The last time I heard of an independent school student justifying murder was just 12 months ago (see video). It was at a DEI conference- the Student Diversity Leadership Conference 2023 of the National Association of Independent Schools, when Jewish students were sent running for shelter by the anti-semitism. “Hamas just had one day of revenge,” one student can be heard declaring in a keynote to the whole audience of roughly 2000 students. It seems murder for justice is OK today. We saw the same lack of moral clarity in the words of some of the Ivy League college protestors advocating for the genocide of Jews. To their cost, several Ivy League presidents could not see the problem with this kind of thinking.
How is it that these students from privileged independent schools and colleges believe that it is ok to commit murder?
Brian Thompson’s accused murderer writes in his manifesto: “Frankly, the parasites had it coming.” “Evidently, I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.” Listen to his martyr-like resistance: “It is completely unjust and an insult to the intelligence of American people and their lived experience”(shouting under police restraint to his growing following of TikTok, liberal media, and college professors). Read the anti-capitalist quotes supportive of violent resistance attributed to him by USA Today reviewing the Unabomber’s writings. Read his Goodreads musings about “it being no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a very sick society.” Are these the values of a prestigious independent school and an Ivy League education?
Where do you think the prosecution will go for the motivations and origins of his radicalization? His statements sound like the extreme activist messages of DEI: “We need accomplices, not allies, i.e, partners in crime.” (see the last paragraph of a blog by Kelsey Blackwell). “The lived experience” terminology at the core of DEI and CRT is the first thing we hear from him: the lived experience in critical theory contrasts with the rational explanations. It is how DEI activists claim the moral high ground because their experience is more authentic than science or reason. In Mangione’s words, it is imbued with the power and righteousness of “brutal honesty.” Does nothing else from the Enlightenment matter? Is prevalent injustice and oppression the moral imperative to combat by any means, as DEIJ neo-anti-racists espouse?
He acted alone, he tells us. In the epic hero’s journey, previously celebrated in schools, drawing not just from the Western canon but from Gilgamesh to Odysseus, the archetype of a story of personal redemption, the protagonist is not the lone anti-hero striking a blow for justice and throwing away all redemption. Heroism is different now, it seems. Redemption, transformation, overcoming adversity, and building a legacy for family and society seem redundant. So where is purpose, value for life, and universal values? Is all we need justice and power? The end justifies the means. Resist. Kill. Fight. Robespierre would be so proud.
How does an individual with all the benefits and advantages of privilege get so radicalized? And why does the under-employed scion of the wealthy get celebrated as revolutionary for killing the son of a grain-elevator operator and a beautician? Is it because of his authentic back pain, for which he had the resources to get treatment ultimately? There is no back pain defense for murder the last time I looked, though the press has seemed to emphasize this as a justification, probably seeing what is coming. Even Elizabeth Warren said, “You can only push people so far” before taking it back after the outrage she received. Is that the kind of moral clarity Mangione must be drawing from?
Is privilege to be despised as the preserve of the great white colonial capitalists? Mangione’s ancestors came from nothing, as did the victim’s family. Where is respect for what they have built today? For the epic journey of immigrant success? For civics? For the tremendous liberal thinking of this country? Does it have a place at all in DEIJ?
Independent schools and Ivy League colleges have embraced the extreme ideology of DEI without thinking about the core skills and values that need to be embedded. This must all lead to something more productive than the competition to seize the mantle of violence and martyrdom: to be the first, like being the first in class, to strike a blow for justice as the conduit to meaning.
These skills must be carefully prescribed, and theories are not skills but content. And curriculum is the interplay or dance between content and skills like critical thinking. Social Justice and the three other curriculum models (Scholar Academic, Learner-Centered, and Social Efficiency), as I lay out in my book Meaning Loss, are contra-indicated. They are not just contra-indicated; they create existential curricular conflagrations. At best, this leads to poor outcomes; at worst, it leads to fatal ones.
Schools and colleges that have embraced DEI (virtually all independent schools and Ivy League colleges) will come to terms with their misstep sooner rather than later. Rebranding under community and inclusion won’t be a remedy because the problem is in the system. A systemic solution is needed because knowledge is complex. I provide a curricular way out of this based on skills and an understanding of how meaning and purpose work in Meaning Loss.
Will this anti-hero plead not guilty and drag the country through a good understanding of what drives the radicalized young person’s mind? Already, we have college professors, not just politicians, posting enthusiastic support for Mangione on TikTok. Will independent school student leaders again support murderous violence at their DEI leadership conferences as they did in 2023?
My heartfelt sympathies to the Thompson family.
