Misryoum newsroom reported that on April 1, Ms. Weiss’ speaking engagement at UCLA was quietly pulled. It turns out, staff had been working against the event since February, sending emails to get it canceled based on their own internal fears. Over 11,000 people signed a petition to stop it, too. It’s the kind of thing that feels like a bad April Fool’s joke, but unfortunately—it was very real.
Then there’s the ‘No Kings’ protest business. Misryoum analysis indicates that professors were out there on March 28, acting out scenes to mock President Trump. I can still hear the distant, tinny sound of a megaphone echoing in my head from those videos. They claim it’s satire, but it feels a bit stale. The argument that Trump is just some egotistical dictator feels like a ‘cut-and-paste’ talking point—you know, that knee-jerk reaction people have when they don’t want to dig any deeper. It reminded me of those election ‘cry-ins’ at Cornell years ago. Just—why does it all look the same?
And then we have the situation at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Joseph Willette, a doctoral student in music, turned in a thesis that was essentially a sacrilegious drag show called ‘Mass of Perpetual Indulgence.’ The school let it slide under the guise of satire. But is it really satire? Misryoum editorial desk noted that just because you include ‘unsettling’ content doesn’t automatically make you the next Flannery O’Connor or Charles Dickens.
Satire usually has a point—it’s supposed to lead to some sort of moral clarity or grace. This? It just felt like a warped worldview where the lines between right and wrong were deliberately blurred to confuse the audience. It wasn’t just the public who hated it; local religious leaders were rightfully offended, seeing it as a blatant disregard for basic moral principles.
According to Misryoum reporting, the fallout was handled with about as much grace as a car crash. The university promised to hold a meeting to address the anti-Catholic concerns, but then… nothing. No meeting, no paper trail, just a total lack of accountability. It’s hard to tell if they were just avoiding the headache or if they honestly didn’t care about the optics of it all. Probably both, actually.
It’s a strange time for academia. When institutions stop caring about their own standards—or maybe they just don’t have them anymore—everyone else has to deal with the mess. There’s this recurring pattern of universities hiding behind ‘artistic freedom’ whenever things get uncomfortable. It’s getting tiresome, honestly.
