatives David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, and Ben Shapiro."

These excerpts are from the book, "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure", by @glukianoff and @JonHaidt
https://amzn.to/2GvCQNg  (US)
https://amzn.to/2DteTpd  (IN)

The book grew out of their 2015 article in @TheAtlantic - "The Coddling of the American Mind", which became the most widely read article in the publication's history. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/