[American Spectator] One of the more preposterous aspects of the protests roiling American college campuses is the insistence of the students that they be spared any adverse consequences for their actions. They expect no suspensions, no expulsions, and most of all no harmful impact on their precious internships and job prospects. Civil disobedience without penalty is purely performative, and reduces their protests to a juvenile lark, the latter day equivalent of phone booth stuffing or streaking. Had Martin Luther King Jr. written a "Letter from the Birmingham Hotel" it would have lost its moral impact. Suffering the consequences of his actions was the price of his civil disobedience. Avoiding them today renders the actions of student protesters functionally meaningless.But spare these kids the usual opprobrium dispensed by their elders. They are in fact acting in accordance with the consequence-free behavior embraced by many of our leading institutions. Students at our top universities endure expensive courses taught by vapid ideologues, tortuous bureaucratic ordeals imposed by incompetent administrators, and witness no penalties for rule-breaking committed for officially approved political causes.
We wish to think that once these young people leave university, the "real world" will impose consequences in the form of a mythic boss who brooks no nonsense. But that is not likely, given their career aspirations. The academic majors of student activists, as noted by the New York Post, are heavy on various "Studies" disciplines, which suggests future employment in the non-profit world, where inadequate performance is difficult to measure and rarely punished. These students avoid the STEM disciplines where failure is obvious and penalized. Non-profits offer "meaningful" employment to activists without the dread prospect of being canned for non-performance. (READ MORE from Karl Pfefferkorn: For the Democrats, It’s the Keffiyehs vs. the Tote Bags)