It was addressing the exact ideology and behavior that is coming into fruition now, and we should have listened. In the early 90s people watched as the fringe slowly leaked out into the mainstream, and now it's fully into the mainstream. Example: the only acceptable feminist in public discourse is now the radfem (google the term if you think I'm using an epithet)--if you deny patriarchy as an omnipresent and nearly omnipotent, incorporeal force, you don't have a seat at the table. Another example: privilege theory, the "invisible knapsack" is a concept invented in the 90's, and while it has an academic basis, and functions as a motte-and-bailey argument in almost every use.
The ratio of college campus hate hoaxes to actual hate has got to be sky high. Yes some are real, but they almost never pan out, and the university silently drops agitating about it.
I don't see how you can even say this stuff. This is like the opposite of people who believe in bigfoot and UFOs. We all have cellphones with cameras on them. And so Youtube is filled with insane campus protests, assaults, bizarre seminars and speeches, and yet people deny they exist or have any power.
I can say it because it's my lived experience. I think you should read my comment again - I have seen hate on my campus, and it is not a hoax. Richard Collin's death is a testament to that.
> And so Youtube is filled with insane campus protests, assaults, bizarre seminars and speeches, and yet people deny they exist or have any power.
In other words, we have the most potent tool for confirmation bias and alienation ever conceived by man. Lenses only capture moments, not sympathetic humans.
First, I want to note that this has been a conservative talking point for a long time. It's flared up again since 2014 or so, but "PC culture" has been the go-to jab against coastal intellectualism since the early 1990s. That isn't to say that valid criticisms of (coastal, collegiate) intellectualism can't be made, just that the motives for the term "PC culture" are part of a broader and somewhat aged conservative campaign against the perceived liberal elite.
> Can you say with an straight face that most universities, for example, aren't more extreme left than in the past?
I can indeed say this with some certainty. I'm in college right now, in a department (philosophy) that conservatives frequently associate with rampant leftism and its intellectual mainstays (pomo, critical theory, &c). This has not reflected my experience at all - many of my professors are philosophical libertarians, and the diversity of ideas is actually broader than I expected going into the major.
I have also had progressive professors, but they have bent over backwards to make conservative students comfortable (even in environments where nobody was on the attack).
Of note: The most overt political actions I've seen recently on my campus have been plasterings of white supremacist posters [1] and the murder of a visiting black student by a white student [2].
[1]: http://www.dbknews.com/2017/03/28/umd-white-supremacist-post...
[2]: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/21/sean-urbansk...
Edit: Added "recently" to the final sentence. There were some campus sexual assault protests in my freshman and sophomore years that might be characterized as political (even if I wouldn't).