OLYMPIA, Wash. — Classes are resuming at a small college in Washington state after protests on the progressive campus attracted national attention – and threats.
The Evergreen State College in Olympia announced on its website that it reopened its campus as of 3 p.m. Monday. Administrators didn’t immediately provide further explanation.
The college had been closed for the third consecutive weekday Monday. Officials said police were reviewing new “external threat information” received over the weekend.
Protests followed a white professor’s decision to oppose an optional event in which organizers asked white students to leave campus for a talk about race. The event was a reversal of the college’s longstanding annual “Day of Absence,” in which minorities attend programs off campus.
Biology professor Bret Weinstein, who has taught at Evergreen for 15 years, wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal saying he was called a racist because he had “challenged coercive segregation by race.”
Some students called for Weinstein to resign. Conservative media pointed to the furor as an example of intolerance on college campuses, where protests have derailed multiple appearances by contentious figures.
The University of California, Berkeley, was criticized for canceling an appearance by conservative commentator Ann Coulter in April and another by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in February. The university canceled Coulter’s speech amid threats of violence, fearing a repeat of the clashes ahead of the Yiannopoulos event.
