Radicalization

I found this report on the “active slasher” at Ohio State at Reason.com interesting:

Before he was shot dead while attempting to murder a bunch of people with a car and a butcher’s knife, Ohio State University student Abdul Artan—a Pakistani immigrant who reportedly became radicalized after learning about injustices committed against fellow Muslims—was enrolled in a class called “Crossing Identity Boundaries.”

In fact, he had a group project on “microaggressions” due later this week. The assignment, worth 15 percent of his grade, required students to find a dozen examples of microaggressions on social media and explain which identity groups were the victims, according to the syllabus.

That’s a classic consciousness-raising exercise and is in turn a proven method of promoting radicalization.

Maybe this cat was looking around for reasons to hate. But maybe the university was encouraging him to hate. If I were an enterprising young attorney, I’d be getting Artan’s victims to join in suing the university.