Privileged college progressives denounce DC’s Black woman mayor
Elite, expensive, exclusive, entitled, clueless — it’s all there at Washington’s posh American University
Jeffrey Denny
“Bowser, Bowser, you’re a coward! Students have all the power!”
So chanted students at American University in Washington, DC. They were protesting what many here declared was DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s “capitulation” to Trump’s “fascist military occupation” of the city.
Yes, Trump was playing the race card for MAGA bigots by seizing a Black, Democratic city, run by a single Black mom, to pretend to fight crime.
The DC mayor had no power to stop Trump. Her strategy was to avoid unproductive confrontation, de-escalate the standoff, and prevent a complete federal takeover.
“DC mayor walks a tightrope with Trump,” The Guardian of London captured nicely, with the greater perspective of distance. “As the federal takeover of DC police ends, Muriel Bowser is balancing leftwing pressure with a rightwing president.”
Bowser also grudgingly accepted the extra help for the short-staffed, overworked, and underfunded DC police struggling with violent crime in poor communities, which, while down, persists too much.
Many blame white city council members who were captive to social justice activists. They slashed the police budget and handcuffed the force by relaxing DC crime laws so much that two of them faced recall efforts and even President Joe Biden and Democratic Senators balked amid a spike in shootings, armed robberies, carjacking, and retail smash-and-grabs. Meanwhile, a councilman for the city’s most crime-ridden ward demanded that Biden call out the National Guard.
But of course, the AU students know better.
Campus protestors at elite colleges across America typically feel they’re more enlightened than anyone.
Even among Harvard and Columbia, AU stands out.
First, it’s in Washington, so naturally, students are swimming in political waters and prone to exaggerating their power and importance.
AU is also expensive — a BA costs $280,000, three to four times the national average for in-state students at public universities. The nearby University of Maryland costs around $30,000 a year.
AU is well-endowed, with over $1 billion in assets. Endowments fund scholarships. Yet only 16 of AU’s 7,800 students receive its premier grant for poorer students.
AU is relatively exclusive. Its 47% acceptance rate is not too bad, but it boasts that students arrive with top-percentile GPAs ranging from 3.59 to 4.14, SAT scores between 1320 and 1450, and ACT scores between 29 and 33.
AU is prestigious, ranked highly for academic quality and networking opportunities with Washington elites, many of whom teach there.
AU is also known for its School of Public Affairs, where a faculty of policy wonks mints a new batch for careers in telling Americans what to do. Even if their “lived experience” is nothing like that of most Americans, nearly 60% of whom didn’t go to college.
The community surrounding AU is a white progressive bubble.
The lovely, leafy, stately campus sprawls amid DC’s Ward 3, which is over 90% Democratic, like the city, but 80% white, while DC is 60% people of color. Incomes are 2.5 times the national median. Home prices are three times higher. Both far exceed the city’s. Millionaires are a dime a dozen.
Despite signs and chants against the DC National Guard, such as “Go home! This is OUR city!”, some 94% of AU students are not from DC. While many of the women and men in the DC Guard, of course, are.
It gets better.
AU’s Ward 3 enjoys the lowest crime rate in DC. But the white residents hammered the local Black DC police precinct chief for failing to stop a rash of violent incidents and also curb traffic violations. “They need to put more cops here!” they demanded. “They need to get out of their cars and patrol on foot!”
Suffice to say, DC police can’t afford to live in the community they serve.
At the same time, local (white) high school students said they felt “scared” by the (mostly Black) police presence. An AU student from Berkeley, Calif., representing the college on the elected neighborhood commission, pushed a resolution denouncing Biden for rejecting the weak crime bill.
It may seem unfair to single out AU among other protests, in DC and across the country.
But from its perch in the nation’s capital, AU vaunts its unique mission of educating future leaders. Denouncing an actual leader — a Democrat to boot — who’s under historic fire by a vengeful autocrat, and from a cushy campus quad, is not leadership. It’s pompous contempt that’s only helping Trump. Do better, kids.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
