A comprehensive response to critiques of Black Lives Matter

This is indeed a thing of beauty.

A letter was sent from law students to a professor :

 Specifically, you have presented yourself on campus, on at least one occasion, wearing a “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt. We believe this is an inappropriate and unnecessary statement that has no legitimate place within our institution of higher learning. The statement you represented and endorsed is also highly offensive and extremely inflammatory. We are here to learn the law. We do not spend three years of our lives and tens of thousands of dollars to be subjected to indoctrination or personal opinions of our professors. 

Your actions however, clearly represent your View that some of those demographics matter more than others. That alienates and isolates all non-black groups.

This did not go down well with said professor. First, the idea that money determines what the professor should teach :

 I do not subscribe to the “consumer model” of legal education. As a consequence, I believe in your entitlement to assert your needs and desires even more strongly than you do. You would be just as entitled to express yourself to us if the law school were entirely tuition free This is because you are a student, not because you are a consumer. Besides, the natural and logical extension of your premise IS that students on a full scholarship are not entitled to assert their needs and desires to the same extent as other students (or maybe even at all). So, as you can see, arguments premised on consumerism are not likely to influence me. On the contrary, such a premise causes me to believe that you have a diminished view of legal education and the source of our responsibility as legal educators. This allows me to take any criticism from such a perspective less seriously than I otherwise would. 

You are not paying me to pretend I don’t have an opinion.

I've never understood the idea that students feel entitled to a good result because they are paying to be educated. You are paying to hear the expert's opinions and receive their judgement. If you just wanted to buy a meaningless qualification outright, you can do that over the internet much more cheaply. Since you are paying a significant amount of cash, you should expect to receive correct instructions, fair judgement, professionalism, and assistance. But that's all. You're not buying a degree - money doesn't absolve you of the requirement to do the work you've paid the professor to set for you (preparing lectures takes a lot of effort !). And you most definitely don't get to set university policy or what the professor thinks or teaches. You get to discuss those, of course, but not because you've paid money.

Next, on the idea that saying that black lives matter is offensive :

There is a difference between focus and exclusion. If something matters, this does not imply that nothing else does. If l say “Law Students Matter” it does not imply that my colleagues, friends, and family do not. Here is something else that matters: context. The Black Lives Matter movement arose in a context of evidence that they don’t. When people are receiving messages from the culture in which they live that their lives are less important than other lives, it is a cruel distortion of reality to scold them for not being inclusive enough. 

Black Lives Matter is about focus, not exclusion. As a general matter, seeing the world and the people in it in mutually exclusive, either/or terms impedes your own thought processes. If you wish to bear that intellectual consequence of a constricting ideology, that’s your decision. But this does not entitle you to project your either/or ideology onto people who do not share it.

You can read both letters in full at the link below.

http://www.pajiba.com/miscellaneous/law-professor-absolutely-destroys-student-letter-protesting-her-wearing-a-black-lives-matter-tshirt.php#.WqHU03oBRnB.twitter